Herbal Grey

i probably had the internet on .... sometimes i forget to turn it off when i play @_@

yea my connection be gdlk ;P go wireless!!!

lufenia wants me to post.... herro...... gli i was lurking on some post you made that you forgot you were playing csextend.....yea, i entered a tourney and got 2nd without ever having played the game before...playing against relius players was very scary, so i whacked them with the pumpkin and dominated them in the corner so they couldn't scare me with attacks and combos i've never seen before. i remembered it was extend every time i tried to jump after fork -_- sooo sad....tager is suddenly scary...no safe pokes........

i just jump a lot, and if they are spamming 236-anything, then j.2c punish should discourage them ^_^

herro. always looking for rachels to play with, since most of my rachel game is copying one rachel or another i've seen lol. just entered the tournament scene (9th at scr, 2nd at ffa airdashers). the best aspect of my game imo is my spacing. mostly i like working on my blocking or copying other rachels' mix-ups, especially against characters who are immune to instant j.a. i tend to play bb late or very late at night, when psn isn't crowded with lagging 10 year olds. but i also play a bit in early evening psn: brkrdave (sometimes herbal_grey) i need to work on my lambda and carl matchups ...severin didn't used to own me so hard o.0 (cs2 makoto gives me grief, but thank god she got hit with the rachel nerf bat for extend...have you seen how slow her overhead is now???)

time?

Does that mean you're playing tomorrow??? ^_^

severin beat me so badly in the final that i got demoted to third

hmmm...and this is on sunday? time? do i just bring a controller and connector cord? moneys? i actually have a car and it's like 20 miles (i'm west la) so i could drive....me plus someone in between lax and granada hills ;P

what is ffa? what is..tournament? but seriously, i might wanna come, what is/where is this?

that was awesome proof that i need to watch more videos...i thought i was cool cuz i could do that once...not twice........at least there's ONE new thing to start getting good at in ex besides summoning pumpkin after j.2c -_-

I could be totally wrong on this, but in the limited amount of time I had with extend, it seemed like most of my standard bnb combos into bbl were doing like a full 1k less than before, maxing out at around 4k instead of 5k. (or on a lesser scale 3.5/3.6k instead of 4.1/4.2k)

Good job Xie with running the tournament! Good job other xie/my-key for knocking me out, and good job announcer Xie for announcing what was going through my head as I was playing on stream.

you have to adjust to the rachel...for hara specifically, i find that he expects you to respect him, so he tends to do a lot of unsafe summoning at full screen instead of using sword iris, allowing me to winded dash through the poles (on the ground) and hit him with 2a/poke/etc. if you allow rachel to do a full screen summon while you're respecting poles/pumpkin etc, then you're right, you'll end up in a block string, or worse corner pressure if you're not careful...if you do lose the initial zoning battle, chances are you're gonna have to settle for air summoning pumpkin to try to get the advantage back (and use up more wind stocks in the process). i think the main thing to keep in mind is that rachel can't mix you up with her zoning, so don't get too anxious. eventually, she has to come in to do any non-chip damage, so the only way for her to do damage is to summon something and rush you down...THAT is when you can hit her back if you're playing defense. if i feel like i'm about to be locked down, i tend to use jump 7d/9d plus lobelia/pumpkin summon to try to gain some momentum and avoid that lockdown which it sounds like is your main problem edit: make the rachel player stay honest with their sword irises too...make them have to sword iris to keep you away (i tend to approach with a jumping barrier guard to make them sword iris)...once you start over-respecting sword iris in this matchup, you're dead, because respect = summon for the other rachel. once the other rachel gets a summon over you, you're gonna have to start doing some blocking.

i play this matchup a lot with hara, the only way i've found out of this is to IB the 6b and throw my own 6b before he can throw another one (or jump out). however, the spacing of rachel's 6b has to be perfect in order to keep performing it. pretty much, unless you IB, you cannot get out of rachel's corner pressure unless the rachel makes a mistake or gets greedy. if you can IB a lobelia, you can do a dash 2a poke before rachel resets pressure also. BE PATIENT when you are cornered by rachel. wait for a hole. try to IB and escape. also, air summoning is not the best way to go...if the other rachel summons pumpkin on the ground and you jump to summon pumpkin, you are at a disadvantage, not only because you are in the air and rachel's anti-air is awesome, but also because to hit a rachel full screen with the pumpkin you have to use a wind to get the pumpkin down AND a wind to hit the rachel, while the other rachel can actually beat your advances with one 5d. if the other rachel manages to summon pumpkin before you, wait for them to rush with the pumpkin and 5d and jump over or if you're feeling lucky, mash a 2c before the pumpkin hits you....rachels never bait cat chair in this situation

ppl are scared to critique the rachel god ;P you were pretty successful, so it's hard to critique anything. i think some things you did were a bit risky, but you didn't get punished for them, so.....here's what i think 1:20.... what? no j.2c? 1:25.... awesome hit confirm; i don't even attempt that 1:49.... you have one wind stock left and you use it to do a j.a overhead that you can't combo after...it works in this situation because you got the green grab, but to me it seems a bit risky because if you hadn't gotten the grab you would have been left with zero wind at close range. i'm not sure you could have even confirmed the 3c after 5b into george after that j.a, so you were almost left with zero oki and zero wind if that grab was teched. even if you did confirm the 3c george, you're still in a worse off position than if you had thrown a lobelia and summoned pumpkin and had a wind stock. but again, what you did worked, so it's hard to say for sure 1:57... unsafe lobelia, although it worked lol, so idk. 2:45.... i think you confused rachel with platinum lol. who knew rachel had legit a-button block strings, nice 2:52.... was that fork because you thought he'd 3c? safer to try to IB a 3c and if he doesn't then you still have time to anti-air him if he doesn't 3c 3:13.... interesting combo, but it lets him out of the corner 31:03... this is your decision, but is that RC a burst bait? i don't know if i agree with using RC to bait burst unless you already see the burst. i think sometimes you have the urge to use all your wind trying to get a hit on the opponent when you can't really even combo after a hit when you finally get one. sometimes you throw unsafe lobelias, but that's hard to critique when they work lol. you let him out of the corner a couple times by extending a combo (31:35). you may have a reason, but sometimes you summon pumpkin when you have no wind (31:53). awesome combos, spacing, mixups, etc etc. hope that helps.

5B loses to noel's 4d, so i always think twice before using it. also, i'm not positive, but i'm pretty sure if they j.4d (i think that's the input, the whirly air cross-up), they'll get a FC. i have a LOT of success with winded 6c in this matchup, especially because noel in the corner trying to play defense is lolzy as ****.

bang has a number of frame traps, so yea, there's not a lot to do besides block unless you want to take big damage, although i have more success with backdashing, especially after an ib. eventually, lots of bangs like to do 5a dash command grab, which means you have to backdash or jump immediately after the 5a or you're about to take big damage for shenanigans. even the best bangs tend to autopilot, which is why they get demolished by cat chair imo general. if u play bangs who like to mash d, GRAB THE **** out of them. if they try to use 2d to anti-air, pull out pumpkin to delay your drop, then hit them with the pumpkin. cat punch goes through nails...it's is better though to wind yourself up to grab them before they can throw out nails if they are using them very liberally...or, wind yourself up over the nails. using one wind to avoid three nails hurts rachel less than it hurts bang. remember that an air grab with two wind stocks is 4k METERLESS...considering how much bangs love to jump and use nails, it's a good strategy to try to air grab them because if you let them get you locked down, like gli says, you're pretty screwed bang does not have good defensive options, so if you can get a bang on defense, you will probably win the round, as long as you don't let them start doing d's on wakeup....don't try to zone bang. having a few rods out is always good, but pumpkin will be much more useful for you to stop his attacks and go on offense.

lol, so you should only do it if you're an incredible player tempest dahlia "works" against arakune during curse, but a good arakune will slap you with the bugs long before you can use the move. unless you're incredible, i either try to wait out the storm or counter-assault after a 2a/6c if you want to use meter @Koopa. I agree wind is a good option, but you have to be careful because sometimes i like to combine an 8d with a 7/9d to escape a corner, move around, etc and i often get slapped with a negative warning (which can be dangerous). often i'll take the negative warning though because so much of the curse is gone by the time i hit the ground.

It looks to me like the a-lobelia is lower to the ground. was this already noted? sorry if i missed it. Edit: or maybe it just falls differently. Explain please? it "looks" different lol

@Kirbster, yeah I've been thinking I want to use cat punch more (it goes in streaks for me), but I always have a hard time doing it on reaction, whereas a cat chair will guaranteed come out....obviously a cat chair is more risky, but yeah, netplay....ironically I haven't seen any ragna's to test cat punch more against, but I've had lots of success against jumpy jins. @Topher (sirlunchbox). definitely should use cat chair less lol. i don't usually use it that often, but against those specific two players, they play zero defense, so i tend to spam it even more to MAKE them play some defense, even if i have to eat it big a couple times. against jins (thinking about the shadowred match), I find that they jump so often that it's hard for me to time a counter-assault reliably so I usually just try to backdash when they jump or use a d move (that isn't 2d). against ragnas, i'm having trouble with what to do in the corner between gauntlet hades, deathspike, air dash grab, and of course 5b. even after i wait out the seemingly endless amount of deathspikes, i do tend to panick with a chair...but recently i've been experimenting more with 6b instead of trying to jump out...is this safer than winded a-lobelia? what do you do besides chair in the corner (excluding counter-assault, the most reliable ragna pressure ender lol)? Edit: I played a bunch of matches against gigaitachi and thogha today and cat punch (when used appropriately) was catching em every time they did that automatic j.b/j.c, and it seriously changed their gamestyle after getting whacked couple times lololol.

Hey, so first post on DL. pretty casual player here, but i know basically only two good rachels (harakiri tiger and doopa) so i don't get too much help on how to improve other than watching vids online. here's a couple matches people have uploaded of my play (people only upload when they beat you lol). the random moves you see are ... well, decisions made by the internet (you'll see a couple interesting choices), but thanks in advance for watching and critiquing if you would please: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wllGzOJ7sT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmRuN9DjuqM maybe i'll get some more matches up myself where i'm having less trouble with lag.