…and yet you still won? I was expecting you to lose the entire time I watched that, but nope! I even expected you to do something like natural disaster, only to get blocked and hit with a follow-up command throw punish from Kan-Ra, but nope!
Nice pt 2! Similar tactics as in the first vid. I like the jump back early HK in corner. Seems the idea is to bully your way in (carefully) put up a wall behind you and poke em to death, then throw, combo when the opportunity presents itself, and enjoy beating the opponent down! 
The getting in Kan-Ra’s face can be difficult if he puts a scarab low enough, but once your in, w/good chunk management … have fun! Main thing I’d notice (and try to do) is the moment I see Kan-Ra jump ND towards them to try to catch him before he lands or gets out a multi-hit attack. Good stuff. Thx for posting and I look forward to the next ones!
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Hey, that’s the Aganos life, it seems (the first part of the vid at least). Nice comeback at the end though!
Most of the time when I fight Kan-Ra, it looks like the first 2/3rds of that @LeoFerreis vid.
My main problem, I think, is that I don’t push buttons when I should have advantage. I tend to get thrown a lot by trying to counter-hit up close after blocked stuff so I gave up and just end up giving up all my control. This is the disadvantage of not playing this game very much… that’s the type of intuition that can only come from tons of matches.
In fact, I’m having a hard time seeing where he got control of the match back. It looked like he did at 1:03, but then the thing that happens to me a lot happened to him… he presses a button, it’s blocked, and then something happens that Aganos gets hit by, whether he has chunks or not (here it looked like he tried to jump back + air normal for space). I’ve been trying to not use sweep and instead just pester with LP and LK and stuff but I feel like I get no damage with it and I just slowly lose chunks on trades. I’m fairly sure he didn’t mean to backdash (I get accidental backdash all the time with Aganos and I have no idea what I’m doing to trigger it) at 1:13 and then immediately lost all his chunks. If this was me playing, I wouldn’t have recovered after that.
Looks like the Kan player makes an input error at 1:40 (probably tried to cancel the jump normal into scarab) and Leo made a good conversion into chunks here. At 2:00 he does something I need to do more (that is, challenge Kan after blocking a spike)… bastfree says Kan is -8 here? I always think he’s even-ish and there is deceptively small block stun on the move, so I’m always late on taking initiative.
And 2:13 is the biggest part of the match that I would have never thought to do, because I suck at using Natural Disaster in any capacity. It feels like such a bet and I have had basically 0 success using it in any match I’ve tried. It feels like a slow TJ powerline that is -80 on block. It works for him here because he counter hits a button (with chunks), but if it’s blocked I think he just loses the match? Do I need to just start betting it on neutral ND at times?
He does a nice reset to get chunks (I probably would have gotten thrown here) but he still has a long way to go. The pressure after is nice (again, he presses some buttons in spots where I traditionally don’t)… the combo break sucks because he was gonna 1-chance him through the wall I think. And then he drops the recapture combo because of how inconsistent Aganos’s shadow ND is and then the Kan player makes a big mistake (but nice punish by Leo here).
I guess it comes down to me pressing more buttons and accepting chunk trades? And doing ND “randomly” in footsies? I dunno.
Do you have any good vids of you vs Glacius @LeoFerreis or @CStyles45? I’m really bad against Glacius with all my characters because I’m bad at reacting to Shatter and I feel like if Glacius gets a full screen hail out, Aganos just has to sit there… he can’t flick it because of Shatter and you basically can’t jump it with any success. And I have no idea how to handle jump back normals (without meter).
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In the Glacius MU, if you are full screen then you are outside Heavy Shatter range and free to chunk up…you just have to respect his ability to do Shadow Shatter on reaction. My general stance in the MU is to bully him similar to Kan-Ra. Glacius doesn’t have any multi-hitting normals and you can get away w/ a lot if you have at least one chunk. You can effectively trade any attack he does and get your chunk back either off of a throw or D+HK.
If he gets 1/2 to 3/4 screen look to punish any hail/shatter/or jump attack w/ ruin/shadow ruin on reaction.
If he wants to stay full screen then chunk w/ he draws hail. Place a wall behind. Flick hail to avoid him getting meter to shadow shatter. Keep on repeating until he brings the fight to you then use the above strats.
Glacius in Instinct is tough for Aganos so depending on how your opponent plays I generally play the runaway game. You can’t ruin to punish cause armor will absorb. Look for opportunities to trade a chunk to throw him while in instinct and then repeat.
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Makes sense, except for the part about flicking the hail… I swear I just get shattered every time I try that, and you can’t jump over the hail easily as Aganos. If you’re full screen and he has no meter, yeah, you can get a chunk back but I feel like I just waste it getting hit by a jump back normal randomly (and I can’t really build enough meter to kill him only with shadow ruin, I need another plan here).
I guess I can take the jump back hit and try to punish landing frames with, like… heavy natural disaster? Is this reliable? I feel it must be pretty annoying trying to get the grounded hit, and if you hit him out of the air it’s no good at all (especially if you have no chunks, you wake up right next to him and can’t walk out of range of throw, so you have to play this dumb “will he DP or throw” mixup that I feel sucks for Aganos).
Basically, when he’s summoning hail, even if I get a chunk, I don’t really know how to get around it without eating shatter or jumping into the hail, and without meter I don’t know how to handle jump back normals. I guess I just have to retreat to full screen and try to chunk? But if Glacius has meter then I feel like I can’t stand anywhere on the stage.
Also, I’m pretty sure you can’t chunk after sweep because Glacius can shadow cold shoulder you? Or heavy shoulder canceled into shadow shoulder?
With the hail/shatter, you just have to be aware of what strength shatter they throw out while holding hail and vise versa. If they heavy shatter then you know they’re not holding heavy hail…jump back when it’s released and chunk. If they medium shatter then they have heavy/light hail held. Regardless, take a chunk when they draw hail if you have zero, they can’t punish it in time. Everything else I feel out based off how skilled/knowledgeable the opponent is and what I can/can’t “get away with”. Take a chunk full screen and see if they shadow shatter on reaction. Sweep and take a chunk and see if they can properly punish w/ shoulder into shadow shoulder…etc etc.
Part of me thinks I should just take the shadow shatters (as long as I have 0 chunks at first) anyway, just to get rid of the meter so I can fight. It’s better than them using it in combos and if I can “pick” when they use their meter instead of them, and the damage isn’t that high, maybe it’s just worth it anyway.
Anyway, the main source of my damage in this fight (and any fight) is that I just struggle to react to Shatter. It’s not “hard”, and I react to harder things in other games, I just have a mental block with it and don’t play against Glacius enough to overcome it. With Aganos I’ll often have a chunk, take a shatter and not even punish. There are other aspects of the match I struggle with but I think I would win more against Glacius if I at least converted these opportunities reliably.
Could you guys have the Aganos vs. Glacius discussion moved to another thread please - it’s a bit off-topic here.
Not unintentional. I assumed he was doing the setup (Scarab ender, immediately follow with Clutch) that negates all of Aganos’ wakeup options. This situation changes significantly based on the ender level:
If it’s a level 2: Shadow Ruin, Shadow Pulverize, jumping, and backdashing all lose and you suffer a full combo either by getting grabbed or getting manualed (while stuck in Scarabs) after the grab whiffs. You’re forced to block on wakeup and Kan-Ra pretty much still has the advantage. KingEZ4ever probably knows this, as you can see this exact setup at 1:30. Doing any wakeup would have lost me the game there.
For a level 3 ender (which happens at 1:13): The situation flips; Shadow wakeups still don’t work, but now blocking will get you thrown, as Clutch will hit before the Scarabs do. Backdashing gets you out of the Clutch attempt, and if I remember correctly, allows for a Shadow Ruin punish, dependent on the number of chunks you have. I made the mistake here of just looking at the level ender and autopiloting “Level 3! That means backdash!” while forgetting that Kan-Ra could be doing something other than this setup.
As for Glacius: It’s a really fun matchup with a lot of distinct situations to it. I could give a detailed breakdown, but to do it properly, I’ll put it in a separate thread when I get the time.
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