General Mixups
First off, lets look at shining wizard, the low grab.
Shining Wizard Mixup
This. This is my favourite thing in this game right now.
Here is my current mixup surrounding this move, which I posted before in the GD thread:
Off of the ideal tag combo, after the anti air grab, try for a cross up or fake cross up. They have to guess which way to block (I actually really like king’s jumping forward), if you hit, confirm into magic series combo, go for a jumping roundhouse and switch cancel into your point.
Between your two knee loops you have just landed (one from tagging King in, one for this setup), you have done a ton of damage and King has done his job.
If they do block the cross up, its pretty much a general assumption that your opponent is going to block low, as you naturally would against everyone else. Once you land from the blocks cross up, EX shining wizard them.
Once they start catching onto this, they might start blocking high in anticipation. This is EXACTLY what you want them to do.
DO NOT GO FOR GIANT SWING IF THEY START BLOCKING HIGH. Yes, this grab grabs high, its WAY better to go for a low normal into magic xx ex kicks into loop (and then of course, ending with tagging king out). Giant swing is only really that great for whiff punish and certain footsie situations do to EX’s bonkers range. You get more damage, spend less meter (potentially), and are WAY safer going for low normals.
If you land the shining wizard, congratulations you get another opportunity to mix them up.
This mix up is awesome. Its two 50/50s in one, and so far is doing wonders for me.
Don’t worry too much about missing SW. if you pay attention, you should be able to see the frames of animation of your opponent blocking, and this will be perfect indication on what to go for. For people with poor reversal options, it destroys them, and once safe jumps are figured out it will be even stronger.
You can of course use SW in other places, like after block strings and stuff, but its risky. In my eyes, this is the best set up. for it.
Patent pending.
Jaguar Step Mixups
There is something that fills my heart with joy when I watch a giant man with a leopard head prance all of life’s problems goodbye.
This is a pretty decent utility move. It has a ton of invciibilty, but unfortunately not on startup or recovery. It leads into a mid hitting follow up, and over head, and low hitting follow up. Pretty sure all three are unsafe on block. At certain ranges, this move is down right useless. However in some situations and some match ups, it can be a very useful tool.
A mix up I have been drying to develop is doing it on some one’s wakeup. Try conditioning your opponent to believe that on their wakeup, you are going to go for pressure. in the case of characters like ryu, ken, and sagat, there is a good chance they will eventually go for a dp.
This is where this move comes in handy. If you time it right on their wakeup, it will make DPs whiff. Completely. Its beautiful. I need to test this ore, but I feel like there is a certain spacing and timing so that it will pretty much go through everything, save for long moves with incredibly long active frames (Zangief’s lariat) or if they are mashing on fast normals. But that’s they great part of this move. Using it practically on your opponents wakeup once or twice will naturally make them want to try these tactics. And we all know how mashing normals on wakeup can turn out for you opponent. Use it to your advantage.
I am not going to go too far into detail about the high low mixup game with the follow ups. I think the application is pretty obvious. Pretty sure they are not safe on block though, so a good set up for them is to go either high or low, switch cancel on block, and then proceed to mixup with another high/low or pseudo unblockable with your point.
So in short, this move is less dangerous of a mix up then to SW one as far as damage and practicality is concerned, but its great for getting in your opponents head to condition them to do incredibly unsafe things on their wakeup. It should be used sparingly, but the beauty of it it only really ever needs to be used once in match for its effect to be felt. It works especially well on grapplers other then grief, since it goes throw throws as well. Gief can just lariat on his wake up to pretty much fully nullify this mix up.
Forward + Strong Mix Ups
So this one is pretty basic, but might as well touch point on it. forward strong is a unique normal of King’s where he chains two elbows, and then follows up with an over head. However, you don’t HAVE to go to the overhead. The first two hits of the chain are safe on block and have decent frame advantage. Therefore, on block you can decide whether to follow up with the over head or go low with a different normal to open them up.
Pretty basic stuff, but its worth mentioning that this one works well in conjuncture with Jag Step. Forward Strong has a very short reaching hit box, so you have to be very close to your opponent. You can close that space with Jag step. Or, if you have been using the Jag Step mixups on people’s wakeup that I mentioned above, and it was successful, a smart player is going to be wary to press button on wakeup knowing you can frolic right through whatever he pushes, and will probably wake up blocking. When they do, that’s when to use this move. Keeps your pressure going and could lead to a combo to get King out.
This is definitely a mixup I still need to do a lot of testing with, like if they can reversal DP if you forward strong is unlinkable into a low normal.
