Beating Anti-Airs (Work In Progress)

I’m bored so I figured I would make a list of every method of Baiting Out and Punishing Anti-Air Normals and Anti-Air Specials… or better yet… methods that stop Anti from popping out to begin with.

Unfortunately I’m also extremely lazy and don’t play anyone other than Hisako. So if I have to do this by myself its going to take a Tall Time.

Shin Hisako - Forward Dash, Spirit Orb Shenanigans.

Aria - Drone Assists

Kim Wu - Dragon Dashes

Cinder - Forgot The Names of The Moves

Hisako - Air ORZ

Eagle - Air Arrow Shot, Bird Assists, Double Jump, Arrow Rain

Sadira - All Kinds of Shenanigans I assume.

Aganos - Full Payload Jump (I think this works)

Spinal - Dive Kick (Obviously)

All characters:
Meaty jump-in off hard knockdown (will beat any non-invincible [non-DP] anti-air)

Hisako:
Air-ORZ to alter jump arc (works well with wall jump as DP bait)

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Sadira and Eagle:

Double Jump. Can be use to even bait DPs

Eagle can also use:

Mid air arrows
Arrow rain to cover any buttons

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So I want to go off on a tangent for a moment to talk about why Anti-Airs, Dragon Punches Specifically, are so difficult to land.

First of all its because the input is just Bonkers… trying to :arrow_right: :arrow_down: :arrow_lower_right: is simple enough but doing it faster faster and increases the likely hood of something going wrong, for me specifically I’ve had Unintended: Supers, Ex Dragon Punches, Fireballs, Forward Dashes, Crouching Medium Punches, Standing Medium Punches (specific to cross cuts), Forward Medium Punches (Command Normal) and even Jumps… this sort of thing is inevitable, the whole purpose of the motion is to stop you from doing it to quickly and yet the situations where its required demands that you be able to do it quickly…

For me specifically, the move has three alternate methods it can be performed relative to where the opponent is jumping from with which character.
:arrow_right: :arrow_down: :arrow_lower_right: : Default method for stopping straight forward jump ins. And the occassional neutral jump.
:arrow_lower_right: :arrow_down: :arrow_lower_right: : just like the default method but doesn’t make your character stand up, allows the Dragon Punch to connect Deeper, perfect for defensive players and/or those who use Hitbox Arcade Controllers.
:arrow_right: :arrow_down: :arrow_lower_left: : Used for performing Crosscuts (Autocorrecting Dragon Punches)… I don’t think its worth practicing since you can only use it if you know for sure you’re going to get crossed up.
And :arrow_lower_right: :arrow_lower_left: :arrow_lower_right: : the legendary “wiggle” method Used for stopping ambiguous Jump, particularly in the corner. Perfect for defensive players such as myself, I’ve swatted a satisfactory amount of attacks using this method… unfortunately this is not a D-Pad friendly method (non of them are actually).

So yeah… its no wonder why everybody eventually screws up a Dragon Punches (if you haven’t yet that just mean’s you’re not going for them enough).

But this isn’t new… I’ve already whined about this before…

But James has shown me that it turns out theres yet another reason why its so hard to anti-air… playing Too Defensively… While it might seem like a good idea on the surface, Standing up to Block Jumping Attacks is actually the wrong reaction… standing guard is primarily for overheads. If you block a jumping attack though, in all likely hood, you’re still at a disadvantage… and that wouldn’t be an issue against certain characters, just keep blocking and stick out a jab or two in there and you’l be pushed out of the opponents range. But for other characters, Grapplers in Particular,… well… you have a character with an unreactable, untechable command throw that gives fantastic Okizeme, standing right next to you with a significant advantage, what do you think is gonna happen ? This was what the whole Rainbow Mika Season 1 Fiasco was all about.

So this leaves you with one option… Smack’em out of the sky before they have a chance to be a problem. And to do that, you might have to start playing more proactively. And I won’t lie to you… its gonna get worse before it gets better. In his attempt to swat people out of the air… Playing defensively was so deeply imbedded in James that even thinking about Anti-Airing got James kicked in the face so many times that he was losing 3 Times as much compared to his usual style… and I didn’t fare too well either, I suffered 27 Losses in a Row getting kicked in the face by the most reactable jump ins that could have easily been blocked. LoL… it was so discouraging… and the ever growing losing streak is trying to reinforce that defensive play style. At some point all logic goes out the window… cause now we had to view every blocked jumping attack as a failure… and every boot to the Face as a success “Atleast I tried” we told ourselves as we lost 35% health to optomized jump in Counter Hit Combos. LoL… its hard to see losing a round in 13 Seconds because of being amitious rather than cautious as a resounding success but theres genuinely no other way of seeing it… luckily for him it paid off… he made platinum (again)… and I was finally able to beat my Button Mashing Friends back to back…

So yeah… thats half of my view on Anti-Airs… the other half has yet to be determined.

You could also just down+HP. The characters with DP’s tend to have pretty good ones. :thinking:

And if you can’t AA the jump-in but know how to mash out input shortcut DP, then you can also just block the jump-in and then DP. Or backdash - that’ll tend to evade most offensive options out of a jump.

Point is, there are a decent amount of options available to you, many of them not particularly demanding on the execution side.

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Yeah that works really well in this game because its so well made… hell I could even walk under and then Down Fierce the Cross Up attempt…

Here are a bunch of way to beat anti airs. There could be others I missed but i’d like to think this list hits a good chunk of the stuff and then the rest is left to setup-py stuff. I put them in a spoiler.

JA;no way of altering jump arc
SW-Divekick
GL-no way of altering jump arc
TH-no way of altering jump arc
SJ-Air Dark Demise(Greatly Alters jump arc,invincible,frames 9-21,risky),Air shendokouken (halts air momentum)
SA-Widows Bites,Double jump,Web Cling
OR-no way of altering jump arc
SP-Divekick
FU- Air Shadow Eye Laser
TJ-no way of altering jump arc
MA-Dash forward jump,Dash up jump, Air T/V/E strike (air fireball with good angle,risky)
KA-Swarm(halts air momentum),Jump HK,superjump,Shadow Sandtrap lockdown
RI-Tail flip
OM-Turbulence,Shadow form
AG-no way of altering jump arc
HI-Air ORZ
CI-Trailblazer,Pyrobomb detonate,Cross fire
AR-Boost Hover,j.mk(moves aria back) J.HK (halts air momentum)
WU-Dragon dash
TU-Air Skull Splitter,J.MP,J.HP
RB- Air Parry (instinct)
RH-Air Wicked Tongue,Air Wrecking Ball
MI-Air backdash/dash,Mist(invincible,cost blood life)
GA-Quad Jump.J.HK,J.HP,Minions
RM-no way of altering jump arc
WEY-no way of altering jump arc
MEY-j.MP
KI-j.HP(air projectile,halt air momentum)
SK-Air Spirt Orb (halts air momentum,Dash (more aggresive “jump arc”)
EA-J.HP (halts air moment+air projectile)Bird Fling(8 way 2nd jump)

Also crosscuts and wiggles don’t work in KI.Its a little silly but the defender has to input a reverse motion and press the button when the aggressor moves to the reverse side, making the reverse input a regular input, to successfully anti air crossups.

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