Eshi

I haven't visited you TN guys in so long I'll try really hard to attend this tournament! It might not happen because two of my very close friends have weddings that month >_> I'll be checking my schedule!

I've always been very strong at blocking thanks to grinding against Ivysaur's retarded Carl pressure, but... her guard cancel should be a LOT less shitty. She would be perfect otherwise :3

Hey guys. Figured I'd finally post here. I started out this game with Akihiko but got annoyed by my inability to consistently win against players of any level, so I've switched to Elizabeth. This character is dumb as fuck, sooo much fun!

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, and it reeeally needs to be because it's a GREAT trick. While comboing an opponent in the corner, end whatever combo with 5C > 2C > C Maragidyne or just 2C > C Maragidyne such that they have to tech on the ground. Thanatos immediately starts Maragidyne after 2C recovers which then comes out a few frames after the opponent wakes up. This setup shuts down a TON of options. If they try to poke or F-Action on wake-up, Thanatos will probably get broken but Maragidyne will still come out for a beefy fatal counter combo. If they try to roll out, Elizabeth has already recovered and can just fatal throw them back into the corner. If they don't emergency tech, the combo resets as Maragidyne picks them up. The only reliable option is to block, but they're still forced to block for 2 seconds giving time for liz to mix them up or perfect her positioning. It's extremely strong.

Editing this post with information that's actually useful. There are two things that make this match-up really hard: 1) Gunshots. Elizabeth can't explicitly deal with it because Magnetic Blast isn't fast enough to punish on reaction. You literally have nothing to disuade its use so approach patiently, there's no reliable way around it. 2) F-Action. While usually bad in most match-ups this shit is retarded against Elizabeth, but there ARE ways around it. Maragidyne is made useless in neutral and after knockdowns, so don't use it outside of combos (same for B laser). This plus gunshot zoning means that you should always keep Naoto within mid-close range if you can help it. The main problem then is that Naoto needs to be respected in pressure far more than normal because she'll break your persona (or hit you) whenever it's triggered. Here are some mix-ups that I've brainstormed to help get around this: * 5CC > 214A. This dissuades her from auto-pilot DPing after every block 5CC, and it's air unblockable if she jumps. Two birds with one stone. The main problem is that its hit confirms are weak. * 5CC > 2C makes the persona eat the F-Action follow-up. At close range, this gives Liz the chance to quickly dash 5CC for a counterhit. Note that 5D vs. F-Action will push Naoto too far to punish. * 5AA > 9 > A+C > 6 IAD > jA cross-up. If she tries to F-Action through the holes in Liz's block string pressure, this will make the follow-up whiff and leave her vulnerable to CH 5CC > 2C. * Baiting. This is always my least favorite option because it's pure prediction and therefore unreliable. My next project is figuring out how to properly space oneself against Naoto's pokes. I need a lot more experience with this match-up still.

akihiko is most like AE2012 makoto. shitty pokes and gets zoned out easy, but has better mobility than grapplers and god help you if he gets in and guesses right

well if you're just talking about her combos then that's just the way she works so nothing you can do. But in neutral or knockdown situations, Maragidynes are just a free EX corkscrew. Aki's one of the few characters that shuts it down completely (another is Naoto).

Is the venue for NEC going to be bigger than the one for Summer Jam? Like, significantly? Packing all of 119 P4A players into the tiny "anime" room was not the best of times, lol. Even the main room was decently cramped.

Sorry for being really anti-social at this tournament. A combination of the anime room being stupidly crowded + not doing as well as I wanted in both P4A and BB + boyfriend unexpectedly being sick and then getting me sick really mellowed me out. I plan on coming back for NEC so, I look forward to seeing y'all again!

who the shit is the player SteelCoil? His Labrys is super gross, he made me look free as hell last night. I learned a lot though! GGs!

Maziodyne isn't that threatening. If she does 236A then EX Kill Rush that bitch. In general she doesn't get much reward for just throwing any version of it out so just block. Using any Maragidyne is actually a free punish for Akihiko, just do D duck > EX Corkscrew on reaction to get a free fatal counter every time. It's flat out impossible for her to land it, even with a well spaced knockdown. Another thing to keep in mind, if this bitch ever corners you and you block a 2C, do not try to hit it. She'll just 5B you in the face and start corner pressure again. Priority 1 is to GTFO so you don't immediately die, so jump out or maybe e-action or even weave > corkscrew to predict the coming 5B. Other characters will hit the persona with something jump cancelable and immediately jump away, but akihiko doesn't actually have anything jump cancelable on block (which is what hitting a persona counts as).

It's funny how PQ's going ragemode when he clearly doesn't understand the concept of a match-up. It assumes that players of equal and highest possible skill level are playing against eachother and weighs which character has the advantage, if any. If your point is that Akihiko has the tools to deal with anything (which is completely wrong), then say that his match-ups are even, not his match-ups are good when you're smarter. :|

wat. WAT. Shit that's awesome. just on hit or on block too?

man, I love playing ranked in this game. people say that the best players are in player but I've had so many fantastic matches in ranked (marlinpie, banana ken & many others) and learned so much. It's crazy how competitive this game is already, nothing like blazblue o_o

2B seems really difficult to AA Yu's dive stab with. I need to figure out a more reliable way to punish it, but IBing the unsafe one works pretty well. This is starting to become one of my favorite match-ups to play because of the emphasis on footsies. Yu's pokes are about as good as Mitsuru's but have a LOT more recovery, so if you space yourself correctly then you can reaction Kill Rush punish a whiffed poke. I dunno, playing with strong players just makes this match-up super fun. It feels very even IMO. After getting a long knockdown off of a move that grants oki (counterhit DP, Lvl 3 Corkscrew, any corkscrew in the corner), do 669 for a dash buffered jump and then do j4B. If timed correctly (pretty easy actually) and Yu tries to DP on wake-up, the jB whiffs through the invincibility but you land and block before getting hit. IMMEDIATELY run under him if this happens so that he can't super cancel on the way down. If he doesn't DP then just press buttons as you normally would. Oh, and you can do SFIV-style cross-up safe jumps on him too, his DP has no hitbox in the back of it.

It is not heavily in his favor, it's probably even actually. Your points are true but Akihiko is also MUCH faster with his Kill Rushes and Corkscrews than Kanji, who's attacks are generally very slow. focus on limiting his options, reacting to his approaches and hitting him as hard as possible before resetting to neutral and the match-up gets a lot easier. maybe sneak in a reset or two if you feel lucky.

as for his F-Action, if you trigger it with a cross-up the active frames will go in the wrong direction and you can punish it! also if you do a REALLY deep jB then you can block it, it has like 2 frames of start-up or something. Way too precise to be reliable unless you're an execution god like Kubo.

man, hook b being +3 on block is such bullshit rofl. 5B fatals all day :3

i swear to god, the number of matches I've had stolen from me by random DP's and blocked DP > super is so pathetic. Why am I so dumb

Wow, I just figured out a crazy weird glitch. I was practicing CH 2B hit confirms (on aegis jumping) with this combo: 2B > jumb back airdash jB > 5B > jB > 5AAA > A Hook > C Duck > B Corkscrew But if Aegis is high in the air by the time B Corkscrew connects, instead of wall splatting in the corner she flies in the other directions and wall splats the opposite wall. As if the corksrew hit her from the other side. o_O

dj.A means double jump A i believe

Huh. Did anyone else know that LVL3 Duck has upper body invincibility? Saw it here. This could actually be useful since it looks extremely similar to the cross-up setup, duck > weave > EX duck > corkscrew.

I get fatal 5B all the time. this is my favorite corner fatal combo, makes people shit bricks to see.

chie is really fast so you have to be careful when you use jC, otherwise it's a pretty good tool in this match-up. for Chie her best tool is probably Black Spot, it's decently fast and outpokes akihiko really well and fatal counters and EX version has super armor. be careful not to run into it. Chie has the fastest recovering F-Action in the game so it's kind of hard to bait. Do NOT let that shit hit you while you're near a corner or she can follow it up with huge damage for no meter. You can "safe jump" Chie's F-Action by triggering it with a jump-in and immediately blocking low. Once she lands she's not in counterhit state but she IS crouching, which means you can punish with 5B [one hit] > B Kill Rush combo. If you're fast then 5B will fatal in the air for jB loops.

you can follow up a counter hit after a short hop, but it's still reeeeally bad. :/