But back to Astaroth, my initial claim was, Astaroth won't miss a GI in 3KA. He doesn't even need to see it for being a 4A+B to have a good chance of reGIing the attack, plus the fact no one fails to see 4A+B. Add to that, the Astaroth has nothing else for his attention while he's swinging the 3K>A, so it's very unlikely he'd miss.
Condition 3KA with 4B. Hesitate on completing your Prep combo to the point where they think they might be able to shake. You have now created a situation where they'll be busy preemptively shaking instead of GI-ing - allowing him to possibly miss. Is this feasible? Certainly not. But neither is 4A+B in the first place, or delaying guaranteed combos. However, the situations exist - I feel as if you don't even acknowledge 4A+B having a niche use.
-> Your claim is this: It's something that's there. And more options is good. I want to advance a sophisticated argument to the contrary to this, because I think not only is the opposite true, it's very importantly, oppositely true. And the making of this argument might seem to give you the credit of only a newb, but, I walk over all the details because that is my way, that is how I assure myself where I'm going.
One response to your claim is out there in Raph archives, but I don't have the experience to make it my own. It is, "4A+B is *always* answerable by timing the reGI, because it reduces Raphael's choice to 0 while giving your opponent one, which he need only take to get GI advantage. Thus, 4A+B is arguably worse than doing nothing, always."
Another response to this is a challenge. More options is not better. I can see only in Taki where options themselves are a weapon. Taki has so many strings, and the annoyance of that i10 interrupt leading to three meaningfully different followups, that wrapping the mind around the possibilities must be fought at the same time as actually grasping the enemy strategy. In all other cases, a hundred varieties of kitchen knife don't add anything to the option of a good sharp dagger. I would make this argument in two ways. One, your new argument relies implicitly on the idea 4A+B may be needed, or most useful, in a situation where other options could not do what it does. I challenge this. At the very least, we know for a fact 6G can do everything 4A+B does except the large window (it's 16 frames or something?). Two, I challenge the practice you are advancing, of "that you should never try to discount any of Raphael's options." I think you should discount options. I think for a player to grow you have to ask when you can discount options.
You have said it for me - 4A+B has a larger GI window than 6G. Thus, it can be used in ways 6G cannot. The rest of your arguement, however, seems to be only a difference of ideology, one that I believe we will both have a hard time convincing the other of.
An anecdote - Jink (a Siegfried player) uses, and consistently hits, Siegfried's BBB on NH. It is not a NC, or even an NCC. It is extremely linear, and B6 or 3B beats it in just about everything but damage, which is usually offset by its terrible frames. But he hits BBB. And not only that, but also 236B - one of the slowest unblockables in the game, in addition to 4BBB. However, that's not all he does - he jagA's like no tomorrow, and I like what he does with stances, when he uses them. But he tends to make a point of using, hitting, and winning with moves that are at face value "discountable".
The point of that is this - you can utilize only 236B for whiff punishes, use only 3B to punish barely unsafe moves, or try to kill step with WS A. But why not 11B to punish whiff, even if it means only SG damage? Why not try to throw, or instigate a VE mixup? Why not just step back? Granted, none of those are orthodox, or even preferable options in most cases. But they're options. And I think that for a player to truly grow, they need to understand what options are available, which options are the most helpful for their situation, for all the correct reasons.
So that is why, I say, the argument about a 4A+B not only gets rebuffed, but it bounces right off the chest of its adversaries. The things you can say in 4A+B's defense, don't quite count as pros for it at all.
4A+B doesn't have many pros. But it does have uses, which I believe failing to acknowledge will weaken the player.
Imagine the Siegried player. He plays strong players who get inside his space a lot. He stares them down and knows his moves, and, trying them out, finds "Hey, 4A and B6 are really helpful, as are 4K and these good throws. Siegfried ain't so bad up here." He uses headbutts and the aforementioned moves with quite a skill, reading his opponents with talent and being quite tough up close, earning a name. But he can never cinch that third round. "I've got to get smarter," he says. His error, of course, is so carelessly letting opponents go through all his agA, SSH and SRSH games, 22A, 22B(~SSH) that he doesn't use. He is absolutely 100% right that he can do great stuff fighting where he does, but he failed when he didn't look for something better; not just that, he didn't look to -make- something better before he was only stuck with bad and worse. His opponent is the one who has made him choose between B6, low kicks, and 3(B)s for luck. He has applied skill to see what he has in this situation, yes, but when he closed himself off from seeing if he already had been 'beaten' by something, he, well, had already lost.
Not any kind of logic about the game, which looks at what could 'handle' the situation as it is, can arrive at the understanding of how to make it as would actually be the profitable one to you.
I can easily imagine a Siegfried player, as I am one. But I find it hard to visualize a Siegfried that plays as you have described. Mostly because some of the moves you named - 22A, 4A, throws - are not utilized much at all by some Siegfrieds, while are used to death by others. However, both groups - the one that use the moves, and the ones that don't - have something in common: the moves they do use, they all use successfully. They have grown past the weaknesses of the moves, and learned to turn them into strengths.
And any Siegfried that loses because he limits his options to B6, 1K and 3(B) has lost before the match even starts by limiting his options so much. Those are objectively some of Siegfried's best moves, but they become most effective when paired with some of Siegfried's more unorthodox moves.
I feel like this example falls a bit flat, however, because it sounds like you don't have a lot of first hand knowledge of playing Siegfried, and are trying to give examples from a Raphael's perspective of playing - a perspective that I'm finding is much more narrow than Siegfried's.
The final thing I must take care to say, is, this is not mainly an argument that 4A+B is one of "bad or worse."
But 4A+B IS bad. I had poor word choice earlier in calling 4A+B "great against Astaroth 3KA/3K(A)" - to clarify, it really is little more than "alright", and 4B really does do a much better job in all aspects against that string.
It's that the approach to thinking about the game, where you offer as the reason what you did - what you appeared to (you may know better than what you appear to say, for reasons of brevity, and English being a crappy language) - is one that plateaus, one that won't get to the real good stuff in a character, because it isn't looking in the right way. It's looking in the right place - yes, give every move its time - but you must demand more of your move, to make the strongest sum playstyle possible, than that it "can" fit. I think it's very important to be cautious of this lesson, which is what I meant by the need to make this argument in full as I started.
The way I'm interpreting this is (please correct me if I am mistaken) that you should only work on the most effective tools a character has, and ignore anything that falls into a niche use, as it wastes time. I disagree - I think spending so much time on things that have been proven to work creates a sort of stagnation in a character, one that can be dispelled by working on utilizing that character's much less orthodox options.
I did not write this to belittle Heaton. I know nothing about what you do or don't know (other than that you believed in writing exactly what you did.) Honestly, I was driven to put into some brief essay my awareness of Fighter Gaming as it is, after that insight coming from Belial as I said. I used the opportunity. If I'm wrong, I get to be corrected by teachers and trolls.
I take no offense, and mean absolutely none in return. What I mean by my post is thus - 4A+B is pretty bad, but even pretty bad moves can have uses once in awhile, or once in a blue moon. You should remember these uses instead of discard them, in the off chance that they may be helpful to you.
At the end of the day, I think this all just comes down to different playstyles - I come from a Siegfried heavy one, which is more based on risks, spontaneity, and match-up smartness. Generally speaking, the last one carries over to all characters, but I feel as if most of the Raphaels here don't appreciate spontaneous actions or unnecessary risk taking. It almost sounds as if you are trying to create one, singular method to play Raphael. I feel that characters that play similarly from one player to another actually offer less growth than characters who offer a variety of ways to play them. If I am mistaken for trying to play Raphael with ideals I learned from playing Siegfried, then so be it - I have fun playing Raphael the way I do. Nothing more, nothing less.
Please take notice, Mandritti - I have nothing but respect for someone that dedicates so much of themselves to a character they enjoy playing. I recognize that the reason you discount 4A+B is not because you're stuck complaining about Raphael's lack of good options, like so many others, but because you would rather look ahead to what good options he does have. I enjoy these back-and-forths, and would always prefer discussing Raphael with you - as opposed to many who dismiss Raphael completely.
What's great is that Raphael has more than one of these ridiculous moves... 4B+K...
If you anticipate a teleport (Cervantes, Raphael, Algol), 4B+K will hit them mid-teleport, where as B+K will just make you whiff a VE dodge. In this case, 4B+K is a better option than whiffing a VE dodge, as 4B+K will, in this situation, actually do damage and not leave you vulnerable.
