sanquerosa

Oh. It seems like portals are now a big part of his combo game if you really want to loop pressure. The combo I've seen the most is linking into 6k to launch, then going neutral steady aim shot, up portal shot, neutral shot. The third neutral shot suspends them long enough for the portal to hit. From there, you can technically cancel into concentrate, then catch with either 6s or 5k to wallsplat and reload upon wallsplat, but man. Even good players don't cancel into concentrate because of how inconsistent it is. Hope Arcsys works out some of the portal input and steady aim clunkiness.

I made the thread primarily since it doesn't seem like anybody really knows how to play Chaos as of 2.0. Hopefully we can get some ideas going- I feel like the character really struggles in certain matchups now. Here are a couple high-level replays. How have you all been playing the character as of 2.0?

5/30. Whew.

It's a little all over the place, but a great resource to start with when you pick up the character. Lots of little interesting tricks here.

So, yeah. I guess the non-Melty part of the Melty story is the only good part. Figures.

Yeah. It's just fighting game stories. They suffer from a variety of issues inherently, and at the end of the day, every fighting game story is just playing with action figures. It's not an easy thing to write a plot around, especially in this format. It doesn't help that Strive is obviously intended to be a bit of finale where everybody finds peace and happiness. Which fighting game franchises even have decent stories? Blazblue? Maybe? Kind of? I guess Melty Blood, but that's cheating.

It's honestly pretty similar. Play the midrange, throw out your K buttons like it's your job, get gun out. His fullscreen lockdown is decent between steady aim and portal shots, his midrange is defined by a really juiced f.s and a good 2s, and he's still got roll and overheads once he gets in- provided he has gun out. Curse and scapegoat let him manage space, you can run and gun really well if you want to transition to mixing someone. I like to do this, as he's a pretty low health character with mediocre-at-best defense and someone flailing into your successfully can still lose you the round. Shoutout to gun in neutral. They have to act once you get it out, because once the reticle locks on, you're not playing neutral anymore. I'd say Chaos is about knowing what position to take depending on the gamestate and being able to switch through them fluently as well as vary options- he does have a lot of them. His execution is arguably harder than last patch. Resource management is important as you can't get bullets and focus from a fullscreen wallbreak. Even at midscreen, replenishing both resources and getting a wallbreak requires extremely tight execution. You're often forced to pick and choose between damage, corner carry, oki, and resource. He's very much a two-step character, and hard for sure. But once you do have the gameplan down, it's immensely rewarding. At least for me. I imagine the person I'm playing against isn't having very much fun at all.

I dropped the game pre-2.0 because every gameplan was just to force inescapable offensive situations all the time at any cost and snowball with positive bonus, super wallbreak, and wild assault. Yes, I know I play HC. Laugh it up. Anyway, most of my specific complaints with the game have been fixed and it feels like a more neutral-focused game now with generally fewer blockstrings that go on forever and less reward on hit. I've actually been having a lot of fun with it.

It takes a minute to get used to, but leverless is fantastic. I play on a Qanba Sapphire, which is a pretty typical layout. Motions like plinking or things like negative edge are easy, but the real factor to me is having any nuance in movement inputs removed. I'm horrible at explaining, so please bear with me. Having an all-button controller enables a sort of "universal language" in which all motions, even the weird ones, are just series of buttons you need to hit at the right time instead of having to do distinctly different motions with either hand. It's really nice, trust me. I started on pad, and it took about three weeks before I was fully comfortable with leverless. Oh. And not to shill, but I do highly recommend the Sapphire if you're going to get a leverless. It's natively PS5 compatible and cheaper than most of the PS5 compatible options, on top of being a really solid box.

Really nice dark theme. It's a lot easier on the eyes, thank you.

bruh why does it do so much don't even joke lad

Yeah, I love her visual design. I'm honestly fairly mixed on Strive redesigns. I don't like May, Ky, Testament, or Faust, but Jam is wonderfully animated and designed.

She seems like she has better-than-typical neutral than expected from a character of the archetype and tons of reward for being right. Her reversal's really nice and you always have 50 meter in Strive. I guess her pressure is kind of gimmicky and has telegraphed points at which you can mash, but she becomes a monster with cards even in that respect.

I'm honestly not sure. Johnny, Leo, Nago, and Chipp all feel really strong. I really do think it's too early to tell at this point.

He feels like a snowball monster. I guess he's still the same old Chaos, in that respect. He's probably pretty strong. He can put the onus on you to act extremely proficiently and he's better than pretty much anyone else at punishing misplays when you do take action against him. You've got to when he pulls out gun in neutral or else you have a tracking reticle that doesn't let you play. It's a combination of the good normals, good pressure, and a generally well-rounded toolkit that's great at all times aside from when you're on the back foot. I guess we'll see. I guess it's awful of me, but I hate dealing with one button backdash and two frame throws, and Chaos is really good at killing both those things on autopilot. So that's nice.