Eshi

It's because the last match-up chart went so badly near its end, for dozens of pages. It'll take a while for the stigma of that to fade from everyone's memory. I'm sure there'll be a time for it to return, but it definitely won't be for CS1.

I'm sure bang players will start using frkz more as they get more used to the changes. It's always been good and it's still very good. Mugen however is bad and always has been by design, of course no one is going to use it. Didn't tsubaki get repeat move proration or something too? that would dissuade its use even more.

looks like a lot of fun but I'd be more inclined to order standby tickets for an airplane rather than drive. there were some really fun matches at tim's house, glad I got to shake the dust off my makoto & noel.

Risk means the ease of punishment. This takes into account things like frame disadvantage, recovery frames after whiffing, how many options can beat it... generally how likely you will regret doing something. Reward refers to how much is gained when something works, which can mean damage, okizeme, favorable positioning, etc. Skewed risk/reward means that one of them is drastically higher than the other. A character like hakumen has great damage off of a lot of his moves and has a lot of safe options for it because of good range or frame advantage or something similar. A character like, say, noel has oppositely skewed risk/reward - her safer options for getting damage have really small reward against standing opponents, and her higher damaging options tend to be really easy to punish on prediction/reaction.

anyone interested in going to that mid Tennessee tournament on the 22nd? I should be available but it's a 4 hour drive with like 200 miles of straight road, so I ain't going alone.

a 4 hour drive is pretty long but I'm considering attending this. I'd bring other players from atlanta with me as well.

fuzzy guard j2C was definitely my favorite moment in the series, but there were so many good ones. japanese pros are so gross.

for makoto, anything with tsujikawa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqSUIVozSNo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pvl63iJYWM

Carl is significantly worse but he's not actually bad. Nirvana's health is harder to manage, his max damage is toned down and he lost his crazy jB FC but he got a lot of interesting buffs too. I think he'll look completely different once players get used to jC/3D and discover more.

Kyaku not playing carl = profound sadness, but his platinum was so ridiculously good that I'll get over it

that match was so hype it blew my mind. christ ALL of these matches are blowing my mind, such insanely strong players.

that stream has some phenomenal players, thanks for posting it jiyuna!

yeah, I had a double take there. I'm surprised people aren't talking a lot more about Rachel's potential - jA high + 5B 2B gatling for super fast mix-up, old 6A back, gross damage back, and the same great corner pressure coupled with the IB nerf.

nice first post andrew =) I'm wondering if I'll make it to winter clash, hadn't thought about it yet. Name: Chris (Eshi) Location: pretty much ATL, Duluth when school's out Travel Ability: I can drive and will drive others for tournaments Games: Blazblue - Makoto, Guilty Gear - Zappa XBL: Koinonea Skill: top tier BB, need practice tier GG

a... what? georgia needs to get hype for ATL revival, I'm tired of me being the only entrant when I know more people care about the game and can play at a higher level if they put in the effort. SFIV is LAME, BB 4 LYF

This match-up feels pretty terrible to me. Makoto doesn't have any tools to make her stay on the ground so Taokaka can completely control the flow of the match - she'll run away when she has a lead, she'll initiate offense whenever it's advantageous. Throwing out whiffed jB's hoping she'll run into it isn't very viable, and 6A is even worse. Parry will lose to lows and slight timing differences in Tao's pressure, DP will whiff on her lows and you really don't want it to whiff. To me, the match-up feels like Makoto running around trying to hit Tao with something random, Tao initiating her pressure whenever she wants and Makoto having no good options to prevent or escape it. Oh, and if you ever get the chance to pressure Tao she can CA out of it and start her own, or run away again. Feels pretty shitty.

platinum looks so god damn adorable. I'm definitely going to pick her up when she's released, she's like zappa and may combined into one freakishly kawaii abomination.

I'll be pretty stunned if Noel turns out to be as strong as players' initial impressions of her. Makoto's combos disturb me now, i liked when drive had a million frames of hitstop

I totally forgot to brag about my award for contributing makoto tactics, YALL SCRUBS BETTER GET ON MY LEVEL

I'll be there, ofcourse. I'm surprised you decided to post this here =)

This sentence literally makes no sense to me. Rachel's normals have extremely short range. If she wants to pressure you, be it in the corner or midscreen, she is in DP range. Her mix-up is 'okay' if she has two wind, but still easy to stop as long as you don't mash through pumpkin frame traps and react to highs. It doesn't get scary until she's cornered you. Imagine a world where... you had to block one lobelia? That's not exactly tragic. And even if you correctly predict an A lobelia, I'm guessing the rachel you play with hasn't tried winding it for a counterhit. In general 3C isn't a good tool for this match-up due to wind, except for closing some distance. Makoto can afford to make quite a few mistakes. Rachel can't afford to make any mistakes, because Makoto does 3x her damage. If you seriously think this, then you have never played a decent Mu or Hazama and the Rachel is simply outplaying you. Sorry if that comes off as harsh, but this match-up isn't nearly as bad as you think it is.

A lobelia's recovery is too fast. B and C lobelia should be easy to punish on reaction. If she's blowing her gauge to make up for bad reads then she'll run out quickly, and she's dead without wind. Range won't help anyone with rush down once someone has actually started their rush down. In which case, your tools to deal with it are A) DP RC B) Parry C) 5A/2A D) Blocking. D) is a fine choice for anyone because her mix-up is really predictable without 2 or more wind. Never, ever use 3C or 5D as an opener against good players. They are both super risky, only punish 1-2 choices and hitting with 5D from midscreen isn't even rewarding. Don't play so desperately, be patient. Her space control isn't godlike. It takes a lot of skill to outzone good players with Rachel, but she can't do it forever because of wind use and low damage giving you more time to find an opening and destroy her. You'll get used to approaching with experience and patience, like any other zoner (most of them are better at it than Rachel, to boot).

Against Rachel, there isn't really much Makoto can do to get in. Wind + lobelia trajectory + pumpkin are effective counters to her approaches. You just have to be patient, wait for her to make a wrong read and then blow her up. Staggered 5CC is a pretty good mix-up against her. Her only defensive tool is cat chair which isn't invincible on start-up, so you can frame trap her with this for a beefy combo. Her rushdown isn't actually that good, once you learn her frame data you'll find that she has holes everywhere and really simple mix-up. Even if you don't know it, IB > DP RC is pretty much all you need.

he was being sarcastic and that was the point.

we can't go. Ivysaur has a test tomorrow he can't postpone and it's a 14+ hour drive so he opted out, not to mention all the final projects and tests we have. We were really looking forward to traveling to our first out-of-state major but this was the worst time possible =/