Natsu Questions And Answers / General Discussion

[TxA]

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How do you deal with Natsu's wakeup (stance) mixups?
If by stance you mean her Possession (PO) stance, it depends on when it's being used. Most of the time you can get up then interrupt her with a 2A or something else fast before she can reach and hit you. In some cases she can get in fast enough with PO, then she has things like PO K, PO B+K and PO B to punish you for attacking off the ground, but most of the time you have enough frames to immediately get up and put something out which will stop her.

Examples of where she will reach you include the 4 input back-teleport into PO moves so 66B4 knockdown, 66AB4 CH knockdown and WR AAA4 CH knockdown.

Examples of where she doesn't have enough time include after grabs and most of her other knockdowns like A:6 and A+B.

If she's going to reach you in time, her only ground hitter is PO B+K low which does about 25 damage and puts her far away from you after it hits, and sometimes it will whiff if you roll around.

Best advice is to get up and interrupt her if she keeps dashing in with PO; it's a gimmick when it's being used like this.

 

[TxA]

Is there a way to avoid the possession + float mixups on wakeup?

For Hover ("float") stance, you can back step out of the mixup then whiff punish. Alternatively you can step to the side then block low, this will cover both of her A and B options.

 

[Harry]

Back step is your best option. Some Natsu players like to try to get cute and do the HOV dive to catch your backstep, but you can react to that with a side step. You can also learn to react to them if you want to go that route, but that doesn't give you a punish if they do the mid.