Dime_x's SG Journal

[Dime]

This is a place for me to put all my random thoughts such as tier lists as I see them currently (and to laugh at myself in the coming months when I figure out that I was wrong wrong wrong) I'll also be posting certain matchups here primarily for parasoul and painwheel, though I won't rule out any other characters being added.

Newer strategies that I find and either snipe from some other players games or find in mine and think bare mentioning will be found here... In short, this will be a chronicle of my successes and failures, strategies and gimmicks, resets, combos, teams, counters, meta, fundamentals etc... Anything I think relevant to sg as it pertains to me.

This probably won't be the best organized thing ever... But oh well, as long as I, myself, can navigate it, it'll be useful for my purposes.


Random/misc stuff:

1. Dhc and tag as reversals are better than i first thought. If the tag is done when the point character has a lot of red health, and that point character takes no more damage till they heal back all their red health, then even if the tagged in character gets hurt, it can still be a not so bad idea since the damage done to the tagged character is offset by the damage healed to the character that was tagged out.

The counter to this is to hit the tagged in character with the fattest combo that you can and then snap in the tagged character and force them to lose all that red health... This is a huge swing in overall team damage and makes tagging versus someone that knows what to do, much more suspect. But against those that dont...

Also, tagging via dhc is better than i at first thought:

Think about it like this... I used to think that when using my battery that it was best to save all my meter for the next two characters coming in unless my meter useage would kill. Or if my point character was on very low life. BUT... i wasnt thinking about red health. Now, if i see my point character on half life with around 25% red health or more! it is a very good idea to dhc on hit even if the character that I'm hitting will be left with like half life. In the end, fighting games are about damage. Dhc ing to do high damage to the point character and heal your own point character is a way of simultaneously upping your damage, while lowering your opponents damage. And that is VERY GOOD. Anyone that has played any sfxt at a semi high level when the game first came out, knows how good healing a character on the sidelines is.


Also note that in sde, or like marvel games, this couldnt be a serious strategy since sde health mattered less cause of hugely damaging combos... Generally speaking it was always a tod or a 1 reset to kill thing... And healing a character wouldnt really change that, that much. But in this new game, especially with undizzy forcing smaller and smaller combos... Meter dump dhc ing a high red health character out is one of the highest amounts of overall team damage without a reset, in the game.

 

[Dime]

Character matchups:

Painwheel versus:



Parasoul (5.5-4.5 in parasouls favor)

Parasoul has a very big advantage at neutral here. But if painwheel can hit her, parasoul is free to painwheels aerial resets and has to make tight guesses to survive. Still, since it's advantage parasoul from the beginning, I believe it to be in her favor with proper play.


General tactics for parasoul:

Use dash j.lp,j.hp to outprioritize painwheel air to air which neuters painwheels offense considerably, use mp shot to to limit painwheels flying space and bait out j.hp charges so that parasoul can j.lp chain break them into fatty combo.

General tactics for painwheel:

Use j.hp charge to get through flowchart mp shot spam. Reset parasoul to death cause she's free to painwheels resets. Try and engineer charged hp shot into fly so that painwheel can get in and pressure parasoul. Once pw makes parasoul block a lockdown assist or a j.hk etc etc etc... Painwheel has a big advantage in frame advantaged mixups so getting to those positions is key, though in general easier said than done. Painwheel can use airsuper to deal with parasouls aerial priority, if she's read or gets ahead of herself.



Bella (6.5-3.5 in Bella's favor)


Bella's general strategy:


Beat painwheel air to air with damn near everything. Pressure into cr.lk xx mgr tick. Run into diamond dynamo against predictable flights. Do way to much damage than she should, in general.


Painwheels general strategy:

Establish space and pressure Bella with near tip spaced fly j.mp. And properly spaced dash jump j.mp. Also, fullscreen charged hp stinger flight cancels I to pressure since Bella has few options to handle many of these attacks. The problem here in the matchup is gaining space in the first place... Painwheel is slower move backwards and has no priority moving forward when upclose and not at massive frame advantage and her attacks are all slow as well.

Proper turtle spacing is the primary way for pw to fight Bella. Something that pw isn't that equipped to do well.


Double (5.5-4.5) in doubles favor. Painwheel has no answers for Bella's j.hp that aren't airsuper or out space it. Double can setup catheads perfectly against pw with little that pw can do cause double has j.hk. Double also has hk luger for frisky flying obvious painwheels.


Doubles general strategy:

Pressure painwheel with dash j.hp and dash j.mp since pw has no great answers for these moves except for reversals... That are kinda bad. If that fails for double, activate catheads and enter limited time god mode/easy way in.


Painwheel general strategy:

Much like against Bella, zone turtle and look for a wiff or bad spacing on the ground and pressure with j.mp. If double activates catheads painwheels should fly to the upper opposite corner and then right as the heads are about to catch up, fly towards double and the heads will wiff under pw if done right and she can escape much of the catheads pressure that way. Though to be honest she has a very high chance of getting hit by point double Ora random head when she's trying to fly over it... But what ya gonna do?

If pw hits double she is also free to aerial resets.





Ms. Fortune (head off) 3.5-6.5 painwheel favor. This is painwheels only good matchup imho


Painwheel avoids the head and all that that implies by flying over it. Fortune doesn't have the best aerial moving forward moves to punish painwheel for flying predictably which is why the matchup is so good for painwheel imho. Actual matchup numbers might be slightly less in painwheels favor. Though it certainly feels like a good matchup whenever I've played it.


Ms. Fortune (head on) 5.5-4.5 in painwheels favor
Different matchup, imho the way the matchup should be played by the fortune player.


Very slight advantage for pw. Fortune has problems safely attacking painwheel and painwheels armor j.hp works well against many of fortunes attacks as long as the pw doesn't make it obvious that she's going for armor.

Squigly (squiglys favor because of smart use of j.hp and sbo allowing squigs to get sing to lvl2 relatively easily and then pressure painwheel with sing xx sbo and pw not having great answers for this)


Valentine (Val's favor cause Val has priority and movement advantage, as well as bypass to keep pw honest with extended fly times and Val is a much better user of updo than painwheel which makes the matchup that much more difficult.


Big Band (not enough info yet)


Filia (bad matchup for pw) this matchup plays out many different ways depending on the skill levels of the players involved... More than other matchups imho.... But it's still one of those matchups where painwheels hand is basically forced cause filias priority is so godlike. Standard fare for pw: make space and try to engineer a j.mp and some good offensive mixup guesses.

Filia kinda destroys painwheels armor and also has the ability to easily blowup any painwheel reset with Gregor. Which means more to painwheel than other characters since painwheel depends on her resets to bring matchups back to playable.


Peacock (peacocks favor by a longshot)


Peacock can give painwheel absolute fits with nothing but j.hk. Then you add in the bombs and homing item drop (plus an updo assist) and the matchup gets ugly, no matter what assist pw has.


Eliza


Beowulf












Parasoul versus:

 

[Dime]

General team theory:


My teams:

I can play many different teams because, as has become common place to say... Sg is pretty easy to pick up. And since sg is easy to pick up, it's characters generally are to.
So having said that let's start here:



Parasoul (pillar), painwheel (cr.mp), double (lk bomber)

This team was put together for 3 different reasons:

1. To abuse invincible reversals into safe on block dhc/full combo on hit dhc.
2. To put a character that uses lk bomber well, in front of painwheel, thus giving me 2 characters that abuse lk bomber well.
3. To finally and for hopefully all time move painwheel to what I believe to be her best position which is second, where many of her strengths come into play and her weaknesses are minimized.


Opponent teams:





Meta teams currently:

 

[Dime]

Movement:


General movement patterns I find to be powerful that I either need to add to my game or explore more in depth.




Painwheel:

Superjump forward j.mp (and to a much lesser extent, neutral jump j.mp and backward superjump j.mp)


Superjump forward j.mp is new to me as per this month and has the ability to change painwheels matchups because painwheel gains height priority on her attacks, something she could previously never really do independent of other characters cause painwheels fly height is capped. This is also good for pw cause she is the only character in the game that can superjump and and call assists before touching the ground (via fly)



Fast fall patterns for painwheel


Fast fall then:

Backdash into:

1. Mp stinger lvl 1 cancel
2. Jump forward
3. Call pillar and fly

Instant j.hp charge:



Peacock:


Super jump is also super serious for peacock cause she can charge item drop then super jump and then double jump and release item drop. And when this is combined with airdash it makes for easy mode item drop crossups that are almost completely safe.

 

[Dime]

Footsies:

Played a ridiculously good Korean solo squigly yesterday (got that vid tho) and it really showed how far i still have to go as far as footsies are concerned. This guy had an amazing neutral game with squigly. I could only semi keep up with his neutral by spamming assists. This is different than just using assists the right way. I played him solo versus solo a few times and man it was a fucking blowout as far as neutral was concerned.


Concepts of his squiglys neutral game:

He would mix between single and double jumping forward and backward in a really hard to predict fashion. He used j.hp almost exclusively at range. While doing these things he would look for opponent close range proximity plus the opponent below him while he had an extra jump. Once that happened he would double jump and come down with divekick or j.mp right when he looked he was going to crossup and cancel that into a divekick that didnt crossup while i was blocking in the wrong direction.

String stuff. The thing that made it good was that he wasnt just throwing out patterns like so many people... including myself. He was actually using reactions for almost everything that he did. Sure he was neutral guessing at points... But it felt like he was guessing a lot less than me... Hence why he was better.

I guess the best way to put it would be that he guessed his movement /jump but reacted with his attack. Ie he jumps forward and if i jumped backward or something then he sticks out j.hp for the range to tag me air to air. But if i had stayed put, then he would have divekicked me while i was on the ground. If i jumped forward, he probably. Would have double jumped backward to maintain spacing and watched what i did and adjusted accordingly as he was coming down. This is different than what I'm used to playing against. Even at evo people were largely guessing their attacks and ranges. Not always of course, but guessing was and still is huge in these peoples and my own games.


So, taking a page out of this dudes book... I need to be less spammy with my attacks and look to react to what the opponent is doing, and:


1. Not use the same response for the same situation that i see. An example is when i play against age, I'll fly and look for him to wiff a jump attack against me then i will pressure him as he lands with my own painwheel j.mp. But... That is very predictable and age routinely reacts to my j.mp and anti air supers me as he lands. I need to learn that in airdashers such as this game, wiff punishing isnt just about putting pressure on the opponent in such an obvious way. I could have also put "pressure" on age by putting in a neutral game mixup of whatever i want... He just wiffed which means that he is the one that now has to guess with how i will respond to that wiff. I could just flight cancel backwards and land throw a stinger at him and try to setup a dash empty jump into blocked super into him having to burn another meter to make it safe, or me getting a free punish.

In a nutshell stop spamming real stuff, stop being so predictable, spam stuff that is designed to confuse, not that is designed to be an actual offense. So spam cancels and stingers from range. But dont use these to actually get in. Use real stuff to get in which is reaction based... Like a simple regular jumpin... Or whatever.


2. Super jump ALOT more. It gives priority to air to airs especially painwheels j.mp. unfortunately, though in order to get that priority the j.mp has to be done early so it isnt something that can be done on reaction... But since pw can fly cancel... I can super jump early j.mp and cancel into fly AND THEN react to spacing.

3. When im upclose and outprioritized because i just wiffed my assist or whatever... PUSHBLOCK dont just run away. Since im pushblocking i can actually jump forward and pushblock the opponent. This will make my spacing under pressure more dynamic. As it is right now im super predictable for jumping away when I'm being pressured. This leads to me losing space. Pushblock needs to be one of my "go to" under fire anti airs... It doesnt do damage but it changes the dynamic and i can mixup between doing it while jumping backward or doing it while jumping forward. Airthrows will of course be a problem here... But everything has counters so that is neither here nor there.


4. Mixup my "landing" game:

Good offensive opponents as well as those crazy fundamentals guys always have a really good landing game... What i mean is they do something the instant they land... They dont just use landing as another opportunity to jump and thus be predictable... No. Guys like magicman will fast fall on purpose and land and then do something like with painwheel, charge armor or immediately do a stinger flight cancel.

It keeps there offense and neutral game fresh. You dont know if they will be in the air for x amount of time or y amount of time nor what they will be doing upon landing and the fast fall has a lot to do with this. Funnily enough, not doing something as they land becomes disconcerting to the opponent cause the opponent will come to expect and "read" that something is coming. Which gives these guys an advantage cause they can use that hesitation to react to the opponents attacks or spacing.


5. Fast fall... Fucking use them.

Fast fall is just the term im using for anything which makes people move towards the ground quicker than what would be normal. For painwheel, just about any flight normal is a fast fall since flight lasts ten seconds... The opponent has no idea when pw might land. So she can cancel the flight and radically change her state. Flight fast falls are i think fundamental to a high level painwheel at neutral. It makes it so that the opponent has a harder time tracking painwheels actual spot on screen. And if painwheel has an AA assist like pillar or updo... The opponent will be hesitant to attack her while the assist is available.

I will go over fast fall theoretical landing patterns with painwheel in the movement section probably later today.
Fast fall is also available to many other characters. Basically if a character jumps or double jumps and comes down FASTER than if they had simply regular jump floated to the ground... I consider that fast fall and i personally think it has huge ramifications for the neutral game depending on the character. I first learned about this stuff while watching magicman but the Korean player yesterday was using squiglys divekick to fastfall into landing and he would mixup what he would do when landing, but the gist is that while i was looking for an air to air... He was basically on the ground. Which funnily enough would put him in great position to instant j.lk press ire me air to air.

I need to learn and master this fastfall and landing mixup. It is high level play and very applicable to painwheel.

 

[Dime]

So im still having trouble with ages new peacock team. Peacock counters all of my characters basically. I either have to switch teams and counter him since he's countering me, or i have to learn how to win a counter matchup all over again. It took me 2 years to learn how to beat bella with painwheel (be defensive and have a pillar backing painwheel) and as bad as the pw versus bella matchup is... It feels worse with parasoul versus peacock. Well a better way to say it is parasoul plus assist feels like it gets beaten by peacock plus assist like at least 7-3. Bike no longer works in the matchup at all really since it goes away if parasoul gets hit...Compared to peacocks bombs not going away... This seems unfair. Bike feels like it needs to get buffed somehow or it simply will be useless in the matchup... Can hit once in awhile but not consistently and even on the rare occasions that bike is gotten out it loves to get killed by assists.



My primary hope in the matchup is painwheel cause she can fly over st.hp and ground bombs. But the problem is when i fly and absorb the plane, age also charges an item drop and if he sees me charge armor he simply releases item drop and i cant dodge it even when i cancel the armor. So thats 2 hits and my armor gets broken. If i make the plane wiff by dodging it backwards i still have charged mp item to deal with so basically i still cant rushdown. The best ive managed is to land and throw a stinger cancel... But painwheel gets overpowered by all the bombs and stuff.


The glue that keeps all of this together is cerecopter. It plugs any holes in the patterns. So in order to get passed this i have to lockout copter and then try to advance. But locking out is hard cause the assist is covered by plane and item drop. I use my assist to counter call but it gets beaten in startup by the copter or if i take a bit longer to call it it gets beaten by a meaty lk george or something.


Dashing on the ground is generally met with lk georges and st.hp and cerecopter and item drop.

On the few occasions im able to get passed that defense im left with either a guessing game as far as pushblock goes because one pushblock and the pattern starts right back up again. Or I'm met by a teleport or a bomb...

Mostly though i cant even make it passed the first pattern cause painwheel is generally to slow in her horizontal movement and even if i land and fastfall into a dash i still cant penetrate this pattern. I generally rely on the peacock making an execution mistake.


The primary problem is that the new plane is.... Broken to be honest... Well maybe not... But it seems it right now. Peacock seems even worse to deal with at fullscreen now for some characters than she was in sde. The reason why is even though peacock can on,y throw 2 bombs now... That homing plane takes the place of old item drop as well as a regular ground bomb since it will track to where the opponent is, and this is without the extra bomb recovery that that peacock used to have to deal with when using triple bombs.


The only thing i can really think of to beat this with painwheel or parasoul or double is to use more super jump perhaps. Like if i super jump over that damn plane i might have a free run at peacock when i charge my armor and then cancel and then call my mk bomber to clear the way.

 

[Dime]

Just a quick addendum:

I'm stupid. I just realized that i can bait chains into painwheels armor and then cancel that armor into airsuper.

So basically parasoul j.p,j.hp wont be completely free anymore and neither will stuff like bella j.mp,j.hp chain. And that painwheel can punish filia iad j.hp spam by absorbing the j.hp and then supering.

The problem is that for me it will still be a guess as to whether they pressed a button since i dont have reactions fast enough to confirm the hit. This means that once the opponent gets used to this tactic hat they can just empty jump and bait it.


But still its a cool piece of obvious technology that i cant believe i never thought of.

 

[Dime]

Played against a new guy yesterday. He had a cool style and a pattern that i bit hard on and beat me in quick match so i invited him to a game cause i felt something wasnt right. Well i destroyed him with my main team and that would have been that except for the fact that he actually lives pretty close to me and is a decent player so we got to chatting, it turns out hes been playing sg for 3 months, but has a lot of previous fighting game experience overall.... I started thinking "this is the exact kind of person we need" so i invited him to a practice lobby and gave him the what for run through of painwheel reset stupidity and whatnot so he knew what he was getting into... He wasnt phased in the slightest, which was a great sign. He wasnt comfortable using assists so i showed him lk butt and told him to empty jump with it.... Holy crap, did i unleash a monster or what?



This guy took that and with his good footsies style started to give me a real neutral game challenge. He didnt like butt, but he does use a damn good squigly and so he would use drag n bite a bit in the same way.
The change wasnt so much that i taught him how to use assists... It was the fact that he saw what i was doing and how simple it was, and lost the "stupid to have" godlike admiration of me that he had when i had beat him up. Put simply he was able to get me out of his head and play like normal instead of on tilt.


I really liked this cause i dont like winning (outside of tournaments, heh) via tilt. It isnt a good look to constantly intimidate your opponent into shitty mistakes cause of your perceived reputation (outside of tournament) and if i constantly play tilt games where I'm either on tilt or my opponent is... Im kinda wasting my time.


Anyways, i wanted to write that down cause the gameplay experience he and i had in practice mode yesterday was one of the most enjoyable sg experiences ive had yet.

Oh and he had a pattern that i learned from him cause he was using it so obviously:

Move forward (dash or jump etc etc etc) then WAIT a bit as if he had a made a mistake, then dash or jump back and immediately go back in.

The effect was that i would see him dash into the sweet spot and do fuck all and so it looked like a mistake so i would bite hard and try to go in, and he would just dash backwards at the last second to make me wiff and then immediately come back in and pressure ME.

Its a simple pattern but the wait was what was genius, incredible bait. And once i saw it i actually used it against him and he bit so so hard. It felt great. The pattern is to obvious to use alot, but it seems like an incredible bait when used sparingly. Any attacking pattern can be used along with a back off and then attack. The wait before the back off is what sells the pattern.

Normally against good players i see patterns like this all the time but i cant "see" them cause the good players dont use them much, and certainly dont abuse them. But this guy was abusing it and finally after like the tenth time he used it, i finally saw it. So i wanted to document it here, i learned something incredible from this guy.

One other point of note was that i started using squigly sing againt him. He's the perfect player to use sing against (spacial footsie turtle, like me) and man was sing good in the matchup, well that plus his bad defense made it better than what it might be, but the general idea i had about how to use sing worked stellar which is basically to read/react to the defensive movement of the opponent and then i do mp stinger plus sting. When done at near fullscreen, the opponent will block the stinger and be in blockstun for pw stinger cancel into j.mp to basically be free. If the opponent was in the air but coming down, then they will land on the stinger.


The pattern certainly isnt foolproof, cause if the opponent has a good grasp of what is going on they can double jump the stinger or "something else" to avoid it. Plus they can do so,thing like reversal after having blocked the stinger... Or they can armor through the stinger etc etc etc.

But those can all be baited and beaten if the pw expects them and the bottom line is that pw can do/not do the sing whenever she wants, and that it puts her where she wants the opponent to be which is up close to her with her being at an advantage. I would never use sing on a 2 character team, but on a 3 character team it seems highly viable if one has a bomber or updo at the back.


Oh and another thing:


cats plus sing is HAHAHAHAHAH good, you ain't runnin' away sucka.

 

[Dime]

Thought of a couple of new things that are worth noting though neither is new stuff, just kind of new to me or new to sg meta in being abused:



Damage potential is overall higher than i used to think. I used to think damage was some form of optimal 1 meter combos and could shoot up if a level 3 or dhc was used. Of course level 3 isnt available all the time whereas level 1 generally is.

Well, i came up with an old concept to use 2 meters. These are right inbetween 1 meter combos and 3 meter combos in availability. Its funny that i should put 2 and 2 together so slowly, but the effect is that my actual damage potential in game has increased significantly. I dont always have meter for 2 supers, but even when i dont, as long as i have 1 meter to blow, my reset point is generally higher damage and lower undizzy which is Win/win.

Also, for certain characters, it probably better to do the first super pretty early. Parasoul is a perfect example of this. Using sniper does very little to damage scaling since its only 1 hit. And using sniper early makes sniper do more damage. So the gist is that with parasoul... Especially parasoul at second, doing a combo such as cr.lk,cr.mk,st.hp x 2 xx mp shot xx sniper is a very good starter. From there parasoul can continue the combo and eventually reset at 6200 damage at only around 150 undizzy or so... Which is incredible damage potential. And that is without using 2 meters. If she goes on and continues comboing she can do even more damage, though the dividends generally fall off big time. The moral being to use sniper super early on in her combos... It gives her horrendous damage potential.


With painwheel, who i realized the concept of 2 meter supers with, the combo is generally a combo into airsuper that does about 6200 damage or so, but the resulting ability to continue the combo means that if i go all out and and end in a optimized deathcrawl. I do 8800 damage that is pretty much universal (combo has to be changed against parasoul, slightly) and if i decide to not end in deathcrawl, i still get to reset at less than full undizzy at around 7k damage. Once again this is huge damage potential.


So the gist being that 2 meter combos are very good for pumping up combo damage and that the offshoot of those combos is metered reset combos. The thing to realize is that undizzy is the enemy of long combos and damage. And being the enemy of damage, it makes supers really really freaking good for piling on damage since they do not do any undizzy.

Seriously, think about it. Sniper shot done early gives parasoul a new linker, a move that does around 1000 damage or so, and only does 1 hit of scaling and gives no undizzy. With these "new" concepts in mind, sniper shot goes from being a really wack super to use to end combos into being a really freaking good super to use for linking early combos.


The point here to learn is that with supers that can combod out of.. It is probably better to use said super early on in a combo before max undizzy is reached. This way you capitilize on the supers damage, as well as being flexible in going for an early yet still high damage reset point, or being able to continue the combo into another lvl 1 for max damage and dhc.


The second point is that the dhc potential here is very good especially for something like the parasoul combo i listed, into just about any safe on block dhc (they become very good on hit) peacocks bomb, doubles cats, painwheels install, squiglys super etc etc etc are all very good to dhc into because of the damage reset plus the fact that that parasoul combo starter does no undizzy since its all one chain.


And last but not least, i think because of this "new" technology combined with some old tech, that characters like parasoul and peacock are no longer bad anchors.


Imho in order to be a good anchor now, you need good solo mixups, good reversals, good priority, and good use of meter.


Previously i thought parasoul had lousy solo mixup and lousy meter use.

But the "new" tech shows she can definitely use meter, and "new" mixup technology shows that she can mixup opponents solo with the best of them:


Cr.lk, b+hk string.
Cr.lk,cr.mk,st.hp xx 2 xx mp shot xx lk pillar string for generally safe on block stuff

When you mix in strings like st.lk x2, cr.mk. Then this mixup isnt even really timing blockable. And there's always the ability to just do a tick throw.


All in all, because double has been nerfed, the gap in anchor power is now much closer. Double is still the best anchor in the game, but now other characters can definitely compete. And parasoul has way better resets than double and has the ability to throw in super damage yet continue her combo. For 1 meter and without screwing damage scaling like cats. Cats being weakened by no longer having assist macro makes anchor spot more viable for many characters. Also, parasoul can dhc into level 3 and continue to combo... Something that not to many characters can claim.

With peacocks new cr.mk and cr.hp technology she has actual mixups into throws or lows and her high, at least online, is very hard to react to... Plus peacocks combo damage is ridiculous and she can compete with any characters poking arsenal and has the mobility to factor in.


So yeah, just some points i wanted to get off my chest. I no longer think it is all that viable to think of any character as a battery. Basically imho if you are saving up meter for a character to come in... I feel like you are giving up damage. Based on character obviously.

 

[Dime]

Its been a long long time since i posted in here. I havent had much new to say and havent had nearly as much time to play since ive been swamped with work. But i kinda broke my back (not really, its just an old injury combined with the worst case of sciatica ever) that has left me bedridden for the most part and missing work for the last few days... To make it worse, i havent even really been able to play sg in training mode since even sitting up causes intense pain. But there is a silver lining in every cloud. Ive been watching more and more sg vids than ever as well as a few fundamental videos and have had lots and lots of time to theory fight for painwheel.


First a couple things that are kinda off topic but i wanted to share:

Dekillsage has a ridiculously good set of him versus tj gamer up on his youtube channel. Watch them. They are probably the highest level of play at sg that ive seen. The neutral game mixups, resets, reads, and adaptations are just to fucking real. Excellent excellent excellent set from these 2 fantastic players.


Also, dekillsage has a first to 7 against woofly. This is also a must see imho. Woofly aka 2chep aka i2chep is a longstanding sg player from the "og" days and considered to possibly be the best eu player. He has an odd style to say the least. He uses kinda crappy assists and doesnt seek to spam them as is the american and australian strategy. Instead he more uses his assist for blockstrings and set plays. Also he has an interesting tear based keepaway parasoul that uses neg edge tears.... Sweet stuff, and even sweeter to see being used effectively. Can learn a lot from his videos... Ive already seen the neg edge tears being adopted (stolen) by other players so its definitely something to be on the lookout for.



And finally, the reason why i started writing this post...

Painwheel strings and armor considerations.... A theory:


Painwheel strings has mostly to do with her starters and her actual chains. Its an idea i really got after watching an episode of airdash academy. I already knew much of what they said but their video jogged my memory.

Armor considerations is basically the ins and outs of painwheels armor, what attacks are good, what are terrible or not worth it and different ways to apply painwheels armor.

Painwheel as a character at this time is primarily a baiting character. She doesnt really back up well, nor does she really attack all that well from neutral. What she really excels at though, is baiting people. Making people think she will attack....and then she doesnt attack and baits their reversal, or she makes the opponent think shes backing off and then when the opponent tries to come in, she counter hits their approach. Baiting in a nutshell. Also, painwheels best attack (jump back medium punch) is ridiculously good at this since it has amazing priority when jumping backwards PLUS it easily hitconfirms from a backwards jump into a full combo.

What does this have to do with armor? Painwheels armor is basically another bait, in a nutshell. Dash forward and then armor. Dash back and then armor... Jump forward and use j.hp armor to soak up a hit while calling an AA assist to hit the opponent and then cancel the armor into a fly and confirm the otg.
Use wiff j.hp full charge, then fly cancel and unfly block while calling assist. Etc etc. The primary problem for pw is imho, people not knowing what her strategy is primarily. She is a bait character first and foremost.
If the opponent doesnt respect her bait, then she has all kinds of ways to make them pay such as airthrow them, ground throw them, confirm them into j.mp, let them waste their confirm on armor, let them overextend into pillar or updo assist, let them wiff their own updo or pillar assist and then counter call with your own assist.... Etc etc... Baiting 101.


How to use armor:

St.lp:

Good as a tick throw and good as a bait when the opponent is in hitstun so that most of the armor time is used up by the time the opponent mashes something out, which means less effective time for the opponent to get multiple hits out and break the armor. Also very useful to use the st.lp to go into rote mixups like cancel into fly overhead or cancel into low.

St.mp:

Really good with an AA assist like pillar cause the st.mp will hit and then pillar will combo and if painwheel fly cancels after the st.mp she can get an easy otg confirm since the pillar causes knockdown. St.mp also autocorrects if its armor has absorbed an attack so this is good against crossups as well, especially with an assist protector.

Cr.mp:

Best armor confirm besides the hp armors and it starts up much quicker. VERY GOOD to call an assist during and cancel into fly for the confirm before the st.mp goes active. The reason why situationally this is better than simply blocking while calling an assist, is because if painwheel is forced to block something before the assist hits it becomes very hard for to convert with her slow dash, and also armor is immune to high/low mixups for 2 hits. So basically painwheel recovers much faster from armor cancels into flight than she does with just blocking... Which makes for much easier confirms.

St.mk:

Basically the same thing as cr.mp with an assist except with the caveat that you want to let the st.mk fully charge and come out. A higher priority attack though with less ability to convert easily.

St.hp:

3 hits of armor, slow armor startup, most range and best overall hitbox of all armor attacks and easy conversions off of near full charge. Good for charging when you notice an opponents AA assist about to hit you out of your ground string, but requires practice to use that way. (Note to self.... PRACTICE THIS) i can already do it sometimes even without practice... need to start getting that percentage higher though... being able to string with less worry about being updo'd out of stuff could be very powerful and even setup happy birthdays.

Cr.hk:

Extremely fast armor startup, low profile, leads to otg combos on full charge. Best uses are during blockstrings for the low, and with an assist just like cr.mp.

Cr.hp:

Outside of combos i havent found any particular uses for this move that isnt already covered by the other armor moves. Low profile, full charge isnt wigglable unlike st.hp.


Strings:


lp starter:

Very useful in 2 situations.

1. When a quick move is needed to punish something that cr.lk will not (filia hairball)
2. In links like after a j.hk hits, since the j.hk has changing advantages, the lp offers the easiest conversion because it is fast.

Lp,cr.lk,st.hp starter:

The cr.lk is the second attack here so people that auto block high after the first attack of painwheels ground string can be caught here. This isnt an actual blockstring but it is a confirm. Substitute cr.mk for st.hp for a true blockstring iirc (you will have to confirm into lp stinger or lk buer though since flight cancels wont combo)

Light,cr.mp,st.hp starter:

If the opponent has a habit of pushblocking the second hit of your chain on reaction, this can keep you in since they will time their pushblock early.

Cr.mp st.hp starter:

If the opponent likes to anticipate the first hit of your string and pushblock, this will keep you in.

Cr.lk xx fly df lk:

My go to overhead mixup. Can be blocked on reaction and pushblock messes it up. If they start blocking it on reaction, mix it up with the first starter in this section, or do what i do and do the next string.

Cr.lk xx fly 6 airthrow wiff, land, ground throw.


Works if the opponent thought an overhead was coming and wanted to block/pushblock it.

There are more but these are primary in my mind. Moral of the story is to vary your ground strings to make you less susceptible to pushblock on the string front. You can still use frametraps and stuff, just dont forget about string variance. These all have many other subtle uses over other strings such as differed spacings one is left at as well as having different holes.

and never forget to randomly charge your strings at various points. Dont be predictable about full charges though since that is just going to get you thrown more often than not.

 

[Dime]

Ive never thought of painwheel as a pattern character, but a couple of patterns have come to my attention that are way to powerful to not post here. The first pattern allows painwheel to make ridiculous use of doubles mk bomber. I get both confirms and pressure from this pattern even at midscreen... And as anyone who knows me knows.... Ive always said that pw has serious problems converting mk bomber at midscreen.


Jump forward, j.hk call mk bomber, flight cancel j.hk after about 3 hits.

This is enough time to confirm the j.hk. If they hit then the mk bomber will combo. If they got blocked then the opponent has to continue to stand unless they want to get overheaded by flying painwheel. Ive never seen anyone use this pattern with pw. As far as i know it is new. And god is it ridiculously awesome. Most of the time the bomber will get blocked so be prepared to go for the flight crossup/non crossup j.hk 50/50 on block.... Remember that the key to the pattern is to confirm the j.hk. You can of course play with this as well... Like instead of going for the confirm you simply let the j.hk hit once and then fly cancel forward while calling the assist for an assist crossup. Tis is very strong if you can get into range to do it. And that is where the second pattern comes in:


Dash j.mp, 1 hit (doesnt matter if it wiffs) xx fly, f+j.hk plus mk bomber.


This is designed to move painwheel close against those people that are trying to turtle outside of bombers range and get painwheel to wiff something. The beauty of this is that wiffing the j.hk behind the opponent is less of a concern because thats a great opportunity for the mk bomber to actually crossup the opponent. This is what i would call a "braindead" pattern. The smarts is in knowing when to use it. But in the right situation it is golden.


And more anti turtle stuff:


i never really thought of fully charged j.hp as a spectacular offensive move... But there is one extremely excellent situation to use it offensively:


When your opponent wiffs an assist it is rather prudent to punish it with mk bomber. This locks out the assist and does very respectable damage to it. At that point in time most people are going to back up and try to make space to allow their assist to cooldown. Tis is the perfect time to charge at them with a fully charged j.hp to rush them down. Just make sure to cancel it before the final hit into a j.hk. And that is actually the final pattern:


Fully charged j.hp xx fly j.hk plus assist xx fly j.hk


Just a different looking pattern than the others, designed to give painwheel a way in against the turtles. Ive been having lots of troubles against spacial turtles such as myself so thats why i invented these for myself.

If anyone out there has already been using these as an ongoing offensive strategy, my bad for not knowing.

Happy hunting fellow pw's

 

[Dime]

Painwheel fakeouts


(how to get an actual high/low game and fakeouts and instead of just a low/throw game)...cause offline people can react to raw over heads from flight.

1.jump hp charge, fly cancel df lp or lk or wiff airthrow
2. Fly cancel 6wiff airthrow, jump back j.lk wiff fly cancel df j.lk
3.wiff airthrow, land j.hp charge
4.cr.lk xx fly j.hp (to bait pushblocks and is a slow overhead so it can setup the next fake
5.cr.lk xx fly df j.mk wiff, cr.lk
6. ( on first approach) cr.lk xx fly f+mk (baits pushblock, moves painwheel in closer)
7. Whatever above pattern into land cr.mp charge OR ST.LP CHARGE (The cr.mp/st.lp will be point blank so no worries about wiffing them unless the opponent was jumping out)
8. One of the best fastfall patterns out there (grounded opponent like all these patterns): j.mp (1) xx j.mk fastfall. Same shit as double but people expect it way less from pw cause no one does it. The caveat here is instead of going for the rote low/throw mixup instead do a cr.lk xx fly j.hp... Sure you can get the easy throw but this sets up j.hk crossups on blocked j.hp and it sets up all kinds of other fastfalls. Its just a way to keep painwheels mixup game fresh and keep the opponent on there toes.


These are all supposed to be performed point blank in as unpredictable a fashion as possible. It goes without saying that painwheel can and does win WITHOUT these kinds of things (and these are hardcore reversal bait/invincible assist bait and that these could be called gimmicks. Whatever, its still a way to mindfuck an opponent and use painwheels natural fast fall fakeouts to her advantage. And its just clean as hell to get these off in game much less have them be a natural part of your painwheel game... Plus moar buttons... Hahaha there are many more and i will try and update this post with more upclose fastfall patterns.

 

[Dime]

So, one of my best techniques/patterns is empty jump/dash empty jump forward and call lk bomber assist with parasoul. On hit i get a free combo, on block i get a free high/low mixup against those that dont pb autoguard my mixup. So... Its pretty good and against people that havent played against a good abuser of this... I can take match upon match against them. So its good to know.

The problem is that up until now, parasoul was the only REALLY GOOD user of this strat i tried it with many other characters and it just didnt work out the same. They either didnt have low enough jumps, good enough dash pickups when the assist hit, or decent high/lows to threaten with on block. Parasoul seemed MADE for this strat. So i was pretty bummed.

But then, ive finally realized how stupid i am... I can actually do this with painwheel. The "trick" is to time the lk bomber call MUCH LATER than when i call it with para. So with para i generally do dash, then i Jump and lk bomber at the same time. The result is that the bomber hits just as parasoul is starting to fall during her jump or a little after that, which is the perfect timing to see bomber hit and be able to confirm with dash into high/low/otg pickup.

Doing the same thing with painwheel unfortunately made the bomber hit waaaay to early, and the pw would land and by the time she started her dash, the opponent wouldnt be able to be otg'd.... So that sucked.

But now... (And i feel REALLY REALLY stupid for not realizing this, like, immediately) if i just delay the bomber call i get almost the exact same timing as i do with para. So i can confirm into dash plus lk buer otg pickup into full combo, or on block i can go high/low on reaction with flight.


So yeah... Its AWESOME BABY! And combine that with the fact that I'm now starting to use parasoul hp fireball assist whoch protects painwheels j.mp approach... And man pw is feeling like a new character. Now i can safely say that the pw empty jump strat is about 90% as effective as the same thing with parasoul. Parasoul still gets a slight nod because she can call the assist earlier and because if she crosses up on accident with the assist (which happens ALOT) she can always input a towards dash and it doesnt matter if she gets a forward or backward dash... She can still get easy pickups... In that instance however painwheel cant.


So yeah, tldr. Painwheel empty jump late lk bomber call... The gift that keeps on giving and something that other characters might well be able to use themselves. This one little timing trick might make lk bomber the best assist in the game imho.

 

[Dime]

Another painwheel pattern I'm currently working on, seems really effective when done at the right spots. And compliments painwheels superjump j.mk game very well is:


Jump back instant j.hp non charge then fly cancel the j.hp on the last active frame and do either a flying j.hk or j.lk.

What this is and why i now use it:


After getting my ass handed to me by val and other airdashers that like to jump away to make space then cancel that jump back into an airdash forward for what is a really hard strat to stop. I looked at pw and found that she has a "somewhat reasonable" facsimile: J.hp acts like an airdash forward. Only it also hits. The big problem is that it doesnt have much range and that it doesnt hit crouchers and even some standing characters, so it has to be flight canceled into a better air to ground normal. But the key here is that the j.hp advances forward... Faster, than any flight cancel into a move, and also, at that specific height, (instant j.hp) there is no fly xx air move that is even moderately good air to air. This is one of painwheels many "holes" in her priority map.

Which is why knowing this pattern is a good thing for her... It plugs that hole... Albeit slowly, while also advancing her forward.


Now it goes without saying that rote use of this isnt going to get pw far. I think it either has to be used sparingly if used as a one off pattern... Or if one is going to seek to abuse it then they have to use varying patterns such as:


J.hp charge fly cancel fastfall (basic fake)
J.hp plus call assist
J.hp full charge and let er rip



So yeah, just another pattern to spruce up painwheels game.

And since I'm already here... Ive also been experimenting with various blockstrings:


Cr.mp (4), F+hk (4) (ratchet poppy) is probably the best alternative confirm string i have, and a caveat to it is that the followups on hit allow for different kinds of resets than are available from my standard bnb.

The reason for cr.mp into ratchet poppy is so that my opponents cant just pushblock me out of my confirms all day long. As it is, all of my opponents are extremely used to my confirms and they all pretty much pbgc into iad or jump attack or mp bang if using peacock. This really puts a cramp in my offense because i go from being the one doing the pressuring to being the one that is being pressured and it also puts to much pressure on me to guess right about going for the hitconfirm or the throw... Plus they are just getting way to much easy offense via pbgc and its stupid easy applications.

 

[Dime]

Making the best of/optimising team pali:


So after careful consideration, ive decided to focus on team pali exclusively until i think ive exhausted my ability to optimise the team. This is no easy decision to come to because though team pali is probably the strongest team ive yet played it has huge glaring weaknesses:

1. Painwheel is on the team... And she doesnt have fiber for easi(er) conversions, nor does she have bella raw tag to save her ass... Both the primary reasons why i feel taludas painwheel does better than most.
2. This team seems to lose pretty hard to val and peacock who are both probably the top tier in this game. These are bad matchups to suck at.
3. Zoning via highly defensive movement and baits seems to be a hindrance to this teams ground loaded power... Basically this team has a huge ability to overextend. So in order to fight that, this team needs to kinda be reined in and used in a more defensive manner even though it is capable of extremely explosive offense should it get in or get a confirm.


So knowing these things, its time to talk about this teams strengths and what i need to optimise and throw into my game.


Strengths of team pali:


1. Incredible dhc synergy in any direction no matter the order. Very good assist synergy no matter the order.
2. Crazy offense behind lk bomber if the team can get in range for lk bomber
3. Every character on this team can convert throws both ground and air meterlessly
4. If mk bomber is being used, then the team sacrifices midscreen lockdown for corner push and a better overall assist poke since mk bomber does more damage than lk bomber.
5. Parasoul dominates air to air while mk bomber dominates the ground, parasoul is one of the few characters that can easily convert mk bomber into full combo by dashing/running
6. Though painwheel generally cant convert mk bomber into full combo midscreen with any consistency, painwheel can however use mk bomber to charge up nails and give painwheel pressure for oki.



So... Now the "juicy" part... How to optimise the team more than i already have:

1. The first thing is to make the switch from running lk bomber to running mk bomber. I do use mk bomber for certain matchups, but as of late ive noticed that everyone wants to play a baiting game against me, or if not doing that, then they play a hyper offensive airdash game against me. Mk bomber doesnt help out against airdashes anymore than lk bomber so no reason to pick lk bomber over it, but mk bomber does have much more range than lk bomber which measn a much better midscreen poke, and since it does more damage, its also a better assist counter than lk bomber.
2. Dont use rote hitconfirms anymore. They suck against everyone i play and every blocked hitconfirm is either a pbgc into pressure for my opponent, or worse. So since team pali has a great way around this i should seek to abuse it: utilise tick throws almost exclusively to open the opponent up. Only use hitconfirms in places where i see the opponent obviously open to being hit... Like in a ton of recovery AFTER being blocked or wiffed. from there i should utilise low/throw mixups on my confirms when the opponent starts to tech my throw attempts. This insures that I'm getting the most money for my ability to get in.
3. Any throw combo from painwheel or parasoul should have mk bomber in it for corner carry. Assists are almost always available for throw combos since throws cant be combod into (with certain exceptions) one of the premier things about team pali is how much stronger it gets when its foes back is to the corner. Parasoul gets nutty high/low mixups one on top of another, painwheel gains the ability to easily confirm mk bomber while having very strong corner combos, and both characters gain a lockdown assist in mk bomber.

So the corner is a high end strategy in fact i would definitely say that with undizzy the way it is, the corner is a much more important of a goal than resetting the opponent.

4. Going along with the idea of tick throws, with parasoul i need to seek to abuse cr.lk,b+hk and cr.lk,f+mp and cr.lk,throw for a nice three pronged mixup offense. My opponents are way to comfortable to just block since pbgc makes defense easy. They are no longer scared of parasouls offense behind lk bomber cause they can pushblock autoguard all the mixups, and they can pbgc through the confirms... So, basically the high pressure that used to make them crack and therefor give me a huge amount of confirms... No longer gives me a huge amount of confirms. This isnt because my mindgames have gotten worse or theirs have gotten better, its because pushblock autoguard protects them when they've made a mistake and blocked lk bomber. So, i need to adjust to this situation. And in my mind there is one good way to do this: abandon the concept of lk bomber lockdown into mixups. I COULD use staggers and whatnot to throw off there pushblock timings... But this is a diminishing returns strategy. They now have the option of reversaling rather than having only the ability to block correctly. And that is nowhere near as strong or as cheap as i need to be in order to win at sg. So, just use mk bomber to poke, punish, and confirm until in the corner where i can use it for lockdown again and go with the lockdown mixups which for whatever reason, seem to be much harder for my opponents to deal with, when cornered.

5. Optimise my corner bnbs with parasoul and painwheel as best as possible.

6. To be comtinued.

 

[IsaVulpes]

2. This team seems to lose pretty hard to val and peacock who are both probably the top tier in this game. These are bad matchups to suck at.

+Fukua which is even worse

3. Any throw combo from painwheel or parasoul should have mk bomber in it for corner carry.

Parasoul gets full corner carry with just Bike, so this seems unnecessary

While it's true that you will usually be able to put your assist in your throw combo, assists are also valuable reset tools -
And resetting out of throw combos is pretty much necessary due to the amount of scaling they put in the picture

If you use an assist in your combo, you can't really do assist based resets anymore due to not being able to call it again while the opponent is still in hitstun; making your overall reset game weaker.
I don't feel that's worth the few extra damages you pull out of Butt instead of Bike.

5. Parasoul dominates air to air

I must be really bad at pressing buttons :(

with undizzy the way it is, the corner is a much more important of a goal than resetting the opponent.

I can't really follow this train of thought..

cr.lk,f+mp

This is a pretty big risk, for the record
At least if you don't go with assist conversions
Or know how to handle Pushblocks

pbgc makes defense easy.

Does it?

they can pushblock autoguard all the mixups, and they can pbgc through the confirms...

Maybe your offence is simply not really.. conscious of PBGC and PBAG?

This isnt because my mindgames have gotten worse or theirs have gotten better, its because pushblock autoguard protects them when they've made a mistake and blocked lk bomber.

Do you really think "I blocked an assist" is bad enough of a mistake that it warrants giving the opponent three unseeable fully safe mixups in a row?

that is nowhere near as strong or as cheap as i need to be in order to win at sg.

Are you just dissing yourself here, or do you think this is a general thing?

 

[Dime]

@IsaVulpes

I'm away at work and therfor have extremely limited time and no computer to easily acces to answer your questions in quote form. So.. there will be no quotes I'll just take your first reply as 1.



1. Noted, but i havent played any fukuas besides gfarmers, awhile back before he stopped using her. and yeah, i agree that is another matchup thats sucks to be bad at since probably everywhere except australia is up on fukua cheese.


2. My resets are slow enough to be able to utilise bomber even if it was what i started my rest with on the previous combo. Bike is weird to use for me during throw combos since it can want to use otg. And bike combos arent 100% universal afaik. Still yes point noted. But as this is my journal, I'm mostly looking to make myself look for certain things/use them more. And in this instance i just want maximum corner carry on my mind at all times from now on.

3. Perhaps you are, or perhaps im godlike, or perhaps my opponents suck. Perhaps its a small combination of all those things, i dont know.

What i do know is if you disagree with parasoul owning air, you should list what you feels she loses to. Also, yes i overstated her dominating air to air. She DOES own air to air but only with the right spacing in general and the right moves. It is very easy for her miscalculate and wiff or judge the spacing wrong and get out ranged.

4. In the corner, most (but not all) characters get huge damage bonuses via corner combos , which means your undizzy bat goes farther as far as how much damage 240 points of undizzy allows you to do. In the corner your opponents risk/reward for calling assists is much higher on the risk end. In the corner if you accidentally undizzy or ips pop, the opponent is still cornered. In the corner, incoming mixups are MUCH more brutal. In the corner, mk hornet bomber becomes a super high damage, invincible, lockdown assist. Mk hornet mp bomber is the assist that I'm now going to to be taking into all of my games. I'm dropping lk bomber cause it simply isnt as good with pbag being a consistent way to water down my lockdown mixups.
In the corner, you have a game winning STATIC advantage that can be possibly be held all game.

Midscreen forces you to deal with undizzy making your combos do less damage and should you hit undizzy you are forced back to neutral whereas if they were cornered you still have corner advantage (albeit a lot less of it) in the corner my personal burst baits are much more potent in painwheels case and possibly in parasouls. In the corner, parasouls high/low lockdown game becomes absolutely nutty and pbag seems to help a lot less against the lockdown mixups i use when cornered which i cant use midscreen.

5. Ive found that everything i do that doesnt actually hit my opponent is a pretty big risk. So this means little to me. If i go for cr.lk,cr.mk and my opponent called updo/whatever invincible assist while i was doing that, i go for a ride. So... Yeah, not to worried about punishability in this context, I'm more worried about having variable mixups that my opponent cant or has a hard time reacting to that arent easy to defend against, that give me fullcombo or something thereabouts. This is almost exclusively because on block IF my opponent DIDNT get hit, I'm probably going to deal with pbag or pbgc. If i did hit, then everything is good. If they called a invincible, them I'm going for a ride. The way i see this, there are 2 ways for me to "lose" here, and one way to win, assuming i continue to use the aggressive hitconfirm style that i like to use. Having 2-1 odds of shit not being in my favor isnt a positive outcome for me and changing my style to completely avoid this confrontation also isnt something i want to do. Hence, my answer.

6. When playing against my opponents, yes, it does. Perhaps, its me making it easy for them. In the end it really doesnt matter. The facts are that before my opponents were pbgc/ag'ing through most of my pokestrings i was winning a lot more. My opponents arent good at predicting which side of the coin im going flip to. They ARE good at pbgc and also pushblock ag then wait, reversal once blockstun has ended. This at the very least, waters down my mixups, and at the most makes me not want to base my game on blockstun into high/low mixup. Because its way to easy to defend against once people have the timing for pbag down.

7. I'm quite conscious of it. My offense isnt. THIS IS AS INTENDED. If my offense were designed around negating pbag, i would have to start using frame traps pre pushblock to bait the pushblock, or i would have to start using frame traps/staggers post pushblock to bait the pushblock lengthening mechanic. Either way, both are much less powerful than high/low in blockstun when the opponent can only choose to block in either direction or alpha counter if they deem that to hard.

Anyways, this only has 3 answers besides quitting the game. Use constantly shifting hitconfirms, use frame traps, use distance/keepaway and forego any rote confirms as much as possible. My answer is solution number one. Constantly shifting hitconfirms. So highs,lows and throws and i might even throw in some multihits here and there. But seriously, parasoul has a high that basically confirms itself, and a throw that confirms itself, neither really susceptible to pbgc and both of which would be hard to use pbag against consistently, at least in my mind.

8. Yes. Idk where 3 comes from, or from what character you are talking about and against what character at which point on screen, but yes, I fully believe that blocking a lockdown assist is a paramount strategic mistake. They have no range. The only lockdown assist i see being kinda really dumb is m sek ATM and maybe hk hairball... And mk bomber in the corner... Lol. Hk hairball because it is super high priority, not invincible, just high priority, has crazy range, and unlike mk bomber, is unduckable. Its like lk bomber lost its invulblnerability, and gained mad range... Plus got faster to boot. Ive never had a problem with things like "opponent fucked up his spacing and got owned" imho, if you block lk bomber or cerecopter at neutral... You just made a pretty big mistake and having to spend meter to ac out seems like a damn fine option to me. Its what i do when i make that mistake against lockdown and dont think i can guess my way out of the mixup.

9. Neither. I'm giving my opponents props and acknowledging that they are currently running better shit than i am because they weighed the merits of what the game boils down to and made teams for this better than me and i need to adjust.

Plus, you know... I use painwheel with no fiber upper or bella raw tag... So yeah, I'm still low tier i guess until i find better stuff.

 

[Cellsai]

So...this will be short..

We need to sit down and have a serious discussion about the word 'short'.

 

[Dime]

We need to sit down and have a serious discussion about the word 'short'.

it came out longer than intended so i just edited it to not say that. Still only took about half an hour to type out, so, relatively speaking, it was short for me :) Anyways i have to wakeup early so im out.

 

[Dime]

J.mk plus assist with pw. I need to revisit this.

 

[Dime]

Transitional anchors:


Q. What is a transitional anchor?
A. An anchor character in the third spot on a trio team that isnt designed to be last woman standing but is there for dhc purposes mostly. Basically if the second character gets a hitconfirm, then the transitional anchor always gets dhc'd in. There are many purposes, but the primary ones are to get the transitional in at a range that they are good at without having to neutral, and/or to do massive damage no matter what in one hitconfirm without having to reset, thus opening oneself up to super mashes or the other player guessing correctly at the reset point. Aka, a semi comeback mechanic.

Having a transitional at 3rd instead of second makes sense, second is not guaranteed to have enough meter to dhc. 3rd almost always will.

This as a concept is nowhere near new. But i dont think it has been explored with enough depth in sg.

Some characters that could do extrememly well as transitional anchors that arent generally known to be anchors:

Peacock
Painwheel
Parasoul


All have strengths and weaknesses.

Painwheel gets absolutely ridiculous crossup mixups when shes installed plus gets safe dhc . Peacock gets a semi safe dhc or a hugely damaging argus that puts peacock at her perfect position.
Parasoul gets in with either a knockdown advantage or an ability to pick up an otg combo as well as some semi safe dhc options.

Ive already experimented with peacock transitional... And yeah its pretty damn ridiculous. I do one throw combo and dhc into argus and do crazy damage no matter what, then my opponent is down to low life and needing to get in NOW. They have an option to tag... But that gets them punished everytime.

I use peacock transition against other peacock players when i dont want to mirror but do feel like turning the tables on them and making them jump through hoops.

Anyways, just something to keep an eye out for. I will be experimenting with painwheel and parasoul transitions soon.

This is of course far from fool proof. The opponent can snap in the transitional, or the second may never get an opening and the transitional will have to be a "true" anchor. But from my few games played. Ive found transitional to be quite good despite the drawbacks.

-edit


Double, funnily enough seems like the ideal transitional bridge character (second character) double is a great anchor for when the transitional bridge is dhc'd into, and double gets openings well plus if your transitional doesnt have the best of assists... Double is good without assists. Plus double second has a double jump for incoming mixup defense and a safe dhc should the point get that far. Double also doesnt have the best of resets and is prone to throw openers which get scaled, which a transitional dhc can fix by resetting scaling and having the good resets that the transitional has such as painwheel or parasoul. Double literally seems designed for second when transitional anchors are included in the mix.

 

[Dime]

Painwheel, flight micro movements. Remember, practice, learn, adjust.

 

[Dime]

Need to practice:

BB sound stun into tag combos.

Painwheel lp stinger xx hatred install, xx tag combo, xx tag back into painwheel raw tag (is this even possible?) painwheels raw tag is unbreakable when she is in hatred install and does 1800 damage and afaik doesnt add anything to undizzy (could be wrong)

 

[Dime]

Project BIG BAND:

Take BB and turn him into something decent, cause right now he seems kinda bad... Then again, I'm kinda bad and my BB will be the same of course.

First things first... Overall BB theory:

I think BB is a character that excels at making reads, but gets punished highly for not guessing correctly. I also think that with BB lp brass for general poking, and hp and mp brass for going through zoning... I dont think BB has problems with getting in. So he has no need for an assist that clears the way for him such as lk or mk bomber. I think the most important thing to do with BB is to find ways to make him safer. M shadow assist from fukua seems to do this, but can be hard to apply at neutral. So i need to find better ways to apply it from neutral, or stick to using it as a blockstring assist (cr.hp+m shadow xx e brake is SUPER REAL PRESSURE) as is doing overhead plus m shadow... Heck even l beat extend plus m shadow can be ok on block.


The REAL PROBLEM with assists and BB is that damned e-break. I swear, e-brake and peacock fake teleport seem more designed to hamper doing port plus assist and brass plus assist, than anything else. I swear BB would be higher tier if he could easily do brass plus assist (brass breaks through things with its ground armor, and the assist protects it on block) having said that, there are some not so great ways around this:

Do a normal with assist call and cancel into brass. The problem is that the normal opens up band to counterhits. So doing a macro assist call and then doing brass seems like a good option... But is slower for getting out the brass attack (which generally needs to come out as fast as possible since it is genreally in reaction to a favourable situation or spacing. And there is always jump variants of calling macro assist and landing and doing brass, with the assist to cover, hopefully.


One really nice tip from experimenting around with that though is that st.mk kara into brass... Isnt only useful for getting a fullscreen hp brass to hit... Its also VERY useful to extend the range on lp and mp brass for poking reasons.

 

[Dime]

There are a bunch of things i want to touch on in this post... But i have no thoughts on how to organize any of it... So i guess i will give an outline of the things i want to touch on and see if i can get to all of them:

Painwheel... Top tier?
beat extend L the great game changer?
BB neutral game as I'm seeing it in a theoretical perspective.
Pw cr.mk is a low!


Top tier painwheel:

Painwheels weaknesses have always been quite numerous and i wont list them here since ive already done that in the past. The point is though that many of her weaknesses have been shored up:

She can be tagged in on hit now which gives her her most powerful position without having to neutral, this is like filia gregor dhc... But for no meter... And is a huge buff for pw should it stick.

The way this could be used? Think like nemos mvc3 team where he hits with nova then tags in strange to combo them, only with pw it will be a series of high probability high damage resets. Kill the character and then tag in the original point and do it all over again. This could be quite viable for a painwheel second, team. And you still have a safe dhc...

Painwheels weakness of both not having the best upclose defense or midrange offense/defense as well as being to slow to be able to confirm off of updo or pillar from a variety of situations, has all but been completely destroyed with beat extend L being in the game. Painwheel can now confirm an invincible assist from a variety of setup movements such as jumping or flying backwards... Which makes her midrange game super scary. She basically has little to no weaknesses anymore except against peacock. And against peacock, painwheel can simply change from using beat extend L to using H brass. She works well with either assist and brass really cramps peacocks style.
In fact, this duo of long range horizontal assist, or really good AA invulnerable assist are what make BB probably the best or second best support in the game right now. Doubles damage is low and double only really controls the lower vector of the screen, safe on block cats and her j.hp as anchor seem to be the primary reasons to play double now... It seems like she could use a BIT of love. But maybe not... Shes still quite good. But if I'm picking her for support... I really need to think along the lines that BB probably supports better.


Beat extend L the game changer?


What to say about this move? Well it has weaknesses when compared to pillar, updo and fiber... But its strengths imho outweigh its weaknesses.

Its primary weakness is that it has a higher prevalence for getting happy birthdayed and /or stuffed on startup. But that weakness is somewhat mitigated by it also GIVING lots of happy birthday situations that the other assists wouldnt necessarily. Also, just because of how it functions, beat extend L is going to give much better ability to confirm than any of the other assists.

Previously the only characters that could use updo pillar and mk bomber really well and convert off of them consistently were like val, para, double, fortune, filia. Most every other character had a hard time converting from various positions because they have slow dashes or runs or bad pickup moves.

Beat extend L changes all of that. Now EVERY CHARACTER can be used kinda like vanilla and sde val... So to speak. Just run around and call beat extend at the right spots and you have a confirm.


So to me, this assist is a real game changer for those characters not already mentioned:

Squigly, painwheel, Eliza, cerebella, fukua, peacock (gets actual confirms from hit beat extends without needing to use teleport, but can still teleport assist with it easily) and yet is still ridiculous for the characters mentioned up top.

Yeah to me this move is a game changer.


BB neutral game as I'm seeing it...


Hmmm... I still have yet to put BB through the rigours... But theoretically i think i finally have a battle plan of how to play him at neutral:

His AA is cymbal crash or parry, his jumpin is j.lk, his ground game is lp brass...or call assist. And thats basically it.


Pw cr.mk is now a low:



This is stupid good. Now i can open people with st.lp then mix up with throw or cr.mk instead of cr.lk. This is a pretty big damage boost. Plus i can attack with cr.mk plus assist for more blockstun advantage and less ability for the opponent to pushblock me out. Many many small little buffs come about because of this one little change. I for one hope it sticks and makes it into the regular game. Mike seems to think it doesnt make much difference either way...and i for one am not interested in educating myself out of a good buff.

 

[Dime]

Sweet.

I'm REALLY starting to like BB now. Finding more and more cool things with him and utilising his moves better and better.

I really like him with lp shot from parasoul... Man... So good. Things that lp shot allows me to do:

Beat extend L plus lp shot is safe as hell unless the opponent supers me or their punish has armor frames as the shot makes contact with them... This is very good.

Shot plus lp brass is terrific pokes.

Lp brass on block > beat extend L or m is gross when using shot to cover.

Lk step plus shot is stupid good and positive on block and a confirm on hit.



BB MIXUP GAME:


St.lp xx lk step plus shot
St.lp xx cr.lk,cr.mk,st.hp with a shot in there on block somewhere to allow BB to continue pressure.
St.lp, delay, throw


So once BB is in st.lp range he has really good mixups when using shot to cover himself.

This character is super fun and has crazy pressure with shot assist.

 

[Dagwood]

Napalm shot l is my favorite assist for big band too. its just overall an awesome assist, gets overshadowed by Pillar.

 

[Dime]

Yeah I'm really liking it. My only problem is people that play the completely far game or completely in your face game cause the assist doesnt seem to help... THAT much versus either of those styles... Which of course is what my opponents do. Beat extend helps against the pressure though for sure but ive been noticing that shot doesnt cover beat extend THAT well because the shot likes getting eaten by the opponents assist.

 

[Dime]

Not having a gtfo move as an assist is putting a cramp on my BB style. I previously didnt like hornet bomber cpbecause BB cant convert the mk or lk versions into full combo very easily... What i wasnt thinking about at that time was using giant step or h brass to confirm.


Both are just theory right now since I'm away from computer, but if brass is an easy conversion it means that BB can pickup mk bombers into unscaled okizeme plus corner push... Which should be good. Or he can brass into ssj, or brass into taunt. Or he can possibly a-train on reaction as well.


If these confirms are easily possible even when jumping away and calling assist... Then I'm definitely going to be switching back to mk bomber assist.

 

[Dime]

Hmmm...been awhile since my last journal entry, been very busy with work and stuff. But just wanted to share my extremely late thoughts of squigly cr.hp assist and other things.


Man oh man squigly cr.hp assist for pw is ridiculously good. So many resets and reset pressure blockstring into mixups it isnt funny. Why wasnt i using this assist before @Spencer ? Its ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. A lockdown low assist with a highish hitbox and the lockdown lasts longer than filia cr.mk making it perfect for pw slower flight confirms.

Pw is crazy on hit as we all know, but against people that can react to her flight overheads she loses something. Also on her blocked confirms she loses something since flight is a big (attack me) sign.



Well, with squigly cr.hp assist pw can do crazy stuff like poke plus assist and then cancel into fly for a crazy lockdown/high/low mixup that she gets to go for 2 mixups in a row off in most cases.

She has fly plus low mixups all day.


The fact that squigly cr.hp lasts so long AND hits low is what makes it so special. Ive always believed in assist/assist shells that accomplish as much as possible.


An example is doubles lk bomber... It is a lockdown assist and a gtfo assist which is crazy good. Unlike other assists that really only serve one function.


Well the assist shell of squigly cr.hp assist and BB beat extend L assist gives a ton of assist options, the most important being you get a lockdown assist, a low assist, and a gtfo assist that pw can reliably convert off of.


Quite literally this assist structure completely makes painwheel have no weaknesses except for one real weakness and one semi real weakness:

This assist structure is weakish against peacock because of the short range of the assists. And the other semi weak aspect is that the assists in general are lower damage cause of scaling.


But other than that this team has EVERYTHING from a frontloaded point of view.

And now some strings that ive found rather awesome with point painwheel and these assists:


1.cr.lk,cr.mk xx fly plus low assist (you can choose to make the assist crossup by flying over the opponent and depending on your button input you can hit high or low first... An amazing little blockstring that makes people hold up back/mash on shit like a mofo.

*note
though this string is amazing from any position, it is REALLY good if the opponent has already used pushblock such as against pw j.mp or j.hk early. Watch out for pbgc though and make sure to punish any pbgc attempt by making the reversal wiff.


2. Beat extend assist confirm: combo into st.lp, uncombo into chain cr.lk plus squigly assist then:

Chain into cr.hp charged overhead, or chain into cr.hk charged low. And on block you still have time to frame trap or go for another mixup.

3. J.mp (4) j.hp (4) xx fly upforward j.mp (1) (blocked) xx j.hp xx fly plus cr.hp assist: opponent lands into lockdown low assist and cant call assists because they are still in superjump. Good repressure reset mixup whether you assist confirmed or not because of the uncombo j.mp. Weak against heavys because they land and can reversal or call AA assist.


There are many many others of course but i like those to get to ball rolling because they all have very important strategic applications.

 

[Spencer]

Yeah Squig's 2hp is godly. It turns every reset into a natural high/low. I think the team you're rocking is about as good as it gets for PW.

 

[Dime]

About priority


There are 4 types of priority in my mind:

1. Speed
2. Long range
3. Disjointedness (this is mostly exclusive to sg)
4. Properties like invincibility or armor.


The reason for the designation is that knowing that a move is "high priority" doesnt tell you want makes the move good nor how to fight it. It also doesnt tell you the moves weaknesses. Case in point painwheels j.mp and bigbands j.lk:


Both could be called high priority, but for different reasons.

Painwheel j.mp has disjointed hitboxes and range. Knowing this one would think the move is godlike and unbeatable... And in the hands of a good player it can certainly seem that way, but painwheels j.mp has one crucial huge flaw that messes with its priority... It is VERY slow. So it can be out prioritized easily once someone gets close to painwheel and uses fast startup jumping moves.


BB j.lk is the exact opposite of painwheels j.mp but just as effective of a priority tool. It, unlike pw j.mp, doesnt have much range, and it isnt disjointed much at all. What it DOES have though is extremely fast startup and godlike active frames (i left active frames out of the priority list because i feel active frames are an off shoot of range and speed) this speed allows BB to use his j.lk in a preemptive fashion to beat most other air to air attacks when his and his opponents buttons were pressed very close to one another with regard to timing.

 

[Dime]

For the painwheel compendium, I'm doing my part (the introduction /overview ) as 3 parts:

Overview

Strengths

Weaknesses

I had a very good start on strengths and weaknesses but my low tech system of filing shit (writing things on a small notepad) left much to be desired and i lost the damned notepad... So here's a better way to file and stuff.

Weaknesses first since its easier to think in weaknesses for pw and then the strengths come because many of them outright do away with some weaknesses or at least serve to blunt said weaknesses:

Painwheels ability to convert off of regular dp assists such as updo and pillar and mk bomber, is weak when outside the corner. And most first hits, will be outside the corner... So the most powerful assists in the game arent something that pw can use "well" with regard to confirming.

Painwheel has no great midrange air to air, shes all j.mp which is a slow long ranged attack, or shes j.hk/j.lk/j.lp which are all short ranged and kinda slow and bad hitboxes. Her j.mk is the closest attack she has to really be a mid ranged air to air, but it loses to basically everything else that opposing characters would do at the same range, case in point it loses to bellas j.mp because of bellas disjointed hitboxes and it loses to parasouls j.lp because of the speed difference, and loses to most other midrange air to airs because of one of those things.

She has probably the bar none worst reversal in the game, but since its still a reversal it is still good in the right situations, but still, in most situations it is pretty bad... And for meter, no less.

Painwheel is slow in ability to move just about anywhere quickly. Her dash has tremendous startup (though visually it doesnt telegraph itself so there's always that) and her flight also has lots of startup.

Painwheels rote flight overheads are react blockable rather easily, making her mixup game lack fear factor and strong starters without mucho conditioning of the opponent.

Painwheels starters in general suffer horrible scaling, her j.hk hits 6 times, whereas her j.mp hits 4 times, her other prime combo starters are her throws, which scale damage by 50%. So you can crossup with j.hk into a scaled combo, or you can throw into a scaled combo. Her standard unscaled optimal starters are j.mk and cr.lk or cr.mk. But with her flight overheads being react blockable it is unlikely that you will be opening the opponent up with either of these as a form of high/low mixup. Moral of the story being that strong starters are hard to come by, and the scaling can be horrendous, some combos drop 1500-2000 damage just for starting them with j.hk.

Painwheels grounded normals are very short range and stubby in general.


Painwheel has no exceptionally powerful assist because her most powerful moves arent allowed to be assists (armor attacks and nail charges)


More weakness will be added but thats enough for now, tomorrow will be strengths :)

 

[Dime]

Before i go into strengths id like to mention one of painwheels prime strengths when considering her in relation to her peers. Its been observed, for good reason that pw doesnt really standout in any category as being the best in it, and she isnt really an all around character either... Which is how i used to think until i realized that there is a category where she is "more than likely" the best in the game:

Hitconfirming. Its a hard category to acknowledge pw as best in when so many characters in sg excel at it or at the very least cant really be considered "weak" at it. But pw takes things a step further. She can meterlessly confirm all of her throws (front back and air) she has easy j.mp air to air confirms. She has j.lp,j.lk,j.mk air to air confirms. She has j.hp air to air confirms (not easy but doable with practice and spacing/character dependent) and she has easy ground confirms, she has armor confirms off of cr.hp, st.hp, cr.mp and sweep. Painwheel is a hitconfirm beast. If there is anything that can be said that she really excels at... Its hitconfirms.
Oh and the reason for learning that pw has better hitconfirms than most other characters, is to learn how to pick better assists for her. Because with her having such good hitconfirms, there becomes less reason to be able to confirm from dp assists and the like (unless going for stacking synergy which is to stack strengths on top of each other in order to change the strengths from strong to near op, like giving bella a command grab assist, or giving peacock a projectile assist) for painwheel a stacking synergy would be something like beat extend L since it offers a hitconfirm from a place that pw doesnt easily get them, invincible ground moves.

But in pws case i feel like it might be better to go for opposite synergies, aka synergies that seek to diminish faults rather than synergies that seek to pump up strengths.

Here again beat extend L makes its presence known by shoring up painwheels weaker reversal options, so it gives her Both a stacking (attacking in this case) synergy and a defensive synergy... So obviously its super good for pw... HOWEVER:

H brass assist also stacks with certain painwheel strengths and weaknesses, it doesnt stack with her hitconfirm strength though (outside the corner) but it makes up for one of her biggest weaknesses... Ability to get in, and ability to deal with peacock. After that its still good as a damage assist in both highly scaled hitconfirm combos, and combos that start with optimal moves. And its also a great counter assist that does ridiculous damage to the opponents assist when painwheel baits one out on wiff. For this reason i believe brass to be the better overall choice for pw. Though i also believe that beat extend is godlike. Personally my preference is to use brass against any team with peacock on it, and beat extend against teams without it.

So on to the rest of the strengths:

Hitconfirms from basically anything and damn near anywhere.

On the higher end of the damage spectrum with her corner combos.

Can vary her reset points greatly because of flight, she can basically go for a reset just about anywhere.

Her flight movement allows her to evade most ground pressure that other characters have to deal with.

She controls huge amounts of screen with fully charged hp stingers and can easily set up her own offense with them if she finds places to put them in her game.

She can charge her stingers and flight cancel them before they come out, as a fake, allowing her to go offensive against people that try to rush her down before she gets a max charge.

She has a plethora of ways to use unfly to bait disadvantage on block anti air things and to go offensive relatively safely via calling an assist

Buer thresher is one of the best aerial reversals in the game.

Can air armor through obvious one hit reversal attacks such as pillar or updo.

If pw is in armor, she can reversal most supers after they recover from superfreeze because armor doesnt get affected by superfreeze hitstop.

She can very easily bait pushblock with her flight cancels, which can give her opportunities for strong starters as opposed to scaled ones.

She is great at baiting wiffed assists.

 

[Dime]

Overview:


Painwheel is a highly mobile, high corner damage character that hitconfirms exceptionally well and gets great damage by baiting pushblocks with fly attacks. She can reset and do mixups from just about anywhere in her combo strings that she wants and she has high priority long ranged neutral game tools such as her j.mp aerial normal and her projectile stingers that she can use to battle other non zoning characters with from afar. Her st.mk is a very high priority tool to use on the ground as a far anti air or as an attack directly proceeding a dash to get in.

 

[Dime]

Its been a while since ive posted in here, as per usual. Its just that there is less to learn about the game so there is less to write about (dont take that as saying that the game is figured out though... Because its far from it)

First things first, i now believe that some point characters have been figured out well enough to make "some" front loaded teams viable.

I believe that front loaded val, painwheel, and fukua teams are currently viable (as far as beta is concerned) frontloading isnt as viable for retail pw imho, also, for now i feel that fukua is better on a front loaded duo rather than a trio. Painwheel and val both work excellently on front loaded trios though.

Anyways, to keep this short. I wanted to write in here to chronicle my newest painwheel teams. Ive finally completely figured out how i want to play this game and how i WILL be playing the game from now on:


I have 4 different teams that i play. They all have different flavors though most of them are quite similar at first glance:


(In no particular order of strength or preference)


1. Pw/ BB duo
2. Pw/BB/peacock (hk george assist)
3. Pw/BB/double (m bomber assist or h bomber assist in the beta)
4. Pw/BB/squigly (cr.hp assist)

Pw always uses cr.mp assist, and BB is flexible between h brass or beat extend.

The strategies:

All these characters have safe on block dhc for BB to be able to use his reversal at will.

Peacock and squigly anchors cqn be said to be a front loaded team.

With peacocks h george, painwheel gets to go in on offense almost all day long and use h george as a shield.

With squiglys cr.hp assist painwheel has a ton of unblockable setups and the entire team basically becomes one giant piece of unblockable spam.

With duo, its just the team i would use against a strong duo or basically any solos. I dont like trio versus solo because it is to easy to get randomed out by solo damage.

With double, im just going for tried and true sg fundamental team making, its a solid team but not cheap in any real way... A very fair and fundamental team as far as sgs top teams are concerned


These teams give me the most flexibility to mix and match how i want to play painwheel and give me the best shot of never being in a match that isnt at least 5-5 from my own point of view.

I dont feel as if i can be countered by using this set of teams. I have options for virtually everything.

 

[Dime]

Complaint post...


Things that currently piss me off about the game:


1. Midrange Upback is to strong and to free of a movement option. The simple gist of it is that against semi decent spacing there isnt much you can do against it except to play a spacing war of attrition.
Neutral feels like nothing but a bunch of double jump emptyjumps or regular emptyjumps and coming down with an invincible assist such as L beat extend. Then its about countercalling the assist, getting lockout then going for a weak mixup if you are positioned right. This makes both players not want to call assists which should open up the neutral a bit... But really doesnt. At least not much.

So the game basically starts to boil down to a bit of a turtle and airthrow and countercall fest. Which is very boring for one, and for 2 is just way to easy of a neutral game "footsie" technique to be able to use. Its all about the assist and little about actual dynamic thohght or spacing because there are so very few "safe" ways to pressure a midrange upback then double jump emptyjump forward plus call assist on the way down. This makes the pattern very abuseable and since it is so abuseable the situations that it inevitably leads to, are seen over and over again. The play almost looks scripted, thats how flowchart it is.

Obviously, this isnt very fun to play against much less lose to.

My thing is that there are 3 things that really exacerbate the situation:

1. The new upback... allowing the pattern to start way to easily and way to freely (before you could stop the pattern by rooting the opponent to the ground with your aerial attacks as the pattern wiffed, or as the pattern started... Now, neither works)

2. Beat extend/invincible assist on the way down protecting ones descent from airthrows and grounded/aerial pressure. Also, you cant run under because of the assist... So most forms of counter arent really available. Well they are, but a wrong guess gets you killed and put into a blender. A correct guess results in 50% scaling from an airthrow, or, nothing but pressure, against an opponent that still has their invincible assist ready to go for your grounded pressure. The best guess to make here is to simply block their assist and counter call them. Which DOES work well, BUT since its by far the best option, it gets super stagnant really quickly and the entire game seems to take on countercalling from point blank range rather than actual dynamic thought. It just really feels like raw gambling with little thought or spacing knowledge thrown in.

3. Double jump while having the ability to call assist while still being able to block, while not being subject to the old preblock rules from jumping attacks.


It isnt any one of these things that is causing the game to bog down, its the combination of all these things that is the problem.


The thing is i actually aggree with most of the things that the upback buff prescribes to do. I dont think offense should be as easy as just jumping forward and wiffing an attack or being in startup of a jumping attack and being able to root the other person down if they were trying to upback out of the pressure (even though as ive said in another thread there are actually a myriad of DIRECT ways to blow this up) i also agree with upback working against projectiles and against assists.


But i still feel that like so many of the games changes that have come previously, its not the actual change that is bad, its the DEGREE of the change that is bad. When unblockable supers were first introduced. It was a GOOD change, but the degree of the change was all wrong. Many supers were unblockable from half screen away... This was just a bad balance because the first effort was a kluge. Mike actually supported the first effort and couldnt see what was wrong with unblockable supers that hit from half screen away. But due to the communities hate of the first revision, mike went about actually looking at every super and balancing them accordingly. The only balance, which is one i suggested from the start, was to have the unblockable range diminished.

All of a sudden a broken mechanic was no longer broken and the game was actually MUCH better as per mikes original vision. No more getting supered out of a super that was correctly done against an outsretched attack.

Even though i know my opinion means basically nothing. I would be remiss if i didnt at least offer some "solutions" to the problems i now see the game having. Problems which to me are as deal breaking as those first unblockable super beta patches:


1. Upback gets balanced in a micromanagemment sort of way just like the unblockable supers. Every super is different, and everything that upback works against is different.

If the inabillty to fully root an opponent with an air attack never comes back, perhaps a happy medium, of air attacks only root during their active frames, not before the actives which i assume is how it used to be. This would be more fair and keep the abiltiy to jump out of attacks and armored aerial attacks would no longer root during armor startup.

Or keep the upback against aerial attacks as it used to be, where it rooted at all times, but make the upback not rooting against assists and projectiles a thing. So the upback buff is still in effect but less globally so.

2. Nerf double jump in some way.

Make double jump not able to call assists, or make double jump lose its ability to block, or restrict double jump to only post apex jump heights or restrict the range on forward jump double jump or... Something... There are alot of ways to tone down the power of double jump ever so slightly and i really feel that if nothing else is done with respect to the new upback, that nerfing double jump in some way is of paramount importance.



Thank you to anyone who reads this.


Tldr:

The new upback and its ramifications warrant further investigation imo. Read the post to see the reasons why in my opinion.

 

[Mike_Z]

The play almost looks scripted, thats how flowchart it is.

That says more about the players than about the game, though. Even in games like 3s where there is a game-defining super powerful defensive option, gameplay among good players does not boil down to that.

Although I am actually super willing to try doublejumps putting you in SJ mode. It might feel like utter poop but they can reach SJ height so...let's try that!

 

[ClarenceMage]

Even in games like 3s where there is a game-defining super powerful defensive option, gameplay among good players does not boil down to that!

How so?

High level 3S very much includes awareness of parry OS timings, conditioning high-low parry to blow it up, neutral game parry confirms, blowing up predictable pressure/footsies with parry on read, red parry punishes that in turn discourage certain methods of offense, keeping track of your opponent's parry attempts to take advantage of parry lockout period, bloody SGGK...

Not all of the game is parry-based but parry is an almost constant threat to keep track of from your opponent, and an always-available solution to many problems that you must solve in the game. Is there something I am missing that means that parry is not one of the most important things to understand in consideration to high level play?

 

[Mike_Z]

High level 3S very much includes awareness of parry OS timings, conditioning high-low parry to blow it up, neutral game parry confirms, blowing up predictable pressure/footsies with parry on read, red parry punishes that in turn discourage certain methods of offense, keeping track of your opponent's parry attempts to take advantage of parry lockout period, bloody SGGK...
Not all of the game is parry-based but parry is an almost constant threat to keep track of from your opponent, and an always-available solution to many problems that you must solve in the game. Is there something I am missing that means that parry is not one of the most important things to understand in consideration to high level play?

As you so eloquently put it, "This is nice. This is also not what I am talking about at all, and is not a counterpoint to anything I have mentioned. Please respond to what I have written, not what you have thought I have written."

I was talking about the "play looks scripted because one option dominates all and is constantly used" being indicative of the level of play, rather than the power of the option.
Even in games where that is known to be true about some option, high-level play does not become predictable. Mid-level play, however, does.