I’ve been trying to main Harley, but I’ve had a good go at a fair few characters and to me it seems Harley is really weak.
-Her Trait is never safe to use and is not reliable.
-Her damage output seems very low compaired to most other characters in the roster.
-She does not have much range on her normals compaired to some other characters.
I’ve heard a lot of people say Harley has a lot of high/low mix-up. If anyone agrees with that could you explain it to me? Do they mean High or Overhead? A lot of High moves isn’t really important since the opponent only has to duck to avoid. If speaking of Overhead, she only has 1 Overhead normal. But comapired to a lot of the other characters this isn’t really very much (please note I’ve not played every character in-depth yet). I had a go with Nightwing for the first time today. His Overhead/Low mix-up is God-like.
Also, when I go into Tantrum Stance (laying on floor, feet waving around), if the opponent jumps over me…If I press Back or Forward Harley rolls in the wrong direction.
I really like this character, but she feels so weak compaired to the other characters I’ve played. =’(
the video i posted on the first page of this thread goes over some of her mixups/setups; you could watch that. i need to watch the video again myself because i forgot everything lol.
my midscreen harley BnB does around 40%, and the important thing is she has meterless combos, unlike some of the other characters.
we haven’t found a safe way for her to use trait yet, but i guess the item you want when you go for her trait is the bomb.
I have watched your video. I watched it before I even joined the forum, in fact. =p You have some very good points, and while I guess Harley does have some mix-up combos, these combos are always small in damage. It seems even Solomon Grundy has more mix-ups that lead to damaging combos. Grundy can do a few small combos with Overhead/Lows that can then lead into a full, damaging combo. Apart from back 3 or forward 3, Harley doesn’t have any combos that contain Overhead/Low mix-up that cause a decent amount of damage.
I’m not professing to be a Harley expert or anything of the sort. But she does seem very weak to me.
Also, she doesn’t have a decent anti-air. Her high gunshot is too slow on start-up to be used on reaction and her cupcake bomb isn’t great either.
Alright, first off, it’s a matter of being a jack of all trades. She’s not meant to go balls out on Rushdown, not meant to spend an entire fight zoning out. A master Harley will have to use all of her tools to move in and out of certain styles of play fluidly.
As for not having a decent Anti-Air, having one is a luxury in this game. Very few characters actually do have one.
found a reliable way to get play doctor to work at the end of combos (or at least come out):
do your combo into B3, air 2, air 2, land, 2, 1, D, B, F+1. this essentially turns play doctor into a standard three input special move instead of four. i got it to land just about every time with this method. you could probably even do 1, D+2, B, F +1 and get it to work. seems insignificant, but i guess that extra time of pausing between F and 1 wasn’t cutting it. now that i think of it, i should probably start doing this with all of my specials moves so they’ll come out quicker. i’m just so used to doing it the other way.
also, i wish we had frame data for harley’s picture and flower traits. it would be nice to know exactly how much recovery they have and whether or not they’re active immediately.
Harley’s got a very hit-and-run style of play that’s hard to adjust to. You want to be moving around constantly with her, staying just out of the enemies’ poking range. If you need a high low game, remember that you can cancel almost any string into Tantrum Stance, which is a mix up within itself.
She’s incredibly versatile and well-rounded, and has a decent enough moveset to at least be mid. I’d argue almost A tier, simply because her meterless, mid-screen damage is pretty up there as well, and off of almost anything.
would someone be so kinda as to tell me what harley’s air-to-air BnB is with a jumping 2 starter?
i start my combos with B2, 2, tantrum and F2, tantrum, but those obviously don’t work when people keep jumping. also, what are you supposed to do when tantrum is blocked? backwards roll?
yeah, I think the best thing to do on a blocked tantrum is roll backwards, it’s not safe but it can be difficult to punish. Harley does have a forward 3 overhead that can be cancelled into tantrum, so you can use this if they always block low, but it’s quite slow and has very short range, plus if you’ve been blocking and then press forward 3 a cup cake usually comes out.
Also, although blocked tantrums are punishable, you can also use the mixup of rolling forward into a grab. I incorporated that into my gameplay and found pretty good success with it. You can also wait a beat then do 1 and try to catch them pushing a button.
Also, I found that in the corner against most characters, play doctor isn’t the best combo-ender. If you end a combo in the corner with 112 into Silly slide, if you jump straight up it’s an extremely ambiguous cross-up. The cross-up depends on whether you chain the 112 into silly slide, or wait just hair after 112 to do it empty. If timed just right, you can actually cross-up with the jump attack then land infront of them as well.
One more thing, Harley’s jumping shot is pretty great. The angle is fantastic and it’s safe against most characters on block at max range.
then again, cartwheel is only -6. the best your opponent can do is D1. backwards roll has a windup animation before she actually begins rolling but still looks pesky to punish; forwards roll is faster but obviously not safe.
that reminds me, i was playing a harley online who would do a combo, knock me down, i would block low in anticipation of a tantrum, but she would use F3 and open me up.
those random crossup setups she has are really cool, but you need to test them against every character. i couldn’t get it to work on joker, and the timing was different against big characters.
Yeah, I’ve been swamped at work and haven’t had the time to test with all characters, but I’m pretty sure it works with joker as I remember doing it to a friend. And yes, F3 is a great for people who like to block on wakeup or don’t have good wakeup attacks.
air-to-air? I suppose I could try and figure something out. right now if I do it high enough, I do a second j2, 112, silly slide to keep pressure. I’m absolutely sure there’s better, I just haven’t looked into it yet.
As for air-to-air, J2 into 112 is what i’m going to be using for now. If I want to pressure I can end in a silly slide, but if you want to zone, you can take a single step back and cupcake bomb right after.
Note that in the corner there are longer combos. J2, 112, 12 doctor gets about 29% I think.
What are you guys doing to discourage backdashing on wakeup?
A big part of my game is bnb into 112 Silly Slide, then meaty f2 or b2, but backdash beats both clean (to say nothing of wakeup attacks). If I suspect a player is going to get cheeky and wakeup, its block and punish, but if I whiff either attack into a backdash I end up totally out of position.
i recorded harley doing 112 silly slide>B22, and i’m not able to dash out of it. i can’t even get a wakeup attack to work.
if they’re really being that predictable with wakeup backdashes, you could do things like dash>grab, perhaps throwing a tantrum stand would work because of its long range, maybe go for a cross up 2 into a combo, but you might have to change that combo ender for that.
jeez, i can’t even wakeup super out of it! is it possible you weren’t doing the followup fast enough?
It’s very possible I was mistiming the meaty. But I thought backdashes did get like 8f invulnerability, so I’m having trouble seeing why that wouldn’t be an answer even if my timing wasn’t an issue.
What? The cupcake bomb isn’t great? It’s her best move. You just have to predict when your opponent is going to jump and it will stop them every time. And EX cupcake is ridicilously good for her zoning game, it’s carpet bombing.
High gunshot requies prediction too. This is what real zoning should be about, essentially. You don’t react and spam things, you predict.
that’s the same conclusion i’d come to, but i couldn’t backdash out of that setup when i recorded it in training. who was the character that you were doing it to?
it also wouldn’t make sense for backdashes to work that way because that would mean everyone could just backdash on wakeup to escape pressure for free.
Batman.
Been meaning to get into training mode, but I haven’t had a chance to really sit down with the game all week, but if it is just something on my end great. I’m still very green when it comes to understanding NRS’s oki and the wakeup system.
you know what? i was in training mode with harley earlier. this time, i was harley doing the setup on the AI, and it’s possible to do the B22 too early. it’s possible it looked as if they dashed out of it. i don’t see that happening with her F2 though because it has a longer startup and probably can’t be done too early.
