PepperySplash

At my local I have what I think is a pretty solid Zato to fight so I have a bit of experience in this match. I echo a lot fogelstrom’s comments but I’ll just add in a few of my notes that watching your matches reminded me of: At 2:48 you should always try to pay attention to if the zato screwed up his drill placement from a block string or not. I hold downback whenever he goes to a block string that ends in a drill and if I see the drill start to pop up where it won’t clip me it’s a free 2D most of the time. This is mainly a preference thing but at instances like 3:08 I like to sometimes YRC the move (if it’s a long recovery like 2H) I killed Eddie with if I’m at an unsafe range (where something like drill could punish me) to keep myself from accidentally getting knocked down and letting Eddie recharge. This also gives the added benefit that after the YRC you can see if he’s doing anything you might be able to punish with 2D/mappa, etc, and if not you can try to press the offensive from it. But once again, it’s a strategy that may or may not fit into your gameplay depending on how you prefer to use your meter in this matchup. Personally I IB rather than BDC against meaty drill because it’s just more consistent and less risky for me. IBing the drill also gives you a bit of freedom after you block it so that you can usually BDC>whatever anyways. If you’re going to try and escape the corner with IAD 214K, I’d always do it from a super jump if Nobiru is out. At a bit less than peak SJ height Nobiru can’t hit you. Of course you still have to pay attention to how close Eddie is to you when you go to try it because he could still hit you on your way up. Also this zato never did it but wakeup backdash is a very real option for him on your Oki if the player can time it consistently, midscreen especially. If I think I have a fairly good read on the player I like to use Helter Skelter as timing it correctly leads to their backdash input getting changed to a forward dash. Then they just run right into Helter Skelter and you can confirm into knockdown. If you wanted to go a slightly more conservative route you could always just do a very meaty IL to catch the air recovery frames of the backdash. The only con to this is that you lose out on damage and it’s a little more tricky to get a consistent mixup from it afterwards. If for some reason they are confident enough to backdash in the corner you can check it with 6P and get a full air combo from it. Thank you for sharing and hopefully something I said was useful for you

Also I found this on Faust, although it's debatable how useful it actually is It is possible to get the 5H, K Mappa to cross-up midscreen if you were to do a small forward dash cancel into P CWH after the Bite RRC

You should be able to go for an extended/more damaging (I think? I don't have access to the game on a regular basis anymore so I can't check) route on Faust by doing 2KPSH, 5K, j.S2K, j.D, dj.KSHD2K, PD

I found some stuff but it requires Tension, so it's up to you whether or not you want to spend it to get knockdown for Oki off of 2H. http://youtu.be/itHybI6TRsI Notes: -All May combos work on Chipp. Last May combo I think is universal for all the other characters in the video... except Elphelt. -Spacing-wise all of these work after a full range backdash, from point blank, and closer. The momentum from 214K pretty much always gets you in the same spot to do your air combo. - If you are farther than a full backdash away, the 214K might not connect. You can circumvent this by RCing the startup of 214K to get its momentum, which you can then follow up with an air combo. These are always the least damaging variants though. -The more hits of 214K you get, the more damage you will do (generally). The trade off is that it becomes harder to get an untechable knockdown after it. There might be other, more damaging, variants of these combos because I made them up fairly quickly. It's up to you whether or not you think it's viable because of the meter expenditure, but the option is always there.