yeah I think some exploration of this fabled c.m needs to be done at some point to find out if it is as good as everyone says it is.
I kind of wish someone in the tourney scene played Rocket Raccoon all I hear from people is “This character isn’t good or This character doesn’t have potential” Which I call BS upon.
I’d class him very much as a finesse character because he’s got so much potential in theory you need to never make mistakes. I think it’s a combination of low life along with a sort of unconvential play-style that requires a lot of practice and knowledge.
I’d agree that in some ways it’s bullshit, but he’s in the same category as viper. With viper it’s “you can do this really technical combo for x amount of damage or you could pick wolverine and do abc abc abc super for the same amount”
With RR it’s “you can pick this character who can do tonnes of strong and nifty mixups and stuff or you could pick someone who only ever needs one reset”
I know his damage potential is actually quite decent, but the amount of places it can drop really doesn’t work in his favour. My friend once stated something along the lines of “When your RR works it’s a thing of beauty” which is really cool, it’s just the major problem with RR is playing to a level where it works.
If you want RR represented and no-one in the tourney scene is doing it then it could be up to an unknown to show up to a tournament and smash the crap out of people on a stream for people’s opinions to change. I know it’d never be me because my execution is just so shoddy but I’m sure there are plenty of really good RRs out there who just aren’t being seen.
I think he definitely has the potential to be one of the most unpredictable characters in the game in terms of mixups, resets, tricks, traps and all that.
Exactly lol That’s why I get upset when I encounter other players at this game because half the time it’s people who pick Wesker or whoever have simple combos. I agree he’s very technical but when he works it’s so much fun especially when your opponent doesn’t know what to do. I’m like the only person among my friends who play RR and they’re normally like “I love seeing you play with the Raccoon it’s fun” Plus I enjoy playing the character. But I digress sometimes it’s better to let people sleep.
Regulars on the tournament scene can make decent/some money off of winning or placing in regular tournaments. Characters like RR and viper are unpopular because they are seen as nothing more than liabilities compared to wesker, sadly if we ever see RR it may be some tourney pro picking him up for the first few matches in a set where he can afford to lose. Think of someone like ChrisG or Ryan Hart. Sometimes they like to pick teams that aren’t their main characters and they have a tendency to get beaten for doing so. Then they pick their normal team (or sagat for example) and just dominate again because they’re back on a solid team/character. I get part of it is probably wanting to practice other teams, but I think there is some element of trolling/showing off to it “ha ha I beat you without using sagat/level 4 dark wesker” sort of thing.
Sadly not everyone buys into the japanese mentality primarily consisting of “pick a team/character and master it” because winning is more important to a lot of people than that other quality that makes you challenge yourself and pick outside of the top tier because of a fondness for the character or playstyle.
Anyway I digressed a bit there but if you like him then keep repping RR, because if/when someone shows up at a place like evo and dominates with RR and we have to deal with the influx of people coming to this character forum going “omg how i play da coon? lololol coon! lololROFLMAO” we can at least be smug about the fact that we didn’t need someone like justin wong holding our virtual hands and telling us what to do to make us come here.
That’s very true lol That’s why I hate when that happens when people sleep on characters then one guy blows the scene up. You’re right though no one actually sits down with their team they just use them. Like right now I’m like looking at my mixups and using RR with Vergil which doesn’t sound all to great but I like my team and it’s actually pretty neat when you think creatively at times. It’s very true that most players want to win so they just pick the OP guys. Then technical characters basically don’t see the light of day
One teleporter I think RR doesn’t mind fighting is Dante. Since the poor guy can only teleport above your head he’ll always be vulnerable to the Log Trap. You don’t know how many times I’ve punished teleporting dante’s with this attack.
What Dorms are you guys fighting that are trying to zone you? o.O
No reason to bother keeping the Raccoon out when he can safely put him into a 50/50 from any position. If RR manages to guess correctly, his position is no more favorable. He just has a few more seconds to make something happen or be forced to guess again.
His ambiguous teleport j.S is 1 touch death and RR has no consistent way of dealing with it (traps are nullified and j.S beats all RR’s anti-airs). He’s forced to camp out on a spring trap hyper and once he’s out of meter he must guess for his life.
I think RR might need to swap assists based on the matchup more so than other characters. His health sorta forces him to minimize risks and tailor his approach to each opponent based on their options.
I have like one friend who uses Dorm he be trying to zone you lol But you’re right though have to watch the mixups but in most cases it’s like why now use H teleport or what you said and use Spring Trap .
the dog, and magnus > RR =\
Well yeah, that kinda makes sense, I don’t think Ammy is a horrible matchup though, winnable.
Dunno, big priority hit-boxes and small body size herself? She’s bound to be a nightmare when covered with an assist that can tag you to open you up or nullify traps.
While I’m here I wanted to talk about a specific weakness of RR. Controlling the space above him. I feel anyone who has a good move that can drop down on top of RR’s head is pretty strong at opening him up because I’m not sure how to combat that.
By means of example I have a friend who plays modok and his strat atm is to super jump and fire angled beams down. When this tags RR it hurts a lot, so I try and teleport to avoid it, but this puts me in range of modok’s jumping S which has a big hitbox and modok can airdash to make it hitting a bit predictable.
The best way I have found to deal with it so far is to bait it out at the edge of the range and punish with c.:h: >Wild ripper > Launch but that doesn’t help in situations where I’m facing something else similar e.g. dog’s big sword slash thing. If I have time to place a net trap that tends to work best, sometimes claymore eats the air normal and I get hit despite that or it tags RR’s head first and the claymore disappears. I know there are similar moves from other characters that can pressure in this way and I can’t get a feel for a consistent punish/counter to it.
What do all you guys do against that kind of stuff?
I do agree Rocket has a problem with characters being directly above him in a situation he can’t easily throw. Honestly I super jump around and j.S all over the place, the advantage of that position is it pretty much lets you move anywhere you want. you can hit confirm into a pretty high hitting combo, go in for pressure off a spaced hit or go back with a barrier protecting you. It’s one of the reasons I think RRs main advantage is his unpredictable mobility, I like to be high mobile in most situations (stuff like Mad Hopper and H burrow let you stand your ground a lot better). If I have meter I often just lay a mad hopper as they come down as well.
Can you elaborate on how all this works for you at SJ height?
Use j.S while rising basically, it essentially makes a wall of explosions. From my experience people are actually pretty afraid to approach though it and it often lets you move in somewhat safely against some characters. The reason for the super jumps is so that rocket skates down or down forward j.S will combo if it hits.
Ahh I see so jump and spam it. Didn’t know you could do that. You mentioned high hitting combos, how do you get them all the way down to the ground from sj height with just j.S ? Does the second one induce flying screen into hard KD or something?
yeah I guess essentially it is j.S spam but it’s a bit more dynamic than straight up repeating it.
You can loop it basically lol, there is a LOT of leniency in HSD at that point as well so it’s pretty easy to let them fall a lot between the second jump. I know you loop it 3 times, but I struggle to get the 6th j.S to connect unless I really, really rush it which isn’t practical out side the corner. No flying screen, I use c.HS once I land into air series then usually OTG super, it’s possible to get a second launch, but again, the air series is tricky with HSD because you probably had to delay some stuff.
Here’s a particular situation that has been bothering me: Spencer. He can stay in the air for a long time, he can zipline over the ground and instantly strike you so mostly no traps aside from Hopper, and blocking is pretty useless against him when he has long range assists. At least for me anyway.
I actually think that he has more trouble with Zero. I was playing against a friend yesterday and hadangeki + buster / teleport spam I couldn’t get through, just eat chip damage to death. Trying to teleport behind Zero is a deathwish, and I think the only way to deal with it is to reverse troll and just stay underground. 
If he gets out an assist, it’s just like your teleport + assist so you can only block. Otherwise c.H is pretty great against him, hits a nice angle where it keeps him form zipping unassisted. Otherwise j.S rocket skates all over the place. You have more air mobility than him.