Fundamentals is largely ‘knowing your buttons’, ‘knowing your comfort situations’, and ‘knowing your attack vectors’. ‘Fundamentals’ gets misused a lot. This is a case in point. R.Mika’s buttons are quite frankly ‘bad’. You /can’t/ mindlessly use them. Same with her specials. You must know your ranges really well or your going to eat 52 frames of wiff where they can do tons of damage on you.
I agree with you to a point about how crazy she is when she is up close, but mix ups themselves aren’t really mindless either, especially when a lot of characters have good reversals unlike R.Mika so it isn’t like she can just completely overload you with pressure up close. I’m not quite sure how you say she can bypass the varied timings though? Yes she has a response for every wake up but it is still technically a ‘read’, and very few of her combos give you a true hard knock down.
The strategy against her is pretty easy as you mentioned though, ‘stay the fuck away or you’ll get beaten down.’ This works fairly well for most characters, but in general she feels balanced, not really having too hard a time with anything other than maybe her neutral nor does she have that easy of a time other than maybe the corner. In both cases it requires way more skill than seems to be the sentiment for these salty people. Maybe she just made them sweat too much and they don’t know what else to do with the excess salinity? (More seriously though, maybe its more so that R.Mika DOES take /more/ fundamentals in order to be effective so the ones people come across win from there?)
Any misconception about Mika is likely players who haven’t figured out that if you are not using an attack that is invulnerable, that you do NOT attack when you wake up. People are probably pushing buttons and getting wrecked, thinking it’s because all of Mika’s damage is free. EVERY character can do meaty wakups, but they are most common in Mika’s game where that is most of what she does.
My point about bypassing wakeup timings was simply that Mika doesn’t have to knock you down, and is arguably better off if she doesn’t. Off of any PP combo, corner or midscreen, she has the option to end in a standing reset, rather than a knock down. I haven’t seen another character with a reset game half as scary or robust as Mika’s, and not only is her ability to create standing resets amazing, but she also has the perfect tools to reward her for creating those situations (command throws and f+hp, mainly).
This is what I meant by her getting to do things “on her terms”. Yes, you still have to make the right choice to bypass their defense, but almost every other character has to end their combos in a knockdown that gives the opponent lots of options in terms of wakeup timings and potential attacks. Mika, on the other hand, gets to stand you right back up in front of her and say “guess again!” Invincible reversals are good against her for sure, but are also risky by design in this game so it’s a real double edged sword for them. Mika seems like the best character in the game at keeping her offensive momentum once she opens you up.
Incidentally, I think this is why Capcom made her s.MP negative on block. Can you imagine how insane she’d be if she could reset you standing into a meaty s.MP, and either hit-confirm into PP for another reset, or frame trap on block? f+HP is already amazing, but they were wise not to let you get to PP off of anything frame positive on block.
Is why you want to hit s.mp meaty all the time in your resets imo, if you can get it consistently 0 on block you have a 3 frame jab that you can effectively frame trap with since a lot of cast have minimum 4 frame moves, and if opponent has 3 frame move there’s usually a good reason to go for a trade anyway
This is the 1st SF game that playing a not so good character compared to the rest is actually pretty damn funny. Some firends always told me “hey, mika is not bad at all, she es ‘ok’…”, then, they just tried her and we all agreeed she just sucks on so many matchups XD
It’s always a struggle to outplay your opponent, and what people are doing is respecting her too much, maybe that’s what Marn means, just play against lots of mashers and scrubs and voila, no more confidence on CCs or command grabs. What’s with the different range for both command grabs anyways? They should have the same range for P and K
I just haven’t had time lately to finish it but this is why we need an FAQ on Mika. Not just about how to use her moves but on why her moves were designed in specific ways. Then when things like this come up we can just link it and ignore it if they decide to not ask actual constructive questions afterwards. And honestly it’d be nice to be able to separate some of the more common knowledge from the ‘busier’ tech and beginner threads as well so newcomers don’t have to sift through giant threads.
Now if only I could get some time to actually play the damn game on top of things that’d be great -_-
Even without any of her fancier mixups or vt shenanigans she has enough advantage off of any knockdown to continue to threaten with hit/grab mixups. Neither Gief or Laura can do that, so that alone should make her the best grappler, at least.
If you don’t get mix ups with Laura your doing horrible with Laura. If you /need/ mix ups with Gief your doing horrible with Gief. All three of the main grapplers are balanced to similar degrees. In all the tier lists I’ve seen they’ve been smooshed together and rightfully so. The main grapplers of SFV have been very carefully balanced because grapplers can easily break the game if not balanced correctly. If anything I’d say R.Mika’s ‘distinction’ as a grappler is her poke game, not her knockdown game which Laura has a decent set up on as well. I don’t think there is a clear ‘the best’ grappler unless someone unlocks some bawler tech in either of these characters to set them out ahead of the others.
You were on my ass for talking about Laura earlier in this thread so I’ll refrain, but you don’t know what you’re talking about regarding her. None of her knockdowns barring backthrow lead to another hit/grab mixup. Having to potentially only get in once is amazingly powerful, and when people cry that Mika is broken I really don’t think they have her pokes in mind.
edit: What the fuck man? I just saw that you posted “her neutral game sucks, but her knockdown game is so strong” in the nerf thread. Is this “pick a random opinion”-day?
Well in this particular instance I had already linked Mika’s hitbox info in this very thread. On the same fuckin’ page: R.Mika General Thread: She’s Stone Cold
I doubt this person would’ve read any FAQ if they can’t be bothered to do anything else.
Serious answer: I do read this read a lot, I’m saying it sucks that both command grabs have different range 'cause sometimes you need to go for one, but the one with the most range (punch) sends people away from the corner if you’re like 3/4 of the stage.
Thing is, it’s a very different story of people are just confident on ther pokes and longe ranged footsies against Mika, so most of he times I see people just not respecting her gimmicks and rush her, they always get her cornered and it’s a nightmare against Karin, Claw, Bison and sometimes Rashid. Claw beats Mika players by just pressing buttons, how can you make that character block your things? Mika is far from broken, she needs to get in a lot and that alone is a big risk.
Not sure what you are referring to in the edit. If you mean me saying Mika has good pokes compared to the other grapplers but that her neutral game isn’t good I do not see how that’s conflicting. A lot of her pokes confirm into things, but her move speed is slow and her range is shorter than most other people. I was only referring to her pokes being better than the other grapplers. If that isn’t what I said that is what I meant. I think you over estimate her ability to get /in/ ‘only once’ and keep it there, but I ain’t going to disagree with you that this is her strength and why she can be strong. Honestly are we even disagreeing at all here? This seems more like an opinion differences than a disagreement on the game balance or w/e at the moment.
I do think that Mika seems the best out of the grapplers right now just because she can continue to pressure after her Brmistone throw. With that being said, she still isn’t the " Broken " / " Stupid " character that some wants to believe she is.
Does Mika need fundamentals to play ? I will say Yes to a degree and also not as much to a degree. Hear me out, please.
Mika does have some really hard time in the neutral because of her t-rex limbs on her normals and average walk-speed. She does have some ways in like the dropkick and her V-trigger can be a " Get in " method but both of these methods are telegraphed. So in that sense, it does take some fundamentals to get play her neutral.
What people are angry about is the fact that she might need to only get in once to win, So you may be getting outplayed and then guess right once on a dropkick or a jump in or even a luck F+MP in the neutral and get rewarded heavily for it. Your opponent has pretty much to play an almost perfect zoning style to keep her out because one mistake could lead them to death, potentially if you can keep the momentum going. The momentum guessing game isn’t really something that i would consider to be " fundementals " and that is why some thinks she doesn’t need fundamentals.
Hmm, that is a good point. Although, I am not really sure I understand why people keep mentioning that she only needs to get in once? Most other characters have a reversal or wake up that keeps her from being too impossible to handle. Do you have any thoughts on that?
No, i’m not asking that, I’m saying it’s silly that all P command grabs have more range that all K command grabs, in case you didn’t know…And the EX kick version also has less range thant the EX punch one. I swear sometimes I think I’m close enough to EX kick Cgrab people and I see Mika wiffing her arms THROUGH the other character.
