It’s a growing satisfaction that others will come to see what I saw in the initial stages of her reveal.
Looking forward to a balance of her Arsenal, an update that satisfies the casual player and advanced player alike
Man, I don’t see why some of you cats are saying Kim is low tier, when you’ve got characters like Kan-Ra still healing from the wounds of the nerf bat, and almost the whole cast can mop the floor with him.
Plus in Instinct, she shuts down alot of characters’ options. This is my opinion based only on my experience though.
I’m loving Kim Wu… so much so that I’ve neglected playing my previous 3 main characters and am probably super rusty with them and don’t know how to use their season 3 changes.
I think Kim is mostly fine right now. She has flaws, but every character is meant to. The only character I really think wrecks her is Aganos… but I’m sure there’ll be some tricks down the line.
It’s too early to ask for buffs or nerfs.
There are ways around kim’s counter. Armor, high invincible moves, multi hit projectiles, shadow projectiles. Or just use moves that reach far enough outside her counter hitbox (although doing this doesn’t yield you anyway rewards but you won’t be able to cancel anything also kim gets a dragon regardless, the only plus is you don’t get staggered.)
How do you guys win against Orchid. I can’t ever deal with her. If she does her slide none of Kim Wu’s normal have the reach to punish that. Even then Orchids normal beat Kim Wu every time. I find not way to win against her or even go in. Try to move in close she slides or throws a bomb and makes it hard for you to enter. Play defensively she can slide and be safe because none of your attacks can reach her even then she can uppercut after he slide so its hard to even punish there.
I like her playstyle but holy jeez are her normal so bad. You can’t properly play neutral unless your a ft in front of them because none of her low attacks have range. If your opponent has a wakeup DP your odds of winning go down like 30% because you literally lose your low attacks at the point. It doesn’t help that it’s so easy to tell if she is using a medium, heavy, or light flame kick because all the animations are different.
It’s so hard and while she sure does have damage and can handle other characters but unlike most other characters it feels like your working in the coal mines looking for ways to open an opponent while everyone else just gets a doorway.
It also doesn’t help that if some characters have better normal at the range the parry places you it’s pretty easy to get punished yourself. At times it even seems as though they recover faster from a parry than you do.
My thoughts exactly.
First off you have to treat everyone with an invincible wakeup with respect, but that’s true in any fighting game. Bait the DP and then punish it.
Kim Wu doesn’t have far reaching lows but that doesn’t mean all her normals are bad. You can take a few steps back and do a standing Roundhouse to Medium Dragon Dance. So long as they don’t have meter you’ll be next to your opponent at +2 and you can counterhit with a cr. Jab or go for a throw. Even better if your opponent starts fishing for the shadow counter on the Dragon Dance you can cancel it with a dragon and get a full punish on the shadow counter.
Her standing Strong and standing Forward are really good buttons too. They’re both great for counter poking. Against Orchid you can stand outside her cr. Strong range and counterpoke a whiff with either of your mediums and buffer in the weak or medium Dragon Dance for combo.
As for slide, she shouldn’t even be using slide too much against Kim Wu. You don’t have a fireball she’s trying to get under and her amazing walk speed is a way bigger threat to you than slides. Since you shouldn’t be hitting any buttons at slide range you should be able to reaction parry the Heavy or Medium slides and get a free dragon. Parry always puts you both at neutral, although remember that you can instinct cancel parry into full combo. Good buttons after parry include st. MP/MK and st. RH although sometimes I just backdash if they like to push buttons and try to whiff punish whatever they throw out.
Additionally I went into training mode and you can punish all three slides. Medium or Heavy slide is punished with st. Medium Kick or Punch into Medium Dragon Dance both of these slides can push you too far back for a Light punch or kick. Light slide always ends close enough for you to punish with cr. LP into Medium Dragon dance.
Additionally against Orchid remember that a lot of her pressure is shadow counterable. Even just cr.MP into a single Rekka is shadow counterable. If she’s charging the heavy rekka or dash cancelling it, both are beaten by cr. LP. If she’s doing a short charge into Heavy Rekka to try and counterhit the LP you can Parry there or block and then take your turn since she needs at least a medium length charge for her to be at frame advantage.
Also Orchid’s jump is somewhat floaty and you can punish it at 3/4 screen with a reaction Medium Dragon Kick or at 1/2 to 1/4 screen with a reaction Heavy Dragon Kick. If you have another dragon you can cancel them into st. MK Medium Dragon Kick for 26%.
Hope that helps.
1 Like
That helps a bit. I’ve been having the same issues he has. One of the things that drives me absolutely crazy is how bad her frame trap is. I like to use it a lot following st. MP and MK pokes, but it seems like some characters get an advantage off of being put into the frame trap. Following the double roundhouse I like to hit st. medium kick which is either 5 or 6 frames depending on range. If I am in the 5 frame range I usually always get my counter-hit on people who press buttons after the frame trap. But anytime I am in that 6 frame range, which is anytime they haven’t been pushed into the corner by the double roundhouse, then there are certain normals that just beat Kim Wu. Some I’ve noticed in particular are Omen’s crouching medium kick and Sabrewulf’s crouching medium punch. They just beat you even though you are +2 frames. And if they do try to whether the storm, there’s not a lot you can do to mix them up. They will likely just remain blocking high because it’s impossible to low-hit them at that range. You would need to walk forward after the frame trap to get a low MK out, but +2 frames doesn’t offer that luxury. Her short size is definitely the hardest thing for me to click with. Most of my wins with Kim Wu are based entirely around pushing people into corners and keeping them there, thus flexing my offensive oki and wall splat game. Other than that, I have a hard time beating good players unless I am just back-dashing a lot for whiff-punishes, which is something I feel like I can do with half a dozen other characters and not gimp myself with short limbs.
3S anyone? Remember how Urien’s Aegis Reflector largely went unnoticed until the Japanese started coming over and videos started making it out showing the unblockable set ups that were blowing up American players? Everyone up to that point gave the super no thought because it didn’t do direct damage.
If I recall, that took months for that tech to be shown off. I could be wrong, as I didn’t follow 3S that much in the day. The point is, there is no way you figure out a character in every set up, in every scenario, with every tool at their disposal without doing intensive research both in and out of the lab. Give it time and let her stumble before we cry nerf or buff.
3 Likes
So I took a look at this in the lab. So you can beat both Wulf cr. MP and Omen cr. MK by doing a cr. LP into Medium Dragon Dance. It will whiff at absolute max distance that s.MP into Medium Dragon Dance hits, but in that case cr. MK counterpokes both since both moves bring their hitboxes forward. If for some reason they block both Dragon Dances (Without Shadow Countering) you’ll be at +2 directly next to them and you can go for a Dragon Grasp which will beat anything they do except a throw invulnerable or invincible reversal.
Also while she does have stubby limbs, there are some awesome tools that Kim Wu has that nobody else does. Her LK Dragon Kick gives her a fullscreen punish against slow whiffed normals/specials, and her MK and HK let her punish neutral and backward jumps at 1/2 and 3/4 screen distance. Also don’t discount her parry. Her parry lets you avoid certain mixups or counterhit setups entirely. You can get out of all sorts of things with small gaps like Rash wrecking ball to attack, Hisako and Orchid Rekka pressure, Fulgore LP laser strings etc. It basically gives you a meterless psuedo shadow counter which considering the amount of positive frame pressure in this game is a good tool to have.
Plus Dragons are among the absolute strongest tools in the game. Each Dragon is a combo extension, a safe way in, a nigh unblockable mixup, and in instinct the single scariest anti-zoning projectile in the game. Sure they’re hard to get, but when you consider that you get up to three cancels all of which can be used to create extremely dangerous mixups or to turn Dragon Kicks into mobility tools, they seem pretty nice.
So yeah Kim has weaknesses, her poor reach being foremost among them, but she also has unique tools that make playing her very different than other characters, even characters who can backdash/whiff punish in similar ways.
2 Likes
The last sentence is the most true out of all of these. It feels like how Kim Wu’s way of fighting in a match every character can do but your gimping yourselfin exhanhe for damdge.
I’m in the lab testing this and the crouching light punch simply does not have the range to beat Wulf’s crouching medium punch. And if I go to the cr. MK then Wulf will counterhit me. I’m not sure how you are getting different results unless you let the Kim AI back you into the corner or something. Like I said before, I have no issue playing as Kim Wu when I am cornering the opponent, because the lack of push-back allows her frame trap to actually give me +2 while being close enough to hit buttons afterwards. But at any other point in the middle of the stage the frame trap will always work against me and I will get counterpunched with both of us pressing buttons at the same time following the double roundhouse.
I haven’t been at my xbox for a bit due to work. But at everything except absolute max range c.LP worked for me and I’m pretty sure I only tested this midscreen. Tomorrow after work I’ll make a video if I can.
I really don’t think that helps her at all though. In the case of that low medium, your best bet is that you get a counter-hit TRADE. That is not something you should ever be going for because if Wulf remained blocking then he would get a full punish on your whiff.
And against live opponents you aren’t ever going to be at anything but the max range unless you land a deep jump-in attack. So the question still stands, what do you do when you land the frame trap at max range? Block?
My Kim hit level 50 last night, no double exp, in ranked mode. I guess the way she is expected to be played is to really play a defensive whiff-punish game and to sneak in as many parries as possible. It feels like she just has no advantage in offensive pressure over any other character until you start using the dragon cancels. She has an overhead, but so do a lot of people, she has a frame trap that she cannot take advantage of, and she has a whiff punishing flying side kick which cannot start a combo.
Maybe I just haven’t learned anything insane with her dragon cancels yet, but they feel very underwhelming so far. Beyond that, skull-less Spinal seems better in neutral game than Dragon-less Kim Wu, and that’s a huge problem.
2 Likes
In my opinion, if you’re looking to beat crouching mp from Sabrewulf, you need to play footsies. It’s not that crouching jab needs longer range, what you need to do is find ranges to whiff punish crouching strong.
There’s a reason why hurt boxes are on the recovery of certain moves.
2 Likes
Kim seems a little like Dudley in that way - stubby normals but good mobility, good for counter-poking.
Very few people are playing her that way though…
1 Like
Very similar, except in SF, specific normal attacks have special cancel properties compared to here where all of Kim’s buttons aside from sweep, are special cancelable.
1 Like
Never looked at it that way. Interesting.
Lab time!
You’d be surprised how many Kim players DON’T use this button. I have yet to see one.
My favorite Grounded confirm I use in neutral is St. MP > Heavy Dragon Dance. If it whiffs, then Dragon cancel into whatever. Or Grab.
This button is so good, You can even use it as a AA to tag people out of the air if your spacing is on point.
So I like to go for St. MP (AA), into Dragon Kicks, and do a Juggle, cashing out with Shadow DK.
Fun stuff! 
1 Like