BBCPE/BBCP Character Overviews?

[DrKatz]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering if someone could give me a comprehensive overview of Relius and Arakune. I'm having trouble deciding who I will main in CPE and CF when it comes out. I'm a Zato main from Xrd, so I feel both of their playstyles would transfer over fairly well (puppets, negative edging, oppressive offense, etc).

I know a lot about both characters already, but I want to understand them more. Their best tools, their weaknesses, the playstyles emphasized by each, and how viable they are as characters. Thanks so much guys!

[Poultrygeist]

When I was trying to discover who I wanted to play in GG, Greatfernman suggested that Zato was the closest GG has to Relius, so I think you might like him more.  As for a comprehensive overview of him, I'd suggest skimming his wiki page but if you have specific questions come visit us in the Relius subforum, we're not as active or populated as other character subforums so we'd be happy to answer anything specific (or more specifically, DP and Myoro would because they know the character more than I do) but as for some of the most important things IMO.

Relius's strength is of course his very scary pressure and his ability to not only punish mistakes, but force them to be made.  If you're creative and good at learning your opponent's patterns then you can give people a really hard time with him.  His weakness is that his defense is pretty horrible due to having no reliable reversal, and having his backdash subsequently nerfed across versions.  

When you can safely get Ignis out, do so.  You can do this off things like making your opponent block a 5B or 2B or off a knockdown like 3C.  Many Relius players choose to summon her with 5D/2D rather than follow ups to Id Lauger (236C) because it doesn't drain the meter.  Once she's out you can do all manner of nasty things.  One of the most common and basic things is the 5B->6D loop, which is exactly what it sounds like.  It's a real combo but also a blockstring and you can even delay or stagger the timing to throw them off, as well as throw in 3C or 6A and then make them safe with another 6D.  

You have three follow ups with Id Lauger, but midscreen two of them are particularly important.  The A followup sends the opponent further away from Relius and the B one drops them closer to him so you can continue pressure.  After the B one, you can adapt to their option in some ways, for instance if they try to jump out you can hit 4D and Ignis will tag them out the air, or if they try to backdash you can potentially chase with 6D.

If you get a knockdown in the corner or very close to it, you can do an unblockable safejump by cancelling the knockdown (usually 3C) into 236D and then executing a well timed j.5C.  If you do it right, they will be unable to block as the 236D hits low and the j.5C is an overhead.  If they opt to delay tech or roll, you can trade the j.5C for a 3C which gets you a combo.  Sadly this setup is going to be gone as of CF due to him getting a new 236D, but fortunately that new 236D is a command grab.  Since you're a Zato player, I'm sure you'd be thrilled to have a bootleg Damned Fang, although it's not quite the same thing because in this case it's the puppet doing the grab.

This is of course not everything, just a few intermediate things that I thought might help you out a bit.  Lich (one of the more successful NA Relius players) wrote up a nice guide but it's based on vanilla CP, so there is some obsolete information in there.  I hope you decide to go with Relius because I'm biased and he's my favorite character.

[DrKatz]

Thanks so much Poiltrygeist. I like Arakune's design. But the idea of unblockables and endless pressure/frame traps is too good to pass up. You have successfully convinced me to main Relius! 

I'll keep in touch with you in the Reliua forums! From my understanding, Relius has better pressure than Zato, but slightly worse mixup.