Moblin

It's true that my gameplan with Haku in this version is to get smacked around a little and then OD back into the game with a lucky read/mistake by my opponent. Reduce his damage, make him a more versatile character again. I miss old hotaru, but what is the main difference between this 2b and old 2b? edit: People are still discovering neat little tricks with Hakumen. The problem is that they are made null and void by having OD combos that completely overshadow everything else that is interesting in his gameplan. To make Hakumen an interesting character, this is my current wishlist: Eliminate the current damage of his OD or make Mugen into his overdrive. Give him a little more blockstun on hop- agito so that if he has meter, he can do badass mixup. Reduce his meter gain a little bit, and bring back old Hotaru. Keep the enma follow up on his Drive because it's actually a pretty balanced call-out if his OD didn't give him 8k off of them.

Seems like you have to condition your opponent to respect it with j.D before you can do anything with it, as most people know it's interruptible. Some people do respect hop agito in general though. That's a great video and I learned a lot from it. Since hop Agito, fundamentally, only works when they respect it: you can also airdash after the Agito to do AD j.b mixup which is really really strong. Airdashing j.B after Agito also punishes the backdash option and either straight up punishes it or allows you to hit their guard, I'm not sure which depending on how fast the airdash and j.b come out.

2b combos into both Kishuu > Enma or Renka on normal hit. It's really good to use when you think they'll jump out. Sometimes it's really hard to confirm a 2b hit though, so a simpler combo that gets you meter and knockdown if you notice you hit with 2b: 2b, 2a > 2a > 3c does 1k+ damage if I remember correctly. Gets you knockdown meaning oki setups or more mixup. You can use varying amounts of 2A before 3C for knockdown.

That's a good idea, but if they meaty the 5a it will hit you in your jumping frames before you can hotaru. It takes about 7 frames to jump.

Hotaru is not good to use against a smart opponent on wake-up anymore. A meaty will beat it clean before you can Tiger knee it. If they just sit there and wait to hit you after you tech, it's a free punish after hotaru whiffs. And people like doing this already to bait a counter. Use hotaru to call out your hard reads. If you have them in the corner and you think they'll jump, hotaru. If they reaaaally like to airdash in on you, hop ---> hotaru them in the face on prediction. Hotaru leads to so much damage that I feel it's worth it to figure out when and how to hit with it, even after its nerfs. Most people don't have the reaction time/presence of mind to insta-burst a sudden hotaru hit, and it gets you so much damage to AD ---> OD confirm it at any stage of the match. @soviet: Learn a better combo from CH Agito, since you seem to get that a lot in matches. Rather than 5c, 3c try something like Agito CH, j.b, land, 5C > kishuu > 2C BnB loop or Agito CH, j.b, land, 5C > Zantestsu devastation

Yeah, that's cool man! I need to work on 5C after the Enma OD cancel. Usually I just hop Hotaru if I don't have enough for Zantetsu. 5C seems like a much better route. Not sure if you just forgot to add this, but you can definitely get double 5C in the corner after the Enma OD for every character as well. After two 5C you usually have enough for Zantetsu. For: j.C > Hotaru > neutral j.C > 6C In the corner, do you jump cancel or AD cancel the hotaru? It's really hard for me to get low enough to land 6c Are any Hakumens going to SCR?

A player in my scene was getting sick of my Agito spam in neutral, and this is what he came up with: You have to predict the Agito somewhat. But if Hakumen tries to IAD over his opponent and Agito from a neutral game position, a backwards normal jump and airgrab will beat Agito almost every time. You have to jump at the same time Haku does. He plays Litchi though so jumping away from Hakumen is something that is not rare in the matchup, so he uses it as an option select.

I like doing renka(2) more sometimes because you can do the old airdash combos from it. Those were my favorite Haku BnB. Honestly Renka(2) definitely has its place for low scaling but carrying combos. Renka(1) >kishuu does tons of stuff as well for an extra star. To get used to Haku's new combo paths, like 2b > Enma I just go into abyss mode and try and hit confirm only that route to win (while I grind stats). You learn to hit confirm it because sometimes the computer blocks and sometimes it doesn't. The item Mr. Stoic gets stats rewars faster while reducing yours to 0, so you get plenty of practice with the combo per match. And Abyss mode is fun. @Omnix: You mentioned using Enma to stall for stars during your overdrive combo - what is your combo route after Enma once you've used it to stall for enough stars? I have a tough time getting them back to the ground for a Zantetsu or a super, if I do anything but OD cancel the Enma.

Oops, I meant to say Enma, not Gurren. For 2 stars, it's just so efficient to confirm into enma for almost 2k, corner carry, and knockdown instead of whatever > 3c. I, too, am sad about Renka's inefficiency as a combo move. I use renka after a 2c on hit sometimes to catch their jump. I also use it for a really specific mixup I like to condition my opponents to blocking. But other than that it is largely unused.

So a goldmine of new Hakumen vids just hit Jourdal's channel. I'd like to talk about some of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvJtW9qgSvM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYMx1iyfUU4 These matches between Chibaken and Noel/Hazama give me some really cool ideas. A few notes: 1. 5c > Gurren, 6a reset shenanigans in the corner. Will work on anyone once. Probably not after that. Unfortunately, Chibaken tries it 20 times. 2. Does anyone know why he ends his air combos with j.B, j.A > Agito instead of the usual j.2C > Agito? Usually did it in the corner. 3. 2C seems to be used a lot to prevent jump outs and looks surprisingly hard to punish on whiff if used correctly. Also saw other hakumens using this, but the ability to anticipate the situations where it is useful remains elusive to me. 4. The use of 5c in pressure is really interesting. It's -3 on block so it shouldn't really be used, but Chiba is conditioning his opponents to respecting it by special cancelling it like 50% of the time. Still not sure if it's that great of a thing to do. It seems kind of gimmicky. He does get a lot of damage off of it though. 5. The ability to convert any 2a CH or small hit into 2b > gurren is impeccable and something I should work on

I was like that for a while too, and about 90% of the hakus I fight online never use the followup either. To get past it you have to actively train yourself to do it. Record a training dummy to use 5b or something, then time a counter to catch it. When you hit D, immediately after hit and hold A. It should be like a footstep heel-to-toe. Ba-dum. D --> A. Do this every time you counter now. Never just hit D. Then just learn what moves/characters that it's NOT good to hold A against. Much easier that way imo.

I hate it when I do that accidentally.

That would be amazing if it was. I've been having a lot of trouble with backdashing but I can't test it out for myself until later this week.

Yeah sorry should have been more clear. With the amazing amount of meter gain that Hakumen has in CP, he can afford to use 2 stars to try a few Yomi enmas in neutral. Usually they just block it and then oh well. But the risk vs. reward is usually worth it in my experience. Especially with how easy it is to bait bursts on an enma combo. If they block it, sometimes I won't jump cancel, wait a split second, and renka. Usually catches people because they are trained to expect Hakumen to be in the air after a blocked Enma. I am definitely going to work on my combo execution more...

When Amane is at lvl 3 drill, he's scary as fk. My question is can he gatling into his drill so that he can force you to block a move, then DRILLL LEVEL 3, and have it be gapless? I was trying to counter/yukikaze the drill when I knew it was coming but I couldn't quite get it to come out as the blockstun ended and as he was following up with Drill. Ho many and which moves can he start this with?

Jin pressure is so hard to deal with. You're obviously much better than me but as an observer I can definitely suggest some things that I've seen better Hakumens than me do. Here are some things you could try. That jin really liked using DP's on wakeup. He had a tendency to especially use them in the corner. If you know he's going to neutral tech after you knock him down, jump with barrier on his wakeup and come down with a J.b right before you hit the ground. You'll barrier block if he DP's and hit his guard if he doesn't. If he starts calling this out and uses an Anti-air on wakeup, replace J.b with Agito. When you guys are doing neutral footsies with J.C, and you have a lot of meter, kishuu works wonders. Empty back hop or neutral hop --> kishuu, enma catches a lot of people off guard and is safe on block, and low profiles under Jin's j.c and a lot of his normals as well. Especially when he likes jump > J.C a ton.

What other option is there after whiffing a counter, except to counter again to catch the counter punish in case it's mistimed? and then you 2d twice in a row while they walk up and grab you

Oh, I was reading it wrong. I thought 2d (catch) and 2d (attack) meant the regular and enma variants, after the counter was activated. Instead of claiming it's confusing to read, I think it is much more likely that I just had too many beers today. I suppose if the opponent was good at it, they could block the countering of a projectile on purpose, and be able to meaty you as you come out of the animation of the counter or setup some other kind of mix-up.

Yeah, I mean Hakumen should be invincible through the entire animation, so it can't be negative on block if you're invincible through it right? Or maybe that's not the right definition of being negative on block. I'm just wondering at what point can the opponent move as it relates to when we can, after the animation of the catch and the invincibility ends and their blockstun is over.

Does anyone know how much blockstun the catching part of Hakumen's drive has, now that they are blockable? On the Wiki frame data, it leaves that part blank.

Yeah, you're definitely right about the combo consistency. I'll probably be picking up an ASUS monitor soon - so I can practice combos at home that will be no different from tournament combos. I'll try doing 3c after the CT as well, but it doesn't seem very unsafe on block at +0. What do you(Spark or other Hakumens) think about the drawbacks of standing still to 5d the flying staff? When watching some Hakumens in this matchup, they tend to opt for lots of movement in the neutral game and blocking/cutting the staff when they get the chance, and coming off as more unpredictable as well. Do you think this is worth the trade-off of simple, stationary meter gain with 5d? Standing still to 5d it still lets her AD in on you with her staff during the wind-down of the move. If we get a good discussion of this going we can definitely copy any relevant Litchi vs. Haku info to the matchup thread, or just continue the discussion there. edit: Also thank you Spark for the analysis. I feel like getting advice from you now leaves me with no excuse to keep losing

I have no problem with the idea of just being defensive and waiting for stars, and then blowing the opponent up when I get an opening. That idea is the most true to the concept of Hakumen as a character anyway. Yeah, I'm kinda realizing that all my normals get beat like 75% of the time... I had a lot of success blocking his mix-up, which threw off his game and let me get some openings for hits.

Please tell me what I can do better here in this matchup. Any and all advice is appreciated. http://www.twitch.tv/kingsofco/b/494518119?t=266m35s Anyone with any advice on the Hakumen vs. Litchi matchup? Of course advice from Spark would be like Christmas but I will take any criticism or thoughts very seriously. These were grand finals for a big tournament here in CO. We were both very nervous and dropped a HUGE amount of combos. I had a ton of fun but I WANNA TO BEAT THIS LITCHI NEXT TIME!!

What is the advantage of superjumping in the last part of Hakumen's BnB as opposed to normal jumping?

Well that changes everything. Any hakumens going to SoCalR?