[CS2] Taokaka Self-Improvement and Critique thread

[Domethieus]

Post up videos x3

The thread should be self explanatory as the Tao board lack one.

Edited September 13, 2011 by Domethieus

[XDest]

The first thing that's very obvious: You not using your movement to your advantage, and because of that you're whiffing everywhere. You're still trying to use Taokaka like a character that doesn't have 2 dashes/3 jumps. You almost never use drive cancels in your midscreen neutral mixup, which gets rid of a lot of options.

The other problem is that you attack right as you jump/dash, with no delay time. Several of those j.2B attempts would have worked if you just waited a bit. You need to gauge whether you are going to do a vertical or horizontal air to ground move (j.C for horizontal, j.2B for vertical). You whiffed a couple times for simply choosing wrong. Movement is huge with Taokaka, and you're still not quite there, play around with it more.

Using 27,7,7 (with any number of jumps/delays) -> j.214D6 to get out of the corner instead of just taking it is sometimes a good idea. A lot of people still get pissed off at this.

You should be delaying between j.C and 9D~9 vs smaller characters in combos, so that 3D~3->j.236Bx5 will hit properly.

You're not confirming the air-to-ground hits you do get. You're always just going for 3C, instead of 66->5B->3C for an actual combo. You don't confirm when you're too far away either, to go for a 6A combo, instead once again you use 3C and get no combo.

You're not using A and C drive cancels in blockstrings, and they're ending way too early for anything to happen.

[Cryingvoid]

Domethieus

Well, XDest said much. To summarize what you really need to improve, you need a full guide, since, honestly speaking, in these matches you showed nothing what can be referred to as "Tao's play style".

Needless to say, you need to improve everything, from movement, to execution. And it obviously should take time and effort. To make it clear, remember these main points:

Tao is a low-on-health rusher. She lives for one purpose: to confirm a damaging combo. Otherwise she dies. There are absolutely no other means to win, but to use your speed and diversity to get a nice combo starter in.

- this means, a) you need to use your drive variations and other moves, like 6A anti air and 6C spacing to counter the opponent's moves and confirm a combo off the counter hit, or b) you need to use your drive cancel mix ups and cross ups, cat jump cross ups etc. to confirm your combo off a blockstring.

These two are the only Tao's strategies to win. The point is, once you scored a hit (any) you absolutely must make the maximum possible damage off it. So you must practice combos off any possible starter in training mode. Also, since she's low on health, has no oki's, almost no resets etc, Tao can't afford dropping combos, neither can she do low damage variations, so don't drop 9d dash loop. It is better to make fewer reps, but always a solid ender.

I'll repeat myself, Tao is forced to treat her every combo as the last in a lifetime. Logic is simple: 1) you can't waste punish opportunities; 2) you can't fail hit confirming each high-profile starter; 3) you can't drop any combo.

This is main. You shouldn't think about anything else right now. Try get your practice concentrating on these main points. Train hitconfirming, combos and her mixup game.