BladeOfJustice7

Relius benefits from nothing happening as much as Hakumen. That's the issue, I never fought a strong Rachel in CT, but the only other matchup that's as difficult to deal with is Arakune. If Ignis didn't recharge while you were waiting for stars to go on the offensive the neutral game wouldn't as much in his favour as it is now. Gonna have to figure out what tools to better deal with Relius, getting a full OD combo is out of the question, so you must play perfectly whole match. Best way I can put this matchup is Ky vs Venom, whatever you can do he can do better. The neutral game is in his advantage so you must force him into situations unfavourable towards, him, which are very few. As you build stars, he builds "wifey meter" which negates your stars in the same ways as Venom's ball formations and angle negate Ky's screen control. So you must press and blitz him perfectly with little to no mistakes. Similarly Venom and Relius could make Ky and Hakumen block for a good while due to their lack of defensive tools and wide/big hitboxes. SO you don't ever want to be in situations where you have to block, EVER. While Nu13 (from the matches I've watched) is no longer really a bad matchup. Relius now might be one of his worst, similar to Venom to Ky in GG.

Same here somewhat.

Thanks mAc I've never had such a hard time in a matchup in my whole life playing fighting games than Relius. Without strength of counters he's helpless to Relius' pressure, making his neutral game that much more scary.

I gave a write up on my impressions on the Hakumen/Relius matchup.

lol @ opening post. Ok so I just got blown up by this matchup online just now. Pretty fucking salty about it but I'll do my best to give honest impressions. Neutral: Relius has the advantage since he simply needs to land a few pokes to lock you down with Ignis pressure while he mixes you up. In CSEX his mixup and pressure game were largely gimped due to Ignis dying quickly and Hakumen catching Relius with counters whenever he was too close when/if Ignis activated them. Your main goal is to get in on Relius when Ignis is not summoned. DO NOT approach Relius when Ignis is out, neither in the air nor on the ground. If you do, he has a number of options to turn your pressure into damaging combos that lead you into the corner, which is the worst place you want to be now against him. IAD>Agito is easily stuffed by Ignis' 4d, only use this when Ignis is gone and must be done at the equivalent tip of a j2c. If Agito is not spaced well enough in the air, Relius' AA will stuff Agito for a free FC combo for him into the corner. Jc and 4c while decent at keepaway to hold the married couple away while you build stars, both can be beat with a well spaced 2/5b, once against pushing you into the corner. However, if you feel that Relius will try to get under jc you can use a delayed jb to CH stuff him into a nice combo, but be careful since jb also loses to 2c, if Relius decides to bait you. Ultimately you'll have to wait for Ignis to go away like I said, or die, in order to get an opening to attack Relius. Otherwise you'll need to play patient and just build stars. Offense: Provided you do manage get in close on Relius, it is imperative to stay on top of him in whatever way you can since you don't want him to bring back Ignis into play. A well placed Led Ley+6d while Ignis is out will lead into another damaging combo. I found it was best to back off, since nothing fruitful ever happened while trying to force a bad decision on Relius' part while ignis was out. Backing off is probably the best thing you could do. Relius won't use led ley on defense if Ignis is not out since it is not invincible to grabs. Defense: Learn to block perfectly. That's basically the name of the game, with counters virtually gone. You'll basically have to survive Relius' onslaught on pressure by blocking perfectly until you either see an opening to hit him or jump out. The only way for Zanshin to be effective is through IB'ing his pressure. But with the lack of 6d, the only effective frame 1 counter is 2d and Yukikaze. Relius will try to pressure you into the corner and hopefully open you up near the corner for some corner screen oki. While in the corner it is important to barrier block at all times in the air ESPECIALLY if Relius ends his combos with an SMP. He is going to try and reset you with an air unblockable 4d, which has HUGE untech time in the corner. Yukikaze should not be used at all except on occasions during wakeup. Since this is the only time you can be sure Relius will his own normals, by trying to meaty you with 2/5b/jc to keep you from jumping you out of his corner pressure. Otherwise Yukikaze will either be baited by Relius or he'll just Led Ley right through it since it's usually Ignis that triggers yukikaze. Since he can easily bait it, it's best to go for a CA with your 4 stars when being pressured by him, especially in the corner, in order to get him off of you. 2d is also dangerous to use since it can only catch mids and lows, making it nearly impossible to catch Relius since he is usually hovering above you commanding Ignis to continue his pressure on you. This matchup feels like a 4/6-3/7 matchup in Relius' favour. Keep in mind it was Netplay so I couldn't IB for the life of me and sometimes the game didn't always input I reacted adequately to overheads. But it is in Relius' favour since there are few opportunities to land any substantial damage on Relius with or without OD in hand, and with gimped defensive tools, it's much harder to deal with Relius improved pressure which aids his good neutral game now since Ignis's health improvement makes it hard to find opportunities to go on the defensive. I'm one person who's good with using hakumen, don't take my thoughts as absolute. Just posting these write ups until more people have the game.

GGs Daniel, thanks for all those blowups and Astrals. It felt like 20-1 for you, that #DomesticMixup and #MaritalLockdown. I just couldn't deal with it and could barely get in.

Which points exactly in the loops that give you a hard time, so I can maybe help since I already have a good grasp of it now. @dioxide, or someone who can record Hakumen combos, could you come out with a slow motion breakdown of landing the loops in his combos. I prefer her, since she has the best execution here next to Spark, and she can record. But if anyone else can please go ahead and do so, message me if you need any help making it. Thanks.

It's also wort-h noting that he doesn't really like being recorded. he has a very standard hakumen across every version of BB due to his strong fundamentals and understanding of hakumen. So as long as there's matches of him, you can apply how he plays to any version of BB.

I already felt it against Ragna and Bang, keeping in mind my friends who use them don't even own CP yet. OD combos are hella fun though, I just wish this character had the defensive tools to match his bulky size.

This makes me more than happy to hear, while I've played GG since X, and played AC for 2 years and got back into it, I am much more encouraged to teach people Blazblue than GG. Simply because there are so many mechanics one must get a grasp of, in addition to learning the metagame and playing your character effectively in accordance to matchups. Depth shouldn't always mean complexity in me books. I'd like to hear more about these negative aspects personally. Thanks for the post elven.

That sounds about right. That's even more accurate lol. Don't get it twisted mAc, he's still fun to play as. But we no longer have a "defense" for people to respect for the most part is all. Luckily we can end rounds even faster by landing quick OD combos at any point in a match. You just need to find the opening, if there is any, in your opponent's playstyle.

No it's not. Bring back frame 1 active 6d, then we can talk about it being better. The "a" attack parry, like most of the changes with hakumen, are what I called skewed improvements. If people don't understand what i mean about that, then I'll explain later.

It's a loketest, there's never any fancy intros during loketest. The main aim of a loketest is to properly balance the game and make it fun for everyone, not to make it pretty. ArcSys has a good reputation for gaming their games pretty with good music and awesome fight intros, even BBCP during loketests didn't have special intros, and look at the chalk ton of intros the game has now.

Yup. Thanks for the info elven, I'm really curious to see Ky's new 3hs. So I'm guessing you can't do 2d>214d>stuff correct? Because I've read that 214d OTG's

It just takes some time getting used to and watching matches, I'm already almost used to performing 2 jump loops (in offline matches). If anything I just forget how to do combos and end up with a brain fart after a j2a lol.

Bumping up my question. Since its been clearly ignored.

Awesome thanks. Are you referring to his new special move Split Ciel (214D) by any chance? Or is it really a new normal? I remember in the last loketest you said Split Ciel can OTG the opponent. Does this mean he has a legit follow up to a successful 2d on the opponent that can lead into a combo? Is the music still the same from what you can hear? Once again, thanks.

who's the hidden character that's supposed to be revealed for the loketest?

It wasn't JC'able in #R? ANd thanks for the clarification on Stun Dipper.

I never got to *learn* #R, but it was only in AC and onwards that they removed the ability for Stun Dipper to combo into itself from any range and wasn't just spacing dependant like how it is now in AC correct? If this is the case could someone just confirm/clarify that for me, that's all I could think of.

How do you unlock the CP Character Voice Selections?

I'll post up if I play BB tonight, kinda tired and haven't played GG for a few days. Was in the middle of working on my execution and Ky's new R combos. EDIT: What? How? I'm curious about this actually.

Tell that to the Japanese players then. Watching sets like Suya vs Porocchino is evident of that.

They'll learn to block Zantetsu and tech air grabs.

Assuming you let him touch you with a good OD starter, I guarantee people won't fear him 6-8 months from now, except for the random netplayer. I'm glad to see you guys agree with my writeup. Those are my observations, though I LOVE his new combo system in this one and I hope it sticks. It really just works. As for adjustments they'll need to add repeat proration in conjunction with the SMP already present. They'll also need to add it to Shippu potentially too to limit OD damage but, if they do that he'll need frame 1 6d, renka>kishuu and comboable Tsubaki (it should go back to 2.2k as well). I think then he'll good without being polarized in terms of good tools.