Proper Raph Guide

[WARUI_NE]

Prep VE is solid..... why the hate
VE is solid in general

 

[darkfender]

imho ve is not slid on block...
And again i could prove that seA is a lifesaver in many matchups mostly due to range....try it on tip

i maybe have misunderstood optymus post not that is so easy to have opponent in the proper position ..btw the stepg problem remains even mostly preps prep or non prep they are gonna step that 3B....if they play the poke game i said....

 

[hotnikkelz]

Seems people have success with SEA stuff, I hardly ever use them. My Raph is strange yet basic. I use 4A+B and 44B and apply 236B where I can.
44K is whored, WS B is whored, 2A is whored when in range and some lows and throws. Few other stuff in between there, but I think most people just play Raph too fancily :)

Bubbles, VE kind sucks. Not because of the mechanics behind it, but because the reward is low for the risk applying it imo. The throw is the most useful thing in it.

 

[darkfender]

4A+B is awful .___. 44K is very solid

 

[optymuss]

a good B+G follow up is 236B to make SG damage or keep raph at mid range but if they dont tech and you whiff your at a big disadv.

im grateful that VE K wont eat a 66:B from voldo on block.

 

[WARUI_NE]

Bubbles, VE kind sucks. Not because of the mechanics behind it, but because the reward is low for the risk applying it imo. The throw is the most useful thing in it.

exactly the throw is so good it makes the stance great
4A+B is utterly useless
@darkfender
VE K is amazing
VE A is amazing
VE B is amazing

all suck when blocked cept maybe VE B but if you are using the stance right they won't get blocked pro tip look beyond the frames

 

[Heaton]

4A+B is great against Astaroth 3KB/3K(B). But then again, 4B/4(B) is even better.

VE Throw is hands down my absolute favorite option, and one I get a lot because of people waiting for VE A. More Raphs should whore that, I think.

 

[Mandritti]

4A+B is great against Astaroth 3KB/3K(B). But then again, 4B/4(B) is even better.

3KA? But the Astaroth has no need to keep something in mind after the 3KA, so how would they miss the GI?

VE Throw is hands down my absolute favorite option, and one I get a lot because of people waiting for VE A. More Raphs should whore that, I think.

SilentWall has proven to me you can progressive defense VE A / throw reeeaaaally easily. (Like VF throws, I hear?) Then again, SilentWall has followed the Path of the Block for many a year, so he might be better at watching me try a timing mixup than other players you would face.

My experience with the Prep guessing game is players meet two kinds. One kind will never ever fall for either one of Prep 2 or Prep B+K, but they will walk into Prep A much much more than you'd think anyone would, if you let them. The other kind needs to be told they can't step out of prep (i.e., do hit 3(B)~Prep B(B)~Prep BB) but also has to be told you will pressure their gauge in a Prep B{B...}{~Prep B...}/SEA sequence for them to walk into any trap of any kind out of a Prep transition hit or block. Of this second sort, check that Prep B+K would work on them, but save it as long as possible. Those that aren't giving you predictable verticals to stop prolonged Prep are the sort that don't challenge the risk reward on just doing Prep B...s to your own pace. I put myself in mind of my opponent like Belial said, and I saw it's tough to control your own tempo to respond correctly to Prep, suitably abused. It has answers on paper, but if you demand your opponent to think of those answers really quickly, either he won't succeed, or he will but his own game will be garbled. (Theory time: Against a strong opponent who won't be fazed by this, it can be treated as a gimmick with the same 'bag of tricks' utility as any other gimmick, maybe?)
Prep A is decent if it's what you need to stop crouch. It's large negative but it has great spacing on normal hit.

I am unhappy with "Prep VE", this said. On the other transitions to it, it's discardable (word?); there are more impactful guessing games that exclude this move. And with 3(B)~VE, the trouble is, it has to be conditioned as the last thing expected, because players tend to respond in a way that just devours the VE, including aggressive and defensive behaviours, because the stance attack is just so damn slow. That is, it won't get anything while players are feeling you out, and if you represent it in bulk, it's all too easy to crush it while being essentially unpredictable in doing so.

 

[Heaton]

3KA? But the Astaroth has no need to keep something in mind after the 3KA, so how would they miss the GI?

I don't quite understand what you're saying here.

snip

Yeah, the thing I dislike about Prep ~ VE is that it takes so long to condition people to do the "correct" reaction for you, that you're better off with a lot of other options. But just VE on its own has a bit more potential, I think. In a way, it reminds me of SRSH - you have an option of ducking to block SRSH K, and standing to block SRSH B, but both are mutually exclusive of the other. With VE, you would duck the throw, or stand and block VE A (ducking the second hit of that, of course). The reward Siegfried gets on hit with both of those moves is a lot better than what Raphael gets with his, but I'll take any reward no matter the size with Raphael. Not to mention, getting hit with something out of VE starts your opponent's mind to start going - "What am I going to do to NOT have that happen again?" This is especially the case if their normal defense against VE isn't working, or if they don't have a defense against just doing B+K when they're negative. The thinking, I find, can cause them to freeze up a lot - I've had times where I just sit in SRSH and watch them keep ducking and standing while guarding. Of course, the freeze up wouldn't be as pronounced at high level play, but if you can get someone in a tournament to freeze up for even a second, you've got an advantage to use.

So basically, Prep ~ VE isn't worth the work required to properly utilize it, but I think going to VE from B+K after a whiff or blocking something that leaves them negative might have its uses. Then again, I do main Siegfried, so maybe my Siegfried playstyle is bleeding over to my Raphael playstyle a bit too much.

 

[RT0wn]

I don't quite understand what you're saying here.

An Astaroth should expect to get 4A+B'd by a Raphael if the 3K is blocked, so the Astaroth should look to GI back.

 

[Heaton]

An Astaroth should expect to get 4A+B'd by a Raphael if the 3K is blocked, so the Astaroth should look to GI back.

Ah, right. I was just showing that 4A+B isn't totally useless, but in that situation 4B is even better, since it actually will get you something unless they just 3K.

 

[darkfender]

i repeat 4A+B is useless because its really easy to counter GI....if its not is because most people never saw one (for a reason...)
It has a short window that begins late, and is GIable on reaction...

Really i am one of the few that can even defend raph teleport (that against moves with long blockstun expecially IVY, nightmare and co can turn in a free 4B or 66A+B combo or even 44A+B sometimes), but 4A+B IS useless.

 

[hotnikkelz]

4A+B is awful .___. 44K is very solid

4A+B is good when used properly. I get quite a bit of success with it. Does nice damage too. To say 4B replaces it means that you're not using it in the way it should be used. 4A+B is an anti interrupt in places where you have small disadvantage to slight advantage, eg post 1B, 1A on hit. 2A on block etc. There's much more to its application, not a tool to abuse, but one to keep in your head considering its damage. I get reGId sometimes, but not enough to make me stop using it.

VE A is just ok
VE B blows, cuz it's too linear and high
VE K blows cuz it's poor damage and far too unsafe for the reward

 

[WuHT]

4A+B is good when used properly. I get quite a bit of success with it. Does nice damage too. To say 4B replaces it means that you're not using it in the way it should be used. 4A+B is an anti interrupt in places where you have small disadvantage to slight advantage, eg post 1B, 1A on hit. 2A on block etc. There's much more to its application, not a tool to abuse, but one to keep in your head considering its damage. I get reGId sometimes, but not enough to make me stop using it.

I fail to see where 44B or 4B not have yielded superior results to 4A+B. I'm bringing this because there arn't that many horizontal mids, and some of the better ones are actually body attacks (and require the slower 8A+B to take care of). 4A+B can catch SL which is a plus though. Luckily 44B and 4B are both really solid moves on block, and are reliably evasive. It's when (imo) tracking BB's are spammed and then you can't take advantage of raph's powerful counter-move game.

4A+B should not have functioned as an aGI, but an anti-step move that triggers only when the opponent moves laterally. That's my pipe dream.. one of many.

 

[hotnikkelz]

Catching SL is the definitive factor for me (just as you said horizontal mids are rare)....I <3 44B as well. I'm not saying substitute this move with others, what i'm saying is you use all your tools in conjunction with each other. Apply what needs to be applied where it is meant to be applied. 4B operates differently from 4A+B.
I agree with everything else you said.

On another note, I use just B waaaaaaaay more than BB for some reason. I think the break in tempo confuses people. Has decent data too I believe. Raph's step is mustard

 

[Mandritti]

I don't quite understand what you're saying here.

An Astaroth should expect to get 4A+B'd by a Raphael if the 3K is blocked, so the Astaroth should look to GI back.

It's not that the Astaroth would expect 4A+B, or even "a GI"; I meant just that an Astaroth who does 3KA, knowing what 3KA does and watching it not whiff, isn't going to trip on his defense because he has no offensive followup to be thinking about. Either he achieves KND and will only be seizing ground, or he is crouched and he's punished so he doesn't have to think about that, or it's "blocked" and he needs to spot what you're doing so he'll be attentive anyway, to a GI as well, whether 4A+B or not.
I just didn't think he would be likely to be 'caught up thinking ahead' so that you could trick him with anything that has an on-reaction answer at all, because he'll have no sequence in mind. That's how it was with Astas I played, and any videos that came to mind, they go defensive after 3KA block even though frames are great (so I just inferred there aren't profitable patterns to use here). But thinking about it some more, I suppose the fact that Asta *has* the 3KA, 3K(A) option, if that player is using it, would allow that player to be surprised up to the last moment when his opponent (you) makes the blocking decision.

Is there an accepted phrase or standard term for this 'having a sequence in mind'? And then, referring to the human error players make, when they can't "change course" (at the appropriate time) when the opponent's response is different from expectation?
EDIT: You know that mistake where you fall for some mixup, or even you do something yourself and it doesn't succeed; and then it sticks in your mind and you "answer" the mixup that already happened, even in an incorrect scenario for it; or you -see- your mixup not succeed yet you then proceed to do a few things as though your hands don't know you screwed up yet? That's a common play error and fault to overcome, right?

 

[Heaton]

Is there an accepted phrase or standard term for this 'having a sequence in mind'? And then, referring to the human error players make, when they can't "change course" (at the appropriate time) when the opponent's response is different from expectation?
EDIT: You know that mistake where you fall for some mixup, or even you do something yourself and it doesn't succeed; and then it sticks in your mind and you "answer" the mixup that already happened, even in an incorrect scenario for it; or you -see- your mixup not succeed yet you then proceed to do a few things as though your hands don't know you screwed up yet? That's a common play error and fault to overcome, right?

That just sounds like conditioning, whether you're conditioned to your own mixup, or conditioned to eat your opponents.

And really, I'm not advocating that we all start trying to use 4A+B any time there could be a possible horizontal. Rather, there are times when it can become an actual, legitimate option, and that you should never try to discount any of Raphael's options - especially considering he doesn't always have that many. 4B will work against 3A always...if you're quick. If you start too late, you're liable to be hit with 3K(A). 4A+B doesn't require any strict timing at all - buffering it from the block 3K will GI either 3KA or 3K(A), or waiting and seeing will also GI either hit. Of course, the follow-up is re-GIable, true - but wouldn't you rather have more options rather than less?

 

[Mandritti]

I don't mean eating a low, and then crouching for a mid to the face. I mean eating a low, then when your opponent is in a situation between a mid or stepping around, blocking low. For my part, it's really like the impulse to block low bounces back again after coming too late, rather than disappearing completely as it should. I feel like I'm reacting not a second time, but reacting to the original thing. Somehow one part of my brain doesn't catch up to the other, and unfortunately this is the part that presses G2. :\
I know players at many levels have errors that can be called overexcitement, like losing yourself in a tempo of your opponent's choosing, the simplest of which being the lull of 'block, attack, block, attack, block, attack,' broken by 'block, step, wtf hesitation -> throw, oki'. This one brain-short feels utterly noobish to me, but I hoped it was relateable.

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.

-> 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.

It is said that, if Playing to Win, you can do fine by doing the good stuff at the right times. But you can take this one level up to even guiding how to Play to Learn. A few months ago Belial gave me very helpful pointers, by being uncompromisingly Russian with vague parables about cooking(/jokes), but he said 'every time you attack, you take a risk.' It was something obvious, but until I read that I didn't grasp it really. What I finally noticed was, every attack is balanced with pros and cons, but each time you use something there is the chance for massive reversal, by being countered. It finally made sense in some exact way to me, why fighting a game of 2Ks and BBs, even though "equipped" with everything needed to beat someone without perfect reaction time, isn't as great as a more swingy hurling of risks for massive damage. (Belaboring of risk-reward snipped for space.) But let's ask how the 2KBB player could grow from this situation. How could he see what is missing from his (losing) game, except by thinking of success and failure of plays beyond actual hit and miss? Yes, he has to see Fighter Gaming is broader than hit and miss, but that is to say his learning must do that. Apart from that his strategy for winning must acknowledge games are more than hitting and missing each time, he must look at how games are decided in that way, each time he plays, so that his games add to his experience to keep -learning- from there.
That is why observing a move to work on some occasion, or even a bunch of times, is not the same as seeing that it is good to your game itself. But I'm also saying that Raph should avoid doing 4A+B not just to win more, but to -learn- how to do something better. I have an example for this below. It is only the thought-process that recognizes the goal is only and always to take that 300th life point first, and looks to cut through all the space of things going on, with least risk, to the mixup-point of greatest weight and decisiveness (and rigged odds for you) to make you, in its aftermath, orders closer to that goal than your opponent to his - only that kind of logic - which can get the player's game to that actually extremely profitable awareness & playstyle.
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. "being able to use it" is little, when driven players can warp game systems to make any move they want feature as their star player. The questions are only, "When forced, what does it do if it works ? ," "Can a smart opponent be lured into this?," and "Can it keep something worth thinking about, in check?" By its aGI properties, it cannot be a trap. It cannot be forced. And anything being abused, not just single moves but strategies of sorts, though limited and exploitable Raphael is, can be more decisively answered by Raphael, with something not 4A+B. It's in the situation somewhere; And the Raph player -ought- to try and work them, even if 4A+B would and could do a job here and there.

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.

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." 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.

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.

 

[DC97]

snip

Welcome back.

 

[WuHT]

1. Proposal : We should have a rule to structure long posts in a manner that is easy to read but also gets to the point

2. Implementation: Use whatever formatting issues are available to organize the substance of your post.

• Generous paragraphing (while maintaining organizational coherence)
• Structure long sentences using brackets and dashes (to isolate individual points only relevant to the immediate few words prior to it) to make reading easy.
• Use of numbered/lettered headers for points that require a certain sequential order
• Use of bullets for lists that don't require a certain order
• Use of indents to represent broadness or specificness of topic at hand.

3. Personal thoughts: I understand that mandritti puts a lot of time (and thought) into his posts, and I always make an attempt to read them from start to finish.

However, keep in mind that if you make it easy to read, you'll get better feedback.