Complexity

I would've thought people would think this was one of the matchups that didn't change much from vanilla to now because you should have been fighting Millia with both swords on your back in vanilla anyway. I don't actually think 2s and 2h should be used as anti-airs unless you are VERY confident that it will be at least blocked, considering Millia's air options and that both moves take years to recover, so it's almost always likely a punish unless you have YRC. Furthermore, it's not the kind of matchup you want to be giving hits away to either, since you can die in 1 hit. I think the best way to play this matchup is to probably wait for the Millia player to make a mistake. Ramlethal's j.s is pretty damn good at shutting down Millia's airdashing or even ground approaches sometimes, and if it whiffs it's no big deal. If Millia tries to catch you in the air with j.p, let her and prepare to IB one of her j.p so you can air throw her. It's kind of a worst matchup for me too because of how annoying it is to get a clean hit on her and that Millia can also win the game off 1 hit like Ramlethal. Millia's low defense doesn't really matter either since Ramlethal should be trying to 1 touch death people anyway.

It seems pretty difficult to do backdash YRC outside of setups because of how close you have to be to the opponent and the fact that he must not be in any form of blockstun or hitstun. I don't see a situation how you can get the backdash YRC off without the risk of getting thrown.

I know backdash YRC and j.k dj.k fuzzies are legit mixups but are they practical though? The timings to get them seem really tight. Never seen a match where a player tried to go for them and succeed either.

Since it's actually not mentioned here yet, and I believe it should be, Faust can duck under the back half of Trance, so remember to follow your Trance up with a 2k so he gets into his blocking animation and will not be able to duck under it. This also works even if Faust is knocked down and crouches when he wakes up. The worst thing that can happen is doing a Trance on Faust's wakeup but he pokes you out with 2p instead.

You don't understand what I'm trying to get across. Using 6p to read the Faust f.s is safer than using other moves because of its upper body invul. However, if you are already trying to guess in the first place, it is very likely that the scramble will always come down to 2 scenarios. Either the Faust hits f.s and you punish him with whatever you press because you read his f.s or Faust does not hit f.s and will most likely punish whatever you whiffed because the recovery on all those moves are plenty enough for Faust to react to with his own f.s. This is why if you want to make a gamble, doing it with 5h is the best, because in the scenario that it misses, you still get hit by Faust f.s as a punish anyway. It's no different from if you whiffed 6p. You take a scalpel to the face. The difference lies in that if you used 6p, you get about 140 damage to corner carry, whereas if you scored with 5h, you get 200 damage to corner carry. If you want to guess the Faust f.s, whether the move in question used to punish has upper body invul is almost irrelevant because it's only relevant for about 9 frames after the Faust uses f.s and it is downright impossible to react to that with 6p. I'm not saying that using 6p is bad if you want to counter Faust's f.s. It's damn good for sure, since it still gives you corner carry. The thing is that there is another option that gives more reward for almost the same risk. It's like if you went to a casino and there were 2 tables but one gave you 2x the input while the other gave you 3x the input. Which table would you sit at? 5h has 14f of startup, so if you factor in Faust's 10f f.s startup, he has 4f to react to you pressing 5h in order to beat it. That's obviously impossible so he won't be able to react to beating your 5h with f.s. Of course, the other reason why 6p is better than 5h is because of its lower recovery. If your opponent cannot react to a 25f whiff, then by all means 6p is infinitely better than 5h because not only does it offer reward, but there is also no risk. In the end, do whatever makes you comfortable fighting against the Faust f.s. If 6p works for you, go right ahead and use it. I'll probably be sticking with 5h however, because analysis reveals that using 5h is often better than using 6p if you want to guess the Faust f.s. Edit: Faust can do 2h fishing rod to catch 5h more easily than 6p, but even doing so is difficult because it requires a short dash into the 2h. This works against all whiffed pokes, so as Killey mentioned earlier, don't make beating the Faust f.s your main game plan because it will come back to haunt you when the punish turns from f.s into a 2h fishing rod.

6p has 9f startup, 4f active and 22f recovery. That would mean that a 6p has 8+4+22=34 frames of whiff animation. Faust f.s is 10f startup, so he has 34-9=25f to punish Ramlethal for whiffing 6p. Faust has 25f to see your 6p startup, go active and punish it whiffing. By the time the Faust actually notices that you whiffed your 6p, it's active frames are already over and Faust's f.s will be a clean, although weak punish. Of course, it depends on whether you think 25f is reactable to. That's the startup of an equipped 2h. Some things in the game aren't gambles, but often the safer plays in a game do not reward you very highly for doing so. For instance, you can space yourself outside Faust's f.s range, wait for him to use it, see it whiff, dash in followed by dash break to your f.s range to get into a more favourable position and then react to whatever he presses next until he does something dumb and gets punished for it, but obviously nobody is going to try and do that because why do that when you can just hit him out of the f.s anyway.

Alright alright let's see why 6p and f.s have both their advantages if you insist on some theorycraft. Comparing Ramlethal's f.s and 6p: They both have the same 9f startup. f.s is active for 6f. 6p is active for 4f. f.s is 18f on recovery. 6p is 22f on recovery. f.s has no invul. 6p has upper body invul that can beat Faust f.s if it's not active by the time you do 6p. f.s has a way better hitbox than 6p. First of all, let's assume for the sake of argument that nobody in the world can react to a 10f move. In other words, if you use either 6p or f.s, you are guessing that the Faust will press f.s. If you use 6p, Faust's f.s will be low profiled and it doesn't matter whether his f.s is already active, because by the frame 1 that you hit 6p, your hitbox would already have vanished. You can press 6p 9f slower than Faust presses f.s and it would still hit him. Using f.s on the other hand is much riskier, because using f.s means that you don't have the luxury of an upper body invul, and hence you must press your own f.s at the same time that Faust presses his f.s, because Faust's f.s is a frame slower in terms of startup. Of course, this means that Ramlethal 6p overall is a better move versus Faust f.s because it gives you a lot more chance to hit him out of it. If that's the case, when is 6p worse than f.s? Obviously, when it whiffs. Now why would 6p whiff if you have a much higher chance of it hitting than if you use f.s to hit? Because you are guessing that Faust will use f.s, not reacting to Faust f.s. If you use 6p and it misses, you are in greater recovery than if you use f.s. You can argue that 4f recovery difference isn't a big deal. True enough. You probably still get hit by Faust f.s if you whiff either. There's also other things to consider. For instance, you hit 6p and it whiffs, but just at the same time that your 6p loses its active frames, the Faust hits f.s. This is the part where f.s would have saved you because f.s has more active frames than 6p. Okay it's a small window difference of 2f that doesn't make a lot of difference. Fine. Faust's neutral game also doesn't revolve solely around his f.s. If he hit something else entirely other than f.s, your 6p is probably going to be inferior to your f.s in every way unless the move he pressed was 5p, and I know that because I keep getting my f.s stuffed by Faust 5p. In the end, you can think about it in this way. 6p carries a lower risk and is more consistent at beating out Faust's f.s, but only if he uses f.s. Your own f.s on the other hand is much riskier at Faust's max range f.s range but get in a bit closer and it shuts down other things that 6p wouldn't have hit. I didn't even count the extra meter you get from using f.s if it hits, and you sure as hell don't want to throw out S sword in this matchup anymore in neutral because there's no point when the Faust is going to press f.s and hit both you and your sword anyway. However, all this theorycraft is actually useless because at the end of the day, you are still guessing whether Faust is using f.s at the point in time that you press whatever move you use to counter it or not. This is why I proposed using 5h as an earlier example in this thread because if you are going to gamble, you might as well gamble with the greatest risk reward in your favour. 6p lowers that risk by giving you more leeway in terms of when you press it, but nevertheless it's still a gamble because you are not reacting to a 10f move. Mashing 4pppp used to be one of my favourite options against Faust in neutral, but the reward sucks and with the chaining slowed down I don't even know if it's a viable option any more. Beating up fishing rods with 6p sounds good though, since you can react to it. I'll buy that. Correct me on anything that I might have wrongly theorycrafted. I haven't played against much Faust since the patch dropped so I might be incorrect in some aspects.

You don't have to low profile Faust f.s to beat it. Any move will do as long as it hits his extended hurtbox while he's doing it.

Optimized throw combo: b+c/4b+c 236[d] 5dd 236d~c 3c 214d~c 214b 2dd 6d 2dd j.dd j.6dd j.214d (3580, 27/-0)

Well optimal or not it's queer that I can't do the combo from that route and I thought there might be some explanation as to why.

It's not the cancelling that I have issues with. The string 5c 2c 214d~c 214a 5c just specifically doesn't seem to work for me at the second 5c, as if the game doesn't let me cancel 214a into 5c. I've no problem doing it from other starters. For example, 5b 2c 214d~c 214a 5c and 5c 3c 214d~c 214a 5c are fine.

Is there some kind of trick to doing the second 5c?

Is 5c 2c 214d~c 214a 5c not doable?

Ground SE has a long recovery and swords can be set if Ky ever tries to throw one in neutral. If he does air SE and does not YRC it, you can try and Daruo past the air SE and hit him as he is landing. Do a lot of rising j.p. It will at most clash with Ky's rising j.k and if it does clash mashing j.p will win you the next clash unless he cancels the clash into a Blitz. Ky doesn't mind moving much because he can play his game while being mobile. If you find that your swords aren't hitting Ky enough, keep them and play a clean neutral game until you get a knockdown or get him to block one of your normals.

How to beat Leo pressure outside of stance: If he's pressuring you, mash 4[any button except d]h and react to dust. What happens is that if Leo tries to do Zweit (his crossup move), he will be thrown out of it on the way to crossing you up. If he does some move that baits throws like 6k, you will FD. I guess the other thing you need to watch out for is throws but if you are FD-ing consistently he should be out of throw range soon enough. How to beat Leo pressure in stance: The best option after Leo does any sort of ender that ends with him directly next to you in stance is to do a delayed 2p. If he uses stance p, k or s, you will block whatever he used. If he uses stance h, you will hit him out of the startup with your 2p. If he uses stance d, he's taking a huge risk in an attempt to read your delayed 2p, and it is definitely not in his favour to do that. In the event that he starts to do delayed stance moves to beat your delayed 2p, you can start backdashing on wakeup. Random things: His guard crush move is 27f and can be mashed or jumped out. If he finishes a rekka string midscreen and knocks you down with it, you do not need to fear his h projectile if he uses it as an oki option, even if he YRC-es it. Just super jump FD out of it. Instant blocking the first hit of his rekka string will lead to the second hit not being a true blockstring. This means that it will cross you up and you have to block the other way if you do IB the first hit, but this also lets you throw him out of the second hit.

I don't play this matchup much at all because Axl isn't very popular, but after Axl Bomber ender it's probably good to hold your tech until you nearly hit the ground, so that you don't die to Axl's dumb air reset game and that you get the invul from neutral tech to let you land safely.

Her neutral isn't weak, but her limited gatlings make her weak in neutral compared to other characters. It's just that players get destroyed by Ramlethal after 1 hit that in the end you don't see much of the neutral game being played out at all. As for the matchup against Faust, after a couple of games I feel that it is pretty damn even, although it is more on Faust to make a fatal mistake and then get hit once into death.

My initial tests on the 2d > instant 2h were that it would whiff on Millia, Venom, Faust, Leo, Chipp, May and Ramlethal herself, while completely whiffing on Bedman and Elphelt even if delayed. However, the combo involved was a much shorter combo that would lead to the opponent landing slower from the 2d (characters fall faster the longer the combo), and in turn would lead to the instant 2h being too fast on characters like Millia, resulting in a whiff. With longer combos, the wakeup timing pretty much shifts downwards for every character because they land faster and recover faster. I wouldn't be surprised if there are characters who can mash their fastest move out to hit Ramlethal and deactivate the swords.

Well it isn't all too bad that the sword can whiff. It can set up some very cheesy command throw setups if the opponent doesn't know that the sword will simply pass through his character's sprite without putting him in blockstun.

It might whiff on Bedman and Elphelt. Some characters might need a delayed 2h cancel from 2d or else it will whiff on them too.

What are you talking about? It is a guess, the guess being that he will do f.s during the active frames of your 5h. There is also a very lopsided risk reward game involved, in that the chances of Ramlethal getting 5h CH being way lower than Faust getting a f.s in, but on the other hand it is also a 200 damage and potentially death in corner reward versus getting stuffed with a scalpel for 40 damage. Obviously it doesn't work against people who aren't f.s happy in neutral, but the point being that if Faust doesn't use f.s in neutral, the ground game is much easier to play, and then you can start using your own f.s to beat out Faust's other pokes, which aren't as long as his f.s.

The arc which Cassius travels in is pretty damn good in wrecking Bedman's Deja-Vu in neutral. I wouldn't recommend throwing away your S sword in this matchup either because it's pretty good in clearing out the midscreen Deja-Vus that your Cassius can't hit. Be aware of Task B' as it puts Bedman next to you from seemingly nothing.

I have tried the setup and yes indeed it works. Your theory behind which the setup works is also correct. However, there are a couple of flaws. 1) It loses to OS blocking. If the first j.k is too deep, there is no way Ramlethal can do another high move before she lands. Doing 4~1 will block the first j.k and crouch the rising j.k. There is no reason for the opponent to be stand blocking after the first j.k. You can't even do air Detruo after the deep j.k. The timing to do 4~1 is pretty tight though, so if the opponent has no clue as to how the setup works, he will be standing after 2s hits. 2) Doesn't work on Chipp, May and Faust IIRC from my previous fuzzy j.k experiments. Aside from that however, the setup is pretty damn good even if the fuzzy j.k does not work on the aforementioned characters. It's a safe jump plus two swords allowing for many variations of mixups. I'll see if I can make the setup even better.

Your best bet is to set the training dummy to crouch and block everything.

The j.2s will reset the opponent's sprite once the opponent blocks it and he will be crouching if he's holding down back. Your rising j.k will whiff.