How to deal with orchid spammers?

i can’t figure it out flick flack light-medium-heavy all movements slightly fast ? she has inifinite grande she uses right time when you knockdown and up right in time grandes blow up. her damage totally highest after kim wu i do believe.(tusk has really slow movements) she can grab people on air she can even air combo. flick flack light and medium only difference is distance

Are you having a hard time breaking flik flak, or are you referring to its use in neutral/pressure? If the latter, then all versions of it are pretty negative, so if there isn’t a grenade about to explode immediately after it’s your turn. If you’re talking about in-combo, then you just have to be used to seeing the linker. I can usually break it on reaction, though I know others have a harder time with this.

With regards to grenade pressure, effective use of shadow counters are your friend. A lot of that stuff isn’t as safe as it looks if you have a bar and know where to use it. Sometimes you will be wrong and the vortex will continue, but the important thing is to stay calm and recognize what strings the particular Orchid prefers. Heavy vortex play is pretty low damaging actually, so you can afford to be wrong a few times while you figure it out.

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i’m having hard time to break flick flack light-medium animations hard to tell correctly its really fast. about to grenade part she has infinite of them but not like arbiter he has limited ammo and cooldowned grenades. i’m not talking in combo when you hard knockdown after that grenade blown up when i recovery from hard knockdown i try to take a guard it doesn’t work what i expect. mostly when i play agains’t to orchid i don’t feel like she has recovery time she is literally fast hardly to punish her. i’m saying even her air movements broken and OP. also her hitboxes broken too.

Flik Flak as a combo linker (and like most linkers) have small tells as to what strength they are. Things like…

  • Visually, there is a slight difference to the VFX that her legs generate.
  • Audibly, the way she says “Take that!” is different between the two. Light barely sounds like she says anything, almost like a whisper. Medium is like her normal voice level-ish.
  • Damage wise, Light is going to always hit 2 times, while Medium will hit 3 times.

There’s no big ‘aha!’ means to break Flik Flak, or maybe even around half of the linkers in the game. I’d recommend taking some time using the combo breaker training mode against Orchid and trying to break only her Flik Flak linkers. But ideally? If you’re not reasonably sure, don’t attempt to break it. Look for something else you can recognize and break on reaction.

This is hard to understand, but i’m guessing you mean that on your wakeup (when you’re getting up from a knockdown), with Orchid having a grenade out, it’s difficult to block what she does.

If that is what you mean, then that’s a part of her gameplan. This is how she opens people up to get her damage and what you as a defender have to deny through blocking (most recommended), DP’s, Shadow Counter’s, backdashes, and such.

Anything that Orchid does in the air is breakable. Anything. The target combo she does in the air will always be a heavy break point on the second hit. The throw is a light break point.

With her ‘hitboxes being broken’ i have no idea what you mean.

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thanks for the tips that will help a lot. also im glad to know her air grab breakable. about the hitbox i don’t know how to describe but her attack reaches more than anyother size of character.

her grab grabs you more further distance than any other characters, simple like omen demonic despair has low range orchid may grab you out of hitbox(not actually out of hitbox but it felts like that than other characters for other characters you need to literally kiss their face to grab).

also i felt ilke she has no recovery time any of her movements her basic attacks really fast i’m having hard time to punish her.

Orchid is nowhere near broken. She certainly has strong tools (as does the entire cast), but her air “movement” is quite standard, and her hit/hurtboxes track her animations pretty dead nuts. If you’re having problems hitting her, it’s probably due to a lack of knowledge on move properties (her overhead low crushes, for instance) or poor selection on what to stick out against certain options. You don’t challenge her in the air, for instance, unless you have access to a Saberwulf-class god air-to-air button like jump+HP or something. Her air throw hitbox is fairly large and comes out fast, so if you want to punish a jump you simply stay on the ground and AA her. She can’t change her jump arc and it’s not particularly fast, so if she’s jumping in on you in neutral it’s not that difficult to make her eat it.

She does have unlimited grenades, but they function quite differently than Arbiters. Hers don’t stick or recaps, and it’s not terrible to take her grenades in the air if you have to. They do grant some pretty nasty pressure options, but as I said previously, knowing how to use shadow counters well will take a lot of heat off of dealing with them. That said, sometimes you’re just going to get hit, and sometimes you’re going to have to hold pressure as she does otherwise unsafe mixup rekka strings into grenade explosion. That’s a big part of what keeps her viable in a cast of flying monsters and fire people.

On breaking her flik flak linkers, I recommend using combo breaker training or simply getting a friend to run sets with you where they use a lot of them. The linker is fully reactable at all strengths once you get used to seeing them, but it does take time and experience to get to that point.

Depending on the meaty grenade setup (I think that’s mostly what you’re having an issue?), you can actually just forward dash out of it a lot of the time.

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You don’t challenge her in the air, for instance
so if you want to punish a jump you simply stay on the ground

i think this is deadliest line for me thanks a lot i should stop playing with street fighter mentality and realize this is KI. i main shago and omen my gameplay more like street fighterish~ KI is really unique all my wins based on my street fighter gameplay.

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Absent her grenades, Orchid is actually pretty unsafe. If there isn’t a grenade out, this is the general gist of Orchid’s specials:

Slide: always negative, usually punishable
Flik flak: always negative, usually punishable
DP: always punishable
Rekka->rekka: safe
Rekka->rekka->overhead: punishable
Rekka->rekka->low: punishable
Rekka->rekka->charge (or not) rekka: always safe, plus if you let her charge it

Once she has grenades out the calculus on this changes, and you can generally expect her to be plus (meaning you cannot push a button). This is why I recommend shadow countering the beginnings of her strings, be they rekkas or overheads or whatever. She knows she’s plus, you know she’s plus, and because of that Orchid players tend to want to push buttons to get that juicy combo. Whether she goes low->rekka or overhead or raw rekka, a good shadow counter will shut it down. Don’t hold the mixup if you don’t have to.

sorry the ask that what is rekka ? i don’t know too much KI terms

Orchid’s rekka’s (which are basically a special attack you can change depending on what buttons or inputs you use) are the moves you hear her yelling “Ichi!” “Ni!” “San!” while she’s attacking.

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The best advice I can offer is that if you’re having trouble breaking something, don’t break it. Getting a lockout will be a lot more painful than any particular linker. Wait until you see an auto-double or a linker you know how to break.

Also, what character(s) do you play? There might be character specific solutions to some of your problems, like an Invincible Reversal or something.

mostly shago and omen a little bit sabrewulf and jago

Probably a silly answer, but lab her a bit. Go into the lab and just play around with her strengths paying attention to sound, animation and the number of hits. Include the strength icons and such and play around with timing on breaks and so on.

Believe me when I say, I hate to lab. I am a player of heart and feel, not so much of science. But, it helps - it really does. I spent like a week trying to learn how to cancel out of TJ’s autobarrage, learned it in like 5’ in the lab. Play around with Orchid a bit and see what you discover.

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Jago, Shago, and Omen all have a meterless reversal that can be used to get Orchid off of you if she’s trying to pressure you on wakeup. If you see an Orchid pushing her luck you can bop her with a wake-up DP/light orda. Sabrewulf can use Shadow Eclipse if he has meter.

You can also try to use a projectile invulnerable shadow move to go through the grenade and catch them off guard of you’ve got the right timing

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Try playing mirror matches too… you’ll see double the amount of her moves at once

to beat orchid, you must become orchid

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@SneerfulWater57’s definition of rekka should suffice for your purposes. I’d call it a special move that has multiple parts that must be input in succession to get the full move. In Orchid’s case, QCF+P gets the initial hit of the move (where she yells “Ichi!”), pressing punch again gives the second hit (“Ni!”) and then pressing one of the punches gives the final hit (“San!”) where which button she presses determines the properties of the attack. LP will hit low, MP overhead, and HP hits mid but is safe-to-plus on block depending on if/how long you charge it.

If the character is really frustrating you, playing as that character isn’t a bad idea. It can help give you understanding on the properties of certain moves, as well as give you an idea of how other players deal with the things that are frustrating you.

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The problem with playing a character you don’t understand is time. Maybe some can get a character and be great with it just without a lot of practice.
If an advanced or gimmicks player is giving me trouble I prefer going to training mode, set the dummy in different situations, moves or specials that give me hard times and look for ways to either counter them (look for gaps where to punish or escape) or how to block them.
Training certain reactions against x characters (for instance, block standing/shadow countering Orchid’s overhead) helps too.

This can be to check the basic things that are bothering you, and it shouldn’t take that long.

I think I would need to play way too much just to have a better understanding of the character and honestly it’s not the way I enjoy fighters the most.
Maybe it’s that I have fun trying ways to improve MUs in training since this KI is the only game I felt like doing this, tbh.
Of course you have to fight real ppl later, that’s the only way to apply and get feedback on your practice.
My biggest trouble is that I’m totally spoiled with having no lag in training mode xD

PS: the light flickflack may be safe but Orchid shouldn’t be able to push button after it (watch out for "shoryuken (dp) " attemps after some sligthly negative moves like that one.

  • Train shadow countering! (Eg, flikflak,the second rekka hit,second hit overhead)
  • Flick flak can beat low normals so find a button that’s good for stopping it at close (eg: Wulf’s crouching lk or mk)
  • Orchid has ways to stop you from jumping (air throw/cr.HP/dp) so don’t do it for free.
  • When she is about to use the grenade she is open to an attack. If she is close and you can,punish her (even with a throw).
  • Wrong break attemps means good damage for her, don’t get anxious. Learn to break her shadow flick flak. The jaguar (or cougar?) is easier
  • The slide is very unsafe (unless they timed a good nade). Make sure to punish that. You can also neutral jump a bit, but blocking is better, because if Orchid cancels the slide into dp you can still punish.
  • Grounded combos hurt more than juggles. Don’t get nervous, you can break the air throw recapture (lk+lp) just watch out for counterbreaker attemps, but well, that’s KI metagame.

Oh,I almost forgot. Shadow countering Orchid in Instinct is not a good idea unless your shadow goes through projectiles. She would use the cat to make safe her unsafe moves. So, it may be better to save that shadow for any invencible move you can do between a gap avoiding her pressure and getting your turn back.

They have already given you really good tips above :slight_smile:
Best of lucks!

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Shago and omen can effectively run from her. Just keep your distance and frustrate orchid with their zoning abilities until they want to do something that leads to an easy punish. They also both have reversals to get her off of them. Though don’t over use these. If you have meter omen can use shadow form to get away from her.

Jago and wulf have to fight her on the ground. Something wulf can have issues with since she outranges him for the most part.

Orchid for the most part is actually generally among the easiest characters to break as well. Her light flik flak hits twice, medium 3 times etc and most of her linkers outside light ichi linker are pretty slow.

lol…anytime I fight an orchid and they do yolo Flik flak openers…I just smile and say “No sir! Thank you!”. No you TAKE THAT!"