Ronove

Oh god no, please no. D:

They haven't officially stated that but at the same time they've said that the game is #R based rather than AC based so it's pretty unlikely that we'll be seeing forcebreaks in Xrd. Besides, there's already a lot of new mechanics that use meter, so forcebreaks would probably be a tad too much (and mind you that I'm not glad that Millia lost her FB Pretty Maze), even taking into account that the game is supposedly intended to attract new players.

But why would you want to do 2B after 5B, it makes no sense. 5B moves her forward closing the distance between her and the opponent so that's the last normal you want to use before doing 5C 3C. Just hitconfirm with jump-in/5As/2A/2B and THEN go 5B 5C 3C. True, I need to test this on all of the cast but I think this should be comfortably working on most of them. When the damage is this high it really doesn't matter if it's 1k more or not, it's more important to carry the opponent to the corner and setting up corner oki so that you can ride on momentum, IMHO. As for DPs/reversals, I have to see if I can just bait them with 5A and 1AB during 22B and still be able to follow up with hi/low. 22B lasts quite a while so it might be possible. Have to hit the lab to try that out!

Uhm... how can you not easily hitconfirm into 3C? Jump-ins, 5A, 2A, 2B... she has so many ways to safely gatling into that on hit and you don't have to care about damage, all you need to care about is that you end that with 3C. You can just spam 5As, dash 5A again until you hitconfirm them and then go into the 3C gatling route and it'll work. Could you provde an example of that? I've been trying at all ranges and I'm not really encountering the inconsistency you speak of. 3C pulls the opponent towards you at the right distance even when you confirm a 5B at its max range, 22B will activate and keep the opponent in blockstun while you're doing 2B/6B mixup. The reason why I prefer 22B to 5D oki is because the lightning trap keeps the opponent honest from mashing (other than bursting of course) while acting at the same time as launcher if a mixup hits.

But the point is to keep them short. Why would you want to do a long string off a 2A or 5A anyway? Just do the minimum required to get out the 3C as soon as possible and as close as possible. The whole point is to set up the oki for doing the real damage/corner carry. Think of it likes this: I'm in neutral, my goal is not land a hit that immediately gets me damage, but rather get in so that I can set up her oki and create momentum. So any 5A/2A or jump-in becomes a route to her midscreen oki which in turn creates the opportunity to carry the opponent all the way to corner. [edit] You can even set it up from max range 5B, because 5B itself moves her sprite forward so you can just do simple 5B 5C 3C > 22B oki and the opponent will be within range to be picked up in case you successfully land your mixup. For instance, off 22B oki > 2B you can do 6[A] 2C 6C jB(2)jC 6D 236D dash 6B and if you're already at the corner or not you can end the combo there by doing another 22B which again will work as oki ender and keep the opponent blocking at the corner while you do another high/low mixup. Else you can just continue the combo as usual to get more corner carry and set up fireball+graviton oki. Off 22B oki > 6B you can do 6A 6C > air bnb again with the same pattern as described above. It's worth noting that landing the low mixup off this type of oki leads to a lot of stupid easy damage, which is good because it'll make the opponent scared of not blocking low.

Mind you that when I'm talking about 3C 22B oki I'm talking about those short combos from 2A/2B or 5A which can end with 3C. Wait for 3C's second hit to pull the opponent towards and then input 22B. It works off jump-ins as well. Try doing a simple jB(2) 5A 5B 5C 3C 22B. She'll pull the opponent towards and set up the pole close enough. From there you can do a 2A/2B or a 6B and if they hit the lightning will act as a launcher allowing to combo in both cases.

For midscreen oki the best route is to end with 3C 22B, IMHO. 22B acts as a launcher in a similar way to Millia's disc oki, so whether you land a low or her overhead you'll be able to combo from that and start her regular air BnB (jB(2) jC 6D 236D dash 6B etc) and possibly carry the opponent to the corner. I'm currently looking for ways to get combos off 22B oki launcher that can possibly end again in 3C 22B.

Any official date yet?

Blitz Shield sort of reminds me of Melty's shield

Agreed! Still, I think it's not a bad idea to keep this route in mind, mostly because I was also considering how to properly capitalize off antiair jK against Johnny. As for regular knockdown against Johnny so far I'm simply either using badmoon ender for midscreen and relaunch jH adc jH adc j2H ender for corner. They seem to be good enough to get a proper knockdown without having to use the pin at the end given that she can't pick it up right away in +R. Right now the only scenarios where I'm usually going for pin ender is when I'm doing orb oki rather than disc oki.

Good times back in Calamity Trigger when Tao's 6B would do that. :\

Time to set up? Graviton is 16 frames fast. Do that + Fireball from fullscreen and the only character that could pose a real threat would be Tao and maybe zoners (but again, she can do other kind of bullshit against these characters, like graviton + teleport). The fireball stays active for a long time and you can litterally move it around changing the graviton placement, get the opponent blocking and dash/teleport in. Hell the fireball can even hide Kokonoe (not to mention how good her Fireball super is for that kind of trick). She has the safest way to set up her offense from neutral than any other character in the game. How on earth is that not terribly good is beyond me. Mind you I like the way she plays (minus the unblockable bullshit and the stupid damage output), but rather than a BB character she feels more like a GG character or even a Marvel character. Lot of freedom to try different kind of approaches and tricks.

I honestly can't understand how people can say that her neutral game isn't that great. Fireball + Graviton is an insanely good tool in neutral phase to make the opponent block and start the offense (think of I-No's notes), her 3C is stupid fast for a poke and is safe, has a godlike 6A antiair and her jA has good hitbox and makes up for easy hitconfirms too. She can do whatever she wants, either approach opponents with fireball+graviton or just fuck up their neutral and easily get in. Not to mention Fireball super + Graviton in neutral. It's too freaking good.

Why on earth would people want to play #R when there's AC+R available and still played in local communities? I mean, seriously. I dont' want to sound rude it's just that... it doesn't make much sense to me. If the excuse is "I want to be prepared when Xrd comes out" well guess what, you can get plenty of that by playing AC too, because it's still Guilty Gear, it's the most recent installment and it's still played offline (and I guess online too) by a fair amount of players. Xrd is going to be a different beast of a game than #R or AC anyway, and playing #R is not going to make any real substantial difference than playing the current best version with other people, IMHO.

6B seems to be the best way to end combos with, for now atleast. Lightning pole oki is probably going to be the most common oki setup until people find a way to use her graviton+fireballs as oki tools.

@NeoHomonym (:O) Mind sharing your oki tech? :3 (I know I'm being lazy. I blame GG for taking away most of my spare time)

I second Henaki, the high damage is probably part of the testing. Though I don't think we'll see much of an overall damage nerf either, it's GG afterall.

I'm interested in showing up but I'd like to know if it's going to be the first half or the second half of December. First half would definetely be better for me. :V

The stages also look pretty darn nice. That could be a reason, but looking at the size of the characters and the stage I'm prone to think that rather than being wider it's more like it's "shorter". I mean, there are two ways to adapt a 4:3 game to a 16:9 ratio afterall: you either keep the same height and make it wider, or keep the same lenght and "trim" the camera height. In this case I get the feeling that the lenght seems to be pretty much the same, ElvenShadow and the others who attended the loke test might confirm or deny this of course.

Awesome stuff! [edit] whoa is that Millia's H Tandem Top? Looks bigger than usual.

Wait, if they are like +R then that means that she can airdash cancel all of her air normals except j2H (Millia-copter) . That'd be super sweet. Is her jD the same speed as in +R? Or is it "fast" like in AC vanilla?

Great news! One more question: are Millia's air normals still not airdash-cancelable like in the previous loke test? Thanks for all the info.

I see.... so I suppose that Millia's disc oki is still there and it still seems pretty good?

@ElvenShadow have you seen anyone succesfully using Blitz Shield on wakeup against Millia's Tandem Top (disc move)?

She doesn't really have a strong okizeme. She's about getting a knockdown, possibly corner knockdown, and immediately putting pressure on the opponent as he gets up. Tao relies on pressure mixups rather than creating real hi/low/throw/crossups kind of okizeme.