MoralHazardPay

As in random neutral swoops? Put pressure on them but following them into the air, anti-air grabbing, or airthrowing. If someone chickenblocks it means you have a chance to bleed them of meter and keep the pressure going.

I guess I can stop practicing swoop airthrows. And hitting PSH isn't a weird technique, it's literally how you RC without using K

Don't use a macro button for YRC off stance, you need to hit PSH as you are holding down K. It also only has YRC points when the meter ticks up, not at any point

You don't use it on wake-up. You use it as a threat to stop people from poking out of your pressure or a punish predictable moves. Don't pop it unless you have a YRC on deck. What I like to do is to use it after a blocked normal and mix that up with pressure resets such as the needle, ball, and IAD. If Elphelt's looking for a late 2S to beat a of your followups or be safe against others it's a full combo punish. Also, something to test tonight; is his meter gain via that move governed by hits or damage absorbed?

What's the best way to whiff the airdash and go low? I worry that high blitz and 6p on reaction to the swoop is going to hurt if you don't do it off a Ball or Needle setup

I find that it isn't so much that you can't just block for a while but that Axl has terrible defensive mobility. You block for a while but still need to make a hard read to get out of many situations thanks to crappy air movement and no jab. I actually find dealing with Slayer pressure easier than most other characters because his style of "give them enough rope to hang themselves" is already in line with what you already do on the defense, so you've just got more options (that get horribly punished if you screw up) to choose from. It's why I find the Leo matchup to be pretty scary even if in Axl's favor; he can do reasonably safe pressure with gatlings into 6K for a while then start doing tick throws and stance mixups

My general issue with Elphelt is that she can do a high grenade toss and see how you react; it's going to lock you down if you don't either hit it or take evasive actions, which gives her room to get in. You can stop her from doing this by keeping the pressure on, but if you lose momentum at all it's shotgun loops for days. Yeah, Ram is a lot easier after they broke her knees; she did quite well back in 1.0 against Axl. As for Zato, he can kind of skip past pokes with Break the Law YRC and bring Eddie with him, so I have a lot of trouble there. Venom is definitely a bad matchup for sure; I'd actually put May as a reasonably good matchup. The only thing you really have to look out for is 6H going over here when used too close as a surprise overhead, but resen is pretty oppressive in that matchup. You don't want her to get setup with Seaworld of course, but that's pretty similar to not letting Ram setup either. Leo's a good matchup, but it's a bit too swingy for me to think it's great. All Leo has to do is tag or trade with one far ranged normal and H Boom YRC to start putting pressure on you and he'll destroy Axl up close.

IMO, he's got 3 really good matchups and 3 really terrible matchups. Axl tends to smack around Slayer, Potemkin, and I-No as they have trouble getting in his blind pots and their offensive maneuverability can be seriously limited by his 5P, 6K, and Rensen. His two absolutely godawful matchups are Chipp and Millia because they give zero shits about your chains and are able to ignore much of your defense. I'd also say that Elphelt is a really bad matchup as you have to smack the grenade out of the air or she's in for pretty much free. Everyone else is kind of in the middle. There are some matchups which lean a bit against Axl like Ky where Stun Edge YRC beats any non-Rensen poke into a full combo, and others which lean a bit towards Axl like Leo where you can keep him out reasonably well so long as you make sure he never gets out a H Boom YRC or knocks you down.

It's Steve H; that shit's said in good humor, not as a proclamation from on high. The air greed sever maaaaaay be my fault though, as I asked him if Ky had one when I was just starting Xrd. If it goes back earlier than that it's probably just a common thing to ask after getting your ass whooped by his Ky

It also makes the f.S canceled into his unblockable quite scary. Man, he still doesn't think Slayer got what he needed? Nice to see he appreciates new Axl though.

So you'd argue that it's not that Blitz Shield is weak, but rather that it is too strong and thus negates a lot of possible options, so only tactics which avoid it are used? I'm kind of split. On one hand I really like that it's a universal reversal mechanism if you can properly call out high/low. It's really satisfying to land one... but I do worry that it's kind of got this niche dominant strategy thing going on.

The general idea behind reversals in an offensively oriented game is that they should be high risk low reward. You can do this several ways, with the most obvious being making reversals horribly unsafe on block or whiff and have limited rewards on hit. You can add reversal safe oki. You can make reversals situation specific. You can also make their execution difficult. 1 tends to be my favorite option; you need a hard read our else you end up in a worse position than you started. 2 only really works of you make reversal safe oki much worse than non safe oki so that reversals aren't a dominated strategy. 3 works best as a universal system, such as Blitz Shields where you always have the option but it's a super hard read. 4 is just poor game design, as it is balancing for the bottom rather than the top while just making newbies frustrated.

May. Her aquarium gimmick in Xrd is entirely about controlling space via the beach ball and dolphins.

I spent a few hours playing this matchup today, so my basic thoughts. You lose at full screen. If he can keep you from getting in Resen range with charge he's gold. Your Rensen is your god here for beating his zoning and getting in; you need to predict a move and get a lovetap in. You want to be playing maybe two characters away from him; make it so that you can bully with 2HS, 3P, and 6K while occasionally tossing out a 6H. You also lose if he gets pressure going, so you don't want to be too close. Be warned that his jumps tend to take him over a Rensen upswing, so YRC that on a whiff. He can safe jump the hell out of your DP, don't bother with it on knockdown. I had trouble low profiling his jump ins, so watch out for that.

So, Dead on Time: When is it best used? BDC for invincibility through startup to blow through moves? Instead of Mappa RC when in Hellfire or worried about a Burst? EW seems to be a combo tool and crappy wakeup, while the aerial OD is more shenanigan based or for massive corner combos.

The two characters is been practicing on were Millia and Sol so that may explain some of the issue

So I am having a tremendously difficult time pulling off his c.S (3) IAD SHD combo; I think i'm actually doing it too late because they tend to air recover before the S hits rather than occasionally just whiffing the H. Is there a certain rhythm to getting it off? An easy character to practice it on?

The thing with Hellfire is that it means I'm guarenteed in any long set to eat multiple wake up Elphet supers for half my life. No way around it.

I think you're missing my point; you don't always want to make the trade (to move closer to a failstate in order to gain the mechanic) but if it is possible for said trade to be in your advantage (eg any time you'd rather be at 49% than 50% in a hypothetical situation where your mechanic cuts in at below half health). So long as the possibility for it you to be better off by having less health, it's a comeback mechanic. I generally use SF4 and Injustice to demonstrate this; Ultras are very much a comeback mechanic. There are plenty of times I'd rather have a bit less life in order to have my Ultra or for my Ultra to do more damage. Clashes in Injustice however, aren't really a comeback factor because while they kick in at what is basically 50%... you can't use them to go above 50%, and the situation resets at 50% anyways so you can never be better off at 49% than at 50% Yes? I'm not saying that comeback mechanics are bad, just that they exist.

The definition of a comeback mechanic is where the game makes you better off for being closer to a fail state. Basically where you might prefer to be at a lower life. Hellfire fits this because if you land an OD, you might prefer to be in hellfire. Guts does not, as you'd always want to be at a higher health level

But you can still mash! There are zero options taken away from the defensive player!

People will hold to tech and tech on the first frame until people start doing techtraps. Then they'll mix up first frame held techs with late techs. That's a great thing! You've added a lot more back and forth mindgames because now you have the guess of early or late tech at all levels of play rather than "I have the read that he's going fo the early tech, but my techtrap might get screwed up because it's a 1f window for him to tech out and I get punished even though I made the right read."

Because you lose zero defensive options when you have access to hold to tech, but you can end up in a worse situation with buffer to tech. Let's assume you have perfect execution. You want to tech on frame X. You do not want to tech on frames X-1 or X+1 even if you are unable to tech on frame X. Assume a 2 frame buffer. If you press tech on frame X and you are still in an untechable state (due to your opponent delaying their string) but enter a techable state on frame X+1, you'll tech on frame X+1. To avoid this, you might press tech on frame X-1. But maybe your opponent did a slightly faster string than you expected, so you tech on frame X-1. Granted, people generally don't have frame precision in areas such as this and thus buffers do more good than harm for the defensive player, even at super high levels of play (see: wake up reversals). But with a press to hold, you only press to hold if you want to tech on the first possible frame while the button is held. You lose absolutely no options; double tapping works exactly as it has, and people who mash to escape would just hold the button... leading to the exact same situation as we have now, except people are able to make the game better understand what they want

I think you're mistaking buffered techs for held techs. A held tech just means that if you're holding the button and you are able to tech on that frame, you tech. A buffered tech means that if you press a button and are able to tech within the next X frames you tech on the first possible frame if X is within the buffer. A held tech grants the player that wishes to tech more control, while a buffered tech takes away some control (if you press the button, you will tech on a larger window) in exchange for reliability. Absolutely no changes in dynamics happen with held techs; all it means is that you always tech when you want to tech rather than mashing and hoping you hit the right frame. There's a removal of execution barrier here, but I'm fairly certain that nobody is arguing that the teching execution barrier is a sacred cow. If someone wants to tech out of your black beat combo, they get to. You know when your combo is techable, so you can choose to do a techtrap if you think they'll tech. Seriously, you can still double tap or delay your tech or whatever. All that hold to tech does is give you an additional choice on the defense, that if you don't think they're going to do a techtrap you can always escape a blackbeat as opposed to mashing and hoping.

All that held techs would do is add an additional defensive tool; if a player wanted to play as of it was the current system they could still mash to tech or wait and do a delayed tech