Ctrlaltwtf

Voltec Charge is king here. This move is the key to circumventing Arakune's fullscreen options. This is because it not only blocks nearly every fullscreen tool Arakune has but it does not generate Curse when you block Drive moves with it. Don't ever hold the button down for longer than a brief moment. The goal is to block a hit during your (still guardpointed) recovery on the move; your guardpoint won't immediately stop when you let go of the button. Once you master this the matchup becomes very different. Arakune is required to close in on you or throw out clouds. Clouds give you an opportunity for Spark Bolt or, with magnetism, AC/360C reads. Don't get complacent though because Arakune has good approach against us. An Arakune that knows the matchup will likely immediately back off and throw out clouds, which we can't negate with Voltec. The safest way to circumvent them is to back up, wait for the cloud to get lower, then jump over them. But this gives Arakune a lot of time to do whatever he wants. Sometimes you have an opportunity to Sledge through things on the ground and under the cloud, but this is a very situational thing. Atomic Colllider almost never works in this matchup due to his jB or other crazy air moves with erratic/huge hitboxes. His 2C hits a whole bunch of times now in this iteration, but it's still nothing special. Just IB the last hit and 360B him for free if he throws it out recklessly. Obviously this doesn't apply when Curse is up. He may try to use 6D and 2C in conjuction for unblockable resets with Curse. An Arakune main will have to give more info on setups for this though because I've only ever fought against it. Gadget Finger Oki Expect either 5A, backstep/forward step, or reversal super. He has little reason to jump. His backstep/forward step mix-up is really annoying here but backsteps can be punished with a held 360A, especially after 1.1 backstep nerfs. While the total duration got decreased, the invuln frames got decreased as well and that's all that matters in this situation. (26F > 24F) If you hard read a forward step you can easily 5C him out of it for great damage. Sledge does not beat his reversal super on reaction. You have to block the first hit first. After that you can easily BSledge him for a CH. Hitting Him During Curse If you ever get lucky enough to smack Arakune while he's trying to attack with Curse on, always ensure to do your combos as slowly as you possibly can. We want to waste time and get that Curse meter gone. Hyper extending with Spark Bolt/Gadget Finger is a good way to waste time. You pretty much always want to go for GF oki when Curse is on because he isn't allowed to Emergency Roll and immediately spam bugs on it. If your attack gets blocked, purple throw him ASAP. This makes you safe from the bugs that are about to hit you and, even better, when he breaks the Throw all his bugs disappear. Actually landing the purple throw is not the goal here.

Just a heads up that some of that previous write-up is no longer correct as of 1.1 Also an obnoxious fact about this matchup: Your 6A superarmor will break to his DP due to the way his DP works. Even though when he hits you with it normally it only does like ~1700 damage, when he gets guardpointed by your armor every single hit he is hitting you with is doing like 300~500 damage (reduced by 1/2 because of super armor). So this means about 5 hits in or so you're 6A superarmor will break and you'll get dinged by the last couple of hits. Backstep won't avoid it either, and it's difficult to punish afterwards without magnetism. It's a really aggravating move in this MU. If you really really want to hard read a flashkick, Voltec Charge is your only meterless option and it's still pretty difficult to time properly. Not to mention he will still hit you so he has the ability to RC ---- That aside, you can 5A him out of his jumping overhead (2DA), and 360 him out of almost everything else.

Well whatever your schedule ends up being let me know ASAP. I don't mind doing it the week after the 7th.

UPDATE: Looking more like the 7th of June now for next casuals.

4D is definitely better seeing as you can use 5C>6B on it which makes the combo really good. You can also do 5C>ASledge>3C>AC whiff on it. I still probably won't ever use it much though cuz I'd rather keep my meter. Useful for a raw magnetised AC confirm though. Off of any other magnetized confirm you can usually just do a normal combo on it.

Tager really isn't a complicated character. There's no major secret to being good with him. If you really want to become competent you just need to study other character's pressure/neutral tactics and learn how to overcome them. Throwing people all the time is exactly what you're supposed to be doing though. Your opponent has no excuse for losing to that. Throwing someone when you're able to is almost never a bad idea.

Tentative dates for next casuals are Sunday the 1st or Saturday the 7th.

This link just takes me to my own upcoming events lol

GGs netplay tonight. I don't check this thread very often at all anymore but I've been netplaying these last few nights.

I get off work at 9:45 PM EST You guys got a lucky break.

How does the 31st or 7th (Saturdays) work for you guys for next casuals? Thinking of requesting an early shift again.

Yeah unfortunately the turnout wasn't nearly as good as last year, and it was even less on Sunday so we decided to head out early.

Is it better than just AC>sjC whiff > jB > 5B stuff though?

Well here's all the folks on Twitter that you should follow: @Ctrlaltwtf (myself) @801_Jojo @HolyOrderShar @xHarukasan Next casuals is currently up in the air. But I'm sure folks will be up for it soon enough. With EVO coming up we could definitely all use the practice to stay sharp.

If you delay the 5C and do 66~5C instead you will be close enough to do 4D instead of 6D even midscreen, which gives 4257 just like the corner combo These are my current 50 meter routes: Gasaishou DM: 2592 236C>5A>5C>3C>214D~66B>5A>5C>2C>4D~A>j8D~A>Jakou>Mizuchi 5A DM: 3856 - Requires 43 Heat 5A>5C>3C>Houtenjin>J.Zaneiga>66 6C>66 5C>2C>Jakou 5A DM: 3735 - Requires 29 Heat 5A>5C>3C>214D~66B>5A>5C>2C>4D~A>j8D~A>Jakou>Mizuchi 5B DM: 5323 5B>5C>3C>Houtenjin>J.Zaneiga>6A>66 5C>6C>66 5C>2C>4D~D>jCx5>Hiren 5C DM: 5700 - Requires fastest execution, refunds 32 Heat 5C>3C>Houtenjin>J.Zaneiga>6A>66 5C>6C>66 5C>2C>4D~small delay~D>jCx2>jCx5>Hiren 5C DM: 5700 - Needs to be midscreen, more lenient on execution, refunds 33 Heat 5C>3C>Houtenjin>J.Zaneiga>66 5C>4D>214D~66 crossunder~Gashou>Jakou>66 5C>2C>Hiren I find it amusing that the two 5C combos do the exact same damage.

Nice to hear it, man. Are you Hermes then? I realized afterwards that we completely forgot to get your contact info lol

No idea if this has been posted befoer, it's not in the OP though so here goes: 5A/2A corner route meterless: DM: 3207/2704 5A/2A>5B>2B>6C>j22A delay jC>j623B>5B>2B>jB>jC>djB>jC>j2C

Always ensure you IB the 5BB too, it's really telegraphed due to the first 5B. This gives you some wiggle room with 5A/2A at times. As Mo mentioned, Azrael doesn't appreciate Barrier at all due to his lack of a dash. This might make him resort to Gustaf which is -2 if you IB it. Never fail to abuse the fact that your 5A/2A are better than his. Your 2A in particular is 3F faster than his.

They just took solid Potemkin and shot him all the way down to his own C-Tier in Xrd due to removing some of his great tools and giving him new borderline useless ones.

That's more than a little bit of an exaggeration. It's not like Busters/720s have changed at all.

New corner routes, not sure of character specificness (these may have already been found, there a revelation to me though) DM: 4156 5B>5C>6A>2C>ASledge>5C>6B>j2C>5B>jC>jD>6C>jB>jC>GP DM: 5217 5C>6A>2C>ASledge>5C>6B>j2C>5B>jC>jD>6C>sjC>jB>jC>GP DM: 7188 5C>6A>2C>ASledge>5C>6B>j2C>5B>jC>jD>6C>j2C>3C>AC>Spark>OD>MTW>TB>GF DM: 7353 FC j2C>5C>6C>BSledge>5C>6B>ASledge>5C>6B>jC>jD>6B>2C>AC>Spark>OD>MTW>TB>GF Very important to delay the jD

Only thing I like about the 5A nerf is the gimmicks I can get off of it's shitty stun proration now. For example: 5A>3C>AC whiff>2C>AC>GF whiff>360B blows up neutral and forward tech hard with almost no risk of punishment on backward tech The downside obviously being the fact that it's a gimmick and if they backward tech they will fly pretty far away (which is what makes it safe) Quick wake-up could potentially punish you too, but that's a pretty hard read on their end and you'd deserve it.

when it was 23F 1-19invuln that's a 4F gap of vulnerability. Now it's 1-20invuln 28F which is an 8F gap of vulnerability. This massively reduces the amount of things we can counter with it. Because you have to wait til your backdash is done to do anything, regardless of invuln frames. Our opponents just gained 5 more frames to recover and jump out of any potential throws, and we got a single frame of invuln as consolation. This is really significant because most of the time you backstep -> throw the throw only has a couple of frames to come out before the opponent recovers. Basically you will never backstep anything ever again, honestly, unless it's some super telegraphed neutral tool that you could easily just block with Voltec Charge instead. We were able to hard callout DPs just fine before without another frame of invuln. I have seriously been unable to backstep > throw anything since the patch came out. I just go for the usual IB>360A tech now. Knowing your opponent's strings/frame data is more important than ever.

Launch yourself in random directions with the first chain hit then try to follow-up with a second chain that puts you where you need to be. This is good practice for me to account for any situation. Try landing right next to your opponent with B cancels from fullscreen, up in the air, etc. I never really needed to practice D/C cancels as they're pretty easy to understand. When you're stuck in the air, the B cancel basically becomes your "Undo" button and let's you try again when you hit someone's block, so it's really important to understand it's movement. Another important tip: After either jumping twice or air dashing, Hazama will automatically turn around in midair if he flies past his opponent. He won't do this if you've only jumped once or just flown into the air on a chain though.

5A nerf making GF oki so bad has made me resort to GF whiff oki extremely often now. Being able to meaty with something other than 5A is a huge help now. If you do go for GF oki and have to use 5A, you pretty much always have to resort to gimmicks to do anything real (unless you have a ton of resources for a MTW>TB combo). That's not terrible seeing as we're a grappler, and 5A>360/AC will always be a threat, but it's frustrating for sure. I've found myself resorting to hard reads on GF almost all the time now.