Setsuka/Ivy - Who's hardest to Master?

Who's harder to master?

  • Ivy

    Votes: 45 40.2%

  • Setsuka

    Votes: 67 59.8%
  • Total voters
    112
Setsuka takes an hour in Training Mode to learn her attacks, add on another 4 to get them consistently. Add on a full hours to perform and weed out bad moves, and then 10 minutes of reading the forum posts for Combos that you need to chain together. Once you can perform all of her moves, it doesn't take long to string them together. I gave her a shot, but just didn't like the feel of the character. It was not as hard as I expected.

I have been working on Ivy ever since the game launched, and honestly, I'm still trying to find the best moves to use in every situation, however I need to spread that out between 3 stances! Lizzy Crawl while I'm not in Coil? Wow, I'm screwed into using 2K which is a deep negative on Hit, giving him a free ticket back into the stance. What do I ultimately need to do for that very specific situation? If in Sword Do 2K(A+K); If in Whip Do 2K(B+K); Then 214 + Mixup.
It took time and a tournament loss to figure this out because I don't have a local Lizzy player to practice against.
Most characters, and Setsuka is included, have 1 option to deal with things, and they only need that 1 option, because it gets the job done well, Ivy has (in many cases) lots of options, however some times none of them get the job done well. If you as Ivy are up against Mina in a range poke match, you had better hope you don't miss once, or you are eating a low hit. She can punish across the map is anything you do is stepped at range, because Ivy is very Unsafe, and that is yet another barrier Ivy players needed to overcome.
 
I think that Ivy is harder to master, and Setsuka is harder to play...
The reasons have been written already.
Not sure if that one has been written, but Setsuka is a good punisher. That takes player skill, especially with her punishment options... Other characters who can't punish well don't lose much from not punishing anything.
It shouldn't require much "mastery", but it takes a constant effort, especially if you want to punish with 2143aB.
 
Setsuka, i think it's way easier to be scrubby with Ivy. They are both hard to master, but i think memorizing a movelist(even with 4 stances) is much easier than mastering all of Sets JF combos/moves.
 
Laswagga said:
Put your Taki up against the right Setsuka, like mine, Vivico88 or destinizish's and you'll see why Taki isn't up there. Yes, Taki's PO and what-not are hard to do consistently but against Setsuka they will get you punished. 24~24 and 24~23 will get you umbrella'd every time. It just leaves her too vulnerable if you ask me. Even against Ivy.
Click to expand...

I'm sure your Sets would wreck my Taki because I'm not actually that great at SC, but what does that have to do with the difficulty to "master" any of those characters?

Laswagga said:
But I'm a setsuka player, so it would be easy for me to just agree with the rest for obvious reasons.
Click to expand...

I play Setsuka too. I wasn't talking about execution difficulty. Setsuka has high input difficulty, but she has a pretty straightforward game plan. She's safe, you've got JF umbrella, go to town. Taki requires a lot of input, a lot of mind games, and she doesn't have a huge, guaranteed punish like the umbrella.

Also, yes, to a degree all the characters have a game plan and punishers, I know. I didn't say Taki was the hardest character to play or anything, just that she's on the short-list.
 
There is way too much criteria in what constitutes "hardest to master" in order to give a non-subjective analysis. It can easily be split into different categories such as:

Are the lowest tiered characters the hardest to master?
Reason - Has the most difficulty winning matches overall.

Are the characters with shuffling movesets the hardest to master? (ie. Ivy, Tira)
Reason - Requires constant awareness of how to deal with specific situations dependent on current stance.

Are the characters that require the most time-sensitive input affluency the hardest to master? (ie. Setsuka, Cervantes, Yoshimitsu)
Reason - To maximize the full damage throughput and potential of said character, one must rely on how to consistently depend on hypersensitive inputs.

Then you have characters like Taki where I don't know what to place her in, except that she is rather taxing to play due to her overall style.
 
I still say Ivy because to date there is still only one Ivy player that can't be touched by other Ivy players...Going off that guy, all other Ivy players aren't even in the same room or discussion.
 
Shenrei said:
Are the lowest tiered characters the hardest to master?
Reason - Has the most difficulty winning matches overall.
Click to expand...

i agree with that one.
i think a lot of people here confuse "hard to master" with "hard to win".
the question was what character has the most anoying moves to master and not who's the better tier, punisher,....
i believe that it takes you more time to practice sets movelist then it does ivy's.
 
Exactly, even with Ivy's 4 stances getting the movelist down is not too bad, alot of them have the same inputs that do different things. Only key there is to remember what input does what in which stance. But, you take Set and it's very tough to master(90% success rate on inputs?) all the JFs that she has, and to make her a viable character/winner you really need those moves
 
i use both and learnt ivy 1st but im still learning to use her situationally and using sets speed to advantage so i didnt vote cause they're both a bitch to master and they both killed my d pad so ima say yoshi cause im working on him now
 
Dont forget iCs. Ivy's iCS is very important to high level play and doing it alone is hard, doing it without wobbling is another thing, and simply doing it when it's smart is VERY difficult. You don't need Ivy's JF-5...but iCS is a must.

The reason I have these two is because while, yes, making a low tiered character better than higher tiers is hard. I'm saying...in the perfect test scenario where someone learns all characters to their full potential, who in execution takes the most skill? It's Ivy and Setsuka because they take the most 1 player difficulty added to the mix of responding to what the opponent is doing. Basically all characters need to pay attention to the other opponent and respond accordingly and it can be harder and easier for some...but when you go to execute the move, how difficult is it to do and manage all the other things? Ivy has 4 stances, has to remember the list and actively plan the switches and make sure it's an intelligent shift. She also has the hardest command throw that requires expert usage to even be effective on top of just having it come out. But setsuka demands constant perfection to timing. Both these characters do not work without mastering these complexities and no other characters have to deal with that degree of difficulty in just controlling the character.
 
I think it's hard to say which one is the hardest to master (personally, I think Cervantes is the character that's hardest to master). They are quite different.

Setsuka: Almost all of her B&B is JF. 33B-combos (both CH and NH), 214B+G, punish on block requires good umbrella-execution, wave-dash and so on, so getting execution down with her is very important. She doesn't have any stances, which makes her quite easy to figure out. Overall, she's safe to play, so you don't have to risk getting punished on a blocked move.

Ivy: While she has some essential JF-moves, most of her B&B-moves/combos are not to hard to pull off. What's harder with Ivy is her stance-transition. Ivy does have hard moves as well, like iCS (her most important "hard" move in my opinion), but then, you don't have to be as consistent with the execution because you wont use iCS as often as you will use, for example, 33B with Setsuka.

Cervantes: He is the hardest character to master (at least for me). His WS A+B,BBBBB..... is insane to pull off (GB-version that's +13 or something like that). His punisher is very risky and tricky to do. He's also very unsafe, so you have to play him very smart not to get punished. Also, some of his better combos are either very risky or very hard to do consistently, like that CH BT B+K-combo (not sure about the input). Still don't get why people don't think that Cervantes is one of the hardest characters to play well.

So, if you're having trouble playing with different stances, Ivy would probably be the hardest character to master. If execution is your weakness, Setsuka probably isn't the ultimate pick.
 
vane505 said:
I think it's hard to say which one is the hardest to master (personally, I think Cervantes is the character that's hardest to master). They are quite different.

Setsuka: Almost all of her B&B is JF. 33B-combos (both CH and NH), 214B+G, punish on block requires good umbrella-execution, wave-dash and so on, so getting execution down with her is very important. She doesn't have any stances, which makes her quite easy to figure out. Overall, she's safe to play, so you don't have to risk getting punished on a blocked move.

Ivy: While she has some essential JF-moves, most of her B&B-moves/combos are not to hard to pull off. What's harder with Ivy is her stance-transition. Ivy does have hard moves as well, like iCS (her most important "hard" move in my opinion), but then, you don't have to be as consistent with the execution because you wont use iCS as often as you will use, for example, 33B with Setsuka.

Cervantes: He is the hardest character to master (at least for me). His WS A+B,BBBBB..... is insane to pull off (GB-version that's +13 or something like that). His punisher is very risky and tricky to do. He's also very unsafe, so you have to play him very smart not to get punished. Also, some of his better combos are either very risky or very hard to do consistently, like that CH BT B+K-combo (not sure about the input). Still don't get why people don't think that Cervantes is one of the hardest characters to play well.

So, if you're having trouble playing with different stances, Ivy would probably be the hardest character to master. If execution is your weakness, Setsuka probably isn't the ultimate pick.
Click to expand...

Any1 low tier character is probably harder to play then cervy. I don't know much about him so i probably agree with you for the most part though. I think too many people think he's easy to play cause we're all accustomed to the teleport happy cervys online :)
 
spongebob said:
Any1 low tier character is probably harder to play then cervy. I don't know much about him so i probably agree with you for the most part though. I think too many people think he's easy to play cause we're all accustomed to the teleport happy cervys online :)
Click to expand...

I think low-tier characters are harder to win with, but not harder to master (with that I mean using the character to it's fullest potential, or as close as you can come. But then, I guess it's all about definition of words...).

I do share your theory regarding Cerv though :) I think you can play him somewhat successful without to much work, but I also think that he's the hardest character to use if you want to master all of his tools.
 
Well, it depends on what category... if it's the sheer amount of moveset memorization, that would go to Ivy... if it's the input of extremely timed Just Frames, that would definately go to Setsuka. So it's an even tie for me... they are both hard as hell to master.
 
The most difficult thing about Setsuka is that she requires constant intrepid execution that needs to be consistent. Yes, she's safe, damaging, and fast but the caveat here is that her best and most practical options also have *severe* penalties if you mess up. And if you mess up often, all of a sudden Setsuka's damage is not so scary anymore.

Examples:
Mess up 1A:A:A?
You lose out on ~20 dmg.

1A:A:A gets blocked?
You're at -23.

Mistime an umbrella punish?
You're at ~ -20 - 22.

Couldn't finish a combo with umbrella?
You've just lost out on a significant amount of damage you could have dealt.

Mess up her command throw finisher?
There goes more than half of the damage of the combo.

BT B+K hits but you mess up the JF?
More significant damage lost.

Screwed up a backwards wavedash input?
You're probably eating damage that you could have avoided if you wavedashed correctly.

Mess up bA after NH33B?
There goes more than half of the damage you could have done had you completed it.

Playing on a TV with significantly different input lag than you are used to?
Then you better get used to it fast. In a tournament setting with multiple setups, there is usually no "warm-up" round.
 
You're also at -18 for missing both FC 3B:B and 1B:B. If the opponent knows you cant do them consistently they now have the option to try and punish.
 
Mastering a character invovles.

Mastering execution of Characters moveset(consistently)
Mastering the utilization of the moveset in all situtions.
Winning with that Character(consistenly) Regardless of match-ups.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back