Bedsheets

I did not end up using the the Ds at the start or middle of combos personally. It is definitely a thing worth experimenting with! I generally was just holding down the Ds as long as possible to either build as much drill heat as possible or to get in as much damage/chip as possible if the drill was already high level. I'd say 5D builds something like a little less than 1/3rd of a gauge. But it felt like it was building more when I was in level 3? May have just been psychological (very afraid of overheating at the wrong moment). I think an interesting application of canceling Amane's D moves might be once the opponent gets used to how long they need to block Ds for. You can cancel your Ds early into say a command hop or into setting up a drill, basically punish the enemy if they start getting too complacent. At least, it sounds good on paper.

So, yes. Even if the curse meter depletes completely as long as you are in OD mode the enemy remains cursed. Also it seemed like, even though the curse meter was fully empty, when OD ended I went to being 50% of the way towards my next curse. Not 100% sure as to why.

Oh man, so I had a huge "Aha!" moment at the arcade today and took two games off of Japanese players, and most of my games were actually very close instead of me getting stomped. Heck, I even had one round where I absolutely slaughtered (Amane does terrible things to people in corners, terrible things). The main difference was switching my focus from Amane's Cs to his Ds. His drive attacks are incredible. They control a huge amount of space and they just stay out there forever if you hold down the button. I would guess something like 80% of my damage in most matches ended up coming from my drives (with something like 20% of that damage being chip). It felt like I was playing Amane "right" because I actually cared about my drive meter, overheating was a real concern, and I was starting to make game decisions based around things like "Okay I need to back off for a bit and let my drill cooldown." When I focused on C attacks the drive gauge might as well not have been there. The main result of this was how my opponents played against me. They actually had to respect my Amane. His D attacks just do so much damage, or so much chip on block, and cover such good range and my enemies had to respect that. And I mean, his Ds cover everything. 5D controls horizontal ground space, 2D controls ground to air, jD controls air to ground, j6D controls air to air. There is pretty much no situation where you can't just stick and hold a drill out to make your enemy reconsider advancing. (6D is a special case move, I'll get into it later). Once your enemy starts respecting your Ds is when the rest of your game opens right up. Scared to rush in? Let me set up a ground drill to control even more space. Hovering around outside of D range? Now you are right in C range. My Cs started to feel like scalpels to my Ds hammer. Once you start getting your drills leveled up the amount of damage and chip you can do is straight disgusting. When I caught an enemy in a ground drill and then used 6D on them the amount of chip felt like cheating. 6D is a very interesting move. It is pretty unsafe to throw out, unless you have the enemy really scared or they are already blocking a ground drill. It is, however, your main way to set your drill level to exactly where you want. Other moves have a limit on how long they can be held, while 6D can be held until the drill overheats. If you can every manage to catch an enemy in your 6D you can get your drill right to the start of level 3, which is very good. Or you can just hold it if you think it will be enough to chip out or kill. So, things I noticed in no particular order: -Cs are special cancellable for sure (you can cancel them before their 2nd hit lands). -Ds are special cancellable -Both of Amane's distortion drives seem to automatically overheat his drill (or they put on a BUNCH of heat and I was too high already). Which is pretty bad, actually. Maybe better off spending meter on cancels and guard crushes unless the DDs will decide the match. -j2b is special cancellable so you can do something like command hop > j2b > command hop -Drill stance automatically cancels after about 1 and 1/2 levels of heat -If you try to enter drill stance when you already have a drill out you do a D attack instead (generally 6D, because you just input 236D, which is NOT a move you want to be throwing out randomly). -Amane's command hops auto-correct for facing if you jump over your opponent. Not instantly though, there seems to be some delay before Amane will change facing.

Heh, I'm a gaijin too, I just happen to be living in Japan. And yeah, it feels like his C moves can be special canceled. Canceling them into hops seems to be the basis for a lot of combos.

Unfortunately my Japanese is nowhere near that level.

I will try to remember to test that next time I am at the arcade (in fact, I'll go jot it down in my notebook). I have pretty much been using my burst, to well, burst, because as mentioned before I am really bad at Arakune (and I haven't seen anyone else play him at the arcade yet).

I can confirm that it is multiple hits on blocks. I was messing around a bit with Arakune at the arcade yesterday. Which mainly led me to conclude that, holy god, I am bad at Arakune.

What is happening here is, actually, the drill is staying at level 3. The overdrive gauge just works differently than you think it does. So, the drill starts at level 1 with the gauge empty and the drill icon is a green color. When the gauge is fully filled the drill becomes level 2 and the drill icon becomes a yellow color. When the gauge is fully filled again the drill becomes level 3 and the drill icon becomes a red color. If you fill the gauge another time the drill then overheats. When the overdrive is done the drill begins to lose heat normally and goes down to level 2. Getting the drill to level 3 outside of using either 6D or using Amane's overdrive seems pretty impractical to me at the moment. Hm, you know I am unsure. Amane's 5B is so good that I was using that almost non-stop. I was trying to focus on combos and 5B is just to good for that. I'll have to make it a point to try that next time I am at the arcade. I was really hoping to get some time alone on the machine and to film myself just going through all the normals and specials but, the machine has been (unsurprisingly) slammed. All of Amane's C moves seemed to have pretty crazy hitstun to me. 2C and 5C (when it hits a ground opponent) both leave them sitting there for a while. 6C rips them out of the sky and sends them sliding on the ground for a while. I am pretty sure that a hit from any of his Cs should result in a combo. But before you go thinking he is god tier or something, remember that his Cs only hit where the knot is, so at the very end. He isn't Dhalsim or something. And if an opponent gets inside your C range the recovery is enough that you are eating whatever counter combo he feels like.

Yeah, Amane has some command hops that he can use on the ground and in the air (214a/b and 236a/b) and then his j2b (which is the attack that started the combo) causes him to lose all horizontal momentum and drop straight down. On hit or block you can cancel the j2b into other things, including another command hop. Should make for some fun times!

Here are the the Amane videos I got today: http://youtu.be/SvpGXkaDESM http://youtu.be/S5a0IlPcPwU The second one is mostly Amane getting stomped though.

http://youtu.be/SvpGXkaDESM This one has a kind of slick Amane combo at around the 2:20 mark.

Even more so in this one: http://youtu.be/S5a0IlPcPwU

Well here is an Azrael (yay) vs Bullet (Zzzzz) as promised: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ0a_c-V24g&feature=youtu.be next upload is an amane vs azrael match (which is mostly Amane getting bodied).

Got two videos in my upload queue coming. But, the level of play by the Amane ain't great, I won't lie.

Azrael is really weird and has a sharp learning curve. Most people who tried him at my arcade could not get anything going. That said, I am uploading a video of the best Azrael player I saw at my arcade. He's not amazing or anything but he could make the character actually do stuff. Most people who tried him just got straight bodied.

I was hoping no one would at the arcade today so I could do some more focused practice but it was a day off for everyone, not just me, so the arcade was packed. I've never learned a fighting game at an arcade before. I miss the luxury of training mode. Anyway, I still managed to get some games in anyway. I didn't get to test some things that I wanted but, someone asked how fast you can get drills out. There is a start up animation when you go into drill stance and then a cast animation when you summon the drill. You pretty much do not have to spend anytime between the two animations if you press fast enough, but, the animations themselves take enough time. It seems like you pretty much never want to go into drill stance while things are at neutral. You are pretty much just asking for someone to just run right up into your face or asking to eat something like a Hazama chain. That's actually my biggest problem in general is just people charging straight at me. It seems pretty easy for fast characters to just dash inside of his C range. Probably will just come with practice. One thing of note is that, as far as I can tell, all of Amane's drive have a limit on how long you can hold down the button for, and therefore have a limit on how much you can fill up his drill gauge per use. With the exception of 6D. 6D you can hold and go from empty meter to causing the drill gauge to overheat, or anywhere in between. I think as Amane becomes more figured out using 6D to set your drill to the correct level for what you want to do will become important. Another thing of note is that Amane's 6B causes him to jump back into the air even on whiff, which makes it a pretty odd move in some ways. Also I think it Fatals on counter hit? Not 100% on that. There was another Amane player at the arcade for a little bit and I managed to get some footage of him playing. I will try to get that uploaded later today.

My arcade was set to 2 out of 3, sadly, the money grubbers! With overdrive it is worth mentioning that the duration of overdrive is inversely proportional to how much life you have left.

I think this is the best that Blazblue has every looked, sounded and felt. But, this is an entirely subjective thing. The new sounds really pop and are satisfying to hear when you see moves landed. The new sound that Hazama's chain makes when it tries to bite you is just great. I also probably appreciate the new sounds because arcades are loud as fuck and being able to hear stuff over the noise is excellent.

It didn't feel smaller when I played, but, its been a while since I've played BB. And I think you made a typo there, as clearly Amane has the best looking sprite in the game.

All requests I am jotting down on some paper, I will try to get to as many as I can. As for how is Amane is supposed to be used I think Toasty is on the right track. He doesn't have strong full screen zoning, no. And he doesn't have point blank rush down either. What he does feel like he has is a really solid mid-screen neutral game and potentially a very good oki game. It also feels like he has tools to help enforce that mid screen distance that he enjoys, lots of moves that either push the enemy back or move himself backwards (like his overhead). What it feels like he is lacking is a strong, reliable way to get out of something like corner lock down pressure. These are, of course, just Day 1 impressions. It will be quite fun to see how everything actually shakes out.

Any combos you add to the combo thread I will try to test on my day off tomorrow. Also anything else you guys want me to test I can give a shake. WillWork4Instal: In regards to Amane vs Hazama that was the matchup I ended up playing the most yesterday. Obviously it was just day 1 putzing around so I can't say anything conclusive. I think the only thing I noticed worth mentioning is that if you have a ground drill out (236d, a/b/c) it will clash with Hazama's chain, essentially blocking it. But also, going into the drill stance naked is just asking for a chain to the face and eating a combo.

Amane is really fun, but I am really terrible with him. Sadly no one else played him tonight so I couldn't really film any Amane action. Friday is a day off for me so maybe by then I can do some research on some combos and maybe figure out some way to film myself playing. He's a pretty neat character.

Good Lambda's can make it feel like that but really there's always a gap in her zoning game. You just have to be patient. You probably just need more experience against Lambda's in general. Watch some match videos against her and see how people deal with her various zoning tools.

My friend mains Lambda, and neither of us are all that great yet but I feel like I've got decent insight on the match. As yuki noted items can make a big difference in the match. The missiles are especially good because as far as I can tell they flat out nullify any (non-super, at least) projectile that that Lambda throws out without disappearing themselves. One missile plain beats Lambda's spike chaser, even. This makes advancing behind missiles a breeze, it's like walking up behind a slow sonic boom with Guile on crack. The lion (or rather the threat of the lion) is really good at keeping Lambda from pressing too many buttons at certain ranges which helps getting in. I'd also give a nod to the bombs because aimed right they make Lambda hesitant to go into the air which cuts down some of her zoning options. The other items are of course nice once you are actually in Lambda's face, as her close up game is lacking. Just be careful and measured in your approach, and when you get Lambda in the corner do whatever you can to keep her there. As for Mami Circulars, yeah, they hit hard, and you can punish Lambda for being too predictable with it (doing one right over a 5d is always fun), but, that move is so unsafe that I really don't like throwing it out (outside of combos) without 50% meter backing it up for an RC.

When Coopa was reading through the forums he came upon a conversation between two Platinum players. "What is the best item that Platinum has?" asked one player. "Every item of hers is the best," replied the other player. "You cannot find any item of hers that is not the best." At these words Coopa became enlightened. (Yeah, I'm blatantly stealing zen koans, deal with it).