Raziul

I saw a lot of wasted combo opportunities and very stationary gameplay. Hakumen doesn't really have the luxury of wasting opportunities, because you're only going to get a few each round. It will go a long way to maximize your damage as much as you can. You had a lot of successful grabs, but barely did anything to follow up after the grabs. You can do things such as hop hotaru for corner carry, or something simple like Grab > 5C > Enma combo. This is mostly my opinion when it comes to playing Hakumen, but remaining stationary or overly defensive allows your opponent to dictate the spacing of your fight. By moving enough to (hopefully) control your spacing, you can reduce your opponents' opportunities to take advantage of their tools, while putting you in a better position to react and threaten your opponent. This could mean back dashing away to open space, double jumps to throw them off, instant air dashing, etc..

Hakumen should be top tier for the simple fact that he's the only character easily capable of multiple astral attempts in a single round. Nobody ever expects the 2nd Astral.

ALSO: did everybody start picking colors yet? Mine was easy as usual. Or do you have a favorite color from the other games? They ruined my Green and Black, but made up for it by adding the orange and black dlc pallete. You'll usually find me wearing the Orange and Black, Brown and Tan (14), or Red, White, and Blue (15). Wish they'd just removed my green and black, instead of making it some gross fail job.

I hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the idea!

All of Azrael's standing overheads. 5D, 6D, and 236D are all overheads. He can play a pretty mean 50/50 game because he can just as soon do 3D in place of his overheads. My problem with this match up is always trying to upback, his 5A > 5B gatling has an amazing ability to catch you in the air, where a simple TCH combo will carry you to the corner. I know 6D is negative on block, not certain about his other moves. He has some really easy/good confirms too. Him hitting you with 2C or 3C in anyway pretty much guarantees him a weakpoint to tack on. Jabs are your friend. I usually start mashing 2A when he comes in for neutral so I can catch his dash cross ups, and try to space him out the rest of the time. Agito pressure works pretty well since 2C and his 6A don't hit very high.

I mean when you hit them with 2A. 3C feels like a much safer ender for those little bits of mashing than just doing something like 2A by itself with out any knockdown or real hit stun.

Between 3C and 6B CH's, I hardly even use OD combos. Extendable 5D is the trolliest thing I've ever seen. It's amazing how conditioned people are to expect the active frames on it to end so soon and you just stand there holding it for a second or two and they still get countered. I recommend you abuse it while you can. 2A > 3C has also been one of the best changes to Hakumen's neutral game in my opinion. I haven't really had much trouble with damage or anything. Most of my problems usually stem from really weird character changes that I'm just not used to yet. Things like Ragna's Inferno Divider being air unblockable, Bullet's invulnerable command grab, and gimmicky stuff like that.

Don't bother trying to pressure her with Oki or anything. Between the invincible backdash, wake up teleports, invincible start up on her fireball DD, you're not going to be able to keep her locked down at all. You're pretty much better off hopping back and preparing for footsies and neutral again.

Hop and then 3C actually seems to work mildly well for the back dashes as long as they don't do a second. Also, another GIF for you all. Hakumen don't care.

I spam fullscreen Shippu on her every time I fight her. They can't resist setting up that fireball when they see the spacing.

It's usually at wake up when they're whiffing my meaty attempts. And yeah, first thing I probably tried was to chase them down with IAD j.2C just to have it still pass through them and get punished. Can't remember who I had tried it on but I had tried catching them with 6C but the backdash moved them out far enough that they were out of range.

Since we don't have our Q&A up yet. What do I do against the people who abuse invincible back dashes? So Tager, Arakune, Kokonoe, Azrael.

Hotaru probably wouldn't help too much unless you're right on top of her. Its hitbox is a lot more vertical and I imagine you'll be slightly above her when the first attack connects. Most Lichi I fight don't wait for the guard point, they just poke you out of the sky for free combos.

And then you find yourself in the corner with Lichi.

No matter how quickly he cancels into his next stance, Kagura's drive moves will always give him gaps. I think the smarter ones will learn to use that to bait counters and punish them with a slower starting move or even his overhead. In return, we'll need to learn to predict what he'll do next so we'll know how to react properly. 2A and 2B are great tools for interrupting his drive moves. You just gotta be careful to avoid getting hit by his 3C and 6B at those ranges.

Oh man. I never realized how normal Hakumen feels in comparison to some of the other cast members. I'm really starting to hate some of the decisions they made for CP. I didn't think that 2 frames could make such a big difference, but it really makes things like dash cancels feel so much stiffer when they're not even coming out 50% of the time because you're pressing the button too fast. Extend at least had the benefit of using input buffering to help you through some of the more weirdly timed parts, but it almost feels like that's non-existent in CP. It's almost weird because, it looked like they were on the right track with accessibility by making many of the new characters very easy to use and pick up and learn, but then you turn around and make the original cast twice as strict. No wonder the only characters I ever get to fight are Azrael, Bullet, and Kokonoe now.

My problem is that 2D isn't coming out at all. I end up getting hit by the fireball usually because Hakumen is standing still like a tool. I think I'll just have to mash 2D more when the situation arises.

Apparently it has a maximum range too.

What I'd like to know is, how does her teleport cross up mess with my 2D? I've ahd situations where I've gone to do 2D and get stars off the fireball, but she'll teleport and Haku does nothing. It's pretty weird.

It gets blocked and I get punished because of the recovery.

spacing doesn't mean shit if her j.B literally lifts her over the attack.

So here's what I was talking about with the Kokonoe crap. Story of my life in this match up most of the time.

Her backdash keeps her safe from most oki and pressure. Really annoying.

Dear Santa, please tell Arcsys to stop making human to wolf and wolf to human transitions so stupidly hard. I'd love it if I could actually play this character at some point in time.