ThatHiroGuy

Who's the highest rated Leo player right now? As in, who does the best in Tournaments? Or have there even been any significant ones lately?

Neh, I made sure to check it before posting. It only lists the move itself, and doesn't say anything about entering the stance. I figured it's been long enough for people to realize now, but I saw it wasn't mentioned here lol. I still would like to think there's something hidden within Leo, but there prolly isn't.

So you can enter BT stance from 632146HS... I wonder if there's any other secret ways to activate it...

It's pretty true though. A business can easily mistake low sales as a non-interest in the game, as opposed to people trying to send the message that they don't like their practices. This is definitely a fine line of an issue, and there's not really high chances of this practice changing for fighting games, unless there's literally a ton of anger thrown in the company's general direction.

Yeah, we might just differ on those opinions. I think it's harder to actually apply 2S as opposed to 2K. It's just got too little reach, imo. That is to say, if I use it in pressure, it's probably going to be exclusively for what you said, creating a frame trap.

If you want to truly autopilot, and you're willing to use 5K anyway, you can just do 5K>5P then repeat it again to see how they're blocking. 5K>5P and then (hold 1)2K>5S>far 5S (if possible)>6S. It's not necessarily autopilot, but if you practice it enough it is. My honest opinion is that 2S is actually garbage. 2K fulfills everything you need from a low, and 2S gets counterhit a lot more/more easily. But anyways. 5K>5P is always nice to start off pressure to see how willing they are to block, and to fool them a little bit. Then you throw out more light pressure. Something like 5K>5S>5H>6H>light normal etc etc. I've been practicing a lot of blockstrings, and really, nothing is going to be too much more effective than the other, but I'll tell you if I find anything else.

It's not that he's too honest, necessarily. It's just that there's EASY ways around a lot of things he throws at you, if you're not conditioned to block him. Mashing beats non BT parries, and most of his pressure game outside of BT. Super jumping beats his projectiles. You can grab him out of freaking 5K at ridiculous lengths. You can grab him (or mash for counterhit) out of 236H. Getting into BT and not getting punished for it is entirely based on your ability to Yomi correctly, or else you get hit hard. BT is basically the best part about him if you don't count the insane damage from 5H. High invincibility on dashes, a lot quicker to move around the screen, decent anti-air, nice mixup potential, throw invul, crossups for days if your opponent sits and blocks, etc etc. It just has SO little viability to run for a long period of time, since it's literally the highest risk that exists, and getting into the stance is harder than even having it up most of the time. He's got a lot of glaring flaws. More weaknesses than strengths. That sort of thing.

Pretty much this. It's not that Leo DOESN'T have anything to deal with the opposition, or lacks good normals. Everything he has is useful in it's own right, for it's own reasons, it's just not enough when compared to the other (much stronger) characters. Leo's 236S is good for offense, except... it's very risky to go for anything immediately after it (unless your opponent is afraid). Leo WOULD be able to take immediate advantage of the 236S situation if any of his normals were slightly better in activation times and hitbox. I said it before, and I still hold the same opinion. Leo isn't the worst character in the game by far. He's got absolutely bonkers damage for just 50 meter, and that leads into setups that could potentially leave the opponent at 40% health before the match even went anywhere. His air game could be better, but he's a ground based, fundamental character, and his normals lend themselves nicely to that definition. He CAN be aggressive, but there's overly too much risk involved in it all if you're actually trying to open your opponent up (not easy outside of BT). All that being said, this playstyle just doesn't lend itself well to Xrd's meta. A lot of the best characters have really scary ways to keep you locked down during pressure, and even add mixup in some cases (Zato). Scoring a knockdown means some characters basically win, if you're out of a burst or meter. Leo is all too predictable outside of BT since his 'trickout' tactics can all mostly be beaten by simple mashing, and knockdowns don't really gain him anything if it wasn't by a throw. High mid tier is the educated guess, for now. If some nasty tech is developed, easy A tier, since his damage and (some) tactics are pretty neat.

He gains momentum (it looks like) at the end of his dash. You can tell, since when you dash and jump cancel the end of it (right before it ends) it'll propel him farther than it would at other points of his dash. That's why I was wondering about what I said. I'm not sure how it works, but Azrael can TK his ground specials and it ends up either making them slightly faster, or makes them cover more range. Something to that effect, anyway, since I believe it just cancels part of his dash to throw the move out preemptively. For Leo, I just feel like there's an actual difference when you TK them. I could be wrong.

236H YRC is great for covering distance, will still cross up if you do it at the right time, and you can FD brake (if you fear a counter hit) or even go for a grab after the FD. As for 5H>Hold P- when I follow up with 2H , I trade. Since it's counterhit, it launches them and you'll still get a rather beefy combo off it. The other HS moves you can cancel the parry into are just a bit too slow to do anything meaningful, since most people will just mash until they counter you. Off an air grab, if you really wanted to, you could RC>D since D drops you to the ground quicker, and you can almost immediately cancel it into anything on the ground. Mid-screen you can hold back while you're doing the throw/RC, press D to hit the ground, then immediately hit 6H for his heavy projectile, and it will keep them locked down. Alternatively, RC>D>66>236H when you hit the ground. I'm thinking you might be able to TK his 236 specials during his dash to get a TON more space on them, very similar to Azrael. I noticed that when I went for TK 236H I almost crossed the opponent from 3 quarters of the screen away, and DID on some occasions. I like BT stance even if I'm out of pressure space. Projectiles generally don't matter, and his dash is goofy levels of fast. If I assess the situation properly, I can dash forward quickly, call out someones attempt to zone me, and parry it, or anti-air them. People tend to want to take advantage of it, which just works out since I expect them to be foaming at the mouth for the 'free' hits.

Uhhhh... So that video is pretty serious. Those were performed by doing what... is it 5H>P? That combo that took like 75% of Venom's life...

I was thinking of Kara-cancelling, but I'm not sure how that works in this game, or any fighter tbqh. I just know I've done it before in SF, and that I'm thinking of similar inputs (for j.D->2/3P+K) that might work. Could that be it?

No, they didn't do a FRC of any sort. I swear they were fast-falling though... I wonder what they were doing to make that happen? I really don't think I was seeing things, either. It was really close to the ground, I don't remember what it looked like he was doing, but it's like he did some air normal, and dropped from maybe mid jump, immediately to the ground within the next few frames. Maybe he was canceling momentum on something with... something else? I really don't know x_x

I saw somebody fast-falling with Leo earlier... How...?

Found this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EMslW8IXes Neat.

I won't disagree, but it was a small advantage in comparison to Leo, at best. Azrael's great normals pretty much amount up to 5A, 5B, and 6A (6A being situational). 5A and 5B were only so great due to their ability to be used at any length, for multiple applications. Leo doesn't have anything like that (that I know of), but that only makes him slightly less advantaged than I'd say Azrael had it. I don't want to make it sound like I think they're the same character or anything, I hope it doesn't come across like that, but I find it easy to compare their approach to a match. And for me, I find that most of it is similar for either character in the scenarios they're posed with. I think Leo only differs in the normals department because Azrael's were painfully simple to use, and didn't require thought in application. It'll just take a bit more work to find out which normals are good, and when to use them. Otherwise, Leo has almost all the utility and gameplans that Azrael did, sans a guardpoint.

I think he'll struggle with this cast for sure, and when you think about the likes of Millia and Zato, you immediately realize how a character like Leo couldn't be THAT high up. However... With a character like this, there's a lot to be discovered in terms of the highest damage combos, what is safe and isn't safe, what does work and what doesn't. For example, I've thought about the validity of doing... I think it's 214H in stance? Whatever that Azrael-6D-looking axe kick is- using an FRC while it's in the air about to land, and then hitting another button to get a mixup off of the opponents expectation of a high, or hitting D to counter their incoming attack. Or like I saw somebody do the other day... Do poke pressure, throw out the H projectile, YRC into the move that crosses sides and puts him in stance. If you time it correctly, it's a straight difficult to block (or counter) crossup. It's things like that, that I believe will make Leo a bit better than others expect. Meter is extremely useful in this game, and you'll pretty much always have 25 stocked throughout the course of a match, especially if you're on the offensive. Being tricky will be the key, though. It's the same issue as Azrael has, except Azrael is stupid fast. He has struggles getting in on half of the cast due to their ability to run extremely well, then when he gets in, he has to make it count with the few mixup/crossup tools he has. And even then, there's tons of ways to combat it, like OS's, blocking well, and general mashing. That doesn't stop him from being extremely good though, because of his skill set. Leo has the same thing going for him, except with the added bonus of YRC and Blitz.

Where do you go in Columbus to play? I sent you a PM before but you never replied ;-;... I live there too! Good info on Leo.

I wouldn't be surprised if his neutral was at least slightly similar to Azrael, with the addition of the ability to throw out a projectile for good measure. That is, he'll struggle at fullscreen because he's not that kind of character. The projectile helps a bit, though. He'll probably have to make good use of fundamentals, and his ability to poke semi-safely from a few character lengths away until he can make his way in either forcefully (YRC projectile), or progressively with pokes/sweeps. I think that his stance isn't going to come into play unless you get a confirm from an air hit into Sparade, or you're doing it as oki from a knockdown. Or of course, maybe you have them conditioned to block, and they're in the corner. Then it's free reign as well. It's definitely not as big a part of Leo as I thought it'd be.

Hopefully they do the same for the other ArcSys fighters, that way I'll never have to turn my PS3 on for them. I don't mind needing a PS3 for my single player games, hell I still have my PS2 hooked up for the classics, but one machine for all of my fighters/ FFXIV is gonna be nice.

The PSN store updates on Tuesdays for America, Thursday for Japan. That's why when the street date was lifted we didn't magically receive the game (digitally) or DLC. Which is why I want to hold out hope for a possible early American release for him, or something along those lines. I don't wanna have to wait a full week because they don't wanna update two days off from the release.

Any news on if America will have to wait until NEXT week or not to play him? ;.;... I wish they'd just update the store, this one time, on a Thursday in America.

I think that people are right to be a bit worried, however, should hold definite conclusions about him until he's out. From what we know, he seems like a worthy contender. The only thing I can think of that would make him bad is if his normals outside of stance are trash, or easy to contest. Or of course, if it's STUPIDLY easy to disrespect his stance pressure. If either of those are true, bad character. Even then, unless it's Kagura levels of predictable, people still seem to struggle with mixup that's ambiguous in how safe or unsafe it is. People talk about how 'easy' it is to block against Azrael, but a year and more of playing, and people still get bodied by week 2 strategies. Oh, and the shield thing. Probably going to be the saving grace of stance mode. It'll be a great way to condition people to force them to block your pressure.

Learning varies by person. To be honest, saying any form of learning is 'objectively' the best, is a bit unfair. However, in the sense of a fighting game, I think it's more common to learn through trial and error- finding what works and what doesn't. That's in every single match, regardless of how badly you get beaten, or how good you perceive your chances to be. Breaking out of 'scrub' mindsets, and habits (which include but aren't limited to mashing aimlessly, and never blocking), happen through painstakingly going through each match and learning what you did right, and wrong. Anyone who's new to a fighting game can do research on good 'tactics', but that means nothing if they're constantly playing people within their specified comfort zone. This also becomes a bigger problem in the long run, even if you do improve. Fighting players who are on your skill level, or slightly above, conditions you to play a certain kind of way. Typically speaking, you grow more accustomed to tactics that only work on someone who isn't prepared for it, or someone who doesn't care enough to try and work around it. The highest level players don't get caught up in those low level gimmicks (not often), and learning how to trick them means that you can take that knowledge, and use it effectively against anyone of almost any skill level. That was the long way of saying, "Fighting players who are monstrously above your skill level is actually more beneficial than detrimental, provided you are willing to learn instead of being salty about losing."

I might post match videos of me fighting some (average) players, so you can get an idea of how she functions during matches. At least, how I play her anyway. People dodge roll her because the Persona strings never end if you don't do that, or hit them. Because of that, ideally, you don't want to limit yourself to Persona based blockstrings. If it comes to that, as I showed in the videos, there's only a few ways around them dodge-rolling. Using neutral (in moderation) and having a good control of dashing/air-turning seems really strong.