Manta

If a high guard can block a projectile, then a high guardpoint can do it. All it really means is that those rare low-hitting projectile moves will hit tager through hammer.

Oh shit, it's CS1 all over again. What the hell's a momentary move?

Wait what? We've lost 5A>5B>5C? WTF am I reading?

There's a world of difference between a move with invulnerability and a move with frame 1 invulnerability. Only the latter can beat meaty attacks.

Callouts are when you counter a move with one of your own before your opponent even starts it. Means you predict them and punish them for their predictability. Tager's Backdash can be used to call out when a Ragna tries Inferno divider at close range, for example. Frametraps are deliberate holes you leave in your attacks when you're beating on their blocks, inviting them to mash 5A (or similar). When they do, they get a CH because your move still went active earlier due to your careful timing. This is opposed to when you have an airtight blockstring, where your moves are so close together your opponent never recovers from blocking to start a move until you've finished. Okizeme refers to how well you can maintain your advantage after scoring a combo on your opponent, typically through limiting what options they have as they stand up after you knock them down. This is a typical mainstay of rushdown characters. Reversals are like the aforementioned Dragon punch, some moves are invulnerable from the first frame of start up to (at least) the first active frame, meaning that they will beat out just about any move (They're an effective counter to the frametrap trick). Problem is, most reversals have horrible recovery times if they miss, so if you get called on your reversal (Like that backdash example) expect to get punished badly for it. Examples are Ragna's inferno divider (623C), Tager's Emerald Tager Buster (720C) and Litchi's Tsubamigaishi (623C). Most characters have at least one, even if it's only in the form of a distortion drive.

The problem works both ways, your thumb on a small Dpad or thumbstick just isn't as accurate as your whole hand on the stick. What you end up with is situations where you just knew you were holding 4 to block that overhead by the game says you were crouching still and similar issues where being in a specific direction or diagonal is imperative. What I also found from my lolthumbstick days was that I would overdo motions for most moves. 360s were easy as pie, (Maybe that's why I started maining Tager...) but a 623 motion became 961236 very easily. When it comes to neutral on stick it's very much a deliberate action you have to do rather than letting go, but it's so seldom necessary that it's no big deal that you can't do it one frame quicker. Most of the time when I want to force say, a 5C instead of a 6, 3 or 2C, I actually just do a 4C instead and get the desired result. (Yeah, okay, I don't play Hakumen)

Are you just autopiloting?

I asked the question on the terumi boards. The answer I got seemed pretty insistent that 6B was throw invulnerable.

So what do you do with a worst case raw AC? As in, midscreen, unmagged, no heat and no spark.

I'm more imagining my twitch backdash to beat obvious reversal windows, like after gadget finger and they have 100% heat. It does seem to be a theme that while he has a lot of distorts to choose from, they're generally a bit crap.

Heh. fair enough. Weird ass punish though. Can you do anything similar if you backdash the first hit?

Only really noticed this now, but is it just me, or does the Highlander sound an awful lot like Feel a Fear from the GG soundtrack?

Can you not just use j.B+C and get a throwcounter into a more damaging combo? I was of the opinion that j.360C was a bit of a weak choice if you have a free air hit. Or do you mean you need to suck him in with the attraction?

Mashing sledge freely feels like a bad idea anyway with that 6B available (Which feels like another Ragna 5B or 5C in terms of free pokes). Personally I feel the matchup is more a game of waiting for you to come to me and beating you with Tager's superior normal moves.

Tsubaki's 3C takes her airborne? Is that the slide part or the 3CC extension?