tolore

I think I'm gonna pick up Joe the condor/Saki for my team. I can do about 22-24k for 1 bar with joe and saki assist so far, he also has a pretty awesome crossup which leads to that damage. I imagine once I start working barokes in/learning more about the game it'll only get better!

because arakune's pressure was bad without curse before, it's even worse now, and it is much harder to actually get curse.

I know people who secondary ragna and picked up the belial(no sure what it's REALLY called) edge combos in less than an hour too, so easy!

I think arakune is possibly the LEAST same from game to game. his base character system works completely different, ALL(yes every single one) of his combos are different, his most important normals are different.

my only problem with people hating on(CT arakune) is that rachel and nu get LESS hate and are MORE unfair. I only get frustrated about nu's who switch OFF their main character to fight against arakune.

you can get the same effect by going into training mode and have someon eelse record the combo on the training dummy(or you do it yourself, only gotta do it right once) and then you can practice against their strings without knowing the char.

Learning how to do another characters bread and butters is worthless, understanding thier move properties and strategies is incredibly important, but simply doing their combos? I completely agree with Matt, doesn't help at all.

robo alex didn't even make top 3!

if v-13 didn't exist banning hakumen from robo alex might do something for me. Also is that's an awesome picture jais.

I can bring some, I haven't used the dpad on either of mine for a really long time so I'm not sure what condition they are in. edit: Also a little late to ask, but how does seeding by skill work, what's the determinate of skill?

so the timing would(loosely) be something like 6A->release C while doing 6A->jump cancel->j.c->release A? I'll mess around with it next time I'm playing.

What's the negative edge timing for the bugs in the non counter hit j.c fever mode combo? I can't seem to get it.

only CT AND no GG! I may make it depending on what else is going on that day.

SP is okay to learn on at first, but once you are used to how the game controls and picking up combos off random hits it actively makes you worse. The AI is very good at things no human can possibly be good at, so it teaches you to NOT do things you SHOULD be doing, and very BAD at things even the stupidest human can do.

woo shout outs time, like always frosty faustings has been a ton of fun, it's totally worth staying an extra week on my trips over to chicago. Heck money permitting I'll come even when I don't go to chicago for christmas. My shout outs will be super long because I basically never see any of you people! ElvenShadow - of course, thanks again for running this event, it's always a lot of fun, your faust is still beast, I thought I might get to OCV your team in GG but alas, I was stopped! Heartnana - thanks a lot for running BB stuff, I'm sure it was difficult for both you and eleven shadow since there was so much overlap in the tourneys. Your noel is hella beast, you really show why japan is often better then america, you seem to have every match up down pat, you know what combos to do off most every hit, and you know what to do on the defense, offense, and in neutral really well. There's few people I've played in America that'd even come close to that level of skill. It's also always great to meet more willvo members since pretty much only gimpy lives up here. Alpha kami - thanks a lot for teaming with us in GG and hanging out the rest of the night. Your ky is pretty awesome, you just need all the matchup experience, your combos are really strong, you picked up some stuff I really didn't expect. Your noel is also pretty awesome, though no match for heartnana's! Definitely one of the best noels there. Ryan Bill - You've got a really really strong bang there, I usually win that matchup no problem, but I've never seen a bang pressure like you do. I think the rest of the bangs are too afraid of arakune, but you dove right in, and it showed great results. You and heartnana were the only people to beat me with any consistency the whole night! I lost to you THREE times between two tournaments, that's the second most I've ever fought the same person in one day since Recna(I fought his team twice in teams, and him twice in singles at one tourney, it was crazy). Bluenine - You had an awesome may, that matchup is always a nail biter, I have a bad habit of losing to may in teams at basically every tournament I travel to, both times I've gone to evo and now this last frosty faustings! At some point all of us Alex's should get together and have a 5v5 team or something, there's so many Alex's, heck we've probably got 5 between southwest canada, washington, and oregon alone. AKA - you're eddy is really beast, even if I had the matchup experience that match would have been really rough, your millia was also looking awesome in teams. You're ragna is also awesome, definitely one of the best I've played(other than veteru, his ragna is too beast). The arakune matchup is really rough on ragna, and I've got a decent amount of experience in it, you probably won't be having in problems in CS though, ragna is insane in it! MSong - holy crap, your robo ky is awesome. I have a ton of matchup experience against robo ky(though our robo ky hasn't played since BB came out), you're at least as good as our robo ky was, which is shocking because he was amazing. Good job taking me out in singles. Bipples - you've got a pretty sweet zappa, not sure how well you know the baiken matchup but our match was pretty fun, Raoh is always a nail biter for me, I often make a mistake against him and die horrifically. Keep it up, it's always nice to find new good players. MacArthur blunts - Your slayer is really strong! You picked up several combos off of stuff I didn't think were going to lead to damage at all. One of the closest and most terrifying matches I had the whole time, you reminded me why I have to ask "will this hit kill me?" no matter how much life I'm at against slayer. Blacksnake - really good match in teams, You've taken me down several times at the last frosty fausting and at the first evo I went to, I'm glad I could finally return the favor, although who knows what would have happened if it were an actual 2 out of 3. Your venom is still the best around and it definitely wasn't an easy match! Testament player on elven shadows team whose name I forget(sorry!) - Your testament is also very good, I have a ton of matchup experience with wuku, one of the best testaments around, if I didn't I'm sure those results would have been very different. Testament player I played a bunch of casuals with and fought in singles whose name I forget(also sorry!) - Pretty much same as above, your testament is pretty nice, I've never been hit by the skull/curse thingy as much as when I played against you. If i didn't have so much matchup experience that would have been a lot more rough for me, keep it going and learn that baiken matchup! Frankie - Too bad I didn't get to play you any in gear, your a pretty cool guy, and your ragnas not bad. You gotta work on that arakune matchup though, it's a rough one but if you're careful and work on your defenses it can be winnable. I'll be sure to say hi to polka for you next time I see her. Klaige - good stuff on coming out here even through your hardships, if everyone were as dedicated as you we'd probably be just as strong as japan and still have a roaring scene! I wish I had played a lot more GG casuals, I didn't know we were cleaning up at 11, I was gonna switch from BB to GG at like10 20 but it was basically too late then. There were a lot of people I wanted to play GG with that I didn't get to. Arakune is a total jerk in CT, he's a lot of peoples toughest matchups, I know how frustrating those matches can be(V-13 is crazy bad for arakune ). It was good meeting you and hopefully I'll get to play some gear with you at EVO or FF3. Ukyo - Again too bad I didn't get to play you at all, I'm not sure I've ever played your ky, but I remember your zappa being pretty dang strong at last years Frosty Fausting. Baiken V ky is another one of those matchups thats just way too roguh, ky has to play really careful and different to get out of that one unscathed. Vortex - I don't think I saw you at all, but good job placing so high in GG I really wish I had played you, north west doesn't have a jam, and as one of my bad matchups I like to get as much experience with it as I can. heroic legacy - thanks for teaming with me and stark for BB, I wish the tourney would have been double elimination instead of crazy pools stuff, I think our team could have gone quite far! Sorry I couldn't take down the bang, he was just too strong! Anyone I forgot - I had a lot of fun playing with basically everyone there so if I played you at all you deserve a shout out! Next time I'll try and play a lot more gear, maybe my flight won't be at 8 in the morning next time and I can hang around after the tourney for some casuals. edit: oh yeah! necrosis, I gotta give a shout out to fellow willvo members, its always good to see your salty self at tournaments. some day I'll play naruto with you guys, someday!

You can go to you tube and look up baiken matches or combo videos. The combo's may or may not be entirely applicable to real matches, but you will see the dashes after j.d in pretty much any video that's up. You need to be at about a full normal jump height when you fire off the j.d. The easiest way to be sure is just do one of the bread and butter combos, or really even just part of one. Stand close to like axl or someone(not baiken/may/dizzy/bridget they are slightly harder than everyone else) and just do tatami->jump->j.p->j.d->fall a little bit->air dash.

Faust is a ton of fun, he's definitely up there on the list of characters I'd play if Baiken didn't exist. As for i-no's notes, baiken has almost the exact same thing with tatami mat, they also have similarly good mix up when you wake up(i-no's is stronger for longer, baikens is SUPER strong for a shortamount of time, yay 9 frame over heads). I never really found i-no that annoying, but thats partially because the only i-no i know plays at a very high level with a lot of other people at a very high level, so (other than baiken) most people don't complain about annoyingness of characters. Also guard cancels makes i-no think twice about okizime even with a note on you.

what? baiken is often cited as one of the most annoying people to fight at least as far as I know. People don't like having their block strings ruined. I think that's the worst kind of person to recommend ino to. her basics are ridiculously hard. I think you massively over rate the difficulty of zappa and ABA. They have odd mechanics that you have to balance, but execution and strategy wise they are both easy. personally difficulty wise i'd probably rate them(this is a rating from getting from low to mid levels of play) Bridget, ino, dizzy, aba, zappa, baiken annoyingness Baiken, Bridget, dizzy, zappa, aba all them are pretty underplayed, baiken being the most used, and bridget being the least. Baiken will rape someone REALLY hard if they don't know how to play against her(guard cancels really wreck peoples day), even good experienced players can lose to scrubby baikens if they don't have matchup experience. I can't really say the same for any of the other characters. SO i'd say she wins for unexpected(though i'm not entirely sure what you mean by that).

prolly not unfortunately, I'm a poor college(for 1 more semester only!) time/money is tough for 3 big traveling tournaments a year. Once I have a job i'll probably start going to some of the bigger east coast stuff.

5C is worthless, 2B crushes EVERYTHING she has from the air. 2B is so amazingly good in this match up.

too bad vyers, it's always nice to see the other baiken players messing people up!

AC, pretty much every character is way more fun and interesting.

I'll be there, playing all BB/GG formats.

Yeah, it's not that gold bursts aren't useful to HIT with, if you get 'em with a gold burst it' great. But the advantage you lose by not saving it to use on defense(especially with baikens defense rating) is tremendous. Also like hellmonkey said, if you notice someone gold bursting it's really easy to read them.

haha yeah, as much as I would have like GG to remain my main game my whole area is BB now, gotta stick with the times. 5a is totally supposed to be 5p.