Doonpa

You live or die by your trap game with Naoto really. It's honestly the scariest thing she has considering that you can kill the majority of the cast off a D trap at the very start of the round with an OMB and no meter (akihiko and Kanji are the only two who will survive). I wonder if the japanese know about that combo path yet, since its soooo easy.

Ehrik, if its ok with you, I'd like to commentate Zeromus vs Axis to give people some insight on the Naoto half of the match up. I promise to not be biased lol

It should be enough, but you'll probably still be vulnerable to DPs. 2[C] is +8, fastest 5A is 5f (2Bs are generally slower), so assuming they mash like a god, you'll have roughly 13 frames to work with. IADing + doing a normal should put you at around the same number of frames so it should work (could potentially trade though). You should try it out and see what happens against the character that keeps hitting you out of it since I'm not near a console.

You have to condition them to not expect it. Almost any character with a 2B that isn't garbage or a decent 5A can hit you out of it if you don't put them in significant block stun before hand. If they are reacting to the fact you are going airborne, you could also try to IAD back j.D them and hit them if they whiff a move with it. If they respect the j.D, you can 5C as soon as you hit the ground and go flying back in with something like j.C and resume your pressure. Otherwise, you'll just space yourself out of their range with the IAD back and you get to go back to playing neutral where Naoto excels.

Mixups: Anything jump cancelable on block into: IAD j.AxN: You can get up to 5 j.A usually or so and a lot of people crouch block this too early and get hit. IAD j.Ax2-3 canceled into air throw into land throw/low/AOA/Throw bait: This is a common tactic that teddie players use with their own J.A since it has so many hits to it. Just another option Naoto has if the opponent is use to blocking your mash j.A stuff. Airdash over j.C or j.A j.B: Simple cross up. Certain spacing makes it so that you can combo off j.A j.B pretty easy. IAD j.AAB land into whatever on landing: Same mixup from the j.AA whiff airthrow trick except you use j.B right before you land to get some addition blockstun so you don't get tagged by 5A/2A mashing. Corner knockdown using 236A~D on an airborne opponent lets you set a meaty C trap and mix the opponent off that. If you delay setting the trap you can throw the opponent before the trap hits them and reset the situation again. Midscreen after a sweep into 236A~D knockdown, you can run up, set a D trap, then evasive action through them for a simple crossup. A really common set up and requires your opponent to respect REALLY hard. Thats the day 1 mixup. Better to go for a meaty and get some safe pressure instead. In your general pressure you always can airdash off a jump cancelable normal and cross up them with with j.C or something. Simple staggers into AOA works well if you are tricky. Blocked traps usually give you enough time to do empty jump low/jump in mix up as well. Overall Naoto's mixup is relatively simple but aren't as scary/safe as say Chie or Narukami. Naoto hits people by outplaying them in neutral and being really really annoying by moving around a lot, forcing crossups with traps in neutral, and taking advantage of them running into/blocking any traps you set.

Naoto in the corner, 214214A~C FC starter: walk forward a pixel, 2A 2B 5C 2[C] slight delay 5B 5C IAD j.C delay j.D land 5AA 236BxN ~7.8k, 50% bar 2B 5C IAD j.C j.D EX Trap, j.B, (C trap hits), land, 236A~B(1)-D, (D Trap hits), 236BxN, ~9.5k, 75% 2B 5C IAD j.A j.C land j.B OMB D-Trap, 236A~B(1)-D, 5B 236BxN, over 8K for sure, don't remember the damage on this. 50% + OMB Midscreen: 214214A~C FC, OMB, 2A 2B 5C 2[C] 5B 5C IAD j.B j.C land 236AB, 236BxN 75% + OMB A little past midscreen or at least 3/4s to the corner: 214214A~C FC, OMB (2A) 2B 5C 2[C] 5B 5C IAD j.C delay j.D land 5AA 236BxN. You can omit the 2A if you'd like. Its just meant to keep the height somewhat consistent and doesn't really hurt the damage much. 50%+ OMB Basically, just the same combos that i've posted before, just with the Houtenjin starter. Great confirms for when you kick someone for trying to safe jump you since its so fast that unless they do a almost frame perfect safe jump, the kick will be fast enough to hit them out of their normal.

Last safe jump: Throw, Followup, short dash, IAD j.C. You'll hit the opponent with the tip of j.C so you'll be at a range where you'll probably have to go into 5B once you land and pressure from there. This safejumps everything except Yosuke's DP. You'll still activate Teddie's DP, but you won't get hit by it, and vs Kanji your persona takes the hit if you time it incorrectly but you'll be fine. If you do it right your j.C should whiff him if he DPs so you can punish him right away. So basically, Naoto can maintain her pressure off any knockdown pretty safely at this point, which makes her a borderline setplay character, or at least closer to Chie's style of setplay which isn't as extreme as Narukami's and is more based on making your opponent block. If your opponent tries to be slick by delaying their tech or not teching at all, then that means you should start going for trap oki which is probably the best thing you can get midscreen. Late teching makes setting up traps safe if you've conditioned them enough. Only character i'd want to safe jump j.C more than do trap oki midscreen on would be Narukami because of the fear-less fuzzy guard which is way harder to deal with imo. I'm also going to be doing an analysis of my ft10 vs VR-Raiden where I'll point out somethings about the match that people should be aware of and its effectiveness. If I can figure out a way to record and put my voice over the video ill do that (dont have stream equipment unfortunately), otherwise you'll be dealing with a giant wall of text lol. EDIT: Might as well spill the secret of how to throw off of C trap oki in the corner since there was a little debate on it on yesterdays stream. This is straight up Denpa tech that I saw him and worked out how he does it. If you delay setting the C trap slightly, you can throw the opponent before it hits. The delay makes it work because the C trap becomes visible immediately due to how close the opponent is to you despite being knocked down. By delaying it slightly, the trap will become active like 1-2 frames later which gives you just enough of a gap to get a throw in. This makes the corner oki a legit 3 way mixup with 2/3 parts of the mixup being entirely DP safe. Your opponent can DP you before you get the throw out, but the timing has to be perfect on the their part and theres a good chance you'll still block if you hold 4 and hit throw because this game is funny.

Oh crap, this is now? lol Ill get on.

So, in an attempt to not lose a chance to press some form of advantage midscreen, i've come up with these things. Since P4A is so setplay orientated, i've decided to put more focus into that area of Naoto's play. She's no Chie or Narukami, but it can't hurt to try to be them. We can't all be like +88 after sweep unfortunately x_____X Any ground chain, Sweep, 236A(both hits)~D IAD jump normal= safe jump except against Teddie, Yosuke, and potentially Kanji. Same setup as above except the ground chain preferably should not be started point blank into Sweep 236A~D into a meaty 2[C]. If spaced, this is a safe meaty against the majority of the cast. Will lose to most fast supers and stuff like Mitsuru DP, Myriad Arrows, Yosuke DP, etc. These setups also work off of raw sweep as well, but most of the time you'll be going into 236A off of it anyway so w/e. The reason why the meaty 2[C] isnt completely invalidated by the safe jump is simply because the opponent can't delay their tech to avoid blocking it. Completely off topic from the rest of my post, but I really can't stress enough how important it is to play neutral PERFECTLY. It's soooo hard to do, but so goddamn important it hurts. I feel like no matter how much tech I try making for this character, there's always going to be this giant hurdle of trying to be a god at neutral like Denpa with Naoto. No amount of cute mixups or retarded SMPs can really make up for being perfect at one's spacing and movement x______x

And wait, you can combo j.A into j.C off the short hop? I thought you'd be too low to the ground for j.C to come out in time. Did you mean j.B after j.A or am I missing out on something amazing?

j.A is usually easier to use because of its downward hit box so you can get the combo to connect even if they are pretty low. j.B's hitbox makes it so that you have to have the opponent above Naoto's head to make it work as opposed to j.A where you can have the opponent at the same height as Naoto's standing animation. Corner: short hop j.A j.B j.D land 5AA 5C 236B~D 236A~D. Almost 2k if I remember correctly. Timing to get the 5A link is weird, I dont really know how to describe it. A lot of the times I get it, but sometimes it just drops on me. Probably has a lot do with how low your j.D hits. If you can hit this, its a nice combo to get some decent damage off of corner oki. If its too hard or you just aren't getting it consistently mid match then consider switching to j.A j.B 236A or j.A j.B j.D 236A, whichever you may find easier. Adding the j.D makes it real easy to confirm whether you hit your opponent or not, the problem with it is that it wont combo on standing though.

Great stuff Psykotik, I've been messing around with Aigis and I was wonder about a couple things about her Double Mode change combos? Like, are the ones found so far universal? i've been having a lot of trouble doing them against characters like Labrys and Chie for whatever reason so I was wondering about what kind of adjustments one would need to make it work or if its just me being bad lol.

Denpa lost to Souji at ArcRevo right now. Watching him fight Souji and not be able to do anything to him in neutral brought back bad memories of me vs Souji at NEC ;____________; His neutral was GODLIKE vs Domi and his hitconfirms were really on point. Its so sad to see so much hard work get shut down so easily.

Anti-Agneyastra combo: 5AA 5C DP. Da bess. Does anyone have anything better. And of course, you need to be like point blank next to Chie to hit this so this what you do if they do it on wake up or something. Sucks but oh well. Takes 3 off the fate counter so hooray for that.

Delaying 2A 5B 236A is only necessary for Chie and Mitsuru. For them, you should do 5AA 236A if you are ok with settling with 8.3k off trap without spending any meter. Otherwise, spending the 25% and just doing 5B/Sweep 236A and then tacking on the 236AB later is infinitely more rewarding because it guarantees the kill at full health if you need it. IMPORTANT EDIT: Side switch versions of the combos I posted earlier: 5B 2B Sweep 236A~B(1) OMB dash under 2A 5C j.A/B j.C land 5C 236BxN ~7.9k 5B Sweep 236A~B(1) OMB dash under 2A 5C j.A/B j.C land (5C) 236AB, 236BxN 8.4k You can use 2B instead of 2A here if you'd like but its hard. C CH/D Trap, 5AA 236A~B(1) OMB dash under 2A 5C j.A/B j.C land 5C 236BxN 8.1k, 8.2k if you use 5B instead of 2A. C CH/D Trap, 5B 236A~B(1) OMB dash under 2A 5C j.A/B j.C land (5C) 236AB, 236BxN Same damage as before.

@Rath, thanks for noticing the work active Naoto players put in on this forum. Theres not many of us still around but the ones who are always post good stuff. So about the D-Trap 2A 5B SMPs, there some character specific garbage I should clear up. Those who have practiced this combo may have noticed that 2A 5B is really inconsistent vs Chie and Mitsuru. You basically have 3 alternatives to dealing with them which are: 1. Do 5AA instead of 2A 5B after the trap. The combo's damage becomes ~8.3k on the last 236B, and of course a little higher with C-shots. Ending it with 236A knockdown requires you to omit the last 236B because proration is really high at that point so you'll have to end it one rep short. 2. Raw 5B. Make sure you do this at the lowest high possible otherwise you still risk dropping this. Doing 5B raw requires you to use EX Fangs to get the 10 hits for SMP, so keep that in mind. 3. Learn the silly timing. Technically, if you hit the opponent at the lowest possible height with 2A, delay a little, do 5B, delay a slight bit more, 236A will connect. It's extremely retarded and hard to do consistently vs Chie and Mitsuru but if you want the damage without spending an extra 25% you'll have to go for it. Another thing to note is that against everyone except Kanji and of course Mitsuru+Chie, 2A 2B also works. So you can do that if you feel more comfortable doing the follow up to dash 2A crouching. @Random Naoto, those combos are cool. I tried tweaking them a little to suit my execution better, so they go something like this: AOA-D, 5B 2B 5C IAD j.C EX Trap 236A 236Bx4-5? 236A~D, 4.3k. D Trap, 5C IAD j.A/B j.C land 5C 214A~Cx5 Mudoon C trap 5D wait, 236A(1) 236236A, wait, 5D hits towards the end of the super, EX Fangs, 236BxN. <-- 125% meter unfortunately, so not as good as the combo you posted. Its also still tricky to get the timing of 5D to hit exactly when the super ends and then getting the EX Fangs to hit so that they don't go flying the other way is annoying as hell. It might be possible to get 236B over 236AB after the 5D but I can't do it. Only thing this combo has over yours is that the height needed to get the rest of the combo after Mudoon is more lenient but less efficient in the end.

If you guys vote for me, I promise to show you guys stuff you haven't seen a Naoto do. Like, end a match at the start of the round. You know, fair things a character should obviously be able to do.

Ok now this is really stupid and I'm sorry for posting these. 5B 2B Sweep 236A~B(1) OMB 2[C] 5C IAD j.A/j.C land 5C 236BxN ~8.1K, 8.3k if you end it with A Fangs 5B Sweep 236A~B(1) OMB 2[C] 5C IAD j.A/j.B j.C land (5C) EX Fangs ~8.9K, can get this up to like 9.3k if you add C shots to the last rep of 236B to kill Aigis and Teddie, otherwise 8.8k if ended with 236A. D-Trap or C-Trap CH, dash 2A 5B slight delay 236A~B(1) OMB 2[C] 5C j.A/j.B j.C land 5C 236BxN ~9.1k, adding shots gives you 9.4k if you use j.A, otherwise 9.5k is the magic number with j.B to kill the characters that matter like Mitsuru, Chie, and Narukami. C CH/D trap, dash 5B/2B 236A~B(1) OMB 2[C] 5C j.A/j.B j.C land (5C) EX Fangs 236BxN ~10.2k, shoot them at the end and no one survives. Any combo where 5C is listed as (5C) means its totally optional and I highly recommend omitting it because j.C into land EX Fangs is so free its not worth keeping in there. What this means is that from the start of the round you can end the round. These all have retarded amounts of corner carrier. Even if you don't fully carry them to the corner off the first 236B, you can dash 5C and STILL get 236B to get connect afterwards although the damage won't be as high. I don't think there is anything else I can do for this character at this point and I hope you guys enjoy these because i've already hit people with this stuff and it feels so good. EVERY NAOTO SHOULD LEARN THESE And @AyyKayAyy, the first post has exactly what you need in this thread. It even lists the key SMPs you should learn to start off.

Nice job Zeromus, those look really good. Stuff like that can really save your butt if the situation comes up. Another little post i'd like to make is that I think i found the optimal punish for anything obviously punishable for simply 25% meter and being a little more than 3/4s screen, this also works anywhere closer to the corner than that of course. Simply put, learn this learn this learn this learn this learn this plox. EX Fangs FC, dash 2A 2B 5C 2[C] delay 5B 5C IAD j.C delay j.D land 5AA 236BxN, 8k. I'm not going to lie, this combo is dumb. So dumb. It's not hard to do once you understand the slight delays to this combo so everything connects smoothly but once you do, you can inflict massive amounts of pain. If the opponent does not realize what they were hit by, odds are they will die from this. So if you are in proximity and they decided to do something unsafe like DP, punish with this. The other great thing is that compared to B Fangs, EX Fangs is faster therefore more reliable to punish DPs before they recover so enjoy. If someone found this before me, major kudos to you but I think this needs to get some more light on it because its soooooooooo good.

Ok, so I found something kinda interesting. So apparently, if you do 236B FC, and slightly delay a super canceled 236236A off the first hit, you get to combo off the silence shots without any resources after the initial super for a full unburstable fatal combo. So something like 236B FC(1) slight slight delayed 236236A, dash 5B 5C land 5C 2[C] 2B 5C j.C j.D 236A works for example. If you want to get the proper height guarenteed without worry about the opponent bursting the fatal immediately, you can do 236B FC, wait, 2A 236236A at the lowest possible height to achieve the same effect. Its also totally possible to SMP off this too, i'll leave it up to whoever in here is even interested in this character to explore this combo path and see what they can come up with. I think that this might lead to a way to get a Mudoon+Silence SMP without having to OMB out of the Silence super.

lol GGS to Bananaken, LK, Digiops, and Roku. First run through netplay after college and I wound up fighting some scary dudes.

I play Naoto and Mitsuru, and im in NJ. Anytime next week would work with me since im out of college by then. Ideally, anyone on the EC should work for me, I know my connection with the Midwest/West Coast will probably not be great and I don't usually netplay so it'll be sloppy if I don't get a stable connection.

There are still a lot of people who play this game, ignore the stream monsters saying RIPRIPRIP. As for people playing Naoto, there are probably less than 10 active Naoto players on here, but everyone here who is active is pretty knowledgeable. There is a lot of resources on this forum to help you learn how to play Naoto. Combo thread has practically everything you'll need in terms of her hit confirms and there is a link to a Naoto guide on the first page of this thread as well as info on the dustloop wiki. If you have questions, there are plenty of us that can answer them. Or, are you looking for someone to sit down with you and teach you stuff visually or something?

I'd like to participate in this too. I don't care who I play as long as we have a decent connection between us. Just don't pair me up with Achtzehn cuz he hates fighting me :P Also, this will have to wait for after finals since school sucks on my part.

Found another fuzzy guard/mix up I guess. I don't know if I can call it a fuzzy since it does really work like the j.C one, so its up to you guys to define it. So basically, Throw, Follow up, wait until the opponent is somewhat low, 2AB, 5D. Now here you want to wait a split second to bait out DPs, mashing, etc. then jump and mash j.aab or any variation of an airstring that almost makes you land, then dj.A and hit 5D again. The 5D keeps you safe if they do block it, and if it hits you can combo off of it. This is particular good if you have meter for Mudoon or if you got the 5C 236B followup from 5DD down. Obviously this setup is not guarenteed as the opponent can escape from after you do the first 5D, but if im not mistaken if they try to upback this setup you can do 5A to hit them out of the vulnerable frames of their jump start up. Mashing, rolling, and Dp have their respective answers of course. Depending on what they mash, you should be able to either hit them first generally. If they roll, you should be able to react and punish with throw or chase the roll. If they DP, block and 236B. I haven't overly tested this setup too much since I don't practice this game anymore, so do what you will with this info. It might not be very good since its not meaty nor entirely safe. Probably can be improved as well so do what you will.