Soniti

Think for a moment about the extremely long recovery on chair and how much less recovery swords have. You do a chair against Nu in almost any situation and Nu will be thanking you for the free combo.

As has been said in this thread, with all versions of ice car except for a (the 1 hit version) you can instant block the second hit and punish starting with 5b.

Why would you start the combo with 2a, which immediately prorates 80% and has a P2 value of 82%, when you could instead start with 5b, which has an initial 90% and a P2 value of 89%. This leads me into some advice on Rachel punishes -- You always want to start your punish with 6b if you have time to do so. It has a starting proration of 100%. If not, 5b is your second best choice, with 90%. Only resort to 5a if you don't have time to hit 5b (which only takes 1 more frame to come out).

Seriously, unless you are going to be guard crushed and don't have barrier or are certain it's the 'a' version of ice car, just block and instant block. That's where your damaging options come from.

Purple throws are so easy to escape that people don't really bother with them at high level play, with the occasionally exception of attempting to finish them off with a throw when you otherwise would be unable to finish them.

Just block then instant block the second hit and punish starting with 5b.

Carl throw loops! Now with more characters to 1-combo kill. These look tough to do :x http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7440659

Just thought I'd point out that good Rachel and Arakune players have trouble with even scrubby Nu's sometimes.

Santa Barbara? I'm moving to UCSB in 1 week and would love some BlazBlue/Guilty/Melty/Arcana/whatever competition! Will you still be in town?

Do something on your end with Adblock or a similar extension and filter the images for the smilies you don't like. That way they just won't show up for you.

Nu mirror. Lots of interesting combos and strategies. Ribaia vs ???: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7291798

It was interesting to read the commentary from the players during that match. Tidbits like using fork poke if you yomi a dead spike sound useful -- I'll have to try them out. Does anyone else but me disagree strongly with Shadow's use (or lack thereof) of decent combos? He can get the some oki setups (or oki at all for that matter) from better combos than what he uses in many situations. He also has a habit of not finishing a person who has already bursted and instead dropping the combo (for oki?). Also, while the guard crush strategy he uses is interesting, he sacrifices so much damage during the combos he actually gets when they poke in order to build wind (using a). He often fails at actually comboing from the few guard breaks he gets. The only time I'd see it as being worthwhile to attempt to force them to block 5c canceled into frog (+wind your pumpkin) is if they are already flashing blue on block.

That's the American version, which is the same as the Japanese version except that the text is in English... No damage difference.

Compared to most characters, no.

Hey Elvenshadow, have you seen H.H's Rachel play much? How beastly is it? There have been literally no videos of it that I've found =( Also, ^pure gold

Actually I got it midscreen (6a 5b j.b j.c dj delay j.2dc j.c land dash forward 6a super) first try on Hakumen today... So it's either character specific/easier on certain character(s) or flukes are great. I'm thinking maybe I'm not doing the j.c before landing late enough on other characters.

Carl has 9500.

j.c in particular has massive hitstun. Winded j.2c is decent too. edit: during my brief testing i actually couldn't get it to combo into 6a+super midscreen, although corner was fine. I was able to use it as extra damage from 6a/throws though, regardless of positioning (6a/throw+7d 5b j.b j.c dj delay j.2dc j.c land sj j.b j.c dj j.2c (j.214b wind oki)

Pretty sure it works midscreen on most if not all of the cast based on seeing it done there in other videos. I haven't actually tried it out yet though. Do note that if you ever have the chance to do melee range super x2 in a combo, you're better off throwing out a 236a in between for extra damage. If you are near the beginning of the combo you can even throw a 6a in between too after the 236a. So... 632146c 236a dash forward slightly 6a 632146c... You can also combo into a frog from the super and super during that frog, although that may or may not reduce your damage/prevent another frog from comboing out of your 2nd super.

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7162663 MASA8 vs Esukiu's Rachel, a Noel, and a Litchi. Showcases MASA8's style of attempting to otg 3c after air combos as a tech trap/free black beat dmg+oki. If it connects and sweeps he can throw out a pumpkin and proceed to oki (or maybe cancel it into 236a and rapid cancel 5b relaunch combo??? definitely if they tech and it's a new combo. as black beat it *might* work.) Particularly effective if he sets out a frog before the air combo and his black beat otg 3c combos into the frog. He actually shortens his air combos slightly in order to land sooner and do this. Major pro of this technique is that it saves wind you would normally use to wind a pumpkin down. Major con seems to be that you are basically in a neutral situation instead of a favorable one if they neutral tech and low block the 3c, unless a frog will put them into blockstun immediately after. Also shows his constant use of 1 hit 3c's in combos. ---- I definitely need to test out this tech trap style oki against kind-of/non-frogables... Doesn't seem worth it vs characters you can normally combo with frog though.

Also Rock and MASA8 are noteworthy players. I'll add the list of players to the first post.

Nah I've seen someone get a person down to 1hp from a defensive burst combo (carl throw loop)... Even throws don't kill in that situation.

What? Air throws don't kill on offensive burst (& dead angle)... why would they on defensive?

Mugen has tons of recovery. I've never seen it done. Maybe with an instant block on Ragna's D inferno divider...? Even then I doubt it.