Hisako Matchup Thread: Riptor

Characters Hisako
,
1

Welcome to the first of a series of threads discussing Hisako’s matchups.

I hear a lot of complaints about this matchup, mainly centered around flame pressure. Catch-counters won’t do her any good against a robot-dinosaur breathing fire in her face, to be sure. Hisako is already weak on wakeup, and Flame Carpet can be used as a conditioning tool to illicit specific responses from Hisako’s wakeup. Riptor’s mobility can make her a whacky, evasie target. I’ve seen/heard it assessed at 8 - 2 in Riptor’s favor.

All that said, a matchup being rough doesn’t mean we can’t grab some W’s from Riptor. I think that we, as a community of Hisako players, can learn to deal with some of the challenges present in the matchup if we work together and do our homework.

I’ll be hitting the lab and looking at some specific scenarios. I’m very open to suggestions on what scenarios to toy with; post about what’s giving you trouble and we can all put those scenarios under a microscope together.

In the meantime, here’s a video of PaulB’s Hisako VS. yokoh0’s Riptor. It helps me to watch matchups at high-level; perhaps it might help you as well, Onryo.

2 Likes
2

thanks for creating this thread and also for linking that video. Unfortunatly it seems a little bit old (no cinder and ARIA on the select screen) and I would be curious to see this match now that PaulB is even better with Hisako.

The thing about this match-up is that, you HAVE TO be the one who put pressure on the other.
Getting out of the pressure is so hard, for both characters.

On Riptor’s wake up you have to abuse both possession and instant air-ORZ. Beware of her shadow meter and don’t do air ORZ if she can lauch a shadow attack.

If you’re experiencing Riptor’s flames pressure on wake up, the best you can do is to dash forward in order to avoid her jump+HP (unless she left the flame carpet before jumping). If there is a flame carpet, and you absolutely want to get out of that corner, you can do the shadow ORZ. It may be punishable, but at least you won’t be in that corner anymore.

Well at least, that’s some of my techs in this matchup, there may be better solutions, because I still get bodied against some really good riptors.

Also as we can see in this video, when you shadow counter Riptor’s jump+HP, she (riptor) can block, grab, or even attack before the shadow hits. That’s really annoying and I hope it’s “a bug that will be addressed”.

1 Like
3

Thanks for dropping in! I agree that applying as much pressure on Riptor’s wakeup as possible is pretty advantageous in this matchup. Riptor’s wakeup options leave much to be desired, and Hisako’s pretty Oki-heavy on offense.

As for this:

Hisako has a poor shadow-counter for sure. Maya’s in the same boat. I think that IG made Hisako’s Shadow Counter poor by design, to balance out the fact that she has near-instant one-button counters that convert to full combo.

1 Like
4

So I spent some time in the lab last night toying with a few things. I wanted to find consistent answers for some of Riptor’s abilities.

Flame Carpet: Set up a scenario wherein Riptor knocks me down, lays flame carpet, and then strikes with a string of rapid meaty MPs.

Findings: This is a very spacing dependent situation. If she is directly on top of you, as in “cannot possibly get any closer”, then you have to respect the setup and block on wake up. If you just inside the edge of the carpet or a little further in, you can back-jump out of it. If you’re dead-center of the flame carpet, you’ll get hit with the meaty often, so it’s best to block. If you are just inside the middle of the flame carpet, or slightly closer, you can hold up-forward and jump over Riptor to cross her up with a JHK. My suggestion is to play with the spacing in this scenario, as the finite points in which you can jump or must block are difficult to describe. I’m going to experiment in this scenario with different normals and see what adjustments should be made.

Fire-Breathing Robot Dinosaur: I set up a relentless flame-spam scenario.

Findings:

  • Outside of flame range, Heavy Air-ORZ seems to be the most consistent punish. The enormous hitbox makes this an option which is minimally dependent on correct spacing. Additionally, Air-ORZ makes Hisako’s hurt-box tiny and sort of lifts the bottom up from the ground. Timing is an issue however; if you do the ORZ too late, the increased hitbox on the final flame may strike you out of the air. A more spacing dependent option is a Jump-in MK; the spacing is strict, and this puts you at greater risk of getting hit by the Riptor player holding B+HP and knocking you out of the air.

  • Inside of flame range: aside from stuffing it with a fast normal or burning meter on a shadow ORZ for full punish, it seems as though we must simply block. I may be absolutely wrong and I’m open to suggestions. The good news is that if she goes full-yolo and mashes HP, she’s horrendously unsafe and can be consistently punished.

Raptor Over-Easy: I set Riptor up to tail-flip cross-up continually.

Findings:

Cr.HP is the best answer to this in several scenarios. Tail-flip has a ton of startup frames and is very reactable. Cr.HP’s hitbox will tag her through most of her flip animation, but it your timing is late, you’re going to get hit. If you DO get hit and she goes for a second one, hold crouch and mash (and I mean MASH) HP. If you do, Cr.HP will come out just as soon as hitstun is over and it will knock her down.

Aside from Cr.HP, Cl.HP can be used at the very beginning of her flip.

Finally, if you do an ORZ while she’s in mid-flip over your head, Hisako will move forward and Riptor will miss you, falling flat on her arse and leaving her open to get punished for her very funny looking whiff (I tested this option in the scenario that Hisako gets hit with the first cross-up, and ORZ’s under the second. I’m not sure if this can be done without first getting hit by the cross-up flip, but it’s a consistent option after getting hit with the first one. I’ll test a proactive ORZ flip-dodge later this week).

Thoughts? Concerns? Any specific scenarios you guys would like me to toy around with?

Oh, and lastly:
HISAKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

3 Likes
5

I don’t know. It just feel unfair to me, but it’s true that having a shadow counter which is unvulnerable to projectile can be useful, and that’s not the case for every characters.

I would just want at least to have someone from the dev team saying: “this is not a bug”

6

So I’ll have some time over the weekend to get back in the lab.

I’d love to hear some more thoughts on the match up. How’s Riptor blowing you up? Or alternatively, how do you personally play this match up? Anything to add or subtract from what I’ve already posted? Does Riptor’s taunt need a buff? Does Hisako have the best crouch pose in the game?

7

Yes she does.

and the best cr+LP too

2 Likes
8

Do you have any videos of total pwnage?

On the one hand, winning is winning and we don’t care by how much…

But on the other hand, the way I watched the first video, the way mistakes were made on both sides and how the matches were pretty close when over, it’s hard to believe an 8-2 matchup is because the 8 always scrapes by and barely looses twice. Especially when the 2 ends up pulling a green health win itself, while maintaining a near even win record.

An 8-2 matchup would lead to seeing a lot of green health (even if just a smidge) or near full red wins with the 2 wins being barely attainable for the other.

It’s the nature of the uphill battle and all things being equal.

I’m really interested in learning more about Riptor and do have quite a bit to go on seeing her matchups, but if I am to believe what I am reading, I have to see it in action too.

… On the plus for me, while I definitely need to work on my combos with Riptor, er, anybody, if what the video showed is how I’m suppose use her outside of comboing, I’m happy I feel I have an above basic level understanding of her tools.

1 Like
9

riptor blows me by sweeping, flame carpets aND jumping firebreath. They get me blocking then here comes the grab mix ups. Her grab range is pretty good, so I get caught off guard.

I also fought a riptor who kept me in hit stun perpetually with tail flips hitting both sides. I was ready to block, but hisako was just stunned. Then came a reset combo eating my red bar in seconds.

I open riptor up with hisakos normals that got range. also jumping fierce punch. If I manage to get momentum, I find myself having to keep it or I’m dead. If I let her loose, I’m block stringed/grab mix up to death with weird ■■■ combos I can’t break

10

I’m definitely not qualified to say it is or isn’t 8-2. I’m just a dude trying to do some homework and learn the ins/outs of the match up. So I’m going to yield to experience in a lot of cases. I just picked the game up in January, I’ve got a lot to learn.

Unfortunately I lack a capture card in my life. That’s why I’m trying to set up scenarios that are easily reproduced in practice mode, and I’m hoping that if there’s anything wrong with my findings that someone will call me out for it. I’m definitely not afraid of being wrong and I’m seeing this as more of a learning exercise than a guide or anything resembling that. Just trying to open a dialogue.

11

YES! How did I overlook this? Uggh. I’m definitely going to be playing around with that one today. Thanks man! :grinning:

So far Cr.HP mashing seems to be the most consistent way out of that other than just blocking the cross-up, so that might be an option for ya if you can’t seem to get your block on. Once again, I could be wrong. You can set up the training dummy to do the cross-up perpetually and play around with it.

I’m off to hit the lab for a while!

12

Just out of curiosity, if you find yourself able to react to the tail flip why bother dodging or trying to time a poke when you can just counter it?

13

Oh I absolutely agree. I was just curious to see what other options may exist since people mention getting blown up by tail flips. Also, I like to lay off the counter button sometimes to make the opponent temporarily forget about it, so that it’s more of a surprise when I pull it out on reaction or on a hard read; in order to do that effectively I find myself exploring other options. I was also curious to see what the best options were after getting hit by one and having another incoming.

I actually just set up another continuous tail-flip scenario to see if countering after getting hit by one tail-flip was a good option. EDIT: It works great, you just have to time it well. Later in her flip worked best for me.

14

The answer:

EXACTLY.You don’t have to care about which side her tail flip is hitting, just push that LP+MP+HP button.
Actualy, Riptor’s which abuse this are the easiest to fight with Hisako. Unfortunatly, when I’m playing with other characters, I always got hit by this move because I’m still trying to catch-counter it.

I may have exactly what you’re looking for.
By playing ranked, I’ve played a lot against DA NECKBRE4KER, and I learned a lot about Riptor with these fights.
Here are two videos of him versus me. Some rounds were close, but some others weren’t at all.

I won first round by a supreme victory, and then this happened :

Always close… always…

Seeing some comments, I will post a video later, with various situations and comments for you guy to understand what to do.

Well, I still lose consitantly against Hi Im Keith…

2 Likes
15

The reply you quoted me on was in response to jumping fire-breath, which cannot be catch-countered. Shadow countered, sure, but that’s a poor option as you’ve already mentioned. But yeah, the quote is out of context in your post.

That said, I’m looking forward to watching your vids and seeing what toughts you have to share! :grinning:

16

Speaking of jumping fire breath, just played around with this for a while. In a neutral-jump-fire situation, dashing under worked better for avoidance than I thought it would, because of Hisako’s shrunken hurt-box on her dash. Spacing dependent, Teleport can work for avoidance because it slides her hurtbox backward prior to pulling her through the floor. If you time it correctly, you can hit her neutral jump with a Cr.HP, but the timing is pretty strict. If you choose just to block it, you can get a tick-thrown influence in there if you’re close enough.

On jump-in, the best option seems to be a simple anti-air with Cr.HP. Dashing under becomes far more difficult due to spacing dependence. Teleport can work for avoidance.

OK back to the lab for a while :grinning:

17

Oh, and speaking of this guy…

@SLHiImKeith: can you recommend me some good Riptor block strings to play around with in the lab? I’m not too familiar.

18

Yes sorry about that, that’s not what I wanted to quote

19

No worries mayne. Thanks for contributing to this discussion!

20

@Lebouer

Thanks for the vids. They got quite intense with the 2nd matches on both.
Didn’t convince me of a bad match up but it certainly helped see how one has to maintain pressure from Riptor onto Hisako to be effectual long term.

Are there moments were Shadow Counters should have been used or would have seemed to have make the difference?
I saw a SC on a jumping flamebreath at least once and that was used quite a bit for wake-up and corner pressure by both sides.
Does saving Shadow Meter more for SC’s, or at least the threat of a SC help to sway a few incoming Riptor attacks, hold merit?

[quote=@Marbledecker]I’m definitely not qualified to say it is or isn’t 8-2. I’m just a dude trying to do some homework and learn the ins/outs of the match up. So
I’m going to yield to experience in a lot of cases. I just picked the
game up in January, I’ve got a lot to learn. [/quote]
I’m in a different yet similar boat. :slight_smile:
But I do have more than a few years of observing the best. Many times these days I hear claims of overly imbalanced matchups when it’s more about the ease of one character’s use versus another’s showing, or simply one player knowing the game better than the other, not the actual movesets.
If a character can’t use Shadow Counters, Combo Breakers and Counter Breakers to keep things even, then I would consider the matchups very imbalanced. However if tools are not used to their fullest, regardless of a player’s skill level, I would question why not.

The great thing about this thread is that tech found or shared can help alleviate the ideal of a bad matchup… Or prove it :smiley:

1 Like