Tari

Friend from high school, works at Game Center over here. And yeah, if he didn't pay, I'd kick him out myself. xD

The guy I'm driving down to EVO with doesn't have a room, so he was wondering if he could stay in the PNW room. It's not my room, so I figured I should ask about it.

Sign me up for both. Why not, lol.

Yeah, I was just joking with the OD super comment, haha. While it would be nice for Rachel to have some buffed normals or specials, I'm pretty okay with what she's got now--and imagine the cries of OP if she got even better again. :P

Her supers get buffed? ./cough Other than that, nothing that I know of. Having said that, the fast wind regen is really nice.

I've been assuming he means Spark, our resident Hakumen mod. Haven't had a need to contact him yet myself, so I can't say that I'm right with 100% certainty, though.

Never knew that, awesome. \o/ Now to just survive the drive.

Looks like I'm going to be making that 8 hour drive from Norcal to Vegas. Whoo~! ./cough I wonder what parking's going to be like? Heh. Anyway, I'll see you guys there.

For 5B > 2D > 9j.A > j.B > jc j.BABC (or jc j.ABAC), you just have to time the 2D and air hits correctly. I just booted up the game and tried, and it seems pretty easy to input 2D a bit before you can actually jump cancel out of the 5B. The wind lasts long enough, and the short gap prevents superjumps from occurring. ^This shouldn't really be happening. If you're landing the first j.A lower than you are off of 5B > 9j.2DA, it means you're doing it too late, and there's a higher chance of you not having the wind effect when you go for the fuzzy. On a related note, while I'm a personal fan of the j.ABAC fuzzy (it's 1 frame faster, I suppose?), it's a bad idea to use that if you do the 5B > 2D > 9j.A path into the overhead. If you mess up the wind timing or anything, there's a chance you'll float too high and the second j.A will whiff due to crossing up the opponent. In that situation, j.BABC still forces the opponent to block, as the second j.B hits behind. That said, if the crossup occurs, it's not quite safe no matter what.

As much as I wish that weren't true.... But yeah, netplay is a realm many people will opt out of. If you have the option to play people locally, it's usually the better choice. When you don't have that option, though, well, there's only so much you can do. @Surf: P4's not exactly the best game. There isn't a whole lot of depth to it when compared to more complex fighters, but it's still a fun, casual-ish game. It's also a very good introductory fighter for people who are new to the genre (which is one of the goals of the game, so I'd say they did a pretty good job). ...and don't feel bad about your play count, haha. At this point, I think almost everyone here has outstripped me in games played by at least 1k. I'm probably still down in the low hundreds. ><

Never gonna stop playing Rachel~. I'll probably pick up Izayoi as another sub, though, alongside Platinum. Gotta actually get around to learning the combos for the other characters at some point, really....

Oh, you guys are flying out on the 15th? What time? I should try to get a similar flight time so I can taxi to the airport with you guys too. >.>

I assume you mean the 17th? Anyway, I'll definitely be heading down to EVO. Not sure yet about how I'm getting there (either going down with the Norcal/Socal guys or driving down myself), and I'll be heading back up on the 15th (either driving or flying, not sure yet). I think I'll probably take you up on the offer for the room unless something really unexpected happens. If I do end up flying back up, do you think anyone could drop me off at the airport on the 15th, or should I assume I'm taxi-ing my way there? :P

Are you talking about BBL combos? You have to take a different combo path against Makoto (BBL > lvl3 j.2C > George summon > 5CC > 236A will fail on her after the 236A, iirc), or burn wind for 2D to keep her lower in the air, iirc. Can't recall the Makoto specific combos, though. I rarely get a chance to use them nowadays, so it seems to have just faded from my memory. Might've involved 5BB > 5CC or 6B > 5CC around where the 236A is, but again... can't remember. I'd test it, but I actually have to head out in a few minutes. Maybe someone else can answer the question in the meantime?

Ah, went and looked for it again, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zk6rkROqKA&t=8m6s It's not part of the qualifiers, sorry about that. Guess I remembered wrong. :/

I might take you up on that. When are you guys getting down there/heading back up? Sort of important for my travel plans. :P

How are you guys getting to evo? My evo plans basically fell apart, so I'm both trying to figure out rooming and travel. I'd rather not buy plane tickets (especially not this late), but I might have to. :/

Sorry, using my phone to post, so I can't really check and link the videos. I'm pretty sure there was at least one BI combo in the arcrevo qualifiers, though.

100% agreed with you on that. If it were a normal super, you'd see people combo-ing into it as a pretty common occurrence, I think. It wouldn't be as hype as it is now, though, when you see someone actually do a BI combo. :P

In certain situations, going from a j.C CH into j.[C] allows you to get a second j.C and continue comboing from there, as well. Not always worth it, of course. 1) It's a height and speed dependent thing. I don't have any video tutorials on hand, but for the level 2 j.2C combos, it's mostly about timing the 2D and the jump cancel correctly. It's a bit weird when you're starting, but it's pretty easy to do once you figure it out. The level 3 j.2C is a guaranteed mid-combo fatal, and it's typically done after Baden Baden Lily (you will very rarely see it off of a normal frog combo). It also comes down to timing, mostly, though the height that you start your j.2C at is more important here. 2) 6B is a decent ranged poke, and it's useful if you think a player might try to approach you or throw something out at mid-range. It's also good in certain blockstrings, if you believe a player will try mashing in a gap somewhere. 6A is Rachel's anti-air. Huge hitbox, decent recovery on whiff (hence why you see people spam it), very good combo paths on CH, and can break projectiles due to the way the hitbox and invuln properties are set. There's not much I can say about it. Just try using it as an anti-air against jump-ins a bunch to get used to the timing. Check out the size of the active hitbox, too: http://www.dustloop.com/guides/bbcse/hitbox/rachel/6A.html (the red area is what you're looking at) 3) The updated Rachel Gameplay Guide by _kro and sakaku covers basically everything about how to zone with lobelias and pumpkins. It's mostly screen denial. You want control over as much of the screen as you can get, and you want the opponent to be on the other side of all of your zoning tools until you decide it's time to move in. That way, if the opponent tries to come to you, you'll have lightning rods, pumpkins, frogs, and whatever normal moves you want to use ready for defense. Remember that a lot of zoning is dependent on good understanding of what your opponent wants to do, and your denial of that option. For example, if he wants to jump and air-dash forward, you do 236B and cut that avenue of approach off, or you throw a pumpkin in his face, or you do 236A with an 8/9 wind. If you have a frog out, the third option will probably cause the opponent to block, land on the frog, and get stuck in blockstun for a while, as well. Defensive zoning and screen control basically means that you should, while your tools are available or deployed, always have a way to deny any of your opponent's options. 4) 5B > 2D > 9j.A is one of the more common ways to get used to it. Having said that, if you're comfortable with your inputs, I suggest not doing the 2D before jumping (ie: do 5B > 9j.2DA instead) because it carries the risk of causing you to super-jump. The early 2D also gives the opponent an extra few frames to react to the wind animation itself (though this is useful for baiting a high block and instead gatling into a 2B for the low). As a result, generally speaking, doing 2D after you jump cancel is better. Make sure you jump forwards when performing it, though, or you run some risk of whiffing the possible follow-ups, or even of whiffing the initial j.A. Remember that the instant j.A overhead doesn't work on certain characters (Litchi, for example), so you either have to delay it or use j.B with a slightly different timing. Of course, you won't really get an overhead that's as fast as possible in those cases, but it's still not bad. 5) That's player preference, honestly. If you think it might work for you, go ahead and try it. I used to play around with Rachel on pad with just the face buttons, with wind at the bottom (clockwise from bottom: D, A, B, C), but I've basically stopped playing pad at all these days.

Yeah, the FC from the [b+D] is what lets you do the girokasu combo. There are a few places where it's actually optimal to use girokasu, but they're usually corner combos that involve multiple reps of 2C. I don't recall a midscreen combo where it's actually optimal. It just looks hype as all heck, and doesn't drain your health the way that [b+D] loops do. As for Brutal Impact, I still stand by it being pretty useless, but if you've got a decent setup for it, by all means, use it. I'm not sure I understand how it's possible for someone to mash DP and get counterhit, and yet not be able to roll out. Getting counterhit on a DP mash requires that there be a fairly sizeable gap during which players should be able to roll.

Surf's combo has to be done off of a FC starter. The mid-combo Guillotine is something that only works off of FC. The JP term for it is "Girokasu", if I recall correctly. As for brutal impact, it's pretty much useless for unblockable setups. The only time you'll get anyone with it as an unblockable is if they have no idea what it does or they think they can block it (courtesy of playing against S.Lab or something). It's pretty much as bad as a fully charged 5B unblockable. The primary use of BI in a combo is for a high-damage round ender that doesn't expend your axe meter. It doesn't see much use outside of that particular situation, unless people are trolling (mind you, the occasional full-screen BI-B is always funny if it lands).

I believe the j.B is usually omitted for proration and the occasional height issue. There's nothing really wrong with using it in your combos, haha. That said, it's best to be able to execute the level 2 j.2C off of a single j.C as well, just so that you'll be prepared in those cases where j.B > j.C might cause problems.

There's been some experimentation with the use of vertical lotus for j.2C combos and other stuff, but I don't believe anything really concrete has come out of it yet. As for oki, lotus is a pretty reasonable long-range oki option. At close range with knockdown, I'd probably stick with frog and pumpkin.

Basically. It's a bad matchup for Labrys, and a lot of it comes down to making good reads and blocking effectively. Mind you, I'm not actively playing this game now, so I don't really know if there's been any new discoveries in terms of anti-Aigis play, but I'm pretty sure it's largely the same as it was before.