_Sey

IB'ing Zato's 2S is very important. IB will let you bdc out of 2S > drill and even bdc IAD to get in, just keep in mind that they could always do 2S > 5HS etc.

this may be obvious but I may as well point it out: bite > dot-d works on the same characters that would get hit by bite > dot bite > dot-d does ~40% on chipp lol

I was reviewing some of Hase matches and I noticed that he sometimes like to air reset with 2K > P Dandy after jD in the corner. Does anyone know why? I'm going to guess that it has to do with messing with the opponent's reversal input kind of like what you can do with YRC, at the same time I think it's somewhat risky, won't Slayer just get hit out of dandy most of the times if they air tech and mash something quick like jP or jK? I've seen him go for wallsplat > 6P, dandy K~ too but that makes a bit more sense, helter will always crossup the opponent after 6P in that situation so he's pretty much setting up a corner version of midscreen whiff UP oki, and depending on the characters he may even open up the option of going for a 2K > 2P > 2S combo. Oh, another thing I noticed is that Hase seems pretty adverse to using reversal BDC Bite on wakeup even in "favourable" situations, how do you guys feel about it? I'll admit I've lost waayyy too many matches because I was to eager to reversal bite people out of "bad" oki (e.g Kys doing run up 6HS with barely any life left) just to end up messing up the input and losing, but even if in situations where I DO land bdc bite I sometimes just wonder if the risk was worth it at all. Sure BDC bite is a strong "defensive" option but it barely has no reward unless you are like... 1/4 to the corner, have 100% meter and are playing vs. a character that can get hit by bite > dot. Slayer's BDC options (bdc jump, bite) are often said to be pretty strong but I often feel like they are actually... pretty bad, sure bdc jump can help you get out of some tricky blockstrings but as a wake up tool it's barely OK (and just bad/useless against some projectile oki setups). BDC jump also obviously forces you to deal with the air-to-ground situation (hilariously bad against most characters and/or characters like Faust) or commit to iad j214K YRC. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have some reversal options instead than none, but watching Hase/En's matches it often feels like they just don't use those options much at all. This got me thinking that the decision of not going for BDC options could be a strategic approach to certain matchups. A few months ago Nage tweeted about "how to use burst effectively" and he noted how some characters/players would rather not use burst in situations where a successful burst would create too much distance between their character and the opponent, instead opting for enduring the oki/pressure situations just to be able to stand closer to the opponent and find a way to retaliate from there. I think this sort of thinking could apply to iad j214K YRC too! sure you could use it to get out the corner vs. Ky/Faust/Chipp but you are also giving up ground and will end up having to get close to them again, which will likely not be easy, now compare iad j214K YRC to enduring their pressure and then finding a way to get them to block, I don't know, ~dandy K>HS and in doing so reversing the corner situation... that would be a much better situation for Slayer, though much riskier and not guaranteed at all. dat theory fighting/meta discussion

So... Slayer's long dash and dandies are pretty much useless, they just get tagged by anything. Axl's 2HS is too active/long to be able to make it whiff with any BDC movements/moves. Axl's 5P is w/e but still frustrating, 6P is the obvious answer to it but it doesn't feel like the reward to call out a 5P is worth it at all. And then there's everyone's favorite move: Rensen; even without YRC this seems like impossible to deal with. Trying to slowly walk in will just end up with Slayer getting push blocked away or tagged by rensen somehow, teleport superjump feels equally useless because of the 8/9 follow up... obviously you can barrier it but it's still not a favourable situation. Oh, and there's his stance too... sj iad j214K YRC can get around if the Axl just randomly goes into stance... he really doesn't need to though. Slayer's 6P beats stance > low > mid but should lose to low > delay > low. If Slayer does get in and somehow gets a knockdown he still has to guess vs. blitz/dp... at least his DP loses to bdc bite, I guess. This matchup has me in tears, what do I do?

Does anyone know who the 25 dan no-name Slayer that always plays at sasashima is? He looks strong and seems particularly fond of reversal D DOT lol. He's pretty much in every video the sasashima arcade uploads.

I don't know how to effectively use Mappa YRC, but I think 2P xx Mappa P/K can be an interesting option even without YRC. I got the idea by watching the mikado hallowen tournament final, Fino vs. Taka(?), the slayer was often doing 2P xx K/P mappa trying to blow up mashing after 2P (2P xx any mappa is never frame-tight, 2P xx P mappa has a 3fr gap). I've had a bit of success using it while mixing it up with 2P dash bite or 2P xx dandy, it's not THAT good though.

tbh Slayer is about a few buffs away from being amazing (comboable 6K, better reward off midscreen 5HS/2HS would make him really scary without being really stupid buffs), he really isn't that bad as a character, personally I don't think he loses to every character in the game, he does have some impossible matchups though (Axl, Bedman... Pot?). The new forward dust and blitz in revelator are also pretty good QoL updates for Slayer imho (for example the new blitz should may be really strong vs. Sol's GF setplay). Yes, he doesn't have as much bullshit as some other characters. Yes, he does require a bit of execution (bdc DOT, reversal bdc bite). You are likely not paying 100yen for every loss you take. Look, I hate losing as much as the next guy and I love whining about my characters in any FG, but considering I don't live in Japan I'm not losing any money playing this game and even if at times it's quite stressful to play Slayer, actually reading your opponent tendencies and exploiting them for huge reward is fun. Slayer is actually the 4th or 5th most played character in the arcades too, stupid JPs just don't understand what "fun" is about. If you are that good at reading people but can't seem to beat anyone with Slayer you may have to go back to the drawing board: you are bad at playing Slayer. You may want to switch to someone more like Sol. I find it funny that you honestly think PO is that much better versus bad players than Slayer, do you just don't know how Slayer's tools work? Slayer is a scrubs killer. Have you ever heard of Pile bunker and It's late? It's OK to be bad at something! That's how you git gud. Happy new year!

Undertow is really good at messing up your P dandy input and making you waste 25% for a YRC Thankfully this can actually be good at times, I've hit waaaay too many people who were dumbfounded by 6H > Undertow because they expected me to NOT fuck up 6H 214P~S. (don't do this intentionally, undertow is easily one of the most useless move in the game).

AA'ing Zato flight is quite troublesome. Your best option is BDC air throw, YRC air throw or just try to get away from that situation with backdash/bdc dandy or something like that. 2S/5P are kind of bad in this scenario, and 6P may lose to flight jS.

Venom's 2S is a strong round starter, Slayer's 2HS has no reward miscreen and will lose to Venom's fS, if you must/want to press a button then you should definitely go for 2S. To get around Venom's 2S Slayer can also go for bdc IAD forward or 214K/P~ and react to what you are doing, both options lose to 6P/fS though. Backward IAD jHS likely lose to fwdc pile bunker or fwdc UP letting Slayer start his game right away. The safest option is to just stand still and watch what Slayer is going to do tbh, I wouldn't advise you to always do that though, if you are scared to play Slayer's guessing game from round start you are already putting yourself in a pretty bad spot.

just look at the attack level table on the wiki. Rule of thumb is: add the difference between hitstun and blockstun of that particular level to the "on block" frame advantage and you'll have the "on hit" frame advantage of that move (+/- can vary depending if you hit meaty with the move/distance between you and the opponent, e.g: 6H can be + on block on "far" crouching opponent, similar situation with 2D). On hit K mappa is -1, P mappa is 0. Pressing buttons after K mappa works because of the situation you end up in, even if you are -1 you can, for example, BDC Bite to grab any opponent trying to mash a 2K/2P. Other than BDC bite and cS some other popular options are 6P and dash cS to catch backdashes, 6H OS cS should cover a lot of options too.

Mitsurugi is #2 in the dan ranking right now... with Terumi. Pack it up boys

Actually, I randomly found out that you can OS 2K~2S/cS (just like Yun uhuh), I couldn't get 2S to hit may or sol corner backdash though. I got the idea to test that out because I saw Hase callout a corner backdash with 2S in one of his recent vids... maybe it could work vs. longer backdashes like Sin's? w/e, I'll play around with it after midterms, just by looking at frame data it looks like it likely won't work on anyone except Bedman/Sin though, GG backdashes are overall too fast to be able to punish them after whiffing something. I wish 5HS could still ground bounce airborne opponents, that looked like a pretty nice way to call out backdashes in older games

F-Driver matches from arcrevo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCIlfVRL3Nk

For corner routes I guess the best option is going to be: 3C 236A d.2B 5C air stuff... Anyway, anywhere on screen you should be able to combo 5C 6C 5D~D j2C ... on a crouching opponent, I saw that in one of the earlier vids, this might lead to something good/interesting. 6C pushes back haz even further now, I think. He is looking VERY boring this time around, mostly nerfs (corner combos are just sad so far) and nothing new to play with except for system mechanics... Mitsurugi saying he might switch to Terumi has made me feel quite hopeless about CF Haz tbh.

There are a few vids of him playing 1.1 at Mikado, actually! http://www.keeponrock.in/?character1=sly&player1=F He's still no Hase though, he's obviously not bad but he plays a very patient/slow game, kinda like En/Tanabata... and quite different from Hase/Taka.

meaty 6K setup after wallsplat on Faust, 6K combos into 2P 2S 2HS etc. on a different note: is there any trick/specific timing to consistently setup meaty IL? I've gotten it to work a few times here and there, but I can't seem to quite grasp if there's an easy way to set it up off both jD and 2D. I know that after 2D KD it's possible to 214P delay whiff UP > IL and be close enough to combo cS afterward on a lot (all?) of characters, but that's not a meaty IL (e.g IL cS works but not IL 2K). Is it even possible to setup meaty IL off both 2D and jD KD on every character? tbh I'm actually a bit clueless about how to get the most out of 2D/jD KD, like I've seen people talk a few times about UP whiff oki but I'm not sure what that leads to... meaty 2K/IL? I'm guessing it likely does not lead to meaty ground crossup.

92% win rate vs. Zato with ~550 matches in that match up?! it's his most played match up too.. He's ranked 'Bounty hunter' now too! Old 1.0 vid of him playing Ruu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM2EpIyA4Lw On a completely different note: does Slayer have safejump setups? I randomly read about how Sol can safejump and OS Sin's dp so I've been trying to figure out if Slayer can do anything like that, what I've found is: vs. Sin @ corner: 5D > Pile K > 6P wait a few frames and neutral jHS OS 2141PP (or 2141KP) On block/hit you get jHS 2P, if he DPs pilebunker p comes out and CH him. Now, obviously we can't reliably setup this without meter, and I'm not too sure if it's worth it meter/damage wise, but I guess it could be useful/can be flashed out somehow?

Thank you! Venom is exactly one of the character I was thinking about actually ahah, I got a bit too salty earlier netplaying one (and Ramlethal, dealing with jHS and her ability to stall in the air was even more infuriating than upback jHS/ball summons/teleport). Yeah, positioning yourself seems to be the key to dealing with that kind of situations, like: Opponent is cornered and they like to jump/iad out and you have just ended a combo with K mappa >>> backdash and watch what they are going to do (hopefully score a bdc air throw if you read them right). but taking Venom as an example, I was just wondering if there was some kind of "low risk" option to dealing with situations like that while still keeping some sort of advantage. While backdashing and waiting for them to hang themselves somehow is a pretty safe and OK option, it's also pretty bad in the sense that you don't really get much out of it if the Venom does not try to IAD out, hell he may even get to go on the offensive. I dunno, am I supposed to buffer 2144 and then react with ~8HS if they try to iad out or ~7P/236P if they try to press something? Is that actually doable? Or am I seriously supposed to just gamble every single time I ever end up in situations like these? And while most people are scared of Slayer's options I just can't shake the feeling that... there's barely anything to be so worried about if you try to upback instead of mashing buttons unless Slayer has 50% meter and has you cornered. What's the worst he can do? hit a fuzzy guard with a 2K that he likely will be too far for converting into cS? That's actually what often messes me up when playing someone good, they'll just upback out of stuff and reset to neutral instead of straight up mashing just to get hit by IL CH and lose a round/match. Bah, I guess I just don't understand the character at all.

How am I supposed to stop people from upbacking and getting out of Slayer's range after situations where I can't pressure anymore? 6HS is too slow to use on reaction, bdc throw is OK but no reward/you have to be pretty on point.

~35min of Hase vs. a Jack-o. He really likes charged blitz.

Karinchu

yeah B follow up is different for sure jagai > a stance has a big enough gap for ragna to poke out with 5B... no chain regen on block or when airborne (they never did, I'm just mentioning it as something that would have been interesting to see if implemented along no regen on block), stance mixup gone... fuck this character lol I don't understand how they want us to play Hazama, he has gotten quite a few archetype changes over the years and nerfs/buffs have always been all over the place... oh well, we'll see.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s581/sh/1608847e-5259-49db-b877-6ced5c7e4e9b/b890a68e5246fc8e89f549984d7bd533

I was watching an old (1.0) vid of Hase playing against a lot of Chipps, and I noticed that he was using burst in a pretty interesting way. He was favoring doing reversal gold burst vs. Chipp's setplay over using burst to escape damage/combos (unless he happened to be very low on life and got hit by something that would kill him). >=50% meter boosts Slayer's ability to convert into meaningful damage and playing a more threatening neutral a lot, and 100% early in a match/round vs. Chipp can easily lead to actually closing a round and even possibly end up going into a second round with Chipp barely getting the chance to burst again (uh... I think, this may be turning a bit too much into theory fighting lol). How do you guys feel about this tactic? In what match ups would you use it?