Discussion on Mixups/Okezemi

S

Shemy

[08] Mercenary
Apologies if there is a thread like this but I can't see it from what I've read so far. (I read the Okizeme one but it only really covered the FC A+B, 2A+B, 4A+B, 1A). I've read stuff for Ukemi and Combos in general, but no mixup orientated threads. I'm enjoying Natsu, I'd enjoy it more offline but I have only a few friends who play SC offline and they are pretty casual at it. The problem I'm having though is that when I play players that block a lot. I become stumped. Usually in other SC, I try to mix it up with good place lows, but Natsu doesn't seem to have any that don't leave her at a huge disadvantage of somekind or aren't telegraphed somewhat so much that any wortwhile player has time to block them.


1) In regards to her mixup game, anybody any advice here? I try go for 1A a lot. It works at first, but I end up falling into a rhythm with this move and after a few fights people begin to notice it and block it. and 1A leaves you in a VERY vulnerable position unless done at max range, even then some characters can punish you for it. Bombs are somewhat unsafe but I try throw them in here and there. The perfect time I've found for bombs is when the opponent is grounded, but that leads into my next question....

2) Anybody any advice on okezemi for Natsu? If I can't FC A+B, I'll 1A or Bomb. Either the opponent gets up when they see the 1A and down block it, eats the bomb (pittens damage) and gets up when at a safe distance, gets up when I'm in PO Rush if it didnt send them flying, (Sometimes I'll BE K throw otherwise I go for B+K or B or Hov B), or gets up and blocks down immediately, which leaves me in a bad position. If I go for 2A+B they get up/jump it or eat it and get sent at a safe distance. I need something other than lows to ground the opponent again. I've used 66B a few times but sometimes this has bad tracking. Any advice on what other Natsus do when the opponent is grounded to keep the advantage would be nice, both of these areas I seem to be struggling on.
 
Natsu doesn't have mix ups.
Almost, if not, everything you do in Oki situations is reactable. You can see each and every move coming.
Ofcourse, thats not to say things don't hit anyway.

*Also, PO BE, K doesn't always connect on a whiff. If you see your opponent likes to press buttons on wake up, its a good idea, but for example against Mitsu, Nightmare, Leixia, etc, the moves are either completely safe or move them far enough away that it won't connect. I think 90% of the cast has an option select against the move.
 
This is the problem I'm having then. Maybe I am far too readable online, but no mixups makes it incredibly hard to punish players who like to keep range + play safe moves + block a lot. Players like Siegfried, it's incredibly hard to get in range or punish Sieg. I was in a player match room online with three different Natsus vs this one Seig and for 30+ matches none of us managed to win against him. Granted he was a good player, but still, it was impossible to close him down since he just resorted to keeping range and blocking constantly. Any grabs were grappled off, any bombs were eaten when down then immediately up, I don't feel Natsu is really a pokey damage player. Tips anyone?

Basically if she has no mixups (what I was afraid of), whats the way to play a Natsu against players that block, keep range and play safe?

P.S. God I hate Siegs 3B. I'm going to go to bed having nightmares about that move.
 
Sieg gets easier as you play against him more.

A+B is a good way to get in if you predict a low.
9K is eh, but you can get in with it against certain moves. Trades with other ones.. Siegs hitboxes are just dumb.
66B can punish at certain ranges.
4A+B surprisingly beats out a lot of his moves at range if you see them coming.
Up close, AA will interrupt any of his stance transitions. It apparently trades with one of the stance kicks though. I don't remember which.

You just have to predict him. She has the tools to get in- its just really hard.
And if you do get in- make sure you get good damage and either 1) stay in, 2) back off and whiff punish. Its relatively easy to zone Siegfried if you have a good life lead.


But as I said before, people still get hit by the PO "mix ups." Natsu is about tech traps and CH rather than mix ups anyway. Don't rely on it too much.
 
i feel the sieg pain; 22A and agA can be really annoying. protoman is right that sometimes it's better to just back off and not do anything within sieg's optimal agA range. if you need to get in i think 66B is your best bet.
 
against slower characters you need to disrespect their frames with your own fast moves.

slight negative on hit moves like 1K into 2A are really hard for slower characters to deal with. catalog a response they use in your head and use an option to beat it next time. mess around with 66B after certain slight negative on hit and on block, it can do wonders against the slower characters and against characters whose BB comes from a certain direction.

if you block sieg 3B, your AA will CH anything he can do.
 
SoNG-Of-SiLeNCe said:
I'm reading a lot of "certain distance" "certain direction"
could us, noobs get some descriptive stuff pleases? <_>
Click to expand...

You cannot punish Nightmare at the tip of his sword. Period.
I don't care what anyone says, its impossible for Natsu to punish Nightmare at that range.

For example, lets take Nightmare's 22_88B.
i29
-16 on block

In theory, this should punishable by a wide array of Natsu's attacks.
But in practice, this is 100% not the case due to outside factors that come into play. Spacing is a huge concern when facing Nightmare due to the absurd pushback and range his moves have.

This is because running adds frames, obviously. You must cover a certain distance in order for your attack to hit. It could be anywhere from 1 to 5 to 10 extra frames added to the impact frame of your attack thus making 90% of Nightmare's attacks stupidly safe against Natsu.


I am positive it is the exact same situation with Siegfried- only he is much easier to read, completely unsafe, and is punishable at most ranges that Nightmare is not due to how much unsafer Sieg is.

Another example:
Siegfried's 3B
i18
-20 on block

Again, this should be punishable by a number of Natsu's attack and it definitely is.
As long as you are not at the tip of his sword when you block it.
When dealing with ranges like this, I just assume the move is roughly +5 frames better than it actually is because its usually the case.
 
So if I'm understanding this correctly against range advantage type characters you have to control the match, go in and keep guessing right? Or forcing them to guess wrong? Because you can't turtle on something that has range advantage?
 
The easiest thing to do would be to get a decent life lead. By "decent," my comfort zone is roughly 60-80 health lead on them. 1/4-1/3. And just start whiff punishing and playing safer.

You see, the thing is about characters who have an insane range advantage on Natsu (which really is just Nightmare, Siegfried, and Ast), its hard to get in and even harder to stay in because those characters tend to have a lot of push back and guard damage. Their effective range is also way outside of Natsu's.
So when you finally do manage to get in, you really don't want to get hit. You don't even want to block all that much due to the guard break.
If its flashing red, I personally just let them break unless I have no other choice since it'll get broken anyway. Unless ofcourse I'm confident I can just go nuts in the next round or two.

When you get in you want to secure a good life lead and either continue the assault without taking stupid risks or just back off and attempt to zone them.



And you can turtle against someone with range advantage, but just don't expect to get much out of it against them. They do insane amounts of guard damage and you'll just get broken.
Have to find a balance of turtling and pressuring. I suppose you should always do that, but its a must against these ones.


EDIT: This is all irrelevant if you can Just Guard consistently.
 
I don't think I've met or seen anyone who can A:6 100%
Realistically its more like 75-90% imo

I still have to practice it before I start playing. I make myself do it 5 times in a row before I start playing- otherwise I want to kill myself when I miss it over and over again.
 
Protoman said:
I don't think I've met or seen anyone who can A:6 100%
Realistically its more like 75-90% imo

I still have to practice it before I start playing. I make myself do it 5 times in a row before I start playing- otherwise I want to kill myself when I miss it over and over again.
Click to expand...
It is very consistent once you get the feeling for it. I've just done it 30 times in a row, not one failure. In Practice. In the heat of battle obviously I'll start to get nervous and mash, but it's psychological. Once I gain my confidence and stop mashing, I'll get more consistent with it. Lag factors in so I can see why you say 90% but I'm still going to keep trying until my hand will not miss it and lag or frame disadvantage may still play mirage tricks on me
 
Thanks for all the advice, I'll take it into consideration. I'll say one thing about Sieg though, a lot of people downplay just how powerful Sieg is.

3B itself isn't the issue. It's 3[ B ] followed by any move really. I spent easily 10 matches online last night trying to find ANY move that could interrupt this process. AA could work, if you were in range. But here's the problem: the pushback from 3[ B ] makes your AA whiff unless you step in again, and if you step in as you were rightly talking about Sieg can block it, if he didn't go for an attack such as K in that stance which is exceedingly quick.

I messed about with Sieg with comp on very hard. 10 minutes. The computer was caught in the same trap I was. Not that it proves anything, but still. If I manage to block Natsu when shes in range (very easy since she has no bloody lows so its a matter of not overextending and blocking on time), 3[ B ], followed by [A] then B,B,B it pushes Natsu RIGHT out of maximum range and as far as I could see there is no attack here that could interrupt the process. If I got caught in a 3[ B ] B, Usually I eat another 3 [ B ] if I got stunned in the process and thats easily 80 damage taken off there alone just from that ONE mistake.

I'll need to set up training I guess against Sieg. I personally think offline it is much easier to execute and punish things, but online is a different ballgame and I guess perhaps where my frustrations are coming from. Online SC is actually pretty good but the difference between online/offline is still night and day.

Anyway people looked too much into Sieg itself, I was mostly aiming at characters who don't commit to anything unsafe and hold the block button waaaay too much, how is it you manage to break down these type of players defence? When it comes to these matchups I struggle, because like I said in previous games I would mixup, no one is perfect and can block EVERY low so you would eventually break them in at somepoint, but Natsus lows are so painstakingly telegraphed that I can't do that so I don't know what to do really but spam AA6 go for grab or WRK, AAB, AA, A:6, 6A+B4. But if they hold that block button down, nothing really happens.
 
lag isnt a factor you should consider, and he wasnt talking about lag when he said 90%. it is impossible to be 100% accurate in anything skill related. very high percent, 80 t0 90 percent, sure but never 100. throw all preconceived notions about online out the window when in character discussion forums, the talk in here is based on offline match play.

getting A:6 out in the open at neutral frames is simple enough to master, A:6 when used to punish a -10 move is much more difficult. basically the command gets more difficult when throwing in block or hit recovery, which is something you already noticed.

as far as being vague, i havent compiled a list of characters BB that it works on, but i will soon.

what you need to know and experiment with is

2K, 1K, 11A on hit, and 9A, 6B, 2Ba, 4A+BA, PO A, 22A, 2A, WS K, 22K on block are all slight negative, (-4 to -7 for all of these examples) when you use these see what your opponents reaction is, many times they will try to attack to press the advantage. in these slight negative situations 66B will go under, and sidestep many options that will normally be tossed out as a check move when an opponent blocks something.

i'm not saying that this is 100% infallible, and it does involve some risk, especially against characters that can heavily punish 66B, but mess around with it and you'll see the results. the important thing is to land it a few times and make your opponent aware of it so that they have to check the 66B with a different move, catalog that response and respond with an appropraite counter (which sometimes is just block because they will check you with an unsafe move).

the important thing here is that you are dictating what move an opponent can use in a certain situation.
 
You listed a lot of moves there that I basically thought there would never be a use for (aside from as finishers when the opponent just needs one hit) so I guess there is a use for them as I guess it would be classified as checkers then? Alright I guess I need to adjust my playstyle then and incorporate them into play. This is where it gets me though sigh, I lose my patience when it comes to poking games, not very good at them. Guess I need to adjust. Thanks for the tips, back to the training room trying to add these into my current playstyle.
 
Protoman said:
You cannot punish Nightmare at the tip of his sword. Period.
I don't care what anyone says, its impossible for Natsu to punish Nightmare at that range.

For example, lets take Nightmare's 22_88B.
i29
-16 on block

In theory, this should punishable by a wide array of Natsu's attacks.
But in practice, this is 100% not the case due to outside factors that come into play. Spacing is a huge concern when facing Nightmare due to the absurd pushback and range his moves have.

This is because running adds frames, obviously. You must cover a certain distance in order for your attack to hit. It could be anywhere from 1 to 5 to 10 extra frames added to the impact frame of your attack thus making 90% of Nightmare's attacks stupidly safe against Natsu.


I am positive it is the exact same situation with Siegfried- only he is much easier to read, completely unsafe, and is punishable at most ranges that Nightmare is not due to how much unsafer Sieg is.

Another example:
Siegfried's 3B
i18
-20 on block

Again, this should be punishable by a number of Natsu's attack and it definitely is.
As long as you are not at the tip of his sword when you block it.
When dealing with ranges like this, I just assume the move is roughly +5 frames better than it actually is because its usually the case.
Click to expand...

Not sure if you are familiar with how to play Zangief in SF, but one of the strongest things to do is just walk forward.

I think a lot of Taki/Natsu players underestimate the power of just walking forward and playing defensively instead of using moves like A+B or try to go aggro on them to gain ground. Its very useful to sometimes just get in their face and block with throw break and A:6 ready.

Nightmare is very punishable at close/mid range. If he is out of range of 6:A chances are he can be punished with 6A+B4 PO:A. Both options will put them on the ground for OKI. Bait out their CE and you should be fine.

In order to be able to take your Natsu to the High Mid Tier level the usage of A:6 as a punisher is critical. So might as well start practicing it.
 
i successfully punished a few NM 3K with A:6 last night, felt real good. lol that we can punish one of his fastest mid hitting options so hard.
 
kAb said:
if you block sieg 3B, your AA will CH anything he can do.
Click to expand...

there are distances where AA will whiff, and a good sieg won't be throwing out 3B at close range. it's really important to just keep your guard at that range until you can get in through A+B or 66B, or even 66K.
 
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