[CS1] Noel Beginner Questions: You Gotta Start Somewhere

[7r17r1]

j.C counter lead to 3C too (if you are low enough), very nice against a whiffed 360/720 (I don't really know the combo after j.D counter, you say 5k heatless huuu... ? o_o)

One thing you can do is condition the opponent to think that you're going to 6B on wake-up every time. When you think they're going to use something like ID or Jayoku, you run up to them and start blocking. Ideally they'll get up, use their DP, and you get a nice free combo on them. If they get up and start blocking, then you're back to a neutral game, but with you in range to use 5A. I've never run into someone who tries to jab on wake-up if they have a DP, so someone else will have to fill you in on that.

When you do throw out 6B and they block it, you do have the option to go right into 5D. There's enough of an opening for them to jab you out of it, so it's still a typical Noel risk/reward move.

/Edited for non-fail engrish

I m playing with some good player these day, and I swear that if you 6B on wake up they will reversal and won't get baited out if you don't 6B

In the worse case for them, they will just block it

That's because Noel's 6B is really terrible, and because it's her only overhead, so your opponent doesn't have to watch out for an other one

If you want to avoid reversal, you can try 2A os 2B, this will work on some char

2A's recover is 8 frame, so if you hit them on wake up with the last frame of 2A, you can block any reversal that come out in more than 9 frame

for example Ragna's dp

Also 2A is somewhat fast, they can't really confirm it on wake up, it will be a high risk for them to bait on your 2A and reversal Jayakou or something like that

and you can start pressure from 2A>2B, clearly a safer option than 6B

but 6B isn't that bad, you can try it on wake up sometimes, but be very carefull, they can avoid it really easily and in the worst case, reversal you, with pure reflexe (sad but true, believe me T_T)

Try to hit confirm that they IB'd your 6B, if they did they surely try to punish you and your only option is to drive (or rapid cancel), once you have punish them for trying to punish your 6B they will think twice before trying to IB punish your 6B

It's just to show them that IBing 6B doesn't give them a free punish, don't drive everytime your 6B is blocked (don't act like me ), or you'll be punished for it

[hazelnutman]

Finally went around to getting the Haida loop down after a few hours of practice.

So what are the general tiers most Noels put characters under when it comes to successful looping?

i.e. Tager and Bang would be pretty damn high on the list of characters to go Haida on (4-ish reps), while Tsubaki and Tao wouldn't be worth any kind of effort (well, at least from my experiences so far).

Also, there was something I read about her 22C bouncing higher or something in CS2. Should I assume that's going to fuck up a lot of these presently-conceived notions of Haida Looping in the near future?

[LunaKage]

Haida looping is supposed to be getting annihilated in CS2, to the point of being pointless, while I do believe one rep would probably be the standard for BnBs though.

As far as tiers go, there are no concrete tier lists, for example, some people say Haku is one of the easiest to loop, while I personally have a hard time with him. Some people believe lambda/mu are hard to loop, I think they are really easy.

As far as the characters you have listed, Tsubaki I believe is impossible to loop, one rep if you are lucky, but I don't believe you can get off more than one. Tao has a deceptive hitbox, while it may look like she is too close to 22B, she is actually in the perfect spot, you need to mess around in training to hit her sweet spot, but its possible get a full 4 rep haida off on her. Its just really hard :P

[bmore303]

I learned Haida on Taokaka because she threw me off in CT. I then went to Carl and found he was MUCH easier to loop than in CT. Honestly the worst to loop would be Hazama, Tsubaki, and Makoto by far imo. It's to the point that I've forced 22BC.. 5B -> 5C -> air combo into my pattern because the range to be successful is too picky.

[dragontamer]

j.C counter lead to 3C too (if you are low enough), very nice against a whiffed 360/720 (I don't really know the combo after j.D counter, you say 5k heatless huuu... ? o_o)

j.4D Fatal Counter. If you're in the air and you see the 720C flash or the 360A whiff, you can just j.4D and punish like mad. Well, if you're low enough at least. I prefer the j.C -> 6A, because that isn't height dependant at all. Anyway, j.4D -> d.6C -> d.6D -> d.2D -> blah blah blah is nice and standard, but its obsolete. I do believe the 5k heatless is like j.4D Fatal -> d.6C -> d.2D -> d.5D -> d.5C -> 2147A -> 2B -> 6C -> 22C -> more stuff... I don't do it because j.4D fatal counters are rare as hell. If I do land one, I just do the standard stuff that I know >_<. </me being lazy>

I m playing with some good player these day, and I swear that if you 6B on wake up they will reversal and won't get baited out if you don't 6B

I can agree with this. 24 frame overhead is punishable. I'm pretty sure my opponents react to it on wakeup.

If you want to avoid reversal, you can try 2A os 2B, this will work on some char

2A's recover is 8 frame, so if you hit them on wake up with the last frame of 2A, you can block any reversal that come out in more than 9 frame

Landing j.C is also possible if you can get the timing down. j.C -> land -> block. As long as you do it low enough, j.C will cancel into block before their reversal comes out. Plus, as a meaty, it will beat out most anti-airs (which aren't startup invincible).

I find that the 2B crossunder trick helps prevent those reversals, because you screw up their commands. (623 turns into 421 and all of a sudden their DP turns into 2C or 2D or something silly). Plus, you get to crossunder them and do a pseudo-50/50. You can punish rolls with 2B -> 6C, and neutral tech goes into 50/50 crossunder. Definitely a good trick to learn.

[Chiizu]

Hazama and Tsubaki can be CT haida looped once or twice but that's it.

[Halcyone3]

Finally went around to getting the Haida loop down after a few hours of practice.

So what are the general tiers most Noels put characters under when it comes to successful looping?

i.e. Tager and Bang would be pretty damn high on the list of characters to go Haida on (4-ish reps), while Tsubaki and Tao wouldn't be worth any kind of effort (well, at least from my experiences so far).

Also, there was something I read about her 22C bouncing higher or something in CS2. Should I assume that's going to fuck up a lot of these presently-conceived notions of Haida Looping in the near future?

my personal opinion:

easy: tager, haku, bang, tao, rachel, arakune

medium: ragna, jin, noel, litchi, lambda, mu, valk

hard: carl

lol: hazama, tsubaki, makoto

hitbox-wise valk should be easy, but for some reason his seems to be quite a bit smaller horizontally than his sprite seems to be

[wighti]

Also worth noting that even if haida is becoming obsolete for (japanese) arcades, there's really no telling how long we have to wait for the console patch. If you're considering playing Noel, it's still a damn good thing to learn even if it would end up being for just a couple of months.

+ You know, practicing inputs, even if it's repetetive ones that you wont be after a while helps you nail down other stuff along the road. Atleast that's how I've seen it for myself, just by getting more and more confident in pulling off some more strict timing requiring combos makes you alot more confident in other departments as well.

[MiraclePizza]

At least learn the easy ones, like vs Bang, Tager, etc. If you don't want to learn the harder ones you can always just use one of the many alternatives since you don't always lose out on TOO much if you don't want to invest large amounts of time into training mode.

[Nini Heart]

Sup guys. I've been playing noel recently, and i'm wondering what her game plan is actually. Everytime i play her, i feel like i have to fish for psychic 5Ds and 3Cs and CH 5Cs and 5bs to get any damage done. I have no hit confirms on a standing opponent outside of her (slow) overhead unless i'm at 50 meter for 5C>RC>3C.

Is this how i should be playing her or is there something else i can actually do to get some damage?

[dragontamer]

On standing opponents, your low is 66 2B -> 6A -> 6C is a combo into Oki. With heat, 2C -> RC -> 66A is your ~3k damage into Oki.

Sure, you can play the psychic 5D game, but I find that I lose more often than not with that. Its good to beat back predictable hyper-offensive rushes, but eventually your opponent will become cautious while approaching you. Thats when you can just do a dash-in and attempt to get into 5A range.

A blocked 66 5A offers you a ton of opportunities:

5A -> 2B -> 6A -> 6C -> blah (Low into combo on standing opponents)

5A -> 2B -> 2C -> 3C -> blah (low into combo on crouching opponents)

5A -> Tick Throw (force your opponent to push buttons)

5A -> 5A -> Purple Throw (Play Psychic Yomi: throw-reject bait if your opponent throw-breaked at 5A)

5A -> 2C CH (Your opponent hates tick throws and starts pushing buttons. 2C counter-hits into 3C Haida loop or 5D combos)

5A -> sjc -> j.D Crossup (slow, but people forget that Noel has a potential crossup. Properly spaced, you can punish some opponent's anti-airs with this.)

5A -> 6B (Overhead)

5A -> 2A -> Tick Throw

5A -> 2A -> 5C Counter-hit

5A -> 5A -> 5A (Solid Blockstring, screw up the timing of your opponent's reversals, even if they are instant blocking. Use lows: reversals require your opponent to let go of the "down" button (360 for Tager, or 623 for DPs). Using 2B while they're buffering will often leave them crouching into 2B -> 2C -> 3C -> Haida loop )

5A -> Block (Reversal Bait)

5A -> 66 2D (Pseudo-Overhead. Crosses up on crouching opponents. Also punishes throws for ~4k damage)

5A -> 66 5A (Dash back in, "loop" to more 5A pressure)

--------------

In the corner, those throws will land 4k heatless damage and ~53 Heat. Fenrir will turn that into 5k damage with no heat gained. Those frame traps go for almost 4k with the haida loop. Outside of the corner, you can go into a Drive Combo with the 623D -> 66C link, which typically turns into corner Oki (it carries the opponent pretty far)

The difficulty is getting into 5A range. Learn your ground approach (66 4+Barrier), and your air approaches (single jump, super-jump, double-jump, Air Dash and Instant Air Dash).

[MiraclePizza]

Wake up with 5D/2D.

Block with 2DDDDDDDD.

Neutral game with 5983DDDD7589D670DDD2629D345D.

Also,

Noel's overhead is 24F which is standard overhead speed in BB.

5C RC 3C doesn't combo on standing opponents and 5C 3C combos naturally on crouchers so I'm not sure why you're doing that.

For damaging openings, you really have to mix your offense up with throws since her high/low game is generally pretty poor. Throws are decently rewarding and Noel's ground throw has the fastest whiff recovery in the game so the risk isn't too bad either.

[DC]

Actually most overheads are faster than that, hers is pretty trashy, you can't make it safe. Her drive sucks, her mixup sucks, AA and A2A suck, oki sucks.

Your best bet is to learn every blockstring in the game and ib every attack.

[7r17r1]

What is that move at 2'50 ? the ones with no blue hitbox underneath her chest ? I don't identify it... and if I have a low invulnerable move I want to know about it =P

edit : with the video link it's always better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfZkLl4o3ww#t=2m50s

Edited November 15, 2010 by 7r17r1

[bmore303]

Looks like Counter Assault =\

[hulskiey]

214D

[HexaNoid]

I don't think it's Assault Through since there's no active hitbox..

Gotta be her Counter Assault like bmore said.

[hulskiey]

Its not cause she bends foward and run through opponent while doing counter assault. I dont know what it is anymore xD

Edited November 15, 2010 by hulskiey

[Chiizu]

Her throw maybe?

[7r17r1]

No, her throw can be seen earlier in the video, with the active box

Her counter assult is suppose to be 100% invulnerable, no ?

[bmore303]

Right, hence why I'm just as confused, based on animation that's all I can think of =| .

[TransientFaith]

What can you do off a blocked 5D? Are there any safe ways of pursuing the drive chain as a blockstring, or should you try to end it with 4D, 5B?, optic barrel A ?

While I'm asking, can you do anything off non-counterhit 5C? Or are you just stuck back into neutral game?

[LunaKage]

What can you do off a blocked 5D? Are there any safe ways of pursuing the drive chain as a blockstring, or should you try to end it with 4D, 5B?, optic barrel A ?

While I'm asking, can you do anything off non-counterhit 5C? Or are you just stuck back into neutral game?

Noel has nothing that's truly safe, only options that you may get away with.

After a blocked 5D, your main objective is to not get punished for it, so 4D > 5B > Optic Barrel/Bloom Trigger is your best bet, however if you want to take a risk you can use 2D and hope that your opponent used something that 2D goes over, not the best idea though.

5C > 2C for a small amount of damage, though if you cancel the recovery of 5C by wiffing a throw, it actually gives you much better recovery than 5C itself, I've actually done this to continue pressure. This tactic will still be beat out if your opponent is mashing 5A, but like I said, Noel has no solid options, only a bunch of gimmicks that can be beat easily if your opponent knows what you are going to do.

[Runis]

I find that off a blocked 5D your best bet is to actually reload your guns. Most people know that noel has tons of gimmicks she can use on 5D and most of my opponents expect me to expect them to try punish it, so they try and bait gimmicks. Noel's best gimmick is to not use one. It totally mindfucks people (but like any noel gimmick can be punished for soviet levels of damage).

[LunaKage]

I find that off a blocked 5D your best bet is to actually reload your guns. Most people know that noel has tons of gimmicks she can use on 5D and most of my opponents expect me to expect them to try punish it, so they try and bait gimmicks. Noel's best gimmick is to not use one. It totally mindfucks people (but like any noel gimmick can be punished for soviet levels of damage).

LOL I fucking love doing that, it was so obvious I forgot.

Speaking of gimmicks, 5D > Reload > 5D makes people salty.