CrimsonDisaster

I've been doing jC to stop people from mashing 5A against j4B, with decent results. jC crosses up as well so it's not like you're losing that part of it, though usually I just do a relatively early jC if I'm really committed to stopping their mashing. Worse comes to worst, late cancel into nails or something on block. Dunno why it would be "terrifying" for Bang's 5A to lose to upper-body invul/guard-point/attribute invul/etc. moves. It's not like Rachel/Carl 6A or 2C or whatever is safe to just throw out and hope they tag a 5A, especially when Bang can punish that whiff on reaction for 3k+.

Here is a core problem with your argument; "it's a guessing game," so it's inherently good/better? Like faultydefense said, a lot of times doing frame-advantage-air-tech ender or neutral-poison-max-damage ender takes all the guesswork away and puts you in an advantageous position. If you somehow deny that completely removing guesswork and still having advantage is a very strong option, I dunno what to say to you. Also, "it's a guessing game," but how do you rig that guessing game in your favor as much as possible? You're acting like Bang gets some 100/100/100 mixup of the gods where they have to guess and you don't, and any experience or pattern recognition they've developed disappears entirely, simply because they're on the ground. Which is untrue. Oki is a guessing game in your favor, to be sure, but it's still a guessing game for both players. If you can't see how someone's past fighting game experience influences the decisions they make, and how you can use that info to screw with them as hard as possible, then maybe you should think about it a bit more before dismissing it so easily. If you always go for the same oki ender, you're always playing the guessing game by the same rules... but why should you do that, when Bang has the ability to change the rules whenever he wants? "It gets me wins" doesn't mean "it is the best forever and I should never do anything else." It isn't about better or worse one way or the other, it's about putting everything together to get in your opponent's head. Completely understandable to be more comfortable going for oki. If that's your comfort zone, might as well do it more often. But there's no harm in trying something different every so often and seeing how it sticks, especially now that your competition knows "hey he's going to knock me down off this and make me guess, better prepare for it." The entire reason I started doing more air "oki" was because, since I'm a GG player, people who played with me before were comfortable with the idea of "he's going to knock me down and then do some stupid mixup that I'll just have to deal with somehow" right from the start of CT. So I changed my style a bit and the results are hilarious. Bang is like the trolliest troll character to have ever trolled BB. His stage is even on a bridge :V Sometimes you just have say "I'm Bang, what are you gonna do about it??"

random combo idea that appeared like once in BBS and hasn't been mentioned or discussed since, which we haven't managed to get to work yet: 623C(which hit?? didn't say) RC nail super on Tager. The post said something to the effect of it doing like 6k off ground, ~8k off air grab because Tager is fat and eats all the nails. Nobody really said anything about it and we couldn't figure out how to make it work, if it even does. Seems like something interesting to explore, but $1 a game is a bit much just to try to make a goofy combo work. Litchi gets stupid stuff like unseeable fuzzies, double/triple overhead/low, much stronger tech traps, jB crossup into silliness, etc. All of this off pretty much every combo, with pretty much every combo leaving her opponent in the corner and set up for oki/tech trap/stickman/etc. And to top it all off she has ridiculously strong pressure with a bunch of hit-confirm points for the times when she doesn't land her initial mixup, with the option of going into even more mixup if she wants. If you look at only the initial mixup, Bang's oki is "better" solely because of command grab... though he lacks Litchi's option select tech traps, and has to give up damage from combos that are already weaker than Litchi's to get his oki. And since it's not realistic to just look at the first mixup, Litchi has way better second/third tier (and onward) mixup and better pressure/hit-confirm at whatever point. Anyhow, you can pretend like only bad players ever get hit by air tech traps, that's like pretending people always get hit by oki. Or you can look at fairly basic facts, like how most characters don't have an air DP or reliable move that stops you from putting them into blockstun after tech, which of course means more possibilities for Bang to land his hilariously high damage air command grab if you read their tech properly. Also the fact that air options don't reset after an air tech, so if you caught someone in mid-air with, say, reading their airdash attack and countering with CH jB, then their options after a tech are even more limited. It's not impossible or even improbable to create situations where your opponent is either forced to tech into an air-to-air blockstring where Bang lands first and gets to threaten air-unblockable or go into his mixup with essentially the same frame advantage as if he had been doing it to someone getting up from a ground tech, or low altitude late tech into Bang getting more frame advantage and still having two airdashes to mix up with, or teching after hitting the ground and essentially giving Bang "true oki," or not teching, which of course creates its own set of problems. Again, sometimes a knockdown is just frame advantage and sometimes frame advantage is just as good as a knockdown. If I'm playing against someone coming from, say, a 3S background, someone who is used to the whole "get knocked down, deal with oki mixup for a bit, hopefully block it and then work from there" model of play, I'm going to force them into uncomfortable territory by putting them into air tech trap situations. A GG player is going to be more comfortable in that spot, so I'll probably do more standard oki enders but keep in mind that GG players are ever wary of having their tech airthrown, so I'd go CH fishing if I go for air tech trap. Arcana players are scared of air unblockables, IaMP/EFZ players are more hesitant to tech but are more used to dealing with BS oki, etc. etc. Pretty much everything you can do to take away your opponent's mental safety net of "okay he's doing this so now I can prepare for what's coming next" is a worth doing. Fighting games aren't as cut-and-dry as "do TRUE OKI unless the combo will kill them and they have no burst."

Did I post "never do oki?" No, I posted that the whole point of oki is to set up more damage- but if you get that big damage opportunity, why not go for big damage? Sometimes you need to hedge your bets and take optimal damage + decent setup over optimal setup. If you did a combo that didn't suck that gives oki and leaves you with enough bar for a command grab RC combo, they are probably down ~3-4k life at the very least, probably closer to ~6k-7k+ total damage before you have meter. Command grab RC into max damage for 5k, they're dead. Or you could go for oki; if you've consistently been giving up damage for oki, and then do that again when your oki leads to the big payoff (command grab RC, in this case), they might survive it and you'll need to hit them again. If you're somehow sitting on this huge pile of meter and need to do 10k+ to make a comeback, by all means go for the oki ender and good luck. If you burn your first 50% meter of the round on command grab RC or whatever, maybe it's worth it to consider going for better damage. I personally think that if I'm going through all the trouble of getting you to sit still and get grabbed AND burning 50% bar on it, I might as well get the most out of it; if you don't feel like your neutral game is good enough despite having nails and ridiculous normals to get back in with, then by all means go for oki more often! The reason the best Bang in the world goes for oki 90% of the time is because he probably has the best Bang oki mind games in the world, and he's playing against people with far more experience dealing with Bang. You probably don't have nearly as strong of an oki game or competition to use that oki on, so why should YOU do oki ender 90% of the time? I've gotten double/triple perfects in sets where I did exactly zero oki enders, does that mean you should never do them too? Some people are just better at dealing with the structure of being knocked down and then mixed up, but fall apart when they have to deal with pressure out of an air tech or something. Sometimes a knockdown is just frame advantage and sometimes frame advantage is just as good as knockdown. For people advocating oki because Bang's mixup is "the best oki mixup in the game," you sure seem against actually mixing up the defensive looks your opponent has to watch out for :V Also Litchi's oki is the best :V

If you're going for max damage, [jB > 4C JC djB xx 236A] is better as it poisons. jC ender gives the option of throwing nails to pressure their tech, which is closer to "oki" than j623B ender. For reference, 623C(2) RC 5C > 6A xx 623B, dash 5B > 2B JC [j4C xx 623B], land, 5B > 2B JC [jB > 4C JC djB xx 236A] is ~4.9k + poison. 5.1k + poison off j623C(2) RC. The only reasons to do dash 6C variants are if you're lazy or if you want oki... but chances are you landed your command grab off oki/tech trap anyways so why not go for damage and kill them? Also easy big damage off FC 623B is just Daifunka into normal air combo followup for like 5k or something. Trading 100% bar for 1k more damage and putting them in the corner, essentially, as you can do his current max damage combo off 623B for ~4.1k + poison or something to that effect. Not that you'll get a ton of opportunities to just throw out 623B and have it hit, lol

There are approximately 3 people who would play in a GG tournament in Austin. Even when out-of-staters show up to UFO for tournaments, there isn't exactly a huge push for GG. It's not worth the effort to organize something because 2 people say they'd show up for it. There's probably a bigger chance of a Melty tournament than a GG tournament in the near future. If you want to show up to UFO "semi-regularly" to play GG, let us know and I'm sure all 2 of us would be glad to play GG with you.

138 dropped Archer who he couldn't qualify with to win SBO with one of these characters tier - Lancer, Gilgamesh 138 did not drop Archer who he couldn't qualify with to win SBO with one of these characters tier - everybody else

SBO finals tier - Lancer, Gilgamesh not SBO finals tier - everybody else

S tier - Lancer, Gilgamesh everybody else tier - everybody else

Melty @ Evo. Get anime.

If you land a clean, counter-hit Critical Heart while in Arcana Force, pretty much everybody's will do huge damage; more with certain Arcana effects (like Sin in that vid).

who cares, Catherine is a BS brainless scrub character anyways

People don't seem to realize that NOBODY runs that on ANY OTHER CHARACTER so I dunno why people aren't hating on Cathy for being garbage rather than hating on a gimmick that only works on Cathy.

pretty sure I've fought against Tsubaki doing j236D > j214C but I'm not near a machine so shrug.

happy new year Austin crew, see you in a few days hopefully

Pozer, Super SF4 is straight to console too. CONSOLE REVOLUTION ARCADES ARE DEAD I BLAME THE MEDIA

Overture 2 would be awesome if they fixed a few things.

No need to do j214D as the entire point of j236D -> dive is that you get a powered up multi-hit dive without charge, so j214C is sufficient. Also IIRC she can combo off airthrow with j214D. j214C probably combos but I dunno if there's a worthwhile followup.

GG is better, regardless of character designs. I actually like some BB character designs more :V

2v2 sounds aight.

thinking of doing commentary on the GvG NEXT vids if there's interest and I'm not lazy

No reason to RC it when you can combo after lvl2 22C if there weren't too many hits before it anyways.

Hard to bait when charge puts you at punishable frame disadvantage :V

5C allows for 2B tech punish/relaunch if they lay there.

Blood Kain is still about as good as it was, 6k+ combos and such with mad lifesteal are still around. Less jD trolling I guess. CS is okay, minimum damage on supers thingy helps it a bit. Still more damage than HF RC blah blah usually. blah blah BE 5D CS adds like 200-400 damage over the meterless combo, decent if you need the kill or want max life steal.