I do think Rash is beatable. I’ve done so myself and I’m nowhere near a top 32 player. But … HELLPPP!!!
I have some vids of me getting beat down by Rash. Hopefully other Aggy mains can learn from this. Aside from being able to break him better and not throwing yolo superpunches w/o instinct, I’m open for any strategies for this matchup.
After looking at my matches, it’s clear I need to block his tongue more and maybe shadow counter any followups. I seem to have blocked his tongue and followup a bit more in the earlier matches (Hisako’s stage). I’ll try this in future battles.
It seems that wrecking ball beats everything and the followup is lighting fast (at least it seems that way so far). Can this move be punished at all once it’s out of startup?
Another thing I noticed is that Rash’s grab speed is pretty quick, which along with his super quick tongue can be rough to deal with, especially if they mix in throws. But to be fair, Aggy has great throw range.
Hope you all can learn from my pain lol … smh … ok, there’s a tear or two on my face … but i’ll get over it. S3 is barely 2 weeks old.
I haven’t had too much time to fight against Rash as I’m stuck in qualifier hell at the moment (it’s a bug that doesn’t save my ladder progress for some reason), but what I would think to do is try to land a forward throw on him and convert a chunk as quickly as you can to establish a range game with him. I’d try to keep the club out as much as possible but I can understand how tricky that is with him having an easy time getting in on Aganos. This is speculation on my end.
If he’s doing constant wrecking balls against you then the only thing Aganos can do is either Upflick (if the opponent has bad spacing on the wrecking ball) or Shadow Natural Disaster as soon as he recovers from it to anti-air him. Your reactions have to be on point though.
Other than that, I can’t really think of what else to do against a good Rash player.
Man I must be doing something completely wrong with Rash then lol just about every time I use wrecking ball I get knocked out of it unless I just happen to catch somebody in the air with it
If you block wrecking ball, Aganos has no option but to use shadow ND. You can try to challenge with anti-air flick but a lot of the time it won’t work, because Rash recovers in time to stuff it with a jump normal. If wrecking ball is badly spaced then Rash will recover differently, but it’s really hard in the middle of a match to tell whether you should or should not attack.
Shadow ND always works, though. So, with meter you’re in business, without meter you’re in trouble.
The only other thing I can say to do is if he tries wrecking ball from full screen to get in on you then use a standing hard punch or a crouching hard punch as they ignore armor. Aganos’ great range on those tools should allow him to hit the wrecking ball but I can see it taking some practice to get the hang of, you might have to go into training room and practice reacting to it.
If you’re looking to intercept it, pick your fastest heavy button that hits that range. If you’re looking to do something about wrecking ball after you’ve blocked it, you must do something that is invincible or low profiles Rash’s jumping attack.
I just use Heavy Punch on Rash, he has little to beat it. Only trade or block. His Wrecking Ball get’s rekt by St.HP. Maybe I haven’t fought a Wrecking Ball Spammer yet but I destory the Yolo Wrecking balls with Aganos so Far. You can even Natural Disaster the Wrecking Ball on Reaction to evade his Rushdown overall by wheeling your big ■■■ across screen to safety. Getting hit by the Ball doesn’t mean anything when you have 2 or 3 chunks at All times. With my Chunk Management skills combined with Chunk/Recycle Buffs it’s really hard to be without chunks in S3, so I completely understand why Heavys ignore Chunks considering how likely I am chunked.
I’m officially calling for Rash nerfs! The toad must pay!
I finally experienced an annoying cannonball run. All he did was wrecking ball into AD mixups back into wrecking ball over and over again. He NEVER touched the ground. If I was lucky enough to hit him out of it, he’d simply zoom back in with his tongue to apply pressure and repeat.
He was always too close for me to use my heavy attacks to knock him out of it, and his follow-ups were way too fast for me to use ANY of my attacks other than shadow natural disaster. I could block the entire time, sure, but I tried that. When I did, that just opened me up for low attacks or throws, so he still had the advantage with mixups! Half of the time I tried to combo-break his AD mixups, I’d accidentally waste meter on a shadow counter instead, which only made things worse because I then couldn’t use it on the shadow ND that I needed (although I know this was because I was blocking when I should’ve let it hit me to get the combo-break - but it’s hard to concentrate under so much pressure).
IMO, here are a few nerf ideas that need to happen to Rash’s wrecking ball (one, some, or all):
The move should not be able to be usable as a linker. Only as an opener and ender.
He should have to touch the ground before starting another wrecking ball.
He should have added recovery frames that delay the timing of a follow-up attack a bit more.
He should only have armor on the heavy version of the move.
In addition, I don’t think his tongue should be able to remove chunk-armor. It doesn’t do any damage, so why should it remove the armor? His heavy attacks are good enough to do it without having to rely on his tongue anyways.
I’ll take credit for that, I main Aganos and Thunder, was hoping to pick up some tech from you since my Aganos kept getting destroyed by that same combo. Nothing personal.
medium wrecking ball followed by medium kick, stays airborne, had my Aganos demolished with that, and demolished Geek’s Aganos with it as well (secretly hoping he’d defeat it)
I could’ve if I had meter for shadow natural disaster, but you had stuffed it earlier when I tried to use it for something else (a shadow ruin, I think).
I went into the lab to test both of these myself. First of all, according to the game’s command list it IS an opener, linker, AND ender. Secondly, what @GrasshopperX8 and you both have said regarding it touching the ground is (mostly) correct. When it comes to needing to touch the ground, Infil is right - it has to touch the ground. However, if you can get the timing down (took me a few tries), the touch on the ground is almost imperceptable because he immediately goes back into the wrecking ball animation - there’s practically no downtime in between - it’s m.WB, followed by j.MK, land, then immediately right back into m.WB - there’s no idle animation between when he lands and when he starts up again, whatsoever.
Infil, you can go try this yourself. While I may be able to punish him on the startup frames right as he lands after block, if I’m flustered enough, as this move setup tends to do, I may not even realize that I’ve recovered enough to counter-attack him (and I’m still not even sure if Aganos can actually recover in time - I’ll have to practice it against a recording in the lab).
EDIT: Recording it and then playing it back isn’t accurate in the lab, as he lands after doing the m.WB and then just does a standing MK instead… I’ll have to turn on hitboxes and just watch it, I guess…
EDIT 2 - The Sequel: Apparently hitboxes don’t show much of anything other than that the landing is in fact there, for at least a few frames (not sure how many, but it’s definitely a fraction of a second).
