Nothing against your comment here, but wouldn’t you say that’s usually how most people generally win or lose in this game - by putting your opponent and difficult situations and capitalizing on that. That’s how sleep won against bass at Evo (pulling out gargos). I’d say that’s kind of the point of any fighting game including KI.
Here’s a few things to consider when fighting as Aganos, 1) are his auto doubles amongst the easiest making just about every combo a mind game to counter break or not. 2) are his manuals not amongst the easiest manuals to break in the game? (he’s a huge character and most of his manuals look completely different and are fairly slow compared to the rest of the cast) 3) breaking manuals with aganos can be arguably more challenging because of the zoomed out camera, which may make some manuals harder to differentiate between.
The thing is letalis used darn near every trick in the game to DEFEND aganos (largest, usually least mobile, hurtbox in the game) against all of his opponents nonsense and executed great defense, low blocks into overhead blocks, shadow counters, instinct cancels into shadow ball, etc. … all while executing strong offense, taking full advantage of which normals could connect with shadow payload, maintained excellent offensive spacing, great use of recycling and more recycling, using smart pressure usually with at least one chunk, etc. It was basically textbook s3 Aganos.
@FGCSlamjam For the sake of perspective, I’m curious of what would you consider to be aganos nonsense?
Shadow payload into wall crash is usually (and was during the tourney) broken with heavy unless the distance is short enough for you to guess the strength. Aganos’s 1 chance to break high damage combos are like Cinder’so in that they require previous setup but unlike Cinder or Omen, Aganos is not mobile and will not open up folks as easily as Cinder (or Omen too), AND his walls can be broken if his defense isn’t on point.
Imo, these are things that makes Aganos’s win pretty darn special and a bit more than “his opponents didn’t know how to break aganos”.
Not saying it’s hard to win with Aganos, but there’s a reason you rarely see him in grand finals.
I’m buying this guy lunch or dinner if I ever see him at a offline!
Like @GalacticGeek said, it’s really inspirational to see letalis’ Aganos take the crown!