So, we all know that Maya gets her pips from dagger blockage. Whats more resourceful? getting hit by daggers intentionally & putting yourself in a multitude of iffy combo situations, or blocking the daggers & getting opened up for free anyway… ? I’d like to know how some of you deal with this. I’m not completely in agreeance with being opened up for free at the expense of blocking correctly. It’d be something different if the daggers didn’t track the opposition; essentially causing the person maya to make use of her pips judiciously. How sway?
There’s character specific ways to get her to waste her daggers when she throws them. Some can low profile them causing them to whiff and fly off to the corner. Others can destroy them on incoming with projectile normals. Others can go invincible causing the daggers to fly right through them. You don’t have to choose between eating the hit or letting her build pips.
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Thunder has to hold that unless he is in instinct. Even then, those daggers come out so quick that dashing through them isn’t always the best method of his offense.
Don’t Thunder’s DP’s go thru projectiles? What of COS, doesn’t it destroy projectiles on contact, or am I mistaken?
As for myself, I like Maya’s dagger mechanics. It’s neat, a character being rewarded for forcing their opponent to block in conjuction w/ applying their own spatial awareness and management skills.
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Definitely not smart because her daggers can stuff the DP.
If you mistime it, yeah. Same for Crow Dash. It’s still a good tool, and even better in this situation, so long as the pilot can utilize it. That’s like saying it’s a bad call for Jago to delay cr.MK v Cinder on oki, or hell even Hisako sweep v Shago fireball (for a closer analogy).
Yeah, it can backfire, by either wrong-guess or timing error, but that doesn’t invalidate the tool.
Is there a visual cue to Maya having the unblockable ready?
I hate having to constantly look at her meter and count the pips to know if i am about to get blasted.
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I’m just saying it’s a flat out horrible idea to preemptively attempt timing a COS at incoming daggers. That mechanic works more so like Tusk’s deflect. I’m not saying that you can’t time it, but it’s more often an accident than not. Thats just NOT a good decision overall. The start up is too slow on COS to deal with daggers. It’d have to be used judiciously at specific ranges.
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You did mention something that is interesting though. Can I possibly hit he daggers to deflect them; with normals?
As Thunder? Unfortunately nope. They are real live fireballs, unlike Swarms or Kunai. You can DP through them though, any strength. That’s pretty neat.
Crow Dash is pretty slick too, and it’s a reason to use COS in that MU; not to tag incoming daggers, but off of KD’s to charge the Dash to get thru them. Then it becomes a matter of discerning a tendency and buffering while charged, and baboom! You’ve made Maya throw two whole buttons into a corner, and have either caught her w/ Grab or hit a crossup DP - let’s face it, you Dash thru her & her fireball off of a blocked jab>jab string, she ain’t blocking whatever comes next. Not this time, anyway. Now, you get to gatekeep her buttons while she deals with your pressure and positioning advantage with a suddenly inferior toolset.
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Even if there was a visual cue it wouldn’t matter. You can’t stop the unblockable period.
You can be on a “ready” state to try your odds at avoiding them, but that still leaves you to deal with the aftermath of your avoiding move
Well… not to be that guy but I think the visual cue is the icon above her meter. 
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Daggers glow more and more in accord to the number of pips loaded.
I can be wrong tho
well, if there are 2 purple pips then the unblockable is ready. but also yes, the daggers do glow when fully charged.
Your best bet is to just peripherally glance at her dagger gauge whenever you’re checking her meter. Honestly though, worrying about how many pips she’s got is a waste of your mental energy, and will distract you from other, more important elements of the fight. There’s very little you can do to stop the full-pip dagger, so don’t worry about it. Instead, focus on making her whiff daggers (and whatever unique means your character has to enforce such a strategy), then gatekeeping them.
You can actually avoid the full-pip in the corner though. It can reach the stage boundary and still register as a whiff. I imagine most Maya players won’t be throwing the full-pip while you’re in the corner, but it’s still good to know.
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I ve seen it whiff since it’s tracking can’t do a full arc and go back.
Guess i’ll have to learn someone with a real DP since Omen and Raam don’t have a meterless invulnerable that can realiably avoid it. Now i can’t wait for Shin Hisako, Teleport + DP will surely put most of the annoying characters at bay, Fulgore has that but i don’t want to deal with reactor speed.
Omen has plenty of means to invalidate daggers! L.Orda & [3K] can force whiffs if buffered during her pressure, I’m pretty sure Slides can low-profile them in neutral, and EX.Orda can dissuade their being thrown in the first place. He’s also got the standard proj.invuln EX.Slide.
RAAM has H.Reversal, [3P], and Bear Grab to soak and blow through daggers. If you have a hard time utilizing your characters single-button tools in these situations, more elaborate tools that require even faster reactions to keep up with increasingly complex inputs aren’t going to help. DP’s aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Raam actually avoids the daggers really well. Do a heavy emergence and they’ll fly right through you into the corner. If the Maya catches on and tries to punish the emergence then switch to medium emergence, it’ll hit the daggers and cause them to flop on the floor which isn’t as good as flying into the corner but there’s less recovery for raam making it harder for maya to punish.
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