AMB Bakery

I re-tested it on Jin's ice wave super and it got blocked. Before it would break the guard point. Been testing it on the portion of the cast to the right of Azrael (Jin, Platinum, Valkenhayn, Bang, Nu, Kokonoe, etc) as well as Ragna and Hakumen, and I've yet to have one of their supers break the guard point. Not sure if this has to do with the patch that came out a few days ago, but maybe it auto-guards everything (besides throws and unblockables) now instead of just 'everything with the exception of distortion drives.'

SA Jin and the Bakery have arrived in room 404. I probably won't bring out any sweets tonight unless people want me to deliver a small serving to their room if they're hosting casuals before heading to copa.

SOON

Does 40-48 oatmeal-chocolate-walnut cookies and 48 caramel-filled brownies (one 13x9 inch pan, but the brownies are hella meaty) sound like enough? I'm looking forward to meeting all of you that I haven't already met otherwise. I'm also looking forward to meeting up with the people I met last time~ Will be good times all around.

He's been doing IAD j.D > 2D at the end of valiant combos since after arc revo iirc. I'm not sure how useful it will be depending on who you play, though. My opponents have emergency tech'd after valiant combos 100% of the time, but it's nice if that supposedly sets up meaty. I found you can get j.D > 2D to work on both forward and neutral jump.

5C FC double weakpoint dickery: 1. 5C 3D > 5C xx TC~236D [6 > 5C] x 4 > 6 > 623C > 3C > 6A > 2C > 5B xx BHS (7106, preceding combo builds 42 meter) 2. 5C xx 236D [6 > 5C] x 4 > 6 > 623C > 3C > 6A > 3D > 2C > 5C xx TCL > BHS (7029, preceding combo builds 41 meter) Alternatively, you can end the combos prematurely with SCP if you have enough meter. Combo 1 SCP version ends at 6A having built 40 meter (5961). Combo 2 SCP ends at 2C having built 37 meter (5559). SCP option seems a little overkill, but it makes you pretty dangerous for like 12 seconds~ Plus the stagger wake-up is nice, and if you have enough meter you can do 5C > BHS unblockable. EDIT: minor discovery about the 5C x 4 > 623C route... it won't work if the first hit of valiant hits a grounded opponent wallsticks (i.e. whatever xx 236A RC 236D in the corner will stop the 5C x 4 > 623C sequence from working). The reason I say this is minor because you can easily alternatively do 3C > 6A > 623C or just do the corner-specific sequence in place of that combo, not to mention this is only the case for grounded opponents, so stuff like OD combos, 2C > 2B TC236D, and TCL rapid 236D will still work because they all launch the opponent before valiant hits. Basically the only place where this is a problem is if your valiant combo started with 236A RC or 5C FC.

Both 1st and 2nd hit of rekkas cancel into hornet or valiant, so it's not completely out of the question as mix-up, but it's definitely a no-more-than-once-per-ten-matches type of gimmick. Doing TCL if you have no weakpoints isn't so bad, especially if you're carrying them to the corner where they have less options. Some things in neutral that you should avoid: 236A, especially after forward dash after you or your opponent have bursted. In the Jin matches this was pretty much every time whenever you were fullscreen. 236A can work as a functional long-range whiff punish because it is pretty fast, but if your opponent catches on, they'll just see you rushing towards them and hit you in the face for it. Jin can do a lot of stuff to you for free, 2D, 5C, hizansen, etc. Valk can just wolfdash sky high and not give a hoot. Airdashing at mid-range. This just leaves you insanely vulnerable and asking to be anti-aired by literally anything. It's okay to do it fullscreen just to get into the mid-range, but using it to close the distance from mid-range to in their face will result in disaster versus anyone worth their salt. Though airdash j.2C is a gimmick that may be occasionally worth it just because of how funky the movement is and how much priority j.2C has. Being backdash happy. It's a cool move, it's invincible, it can make a lot of stuff whiff. It's too bad it's 26 frames and leaves you with very little time to capitalize on them if they whiff anything and leaves you even more open to getting run up on than you were before if they didn't whiff something. Backdash > forward dash > backdash is just you accomplishing a whole lot of nothing and won't phase your opponent in the slightest.

As long as the shitposting/spamming is kept to a minimum and doesn't pile on and start cluttering the thread, it's fine. If it gets really out of hand, I'll bring down the hammer cos that's my job, but otherwise I'll just leave friendly reminders. For example: A friendly reminder that there are matchup subforums for each characters. I'll give you a brief answer/opinion, but in the future please take matchup discussion to their respective matchup threads. Though, if you want to talk about specific gameplay aspects of Hazama that may include techniques geared towards dealing with certain matchups, I suppose that's fine to post here as long as the focus is on gameplay/strategy/mechanics first as opposed to evaluation focused on fighting one character. Dealing with reversals is more of a player skill issue than anything. You're just going to have to work your pressure game around educated guesses of when they'll do a reversal. Backwards Jakatsu is a pretty nice addition to Hazama's toolset to aid in dealing with reversals during both pressure and wake-up. As for the neutral game vs. Jin, Hazama wins pretty convincingly. Jin's normals are great versus characters that only have traditional movement options or characters that lack zoning tools, but Hazama has both of those. At max range, Jin has nothing to threaten you with, and Hazama has chains that cover many angles and movement follow-ups to those chains that allow him to cover even more space. A good ~B follow-up should bait/avoid his anti-airs cleanly. He does beat you at mid-range pretty easily, so you should do whatever you can to either get close enough to AA or begin an offensive or move out of his effective range in whatever way you can. Hazama also takes the cake on reversals. You get 4k or more off reversal super, and if he gets cocky with some kind of gap in his pressure like 6B or doing 2D after barrier push-out, you can easily react and punish because of how fast 236236B is.

No reason to post when people are actually playing games and not getting fired for being incompetent. Happy Thanksgiving.

I actually had the displeasure of playing Kabuki Warriors on the original Xbox. I had only rented it though, so it's not as big a remorse as people who actually bought the game.

Jumping is something you shouldn't do unless you're trying to avoid fireball or if you know your opponent likes to whiff c normals in neutral, and when you are in the air, j.B is your best air-to-air by far. Likewise, 236A is something you should avoid in neutral versus all characters unless you know you've got your opponent scared/you think you can abuse him. If you're getting hit by her j.B during pressure, you need to seriously rework your pressure then to deal with that. 5B and 2A and j.B are your friends. Speaking from personal experience, her 5C and j.C are the things I have the most trouble with, simply because they have silly long range for normals and are projectiles, so I can't 6A/5C/3C where I normally could. That and of course her zoning capability and ability to force me out on a whim with 236D is particularly frustrating, but that just means I have to play more patient. My final advice to you is something that applies to all matchups in terms of getting pressured, but relies on psychology: if you backdash or growler like no tomorrow and eventually your opponent will be looking for it. Once you've created that gap, you can 5A out, and that's one of your best pressure starters. Something so simple can result in a massive change in momentum. I hope some of this helped and I'm not just rattling off garbage.

Lol Azrael's 5A and 5B are better for anti-airing imo, and are far more braindead. Same goes for Azrael j.B with air-to-air. My friend who plays Kagura said this regarding the Hakumen match-up, but I think it can be applied somewhat to playing vs. Kagura in general: "When you see me not crouching, that is your cue to air dash on me." I respect this cos flash kick is one of the best anti-airs in the game, and is also a relatively safe reversal. Why would Kagura stand during my blockstrings ever? To block overheads? He could just flash kick me and get oki. Granted, he won't flash kick on reaction to overhead every time, but there's only so many things Azrael can reliably gatling into overheads off of (2A/5A and 5B/5BB being the main ones, 2B > 5D if you want to kill yourself I guess), so I imagine a good player will catch onto this and punish accordingly. I'm not too worried about neutral. 6A will beat or go through most of whatever he can do, and the hitbox is good enough to beat stuff like 2D~B/2D~A. 5C is good enough at certain distances to stuff stance rushes entirely, though Kagura gets forced back a little too far for the 5C > 6C fatal counter combo to work. If I really want to troll, there's distances where I can hornet bunker on reaction, and the damage from CH'ing that is at least 4k. This doesn't come without hitches, though. There will be lots of instances where stuff will just trade. This matchup is kinda hell for both Azrael and Kagura: Azrael can't do some of his better mix-ups as freely as usual, Kagura's sonic boom oki/neutral gets ignored by Growler, etc.

Yeah, I was going to mention 2A as well, since it beats/trades/goes under their A mash depending on what point in the flash kick you clash with. I'm almost starting to like the hornet option a little more even if it is far more ballsy/troll, just cos I don't have to deal with the uncertainty of clash.

Found a couple of silly things as far as beating flash kick goes, one is definitely more practical though. This particular option is definitely a harder 'read' than the other, and is only really applicable during pressure: do some normal that is special cancellable into hornet bunker, then special cancel into hornet bunker and hold as long as you need, though once the first hit of the flash kick is auto-guarded, you can release D, you'll go under the rest of it for free and get a counter hit. This is better to do if you don't have a lower weak point in my opinion, just cos it's easier to confirm. Off counter-hit hornet bunker launch (w/o weakpoint), you can follow up with 2C 3D into stuff or go straight into rekkas if you want to. If you do have the lower weakpoint applied, you have to wait until they land until you release D, otherwise they'll float too high for you to combo off the chase. The other option works in both pressure and as a meaty option and it involves 6A. You can either cancel into 6A from something like 5B or 2A or you can do it after blocked 236A during pressure, or you can do it after D knockdowns. So usually if you clash the DP with 6A, most of your other options, including doing nothing, lose to the rest of the flash kick. However, you can special-cancel the clash into DUMP and the auto-guard will guard the rest of the flash kick for you, and the move is slow enough to where you'll land at around the same time they do and score a CH. The follow-ups to this are actually better so long as you have a weakpoint, which you usually will. Off 22C dump, you can usually only follow up with 5B or 2B, but off raw dump, especially CH, you can go into 5C, and from there into rekkas/TC>valiant. Plus DUMP is a 100p1 starter, so no matter what you do, it's going to hurt. EDIT: a couple of small caveats to this: One is that sometimes depending on how they time the flash kick, the 6A itself will be the thing that counter-hits, in which case you can probably special-cancel dash into rekkas or something. Two is that sometimes the dump will cross-up, which won't really change the combo/follow-up too much depending on what weakpoint you have applied, just be wary of this. EDIT 2: the second option is definitely beatable if the Kagura knows to mash A after the clash. But then again, even if you auto-pilot 6A into dump, it's still very little risk, especially compared to the huge reward you get for successfully landing the DUMP counter hit.

Valiant Charger and Hornet Bunker have super armor guard point from frame 10 up until sometime after you've released the charge, just a little bit before active. This means that those moves can absorb any attacks that aren't throws, unblockables, or distortion drives, though funnily enough it will absorb crush triggers and astral heats. It also completely ignores chip damage from specials and things like Amane's drive.

Now that it's been moved to the match-up thread, I can say what I want to say, though I haven't had any personal experience with the match-up myself. "Punishing gatling moves" First of all the general rule vs. most characters is that you should IB their C or mix-up A/B moves (like overhead 6A/6B type things) if you're going to try and mash out of blockstrings. However, Taokaka's gatlings are ridiculously free and almost all of them are special-cancellable into mix-up or drive-cancellable into mix-up. It's like if Faust had Moroha/Gold A.B.A. gatlings and could fly around like May. She's a seriously strong character on offense, and don't forget that. To avoid that, you're going to have to zone or play neutral better, which is also kind of hard too because Taokaka has really good movement/approach options. Though I can at least say when she's moving fast, she's probably in the air. She has good things to space with on the ground, but they pale in comparison to the options she has in the air. Ultimately, it depends on how your opponent decides to move with her, which means you're going to have to play a smart, patient, some would even say funky neutral against her. 5B/2C are definitely your friends as far as just normals go. You can be kind of aggressive if she decides to jump, j.B is pretty fast and has good air-to-air capability, at least on the first part of the active frames, plus if you CH you can get a knockdown and she doesn't have a reversal without meter. If you really want to get out of strings, Growler can work so long as they don't expect it. The knockback is pretty fast, so if they don't react/predict fast enough, you can at least reset back to neutral if you don't feel like blocking Taokaka mix-up/pressure. If they do shitty strings or if you IB some special that isn't drive-cancellable/isn't a projectile, 5A should as you're go-to normal for getting out of pressure. For what qualifies as a bad string, you're probably just going to have to ask some Tao player or just find out yourself. It's your job to find out this stuff. 6A is something I would reserve for other matchups in which characters don't have stupid air mobility + normals or stupid good zoning, i.e., people who aren't Tao, Valk, Hazama, Litchi, Carl, Mu, etc. As for Azrael's pokes... well okay, my opinion on Azrael in general is that he is very noob-friendly at first cos he does a lot of damage and has good high-low and left-right for almost no effort, but once you actually start playing against anybody worth their salt, and this goes for all characters, you're just going to have to learn spacing. This applies to Azrael especially because he's a very street fighter character. He has solid normals and specials that are good for keeping people out of the air and dealing with projectiles, but his movement isn't spectacular or crazy like a normal anime character's movement is (aside from his jump/special-cancellable forward dash and super-fast air dashes). I'm kinda rambling but this is probably good advice, tl;dr quit mashing during blockstrings until you KNOW something is unsafe and gear your normals towards punishing Taokaka's positioning or at the very least play it safe until she gets close enough/positions badly enough for you to be a threat with little effort.

Time to be amazed, I guess. Also, remember bonus proration is only applied once per move. If doing 6A otg 5C takes significantly more time than just hitting people with chains a bunch (and remember, OD chains/chains in general do a lot of damage), I'd doubt looping it would be optimal.

Regarding the footnote for Gustaf on the wiki: it makes a lot more sense having actually played the game and felt what it's like in action. From what I see, 236A has 2 parts to its startup: the rush and the actual attack. At point-blank range, the startup to the rush is minimal so the punch can come out much sooner. You can see this for yourself if you just do 236A at different distances, and to really see what I mean, just pause the game on certain frames and look at his sprites during the 'rush' and the 'punch' parts.

Oh wow, this is great. So apparently if Kokonoe tries to teleport out of meaty 5B, 5BB auto-corrects directions and it also counter-hits (ground bounce, woop woop). EDIT: this just keeps getting better. Likewise, if you decide to do forward-dash cross-up mix-up (after j.D/j.2D, 6D/3D, grounded rekka knockdowns), you can also meaty 5B/B for the counter-hit. EDIT 2: you can also delay slightly to get another 5B instead of 5BB if you want 5B>3C route.

Hey guys, just checking in here to let you know that I'm not dead and in fact am working on a big re-work/re-structure of the combo thread OP that makes more sense in terms of starters, screen-positioning, combo parts/enders, meter usage (lol), etc. I'm glad to see some of you have been exploring your own routes and answering others' questions. Makes my job a whole lot easier. A bit selfish of me to ask but, could someone find the options you get after close-to-the-corner jabaki (around the distance you'd have to hit with a chain if you wanted to continue the combo)? The "near corner" part of the combo thread is pretty much only there for that reason, pretty much everything else isn't "near-corner" specific, it's either midscreen/everywhere or only possible in the corner. In addition to that could someone notate meterless cross-under routes in the corner? I'd assume that those are the super-optimal max damage corner combos since they feature jakou (presumably). I'd do this myself, but I'm too busy watching Non Non Biyori really bad at combos However, once this gets done, you guys are going to have a nice and shiny new combo thread OP.

Some of these aren't exactly the purely optimal confirms, but it's basically what you need to know to function. When in doubt, just expend a weakpoint, aerial combo, or do rekkas.

Gustaf isn't always bad in neutral, actually. You can punish whiffed 2D with it, and you can also hit him out of the air if he's low enough. Forward dash also has a few ranges where it's good to use, mainly at the outer tip of 2D spacing, also goes under air-dashy mashy stuff. 6C and air dashing are probably the worst things you can do. 6C especially, though if you really want to mess with them, 6B 6C gatlings on whiff (as do 6D and 3D). Air dashing should only ever be done once you're in on them, though you can still maybe use it to make the Jin take the offensive/react defensively. Some notes on Rath's notes: -I've been doing forward dash once 2C after midscreen grounded TCL. It catches rolls and jump-outs, recovers in time to not get hit by wake-up anything, though it doesn't leave you much time to meaty or follow-up on whiff. Forward dash twice is also good cos you cross-up after the second dash. -You shouldn't never mash after blocking 2D. It really depends on how and where you blocked it. If you blocked it at the end closest to Jin and you were crouching, okay, don't mash. IB'd it standing from around the middle? That's your mash out of ice-jail free card. It also depends on how he follows it up. His 5B may be 7f startup, but you can 2A under it at certain distances, I've caught my friend trying to run in me like this on multiple occasions. He can also jump after making you block 2D, in which case you can blow him up for jumping close to you so long as you watch him. -Regarding Phalanx, if you only have one projectile, yes, don't just immediately discard it. Phalanx checks pretty much everything Jin can do on the ground without spending meter, which means he'll want to approach from the air, or if he's smart, make small approaches from the ground to try and get you to discard Phalanx. If you can use it right, Phalanx buffs Azrael's neutral game significantly.

I find myself gaining stock most the time after a fullscreen ice sword, predicted 2D in neutral, or absorbing 6D during a blockstring. If he fires off D ice sword or super I just get full stock. That said I can answer some of the above post's questions easily after having played the matchup extensively. 1. No, anytime Jin tries to go for j.D mix-up, just anti-air or block instead, burst/counter-assault if you think you're going to eat the mix-up (provided that the success of the mix-up would result in the end of the round/match). 2. You can do this, but only if he does it predictably. Even then, ending a string with 236A is not that advantageous for Jin. If he tries to go in after ending with 236A, you can definitely punish. If he plays lame after ending with 236A, then the growler would be worth it. 3. I haven't had Jin use 2D as oki on me but I wouldn't recommend this just because I've missed absorbing 2D on several occasions. 4. He shouldn't be using 236D as oki anymore because of how fast it travels (unless it's after some fullscreen hizansen knockdown, I guess), but if you think you can absorb it, do it, cos it gives you 3 stocks. 5/6. I haven't done this but you probably shouldn't do it. The actual thing that counters Yukikaze is 6A as the body invuln lets you go through the slash. Then again, optimally you should want to let it whiff and then punish him anyway (free counter hit). 7/8. You can absorb Touga on reaction or close to it, but I don't think the Phalanx afterwards will actually hit him (might make him block though, or at least force him into the air).

What is the best answer for when Jin is just kind of zoning/safely approaching with j.C? I know there's realistically no anti-air option for that situation, so I was wondering what would be the safest approach to get in range to combat him as he comes down. 6C, Gustaf, and Forward dash all seem to be bad options. I've caught it with Cobra/Leopard a couple of times though, hilariously.

You can still FDC j.2K in Xrd, right?