[Xrd] Ky Kiske vs. Sol Badguy

[Kazuki Slice]

• Use this thread to discuss the Sol Badguy matchup.
• If the matchup is giving you trouble, check to see if this post already contains info which will help you. If not, be as specific as possible when asking for help and others will be glad to give advice.
• Please focus more heavily on discussing how to play the matchup properly than who is at advantage/disadvantage.
• This post will be updated to collect useful info over time.

 

'Round Start:

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'Neutral:

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'Offense:

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'Defense:

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'Punishes:

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'Combo Notes:

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[BladeOfJustice7]

 

Ky vs. Sol

I think this matchup is dead even, and pretty typical as far as Ky matches go strategy wise. Ky will try to hold back the tide with his superior spacing and ground pokes. Sol will try to establish katame, and end the round with one momentum run.

For those unfamiliar with katame, it's a situation where because you blocked something, the opponent gets a chance to end the round or gain a heavy advantage only because you blocked. Even though blocking is the incorrect move in a katame situation, it does occur rather often in matches. The most famous example is Eddie making you block something, which allows him to use a little Eddie to chain off the blockstun and possibly ruin you and end the round.

Although other ways of dealing with Sol also work (Mitsutoshi's wall-like Ky comes to mind), I personally play in faith's "negative-style" Ky. Faith was known not really for doing fancy things on offense or defense, but rather for an active neutral game using spacing and pokes to bait the opponent into doing something that would otherwise be normal for the character, but gets counterpunched by a perfectly positioned Ky. If you do this right, then your opponent will feel like he has no idea what to do anymore, as all of his normal offense gets completely cut off. I highly recommend watching any old footage of Faith to get an idea of how this works.

Defense

Keeping in line with Faith's negative style of Ky, you shouldn't really do anything fancy on defense since Sol can ruin you very quickly off of one hit into the sidewinder loop. Rather you should be looking for ways to honestly end his offense quickly. 1F jump/super jump into airdash, dead angle, 2P, creating space from FDing to escape, and other safe options should be your primary means of defense. VT is not really good since Sol's 2D will go under it, leaving you vulnerable to a sidewinder loop. Strangely, 5k will also kick Sol out from doing 2D or brashly running in, and you can autolink that into 5HS, but you have to be rather careful with sticking out 5k willy-nilly.

Sol should not be coming at you from the air unless he has forced you to block a FRC gunflame. 6P, 2HS and SVT will ruin pretty much all of Sol's air pokes. Non-FRC Bandit Bringer without the FRC gunflame is a mistake almost everytime and you should make him pay for it with a SVT just before it hits you, to counterhit Sol into the air. Non-FRC gunflame is also punishable by greed sever or IAD S, but you should wait and pause to confirm that there's no FRC before committing to it.

FRC Gunflame allows Sol to establish katame, and you should avoid blocking the gunflame if you can, although it is easier said than done. I try to backdash or IAD backdash away or if I'm in the corner, try to one frame jump out. Good sol players will do a block string off of a somewhat far poke into FRC gunflame to establish katame. From there, he has many options which could cause you to lose very quickly. He can do jump slash, jump attack feint land 2D into bandit revolver, jump attack feint airdash S D, etc.
Even if you defend correctly, you are still in block stun so he can then run in with either 5K (to ruin backdash and one frame jump), RC VV (to ruin any 2P or other poke attempts), or wild throw (to ruin blocking). Guessing right here just allows him to do a block string and possibly build enough meter to initiate another FRC Gunflame, so this is a very bad situation that should be avoided. If he hits you off of anything at either juncture, he can send you into a sidewinder loop, and you'll lose the majority of your life.

25% of this matchup depends on how effectively Sol can establish katame versus how quickly Ky can avoid or break katame. As Ky, you should try to learn to avoid or break this situation as it occurs.


Offense

I tend to keep offense simple against Sol. Rather than do anything special, I try to do various safe blockstrings and staggered pressure to try to get Sol to hang himself either with a desperate VV or grand viper or whatever.

2K, 2P, 5P, 2S, 5S, are all pretty effective against Sol for pressure. If you pressure him enough you can do some other irritating things like FD brake throw, or FD forward slide throw (I'll explain in the FD Shenanigans section) to get him to do something. Keep in mind that Sol can VV out of some pokes pretty much on reaction (6H, 6K) and he can also grand viper under SEs and CSEs so those should be used rather sparingly. If you block a grand viper, you can actually throw Sol out before the last hit connects, in case if your opponent likes to RC on the last possible hit. That may work for a surprise or two.

He can also grand viper or VV out on reaction to an okizeme CSE or air CSE, so you have to be a little careful with respect to how you use them. In this case, I think the FB CSE works surprisingly well on oki, as well as safe jump S, star oki, Ain's Prison, and safe air backdash S mixup.
If you do manage to get a CSE out before he can do a reversal, sometimes a forward sliding FD will bait Sol into doing something stupid.
Ky's offense really only wins this matchup 25% of the time, as most of the time you are simply trying to goad him into hanging himself.

You should also learn the Sol specific punish combos, as he is kinda weird. For example, VV lands as crouching, so 5S into 6K -> HSE is one combo to practice.

Neutral

I think 50% of this match is decided in the neutral game. It will really be a battle of holding back the tide versus the tide breaking through. The better footsie player in this situation will tend to win the match.

Both Sol and Ky will mostly be deciding this on the ground, as neither can really jump in on the other due to their effective AAs. Sol's 5K and VV pretty much beat all of Ky's air pokes, whereas Ky's AAs will beat pretty much all of Sol's air pokes. Sol is slightly better air to air with his 6p, but this situation should not really occur that often. Sol's effective options are far S, 6H, 2D, 6P, gun flame, VV and grand viper. Ky's effective options are 5S, 2S, 5H, 5k, very occasionally SE or 2H, and 6P.

Keeping with faith's negative style, you will mostly be playing an active neutral game not to establish your own offense, but to cut most of Sol's offense off. You should keep yourself just about 5S distance away and stay lock step with Sol to cut off his options. Ky's ground pokes are superior so primarily, you will be deciding the battle by effective spacing and counter punching his attempts to do something on reaction because of your spacing.

From this distance you can react to a lot and goad Sol into doing something. For example, feinting a 5S -> SE string with 5S -> 2S instead can sometimes bait Sol into doing a grand viper, so keep that as an option. If Sol screws up a FRC gun flame, this is the perfect distance to react and punish with an IAD S. If Sol tries to super jump over you, well, that sends him into the air, which isn't a place he wants to be against Ky.
5S and 2S check Sol from running into you, and occasionally, stun dipper will as well, so you should use as needed. If Sol does an IAD, either 6P, 2H or 5H can counterhit him into sadness. If Sol starts randomly VVing from that distance, then you've pretty much mind screwed him over.

Good Sol players will try to patiently push in with far S, 6P, 2D or gun flame. Sol's far S and 6P will beat out Ky's 5S, so you may have to switch to 2S or intermittent SE. That's where the guessing game really begins, but Ky has an advantage in that his pokes will tend to win out.

Sol has some ghetto tricks like random grand viper or riot stop FRC into grand viper. For Riot Stomp, the FRC point is pretty close to where he leaves the wall, so you can pretty much wait until it's on top of you and then 6P. Same with the Bandit Bringer and Bandit Revolver, you can 6P or SVT CH out. As for random grand viper, again, the guessing game really is to dash brake versus 5S versus 2S versus an occasional stun dipper, but the risk versus reward is not really in Sol's favor.

Overall, the match is even. As long as you can use your superior ground game and effectively space yourself to cut off Sol's options on reaction, then you will definitely have at least even chances to win. However, if Sol does manage to get katame, he gets his chances to end the round very quickly.

I think this match vid of mine (@ 3:24:15) gives a good idea how simple offense and an active neutral game in a negative style can seal out Sol. Luckily, Spirit Juice doesn't really play and isn't very good at establishing katame, as my defense was pretty godawful here....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMP-Wb9zGAQ

 

[HardSlash]

Xrd Sol is really proving to be a rough match for me. It's like I know what I have to do but the openings are so small they're easy to miss. Namely trying to 6P his specials or hit him as he's trying to Fafnir.

[Tenryuga]

Gotta be patient and zone vs Sol. If sol catches you blocking once and has resources you're in a bad spot. When he doesn't have meter though what he can do is not as threatening so you can FD to get him off you or make him dash / jump in to reset pressure.

Pretty much like the writup says you gotta hold the tide back. Luckily we have strong offense and tools to steal momentum like SE YRC so when we get started were fine.

It sounds like you are trying to challenge sol often which is probably why you're having some trouble. You can 6P that hop off the wall kick he has but for stuff like bandit revolver you should probably settle with trying to IB.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9780 using Tapatalk

[SynikaL]

What the hell do I DO to punish a mindless Gunflame ender in a string when he has no resources? Air Dashing is finicky since the hitbox on j.s is retarded and Ky doesn't have a reliable crossup jumping attack if he manages to go over him. 

[Sytha]

If he doesn't have 25% meter you can forward jump/GS over the Gunflame. But because the YRC window is so damn huge that becomes a massive risk when he has meter. But normally you can react the gunflame start up and jump over punish. I use j.H into combo for that. Ill advised Gunflames are one of the key things I look for against Sol corner pressure. j.H, obvious wildthrows and Fafnir are the other stuff to look for. Blitz, Mash or jump/backdash, and stun dipper are what I use on those.

[ProudDisciple]

Ive just started playing Xrd and have a tough time anti airing anything Sol throws out! Whenever I try 6P or 2H they seem to always get CH.

Im thinking that my timing might be off but Ive gotten frustrated with giving Sol free jump ins.

[Zyed]

Sol is gay

 

thats the match up!

 

I swear to god im funny

 

 

Nah for srs though. J.H all day. LOL but not in obvious spot for you to get 5K'd that shit is mashable and salt inducing

 

 

also dont let gun flame counter hit u sun. thats alot. also. don't up back to fenrir block strings. also. stun edge = gun flame will cancel each other

 

also. getting out of the corner is kinda hard. also. mix ups into wild throw pretty bullshit. loooooool

[Sytha]

Sol is hard to Antiair yea. You have to delay the 6P as much as you can for it beating j.S. 2H is about throwing it out early. Airgrab works fairly well against Sol as well. I would give more advice on it but this is actually a area I struggle with as well. Stopping Sol from approaching is definitely hard.

[Wutai_Shinobi]

Ive just started playing Xrd and have a tough time anti airing anything Sol throws out! Whenever I try 6P or 2H they seem to always get CH.

Im thinking that my timing might be off but Ive gotten frustrated with giving Sol free jump ins.

Record mode is your friend here. In training, record Sol doing the jump ins that give you a hard time, then on the replay, try AA'ing them from different distances, and timings until you get used to it.

[xlolxlolx]

in many situations air to air j.p is pretty effective against sol since 6p and 2hs are both too small and slow respectively, be aware that if sol mashes j.p you'll probably trade and it usually ends slightly in his favor

 

also depending on the situation you can get a ch svt for some nice damage if theyre not doing a jump in not covered by gf yrc, safest way to deal with sol's jump in is to stay at a range where you can backstep and make them whiff say an iad j.s or just blitz, blitzing will probably be the better choice in revelator with the blitz followup

[Codename Exia]

A lot of the answer to anti-airing Sol is either really, get out and don't even challenge, or be a man and DP. 6P is unreliable at times with his j.HS being very very good, and 2HS is great but needs to be insanely preemptive.

[Zyed]

you have to DP his block strings and that only works if hes opting to fafnir or bandit bringer

During defense you are usually denied access to DP on wake up Sols will always get Un-dpable oki after the knockdown from viper because of the gunflame right after. Shit like that is definitely what makes him top 

 

Edited September 7, 2015 by Zyed

[Blade]

Watch out for Sol using 6P as a round starter or anti-air, he can ruin your day off just that.

I find 2D to be useful when he's trying other stuff besides Gunflame Oki, assuming you're against a run-up-throw Sol player.

I haven't figured out how to deal with his OTG 2K after a knock down (forcing players to neutral tech under a Gunflame), I just end up blocking it and figuring out what to do next.

[greatfernman]

I find 2D to be useful when he's trying other stuff besides Gunflame Oki, assuming you're against a run-up-throw Sol player.

you mean wake up 2D?

lmao

[Blade]

I'm not making this up, man... it worked for me against a very strong Sol who otherwise was stuffing me in a lot of other attacks.  Ky's 2D is suprisingly fast in some cases.  And more than anything else it's got good reach, though I suppose you could use 2S too, just doesn't seem like you could do much other than RC Stun Dipper.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Blade

[greatfernman]

not fast enough to beat a meaty