Digital Watches

Any situation where the opponent is pushed overly far back. But in the meantime, I've actually been working with a similar combo, and it's fun, but very easy to screw up.

That's ONE followup, you can also do others. There are situations where that particular one won't work.

Dashing: FB bomber actually DOESN'T recover right at the end of the animation. You fall a little first, so you have to delay the airdash very slightly. It's very small though. Superjump: The 2S is JCable as soon as the first hit hits, but you want to wait for the second hit, obviously, to do the combo. Since 2S is such a long animation when it hits (meaning two hits of hitstop), you have plenty of time to go to neutral, wait for the second hit, and superjump immediately.

Alright, this is another useless thing, but... Been messing around with rensen loop against non-potemkin characters. Specifically, Dizzy, who I've thus far been able to get: 5K, 5P, Rensen (FRC), slight dash, 5H, rensen (FRC), BNB combo. It's hard and my execution sucks, but it looks like you can repeat the 5H-Rensen at least one more time.

Or um... Any. That's kind of the point. It's blocking. Either way, hopefully we've been able to clear this up for you: It's just not viable to try to SB against everything. Ignoring for a second the fact that it's humanly impossible, the risk-reward is stupidly bad, since losing the ability to block really screws you over in almost any defensive situation.

That's... definitely not true. The reason you can't FD while running into Savage fang lv. 2... Is because it has 0 frames of startup after the super flash, meaning that it hits you on the SAME FRAME as the super flash started, as far as the game is concerned. Any input you try during the flash, regardless of startup, will not do anything until after the move has had a chance to hit. You can test this pretty easily. May's anchor super (63214S) starts up in one frame after the super freeze. This means that if FD had 1 frame of startup, you couldn't input FD during the flash. Trying it shows that this is not the case.

Wait, and rap isn't getting old?

Slashbacking everything will never be a viable option ever. Human beings don't even see things as fast as the game goes (60 FPS. I don't remember exactly how fast human visual processing speed is, but I think I recall hearing 30-40 FPS. At any rate, it's less than 60, as evidenced by people's ability to sometimes miss certain one-frame bits of animation, such as the benten picture in some of Axl's moves, or certain moves wherein Zappa transforms into S-Ko for one frame. Seriously, go to training mode and whiff Axl's super or Zappa's 5H several times. You'll notice that sometimes you see these frames of animation, and sometimes you don't.), and slashbacking requires 2 frame timing if I recall correctly. Human hand-eye reaction time isn't instantaneous either. Given this information, it can be said that slashbacking on reaction to every move is outside of the realm of human reflexes. Therefore, the only viable means of slashbacking something is to predict it, or to do it against something slow enough to see coming, having memorized the timing necessary to SB it. Tell me when you learn to read minds. This is not to say that I don't think it will play an integral role in the metagame, but it's going to be the threat of slashback, not slashback itself, that becomes prevalent. I believe that if it's not true already, many top players will soon or eventually have memorized the most common strings for every character, and practiced or have enough experience to slashback these strings with a small if existant margin of error. This will force other top players to develop new patterns of attack, possibly inferior to the old ones, certainly different, or put unusual gaps in their existing patterns, in order to avoid being punished by a slashback. In this scenario, you'll almost never see a slashback in a match, but behind the scenes, it will be on the minds of both players. Either way, trying to slashback every single move at all times is ludicrous, and a waste of effort.

This may be nothing, but... I've been testing some odd things against Potemkin, and after a combo of 30-35 hits, I end up with what appears to be untechable OTG hits. Something about the way the hits are happening (the move is Axl's (4)6S+2) and the fact that the gravity modifier is very high due to the number of hits in the combo makes it so that the last few hits are counted as OTG, but are untechable, forcing Pot to be grounded and stand up. What's more, it seems to jumpstart Potemkin's wakeup animation, cutting out the the first few frames of it (possibly they occurred while he still getting hit). I tried recording a potemkin buster and trying it at various points in this sequence, and I simply can't get a reversal pot buster to come out. Maybe needlessly long combos are good for racking up the gravity modifier, so as to prevent reversals in this manner? Then again, I may just be seeing things.

No prob. We should play each other sometime

I agree with all the good stuff people are saying, however, I have a few more criticisms that might help you out: 1. Probably want to cut down on the tenhousekis (214P). Seriously, there were a few moments where you tried it out of the blue, and a stronger slayer could have eaten you alive for it. This applies DOUBLE for low tenhouseki (214K). If you must use a counter, use housoubako (623P), which comes out in one frame (as fast as Jam's parry), has less recovery, and won't get eaten by projectiles. Lastly, tenhouseki is NOT an oki option, (except maybe OCCASIONALLY against sol), so don't use it as such. 2. You're a little impatient when trying to combo a 5P, which lost you a lot of combos due to doing it too early and not getting the back-hit. Remember that when you get an anti-air counterhit, a successful tenhouseki, or a bad blue burst, you have all the time in the world to react, and too soon can be as bad as too late. I also saw you lose a combo at least once by JCing after the first hit of your 2S, which is another patience thing. Gotta wait until it connects. 3. Don't throw out pokes unless you think they'll connect. At 00:59, you get punished pretty hard for this, and if you were playing a better slayer, you'd have lost a good 50-70% of your life. 4. When you miss a rensen, don't do a followup unless it can realistically connect. Doing a random followup will just make for more time for the opponent to react. 1:09 is a good example of this. Also, don't do it if the opponent blocks a rensen. It just loses you frame advantage, and as demonstrated at 8:52, it's fairly easy to punish you for it. 5. j.S to 2P is not all that great. I'd go for a special (rensen, rashousen, or Raeisageki) or a faster normal, such as 5K, 2K, or f.S, (Depending on distance of course). The reason being that you're losing all the advantage of the blockstun from j.S when you give the opponent something so slow and easy to react to afterward. 6. Don't try to beat stuff up close on reaction, and if you must, use something fast, like benten or housoubako or 2K. Doing stuff like 5H way too close and way too late instead of blocking is what lost you round three. 7. When you hit with an anti-air 5P, there are almost 0 times ever that you want to cancel into rensen (Note, the times that you do are all against heavy or big characters like Pot, Johnny, and occasionally Anji and Venom.) Even if you're not close enough to combo, throwing in a rensen will seldom help you against people who aren't dumb enough not to block the followup, and it just gives you more recovery. If you want to trip someone up for teching, go for a 6K or another 5P. Not only do they also have to be faultlessed, but they're much less of a liability in terms of recovery. 8. You use your sweep naked too often. It's really too slow to be a good poke, and the only times I can think of to use it are in situations like slayer trying to teleport in and throw you (or things like Anji and baiken, when they're sealed into blocking high.), or any time the opponent is in recovery and you've blocked or IB'd in time for it to come out (Which I see you use once pretty well at 4:25) In the meantime, the move takes forever to recover and makes your hitbox very large. I can think of virtually zero situations besides the ones I've mentioned where you couldn't be better served by 2K (to make your hitbox tiny), 2P (To hit low from far off), or 2H (To fuck up a ground approach attempt). 9. I'd agree that you need to trust 2S more as an anti-air. You seem to use tenhouseki as your main AA game, and like I said before, it's not reliable. 10. Get your offense together. You seem to give up Oki situations very easily. For one, if you're going to use 6H, make sure it's very meaty, because otherwise the opponent can block on reaction and get an easy hit out of it. I saw you have your 2P blocked at optimal range with 25% meter several times and you didn't go for Rensen (by optimal range, I mean the range where it's a frame trap, but slayer can't dash in through the rensen and hit you in time if you react to the dash and do a 2 followup) And when you get them to block a rensen FRC, go for something that takes advantage of the blockstun, force them to guess high-low (2K, 3P, 2H vs. TK bomber, Raeisageki, 6H), crossup-noncrossup (Raeisageki, quick airdash+j.P/j.H/j.D/Kokuugeki/Bomber), Rashousen or Rashousen faint, air attack or empty jump throw/low, etc. As an added note, go for tick throws more. Rensen FRC, 2K, and airdash j.P all make great tick throws. 11. You should really get into the habit of defaulting to low block when the opponent is on the ground, and high block while they're in the air. Most overheads in the game (minus I-No) are much easier to react to than lows, and 70-90% of the time, an airdash in will end in a high attack, rather than an empty jump, and even the empty jump isn't going to be terribly hard to react to. I saw you get hit by a lot of IAD j.H's and random 2Hs that probably shouldn't have gotten you. 12. In instances like 5:11, it's better to block than backdash. Axl's backdash is pretty weak in terms of invulnerability and distance covered, so it's just going to get you hit if you try it vs. high active-frame attacks like slayer's sweep, any projectile, or anything Axl does. There are a lot of uses for his backdash despite how bad it is, but that isn't one of them. 13. This is a semi-matchup-specific thing, but Slayer really shouldn't be able to jump in on you as often as he does. Your 6K and 2S are very under-used, and you let him keep his pressure when you could have easily turned things around with some anti-air. (If he's airdashing, he can't even faultless). 14. Don't do 6K against opponents on the ground. There are things you can do with it to be funny (close 6K (2), 2S (1), 6K (2), Rensen (FRC), Combo) but nothing useful.) 15. You seem to like FDing a little too much, and with a slow character like Axl, it really fucks you over as far as blockstun. In long strings, FD is great to push the opponent away, but using it as often as you do is a drain on your meter, and it cripples your ability to get out of pressure, even moreso than choosing Axl in the first place did. 16. This is minor, and it's not something everyone can do on reaction (hell, I can only do it a little over half the time), but if you hit with only the backward hit of 5P, you can still combo into 2S most of the time. 17. Gotta be more appropriate with what's anti-air and what's anti-ground. I saw you get CH'd out of 2H or 2D far too often with j.H, and out of 6K far too often with Pilebunker. The only move you should be doing that you know couldn't possibly connect is 2K, and that's only if you can make it dodge something. 18. If you hit with rensen, don't do the 8 followup. A rensen connecting, even with no FRC, is a knockdown. If you do the 8 followup, you lose the knockdown. Really, the only time to do that followup is when the opponent tries to IAD over a rensen. 19. Because of its disjointed hitbox, far reach, and stagger on counterhit, f.S is a great poke for about 3 character lengths away, and you use it well in that capacity. But you need to have a rensen or rashousen charged for immediately afterwards. If you think they can stagger out, throw the rashousen, if not, throw the rensen and FRC it if possible (Not if the FRC'd rensen won't hit). 20. An FB bomber should almost never be the end of your combo. You can almost always follow up with an airdash j.D, a regular bomber, etc. Even though it was already black beat, you may have been able to continue the combo at 9:16 if you had done a regular bomber or an airdash+j.D+bomber. And uh... just because I have a lot to say doesn't mean I think you're bad, it's just a bunch of little things I noticed. You seem to be making good progress, this is just to help you get better faster. Hope it's helpful.

Aye. 1-frame jump. Basically, when jumping, it takes 3 or more frames (character-dependant) to leave the ground after hitting 8. A 1fJ is a way to jump instantly, and is necessary to get out of certain traps, but also just useful as a tool in a lot of situations. Basically, just faultless immediately after jumping, before you even leave the ground. The best way to tell if it worked is that if you successfully 1fJ, you won't see a dust cloud rise from the ground when you jump.

Good, not great. It works as a reversal, but seriously, don't count on it. Especially against low meaties. It's a little better that 623P for most situations, but marginally so at best. I've found that you can get away with a reversal 1fJ or either raeisageki once in a while, but usually you should block on wakeup. Axl, like most child prodigies, does not respond well to pressure. You've got to be able to block properly, and that includes FDing and IBing. Once you have a window, either jump (1fJ if you can), or try f.S. f.S is a terrible combo move, but it's fairly fast, has a disjointed hitbox, has some nice range, and will usually combo on counterhit into rensen, due to the stagger it causes. I'll sometimes use Raeisageki (S) to jump out of a corner, but it's risky, of course, especially with no FRC. If you have only 1-3 frames free and know that a mid or high hit is coming, it sometimes helps to throw out a housoubako.

From the Eddies I've played, I'd give the following advice: First off, never let him have an eddie if you have any choice in the matter. This may sound hard, but there are two ways to do it: 1. Keep the fuck on him. Keep the offensive initiative and NEVER let your pressure game get reversed. This is really hard, but Eddie has a similar problem to Axl in that he has a tough time dealing with rushdown. Use that to your advantage. 2. If you're feeling even ballsier, you can try to zone Eddie out. Keep in mind that this requires a lot of prediction and/or reaction time. Whenever I try it, I always end up doing it differently than against other characters. Usually, I try to keep pressure from far away using pokes and such. Against Eddie, your long range has to be completely defensive. If he comes towards you or summons an eddie, you have to predict or react as fast as possible in order to kill the eddie. Basically, you want to avoid having to block. If you ARE forced to block, there are some ways out, but it's not guarunteed by any means. It all depends on how the eddie is approaching it. My favorite approach is to try to instant block the back-eddie and a few normals, then throw when I'm free. I then lead into a combo into knockdown to get the momentum back in my favor. The only problem is that Eddie can easily avoid this by throwing his 236S (Projectile reflector) into his strings. This move is unthrowable, and a good eddie can fuck you up in your throw attempts, getting a free hit into combo into round over. If your opponent is smart enough to do that, you have to fall back to the more universal anti-eddie tactics. These include IB/Faultless alternations, wherein you IB the eddie and faultless Eddie's normals, forcing him to close the distance. This tactic has been rendered far less effective than it once was, due to the back-pulling eddie summon. Another option is to DAA. This can be a good way to get rid of the eddie, but it will often still leave you at a disadvantage, as all the Eddie player has to do is block (It's got over 20 frames of startup) and punish you. I've found that the most effective solution is to IB and mix up with reversals or pokes out of block. And by pokes, I mean 5K, f.S, and occasionally 2K. With those, housoubako, both bentens, and both raeisagekis, you have a good pool of options, but it still requires you to play a guessing game. Will you need low invincibility or high? Do you have enough time to fly up? Would Raeisageki (S) get you farther away, or just get you counterhit? (It helps to JI+FRC this, as it allows you to cover more distance getting away). Will housoubako hit the eddie or will it hit Eddie? You can even use IB+Tenhouseki, but this is very risky, as it's a free counterhit unless you guess exactly right, and it won't activate if hit by the little eddie. Lastly, this situation is the only place in normal, practical gameplay that I would advise actually using a super. If you IB+Super, it gives you a lot of invulnerability from frame 1, and it will guaruntee you that little eddie will die if he's on you. That being said, if you must use this, keep in mind that all normal risks of using the super apply. Try this only when you know that the eddie is done with its attack and that you'll be pitting the super against an attack from big Eddie. Also of note: Eddie's j.K and j.D are big problems, as 2S won't always beat them from close in. This is a good time to use 6P or high tenhouseki when on the ground, and in air-to-air, I've occasionally had Axl's j.K beat Eddie's. (Don't rely on that, though) Like any other character, to play against Eddie, you have to be able to block well, and it's not something you can really learn without playing one.

Unless I'm mistaken: Barring weird special properties, anything called a "cancel" should be able to be done from the frame after the move connects to the last recovery frame. This applies to JCs, RCs, Special cancelling, and gatlings.

I think it's a situation where a sequence of moves doesn't leave the opponent in enough hitstun/blockstun to combo/continue a blockstring, but the gap isn't by enough frames for the opponent to actually do anything to beat the move. It only works because it happens so fast, but it can sometimes trick the opponent into trying something instead of just blocking.

Alright: I'll say it: Kokuugeki should hit low.

Um. There's no such thing as a link into gold burst, first of all, because gold burst won't hit during hitstun. What you're probably doing is trying to do the gold burst out of some other move, but since no move cancels into gold burst, and some moves gatling into 5D, you get 5D instead.

Where the hell are you getting Axl? It has a ton of invulnerability, yes, but the "upper body" is considered much smaller than on other characters, and the move is very slow.

Yeah, to be honest, I'm not sure how much of this thread is to be trusted. A lot of the info comes from unreliable sources, or is just incredibly vague. "Great combo potential," etc. Not saying all of it is useless, maybe not even most, but a lot, certainly.

Um, by what means did you test this? Every reliable source as well as my and most other players' experience seems to indicate otherwise. Since the visual difference between most characters' stagger and neutral animations isn't that significant, perhaps it was simply easier to notice when you got out of stagger due to something coming out immediately afterwards. Actually, I haven't heard much about getting out of dizzy/faint state, so that could be true.

Button input helps with things like Sol's GV, but not with mashing out of stagger. Also: Keep in mind that while two opposite diagonals (919191919 or 737373737) is probably the most efficient way to get out quickly, it will often be more advantageous to get an input for a move or ensure that you're blocking than to get out as fast as humanly possible.

Yes, you can IB mid blockstring. Regardless of your character, certain situations are impossible to escape or less advantageous to you if you can't competently IB. That goes for FDing in the right situations as well. The only difference that pertains to Jam is that there are some situations where you'd rather parry than IB, but that's miniscule.

The question is just whether it does anything special.

Good stuff, Shoto. I was hesitant to field that one, as I hardly ever get to play against good chipps.