OmnixTSC

I'm online now if anyone wants to play! I will be streaming my matches here.

That's an option for when the 5C is blocked, but it's whiffed so often by Liz players (myself included) that I feel they need to work on just using it after seeing specific things instead of just throwing it out there. I'm going to just flat out avoid using it for most situations unless I can react to something I know it'll work against at neutral. It's the combination of 5C leading to earlier persona breaks and frequently getting us sent to the corner or at the very least knocked down b/c of poor usage. It's perfectly fine to use Thanatos to condition people, it's just that most players aren't using him with the intent to do that. They're just hoping something hits. This leads to impatience and everyone falls into the habit of doing this at least a few times even at higher levels of play, but that doesn't make it any less of a poor decision. As far as conversions go, I don't think it's hard to confirm off of Thanatos pressure...people just need to get better at preparing for the situations they force their opponents into. The damage is decent, but you're not really going to get that against someone in a set once they pick up on Thanatos or Liz pressure in general. It's even harder to make use of something like that against someone that knows how to deal with Liz as the mixup isn't great and the reward isn't either, which gives them no reason to take a risk. The only time they'll push hard to get out of something is when we blow all our meter on pressure that isn't working or when they just momentarily forget that Thanatos is still right in front of their face. When we spend meter on Thanatos pressure anywhere on the screen, the objective should be for us to force a specific situation and to punish the opponent's response to said situation. I don't feel like enough of us are doing that.

It's still too early to really say who's favor this MU is in. There hasn't been a lot of exploration with Adachi yet, so give it some time. Adachi really has no reason to go for 2D or j.2D against Liz unless he's looking to punish something or call out a whiff. He doesn't need to just be using it at neutral whimsically as mentioned before. 5D and j.D can be used similarly with the added bonus of giving him a free approach when active, but it's effectiveness is weaker with how our new Agi and Zio work. We can pretty much see the 5D/j.D and react with our Agi (if you're not already doing something) or Zio (no matter what we're doing) to get a free persona break. There's also the possibility of us getting oki or free damage. Even with Liz's 2B, you really don't want to try to challenge his air options when he's approaching you unless you're reacting to something that's not already right next to you or you're jumping in the air in order to air-to-air something (which is still a risk). I'd recommend staying grounded and outspacing him. Try to identify the player's movement habits, as you want to know when to just move forward or roll to go under something...or when to just block. Oh, and be sure to super jump and air throw j.2D attempts if you're predicting them and they're close to you. Doing so leads to 3kish free damage and oki. Adachi has good mixups and his pressure is really good with meter, which makes you really want to avoid blocking him for too long. Try to keep in mind that I said 'with meter' in regards to his pressure. It's not that his mixup is much worse without it, but his pressure definitely is a bit weaker when Adachi doesn't have SP. SB Gun Shot is a really good tool for him, though his staggers are definitely still a threat without it. It's easy to confirm a hit with it and has a really good amount of frame advantage on it. The good thing about him needing meter in order to get that advantage is that Adachi also needs meter in general to be a threat. If he has to sacrifice meter to continue his pressure, he's losing meter that could be used in other scenarios that could really turn the tables on a situation (if this wasn't already obvious). It's just that not having meter is a really big issue for him, just like it is for Liz...which is why I'm pointing it out! With this being the case, make sure your defense and reads are on point if you want to attempt to quickly cripple his offensive strength and bully him. His defensive options are really good with meter as well. If you can force him to use his meter on offense, you'll have less to worry about on that end, too.

I figured I'd point this out here since I was reviewing Elochai's match at GUTS.. 5C is used way more than it should be by Liz players, especially at neutral. The biggest problem with 5C at neutral is that it loses to so much which kills the risk/reward on it, as you're using something with sizable recovery that has generally poor yield on hit or on block against an opponent that more often than not will flat out avoid the 5C or block it and take a persona card from you. Realistically, all an opponent has to do is look at our meter to tell whether or not they need to worry about a OMC on our end in order to make Thanatos pressure "safe" anywhere that isn't the corner. They need to just look for the potential OMC and at Liz herself for the possibility of a 5D. That really says something about the effectiveness of Thanatos pressure fullscreen or even midscreen. Unless you're conditioning them in order to look for some other opportunity, you're really just wasting meter and persona cards with Thanatos pressure. If you have meter to spare (say 90~ SP pre-awakening and 125~ post-awakening), I'd say it's okay to attempt from time to time. We need our meter for so much now that I really don't recommend going for it often.

Alright, so I took forever to finally post on here. I do apology for that, Elochai I'll start with general neutral situations. You did well at neutral for the most part, but you weren't really taking advantage of some of the things that Zealous was doing. I know unfamiliarity with Yukiko plays a part in this, but there were some general situations that you were in that would come up against other characters. For instance, when Zealous would go to break your persona at fullscreen after 5C/2C pressure you wouldn't ever attempt to set up Maragidyne to contest his buttons afterwards. If you're going to potentially lose a card anyways after failed attempts to open them up with Thanatos, you might as well press your neutral advantage as much as possible. On the flip-side, you weren't actively breaking persona calls when Zealous was pressuring you fullscreen. I saw you use 5A/5B > 2AB a couple of times, but I never saw you do 2B > C Garu or or j.A to stop the persona calls that were above you. The former keeps you safe from fans that come after her 2D/j.D/etc., and you can input a falling air Zio if nothing is coming at you after hitting the persona for the latter. There were often times where you relied a bit too much on j.B/5B for neutral where you could have just moved forward or blocked to deal with something. j.A is another useful tool for dealing with her persona at neutral, as you don't have to worry about stalling your air momentum if you throw it out. You can air backdash > j.A to punish some persona calls and not worry about Yukiko potentially punishing your landing recovery if the spacing suits the situation. A lot of the j.B/5B whiffs hurt you a lot, and it's a habit I end up falling back on every once in a while and getting punished for it. The 5C whiffs hurt you the most, as you would lose a persona card and get CH for a decent amount of damage multiple times. I don't think 5C is a good neutral tool against zoning, and I feel that it's even worse against characters with fast normals (like a 5f 5A) or really solid mobility options. It's okay in some situations, but it doesn't really lead to anything without you blowing meter or conditioning them to respect the 2C follow-up. Our conversions off of stray 5C air hits got worse if you aren't actively confirming into SB Bufu off of it when you can't do a 2C follow-up, so you don't really get much off of it if it does connect in most cases. It's a decent option in very specific situations, such as trying to deal with low air dashing for approaches and jumping at different spacings. Stray hits with 5C can be used to set up Maragidyne oki, but I didn't ever see you going to that. Try to use 5C more conservatively for situations where your opponent is patterning his/her approach or defense. Edit: I never could remember what else I had to point out. Sorry orz

The other thing that could be happening is that you aren't waiting long enough after the recoil/vacuum on 5B for the 5B > 2B part of the combo. If you don't delay the 2B enough, the j.C will either place you too high/too far for a 2A or the follow-ups to combo or falling j.A will whiff after the j.B.

New Liz doesn't let you do whatever you want if you actually want damage. You have to do the proper routes, which more often than not will involve links and weird directional sequences to land hits properly. It's a really rough road, but if you're dedicated... I'm learning Yukari, so Liz combos being hard doesn't bother me. I just have to work extremely hard with two characters now! Yaaaaay Oh, and before I forget. I'm working on some pre-awakening > awakening > knockdown stuff. We've found a few routes that end with 4k+ damage, puts the opponent in the corner with the hard knockdown, and ends with poison and paralysis. This can be done off of 5A, so it's pretty good albeit a bit tough as far as timing goes. I'll record them later today or tomorrow after some more testing for consistency. Edit: I have not figured out how to make this consistent yet...It's pretty consistent off of fatal counters, but everything else is a toss-up. I'll get back to you guys if/when I figure it out ;-;

We are only able to end a combo with 2AB > 2D if the combo hasn't prorated too much. Most characters can punish 2AB > 2D b/c they recover quickly with more than enough time to either press a button or dash at you to punish. I remember being told there was an alternative for landing 2D at the end when that is the case, but I don't remember what it is off the top of my head

If you have the meter, doing 214AB instead is more consistent (especially online). Is there like a combo document/pastebin or something? I'm kinda just winging everything based on what I remember Tahichi doing at this point.

Poison wasn't really impractical, it was just used mostly in situational setups that you had to know of. There were a good number of places where you could use it last game and have it pay off (like during staggers when people over-respect), and there are more of those now with Liz having access to poison setups mid-combo in awakening. I didn't use poison as much as I should have last game, but I'm starting to understand just how useful it is. Her staggers are much better now with hop-cancels and dash-cancels. Our new stagger pressure also allows us to enforce the threat of a failed throw tech with CH j.C leading to a good 4k+ both in and out of awakening (It's more like 5.2-6k based on CH/FC in awakening b/c of poison). Honestly, I felt her staggers were pretty scary last game. If you could condition your opponent, you could potentially kill them for falling into a pattern with blocking/reacting to things off of your next confirm. I agree with most of what you said as far as general gameplans go, TD. The only thing I'll say is that I truly felt that Liz's corner oki was ridiculously stupid last game. Most of it was entirely rigged, with Agi oki killing anything that wasn't blocking if you didn't have a 5F normal (though there were ways to deal wit this as well). If they failed to handle your mixup/setplay, the round was over 95% of the time unless you did the wrong combo...which I'm guilty of doing Oh, also...there's this bullshit.

You can't hold it for pre-awakened 236B, either. I'm really not liking how our confirms are now. NOTHING works the same in this game. Throw all of your old confirms out b/c they legitimately do not work now. Most air-to-airs or anti-airs with a 2AB > Garu in it will drop before the sweep connects. The routes we have to take are so different and the reward off them is worse now. I really don't know how to feel about some of this. No, the setup is somewhat real. They can always just air-to-air you with air throw to get out of it, though. If they do, your mixup isn't really there outside of a high/low/throw.

It's basically the same thing either way. 9~2 just gives more corner carry and the timing is slightly more strict for landing 5C afterwards. So the timing thing is comparable to old garu stuff. I'll look over your notes and make my own list alongside it, Elochai. I'll just fool around on my own for now, though.

Ooooh, I forgot to tell you guys last night. Thank god Elochai reminded me on twitter. 236 in awakening doesn't exist. At all. The move literally has that much startup. There's no charging/holding the button down and then moving around. Awakened 236B just takes that long to be active. Also, I'll try to find more combos for you guys today. I'll also put all the stuff bace finds in the combo thread for you all.

Please edit your post when you have something to add and you're the last poster. This is just so we can avoid clutter. 5B > D Garu still works on airborne opponents, for the record. D garu still has a use! Rejoice! Bace stuff: 5A > 5AA > 2AB > 236CD > 2B > j.B > 5B > 2AB > 236D~9~2 > 5C > 2C > 214AB > 214D > 2AB > 2D (3930 Damage) 5D > 5A > 5AA > 2AB > 236D~9~2 > 5B > 2B > j.B > j.2B > j.C (2847 Damage) FC 5B > 2AB > 236CD > 2B > j.B > j.A > j.C > 2B > j.B > 5B > 2AB > 236D~9~2 > 5C > 2C >214AB > 214D > 2AB > 2D (4558 Damage) My stuff: CH j.C > 2A > 5B > 2AB > D Garu > 2B > j.B > 5B > 5C > 2C > 214AB > 214D > 2AB (4119 Damage)

Yeah, that's what I meant if it wasn't too clear. They'll tech out way before Hama gets to activate if you added a bunch of filler to your combo. We have to manage the amount of normals/specials we use based on the starter if we want to avoid that scenario.

I knew that it was just first impressions, but that doesn't make the statement any less silly. I'm not trying to call you out or anything, but that's the kind of stuff we really don't need being dropped in a forum. One move (especially an AoA which people can already see answers for) is usually not going to be the reason for one character being better than another. Now for the Hama vs Wail discussion. As noted already, Hama is a good option to go for if you don't have to worry about your opponent's burst. It is also, however, an option that is better used in the last round of a game in most cases if you're not fighting a Shadow character (or at least that's the way I look at it). The biggest difference between the two options is that you have to activate Hama as early as possible in a combo to prevent your combo from proarating too hard as well as allowing you to land enough hits to last past its activation, while Wail can be used generally from any starter as long as you didn't already use your SB Bufu and you can reach the corner. It doesn't require really good starters + resources or just all of your resources (burst and meter), though those are options available to you. Near the corner with the 1HS buff or an air-to-air/anti-air starter, Hama doesn't require all of your resources either...so that's definitely worth noting! All that aside, we aren't going to be using Wail nearly as much as before (some people won't use it at all due to how aware you have to be of different situations to use it now). There are just going to be certain scenarios where it makes more sense to go for Wail over Hama, though they may be far and few in-between.

I just want to point out that I'm still laughing at this statement. I'm sorry...I can't do this. *leaves Dustloop forever*

I'm going to have to pass on this, sadly. I'm not really feeling up for playing in this now. Sorry, guys

As a note, you want to avoid having them hit the ground when you use 2C > 214B so you can keep your knockdown for 2C > 6CCC or 2C > 6CC > 63214A/B at the end of combos.

It's a combination of the way the freeze works, the changes in ranges, and the frame advantage on non-awakening Bufus being worse. The startup is the same as last game, but the recovery is worse. I don't remember the specifics behind the new ranges, so I'd have to check on that to note how it affects Bufu usage in neutral. I'd suggest waiting for the console release for information on usability for certain tools that goes into very specific match-up details, btw. It's hard to tell what's what when most of what we're seeing is improper usage of something regardless of the character. There's only so much top/high level footage for us to go off of, and they're bound to make mistakes and use things incorrectly at times as well.

Damosu qualified for Arc Revo just now. It was kind of a weird tournament, but I'm happy that he pulled it off.

Damosu needs to fix his mind charge habits. That's one of the big things losing him rounds. He'll mind charge really early and then immediately get hit at neutral. Another thing is that after those combo videos, it sure doesn't look like he's using a number of the combos he showed us. He's not optimizing his damage and that's hurting him, too (his confirms are a little weak at times). I still think he's performing amazingly, but those problems are holding him back a bit when he could otherwise be bodying even more players.

All I want to say is that...Yamashita's team got OCV'd by Damosu... Oh, and start working 2D into your gameplan now if you're still playing. It's freakin' amazing in both versions of the game.

I think the MU chart was trying to say that players on both sides of the chart feel the MU is in or not in their favor? At the end of the day, the MU is 5-5 at high levels. As Pssych pointed out, unless you're pushing for the higher levels of play in this game (or any game for that matter), tiers come 2nd to playing what you enjoy. Just have fun and put in the necessary work to improve. It'll carry you a long way until you encounter players in the top 1%.

I had a FT10 with Tectal. It was really close, though we both were dropping some silly things. Were a few netplay bumps here and there, but it was pretty solid otherwise. Omnix~TSC (Liz) vs TectalEastside (Lab) Not sure if I'll upload this to Youtube yet, but I'll be sure to update the link if I do. Edit: Youtube took my video down b/c of one song. Replaced the Youtube link with the Twitch one ;-;