RedBeard

You have a nice Johnny. I'll have to eventually get some vids of myself too. The only thing I'll say is that he should have punished your jumpins a lot more than he was. I saw a lot of plain ol' airdashing after coins or whatnot which he should be anti-airing on reaction.

As far as this goes, I agree that he actually is underrepresented. As far as why I think he's a bad tournament character...He has a few bad matchups against faster characters/Slayer. He's pretty awful defensively, takes tons of damage, big fat hitbox, and once anyone in the game is rushing him down it's somewhat hard for him to get out of it and get proper spacing again. It's also no good that a lot of his mixups become really obvious when you have more experience against him, though he did gain good options in AC. And while he can be kind of annoying for higher tier characters, he's not annoying enough to actually have an advantage on them. Doesn't help that characters he gets owned by(Jam, Slayer) are overly played. Though what you said about this being a problem from XX and thus likely being more related to under rep rings true as well. Then again, a lot of Axl's core mechanics have stayed the same game to game. But again, that's just how I see it. Not saying that's how it is.

True, but to begin with I wasn't really counting SBO. Mostly because both Kakyuu and Shuuto hardly bagged any wins for their team from what I saw. Kakyuu beat Yukinose, and I can't remember clearly if Shuuto beat anybody? Perhaps Axl is underrepresented, but IMO he's just not a good tournament character, and I think out of the entire cast he's perhaps only above like ABA, Chipp, OS, and Potemkin(Pre-AC) for lack of tournament placement. But again this is only out of the tournaments I've read results for online and obviously doesn't cover everything so meh. Just my opinion, I can't remember seeing Axl win any singles tournies like ever. I saw Mochida(I think that was his name? He played yellow/purple Axl) win a few in Slash, and Kakyuu used to rape at the beginning of XX A-Cho tournies...but other than that, nothing really.

Like Mike Z said, Bridget with his 5P bug thing retains properties of what he was doing before he returns to a neutral state and taunts. So if you did a combo into a knockdown with OS and then threw Bridget during the taunt on his wakeup, the combo meter would not reset because of the 5P bug. Pretty sure Final Showdown has a combo vid on youtube where he shows this glitch to do an extended combo

I disagree. Balance wise: The games are pretty much equal. Almost everyone in Slash is competetive, and literally every character in AC is competetive. Sure, the top tier in AC has some retarded ass shit, but people often understate Ky/Sol's power in regards to the rest of the cast in Slash because they don't SEEM broken in the traditional sense, when in fact they were considerably more powerful than the rest of the cast. Design wise: Games are pretty much equal. Both of them fail for different reasons. Slash being boring/watered down/made the easiest characters the best so playing anything else is kinda pointless. AC being too much damage per combo, and a few too many stupid options with some characters. People seem to equate doing too much damage as a game being unbalanced. I don't know why, they have nothing to do with each other. The amount of damage you do has no bearing on balance. The amount of damage you do off of specific options in relation to the rest of the cast is. It just so happens that nearly everybody in AC has pretty good damage/options. I also don't recall Axl ever really having a good tournament placing record in any Guilty Gear game, ever. Not that he sucks but he seems like a bad tournament character to me(Much like ABA/Chipp/Potemkin(before AC) are bad tournament characters). Just my opinion though.

Basically for Counterhits... They cause extra "stun" meter for the dizzy guage. I forget the specific modifier. There is additional hit stun ONLY for the move, or part of that move, that connected as a CH. The amount of additional hitstun generally depends on the attack level of the move, though there are special exceptions noted in the framedata. As an example, if I CH you with the first hit of Axl's 2H, the second hit of it is completely unaffected by the CH properties of the first hit. Counterhits also increase hit stop by a certain number of frames, not sure if the exact amount, and I believe it's dependant on the attack level. I could have forgotten something, not sure.

Pretty much just more damage. If you're in range to do c.S instead of 5K in most situations, you should.

Just a small thing to note that I totally forgot to add Anji's Enkasu in the first part like a year ago. I completely forgot about it, though it's somewhat hard to do. Just a late jump j.P->j.P->j.P->j.D->Enkasu. No dash or anything necessary. Sorry about that.

Just to correct here, 6Ping Chipp is pretty much useless. If 6P doesn't clash with j.H, 6P loses. At least in my experience it almost never wins unless you time it frame perfect which just isn't worth the risk against Chipp. If 6P clashes his second hit is too fast for you to do anything but block anyways. Doing anything but early MF Upper LV1 is pretty much pointless against Chipp. The idea would be to get him to land in a position where you can stop him from jumping all over the place. Trying to fight him in the air or anti-air him is almost pointless outside of MF Uppers during frametraps and whatnot. Agreed. It might work really well for a while, but a blocked one is a free CH pretty much. Then again if you have 50% tension saved you can do some pretty serious damage to Chipp and if you repeatedly 2H him or reversal OD or something you can make him a little more cautious about going crazy with his extended strings. Nah most of that was right, though I don't think Johnny can 1 KO Chipp in AC very well. Generally takes 2-3 hits landed depending on if he bursts well and whatnot. It's hard to get Chipp to stand in place let alone build his guard meter when it's so easy for him to take to the air and GTFO of whatever you're doing, or reversal FRC etc. Chipp just owns your shit with his normals pretty much everywhere, so like 4r5 said you kinda need to lay back and make him come to you. You're not gonna catch a good Chipp, simple as that, and he'll beat you up pretty badly for trying. Build some tension via walking and wait for him to do something. Dodge with forward and back dashes until you get into a decent situation. Don't be afraid to just BLOCK Chipp, this is absolutely key. There are going to be many situations where your best option is to block him and punish his next move. Throwing out random pokes is useless, he will just kick your ass for doing it. Don't expect to hit with the majority of normals you toss out. MF Upper is decent anti-air but you should hold FD block every time you attempt it incase of a clash. The match is notoriously difficult to play because you HAVE to capitalize ALL of your hits and play a waiting game. Chipp controls the pace of the match completely, but that's kinda the key...Chipp can't fuck up his pace either or you punish him big time for it. He can't screw up or get predicted or he's going to get nailed. Even with how annoying it is to play, it's 6-4 at worst. There are times when you just won't catch a break and Chipp will just run all over you and make you feel like a scrub. It happens, and you might get the sense that the match is hopeless in that sense but it's really not, you just have to play it a lot different than most of Johnny's other matches.

It's GENERALLY easy because it doesn't give Zappa anything particularly devastating or difficult to deal with as far as Johnny goes, whereas the ghost and dog present far bigger problems due to zoning...which is generally what Johnny isn't good against. Sure, it's possible for Zappa to get all nasty with the Sword, but that's the case with anything. Sol can technically get all nasty on me without tension, but it doesn't mean it's a great situation for him. The sword has some decent mixups/damage/pokes, but as far as the 3 summons go it's most definitely his weakest against Johnny, because it forces him to pretty much poke and get close to Johnny and that's what Johnny WANTS to do. Whereas with the dog and ghosts he gets zoning, and projectiles, both of which Johnny is bad against. Maybe "stupid easy" is the wrong way to put it in terms of the match, but in regards to the other summons it really is. I'd moreso say the sword doesn't do anything particularly dangerous that isn't standard and it's pretty easy to trade with/get rid of, or even lock Zappa down while he has it. If he gets the dog or ghosts it becomes a lot more difficult to keep him in place, and they give Johnny much bigger problems in neutral situations as well. I'm open to hearing opinions on why the Sword should be considered more difficult, I've personally never had any problems with it, and in most matches I see it doesn't stay out that long against Johnny because it's too easy for Johnny to trade or even beat him up close with the Sword. Compared to the ghost/dog, it's pretty easy.

Hmm...actually, RK's f.S stuffs most of Johnny's pokes insanely well for some reason. Tossing out 6H with Johnny is risky, and will allow Robo to horsie him, or begin his air missile spam shit for free on whiff. 2K on RKs part also stops Johnny in his tracks pretty well in a lot of cases(kills his 5K in particular, and even most of his pokes because 2K is quick). The problem is that it's on Johnny to advance on Robo-Ky because Robo-Ky turtles better...and if RK is playing defensive, Johnny doesn't have that many great options to get in safely. I think turtling with Robo-Ky and aiming for a knockdown while tossing pads down is a generally good idea. While Johnny getting a level 2 does decent damage, it's nowhere near devastating anymore. Slayer can do just as hard hitting combos off of random hits. Johnny needs to waste damage by just coining them in order to achieve decent damage, putting you both back in a neutral situation after a successful mixup of some kind. Then he needs to somehow get in...again, and hit you with something to do some damage, and you need to not burst him at a bad time...all for him to do about 180 damage to Robo-Ky. Not fun. Edit) Guardian: You can combo RK after a 2D with a LV2 MF low. Just takes a slight delay. Only VE, MI, and SL cannot be combo'd after a 2D with LV2 MF Low

Saving this from pruning, though most of the information is outdated, there were some quality posts in this thread that still apply to AC somewhat...until we can determine what needs to be saved it shouldn't be pruned!

They'll generally drop like rocks after blocking any of your long range things in the air, but the important thing they achieve if blocked is wasting a hell of a lot of their tension(assuming they hit twice) and putting you back in a neutral situation, which in at least half of his matchups is good for Axl.

6H to bait fuujin is a bad idea, because like you said it has strike invul frames on startup(1-12F)...and 6H has a very short active window(2F). So the chances of you whiffing it and him wailing on you for it is somewhat decent. Problem being if he does nothing he has a fairly large window to punish you from 6H's recovery...and you have to pre-emptively use 6H before he even does anything for it to work. So while it's a good punish if you read the shit out of him, it's pretty risky. There are safer ways to bait/punish Fuujin. Poke->Coin is safe from H Fuujin. Kinda hard to punish on reaction, but at the very least you should be able to block. 2K(and actually a lot of different pokes) is actually an option select of sorts against a reversal happy Anji, because it only has a recovery of 4F(7F max if you hit on the first active frame). Fuujin takes 20F to even hit, so you should be safe to block it no matter what. But you can also throw him out of his strike invul frames after his wakeup throw invincibility wears off, or anytime between 9F-20F you're free to throw him and anytime between 13F-20F you're able to hit him.

Well, IMO, what it comes down to is... Train yourself to have impeccable offense/execution of your highest damage combos and tricky setups/basic mixup game, then play opponents who also do this and you will learn to defend against them. I think a big part of the problem with most people is they just get lazy and don't complete their training. If you're not FRCing like second nature, or you're not hitting your reversal safe okizeme 95% etc, you need to hit training mode more. The best way for both you and your friends to improve is to finish learning offense before you begin learning defense, which you will naturally pick up by playing other good players.