I agree that Hilde is one of the hardest matchups for Leixia and maybe the hardest. Viola and Mitsu seem not so bad to me these days but I have not played their strongest players.
Well it's important to avoid the bnb stuff like 6ab, 44a and 3b. Like against Algol it can be stressful fighting a character who will kill you for one mistake or one good read. I'm not going to claim it's in Leixia's favour of course
. But the thing I like about the Viola matchup is that you can space her a bit, and it's so rare for Leixia to be able to space a character well. Your pokes have better range so long as you can keep away from the orb spam. I just try to focus a lot on stage position to try to avoid being vulnerable to 1-hit ring outs.
Without having played those Violas I can't really comment. I feel like there are things players could've done better against Viola but that's easy to say while I'm watching recorded matches, it's a different situation in the pressure of a tournament. I think LP was the only player (when playing against Viola) I saw who didn't freeze up in the face of her bnb mixups, and he was also taking care to read his opponents' reactions to his own mixups, so he seems to understand the situations a bit better than others. Having said that, I didn't feel like Reptile did much wrong against her but still lost so maybe it's just a case of her being a bit too strong. Certainly I have watched the same combo over and over again just from watching a few random videos with the damage and ring out range, and it did remind me a bit of 2009 Hilde at EVO. I still don't think she should be banned, but it wasn't great to watch her one-hit kill people repeatedly with the crowd booing in the background. Probably the only disappointment in what was otherwise a really good tournament to watch. We'll see how people deal with her in upcoming tournaments.
Well there was Partisan, and then JJJ too in pools who I thought looked comfortable, but I dunno, it's hard for me to ignore the mental advantage that heavy reward can give you. When you feel you have a chance to turn things around at any point, it really helps put things into perspective. Not saying those two players didn't earn their wins, of course.
Some medical BS kept me from doing what I wanted to do. This means Leixia is going to be really OP from now on.
