ehuangsan

I'm just gonna say you still have lots to learn, and kouyakane has some not so nice things to say about you lol. The online tier list is very different from the offline tier list. Even with just the slightest introduction of lag, Sasara, Haku, and Manaka become much stronger, whereas Touka and Tamaki fall pretty hard, and to some extent, so does Chizuru. Also Manaka is bottom tier. I could hang with uragami Manaka while I was in Japan, and he's the best Manaka in the world, which goes to show how hard it is to win with Manaka at higher levels. Spamming books and playing keep away only works online; you have to find ways to move forward offline even if you don't want to. Lark and I will also be holding an Aquapazza review session to discuss how JP played and our impressions of JP level play from KSB, and sideblako will also be joining in. It will be dual language Japanese and English and will be on midnight PST 5/24 (3:00 AM 5/24 East Coast) - http://t.co/XPpDrfd0VF We will probably play some AP online too, and I'm guessing some of the more famous JP players will show up to play, regardless of the horrid lag.

My vids are here: https://www.youtube.com/user/shizuburi/videos As for the grand finals, Oz probably thought he was going to lose unless he tried something desparate. Gamera is incredibly good at neutral and defense, and it just seemed very unlikely for Oz to make a comeback from that deficit barring some freak mistake from Gamera. So I think he went for the lvl 3 just to try to take Llyr away from Gamera and hopefully create some counter chances while Llyr was gone. Had Oz actually succeeded in the lvl 3, I think he would've just let it run its course rather than going for the splash art just to keep Llyr out, even if he could have comboed into it unless it would result in a kill. Since in this case Sasara's lack of assist would be much more detrimental than Chizuru's lack of assist, I don't think it was the wrong move at that point, especially if your opponent's defense is freakishly good like Gamera's. In general though, Chizuru's lvl 3 is just plain bad and entering lvl 3 is akin to surrendering. There are very few situations where using Chizuru's lvl 3 actually makes sense and I think this just happens to be one of them.

I'm not sure which vid it was, but If I did a lvl 3, it was probably because I gave up. I'll also upload my KSB vids. At this point, I can hang with most of the regular and non-famous JP players. The famous JP players range from problematic like Sanada, to outright ridiculously untouchable like Akatsuki, Gamera and Super Riannon.

kouyakane is really freaking good at this game. I've never been so happy to take a round in AP from someone before. Not even mojirice gave me so much trouble. To think that Oz is even better than kouyakane is rather mindblowing to me.

As someone who has reached high amateur/near pro level in various games outside of the fighting game space, I will say this: Talent only matters once you have reached a level where you can actually give the very top players a hard time, and lose at about a 2-8 or 3-7 ratio. At the very top level, everyone is working hard and everyone is studying the in and outs of the game, so hard work and study by themselves will not cut it anymore and people start to pull away from each other at the top levels from talent alone. At that point, you will be good enough to recognize the difference between those who got there from hard work and study and limited talent, and those who are actually geniuses at the game as well as the differences between yourself and the top and whether you actually have the talent to climb that difference. However, before you make it to that level there is no excuse. I am of the belief that everyone can become at least master level (Ama-shodan, 2000 ELO equivalent) through hard work and study alone, even with zero talent.

Yeah after mashing that matchup a lot more, I think it's 5.5-4.5 Sol, though it feels like I have to spread the battle all over the stage to win. Seeing Sol's 5K beat Ky's 2P or 2K really pisses me off though, and it takes a lot to adjust to that change in particular, along with fafnir punishing a whiffed 2D.

I agree that this matchup swung pretty hard into Ky's favor. Dizzy into IK gambles and counterhit shenanigans aren't really applicable for May anymore, and Ky can now do comparable amounts of damage off of stun edge YRC or pretty much any innocent looking touch. The only things salvaging the matchup for May and keeping it from being worse than 6-4 are beach ball and that ridiculous IAD combo now leads into knockdown for some godforsaken reason, making that combo even more ridiculous. Ky still needs to advance forward somewhat to prevent May from getting beach ball out for free, but other than that the matchup is now fairly sad for May.

They normally start at 5:00 PM, but htey can postpone streaming top 4 until whenever.

If you are not using Stella Maris with Riannon you are almost certainly playing bad players and/or are doing it wrong. DJCream does use it, but not as often as he should as he tries too hard to dick people over with Rathy alpha counter. Yeah, the only reason Arawn isn't top tier is because he almost becomes the worst character in the game when he's in low emotion. This is also why Chizuru fell in tiers.

What happened to CvS2?

Yeah, online is fairly dead. Some evenings I sit around and wait for people to come play, but most people refuse to play me online nowadays, including Caged. Nowadays, if I do play online I only play against select JP and NorCal people. Occasionally others show up but they're usually too far behind us.

Touka is higher tier than Sasara. Honestly her stuff isn't really that hard.

I dunno; I sure hope so. I'm debating if I should just stay with the American flowchart Chizuru or if I should start practicing Japanese style Chizuru. I'm leaning towards the latter.

FYI, lark and I will be joining the Aquapazza team tourney at KVO, with Owen (Multi). At this point my goal is to just get past the first round lol.

Precisely. It's not something you would really notice about JP players from match videos until you actually try playing them in a fighting game. Most of the top JP fighting game players play with a rather large margin of safety, probably due to cold hard experience from trying otherwise and losing to things like BS tactics or what not.

Actually I think the reason you don't see BS in high level JP play is because top JP players subtly go out of their way to not let it be an option. It's similar to how non JP players thought that Ky's greed sever was terrible in previous GGs because there weren't many top JP matches that involved greed sever, but in reality it was actually because top JP players were subtly going out of their way to not let CH greed sever be an option. A great example is looking at how Ain does Ky pressure against opponents with meter; it looks rather bizzare and passive from a Ky player standpoint unless you factor in that maybe he is doing those unusual strings (e.g., 6HS, pause, 6HS again) to avoid BSes. I'm in the camp that BS is quite a strong option, maybe about as strong as half moon shield in MBAACC, only more useful and stupid. It is an incredibly good and stupid way to hang mid level players who attempt setups that would normally be okay to do but for the blitz shield.

Quick answers since it's probably better to discuss this in the Xrd thread: Elphelt - although grenade is an extremely good projectile, that isn't what makes Elphelt truly win the matchup. Too many Elphelts are focused on trying to get a grenade out, which hands Ky lots of counterattacking chances. Instead, she should just bully Ky with her superior normals, as they are all simply better than Ky's (c. S, f. S, 2HS, 5HS, etc.) at Ky's effective range, get the knockdown, then do grenade into shotgun stance. Once she achieves that the round is essentially over if Ky has no tension. Her c.S/f. S and Sol's 5K are some of the most ridiculous pokes I've ever seen in a fighting game. Sol - Sol's normals all became insanely good. 5K beats all of Ky's pokes at < f. S range, and 2D/fafnir beat all of Ky's normals outside of f. S range.Eating a fafnir is almost round losing, so Ky has to be very stingy with what normal he tosses out. Whiffing 2D is fatal against Sol. Zato - this hasn't changed much, only Ky has more options now with the improved RTL, blitz shield and split ciels. Although Zato has the launch summon that opens right on top of you, he gets nothing off of it if you block so it's not round losing to block it. RTL is now an option to get out of the unblockable setup, blitz shield defends against staggered drills, split ciels make it more dangerous for Eddie to just sit back and begin a summon. As for chaotic players, I think the best is to try to filter out what is nonsense and ignore it, and pick a spot to counter attack. It's usually somewhere where they have overextended. I'd have to see your friend play, but he sounds more reckless than chaotic then. A true chaotic player would do something insane like run up VV RC/2D RC, stagger into riot stomp to force tactical battles instead of dancing ouside of the opponent's effective range.

I wouldn't necessarily say passive; negative style players tend to be subtle but fairly active in neutral to set up positions where their decisions are easy and thereby fairly mistake free (so much so that they could choose to pass without consequence in neutral or offense at times), whereas their opponents' decisions are hard and mistake prone. Think of it as always trying to be where your opponent doesn't want you to be and then asking him "well, what are you going to do from here?", and rendering many of their decisions to be wrong. It's not necessarily the best way to play fighting games either, though I think it does work fairly well for Ky. Rather, I would say it's one of many ways that can work and it really depends on your own personality and what you are comfortable with. The polar opposite style also works too, which for the lack of a better term I'll call the chaotic style of play. That is someone who sets the screen on fire every possible game second with complex tactical battles and bizzare yomi-intensive hitting wars, regardless if on offense, defense or neutral. These types of players make many mistakes and get hit a lot, but because the game suddenly becomes very complex their opponents end up making even more mistakes and get hit even more so that when the smoke is cleared, the chaotic player ends up on top. The tell tale signs of chaotic players are when you hear lots of comments like "how does he get away with all that BS?" or "that looked like a really stupid move, why did it work?", because they don't mind making unsound or "wrong" decisions so long as the game stays complicated. Almost like a hustler or a trickster, these people make the Creating Chaos and Inducing Variance writeup in this thread a lifestyle and thrive in complexity. If done right, their opponents won't understand what's going on on the screen, but the chaotic player has at least some understanding of what is going on in the chaos. The present king of this style is Kusoru by far. Past GG champions include Buppa Ky, and DC "chuck all coins and try to win within the first 30 game seconds" Johnny.

No problem. I'll do something about robo-ky. I also meant to do something with stun dipper, which I will get to although over half of it is no longer applicable for Xrd. My inital impression of Xrd matchups are 3-7 Ram 4-6 Millia, Faust, Sol, Elphelt 4.5-5.5 Chipp, Sin, Venom, Zato 5-5 Ino, Bedman 5.5-4.5 May 6-4 Leo, Slayer, Potemkin, Axl Though these will change as I play the game more and from the new patch.

Primary and Secondary Games It seems like nowadays people play many different fighting games and try to be tournament level in all of them. This doesn't really work all that well as you divide your attention across games and then you end up equally bad at all of the games, unless you are really just that talented and have that much free time to outplay everyone in everything. Instead, try to focus on one game (I'm going to assume it's Xrd or +R) if your time is limited, and then find one or two games that can supplement your primary game and play those casually. If you play something that's too similar (BB, P4U), then you might not learn or try something that could have otherwise helped you in your primary game. Try finding a dissimilar game that shores up something that you don't do well in Xrd. In my case, my secondary game is CvS2. It may surprise people to know that CvS2 actually runs a lot faster than GG, and you have to react or make decisions a lot more quickly in CvS2 than in GG. Since it runs so much faster, sometimes before a major match, I just play an hour of serious CvS2 beforehand. When I switch to GG afterwards, GG ends up feeling incredibly slow (i.e. Samurai Showdown speed) and I end up being able to see almost everything and react accordingly. Since my reactions are going downhill due to age and being retired, this helps immensely. I seriously recommend trying to practice CvS2 or MvC2 to at least casual level to supplement Xrd as your primary game. You will be surprised at the effects. EDIT: And if you want to get good at Melty Blood for some reason, I find that A3/CvS2 will be incredibly synergistic.

To be fair, I think this matchup did improve quite a bit for Ky. Split Ciels force Venom to setup and make decisions more quickly than in previous GGs. Plus they FINALLY gave Ky an out against upball to perpetuity in the corner with the improved RTL and barrier which is huge. Previously Venom could flowchart a victory by 1) get knockdown somewhere, 2) dark angel Ky into the corner, 3) run up and chain into upball, 4) do upball forever, 5) Ky dies, everyone goes home. Venom could feed his family with that basic strategy. Overall I think Venom still has a slight advantage (5.5-4.5) simply because first principles still apply (Ky must attack or lose), but at least Ky can now have outs in the corner other than passively dying.

Thanks for the comments. Good to see that this helps both old and new players alike.

Yeah, spamming books does not work against anyone that knows what they are doing. So then you are forced to attack, but approaching people is very hard because Manaka doesn't really threaten you outside of the corner. Her double jump shenanigans are good though, and normal bookshelf is a surprisingly good anti-air. 6D is really fast, you can surprise a lot of people with alpha counter 6D when you block a jumpin.

Rathy alpha counter is one of the strongest in the game, fwiw. Also, it's really hard to win with Manaka. The struggles are real.

Meh, the game is fine as is. It doesn't need any changes. I've come to learn that even Octavia has her uses in high level play.