Shinobi

This match-up is bullshit.

Don't really want to get too in-depth but I'll just leave some comments: 1st vid- Early bursting cost you this match. 2nd vid- Nice use of 6A. Finish up the air combos though, if you're having trouble connecting the ID then just use GH for now. 3rd vid- Just noticed you don't brake. Better start doing that. If you don't know what braking is it's using barrier to cancel your dashing to immediately defend. 4th vid- Ice Car Jin. I also just noticed you don't spend Heat. Use it. B+C > CS is fast and easy damage.

Played this matchup a few times, don't know it too well yet but I have picked up some things that have been pretty useful for me so far. -I generally avoid the air, Tao is crazy deadly in the air so I'll stay on the ground and fight her at my range (5B or 5C). It was mentioned earlier and I'll have to agree, 2C is also nice to use at range if they love to duck. I treat Tao as if I was fighting Tager, you really don't want to try to trade blows with her because she is much faster than you so put some distance between the two of you. -2B when Tao does her drive that has her going through you in an attempt to crossup will catch her. Most Tao's will immediately try to go low after this so 2B has been kind to me in this situation. -5C will catch Tao after she does her drive that has her bouncing back after it's blocked. -Whenever Tao goes for a Distortion Drive just crouch block, if she went for the pounce Distortion Drive you can punish her hard. That's really all I got, Tao's are a rarity.

Alright, I understand now. Onto more pressing matters: This is my most hated match-up. I simply just do not know what to do against even a decent Arakune let alone a good one. Getting out of Arakune's pressure when you're cursed is tough and usually results in my taking a risk. The majority of the time the risk fails and I get hit with a big combo. The times I decide not to take a risk and wait for an opening I end up getting guard broken and eat a big combo. I know there has to be someway to get around all his bullshit but unfortunately I just don't have the match-up experience yet. Arakune players are so few and far between so when I encounter one it'd be nice to have somewhat of a game plan besides-"Try not to get cursed".

Not too familiar with this 'chicken blocking' term. I'm assuming you mean barrier blocking or perhaps jump barrier blocking?

I can get it to work online. It'll require at least a B quality connection but it'll connect. Once you get to C and D rated connections though don't even waste your time with combos that require strict timing, keep it painfully simple. Frame data gets ridiculously skewed and input delay only makes matters worse once you start playing in the C and D connections.

Having played this match-up a lot I feel I can actually contribute to this thread. Always be looking to throw break after Jin does his 5K (2 hits). Actually, always be looking to throw break period. 5K is one of the more common set-ups to a throw attempt but they'll also try it in air combos, after a successful throw, or after that one distortion drive (I think it's 632146+D? The one where he hit's you in the air). Beware of 5D, this move can literally stuff a lot of your rush attempts, be it on foot or an IAD, so when you're going to apply pressure always be ready to barrier block and punish this move. Good Jin's want you to crouch block their pressure strings because that'll allow them to connect with their 6C once they finally get a hit on you. They'll never throw out that garbage 6A and instead prefer j.B, when you see him go airborne in his pressure strings he's going for that j.B so get ready for that. Clever Jin's will attempt a j.D cross up so be on the look out of that. If you block it he's completely vulnerable so punish away. For garbage Jin's, punish ice car with 5B>Combo. Punish that multi-sword attack of his with HF (HF after 4 or 5 sword swipes, basically once they push you out HF back in). HF will always CH Jin while he's doing this move so you can punish this move hard. You can pretty much do whatever you want to him off a HF counter hit so have fun with it. You'll beat garbage Jin's by doing nothing but punishing these two moves because they LOVE to use them.

Tiger Knee. It's adding a jump at the end of an input to get the air version of a particular move very close to the ground. Say we wanted to TK Ragna's Gauntlet Hades, you would do the input as 2147B instead of 214B.

Hold D.

Awesome. There's so much creativity in these combos. You're doing stuff I never would've thought of doing. Seriously, how did you get that 22C after a 1 hit 5D? It's the combo you do around the 30 second mark. Messing around with the combo now and it's tough to do, is this a Tao only combo? EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out.

Ahh. I see, so a lot of experimentation with timing is required. I didn't think this would be this difficult, it looks so simple to do.

I can do the falling j.C-land-2C pretty consistently, but I can not for the life of me get the j.2C-ad j.2C to connect. I mean, I can get it to connect but it's not a true combo, the last j.2C is techable. Is there some sort of trick? Can I cancel out of the recovery of the j.2C with an air dash in order to combo another j.2C? I tried to do that but apparently you can't, unless of course I'm timing it wrong.

Don't really see how that will work considering each fighting game has their own feel but what the hell: Nightmare Jam Akuma Hayate/Hayabusa (DOA... Quick! Hand me a flame shield!) Honestly though, I've messed around with all the characters in BB several times. None of them are really doing it for me. I've tried Tao and she is a complete bitch to control. Not to mention I put in all this work to master a combo and once I got it down I looked at the damage dealt and was a little disgusted. All that work for such a small damaging combo is a turnoff. If that's how it's going to be all the time then forget that. Litchi was next because she was supposedly the Jam of this game (or so I've been told) and she was a mind bender for me. I'm still not quite sure how she should be played. Seems like she requires some multitasking and that's definitely not one of my strong points. The whole two modes thing is a lot to wrap my head around as well. I tried out Haku-men because he had a badass character design but facepalmed once I saw his unique gauge. His gauge reminded me of the limited items/ammo you'll find in other games. I'm one of those people that will stock up on this stuff and never use it because I have it stuck in my head that if I use it now, I'm going to be hating myself later because I'm really going to need it then. So there have been several rounds where it would end with me having a complete gauge. Ragna followed afterwards and he was pretty straight forward. Only took a whole 5 minutes to figure him out, the more I messed with him though the more I noticed I started to struggle with him. His health isn't that great and I tend to get real risky so I've had that cost me more matches than I'd like to admit. It also seems like people are finding lots of effective ways to shut him down and this causes me to take more of a wait and see approach with him, which is odd because he's suppose to be the aggressor. Jin was alright but then I ventured into the Sea of Jin's that is online and decided nope, not going to main this guy. Bang is lulz. I would never main this guy but I will pick him every now and then because the guy has personality to spare. Noel seems kind of masher friendly so I didn't mess with her too much. I see plenty of her online anyways though. I tend to just keep jumping between all of these characters. So I guess it's a good thing I've narrowed it down. I know for sure Arakune, v-13, Rachel, Tager, and Carl are not for me. Kudos to the guys who can use these characters. Like I said, I'm going to have to force myself to pick one.

I still don't have a main. Had the game for a little over a week and have messed around with all the characters but none of them feel natural for me to use. Which is just odd to say because in every fighting game there is usually one character that a player will feel absolutely comfortable with but this game isn't giving me that luxury. It seems like I'm going to have to force myself to main a character.

Ouch.