Am I the only one who takes Riptor seriously?

I ask because Riptor’s forum is the Least active forum by far. No one asks any question about her, or shows any MU ideas, or even post videos of their victories. Not even me.

I’m wondering are most Riptor players quiet titans or do most just not think she’s viable or too simple a character to have a discussion on. Maybe she’s actually so perfectly well crafted that she actually needs Nothing. How do my fellow KI beasts feel about Riptor’s footsies and vortexes? What is a gimmick? Are all Resets gimmicks? I wanna know some real ideas and feelings on the words that get thrown around like “Brain Dead”, “Gimmick”, “Not Good”. How do these words apply to Riptor and why?

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I watched a friend get to Killer rank by ONLY using heavy fire. He only used shadow moves to get 70% damage combos, because riptors shadow moves are so fast, 1 lockout guarantees they hit.
The only “tech” he needed to know was how to do her in air crossup. Once i tought him that, he was able to beat killers.

Riptor is SO OP in the hands of noobs, But then she QUICKLY levels out to being close to useless, because her “tricks” and “gimmicks” are 1 chance opportunities, and are always easily punishable by every move in the game.

Riptor will let ANYONE get to killer rank just on the pure fact that not a lot of people know how to deal with her. As long as you stay on offence, no one below killer can beat you. you can even button mash and beat most people.

But after that, she becomes very hard to use. You have to be constantly doing runs, flame carpets, fake crossups, predator cancels, Anti air recaptures, etc…

Im honesty AFRAID of what would happen if anyone actually got that good.

I may try it as my 2nd or 3rd character.

This is why… :wink: Of the entire female cast, she is by far my favorite on style alone.

I certainly do. Riptor is one of my major mains. And alot of people who claim she is “breain-dead” usually eiter have no understanding of how to beat her, or players who have never fogut a Riptor that can do more than tail flip and run back and fourth.

I vary my starategy alot, so you’ll never see me do the exact same stuff over and over.

If someone only did tha and it’s true. Those people he fought probably had NO idea that they can block the fire and punish. If you think she is OP you’re not blocking her attacks well enough and putting the pressure on her. Riptor is a greatly offensive based character, which is why it’s smart not to put yourself in a scenario where you get cornered.

Her tail-flip isn’t really that scary so long as you can get an idea of where she is going. If she tries to cross you up, just walk forward. Peple claim she is “brain-dead” because her moves are so easy, but what is so hilariously ironic is brain-dead should also mean she is “predictable” if these people boast she’s so easy to predict then they should have no trouble countering her stuff.

I think the main issue will stem based on how common characters are. Someone like Jago for example, is a very easy character to fight because he’s so ■■■■ common. Where as less common characters most people will have little knowledge of, so they can be in for alot of surprises.

This is likely because Riptor isn’t very common online that people don’t know how to deal with a Riptor that does this. It’s a really a matter of patience if you’re fighting her.

And no as Riptor the las thing you’ll wanna do is run away especially against Zoners. Generally you want to corner your opponent without being cornerd yourself. Because if you do, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble.

A smart player can do this with Riptor. If you’re having trouble with Riptor ask for some advice on how to deal with her because we’re all willing to share some of this info. I don’t beleive Rank is a good measure of skill anyway since alot fo killers I fought only got there because they played the game for long periods of time.

KI’s roster is so well balanced it’s just a matter of studying the character you’ll have the most trouble with when playing against Riptor.

Gimmick is a hard term to define because I think it is often misused in the FG community to mean “a mixup I got hit by and I’m mad about it”, but… tons of characters in lots of fighting games have hard-to-block mixups but they aren’t gimmicks.

To me, a gimmick means “a mixup that, once you know the trick, you probably aren’t getting hit by it”. Or, another way, a gimmick is a mixup that won’t hit good players more than once or twice. They are mostly knowledge based. If you know what’s coming and you still get hit, then it’s not a gimmick.

I don’t think most of Riptor’s stuff is a gimmick, because it has been consistently hard for good players to block. It’s incredibly fast, often ambiguous (if you do it from a jump-in, for instance), and hits players when they aren’t expecting to be mixed up. You feel mad when you get hit by it, because “if I blocked that, I was gonna kill you, so you took a really stupid risk”, but… it’s just really hard to consistently block on reaction, so it’s much less of a risk than it seems at times.

I also don’t think dash eclipse with Wulf is a gimmick, because good players get hit by it very often, especially if you use it sparingly. It’s just a solid mixup that has its place.

People also like to use gimmick to describe mixups from characters that they don’t see as fundamentally solid in the neutral game, or characters that need to be inherently risky to hit people. I don’t think either of these definitions are correct or meaningful. You can design characters that are built around risky (but amazing) mixups and not have him be gimmicky.

I do think that is a very agreeable way of breaking down the notion of Gimmicks.

I wont lie I also can get behind this observation. Riptor is a noob killer. If you aren’t ready or just aren’t experienced enough you have no business in the same environment as Riptor. She will quite literally smash you and tear you to pieces, then burn the remains. Riptor in High Level is where she Shines to me. I hate saying things like “There’s no players out there who do this” because I bet there are some truly Awesome KI players out there doing things no one has seen but there life and location isn’t conducive to being noticed by the community. Instead I’ll say, I personally haven’t encountered any players who Expect or mimic the kinda gameplay I preform with the Riptor character.

In my Personal opinion Riptor is comparable to Sabrewulf in the Footsie department. She’s so great with pokes and pseudo-frame traps. Her button checks are amazing but her Spacing is Seriously hard to master because many of her normals are behind her stupid huge Head. Has anyone here won with Riptor by just playing her Street Fighter style?

Kan-Ra’s forum is silent too. I use it as some kind of notebook because I am the only one posting stuff there. Feels like talking to myself. Won’t say he is bad.

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As others have said she completely destroys everyone that doesn’t know how to fight her (Which is surprisingly still a majority of the player base) so we mostly win which doesn’t lead to much experimentation with the character’s playstyle, and when I do lose with Riptor the thought process isn’t “what could I have done differently to win that match?” it’s more of a “oh, my mix ups were blocked, I should have just done a different one.” which doesn’t lead to much thought of other ways to play her either.
Plus I think her tech well has been run dry. I haven’t seen anything new with her since May.

Not that surprising - she isn’t widely played, so it’s hard to get the exposure you need to really get a feel for all the tools that she has. It’s kind of like running into a top-notch Aria, where you’re highly unlikely to be familiar enough with the character to adequately defend yourself.

I’ll have to respectfully disagree on this point - aside from her heavy tail pokes, Riptor’s actually got pretty stubby limbs, and generally gets quite a bit less off her pokes than a character like Wulf. She doesn’t shine in footsies until she pops instinct, and then she’s not so much playing footsies as she’s tossing out buttons that even Glacius would envy.

Riptor isn’t the only character though that has a less than active sub-forum though, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much. There are definitely a few really good, high-level Riptors out there, but I don’t think they’re active here or stream very often.

[quote=“Infilament, post:5, topic:3536”] They are mostly knowledge based. If you know what’s coming and you still get hit, then it’s not a gimmick.
[/quote]

Thanks, I never knew this. I always (mistakenly) assumed it meant, for example, S1 Sadira with her jumps that allowed her to control areas on the screen that other characters could not access (nor break). Kan Ra for similar reasons. Meaning that even if you would know what’s coming, most characters would still have a high chance of getting hit. Or at least that was the meaning I was giving it myself subconsciously.

Personally I say the forum activity is due mostly cause of the transition from the old forums to the new. There were a lot of good discussions in the old forums mostly due to the fact the characters were still new and people still had a lot to discover. The sub forums with the most traffic now are the newer characters and the characters to be released.

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In retrospect the activity on Riptor’s subforum wasn’t my main concern, though I was surprised that the last discussion here was 20days ago unless I read that completely wrong.

In honesty I wanted to here some constructive feeback on the character community on how she has evolved over the metagame. If anyone is playing with her buttons and predator cancels, discovering new ways to attack at high level?

Actually her tail pokes are good meaties and during Instinct they are just Nasty, but her crouching normals are very good. Cr.Mk is almost a frame trap after Hp->Hp->PrC(Lp)->Cr.Mk is kinda legit. Only thing it can’t beat is Invincible Reversals if they are mashed.

Actually Flame+Flame+Predator is amazing tech against everyone except Jago, Fulgore, and Orchid. Think about the fact your mix-up explodes if you flame into them at all times.

Wouldn’t Predator cancel LK > St.Mk be better? The LK puts you at +1 whereas the LP puts you at 0, then St.Mk is 5 frames of start up whereas Cr.Mk is 6 meaning Cr.Mk can get beat out by lights but St.Mk will stuff them. And then St.Mk leaves you at +7 on hit and +1 on block whereas Cr.Mk only puts you at +2 on hit and 0 on block.

I don’t read frame data as I play the game, but I’ll see about that in the heat of battle.

PrC Lp if unblocked gets a Wall-Bounce, or Push-back on Block. Then Cr.Mk is her travel-Footsie, so it meats the push back very nicely. Your strat works if Riptor is extremely close range, my strat works if Riptor is Close-Mid range. Riptor’s St.Mk and PrC-Lk have almost no range in exchange for being mathematically safer, PrC-Lp into Cr.Mk great range but 1 frame worse but can be cancelled into Rampage far easier do to longer active frames visually. Both methods are for different moments of the battle which is Great to know btw so thanks for that. The risk for your strat is being grabbed out of PrC-Lk but PrC-Lp can’t be grabbed at the range I’m doing it.

Well, if we’re talking about utility in “footsies”, then I wouldn’t consider usefulness as meaties to be especially relevant to the conversation. Buttons that have incredibly limited use in neutral can be amazing on knockdown, but I wouldn’t say that makes the character have good footsies tools.

My larger point wasn’t that Riptor doesn’t have any good footsies tools, just that her normals are not really what make her shine in neutral. A character like Wulf largely lives and dies on the strength of his (very good) buttons - Riptor’s offense is built around a quite different toolset. She has the longer range tail normals, but she also has her run, predator cancels, and headbutt->predator frame trap options. She’s not outplaying you in neutral off the strength or speed of just her buttons. That’s all I was saying.

well damn, in light of that I probably dont understand the definition of footsies.:sweat_smile:

How do I Riptor?

Yea riptor and agans are like my least Selected

Lol. Don’t sweat it - there is no universal definition of “footsies”. Infil and I have had this discussion on the forums as well, and we’ve basically got different definitions of what “footsies” even mean. So it could just be that you and I are talking about two things that aren’t even entirely related.

I’m usually of the mind that it refers to using back and forth movements to properly space normals and punish them for low to moderate damage (and by extenstion, I’ll often say that KI isn’t really a footsies based game). Others might say it’s just the use of normals to resolve the game’s neutral, in which case one might say that KI’s footsies simply resolve quickly. There really isn’t a right answer to be honest…we could both be right based on our own definitions of the term.

I would heavily recommend never using PrC-Lp unless you really want some space (not really useful during riptors offence).

Especially since it is extremely reactable to SC even when it is seen for the very first time. If I ever see a riptor use PrC-Lp, it’s either A) a free SC. Or B) I am now free from riptors offence and at equal frame advantage to properly react.

And likewise if anyone ever catches me accidentally using Lp, I usually get SC’d.