Tari

Just tested it. It does, in fact, catch all air techs. I'm rather surprised, myself. >.>; I do. Sorta. Favourite corner combo is this one: "5B > 5C > Hell's Fang > HF Followup > RC > Gauntlet Hades (1) > RC > j.D > jc j.D > j.214C > dash 5D > 623C > j.236C > j.236C > dash 3C > 22C" 100 meter! 3.4-3.8k damage depending on starter! Whoot. 6A's guardpoint doesn't cover enough of Rachel to make her safe against air DPs. You could try making the opponent tech higher by doing a longer/higher-hitting air combo into j.2C, but I doubt that'll make a difference. Alternatively, the opponent can just late tech, which gives them a pretty free escape, too. 5B is somewhat better than 6A against this, because it has a hitbox that reaches all the way to the ground. The only upside to this gimmick against DPs is that it's pretty hard to get a frame 1 DP if you tech somewhere you're not expecting to. It's far easier to just block.

@lumin: Oh, yeah. You're spot on. It's a gimmick that Rachel doesn't need at all. I just enjoy my gimmicks. :D I believe this. I was already pretty sure it wouldn't catch forward techs, just because of the way those techs move.

This is pretty arbitrary Rachel discussion, but do you guys think most people would expect to tech in mid-air after a j.2C knockdown? I'm going to say it's not a great tactic to employ much, but if you think it'll work on your opponent or you want to mess with gimmicks, it's yet another one. There are a number of situations where it's possible for Rachel to combo into a j.2C knockdown and have the opponent air-tech right above the ground. Rachel can cancel the j.2C on landing into a meaty 5B (yes, really, lol), which is air unblockable. Against experienced players, this doesn't mean much, but against less experience players or players who don't fautlless, it's a shitty reset. For example, with 50 meter to start, you can do this in the corner: Throw > 5B > j.C > 2D j.C > land BBL > SJ 8D > j.236A > level 3 j.2C > 214A > 5CC > 236A x2 > dash 6A > 214C > j.B j.C > j.2C (3k-something damage, costs 2 wind but regens it) Then you land and cancel into 5B and if the opponent was mashing tech, the 5B hits them on the airtech and is air unblockable. Many people don't barrier immediately on tech. You can then do... 5B (not properly blocked) > j.C > 2D > j.C > (you now have 51 meter) > land BBL > etc. I'm not really sure how this works against forward/back airtech, but they tech literally immediately above the ground, and all air techs have the same amount of invuln, so it could still work. Anyway, gimmicks. This is not a solid strategy. You risk losing so much oki and pressure if the opponent actually knows how to block. Don't really feel like this fits in the other threads, so eh.

pnw wcg finals: http://www.twitch.tv/yowanehaku/b/302160469 @cake: sorry, can't help there.

damn, what is this place.

are his new combos easy to learn? I'm going to be sad if I can't mess around with him anymore.

I'll be in Norcal after SCR until early January, lol. Probably going to end up mashing at gamecenter a lot, too, because I don't think I'm bringing my ps3 back with me. Mmm... we'll see.

I hate you so much. That thing's just playing nonstop in the background, and I need to do stuff. Though it did remind me I needed to watch that series. No seeds though! Aaaah. edit: I FOUND ONE.

Oh yeah. I heard that was pretty much just meh. I liked the first game, so I'm pretty sad to hear that.

5B beats 4D cleanly, though? It hits all the way to the floor, and 4D is only above-the-knees invuln. And if they're jumping out for j.4D on wakeup, that means you're doing 5B way too late.

My sister bought a 360 for Vesperia, too, ahaha. I want Xillia.

I actually still want to try the 2A > 6CD blockstring against D-happy Noels. It sounds really weird to me, but theoretically it would work. It's a 2 frame gap, and the spin beats all drives.

"We don't play this game"? :P Good luck ending on time, though, guys. First time for everything!

FFXII actually gave you way more customization than XIII. The trick to XIII's system was that they simplified it and made the general options more, for lack of a better term, smart. I disliked that you couldn't actually customize as effectively in XIII. The story was better than most FF games nowadays, but that's only if you enjoy the somewhat more complicated political plots that the writer of Vagrant's Story and the original Final Fantasy Tactics wrote. There's a reason the game took place in the same world as those games (Ivalice), after all. That said, in the last third of the game or so, the story lost a lot of its coherency due to the writer falling ill for an extended period of time and being removed from the writing team. Also, the voice acting was amazing in that game. JP players were saying the English voices were better than the JP voices, and I'm inclined to agree. The game just wouldn't be the same without the stellar job the English voice cast did. On the point of holding forward: Yeah, I think some people dislike being able to just set up the party for battle without having to actually do much in battle themselves. Not really much to be done there. I also don't use the "auto-battle" feature that's in a lot of turn-based games nowadays, either, though one of these days I'll probably be tired/lazy enough to do so. :> Have the game, but it's unopened. I need to try it out at some point~. Maybe during winter break, if I'm not too busy playing Gundam and CSX.

5B catches Noel's drives, so it's at least one of the go-to moves in this matchup.

oh, okay, so4 welch. I also don't wanna play SO4 because they retconned Welch into a weird ass design.

SO2 is a pretty good, standard, old-fashioned JRPG. I enjoyed it, but then, I also played it in class sometimes, and it was just a good way to pass time. The story and characters are mostly all likeable. No idea on SO3.

Should I be glad that I only played SO2 on the PSP undubbed? Or did she not provide voices for her there?

That's a sorta impressive litmus test. O_o @ached: international version might've been in Japanese. Not really sure. All I know is that it had very misleading cover art.

ke ke ke

Is SO4 seriously that horrible? At this point, I'm almost tempted to rent it just to see for myself. You guys are making it sounds so unbelievably painful.

Yeah, there are a lot of options after 5C FC. The only things that really change about combo paths are 3C > Lobelia > 5B and diagonally winded level 2 j.2C loops. Everything else stays about the same. Well, except on Bang. On Bang, you can actually do 5B > j.3DB > j.C > 5B and not have it drop.

X-2's battle system was really, mm, intuitive? As far as turn-based systems go, it made sense and worked perfectly. The story, on the other hand, was pretty much just lulzy, but the game was fun to play regardless. Oh, don't forget it came out with that anime art on the international version that didn't in any way whatsoever represent the in-game graphics. On the other hand, Star Ocean 2 was amazing. Though, to be fair, I played a lot of the game just to poke people as Welch.

Oh. FFXIII sucked to me. For so many reasons. FFXII was a good game to me, but I understand that a lot of people found the systems in the game... unfitting for standard RPGs. I still think it was, by and large, a good game (the story was great up until the point where the writer got fired dammit). Not really caring about any of the FF games at this point, though. Type-0 looks awesome.

SaGa Frontier was such a fun game.