Cervantes Q&A / General Discussion

Think of it like a more powerful, riskier version of Mitsurugi's 4B. Only instead of oki, you've got juggle followups. You have to use it sparingly if you want it to be even remotely useful and even then only on anticipation, there's very little it can be used on reaction to that I'm aware of. Used wisely, it's nasty. You ust need to really really think about it and anticipate *EXACTLY* what your foe is going to do though :/

EDIT: You can also use it to punish RO attempts since you can safely levitate outside the ring during the animation >:)


...All this is theoryfighter from a scrub perspective though. I'm sure someone that actually knows how to play him can give a much more accurate reply :P
 
I have, only very rarely, mind you, been able to use it to evade a particularly slow move, but if it's the sort of situation where I can use 4A+B to evade, then I'm practically mocking my opponent.

It's also not very good, all things considered. You can get more damage off a 3B.
 
Wandrian said:
Think of it like a more powerful, riskier version of Mitsurugi's 4B. Only instead of oki, you've got juggle followups. You have to use it sparingly if you want it to be even remotely useful and even then only on anticipation, there's very little it can be used on reaction to that I'm aware of. Used wisely, it's nasty. You ust need to really really think about it and anticipate *EXACTLY* what your foe is going to do though :/

EDIT: You can also use it to punish RO attempts since you can safely levitate outside the ring during the animation >:)


...All this is theoryfighter from a scrub perspective though. I'm sure someone that actually knows how to play him can give a much more accurate reply :P
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...also is the fact that some people are just stupid and will keep doing it regardless if it hits or not. I love punishing players who use both that teleport and mitsu's 4B.
 
REPROBEAN_CHILD said:
...also is the fact that some people are just stupid and will keep doing it regardless if it hits or not. I love punishing players who use both that teleport and mitsu's 4B.
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Oh god, yes. There was one Mitsu player who literally ONLY used 4B. After baiting and punishing him every single time in every way I knew how, I just had to message him and ask why, if it didn't work the 12th time, he would try the same move a 13th.

He called me a faggot and blocked me.
 
There's pretty much nothing good about Dark Geo Da Ray. Sadly, it's evasion period doesn't start up quite fast enough to be too useful; avoiding ring-outs is great, but any decent ring-out that your opponent will use won't be nearly slow enough to be caught by this move, and since they're probably trying to ring you out while you're standing up, Dark GDR doesn't begin to evade quickly enough to be useful. The one, extremely situational, use that this move has is tempered by the fact that Cross Bone Divider exists (done by 44A+B).

Cross Bone Divider (if you don't hold the buttons down) acts very similarly to Dark GDR while being safe-on-block. Although it doesn't have a badass teleport, the backstep will evade almost as well (Dark GDR still gets hit by moves with a long range anyways), will uber-launch for larger damage and more meter-gain than Dark GDR does, and is even safe on block. Cross Bone Divider is still slow-as-balls and not too great, but I personally consider it to be a whole world more usable than Dark GDR, having greater applicability in a same-enough sphere-of-use.
 
This move actually dodges and punishes all yoshi's indian style attacks, so it has some use. Although any intelligent yoshi would just teleport in front of you and punish you, so yeah... Have fun with it if you're fighting an idiot! :)
 
NarokKurai said:
I've always wondered if that's possible. I've 8B+K'd Yoshis out of Super Dragonfly before, as well as Mitsu's 8A+B, Natsu's stupid roll thing, Astaroth's 9B+K, and a couple other moves. Not too much damage compared to stepping and punishing, but damn fun to pull off.
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Ah, but let's delve into the whole picture, NarokKurai, and see what we find...

Bloody Culverin (8B+K) and Super-High-Jumps

Consider how high up your enemy is when you shoot them. If you shoot them out of one of the jump-really-high moves you were discussing, then landing Killer X (2A+B) after shooting them with Bloody Culverin does 44 damage. But if you've timed your shot right, your opponent is higher up in the air than they are when you shoot them in Combo2, so you should still be able to pop them back in the air with an iGDR after shooting them, right? What do we get when we hit the lab? Well, following 8B+K up with...
  • iGDR gives us 51 damage
  • b2 gives us 53 damage and some pretty great oki
  • b2, 3B gives us 76 damage if they don't tech
  • iGDR, aB gives us 71 damage
  • iGDR, CE gives us 88 damage
  • iGDR, CE, 9B+K gives us 112 damage, (122-126 if they tech)
  • iGDR, b2 gives us 76 damage and some pretty great oki
  • iGDR, b2, 3B gives us 96 if they don't tech
I'd say that using that iGDR unlocks some pretty darn damaging follow-ups! In fact, in my tests the timing seems to be almost identical to what you need to do in Combo2, both for hitting the iGDR re-launch and for hitting with the combo's CE variation. Of course, it's gets all strange depending on where your opponent is in the air when you shoot them. In fact, the last two follow-ups I listed are a bit harder to time, because you need to have your opponent high enough in the air when you iGDR (b2 is i14, compared to the i11 aB and the i10 CE). Furthermore, doing the simple b2 followup after the gunshot is a bit spacing dependent (e.g. it often doesn't catch Astaroth after you shoot him out of his 9B+K unless you shot late enough).

So, When is this Useful?

Well, against moves such as Astaroth's 9B+K or Mitsurugi's 8A+B, it's far safer to just step and punish. The step comes out faster, giving you more time to react, and your 3B punish should do as-much-if-not-more damage. Even if you can react fast enough to use Bloody Culverin on those moves, you shouldn't.

It may be hard to get down these to work consistently against something like Natsu's "Stalker" jump. But against slower stuff like Yoshimitu's "Super Dragonfly" and Mitsurugi's 8A+B, you should be able to very consistently hit these characters at the apex of their jump, making these followups very consistent and reliable.

Bloody Culverin sees it's use against areal stances. Things like Yoshimitu's "Super Dragonfly" and Natsu's "Stalker" do something that other "jump really high" moves don't: they give the attacker options, and you usually don't want to deal with that (e.g. you can't always step the Stalker jump on reaction because Natsu might come down with a horizontal). In these cases, shooting your opponent out of the air with Bloody Culverin guarantees you'll get your massive punish without having to win a guessing-game first. Remember, the primary reason those jump-really-high moves are useful is because most character simply have no tools that deal with an opponent 30 feet in the air. Cervantes is in the elite club that can, and he can do it with massive damage and great meter-building, to boot.

But be Careful!

Sadly, Bloody Culverin is slower than an i14 Storm Generate (b2), way slower than stepping or blocking, and your followup options vary with how high up in the air your opponent is when you shoot them. 8B+K's speed means that if you're shooting your opponent out of the air, it usually because you made a halfway-decent read. This means that you should be catching your opponents near enough to optimum-height that all your followups will work, but you can land at least the initial iGDR even in a non-optimum scenario. Followups to the re-launching iGDR are height-dependent, but it should be pretty easy to eyeball how high off the ground your enemy was when you re-launched them in order for you to make your decision.

Conclusion

Outside of Natsu and Yoshimitsu, I have trouble thinking of characters that have options when it comes to super-high-jump moves. In the other cases, it far more prudent to simply step and punish when given the chance. However, in those two matchups, utilizing Bloody Culverin does take one more mixup away from your opponent, and can give you some pretty phenomenal damage off of either a reaction or a good read. Being unafraid to use 8B+K takes one more option away from your opponent (and it's an option that many characters can have difficulty dealing with). Oh, and shooting your foe out of the sky like a clay pigeon is cool. Shooting him or her out of the sky, then launching them back into the sky, and catching them to bust three more caps into their gut? Now you're king of the badasses.
 
^ This is very true! However, remember that Dark GDR doesn't evade until the 13th frame. This means that, while 1[A] is still decently easy to react to, you could be in a lot of trouble if the Nightmare player decides to release that A button a bit early. Furthermore, since the uncharged version of Nightmare's 1A is i31, and Dark GRD doesn't evade until the 13th frame, you're essentially giving yourself an 18 frame window in which to react (to the uncharged version). As Cervantes's own i17 low has been labled "unreactable" by all the tier-talkers on the forum, you're not giving yourself much room for error when it comes to using Dark GRD against Nightmare's 1A.

That said, it does work fantastically against the charged 1A mixup. It's never beaten by Nightmare's punch in his 1AK (although it occasionally trades with it). Train your reflexes, because Nightmare's ability to release the 1[A] early may make Dark GDR more of a gamble than you want it to be. Also, Nightmare players generally use this mixup on wakeup, so you may not get the opportunity to utilize this counter-strategy very often. Still, it's a stylish and extremely damaging hard-counter, one which I plan to try incorporating into my (somewhat lacking) anti-Nightmare game.
 
I found another use for this move against nightmare: if you find that your opponent always tries to smack you right at the start you can throw out a 4A+B and catch him as his recovery usually isn't good enough to block in time. You may not want to try it more than once but its a solid gimmick and he'll have to repect it from then on.
 
Does Cerv have any good frame traps besides bK -> aB and 4B BE -> BT B+K? I suppose anything after GC A or WS A+B BE would be a frame trap, but those are so obvious that I hardly ever see people actually fall for it.
 
Because aB is so fast you can do it after 4A and 33B since they're only -3 each. You can train your opponent to keep blocking after these moves, unless they know their frames of course.
 
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