Does he have any? If so what are they?
He is good at everything and master at none. He doesn’t specialize at anything so take advantage of that. For example,he can zone but can’t outzone a zoner.
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I main, Thunder. I guess I’m kinda screwed… lol
Then out pressure him I guess? I don’t know much about Thunder lol. Perhaps destroying his fireballs and charge the dash?
I find myself attempting to dodge a barrage of fireballs or block them more often tan not… in order to dash through and punish, the timing has to be impeccable; All while Jago is building meter. Getting in close and playing footsies with him seems to never end so well… he frame traps and dp cancel is insane. Not sure how to beat a top tier competitive Jago consistently… I think he’s way too good this season. God tier.
Just practice and you’ll understand. It’s not easy to describe the strategy of the matchup in words, you just kinda have to get used to it.
In other words… the MU is redundant?.. because I haven’t learned anything at all from it at all. All I know is the obvious which kind of goes without saying… and that is; Blocking fireballs gives him meter… FAST, & that he can be combative up close at a better rate than Thunder in most cases. His double round house stuffs my C./LP like…wtf… 
Ask some Thunder mains.
@Goldbaum Any advice for this player?
His meter gain from block got nerfed recently so it’s not as ridiculous. But blocking him out and just waiting for a Jago to whiff on DP. Double roundhouse also comes awfully slow now so with meter you should be able to counter it easily. Basically, don’t try to hit him while he is. Jago is plus on many normals and he can also make himself safe, but with patience he can be shutdown relatively fast.
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Patience is the Key. I like it…
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Sure is. I played you last night. Granted, I’m no top tier Jago but it’s clear to see where you struggled. You were antsy to get in while ignoring his tools, but when you slowed down a bit and noticed that chip damage isn’t all that bad especially when in the lead, you did great. You caught me with Shadow COTE and flipouts began to take a toll, you even baited out dps when I felt like you were immediately going for a combo.
Play a set with Thompxson if you haven’t already, you may lose, but you will definitely learn all you can.
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Thunder and Jago are similar. If you are good a excellent Thunder, And they are an excellent Jago, then there is no “strategy” to winning.
You need to star focusing on mind games, reads, and conditioning.
-When do they jump?
-When do they try a throw?
-When do they shadow counter?
-If you dash forward, what do they do? jump? block? attack?
Learn your opponent, Learn how they react to you, and focus on keeping them in an uncomfortable place. Whether its on the ground, or far away, or close, or in the air.
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Mobility is really Jago’s only weakness, but he’s got more than enough options to safely cover space if you know the character.
One thing that you really have to do against him defensively is shadow counter though. Double roundhouse should never go by if you have meter, and a lot of his up-close pressure will tend to rely on strings that have viable windows to shadow counter if you’re familiar with them.
And Thunder should obviously never jump at Jago. He has better options to get in, and his floaty jump is delicious DP fodder.
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I main Jago and Thunder is a distant, distant second for me. If you want, we can certainly play sometime, but here is some of the advice I can give you:
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Jago has awesome buttons. Often times, I will try to frame trap an opponent with a crouching medium punch after a medium laser sword. Nine times out of ten, it works because my opponent wasn’t patient enough. Ergo patience is key.
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I am not nearly as good as Bass or Thompxson at fireball-dash cancels. If you can stay close to your opponent with Sammamish, you can force a Jago player to do something stupid.
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Back dashes can be amazing. I am still working on getting better with them, but back dashing a move like Shadow Ankle Slicer is like achieving nirvana. Guess what: Thunder’s back dash is better than Jago’s.
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Jago is a great character. He has a solid normal anti-air and his special. Avoid jump-ins.
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Jago has a very linear offense. That means you can shadow counter him easily – at least in theory. As a Jago player, I can go a bit nutty with shadow moves because I always seem to have at least one in stock, but for Thunder should be conservative with them for counters. Maybe even use them aggressively because of the 1 point of armor.
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Check out Bass’s channel. I believe he has some sets of Thunder and Jago matches up. https://www.youtube.com/user/XiBassiX/videos
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Oh, one more thing.
If a Jago player activates Instinct and they are close to you, you actually can shadow counter their fireballs. This works really well for Thunder because of the point of armor he has with Shadow Triplax. Now, timing is a â– â– â– â– â– , but you can do it either on the first fireball or the second and hope that point of armor carries you through any follow-up hit.
Then tay close and smash the â– â– â– â– out of him. lol
Not even, really. Jago doesn’t have great mobility, rushdown characters tend to have very natural ways of getting in which make Jago’s fireballs a triviality or even a mistake, and whilst getting a fireball on the screen is often helpful against a real zoner, it’s in aid of Jago getting in and not a means to getting real damage. Jago is leaning on the threat of his medium (and to some extent heavy) wind kick for space control, to give him the breathing room to either throw fireballs (against characters who can’t just punish him for it at midscreen) or walk up and press a button like double roundhouse or crMK or something. If he can fill a stock off of fireballs in the interim then that’s great, but he’s not getting his damage at full screen.
A thunder wants to either sammamish in and catch Jago with a follow-up, or just patiently bulldog (i.e. dash and block) in through the fireballs and into the wind kick threat range to where Thunder’s threats come live. If you learn the right amount of patience, you should be able to get Jago players to respect options like triplax and ankle slicer some of the time, but it may be better to be too patient and let him walk up and pressure you (see below), than to not be patient enough and let a raw wind kick hit out of nowhere.
Thunder has some scary buttons at a character length or so away, probably more-so than Jago. It’s just that it’s a particular range, and wind kick is a live threat, so Jago exerts a lot of control over that space.
Well it’s a heavy, so I guess it would. You can pretty reliably tag double roundhouse with a low button, such as a lot of the crMK buttons in the game, but normals generally lose to an active wind kick, so be careful.
If he’s walking up and getting a double roundhouse on you in neutral then you’ve probably cowed to the threat of a wind kick, which is understandable.
^This.
In a version of KI without shadow counters, Jago would frame trap for years. It’s kinda what he does. He has plenty of plus buttons and a plus special up close, and can extend his pressure more than a character length away pretty convincingly with long-ranged heavy normals like stHP, double roundhouse, and his overhead, and specials like light fireball, and wind kick when you think it’s over. And importantly, he can attempt to confirm with an opener (into big damage if he has the meter for it) without taking much of a risk at all, or even whilst sustaining his pressure on block, where other frame trappers often rely more on picking up counterhits. If there’s one thing Jago is good at, it’s making impatient players regretful of their life choices.
But Jago only really has one credible mixup. Back+HP is a filthy overhead, but it’s definitely reactable so if you look for it you can make it difficult for Jago to convert off his pressure, and at a character length away it’s difficult for Jago to back up the overhead threat with a credible low threat, so you can just stand block at that range. (Pray that Jago never gets his KI2 slide.) Jago has a pretty terrible throw range so it’s not so hard to suss out when a throw could be coming (just watch out for baits), his throw damage is a pretty poor reward for getting an opponent to sit still, and whilst he can shadow-cancel his throw, the meter expended would hurt far more on hit, and takes away Jago’s options elsewhere in the match. He can go for a jump HP, but it’ll only stand a chance of crossing up at very close ranges and otherwise you’ll have no trouble blocking (or even better, anti-airing) it.
So your best course may be to wait for Jago’s pressure to just end and then either run Thunder’s own pressure game complete with much more threatening mixups for big damage, or bait the DP for even bigger damage.
And as mentioned, shadow counters are a problem for Jago. He can vary his strings to make predicting the cadence of hits more difficult, and in S2 some of his pressure normals recovered quickly enough to block a lot of shadow counters, but the S3 changes make these tactics far less effective. The best he can do is mix in fireballs (and fireball cancels) in places, go for throws more often, and simply halt his pressure entirely to bait more often. I’m not sure how little you can get away with knowing about his strings when going for a S3 shadow counters, but I think you can have a decent guess at what string is coming and still have your shadow counter hook something if it’s a different string much of the time.
I realize this point spoke of backdashing out of Thunder’s stuff, but backdashing after blocking a laser sword is pretty good and pretty doable. (Unlike, say, Fulgore’s light eye laser, which was kinda like a better laser sword until the recent advantage nerf.) Jago has to use a double roundhouse or a wind kick (depending on spacing) to explicitly chase it, when he really just wants to press another button.
EDIT: also, Thunder is a meterless DP character too now. Light sammamish, use it. After a double roundhouse or a laser sword is a pretty good time, because you have reaction time to know when to input the reversal, but if you can interrupt a string in a more tricky place you’re far less likely to get baited.
I find fighting Jagos is more about countering the player than the character. Yeah there are a few character specific tricks out there like sneaky anti-dp set ups, but for the most part he’s too well rounded to have a single exploitable weakness. Just catch on to the player’s habits and start playing around them. Thankfully Jago’s basicness makes it easy to identify habits.
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Thunder is better at jago face to face. His light dp has the same properties as jago dp but it last longer. Meaning if you both throw out dp at the same time you win. You can punish him for blocking. You can punish him for moving. Like I did before bro thunder is strong when he’s right next to you. He can also control air jumping. His weakness is in horizontal play styles.
Just an extra two cents to the bunch: predictability and “honest play” are his weaknesses. He has no tricky tools with which to catch you by surprise.
Incidentally, many Jagos love to DP punish and DP wakeup. If you can bait those out (admittedly harder to do at your level–I think I saw you at rank 3 or something, right?), you can wreck his face afterward.