chzchan

Oh man that's a good one.

That Azrael respected you too much which, of course, is a good thing for you. He missed many opportunities to grab and light attack you. He was afraid. I wish I had a way to make people fear me. That would really help me out in fights.

Is there a trade secret to getting microdashing down consistently without fumbling into 6A, 6B, or 6C while applying pressure? This has always been a problem for me.

Are there any strategies for dealing with people who jump out of your blockstrings/pressure or just generally continue to backdash and move? I have different blockstring routes that lead to command grab setups and mixups depending on if they are barrier guarding or not, but I have nothing prepared for people who run away. I am always ready to get grabbed or light attacked out of 6A, 6B, or 6C during any of these routes and I actually welcome it with open arms because the opponent going on the offense just brings them closer to me and gives me a greater chance of landing a hit with Tsubaki's pitiful range. But when they use the pretty obvious gaps in Tsubaki's blockstrings to escape and continue to defend, I just don't know what to do. This has become most apparent in the Amane matchup, but I have noticed I have the same problem in general.

It's like trying to beat a large buff bodyguard as a little girl by throwing loaded pistols at him. You hope and pray that one of those pistols will make the bodyguard flinch so you can advance and maybe land a few blows that you already know will do nothing more than tickle him. You also hope that if he catches one of the pistols that he doesn't know how to use it. Of course these hopes are never fulfilled.

I always feel like there's this threshold that I never break when I fight them even if I seem like I have some momentum or some sort of lead. Feels the same way with Hakumen. There's a sort of psychological aspect to it as well because the opponent understands that they are free to make way more mistakes than you can. I do agree that the other matchups are even more awful because they destroy even more of your options and either lock you into always defending or just make it so that you will never get hits in. The Azrael/Hakumen zone of matchups allow for you to get in hits/combos sometimes which are a sort of false hope instead of complete despair from the start in the worse matchups which makes things all the more painful when you just barely can't win. The mindgame that any Azrael used to using Phalanx projectiles can play is absolutely horrifying because the move starts up as fast as a grab at 7 frames. It is effectively a long ranged light attack that can be used to take advantage of the gaping holes in Tsubaki's blockstrings. If I happen to not be high enough off the ground when I use j.236A, 1000 damage from across the screen. If I try using [4]6C, the projectile busts right through mine and then smack. Airdashing is punished at close range by the slab and at long range by the projectile. Using your projectile is a huge gamble.

I would put Azrael up in the same area as Hakumen because of his vastly superior hitboxes and ability to absorb and punish use of projectiles with Growler. This destroys neutral utility of your projectile and makes the Blade Super pretty useless. These properties of Growler and the fact that Growler blows you across the screen as well significantly reduces the amount of options you have when trying to go on the offensive. These combined with gigantic bulk damage, amazing pokes, teleport dash cross-ups, and above average health make the matchup incredibly frustrating. There are actually a lot more things I can list because of how familiar I am with this matchup due to a friend being an Azrael main that constantly destroys me, but I don't feel like writing up multiple paragraphs at the moment.

It feels like the only characters I fight without having the battle feel slightly one-sided are other Tsubakis. There are only degrees of bad. No good.

What are all of Tsubaki's worst matchups? If there was a spectrum where would you place each of them best to worst?

So it isn't really practical unless you have godly timing. Also, I am guessing that it is heavily character specific. That's disappointing.

Oh man that 3CC into 5A. I thought it was impossible to combo out of 3CC without a rapid or CH. Scratch that. They look do-able in the video, but landing the 5A is near impossible for me. Actually, I have yet to land the 5A after trying out a bunch of different approaches. The frame window is incredibly small. Hell, if any of you can confirm that it works, that would be great because I have been at this for a couple hours and it is not working at all.

How in the hell do you get 236B 214A 2B to come out reliably? Is there a trick to it? If execute it too fast it turns into a stance cancel. If I execute it too slowly it never hits.

Well I'm mad. Looking over all the changes for other characters it just seems like Tsubaki is getting the short end of the stick yet again. I was already able to cancel into a command grab off of a blocked 6C by doing 632147C so if the trading of "reduced hitstop" for special cancel-ability results in the opponent being able to recover earlier it really feels like a nerf. The change to 6A is great I guess, but getting an air hit off with 6A happens so rarely that I don't think it will matter. Most people just jump out of it safely because of how slow it starts up and how little range it has. Fireball input was a much needed change, but it really seems like it should have been like this already. Faster start up is a plus, but increased projectile speed might hurt its utility. Harsher SMP on Mugen attacks really kills her potential damage output. I always thought that she was a potential-based character in that if the opponent allows her to reach that potential then they have to deal with the fact that she does actually good damage in comparison to how little she does normally. It really is pretty depressing. Distortion change is fine, but I wonder what it will look like exactly. Will it place Tsubaki right in front of an opponent after use?

Oh yeah I already know that. I just wanted to know if there is any practical uses for it because it really seems like it is just there for no reason. Can you think of any examples where a slightly smaller hitbox would come in handy? For instance, does Tsubaki's 5B whiff if used on another Tsubaki using 2D?

Is there any point to 2D aside from low guard baiting during a charge cancel? I just never seem to use it for anything.

I just noticed that 5C > 6C > 632147C wasn't part of It is sort of unsafe but the step forward from 5C to 6C always brings you close enough to do the command grab unless they barrier guard even at 5C's max range.