Airk

Chains are still kindof a commitment on his part though; You kinda just have to outsmart him and go where the chain doesn't, and then usually you're good for a little bit. You can charge at absolute fullscreen and it'll probably encourage him to try to dash in and chain forward to get to you, or you can jump a lot and air barrier and even blocking a chain there isn't THAT bad. 2C nerf hurts in this matchup though, since it's markedly harder to stuff a generic fly-in-j.B.

I don't really have any experience with this matchup in CP, but as far as I can tell, it hasn't changed too much from Extend except that it's really not safe to charge at full screen neutral because of Geara Lugia (22X, AKA The stupid blade thing that comes up from the ground.) You really have to get on him before he can get too much initiative. Once you're blocking a decent Relius, you are in for a rough time if they know what they're doing. At least, if my experience going a few rounds with Lich in Extend is any indicator. As usual, the only way Tsubaki wins this matchup is if you don't let your opponent play, ever. Fortunately, it's a little harder for Relius to slip away than it is for some characters.

Kagura isn't super bad. He's not even BAD, he's just not...all that good. He's pretty much the same power level as Tager in that regard. You could certainly do worse, but he does have some glaring weaknesses. (Though hell if I know what they are, he bodies me all the time.) The other character who leaps to mind specifically as "someone who can screw up their opponent even more than usual if you can get the right read" is Hakumen.

Is Makoto's defense really that bad? She's got a 5 frame 5a and 6 frame 2A, yeah, her DP isn't that great, but Tsubaki's is still pretty average as well. Both characters have bog standard backdashes. I guess it's cool that Tsubaki can make her DP safe-ish with charges, but first she has to get them, which is not really an easy task if you also want to do damage. Tsubaki's normals are garbage and her pressure is...weak. I guess she has more 'conventional' ways to reset pressure, but they're all totally unsafe and if you can block her 26 frame overhead, there's really not much she can threaten you with. Tsubaki's only good neutral tools require charge as well. =/

The problem is not that the question is "difficult". The problem is that the answer is constantly changing, sometimes as often as every frame. This is what you don't seem to be grasping. No one can tell you how to play "at neutral" because neutral is an endless stream of constantly changing situations, and unless you point to a specific instant in time and ask you "So what is this player thinking RIGHT HERE" then there's no answer. You're not even trying to narrow down the situation, which is why you're getting all these vague and unsatisfactory "Well, you want to do stuff that controls space!" kind of answers - because those answers are all there is without more details. What's more, even in pretty simple situations, there's a whole mess of options. The ultimate example of a "controlled" neutral situation is round start - but even in this pretty basic situation, even if you narrow it down to two characters facing off, there are a dozen or more possible combinations of actions on each side, each of which has its plusses and minuses. I've seen a Ragna player start the round with D inferno divider, and seen it hit, because NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION D INFERNO DIVIDER at round start. So Ragna is using that to control specific space at a specific time on the expectation that his opponent will be in that space and vulnerable at that time. Do you expect people to list every possible action in every possible neutral situation for every possible character and explain the pros and cons of each, or what?

Scud Punishment CAN whiff on meaty 5B but 5B needs to be done early, so it's mostly out of active frames by the time Azrael wakes up; 5B is 17 frames of recovery, Scud Punishment is effectively 19 frames of startup (5+14) - so if you're mostly done with the active frames, you're safe, but if you timed it so that 5B would have connected with its early active frames, you're still recovering when Scud goes live.

Can someone explain why Makoto is ranked lower than Tsubaki?

Er, I mean it works if you KNOW they're going to mash, but the risk/reward is pretty awful unless it's going to win you the round. I mean, you can hit with like 5 DPs and then they decide not to mash and get a 5k punish combo on you and who's laughing now?

Tsubaki players are too busy trying to figure out how to work around our crappy character, what's your excuse? :P

I for one am doubting it's final, but you never know. Maybe they'll just piss everyone off by releasing BBCP2.

Answers: Depends Depends Depends Any questions? :P These are not simple questions are you asking. You could pick two frames of any video of any match anywhere, and get different answers.

Pretty much; No one seems to be willing to publicly admit that he's anywhere near too good. Watching people defend him when he got zero nerfs and a few quality of life buffs in the patch made me ill.

So why is this guy so widely considered to be a fair and honest character? It seems like 90% of his moves are pure BS with some unreasonable combination of massive hitboxes, plus frames, monstrous active frames that TRANSLATE to plus frames, vague animations, and everything confirms into plenty of damage? Plus special magic dashes for free crossups and get out of pressure free. (I want to ask the person who was all "Oh he totally needs Gustav, or he'd never be able to approach with his terrible dash what he was smoking) As far as I can tell, the only thing keeping this guy from being the most BS character in the game is Kokonoe. :P

Next pet peeve: Having to sit and stare at those stupid win quotes for like 15 seconds while the game loads whatever. I realize they're probably saving my reply during this time or something, but good god, can you speed it up a little? Double fail points for when the win quote has some awful grammar in it. "The hammer of Justice shall descent upon you!" indeed.

Sigged. :P

Depends on the character, but it now leaves Jin WAY further away than it used to, so it's much harder for some characters to get a meaningful punish. Arc Sys probably didn't even MEAN for it to work that way, they were just busy making all block pushback bigger, but as usual, system changes screw some characters more than others. And it's usually the same characters every time.

FYI, 214 series is semi-useless against air attacks now - it has no invulnerability against them at all. Now pretty much ALL it avoids are non-projectile grounded mid attacks. It's pretty gimped, and really should have projectile invuln added, at the least. It's basically another example of Tsubaki getting screwed by a "system wide" change.

Does hitting the counter count as a hit or a block? Edit: Also, does this mean that you can just DP Hakumen in the face everytime he lands a counter?

If people are buffering DP while in blockstun, doing almost any sort of charge cancel and not autopiloting a dash 5A afterwards is a free punish for you. Heck, "Just not pushing another button" after most things that aren't C moves will do that. I agree that most people just jump backwards all the damn time (and a few love to backdash) and I haven't found a good way to deal with that. =/

Uh, usually you CAN'T, because you're in recovery for whatever move you did. Hakumen's counters have 6 frames of startup, which is less than the recovery of just about every move, so unless you're getting countered off of projectiles or something, you can't -really- block his counters.

I think there IS an online training mode? I think? I haven't tried, but I thought I heard people talking about it. x.x Of course, the online functionality for this game is so poorly laid out and documented that even if the mode does exist, it's probably labelled something completely dumb.

If it doesn't feel cheap, your opponent is doing it wrong. :P

I have NO IDEA why they made Ice Car so much better in this game. NO IDEA.

So they are cool because they look cool? Good logic man. =/ I just don't think they look that physically impressive. Especially "I kick you with my jacket." Lame.

I don't entirely agree with Zouf's assessment, in that I feel he's underselling the number of options available to Tsubaki; Because our options are individually so bad, you need to use as many of them as possible to keep the opponent from being able to disrespect you the same way every time, which forces them to guess or react, both of which are better then "Here comes the overhead again, jabbin' time." Anyway, since it seems like you already have a good idea of what your options are, for training mode, I think the best idea is probably just to set a dummy on block all and then do all the strings. Like. Literally do: 5BB>6A>5C>5D 5A(xN) > 2A > Throw 5B > 5D > 5B 5BB > 2B > Dash 5A 5B > 6B > Dash 5A 5BB > 2B > 5CC > 5D 5B > 6C > j.C 5A > 5B > Delay 5C 5BB > Command throw (Whee!) ETC Go back to your list of 20. Cycle through them. Do them ALL. Mix up the order if possible. Just practice all of them. The idea is to just get comfortable doing these things. Then when you get bored of this, try it against a CPU Dummy (Not Tager. :P Might not work super well with CPU Ragna either, 'cause he loves him some DPs.). Outside of that, all you can do is try to remain conscious of what you're doing during a match.