ehuangsan

Ma-ryan is definitely more versatile than Yu. Yu is a monster on offense, defense and oki but she does jack all in neutral and does not do much in solving the ultimate problem for every character, which is "How do I move forward without dying?". Ma-Ryan is not quite as good on offense, but she ultimately solves the neutral and forward movement problem and her offensive power is good enough. This is why you don't really see Yu paired with characters other than Tamaki and Chizuru, who can move forward on their own without too many problems. That being said, Kouyakane did mention that Yu is probably the best possible assist for Chizuru, though it is apparently extremely difficult to play correctly. I suppose I can sort of see it.

Lose a lot, then go through replays and figure out why you are getting hit.

For oki? Combo ending in DP or super then Yu 6D oki doesn't work?

Ya know, it never occurred to me to try guard break into counter super with Touka. You could also probably do something like, in the corner facing away from the corner, 2B into rush super, cancel 5D Yu, rush super again.

Lark and I played in the Dencup (Denka's AP tournament) over the weekend, which is an online tournament that starts at 5AM West coast time orz. I lost to some random Chizuru/Yuma in winners, and then Super Riannon again in losers. Super Riannon is too good.

I don't really understand the air throw out of leaf grab. My guess is it must be some sort of bizarre option select, because if his reflexes are truly that good, then why not get the SVT CH for more damage instead? Surely someone of Machaboo's caliber knows of that. Maybe I should ask him directly.

Nah, it can't be that bad for Leo. Leo always has instant chances if he can make you block something. Most likely 6-4 in Ky's favor. 7-3 would be like domination that's so hard that the other side only has one shot at winning per round, and automatically loses if that chance goes away. Ky is never that well off in any matchup.

Yeah, this matchup has to be in Ky's favor. Ky doesn't have to do much of anything; it's up to Leo to start things from neutral but Ky has everything he needs to counterpunch Leo on reaction, and a lot of Leo's stuff that works on other characters fails to IB -> SVT CH into combo on the defensive end. Some of Leo's pokes like 6H lose outright to RC stun dipper on reaction, even out of block stun, as shown in the Rion/Zidane EVO match. Online is different story though. Leo is up there with Sol and Bedman as being one of the best characters in the game in 4f+ lag.

My guess is 6-4 in Sol's favor, and Ky has to spread the battle all over the stage and cannot allow Sol to get into 5k range. Sol's 5K beats every possible button Ky can push when Sol is in 5K range, and 2D stuffs pretty much everything else. Fafnir is incredibly dangerous, and if Ky whiff's a 2D it's almost round losing if Sol punishes with Fafnir. If you look at Ain's approach against Sol, Ain rarely hits buttons and waits for Sol to move first to decide on a button press. In particular, Ain tries to bait a 2D or 5H whiff from Sol, then does run in punish with 5K or 2S. He is even stingier than Mitsutoshi was in the past when the matchup was truly bad for Ky (7-3). If that is how the matchup has to be played at high level today, then Ky is reduced to moving and waiting until Sol does something to determine what button is safe to press, so that would suggest a 6-4 matchup. However, I can't imagine it being worse than that, and it may actually be 5.5-4.5 in practice.

The biggest takeaways are that Machaboo is definitely not up to date with Xrd Ky theory, and plays the game as if it's #Reload with FRC points anytime he wants them for anything, but he's so good that it doesn't really matter. And his reflexes are apparently so good that he can react to Ino dash with 6P or CH 5H. The not ending the air combo with VT is an old XX/#R tactic for mid-screen. The point is to land without recovery and set up okizeme against the air tech. You can land then CSE for a read on a back tech, as they will either fall on it or if not, they will air dash or double jump against a grounded Ky. Against forward or neutral tech, they're in the air against grounded Ky so you can choose to AA them as they try to escape, or set up a 50/50 right when they land by dashing and hitting them in front or from behind. The Ciel, SE YRC, jump IB was clearly a SiN magic air throw attempt where he ended up with the IB chicken block instead, so gets to land and throw while Millia is in landing recovery.

Riannon at 24:18 - that is the sickest callout i've ever seen in my life and must've been incredibly demoralizing.

BDC is back dash cancel. Slayer's backdash is invincible and cancellable into any special move or jump. Cancelling the backdash into anything gives that move the invincibility properties of the backdash, which was a glitch that has been retained intentionally since XX. Think CvS2 roll canceling. So he can make his mappas, bite, dandy, or even jump completely invincible on startup, which also includes ridiculous things like invincible jump p as AA or invincible air throw/j. HS option select.

I think what happened at the end of the Ain-Hase match was Ain had already input backdash before the YRC freeze, so he was already screwed unless he immediately countered YRCed into FD. Because of the YRC slowdown, Hase got a free wolf spider jump in unless Ain had mashed an AA beforehand. It's pretty much like the Alpha 3 V-Zangief situation where if Zangief does kara-canceled towards fierce CC activate and you did something before the activate freeze then you were going to get hit. Personally I am not very fond of Ain's approach in many parts of neutral as he seems to set situations to enter into yomiai on purpose when he doesn't have to, even though he's not as good as Buppa was in resolving yomiai. I concede that Ky perhaps may have to do that more often in ultra high level Xrd because of YRC, although even Ain avoided yomiai as much as possible in the match against Mugen.

Kamoseiro's IK setup You probably won't know about this unless you were playing GG more than ten years ago. It is the king of all ghetto tricks and not recommended for use in a serious match. In Xrd, it only works in the corner due to Ky's limited IK range. In +R, it can work anywhere, but again, it's very unlikely that you will get this on someone. The setup is: RC 5D into activate IK -> opponent bursts -> IK If you do hit someone with it, you will have massive kudos from me. I have intermittently gone for this over the past 13 years, and I have landed it all of once, though I have gotten close many times. Further, the only time that I hit someone with it was yesterday in an online Xrd match. I also said that if I ever hit someone with it, I would retire from GG, so I guess I am retired from all things GG now and will now mostly focus on AP. The inventor of this trick, Kamoseiro, did land it against N-O in an #R tournament once though so I suppose anything is possible.

Yep. Tamaki's super is a clear shoutout to that move, so it's just easier for me to refer to it as such.

I thought about it but I thought he would godpress me if I did it off a string, since he godpressed that one 5A into BC string.

GGs Sima, you are much better than I had thought you would be, and I admit that the matchup is pretty unfair lol. Afterwards I played a salty runback money match against KOG. Came surprisingly close, so I don't think America is that far behind anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3qAMru_HJg

Yep, I'll be at EVO. Mabushin, KOG and GO1 will all enter AP as well.

At least from talking with kouya and crew at KSB, it's fairly close to the Arcadia tiers, only Karulau and Touka are swapped, Haku is clearly better than Multi, and Sasara is clearly best of the mid tier (probably overly influenced by Gamera). So Chizuru is better or worse than Touka depending on who you ask, and Multi just sucks now. S Tamaki A Konomi, Karulau > Chizuru, Touka B Sasara > Morgan > Oboro, Arawn C Hakuowlo > Multi > Riannon D Manaka

They just didn't connect any speakers to that setup for some reason. Yeah, Chizuru is now 4th or 5th best in the game, depending on who you ask. If I had to do a match up diagram for Chizuru, I think it's something like: 4-6 Karulau 4.5-5.5 Tamaki, Konomi 5-5 or maybe 5.5-4.5 Touka, Arawn, Haku, Sasara 6-4 Morgan, Oboro 7-3 Multi, Riannon 7.5-2.5 Manaka

The best Haku online is obviously mizuchama, aka MIZUTYAMA666. Nobody comes close, not even ZeroBlood0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dJzHtXncA8 Though this set was kinda unfair since there was no sound so I couldn't hear any tigers. Even so he would've beaten me pretty badly anyway.

Stun Dipper Tactics - Counterhit setups Been too busy with work, so I'll split this up into multiple sections. Like with other tools, Ky's Stun Dipper should be thought more of as a poke rather than a special move, although most people think of it as a combo only move or a bad move in neutral. On the contrary, stun dipper has very fast startup, becomes low profile almost immediately and moves very quickly, which allows Ky to be a threat at distances much further than at first glance, thereby making it a very dangerous tool in neutral. Further, you can eliminate the need to FRC or RC if the stun dipper counterhits on first hit, so you can use that to set up several situations. The counterhit property is very useful when you can induce your opponent to attempt an attack or counterattack. If you can catch the opposing side to try to attack with something slower than a stun dipper, oftentimes you can counterhit them with a seemingly random stun dipper. If you have enough meter, you can make it safe with a FRC or YRC if you guess wrong. Before Xrd, I was of the opinion that Ky's Stun Dipper was one of the primary reasons that he was competitive, as the counterhit setups are rather invaluable. If you get the counterhit on the first hit, then you can immediately seize the initiative as the second hit will combo regardless of the distance, so you don't need an FRC or RC to make it safe. You can also tack on an RC to do fairly decent damage for half tension. One example of a counterhit situation is off of a setup where the opponent may be tempted to hit a button to counterattack in what was in reality a frame neutral situation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSucIO1Cpzw&t=1m54s Similarly, Stun Dipper can be used defensively to try for counterhit attempts. One example is off of a neutral air tech close to the ground into reversal stun dipper if the opponent is coming at you. If the opponent tries to hit a button, the startup of the stundipper will actually be invincible due to the neutral tech glitch, which is one way to bait the opponent to attack. Note that this bug was patched in the latest version of Xrd. Similarly, if you are dashing backwards, or air dashing backwards and the opponent comes at you, you can land and stun dipper to try to catch any button press attempt. Keeping in mind where stun dipper can possibly counterhit will help your neutral game immensely and can make your Ky much more dangerous. However, you have to not overabuse the Stun Dipper, as your opponent may catch on and try to bait a wayward abare stundipper.

LOL. GTFO. If you can't even put up $4k of your own money to front your own venture, you have no business doing such a thing in the first place.

Lol. To be fair, you did make the ranking by actually playing people, but the level of players you are playing against are not very good, which I did explain to Kouya. And that's why he shouldn't take the online ranking so seriously especially when it comes to non JP players, but whatever. To emphasize the point, before I started challenging JP players, I had a 90%age+ with Chizuru and S+ ranking in only 250 games. Now since I mostly only play against JP players in ranked it has fallen to 59% and I have stagnated in S+. Also, combos aren't the only aspect of the game. I have a 15k combo with Chizuru/Llyr that I landed on Mabushin in casuals off of a setup that he had never seen before which actually made him go "oh wow" out loud. He's still the better Chizuru player (though maybe not anymore, we'll find out at Evo). If you recall your matches with me, I hardly did anything exceeding 7k but I kept winning anyway. That I said you could do well in NorCal or Evo but not win speaks more to how far behind the rest of the world is compared to Japan. Anyways, come join our discussion on Sunday, and I'll discuss what I learned from JP play.

It's not that. For whatever reason kouyakane cares A LOT about the online AP rankings, and if someone gets to SSS+ or GOD he wants to play them because he always likes to play strong people and he's hoping that it's someone new that he doesn't know about. His point is you don't have the skill to back up your online rating, and he considers that cheating like BlackNeppy, WhiteMove, etc. Most of the rest of the GOD and SSS+ players are well known JP players. When you consider the highly skilled jp players dig and kentasky only have SS or S+ ratings, you kinda get the point. Personally, I don't care about the online rankings, but it goes to show how much kouya cares about the game.