Herbal Grey

random stuff: i haven't had very much luck with tempest dahlia in this mu because i usually get counter hit by 4d or 5d bc lambdas (severin) are expecting it if lambdas try to dash under and 2d you while you air-summon pumpkin, you should just not summon pumpkin and random j.2c them lololol lambda's 5d looks pretty foolish if you dash then jump 3d j.C them, going right over the 5d lol i've only seen severin do this, but just putting it out there, lambda can rapid cancel 4b into 2b after the first hit to totally blow your mind for huge damage in the corner.

my match with lk seems to make rachels think i know something special about this matchup...i don't (i don't even know her move inputs, so bear with me) but here's my general strategy most of my hits don't come from mix-ups in this matchup. it's more about spacing. push her closer and closer to the corner and force her to approach you, because her approach is relatively weak unless she has spinny staff oki (which is actually pretty punishable if you predict it correctly). most of my wind is spent on movement and zoning, not mixups (since i find j.b 9 j.b j.a etc fuzzy guard to be a relatively low reward for the use of wind, especially since it's not THAT hard to block) if litchi approaches from the air with any sort of airdash, your first option should be to 6a her HARD. make her not approach you from the air. eventually, she will start throwing the staff at you from the air, but it's still relatively a lot better to get hit by that on your whiffed 6a than to let litchi get pressure on you, and most of the time, litchi will just get hit by your 6a (it becomes a yomi game after litchi realizes how godlike 6a is). your options off her 6b are already discussed by spa, so i'll skip that option. any ground option other than 6b can be a-lobelia'd with ease (preferably with 5d). another strong option against litchi is the triangle jump => jump or super jump then 1/3d and j.b or j.c (j.c counter hit is your 5k friend. if there's one combo you want to practice, it's that one)...... once you've convinced litchi how difficult it is to approach rachel without spinny staff oki, she will retreat to full screen at full screen, remember that pumpkin disappears if you block, so litchi can do away with your pumpkin relatively simply by forcing you to block the spinny staff. however, if george is out, the staff as it spins toward you will hit george and go past you which is a big deal if you have pumpkin summoned (or you can summon pumpkin as she throws the staff at you), so in general at full screen, i tend to go for george summoning before pumpkin IF IT IS SAFE. using george and lobelias is a good way to push litchi farther back til she reaches the corner. once you've backed litchi close to the corner, she can't run from your pressure anymore...do NOT let her back to midscreen by super jump and air dashing over you. be patient. eventually she will be forced into george block stun or get hit with random pumpkin or lobelias trying to get out. experiment with rachel's triangle jump in a variety of situations and you will see that you can catch litchi in a number of things. one of my favorite rachel moves currently is jump 3d 9! j.b, which can catch litchi placing the staff on the ground from nearly full screen. ohh, and as far as blocking is concerned, remember to not barrier guard her swinging overhead so that you can punish it, but beware that smart litchis will rapid it if they have the heat. when litchi does that charge move that places the staff on the ground (which breaks a primer), you can ib the second hit and go on the attack with 5a, NOT 2a...2a will trade with litchi's 2a. don't forget to bait her dp on wakeup with REGULAR block, not barrier and punish it with 5b 6b 5d 3c for 4k if you have wind. make her scared to dp. or if you have george oki, you can just cat chair on their wakeup and break a primer while also option selecting them out of gold burst if they do that. pressure as far as mixups go has already been discussed. call me out on anything i misinformed

yeah i'm so proud of koopadoopa. he's better every time i play him .... online :P lol mb had more ppl than bb, but look at that umvc3 attendance ....... ps. this rachel's pink glasses are so swag

lol i got one the last time i played gli online...and i got one on don a few days ago...but yeah, they're like god status. some skill lots of luck

I think I can make it too

Netplay is a magical land where blocking sucks, mashing is gdlk, and grabs are awesome Also,gli, any time I watch you play you be trollin lol....

berkerderv also, is c0r ur avatar??

yo....trollin psn ggs thread got old...trollin xbl ones when i have never played an xbox before sounded like more fun with cooler peeps

pumpkin .... pumpkin ........ pumpkin

damn, i'm responding to this late. actually, having been watching a lot of japanese vids lately, i can say that winded 4b is not my first option but it works in japan too...and even on spark occasionally. japanese are also being more liberal with their wind because of two reasons imo: 1) improved wind regeneration during combos makes spending the wind less risky; 2) with improved push back from barrier, less chance of guard break, and faster wind regeneration when blocking, it is not as scary to block as it used to be, not to mention damage is in general smaller than it used to be, so getting hit is less painful than it was before. other improvements allow rachel's neutral game to be less dependent on wind. 6a mainly. the worst thing a rachel can do is be obvious and just sit there regaining wind...rachel has decent options without wind between 6a, 6b, and lobelias. the new top rachels in japan are as liberal with their wind as we are: hyaku shoku (spelling) and kure hane expend their wind frequently to get that one hit into knockdown. imo matsu is the only conservative rachel that does well, but i think that the other rachels have surpassed him as far as spending too much wind on random pumpkin, the reason i think that happens more in america is because most american players don't respect our options with pumpkin right next to them, so hitting them with it, even for 800 damage is worth it if for no other reason then to make them think twice before disregarding it the next time i think ppl should watch more jp vids if they think jp play is a lot different (it's just that there is more documentation of their good players imo) anyway, dat's my thoughts

Rising windless j.a is great for when you have George wakeup Oki also because it's safe against any of tager's wakeup options other than mtw. You then have time to land and execute a combo before George is finished shocking them.

6b is a powerful tool against Rachel, but it's not infallible. If you predict it, right when they're about to do it you can winded 3c right under it...this also option selects them out of itsu if they like using it. I also have super jumped over and lvl2 j.2c punished it a couple times, but I'm almost positive winded 3c is a legit punish. Also, as far as mix up is concerned, yeah that sucks. I mostly go for stagger pressure, grab/trm, and unusual uses of 4b.

Some of the footage from the top 4 from the north America bbr qualifier. My matches are about 5 min in against kid viper and lord knight. My loss to spark is a little later, after norcal's team sends spark and xie to losers. More footage from bbr is also available on this account Www.twitch.tv/leveluplive/b/309798480 Edit. I also played xie I think right before spark

Actually, yeah the stream was archived on twitch. I'll post it in the vids/critique section Done. Also, tell me what you think about cor's comments if you watch the matches against xie and spark

Luf made me post in the sanctuary and stop lurking

tofurr, you shoulda been at bbr, and mr. i'd have made a vampire out of your loli. honestly, online i try to avoid situations where i can be outmashed, or if my opponent is mashing, cutting combos short to punish it, but that's just netplay....but it's also worthwhile to know how to deal with it for knowledge's sake...for example, if you have an opponent in the corner / close to the corner in an air combo, don't do lobelia ender, just do a floating j.c then j.c them again after they mash buttons from teching (which is big damage bc j.c counter hit is gdlk damage), or midscreen air enders, end with pumpkin and hit them with the pumpkin after they tech, or doing 5cc tech trap resets in the corner....all sorts of shit that calls out mashing. in neutral situations, where you're worried about being out-mashed, just backdash or barrier guard, you'll be more sodium-free in the long run in other news, i've been experimenting with different types of stagger pressure, where i don't directly gatling things into 5b. 2a - wait - 5b for example. you'd be surprised how often 5b counterhits ppl offline when you stagger it

I've been playing stayfreescrub a lot online recently, and I cannot tell you the number of times he has mashed a out of my combos and gotten a combo. He doesn't do it offline (mostly bc i dont drop nearly as much stuff offline), but yeah, sometimes i have to just call it a night after losing to 5a for the 10th time. I think arakune gets similar rewards for mashing a online

lol tanks you guyzz. no, i played about 10-15 matches with spark in casuals before, and he calls out every single mistake like you would not believe (i won 2, lol). i've never been so scared to throw lobelias. like, walljumpman may be aggressive, but he didn't even know the rachel matchup and i destroyed him several times in a row in casuals, whereas i just had no chance against spark (i missed some key opportunities in mixups/combos because of input failure in losers' finals...still noobish on stick). i'm really disappointed socal didn't pull it out in the final. grrrrrr, copperdabbit showing why arakune's good now haha, yeah, it's amazing how much more solid i'm capable of playing when i concentrate...hmmmm yo, but my team was pretty awesome today, with our jin who seriously called out his opponents with those dp's omg, and just ... tager magic ... it was SO hype.

http://www.twitch.tv/xiei/videos there's a few vids of "brkrdv" ;p .... execution is an issue for me after transitioning to stick.... as a forewarning also, i fail at blocking update: sakaku, i watched your matches with the tsubaki, and there's a lot of solid gameplay. it's hard to critique because i think part of where you went wrong sometimes was just like not being able to block the stupid overhead. maybe do some more barrier guarding? on a more specific level, i'll do a more in depth critique a few things that are situational and you may agree or disagree. 12:30 => you are at full screen with pumpkin while tsubaki is in the air. you decide to charge forward with the pumpkin which i think is a mistake because the pumpkin has a low chance of hitting your opponent (blocked or not) and you could be summoning george. i think if you wanted to punish something like tsubaki charging midair, a winded b or c lobelia would have been safer for that situation, but i still think i would summon george in that situation 14:38 => LOL. get owned 14:47 => 6a would have worked there (it would have been blocked, but your indecisiveness by just barrier guarding put you on defense rather than offense) 15:32 => this may have been an input error. but yeah, after tsubaki whiffs a dash under you, hit them with the pumpkin twice for a full combo into 3c george/pumpkin or 5cc 16:00 => this looks like a situation where you want to zone, since tsubaki was almost finished. you had pumpkin summoned above you so you could have 2d'd it down to hit tsubaki then continued zoning. this is especially true, since tsubaki had a burst even if you did manage to combo. when my opponent has low life and a burst, i tend to try to zone if i have the option (and i am aware enough of the situation lol) 17:31 => personal play preference. i would have counter assaulted in that situation. puts tsubaki in a bad situation in the corner (of course, counter assault would have looked foolish if tsubaki did an airdash instead of a full block string) 19:24 => hehe nice hit confirm with george. i think if you could have done 2 hits with the first 3c which would have let you resummon george i'll stop there. that's a few thoughts

[looks up orz] ... i'm so white i CAN pick c0r up ... lol (it's not toooo outa the way) if it makes it easier for you (but maybe someone else will volunteerrrrr).....i'll pack my setup. can't remember if you have one or two setups, but 10 ppl is a lot, let alone 15.

james. do you have an idea of how many ppl are showing up tonight? should i bring a setup?

i was thinking just in terms of noel's wakeup options...so 5b doesn't beat everything noel does in the corner anymore (excluding chain revolver)..grr.. i played a noel who was d-ing everything i did (2d out of my 4b for example...sad face), so i wanted to get my info straight...

don't forget j.a j.b land dash 3c also works into j.2c frog combo (if you have the wind) ...cuz i forget unrelated, which wins: rachel's 5b or noel's 4d?

i'm pretty sure that happens because you're hitting them with 5cc when they're too high off the ground. try making sure they are lower to the ground before 5cc'ing them and yeah, it doesn't take watching a video for me...it's every time i screw up my proration on my combo enders, so the opponent techs and i get ... 720'd...that inspires me to go to training mode to remind myself of how to play this game. update: i am the best rachel psn. vita got nothin on me -_-

i should pass vita in about 10 more matches so.... ^_^ lol, they managed to make psr even less significant in this game than it was in the last also, no one good plays ranked...like ppl probs think i'm rq'ing to get 100% wins, but there are no good players on it. there's no reason to rq anyway, because your psr barely goes down when you lose