General tips on doing combos that are hard to break

General Discussion
21

No, Rash’s normals are effin fantastic, like best-in-class good. I’m not underestimating them in the slightest.

My point stands. If Rash wants to make his juggles actually hurt, he’s not going to do it with cr.LK->st.LK->tongue->MP type strings - he’s going to be tossing out giant hands and battle axe kicks, which are reactable. Sure, you have to be looking for them, but if you’re worried about eating a ton of damage then yeah, look for them.

Outside of resets, KI will usually only make you eat high amounts of damage if someone is hitting you with something that is reactable. There are exceptions to this of course, but it’s pretty true as a general rule.

22

Character specific stuff to make combo’s harder to break…Well i have a few things i can offer for Kim Wu.

Utilizing exchange linkers - First and foremost, let’s address that exchange linkers add NO damage to the combo system. Cool. The fact that i’m listing this for Kim is because it forces your opponent’s tendencies as well as general game design gimmick. Manuals are hard to break, so combos that can utilize manuals right into exchange linkers are a little tricky to break just off principal. It forces your opponent because even if they did attempt a break, whether they hit or locked out is kinda irrelevant. If they want to break on her manuals OR tech the linker in this fashion, that’s predictability a player can utilize down the line.

Dragon katas - MP katas cancelled into openers actually get treated as manuals. So anytime you see a Kim that mashes that 3 hit backing up kata into whatever, that move is hitting as a manual. Now, a lot of her openers hit twice and hit fast so you can treat most as if you’re breaking an AD and be fine. That is not quite the case for heavy Dragon Dance, which hits with some delay between it’s two hits, can generate a very early timing lockout if missed, and gets to level 2 immediately with about 50 KV filled.

Unfortunately, you cannot delay your timing of your opener after kata or else you risk dropping your combo and allowing your opponent to block, reversal, etc.

(NOTE: I don’t really know if this is a game design thing or a possible glitch because doing the same thing with HP katas treats the following special as an opener and, hence, unbreakable.)

Forced missed Shadow Linker hits - Kim has a few very specific setups where you can force her pretty easy to break Shadow Firecracker linker to hit only 4 times instead of 5. The easiest being L Dragon Kick + Dragon Cancel + St. LP/St. LK + S. Firecracker. The light lifts them high enough where the first hit whiffs and they fall into only 4 other hits.

Granted, this has limited use because 10/10 times, you want to utilize meter in juggles for cashouts with S. Dragon Kick, but it is a way to generate a 20-25% non-cashout juggle with some PD and a chance for a setup afterwards. Plus, since it’s one less hit, that’s one less chance for an opponent to break your shadow and it potentially messes up their cadence on how it’s supposed to hit.

If we were talking about this 2-3 weeks ago before 3.8, Kim had stuff like St. HP + S. Dragon Kick + Dragon Cancel + L Dragon Kick as being totally unbreakable until this point (which was good for about 30% if i remember right) because the game treated the dragon kick as an opener. Probably for the best that got removed lol.

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23

Thank you so much for the information! This is the stuff that I want to see shared in this thread.

For me personally I’m not that experienced with Kim Wu so a lot of this stuff is flying over my head. Footage would help but I’ll go into the lab and try out you scenarios.

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I had time on my hands, here you are…

The first clip is a example of her exchange linker and i used all heavy manuals just to extend it longer. Now, if you, as an opponent, can find a way to guess that manual strength OR tech the linker (it’s throw techable) then it shows you information. You don’t like being tossed around and you’re willing to risk that guess to break. Even using her weakest ender, it’s only worth 14% damage after all that; maybe about 3-4% better than most of the game’s standard throws and full of breakable points.

Second clip is an example of her katas into manuals. I record the dummy doing Cl. St. MP + MP kata + L Firecracker just to show the game treats it as a manual then the same kata string but with H Dragon Dance. There is a gap where if you’re not treating them as manuals and not trying to break on the strike of the hits, you will lockout. With two bars, that early of a lockout is confirmable into a easy 70% damage combo. Even with none that is 2 free heavy AD’s into a ender of your choosing.

Third and forth clip are examples of forcing Shadow Firecracker, a five hit shadow, to hit only four times with L Dragon Kick + Dragon Cancel + St. LK or St. LP. Like i said, not highly practical since she hits so hard with her shadow cashout, but it’s an option she has for ok juggle damage, a bit of PD and a possible setup from the two different juggles i used.

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Wow that was quick. This is wonderful information!