Counter probably has the same number of active frames as Hisako’s parry (if I were to guess). I think moves like this need to have relatively few active frames so that they are deliberate actions as opposed to “getting lucky”. It can suck when you barely miss the timing but I think it’s necessary to keep the moves from being too frustrating to fight against.
As for the Kim thing, what I really want to prevent people from saying is “don’t ask for Kim buffs, she won a tournament!” I think that’s a silly thing to say, just as silly as “Kim is the worst character in the game, her tools aren’t useful.” I would prefer we say something like “Kim doesn’t need buffs because her strengths as a character (X, Y, and Z) are good and overcome her weaknesses (X, Y, and Z).” If Kim were to get (or not get) buffs, I want it to be because her strengths/weaknesses/whatever line up/don’t line up correctly, not because she did or didn’t win a tournament.
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I’d love to know how Kim’s counter active frames compare to Hisako’s counter, as well as the amount of startup. I don’t play Hisako but her counter seems to be more instantaneous. But it’s certainly possible that I just have an “operator error” problem. I just know that in lots of circumstances, like on the opponents wake up, I make the right read (i.e. He’s going to hit buttons) but muff the execution. It’s certainly possible that this is not the right answer, but it seems fair to me based on how stuff able Kim’s offensive moves are. Just as an example, I don’t always counter a fireball - which seems a bit tight to me. Maybe I just need more practice.
You are perfectly right about the conversation and how it should go. But even the language of “buff” and “nerf” has such a connotation and are so frequently abused that it’s hard to get people to behave. And we all have our biases, no matter how we fight them.
My list for Kim at this point is:
Shadow Counter: because I think it makes no sense for hers to be so much worse than everyone else’s
Fireball deflect: lose the gap. I don’t know if it is intentional or not, but this seems very random.
People will call those buffs, but it seems to me like they are just fixes to unintentional outcomes.
This so much. It’s one of the first things I noticed with Kim. The timing seems much stricter. Although it should be zero frame startup since you can wake up with it and catch meaties, I believe. I would really appreciate if @TheKeits could chime in and tell us if it is like Hisako’s in terms of frames. And if it isn’t, is it intended to be harder?Maybe because it catches more types of attacks?
Kim has a 12 frame window for her Dragon Counter. It can catch highs, lows, or projectiles. Everything except throws.
Hisako has a 20 frame window for her Vengeance Counter. She must choose between catching High/Mid or Low, and can never catch projectiles.
Edit - Both are active on frame 1.
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Thanks for the quick response. It’s good to know and confirms our assumption. Although I could’ve sworn I have countered a crossup tail flip some time ago. Maybe he already switched sides when I pressed the button.
Thanks very much for this! So the window is much stricter but it beats more things so is much less risky.
Can you tell us the number of frames before it becomes active? Maybe I’m just not getting it out soon enough, but I’m having a hard time doing things like catching Mira’s bats. Sometimes I get hit by the first one, sometimes I counter the first one or two and get hit by the third and at least once I’ve countered all three…
That’s possible? I thought you always get blown up by multiple projectiles. Do you also get three dragons then?
My bad, my brain was saying ‘except throws’ but my fingers decided to type crossups. Fixed it.
I will have to go see if I can find this, or maybe it’s easier to go into the lab (which, in case you couldn’t tell I don’t do often). But I’m reasonably sure I got one dragon, but I caught all three bats. Don’t bet your life on it, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.
*buffhisakocounter
Yeah i dont think kim is weak as people say.
would the hitbox tool in replays be good for finding that out? I just noticed hitboxes can be toggled on and off and the match can be advanced frame by frame in shadow replays. I don’t know if that’s universal to all replays
Yeah, I have no doubt that the game’s tools will let me sort this out. I just have to 1. get home, and 2. actually do the work. Maybe I will try to check this out tonight.
Having played both Hisako and Kim Wu, I think I can compare their two counters fairly well. Just from experience, no frame data or science.
It feels like they both startup in the same time. However, I think Hisako’s has longer active frames, just a few. This is most noticeable on jumpins, as with Kim you have to wait longer to counter their jump in. I’m not sure if this is a frames issue or a hitbox thing though. It might be that Hisako’s high counter reaches further up because Kim’s counters both high and lows.
So I played with the lab a bit tonight. There’s no clear indicator of when the counter is active, since it doesn’t have any kind of hit box. The timing is pretty darn tight. It doesn’t start instantaneously. For example if Fulgore does a shadow DP you can’t react to it. But I could react to devastation beam and trade in the first hit. So, for what it’s worth. It’s really tough to time things, but maybe it will come with more practice.
Thanks for this response Keits - I asked in the Twitch chat the other day, but figured you didn’t see it (or maybe just didn’t know it off the top of your head). All I knew was that it “felt” less active than Hisako’s, which is, of course, a terribly unscientific way to go about these things :-p
Nice to finally know the exact frames on both since you couldn’t check in practice. That’s actually quite a big window on Hisako’s - that’s a full third of a second. 
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Fulgore’s shadow DP is 0 frames after freeze, so whatever state your character is locked into before the freeze is what’s gonna happen. You can’t even block it on reaction if you weren’t holding back before the freeze. It’s just like Thunder’s shadow grab in this sense.
Most of the “traditional” shadow DPs in this game are 0f post-freeze, including Jago, Thunder, Orchid, Fulgore, and Aria’s. Wulf’s shadow eclipse used to be this way in S1 (which led to the dash through unblockable stuff), but they changed it in S2. Things like Cinder’s shadow fireflash are not 0f after the freeze so you can always counter them. I dunno about Tusk’s DP, I haven’t checked… wouldn’t be surprised if it was 0f like the other f,d,df DPs though.
Since I’m talking about frame data, Fulgore’s beam is 5f pre-freeze startup, then 1f after. The 5f is not invincible (which is why you can’t use this as a reversal, and sometimes Fulgore will get hit and spend all his meter without even firing the beam), and the 1f after gives you time to block (lol if you couldn’t block this from full screen on reaction, GG game balance). But it also means Fulgore’s beam goes full screen in 6 total frames from when the buttons are pushed, which is basically like a jab. So yeah, Fulgore’s beam is basically a 50%+ full screen jab.
To give you some context, CvS2 Guile’s Sonic Hurricane super was 3/4 screen width and 0 frames after the freeze. It was not an entirely bad idea to start the round and immediately just do level 3 super. If the opponent was not pre-emptively holding block during the “round 2, fight” screen, he just got hit for free. This basically means you can never, ever approach Guile without doing a ton of “walk an inch, block”, and if he manages to super during your brief walk, you get hit anyway. But then people found roll cancels and that let people advance around the screen while being fully invincible to everything all the time, so yay I guess? lol
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I suspected that might be true, so thanks (as always) for the insightful information. I didn’t have much time to play with it, but I tried to time the dragon counter to be ahead of the shadow uppercut, but I was never able to counter it. I’m not sure if this means it can’t be countered (seems unlikely) or if I just didn’t get it soon enough. I am hoping to understand better how to identify the active window for her counter. would I be able to see this in the frame data in the move list?
This is interesting. Hisako can reliably react to any screen freeze with counter and get the “hit” with it. Not quite as sure about Fulgore’s, but I know I’ve countered Jago’s shadow DP quite a few times in this manner, both with something->wrath cancel counter and “standing next to him on oki and the screen freezes so I counter”. I’m actually really surprised Kim can’t do the same (if she can’t - I haven’t been into practice to verify). Her counter catches meaties and safe jumps, so I think that means it has to be functionally “instant”, no?
@BigBadAndy from what Keit’s said, her counter should be active frame 1 from when you pressed it and stays active for 12 frames. Counters don’t give data in practice, so short of doing some sort of very specific timing testing I don’t know that there’s a way to verify or really “examine” the window.
That’s interesting. So she simply can’t counter a shadow DP (at least not at close range)? I will have to check this out some more.
From what I remember from trying it, it wasn’t that she couldn’t counter it, it was that the shadow hit fast enough that the “push back” didn’t work and she got tagged by the next hit. I feel like I got a dragon, but still got hit. At the time I figured it was because the shadow DP was still invincible, so the pushback didn’t register and the shadow kept going.
I haven’t tried this with Kim in a while though, so I could be misremembering. I am curious now though - I think I’ll test it out when I get home.
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