All these moves you suggested I've tried them all but they don't seem to be as effective. Also for some reason when I react after blocking Ivy's 9B I can't punish with aB. I think it would be better if I just show you a vid of the way I use Cervy against Eli's Ivy if time permits. I have an old one but Eli has drastically improved on Ivy since then, I wish I've entered the hyperbolic time chamber to catch up with him.
I'm not sure what that one looks like, but I guess I'm venting my frustration due to the fact that I couldn't figure out a way to come around 214B and 7_8_9B the way Eli uses them.
The advice I get was FCA+B GC but I've tried it many times already and to me it doesn't seem to be much of an effect. Two good players according to NoFace I could think of is Hates and Babalook. The problem is Hates has long retired due to school and Babalook is an online player. The problem is with online you can get away with a lot of things according to Egg, FC A+B GC is a boost online.
Also I disagree with NoFace on the match up but that will be a story for another time.
NEwayz I think the best is to show you a recent vid which hopefully next week.
FC A+BBB is great and all, but it's really not what I believe makes this a favorable matchup for Cervantes.
It's really one simple concept: Risk vs. Reward.
I played against an online Cervantes player who executes combos on a level that most offline players aren't even capable of doing consistently.
With this in mind, all of these so called "spammable" and "mindless" tools that people seem to complain about really become very situational to use. I firmly believe that Cervantes is very dependent on execution. You have two options - practice, or switch characters. You can't really deter somebody from doing certain things if you can't make them pay as much as possible for doing them.
When you compare the possibility of landing a counter hit 66A or 3A in coiled stance with the possibility of getting your 1B, B+K 8wayrunned into a 3B iGDR delayed 28B into a BT mixup, or 8wayrunned into a FC A+BBB punish from step (babalook does this ALL THE TIME) into a ground hit or a tech trap, you start to have a new perspective on who really needs to adapt their game. Whip stance 6B+K spam a la Malek?
Sorry, B+K parry into full BT B+K combo. Can be done on reaction. Same with Sword stance. You simply have a lot of variables to deal with against a Cervantes player. You have to actually guess right to score damage or soul gauge pressure, it's not as mindless as people make it seem. You have tools like step (best one), 3A+B, FC A+BBB, and 44B against sword. A large part of Soul Calibur strategy is multicoverage and increasing the opponent's amount of variables in their pressure/mixup.
Really what some people don't realize is that the only reason these low damage tools that Ivy has are good is that they force you to be passive in some way. Ivy can't simply afford to sit there and keep playing this risk/reward guessing game with Cervantes. She's gonna have to run up to you and try to do a mid/throw mixup eventually...and she's not exactly the strongest character in that regard.
This brings me to another point - your mixups vs. Ivy are actually a lot less risky. In case you didn't notice, Ivy's not exactly the greatest punisher in the world. She's decent in sword stance, but then again, you should be discouraging her from using that stance to begin with. Pressure with 1K (she has absolute crap punishment for this move), 3B (she gets a K punish in every stance except sword, which is, amazingly, disadvantage on hit, unlike other characters), and your throw game. Let's not forget that your throws are very potent and that your 3B and 1K have some tracking - this is especially important to remember if Ivy is in SW or WP stance, as her step is less effective.
I really wish people would take the time to sit down and study characters that they have problems with. I had to do it for Amy. Granted, I still lost against Thugish Pond, but for one he's no slouch in his own right, and for two, my local scene is dead and I didn't actually have a chance to
practice against Amy - the only people I really played with were Babalook and IMT dragon on xbox live. But anyway, all of these so-called overpowered characters have their weaknesses. It just saddens me to see that Namco actually thinks Ivy needs big nerfs. The only character I've ever thought was overpowered was Hilde, and I still believe it has more to do with how certain stages are designed rather than the actual character itself. But hey, maybe it's because my own character is so OP. Hehe.
