Tari

On an unrelated note, just saw this in the Bang forums: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyWuQV-n-aM&feature=player_detailpage&t=871 That's quite the flashy corner combo Bang can do on Rachel. xD Good thing it doesn't do ridiculous damage, I suppose.

Yeah, I doubt CP will do it, either, if that's the case.

Yeah. I wish I knew what the scrolls actually looked like, but whatever. I just want my Rachel nendo. xD If only the scroll was the LE cover. That'd be sort of exciting. Or a giant Nago. I'd totally take that, too. I don't recall if BB allows this, but I do know that some PS3 games allowed for cross-compatible DLC between regions. Players with JP DLC could still use it on their NA copies of the games. Can't remember which game this was, though.

On reaction to the 10 frame startup of 2B? :P It's more likely that he does it based on whether Rachel jumps off the ground or not, or based on player patterns. If it's the former, I'm almost willing to bet that a delayed j.A or whatever overhead, or a 5B > delay > 6CD will probably counterhit him out of 360A. If it's the latter, though, that's not a reaction anymore, that's a read, lol.

Geezus. I'm going with Nippon-Yassan. Not sure how reliable they are with preorders of such large packages, but we'll see. I'll take the gamble if it costs me $60 less, haha. If you can get CSE for cheap enough (which you probably can, seeing as how even the LE is going for $15 nowadays), there's no real reason not to. While a lot of things are changing between CSE and CP, there's still a lot that's basically staying the same, as well. If nothing else, the way characters play (movement, spacing, normals, etc.) is pretty much unchanged, as are basic game mechanics like air dashes, barrier blocking, instant blocking, etc. Not really going to comment on the idea of buying two copies of CP. I can't afford that (at least not if I want the LE), so I'm personally just going to get the JP LE and call it a day, haha.

Either that or you've conditioned him horribly to always IB 360A Rachel's 5B. That would be pretty hilarious, actually.

ASCII arrows are neat, but they're not very reliable. I don't remember if they're font-dependent, but they are encoding dependent, which makes them pretty much non-viable. They suffer from the same issues as the icon arrows, in that they generate a lot of clutter in these types of combo lists (where many of the moves are command normals). ASCII arrows would actually have more problems in regards to being visually confusing when placed next to a bunch of '>' symbols, as well. On top of that, people who write combos would have to memorize the ALT-codes for every single arrow, which is probably more time-consuming than just learning numpad notation. I mean, even you aren't sure if there are enough arrows in the ASCII set to begin with, and you're the one drawing them right now. :P For what it's worth, in most games that use arrow inputs in combos, I believe there are abbreviations (QCF, QCB, etc.) or full-motion icons for those abbreviations to help alleviate the issue of over-arrowing. Numpad notation pretty neatly sidesteps all of those issues and is much easier to write and (at least for us) read. Anyway, glad you've got the tension bar/meter gauge figured out.

Yeah, you can find casual GG/BB on most days of the week that it's open (weds-sun). Sunday is sorta iffy, since a lot of people, myself included, are too tired from the events that happen on Saturdays like Dogfight and Carnival Burst. If you can't go randomly, Thursdays are probably your best bet outside of events. Brett tends to show up there to stream and you get a couple of regular GG players around in the afternoon. BB is a bit less populated than GG these days, but if you want to play it and I'm around, I can still play it decently. For GG, if you want good, challenging games, don't play me, lol. I've only been playing that game for a month or so, though I'm actively working on it.

Yeah. That's one of the situations where doing 2D first is actually beneficial. This usually pops up when you start from a knockdown with pumpkin/frog oki, though, not in the middle of a blockstring. Fuzzy guarding off of that is pretty impossible, too. Pretty much. The idea is to input the 2D while airborne, not before you've jumped. What order or timing you hit the buttons in once you've gone airborne is fairly unimportant, as long as you do it fast enough to get the IOH and still have enough wind to opt for the fuzzy guard.

Definitely this. If all you're trying to do is simply an instant overhead, j.2AD is the way to go. Any other way of doing the instant overhead tends to be related to specifically planned mind games or gimmicks that are pretty much unnecessary on Rachel. edit: kod makes a good point. If you're doing the IOH from neutral, 2D first is pretty reasonable, lol. You can still do it as j.2AD, but it's notably harder when starting from neutral.

I honestly can't tell if this thread is trolling at this point, but I'm going to assume it's not. Here's an example of half of a Rachel combo from the current console port of BlazBlue: Numpad notation: 6A CH, dash 5B > jc j.C > 2D > djc j.2C > j.214A, 1D, 5CC > 236C... Arrow notation: CH, dash > jc > > djc > , , :cbt: > ... ...or another, not very optimal one... Numpad notation: (carry to corner) 4B > 5B > 5C > 6CD > j.C > dash 5B > 5CC > 214A, 3C (1 hit) > 236A, 3C (1 hit) > 214C, 3C (1 hit) > 214B Arrow notation: (carry to corner) > > > > > dash > :cbt: > , (1 hit) > , (1 hit) > , (1 hit) > I suppose you could argue that the second list of inputs is easier to understand if you have no idea what numpad notation is, but for people who do know how to read numpad notation (which, as mentioned, is anyone with a few minutes of free time), the numpad notated list is both quicker and easier to comprehend. If I had used notations for the dashes (ie: 66 and two arrows), things would've been even more confusing in the arrow list. Charge inputs, double half circles, and other special inputs would be horrifying for me to look at as well. I was considering writing an explanation of the differences between numpad notation and arrow notation and why each is used for certain games (beyond just precedence), but now I don't feel like it. -cough- @bibi: did you just take a photo of your keyboard? lol

Wait, does this mean we get infinite guard impact again? If so, I'm totally gonna play this game, hahaha. I never knew how to combo with Talim, I always just mashed guard impact for the flashy effects when I was a kid.

Haha, whoops. I like the other line more, though. It's so much more awesome when Domon yells it in English. Shining Finger Sword was the best move in Gundam Versus NEXT.

Generally, you'll be using that combo to push the opponent towards the corner. If you get to the corner, you can do some corner stuff for knockdown and slightly more wind regen (ie: 5CC, etc.), I believe. Can't test at the moment, but that's what I recall. Midscreen, the 3C > 214C > 3C > 214B should work, I think? Sorry about the unsure answers, haha.

The combo you're probably thinking of is this one: 6A CH > dash 5B > jc j.C > 2D > djc j.2C (level 2) > j.214A > 1D > 5CC > 236C > dash > etc. The wind you want is 1D, as it sucks the opponent down and towards you, putting them directly into your 5CC. The timing for the wind is right about when you recover from summoning air George. If you do the wind too early, Rachel won't move, since air summons stall her aerial momentum. You can end with a couple of different things, though 3C > 214B is a pretty safe call.

Litchi's always been an annoying matchup for Rachel. Her normals and staff moves are good for stuffing Rachel's zoning attempts, and her combos will almost always involve extended corner carry while you're airborne, so you won't be regaining wind while being hit (though this is true of many characters' combos). It's mostly just her anti-zoning potential that makes her irritating for Rachel to play against. If you summon something in the wrong place, expect to be punished for it on reaction and end up in the corner with Daisharin spinning on your face. Even if you do get your summons out safely, remember that Litchi's staff can eat a hit of your pumpkin or just tag you at range (which can negate a pumpkin or cause George to dissipate). It's not as bad as it used to be, though. Litchi's old combos and corner oki were 20 times more annoying to watch, hahaha. Anyway, the matchup isn't really terrible, it's just far more annoying to deal with. ...especially since her crouching hitbox is too low for the instant overheads in this game, so you have to delay.............

Ah, yeah, there's some footage in the casuals video. Didn't think to check that, thanks for that. Will do so.

Shoutouts to everyone I met. I'm unfortunately bad with names, so I'll refrain from doing a list. Special thanks to all the guys who played GG with me and explained shit to me. Gotta keep working on my Bridget, haha. A bit sad I didn't get to play in the BB tourney, but it's probably for the best after my amazing casuals against brkrdave.... >_> @Jyosua: Do you have the earlier (non-top 8) GG matches, as well? Was looking for some of Abegen's matches but couldn't find them, haha. Dunno if that was even on your station, though.

Nah, we didn't have any emulated PSN this year. If we had, I imagine things would've been far smoother. The issue with the connection to PSN is that, even though the matches are P2P, the game still needs to check its connection status every minute or two, which leads to dropped games when one of those checks fails. An emulated JP PSN service would rectify that, but I doubt it's that easy to actually create that service. This year, we just hooked the PS3s up to a 4G connection and tried to log on to PSN. It was a pretty unstable thing.

We should make some sort of fake network service that just spams positive connection reports from JP PSN from a laptop, lol. Take this! My love, my anger, and all of my sorrow! Hahaha.

I had wanted to give a more detailed response to this earlier, but this is an unfortunately very late reply, as I was at EVO and pretty much zonked out for the entire weekend. Sorry about that. This combo is actually completely stable on Hazama. Just to double-check, I tried it with a slightly delayed BBL, with delayed j.C > dj.C, and with 6A CH > dash 5B, and it combo'd in every situation. If you'd like, I can record a video of the combo as reference later on. It's hard to say where you might have run into problems without seeing you perform the combo, unfortunately. My best guess is that your BBL is coming out too late. You can buffer the input of BBL during the Sword Iris and hit the button as soon as it ends. The only other possibilities I can think of are that your j.2C (lvl 2) height is too low, or that your 236B is hitting too early. Both can potentially cause issues with opponent placement when the Sword Iris hits. This shouldn't be an issue, either. There are two possible reasons that your combo is dropping at the 214C: 1) You're winding too late during 5CDC. This one is the likely issue. A late wind (for example, 5C(CD), where you push the second C and D at the same time) will cause you too slide forward during the 214A, which puts you too close for 3C (1) > 236A to drop a rod in range of the opponent. 2) You're microdashing before the first 3C. I doubt this is the issue. This is actually somewhat character specific. Some characters (ie: Tager) have huge aerial hitboxes, while others have significantly smaller aerial hitboxes. Characters also fall at different rates while airborne. Those two factors combined makes the j.2C (lvl3) timing a bit varied between characters. All I can say for this is to practice. There is still a pretty reasonable average timing you can use to land the level 3 on pretty much everyone. It's not really something I can explain, though. If you have any questions about combos and whatnot, feel free to ask here. If you want video examples or anything, a couple of us have recording equipment, though I don't know about whether people will have time to help out or not. For the time being, I'm not highly pressed for time, so I can record things. Anyway, glad you're learning Rachel. :D Didn't check this myself, but it sounds pretty solid. That said, the issue with very meaty frog setups is that the opponent can just opt to not tech, and then you lose George and your hard knockdown. The opponent will eat an extra few hundred damage for what basically amounts to a guaranteed air tech. Not necessarily the biggest issue, but it's still notable. You also don't really give the opponent any room to do anything except block, but with Rachel's corner mixup, that's not a huge issue unless you're low on wind. Also, while it's not a really important issue, it's worth pointing out that if the combo is long enough, this sort of setup actually would allow the opponent to tech after the 236A and before George even activates, which is pretty scary. Mind you, that is an incredibly rare situation, as it's hard to get hard knockdown with George and a meaty lobelia after an extended combo without the opponent already having the option to tech earlier.

Do we havr a start time for this, yet? I'm signed up for bb, gg, and exvs, so I'd like to know what's up, lol.

I don't think I actually press tgose buttons at exactly the same time, but it's close enough to not really matter, lol. As for characters falling too fast from BBL, that sounds more like an issue with the number of hits from BBL than a falling speed problem. I'd check, but I'm halfway to Vegas atm and all I have is my phone.

For what it's worth, if you just want to learn the timing of the 3C > 236B, you can go into training mode, shove the opponent into the corner, and then just do a point-blank 3C > 236B without wind. You can actually do that windless practice mid-screen, as well, but you can't really combo after it effectively on most characters, iirc. Might be a different story if you do a dashing 3C, can't recall.

Thanks for pointing that out. And yeah, going into the corner with knockdown, that's optimal. There are very few situations in which you'd opt to not go for that ender if you're looking for corner lockdown. When I said "not always what you'll want to do", I was referring to stuff like BBL and whatever damage combo paths, lol. ---- TD's corner frog combo path is pretty much optimal for damage, and you get both a frog and pumpkin out for oki. You do lose about half a wind stock from doing it. That said, the j.214A in the combo should probably be a j.214B.