Ryd'

For reference: Ogawa (Zato) vs Koichi (Elphelt) This can actually be a pretty difficult matchup. It's a lot like fighting Millia in that a knockdown can pretty much decide the match, but Elphelt relies on relentless pressure and heavy corner damage instead of nigh-unreactable mixup. She's pretty obnoxious in neutral thanks to f.S, 5HS, grenades, and her ability to get knockdowns off just about everything. My notes on the matchup: -Her f.S is a lot better than it looks because her hurtbox stops a good bit before the end of the bouquet and is reasonably quick; it stuffs a lot of things if spaced well. -Her c.S is worth mentioning, as it's fast/big enough to stuff jump-ins that are close enough to trigger c.S over f.S. If you don't have Eddie providing cover, try to avoid going too deep or coming in from above if she's in a position to throw it out. -Her j.S can crossup. -5HS is fast, has reasonably long range, and leads to knockdown, so be careful about trying to do anything after a blocked 22S and the like; you don't want to give her free knockdowns. On the positive side, it's a free knockdown for Zato if you crouch it and are close enough to tag her with 2HS. -The grenade makes it really difficult to protect Eddie. A drill can eat its initial hit, but you still have to keep him (and yourself) away from the explosion while keeping Elphelt contained. I could be wrong, but I don't think they can be reflected; my attempts in matches haven't been successful, anyway. Almost never worth it, but you can destroy them with Amorphous, though you still get hit by the explosion if it's too close. Try not to let her pull them out for free in pressure or it'll never end. These are especially obnoxious in this matchup because they can double as insurance for Elphelt; if she eats CH 2HS or 6HS while carrying a grenade, you don't get a knockdown. If you ever find yourself sitting on a grenade while hitting Elphelt, do yourself a favor and jump cancel if you can, or cancel into Break the Law and YRC if you have meter/time. -Air Bridal Express loses clean to 2HS, 6P, and Nobiru. 6P is generally easier to time and can be easily followed up, but 2HS will get you a knockdown. Nobiru reward varies hugely on spacing. -Ground Bridal Express is safe if you block it at range, but can be throw punished if she does it up close (which a good Elphelt will pretty much never do without an RC). -Her only reversal requires 50% tension, and isn't particularly good, so she's going to be respecting your oki/pressure more often than not. -Her rocket launcher overdrive should be respected at range; she can use it to punish drills/summons, so be careful. -She can be thrown out of 2HS depending on spacing and if you have that read. Might require IB beforehand depending on what she does to lead into it. -It's dangerous to mess with her shotgun pressure in the corner. DAA is the safest way to deal with it in my experience. Watch out for her command throw if you don't want to die. -Zato is apparently hard to combo with her unblockable setups, so you probably won't have to deal with them too much. The matchup really comes down to who gets momentum. If you can keep her on the run, good; if you can knock her down, even better. Being pinned down in the corner by Elphelt is only marginally better than being cornered by Zato. She doesn't have high/low unblockable bullshit, but she has great oki, good~ridiculous damage, and pressure that doesn't let up. Making a mistake can cost you up to 70~80% of your life (shotgun loops...) without costing her any resources, so try not to mess up. Neutral seems like it requires Eddie out just to keep it on equal footing, though it can be difficult keeping Eddie alive. -H- can keep him safe from grenades while Nobiru can keep her from pulling free grenades in the air. A very frustrating matchup if you can't contain her.

Zato Break the Law YRC - allows Zato to remove himself from the field, reposition, and come back up without the usual recovery from extended use, with the added benefit of slowing the opponent down. Powerful tool for returning to neutral or turning momentum around. Shadow Gallery YRC - can "teleport" back to the ground from the air. Invite Hell YRC - the puddles are still left when the drill is canceled during startup (though the drills always seem to dissipate if YRC'd), so you can do anything not airtight into drill YRC 214H Summon, and begin Eddie pressure during the slowdown.

j2B hitting twice on air hit sounds like they're guaranteeing the knockdown follow up at the end that normally whiffs when you combo into it. Nice, as it means more setup time, which Rise can never get enough of. Looks like jB is still overhead, too. All in all, this looks like a nice set of buffs.

I'm speaking from P4A, where Yukiko was the only character who had nothing faster than 7f (2A/throw) on the ground. Every other character had something they could do to discourage Chie from abusing it, even if it was just IB throw if Chie was trying to do it right up in your face, or trade with a 6f poke. And you're right, you don't really see good Chies abusing it in most matchups. And then there's a particular set with Stunedge, where there was substantially more 5A spam, and he's forced to sit there because Yukiko's options after a naked 5A consisted of "jack shit" and "get fucked". "Zoning character losing vs close-range rushdown character if they get in" is all well and good; I'm used to that from stuff like Testament vs Jam, and I wouldn't have had too much a problem with it in P4A if Chie didn't also have Meteors (and I used to think FB Puffball was dumb...) to fall back on if she hit awakening, which was generally a given because of Yukiko's lack of reliable high damage starters and Chie being able to spam DP to push herself into it if she was close. You don't make a character nigh-unpeelable while also giving them phenomenal oki, mixup, and a full screen "I'm going in because fuck you" option while having legit reversals on top of it all. And stupid shit like 5A 5A microdash 5A pause (still awake?) 5A 5B!!! Black Spot dash 5A... as legit blockstrings is both mindless and boring as hell to watch, let alone deal with. But hey, previous game, old rant, whatever. Some stuff's probably changed in P4A2 (just looking at frame data, 5A was made +0(?) and Yukiko was given a 5f throw, so that shit isn't completely free anymore), but I've only played that a couple of times and gave up on Yukiko before it even came out since they felt the need to nerf her (lol) and take away most of her fun stuff.

You'd have had to play Yukiko at some point. I'm still bitter.

Chie: -5A now -2 or -3 Would have preferred seeing meteors replaced with something more appropriate for the character type, but this is good.

AC May shut I-No down pretty solidly, yes. I-No had a lot of trouble challenging May, and was dizzied about as easily as Dizzy vs Eddie.

That's really hard to say without knowing what you're already doing. In general, just make sure you aren't doing the same thing too often, like always going for Damned Fang after two reps of 2P 2K -P- while sandwiching the opponent. Or you can decide midscreen mixup is for characters who have no choice but to slug it out there, and use Mawaru to carry to the corner. Really though, you can manipulate two characters independently of each other and have two ground overheads, a standing low, a command throw, and a fuzzy guard; with options like those, a little creativity can take you a long way.

You realize you're basing a character's worth entirely off of a matchup that is acknowledged to be problematic, without taking into consideration how other matchups play out for that character, right? I-No has several characteristics that affect Pot harder than most other characters, but said traits aren't always in her favor. Many of those same blessings vs Pot result in having a more difficult time dealing with Axl, whose kit happens to make I-No's life a lot more difficult than it does most characters.

Map a few attack buttons to the shoulders and then teach your fingers to do crazy stuff. Or buy a stick so you don't have to deal with your left hand potentially trying to do 3 things at once.

No tools to stop people from rushing him down. Pot is not helpless. Some matchups are harder than others (I-No...), but it's like that for everyone.

Ogawa throws down with Koichi's Elphelt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jApXZlgPwkE

Don't kid yourself. You know you're just going to default C-Seifuku and F-Aoko.

Not sure how you managed to construe that. You said that grapplers are at an inherent disadvantage due to pacing/not being as mobile. AC Pot in particular showed that wasn't the case, as the most significant hindrances to him were two of the greatest sources of bullshit in the game. Not having a large amount of mobility isn't a significant disadvantage if your kit allows you to play around that. I don't see Xrd Pot as being "bad". He might be ranked as the statistical worst character in the game, but that doesn't matter much when you have a stretch of rankings only going from S-B.

Tell that to AC Pot, who was only kept out of top tier by Eddie and HS EXE Beast.

It's just a quick micro dash. Zato's 5D has deceptively large range, and sometimes you don't even need to dash to get it to connect (depends on your opponent), but it never hurts since you should always have time for it.

^That requires meter that you may not always have when you consider how potent YRCs are for Zato in his neutral game. For the characters that it works on, the optimal route is probably: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OYkPEJ95uKM#t=31 (30ish seconds in if the link doesn't work right) jH+drill SG(1) 66~5D~6 6P(2) cS 66 cS 5HS(3) 22HS As for setting it up, Damned Fang is an obvious one. As previously posted, RC'ing either throw in the corner without Eddie summoned will give you enough time to pull him out and go into SG loops. Otherwise: Mixup -K- 5D~6 6P(2) cS -D- 66 cS 2D fly is a simple and effective route.

Drawback to that is that it doesn't look like it gives you time/spacing to go into the 1-hit SG off the unblockable, which should generally be the preferred route on anyone it works on since it ends in knockdown+Eddie pressure. Provided they have enough health to survive, anyway. The primary advantage to jumping in from that distance is that it lets you safejump the unblockable vs anyone with a reversal.

More corner fun. Off both throw and 22S, you can do an immediate RC, pull out Eddie (H), and go into 2 reps Shadow Gallery loop->unblockable setup. Does around 150ish off throw, 200ish off drill iirc. Doesn't work with Damned Fang since that leaves Zato airborne. Also works if Eddie is already out, but if he's already performed an attack, you can generally only get 1 SG rep if you want to have enough meter to unblockable afterward. Throw RC is more practical since you have a bit of time to confirm, and makes his basic throw a lot more threatening. Not sure if this is universal yet, only tested on Elphelt.

I don't think I've seen this posted in the thread, so I went through and tested 1-hit Shadow Gallery setups off the corner unblockable: jH+drill, SG(1), 66~5D~6, 6P(2), cS, 66, cS, 5HS(3), 22HS Something to note is that on certain characters, the ease of getting a 1-hit depends heavily on whether the high or low opens up the opponent. Generally, being opened up by the low makes it a lot easier due to expanding hitboxes letting you tag with jH without getting so close that SG hits twice. Being opened up by the high makes it a lot harder to get on some characters, and seemingly impossible on others. Tested on low-blocking dummies: Easy (fair amount of leeway with spacing): May I-No Elphelt Ky Venom Sin Ramlethal Difficult (have to clip with the edge of jH): Chipp Sol Slayer Zato Impossible(?) Faust Bedman Potemkin Millia Axl I don't have Leo unlocked, so I can't test it on him. I won't claim to have perfected the setup yet, but I wasn't able to get it to connect properly on the last group at all; jH would either whiff, or they'd get hit by both SG hits. Some of them are understandable (Faust, Bedman, Pot), though Millia surprised me. I haven't seen any footage of anyone landing it on those characters, though. As previously stated, it can connect if they block high on wakeup, but you have to be noticeably further away to make it work, which would seriously hurt its effectiveness against anyone who's paying attention to your spacing. It's definitely worth learning for the characters that it does work on, as it seems to be the only way to get a meterless knockdown off the unblockable, and lasts long enough that Eddie is available again after the 22HS.

Semi-serious. I'm not the biggest fan of UNIEL, but it's more because of their choices for system mechanics that make it feel like a substantial step back from MB. It looks great, but playing it kind of leaves something to be desired. Given the other options available now, I wouldn't really be sad if I never touched it again. And on the topic of not playing what I want to play and playing what other people want to play...I've been doing that for years since nobody ever wants to play F/UC with me And now my PS2 stick is dying, so it might be a while before I get that chance again ;_;

Ray wants to revive Melty. I'm okay with burying UNIEL in its place.

Ryan - regarding Blitz Shield for Zato, I don't think there's really a use for it outside of things like Elphelt's unblockables, where there aren't really any other options. If you're following Ogawa's example, he spends a lot of meter avoiding problematic situations with stuff like Break the Law YRC, DAA, and he's ridiculously good at air throwing people out of their pressure. If you anti-air someone with it, I don't think you'd be able to get much more than Shadow Gallery or a couple of hits off Nobiru; Zato's kit doesn't really let him pick up off the recoil the way other characters can.

You can combo into Executor in the corner for a basic unblockable setup, but the throw can be really aggravating because of the way it depends on Eddie's spacing. I don't know if you can get much better off it without meter; the starting height off is a bit difficult to work with.