[CP] Azrael - Gameplay Discussion v.2 (Discuss Videos/Combos/Questions/etc.)

[greatfernman]

i played tochigin the other day and he's pretty good. he was 16th dan when i fought him, but i have no idea how much footage there is of him, since he mained valk iirc.

[RentalBlackout]

Yeah Tochigin is pretty noteworthy too, though he's just as hard to get to watch as the other Azraels.

Btw you playing in SEAM right greatfernman? Friend of mine is in the same pool as you, you'll know which one he is, he probably is one of the very few(I'm assuming) Tagers in there. Best of luck to you and to Ice Cube as well, he used to post a lot around here didn't he?

[greatfernman]

Btw you playing in SEAM right greatfernman? Friend of mine is in the same pool as you, you'll know which one he is, he probably is one of the very few(I'm assuming) Tagers in there. Best of luck to you and to Ice Cube as well, he used to post a lot around here didn't he?

Thanks, I honestly have 0 experience playing against the SEA crowd, so I have no idea how well I'm going to do. :s

[LordSpectreX]

Jin is a prick. MU is unwinnable

 

Wait but...

 

 

online

 

 

Ohhhhh...jeez.

[RentalBlackout]

I think online Az with less than at least 3 bars connection already makes some of your advanced combos difficult unless you have godlike muscle memory. Let's not forget about lag tactics either. Offline play is king.

 

Just to put into perspective, if I'm not wrong, a ping of 50ms delays inputs by about 3 frames. I think that's already the limit of Blazblue's input buffer. I assume you're going to get pings of at least 150+, that's already 9 frames. The fastest jab is 5 frames, so no doubt everything's gonna get affected, even things like spacing. Good luck on instant blocking and teching green throws.

[Warhound]

Teching throws comes down to yomi at this point. I don't know why I bother playing this game, no one around me actually plays it with any proficiency.

[RentalBlackout]

What do you guys do for resets? It doesn't seem like Az has many resets that are worth going for from what I've seen.

[LegendaryRath]

What do you guys do for resets? It doesn't seem like Az has many resets that are worth going for from what I've seen.

He has a great set of overheads (5D/6D), decent lows (2A/3C/3D, 3D kind of looks like 6D so it tricks people up). Falling mixup is fairly strong, using falling j.A > airdash j.A > j.B or falling j.A > (land) 2A. Throws are always an option. If you add crossups into the mix, I don't really see how you can think he doesn't have anything worth going for. His average reward is higher than most characters too.

 

Teching throws comes down to yomi at this point. I don't know why I bother playing this game, no one around me actually plays it with any proficiency.

Sometimes, netplay is the best you can hope for until you get a chance to travel to a tournament. It's far from the best thing in the world, but at least it's something.

[Verimeloni]

Teching throws comes down to yomi at this point. I don't know why I bother playing this game, no one around me actually plays it with any proficiency.

 

I don't have any offline friends who play BB, nearest tournaments are held in an another country. Without online I'd be screwed.

[Kinkuli]

Midscreen i would not personally go for resets since you benefit more from carrying your opponent to the corner. In corner sure, if you score 2A hit for example and maybe reset after 2B with 5D then it works out nicely. Bigger problem with this though is that IF your opponent blocks, you give up pressure as 5D etc. are minus on block. 

 

Also Verimeloni if you know Happi in helsinki then people play BB/GG/P4U/whatever there weekly on thursdays.

[Warhound]

Yeah, online is my only option. But it's gotten to the point where it's just not that fun for me to lose to some idiot doing something I know I should be able to react to or beat, but because of that slight lag input, for some reason Jin's 5B oki gets me every time.

[Warhound]

So, I probably should post the question in the combo thread, but no one has posted there since it's creation, so I'm scared to.

 

Anyways, when it comes to doing his aerial ending in j.D and then you RC it and continue with falling j.C....so like....what the hell is the deal with that thing? I can SOMETIMES make it happen by delaying j.D's hit, because it causes some weird faster falling physics or something to happen. I know it would be a good asset to me if I could master and actually do it on purpose, but I don't know the eh...trick to it.

 

Anyone care to elaborate?

[Yuhoke]

Well, I'll chime in. I have somewhat the same issue with j.D, RC, j.C. I'm fairly inconsistent with it, so in real matches, I use j.B instead of j.C. It's easier to do and I can squeeze extra from no weakpoint AA 5B.

Like AA 5B > j.B > j.C > JC > delay j.D > RC > j.B > 5B > aerial > 5B > (aerial Or TCL > 3D)

But as for the falling j.C, I don't have any trick to it. I find it hard and inconsistent, so I guess it comes down to practice

[RentalBlackout]

I think it's something to do with how much height difference there is between you and the opponent when you do j.D RC. I also find that it works way more consistently if you delay the j.D, in fact I don't think I have ever been able to do it without delaying it. I'm not really sure what's the best frame of reference but for the right height, try doing a raw Sentinel into 5B>j.B almost immediately. That's the height you'll find that it'll be fairly consistent. It really is dependent on how much height difference there is between you and your opponent when you 5B them in the air. If you try doing 5B later(hence lower), you'll probably never be able to connect j.D RC>falling j.C

 

Like Yuhoke said falling j.B is somewhat easier, and I think is more lenient on the height issue. Personally it's still something I can't execute all the time and pretty sure I've seen even Dogura drop it time to time, so it's certainly not an easy one.

[Warhound]

Oh good, fantastic, NOW you guys post in the combo topic.

 

I was wondering what the factor was, I guess it's distance hm? I know that a few times at the end of a match I thought "man I can really just close the deal if I knew how to cancel and get a combo from j.D" and thus many a match went.....uncertain. 

[Kinkuli]

I just usually delay the jD after jC. On top of my mind i think you should do the jD after your jc stops increasing your height and you are just about to start falling down again. Then just RC jC and do whatever, e.g hj jC jc jD or TC valiant for corner carry (you can whiff riger and still hit with cobra valiant). It's really not THAT hard once you get the timing down. You can also use jA to control the height somewhat in some cases, or rather you have to use it, which makes it somewhat hard to do in random situations. Still worth learning as it increases kill and corner carry potential.

[LegendaryRath]

The main factor for getting j.D > RC j.C to work is height. You need to be a significant amount of space below the opponent. By delaying j.D after jump canceling the first j.C, you give the opponent more time to move up, while also allowing Azrael to stop moving upward. If the opponent is higher when you land your anti-air 5A/5B, things will work more consistently. If the are lower to the ground, either add an extra normal in your aerial, (5A/5B > j.A > j.B > j.C...) or don't bother with it at all.

 

There is nothing about j.D that would ever cause the opponent to fall faster or slower by delaying it.

[SinnTek1]

Anyone out there in TV land willing to teach me how to play Azrael? I really like him but I am having a HELL of a time learning his hit confirms and combos for some reason. Like I can do up to 5 to 6 hits in a combo but I have seen him do waaaaaaaaaaaaay more and I just don't get why I'm having such a hard time...

[Warhound]

Anyone out there in TV land willing to teach me how to play Azrael? I really like him but I am having a HELL of a time learning his hit confirms and combos for some reason. Like I can do up to 5 to 6 hits in a combo but I have seen him do waaaaaaaaaaaaay more and I just don't get why I'm having such a hard time...

 

I lost a ton before actually consistently winning any matches. You can see evidence of that all over the match up forums, you have to get used to his weird/not so great neutral game and movement options. Slowly implement combos into your gameplay.

 

1. Basic BnBs, get used to hit confirming 5B > 2C so you can do his 6D and apply a weakpoint on the regular.

 

2. Get your throw combos down, start learning a little bit more intricate stuff, and slowly weave them into your play.

 

3. Valiant combos, once you feel pretty confident in those, go ahead and start learning how to combo into Valiant Crash. I know it took me a good while to actually be able to purposefully hit [uW] applied opponents with it. They were a bit weird for me at first too, don't feel bad if you're having trouble doing the basic 236D > 6 > 5Cx4 part or something, there's a rhythm to it.

 

4. Double Weakpoint combos and beyond, if you've gotten to this point, you should be getting a pretty good handle on Az and how his combos work, I've managed to even pull some off mid match.

 

One thing I always did was go to Ranked, just do Entry and wait for a match to come to you, meanwhile you hit up Training or Challenge mode and just repeat the same combos over and over again. One thing that moved my game forward was that I wasn't capitalizing on CH that I got every now and again. So once I set the dummy to Force Counter Hit, and started to practice what I could combo into, my game improved a lot. Then I started to practice his double weakpoint combos and that helped me to understand how he combos into stuff even more. Oh, something I wish I knew when I started was how great 3C was as a punish move. It's not as good as Hakumen's but, Az's 3C leads into a lot of good combo opportunities, so if someone throws out, like, a distortion and you block it, but you're too far away to punish with 5B or something, 3C is your go to for punishes.

 

Hope that helps some.

[Warhound]

So, I'm finding it difficult to apply any sort of oki on...well anyone. Most people just roll backwards, or I'm too afraid to do anything because of their DP, so I end up just backdashing outta there so I might have a chance at retaliation.

 

Half of my matches were people just running away ]:|

[LordSpectreX]

I think the most important thing to remember from what you said that them backrolling IS NOT A BAD THING. Backrolling has a long duration and it puts them closer to the corner. This is what you want as Azrael, and most characters tbh. If they're spamming backroll like crazy, then sure, go ahead and 3D that baloney. But mostly, backroll is not a bad scenario at all. Focus much more at covering Forward roll. 

[Effenhoog]

So, I'm finding it difficult to apply any sort of oki on...well anyone. Most people just roll backwards, or I'm too afraid to do anything because of their DP, so I end up just backdashing outta there so I might have a chance at retaliation.

 

Half of my matches were people just running away ]:|

 

There are ways to deal with DPs without backdashing.  Block for a moment instead of always just going for the meaty, and 6A can beat or clash with a variety of reversals in your favor.  Doing 6A on their wakeup also prevents them from rolling through you if they try to forward roll out, I'm not confident that 6Aing with that timing is actually reliable in general but it works a lot online and landing it a couple times often convinces people to stop trying to roll out.

 

It will always be a guessing game on wakeup but if you don't mix it up and always back off then you're just giving up momentum to go back to the neutral game and I don't think that's where Azrael wants to be most of the time.

 

Personally my biggest struggle with Azrael is anti-airing, 5A/5B/2C have great hitboxes but no head invuln so I get stuffed a lot, and 6B seems really unreliable outside specific situations.  There are a good number of matchups that I struggle with and really don't feel like I should, but I eat too many counterhit jumpins off failed antiairs.  Such is life when you are shit at games.

[Warhound]

I think the most important thing to remember from what you said that them backrolling IS NOT A BAD THING. Backrolling has a long duration and it puts them closer to the corner. This is what you want as Azrael, and most characters tbh. If they're spamming backroll like crazy, then sure, go ahead and 3D that baloney. But mostly, backroll is not a bad scenario at all. Focus much more at covering Forward roll. 

 

3D is what I do a lot of the time when they are about to get up, and I actually managed to do it twice in a row on one guy.

 

There are ways to deal with DPs without backdashing.  Block for a moment instead of always just going for the meaty, and 6A can beat or clash with a variety of reversals in your favor.  Doing 6A on their wakeup also prevents them from rolling through you if they try to forward roll out, I'm not confident that 6Aing with that timing is actually reliable in general but it works a lot online and landing it a couple times often convinces people to stop trying to roll out.

 

It will always be a guessing game on wakeup but if you don't mix it up and always back off then you're just giving up momentum to go back to the neutral game and I don't think that's where Azrael wants to be most of the time.

 

Personally my biggest struggle with Azrael is anti-airing, 5A/5B/2C have great hitboxes but no head invuln so I get stuffed a lot, and 6B seems really unreliable outside specific situations.  There are a good number of matchups that I struggle with and really don't feel like I should, but I eat too many counterhit jumpins off failed antiairs.  Such is life when you are shit at games.

 

Yeah tell me about it. Well, every time I do a 6A clash I try to follow it up by doing Sentinel, but this hasn't worked, so I'm assuming I just have to spam 6A constantly. I know, I shouldn't back off, I always remember baiting DPs by low jabbing a few times or something and then blocking when they get up. I feel like....I dunno, like I go back and forth. I learn something, know I should do it, and then maybe I improve, but some other aspect of my game withers. I have no idea what I'm doing anymore.

 

As for anti-airing. 2C solves a lot of my problems, 5A is for catching things like Hazama's recklessly charging in with D chains or something and 6B is for those special occasions like that shota butt-pirate or Jin and HIS GODDAMN J.2C THAT HE PURPOSEFULLY PLACES RIGHT ABOVE YOU SO 2C DOESN'T WORK RIGHT.

 

[greatfernman]

 5A/5B/2C have great hitboxes but no head invuln so I get stuffed a lot

2C has frame 9 head invul

[Fatalis]

If they're always back-rolling, dash in and pick them up with 5a for a bluebeat combo.

 

Do that a few times, and you'll scare them into emergency teching.