Suiname

I don't think f.S is punishable on block, but I'll ask Zinac when I see him, though he might not know either. Generally I find myself trying to only use f.S in the range where I'm hitting with the tip anyways, otherwise I prefer 2H since it's low and tends to get counterhits. Counterhit 2H -> scalpel does a lot of damage and is super easy (though very burstable of course).

So the going my way won't connect based on distance, it's not usually character specific. If you are midscreen, going my way will almost always connect, but if you are in or closer to the corner, it usually will whiff. Furthermore, your distance from the opponent when you hit them with pogo also matters, so for instance if you counter hit someone with 2S it staggers them backwards, so if you continue the combo into 2H -> pogo, when you hit them with pogo they're so far away that when they wall bounce they don't come back far enough to get hit by going my way (unless they are close to the corner of course). Same thing is true if you hit near the tip of 2H sometimes, so if you counterhit with the tip 2H it's usually better to cancel into scalpel than pogo, if it's not counterhit then you can go into pogo -> item toss so you don't whiff.

j2k is a really good move if you think the opponent is going to do a crouching normal or any normal whose hitbox you will beat. Sometimes the delay of hanging in the air and changing you air trajectory will get whatever the opponent was doing to whiff and get counterhit or because there isn't a hurtbox at the very tip of the scalpel, beat whatever they stuck out. Getting counterhit from the j.2k guarantees you will get a pretty easy confirm and damaging combo when you land. The problem with j.2k is that it is slow and easy to avoid or blitzshield if the opponent knows you are going to do it. The good thing about j.2k is that even if you misread the situation and the opponent did nothing, it causes a lot of hitstun/blockstun and you can late cancel into going my way low to the ground for safety. In summary, I've seen a lot of good players use j.2k as a footsie tool, but you want to do it as low to the ground as possible so you don't get hurt for doing it. Also good to note, you can use it as a mixup tool also. If you do it low enough to the ground, it can completely whiff on the opponent so you can command grab immediately when you land. A lot of people like to jump cancel 2k on block, do a j.2k that whiffs and then command grab (Nage uses this setup). This is especially damaging in the corner since you can combo after command grab. The timing on this is strict, you have to go into drill immediately after your jump cancel comes out, but doing this setup makes all your options off 2k stronger, as the opponent now has to not only worry about you going low off 2k, going high by jump cancelling into instant overhead, but now they have to worry about fake high command grab. Sometimes if my opponent has adapted to this setup I like to switch it up so that drill actually hits, and either get a counter hit by stuffing their throw or if they block it, cancel into going my way and continue pressure. Just remember to not keep doing the same thing, as good players kill you for being predictable.

so are there any practical IK combos anyone knows? I've seen the ones in the corner, but those are all pretty situational, requiring you start with 5D which most good players will block. The only way I can figure out to IK is to RC a pogo in the corner, so that means they have to be put into hellfire before or on the pogo hit. Just wondering if anyone else has found anything better than that, it seems like guts in this game is pretty serious so knowing how to combo into IK may prove useful sometimes.

Guys, results from the 1$ xrd tourney last night at ignite here. Finished in just under an hour with 14 entrants, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. I liked how the tourney only used half the setups, finished quickly so we could get lots of casuals afterwards. I feel like if there were less people we could do double elim, but I kind of like single elim when there's more than 10 entrants. See ya'll next week.

Everyone here who comes to ignite, is there interest in entering a very cheap xrd tournament weekly? say, 1 or 2$ entry fee? From the past couple weeks it seems like we usually have 10+ xrd players each week, sometime enough for a full 16 man bracket. Playing casuals is great and all, but I really want to get some tournament EXP in this game, and the free tournaments have been fun too, but I feel like it's better to have some skin in the game if you will. Watching the tourney at GGA really made me jealous that we haven't been doing the same at ignite, especially since the drive to GGA for me makes it a lot harder for me to show up there. It doesn't have to be streamed or a super professional thing or even take all the setups so we could still have casuals going on. Thoughts? I'm going to cross post this in the facebook thread.

Yeah the stream is available via twitch right now, though twitch playback kinda sucks: http://www.twitch.tv/ignitegl The videos will eventually be uploaded to youtube as well.

Just a reminder, Ignite still happening tonight despite tournament on Saturday. Myself, Shinsyn, Bzerk, Bozac + others confirmed attendance. Come grind xrd ya'll.

Yeah, I'm not good at wakeup either in this game, I always do it too early. Luckily faust doesn't have a reversal so it doesn't matter. One thing to note about GG wakeup that's different than other games, everyone universally has 1 frame of invuln on wakeup, which is why wakeup throw always works as a reversal if they are in your throw range on wakeup.

yeah xrd tournament was hella fun. I ended up getting 4th, my semifinal match against eddie was super close, eddie is really good in this game. None of the other GG players were there other than Bob Washington though, but I'm hoping they'll start coming by, especially if we do ranbats.

interesting. Why is speed homing less safe? More startup?

Thanks for the advice, the wiki gave me a lot of ideas for combos and corner stuff, I seem to have semi-figured it out as far as combo routes go. I am wondering about what my overall strategy should be as far as neutral goes. Basically I just try to find a way to homing in to start pressure, but I keep getting blown up by all the people I play. I understand that these people have way more experience than me since they've been playing since vanilla, but I thought I'd ask here if there's any techniques you think are absolutely necessary to know to play heart. I have noticed that in the match videos I watched people don't tend to finish block strings but rather opt to jump cancel 2b or 5c and then restart pressure, which I don't do and need to start doing.

Thanks for the responses. I will take a look at the AH3 wiki and test out some stuff in training mode.

so I just started playing this game with the love max release in NA, and I really like heart. I've watched plenty of match videos and sugoidb is a great resource, however, I'm having trouble finding what combos to do when in the corner. From messing around in training mode, it seems like the regular combos I do don't work due to the pushback in the corner. Does anyone have a good combo notation resource for heart? Also, because the character is named heart and the game is called arcana heart, it makes it a lot harder to search for heart specific videos which is unfortunate.

So anyone wanna discuss what the worst match ups are and what to do in them? I feel like Hilda and vautista are hard matchups, at least even, maybe even in their favor. I also think waldstein is bad and I've heard some say merkava is a bad matchup though personally I haven't had trouble (maybe just haven't run into a good one yet).