Xiba Matchups that just don't seem fair...

TuckerX

TuckerX

[08] Mercenary
So I'm sure any of you new to the game have a word or two to say about what's fair and what's not. I consider myself new to the game still, but I find that I'm winning more of my games than I'm losing now.

But, the sting remains...

If you're anything like me, you patiently wait for your opponent to be found, then he disconnects for God-knows-what-reason. This repeats once or twice until finally a promising matchup arises. You pick your favorite Xiba skin/character, select your stage, and then you see who your opponent is... Your heart sinks, you probably swear more than once, and immediately you're in a negative mindset and discredit everything about your opponents style.

Who did they choose? Probably Nightmare or Siegfried. I see them more than anyone else. But it's not just those two that make me want to chew my fingers off so I can't subject myself to their gameplay anymore. Viola and Cervantez are nothing short of the most annoying, projectile/magic spamming characters I've seen to date.

And after losing the game due to your mindset, your speed, your rage quit, or whatever, you ask yourself "How the hell do I beat that? It just isn't fair!"

So you shake the bad attitude and hit up the 8wayrun.com forums to check out the Xiba subforum in hopes of finding that miraculous and perfect "How to beat [insert bastard character here]" thread. After about 20 minutes of searching thread titles, and maybe searching the entire forums, you don't find much. It starts to seem like there's no answer, right?

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I have been to MLGs, I've seen videos of Justin Wong and other pros, I've watched Xiba beat these styles. All of them. So before you put your bad-attitude pants back on, swallow this: They can be beaten. It can be done.

The real question is "How?"

With that in mind, let's hear from everyone that's ever had trouble beating that one harsh character. Specifically, for those looking to give advice to us who are in need, I will start the discussion by saying I cannot stand Nightmare, Natsu, or Siegfried right now. I find that even though I can run really good combos on Night/Sieg, all of my work seems totally in vain after they land 1 or 2 hits on me and have already done seemingly equal damage to my 10 hits from combos. And natsu, well we've all heard the complaint, she's too damn fast.

Hopefully we can gather some decent information and start a fire under the Xiba sub with this thread :) Cheers for now

tucker
 
Well to be a little bit more productive, your perceived impression of xiba having an unfair MU against most of these chars is wrong. I can't comment on every MU but i sure can tell you that its pretty even against NM and Sieg.

Lots of new players seem to struggle against these chars because they punish players who lack good fundamantels, while more experienced players have a much more humble opinion about them.
Fundamantels like consistently being able to block slow lows on reaction. Its less a question of one player having a better reaction than the other but more of being familiar with how their startup animation looks like. Get familiar with those chars moves and you will be able to defend yourself more consistently against them.
Their dmg output from single strikes is high but when you compare it with guaranteed followups, xiba surely is no slouch either, learn all your combos so that you always get your maximum dmg.

My general advice would be to not mindlessly attack at disatvantage, this is a common mistake that new players do and it makes those chars "feel" faster than they really are. They demand you to play more carefully, which seems to clash with lots of new players "mash" mentality. One weakness they have, is that they are unsafe, so punish wherever the opportunity arises, like NM's 22/88 B or Siegs 66 B.

Although Xiba has a long range weapon himself, don't let that fool you - on midrange you are at disatvantage. Try to get in on them, as Xiba is much stronger at close range compared to them.

Against Sieg, try to get familiar with his 4 stances and look what options you have against them. For example his best stance is SCH, which he will be in most of the time because 3(B) transitions into it. Xiba has an excellent tool against this stance in the form of 22/88 B. It technically beats all of his stance attacks: it steps his SCH B and SCH K and it TC's his SCH A. Be aware though, that a good sieg player will be able to adapt and start to delay his SCH A to hit you after the TC frames or will realign himself manually to beat your step. But if he does that, he is probably better than you think. Adapt accordingly.

Do all that and you should be able to beat most of those scrubs ;)
 
For the record I'd like to point out the title "Xiba matchups that just don't seem fair". As well as how I mentioned that most of that mentality is wrong in my post. I believe you've misunderstood my "perception" of the match ups. My rage usually stays with the game that I lose (and probably the player that I lost to). :P

But, that's a lot of helpful information. I will look into those stances for certain. I find it very easy to fall back on a mid-ranged style with Xiba as that's usually what will keep you safe against almost all other characters. But as you mentioned, Sieg/NM tend to be a lot better at those ranges and suffer the close game. So I think it's worth a shot to take a "If you can't beat them at what you're good at, beat them at what they're bad at" approach.
 
I don't care how much you practice, what videos you watch (Wong is a Capcom gamer), or if you have the strategy guide, Xiba just doesn't match up to the higher tier characters. Xiba has absolutely no strengths, and several weaknesses. Although the game isn't bad, I miss the depth of the characters, and extensive move list. I guess the gaming industry is trying to dumb down gameplay all around because there are several games out now that don't live up to the depth and complexity of their predecessors.
 
Xiba actually has an epic wake up game. You can either do 1A+B and hit them low and it pretty much catches everything and when they're used to that you can A+B them and take away half their life.
 
Xiba is a solid allround char with no real weaknesses except punishment, that can work both at mid and close range. Compare him to faster chars and he has superior damage and range, compare him to high reward chars and he is faster and safer.
 
Bumpyface said:
I don't care how much you practice, what videos you watch (Wong is a Capcom gamer), or if you have the strategy guide, Xiba just doesn't match up to the higher tier characters. Xiba has absolutely no strengths, and several weaknesses. Although the game isn't bad, I miss the depth of the characters, and extensive move list. I guess the gaming industry is trying to dumb down gameplay all around because there are several games out now that don't live up to the depth and complexity of their predecessors.
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What? He's obnoxious just from his wakeup alone.
 
So maybe I gave this thread sort of a poor feel from the beginning. What I was really hoping is to find some fellow Xiba players (but certainly not limited to them) that have had trouble with some characters and how they've overcome or come to deal with their hard-hitting styles of play.

Let's try not to make it a balance discussion, please? :p
 
Bumpyface said:
I don't care how much you practice, what videos you watch (Wong is a Capcom gamer), or if you have the strategy guide, Xiba just doesn't match up to the higher tier characters. Xiba has absolutely no strengths, and several weaknesses. Although the game isn't bad, I miss the depth of the characters, and extensive move list. I guess the gaming industry is trying to dumb down gameplay all around because there are several games out now that don't live up to the depth and complexity of their predecessors.
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LOL

No.

He's solid as hell: not the best in the roster, but definitely viable. If your Xiba has no mixups, its your own faults as a player.
Xiba has simple high damage mindgames with risk reward generally in your favour, great antistep, great range, good map control, good lows, AMAZING CE and a lot of safety coupled with a killer CH game.
No strengths huh?

And don't get me started on his guard crush game vs defensive players who won't take the mixups, lol.
 
Actually Synraii, if you don't mind, I would like to get you started on his guard crush game. I'm starting to have trouble with players that like to couple extensive guarding and defensive 8wayrun and stepping. I like the style that I play now and I'd like to incorporate more punishing guarding players. I'm getting to the point where the people I am playing are pretty good at low blocking so Xiba's nice lows aren't really doing as much as they used to for me.
So... yeah feed me some information.
 
I'm a firm believer of practice and demonstration < theory calibur

There is a British player called Gruntdude, look him up or better yet, play him yourself on Xbl or offline in London, check him out. =)
 
His toughest matchups are Natsu, Pat, and aPat. Mitsu gets an honorable mention because 6A BE CH and A+B BE whiffs consistently on hit (damn you Namco lol). He's still viable; professional tournament players need to have a second to offset his bad matchups imo.
 
wing_zero said:
His toughest matchups are Natsu, Pat, and aPat. Mitsu gets an honorable mention because 6A BE CH and A+B BE whiffs consistently on hit (damn you Namco lol). He's still viable; professional tournament players need to have a second to offset his bad matchups imo.
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DAMN i couldn't have said it better myself man. I believe those 3 are his hardest with Mitsu there as well.

Unfortunately i don't really have a secondary so, like i told RTD, im just gonna be that good Xiba guy that never wins lol.
 
Wow I'm surprised this thread even exists... then again I haven't been to any SCV tourneys myself and Xiba is not repped as much as I thought he'd be. But I digress.

Syny, Sett, Chaos and AF69 pretty much said it all... personally I find Xiba to be a pretty epic character. He seems to have an answer for every mixup against every character and has no problem creating them for himself. If you are having problems with Nightmare and Siegfried as mentioned in OP, there are quite a few things you can do, especially against people who get 3B happy.

With Sieg 3{B}, all you have to do is 44B to avoid SCH K (unless he's really friggin close) and SCH A, and that leads to a 3AB with RO potential.

With Nightmare 3{B} I'm pretty sure 4A beats all options except NSS A, and if you can get your opponent to start doing that, then you can easily REM their shit on reaction and get your 6BKabk combo.

I'm really not qualified to talk about this stuff though, give me a few days and I will try to update the matchup thread I started on a few months ago.
 
Well yeah... assuming you have the meter, but I guess you should with Xiba, he doesn't really need to use it unless you've confirmed the hit in the first place. God I love playing Xiba...
 
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