Hello! This is a thread dedicated to the Kilgore matchup! I want to make a thread here for now so that way if anyone finds any tips and tricks to fight against him, we can collect all of our data here to help each other grow!
I’ll start. At the time of writing this and fighting a couple Kilgores, it seems that he has the advantage pretty easily. He can react to any button press from fullscreen with any of his hard punches and can play a nasty keep away game with B+HP. Luckily, none of his bullets deal chip damage so Aganos can slowly walk in while waiting for the guns to heat up completely, thus making the fight a bit easier. I’d recommend at this time to start putting up walls so that he can’t escape when his guns eventually cool down. It’s a great boon that he can’t teleport either as that would truly make this matchup hell. Also make sure to lab what can and can’t be punished/shadow countered/etc.
And now, as of writing this, I’ll give my rating to what I believe it to be:
Aganos (4) - Kilgore (6)
I think if the opponent is smart enough to conserve spin speed and meter, that he’ll be able to bait Aganos’ Shadow Ruin since you can’t react to the gunshots. This is what will be the key for Kilgore so it’s gonna be tough when they start using this strategy more effectively. If they can play like this constantly, than I’ll say the matchup then gets skewed towards AG (3) - KI (7)
Once cornered, Kilgore lacks HP buttons (so less armor ignoring normals),Aganos can out damage him, and metal ball is always 1 hit(even shadow), so Aganos can ignore some right/left mixups if he has armor
Still soon to judge yet. I will post my impressions later (I mean, a LOT later xD)
4-6 isn’t really that bad, and I don’t think the fight is unwinnable by any stretch of the imagination. I just believe it’s hard because Kilgore can dictate the beginning of the match thus making Aganos work harder. Nothing wrong with that at all!
Kilgore does still have heavy kick buttons so he can do that but there’s no way he’s really winning a footsie war to begin with against Aganos.I just find it tricky with how easily he can create space between himself and Aganos with tools like B+HP. They’re great whiff punish buttons as well! I don’t think they’re the best ever and Aganos clearly has tools to get around them, it’s just the initial beginning of the match that (I believe) puts it in favor of Kilgore. Kilgore can relax at the beginning of the match until he gets completely overheated, than I believe Aganos can destroy him. It’s just a matter of making the Kilgore over heat vs Kilgore’s having proper spacing and knowing when to cooldown. What also helps is that overheated Ball is shadow counterable like how ARIA’s flying shotgun knee is. It’s a bit easier to shadow counter the overheated metal ball than ARIA is so that’s great! That and his bullet dashes are super [-] on block definitely help him.
my guess is this fight won’t be bad at all honestly. Kilgores projectiles do no chip. Meaning he’ll just give aganos meter and eventually his range will shorten meaning he’ll have to get closer to aganos if he wants to get rid of armor. And he doesnt have a heavy overhead meaning aganos just has to block low and throw tech. A zoner with crap buttons being forced into a the range of a 10ft giant who has good buttons and much better damage. This fight won’t be bad at all and if anything it may end up favoring Aganos because one shadow ruin and kilgore is gonna find himself cornered with little ways out.
My problem with that is although it does no chip, if he just hits him once then Kilgore definitely has the edge in this one. Kilgore will always more meter than Aganos will in this fight as well. Why would a smart Kilgore ever overheat against Aganos? If anything, he’ll be able to always bait Aganos with a heavy button into doing shadow ruin so that he can cancel into exhaust cooldown (3f startup, 0f recover) and punish the move on block. Even at about closer screen range, Kilgore will have the advantage there.
Missiles will also play a huge roll for him in this match as he can always control the airspace with that at the same time he’s using the chain gun. That will give him the chip damage he needs and smart usage of the two will create absolutely amazing lockdown.
His Wreck command normal (F+HP) has a 8f startup and is only -2 on block which causes stagger which is pretty good for a heavy button.
Overall, I still don’t think this matchup is awful but I will stand my ground that it’s in Kilgore’s favor slightly until I see proof otherwise. Sure, Aganos wins handily if the Kilgore player plays as un-optimized as possible but that’s then the Kilgore’s fault for not understanding how Aganos works.
Again, not really in my element here but I played super casual sets against my brother who is a very low tier Aganos. It’s a strange matchup because Kilgore is one of the only characters who can reliably remove multiple chunks with his normals using his Guns. But does Aganos need chunks in this matchup? Probably not all that much.
Any and all points of view are welcome! He might not need chunks in this specific matchup but technically he doesn’t ever really absolutely need them, it’s more of a convenience thing. He just needs a chunk ender so he can put up a wall and be safe. That might be the sole deciding factor of this matchup, get in at beginning of round with a single knockdown into wall placement.
So as of now Aganos loses the fight due to a huge bug where Kilgores missiles remove armor on block. This was a similar issue with Riptor’s flame carpet in s2. Other wise after playing cupcake the fight is pretty much how I thought. Once that bug is gone aganos will just have to slowly approach and let kilgore hang himself.
Regarding the match up I seem to end up playing it the same way I face Arbiter - a lot of blocking and patience =/ Would love to see someone managing to rush him down successfully. That move where he moves backwards spins and shoots is amazing and keeps wrecking me.