Let's talk about the metagame, seriously

@DurtyDee810, @FallofSeraphs76,
Okay then it looks like I gotta work on my timing and guessing lol, anyway thanks for the help.

The sad aspect of this discussion is… most of people are trying to suppose that I dont know how to play, or, I play with some character that isnt good against air, and for this reason I need to change my character, or maybe because I’ve lost by Sadira and etc.

So, You are trying (some of you) to discuss about my personality, my character or something like this. It is wrong, I want to discuss ideas here.

I play with almost everysingle character, not like a especialist, but I like to learn how to play with a new character, it gives me motivation, I’m a complety multi-character, I dont have a main. I have been watching world competition in KI since Season 1, and I always notice how neutral jump is amazing in this game.
I’m here to discuss about the game, not about me, or if I need to change my character, it is about the metagame, right!? If you disagree… Right! Just say your point, you dont need to talk about me as a player.

The thing is, we don’t believe that jumping is as strong a tactic as you claim. So our natural response is to see if maybe we can help you since you seem to be struggling against it.

I asked what character you play because I wanted to give you advice. Or in some cases, sympathy (Arbiter, Mira).

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Some moments the jump will work, and in this moment he/she will start a combo that will give more dmg than your ant air that you did 3 times before.

I see what you try to say there, but it’s inevitable to consider that some people (you, me, any) can struggle against a particular obstacle.

There are players who are incredibly good in the neutral and space control, but horrible playing the combo system

There is people who can’t anti air, but likewise, they are good setting safe jumps and approaching by air.

Speaking about meta, neutral jumps are powerful because:
-Throws have a big whiff animation compared to other FGs.
-Leads to a full, low kv combo
-Not all characters have damaging anti airs, or ways to transition into the combo system (recapture…)
-In a lot of games,like MK, most chars have some short of uppercut to deal with it. In KI, is not universal

There are more reasons, anyway.

The question is, the counters for this are good enough?

IMO, yes. Most chars can deal with it with moderate success

I thought about doing this, but then realised that people could just easily block my telegraphed moves, given that I have no sight to counter theirs when they happen if there’s no easy way to tell in the heat of battl what they’re doing (Hisako for one).

But the combo they hit you with is completely breakable after the jumping hit. That full combo damage they get isn’t guaranteed so it’s not really fair to compare that with antiair damage.

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Definitely not true; many anti-airs will do between 12-15% raw, some of them actually leading to potentially big combos themselves. Meanwhile, if you get hit by a jump-in, you take roughly around 8% unbreakable and then you can immediately break (so sometimes you will take under 10% total, sometimes it will be bigger if you lock out).

It really depends on the character as well… a character like Rash approaching with tongue does basically no damage at all (the initial tongue hit is either 0 damage or very very little, so immediate combo breaks only do about 2% damage to you).

There are lots of extremely damaging anti-airs in this game. Jago DP, Glacius DP, Fulgore DP (11% with level 2 white life and a frame trap), Raam cr.HP xx kryll (something like 13% with damage over time applied), Kim Wu dragon kick, etc. On the contrary, there are only a few characters that get to start seriously strong offensive air pressure with a heavy attack (Mira, Sadira, and kiiiinda Shago come to mind and that might be about it). The rest of the characters, like Cinder and Rash, have to start with relatively weak attacks, which makes the risk reward not nearly as skewed as you might think it is.

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See a friend of mine has a habit of jumping A LOT. While he thought being a rabbit was an effective way to make him hard to hit and give him crossups openers, this was only really true against AI opponents because every player I ever saw him face online was very capable of dealing with what is essentially a simple tactic. Most would punish him for it as to be honest it probably annoyed them (it annoyed me).

My point is at no point did I ever feel that bouncing around was anyway overpowered as plenty of characters have effective anti-airs.

This is why people want to talk about you as a player or try to understand where you are coming from. Because most of us would not describe neutral jump as “amazing” in this game. It is a useful tool for sure, but I haven’t heard anyone say “master neutral jump to master KI.” You seem to be falling into the (very common)!trap of describing every scenario where neutral jump works while ignoring the situations where it doesn’t.

KI is a fast game. You have to make quick decisions and the two way combo interactions mean you don’t get any time off during the game. It’s also a game with strong offense, which means people like to hit buttons and do stuff rather than playing defensively. So anything that makes your character be somewhere your opponent didn’t expect you to be is generally quite strong. Characters with good dashes can look amazing and so can characters with teleports or fast horizontal special moves. Even though throws are relatively week in terms of damage, in the context of disrupting your opponent’s offense etc. throws are very common in KI and there are some powerful command grabs which are not easily reactable. So neutral jump (holding up) is a good counter to several things that your opponent might try to use. It’s frustrating to get tagged because you were hitting buttons and your opponent wasn’t where you expected him to be, but that isn’t the same as neutral jump being amazingly good. Like many other aspects of the game you have to make a prediction about what your opponent is likely to do and then counter it. If you never expect a neutral jump then you are making it a better option than it really is by being unprepared.

I suggested you use Tusk because he has great antiair, with sweeping range, and delivering huge damage. His deflect also makes his antiair sword normals beat a healthy number of grounded attacks your opponent might try, and although it is punishable by lots of characters on paper (much like neutral jump) lots of people struggle to punish it consistently. In my hands (and I’m no pro player) Tusk is by far the simplest and easiest character to use to condition your opponent that jumping is a bad idea. I have taken whole life bars by using nothing but c.hp/throw mixups on an opponent after hard knockdown.

As always, good players will not be easily predictable and will adapt to your strategies to beat you. But that’s the game. One other thing that people often forget is that jumping yourself is a legit antiair. Just like you have to predict where your opponent is going to be and make good choices, he has to do the same thing. In 99% of situations where your opponent neutral jumps, he is predicting you will stay on the ground hitting buttons and he will then hit you with a jump in to start a combo on the way down. This means he is mentally preparing to hit you with an attack very late in his jump ark. So often, if you hold up and hit an attack very early in your jump ark you can tag him before he expects it. At worst, you will trade or take his hit from the air which at least keeps him from starting a combo. And it’s just one more thing to keep your opponent uncertain of what you will do at any given moment.

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I think I have been getting much better at reacting to jump-ins with raw DP’s. I think the only characters that I have a difficult time getting a solid anti-air on is Sadira or Gargos. But, that’s not so much that jumping is the issue as it is the declared strength of certain characters. Just from the top of my head; Sadira, Gargos, and Cinder utilize the air and can force whiffed anti-airs or even make them seem useless. It takes extreme patience and amazing reads to actually execute a DP as Jago in those scenarios.

Still, if someone is feeling jumpy as a much more grounded character or with an excruciating floaty jump, you’d know just how devastating raw DP’s are.

Just realized something related to metagame with Jago… he can freaking force a punish of his own against what would normally be a punish. That’s not the crazy part though, if willing, he can do this five times in a string.

Meaning that Jago should theoretically be punished five times, but isn’t because he has the tools and means (if ballsy) to force it to be ‘safe’.

Take for example

M. Windkick > DP > S. Endo cancel > DP > S. Endo cancel > DP > can be punished here.

That’s actually punishable as soon as you block the heavy windkick, you wouldn’t be able to block or DP on time. You could maybe spend a bar or activate instinct to cause a frame trap.

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Just realized I said heavy version, forgot how much recovery that version had. I believe it works with medium and light only? Correct me if I’m wrong. Also, I know there are some exceptions to the rule with some characters.

Edit: My brain isn’t working today.

Medium wind kick is now -6 so you can’t DP after it as a mixup anymore. Heavy is even more unsafe of course. Light is -4 so you could force the mixup there if you wanted.

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The string your describing mainly works with light windkick now since the nerf, it will work situationally against certain characters with medium windkick as they will be able to punish regardless.

Rather than “a punish for the opponent trying to punish” it is more “forcefully keeping my turn when it is my opponent’s turn to act.”

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Yes, to clarify further, you can only DP if you could also have blocked. If you can’t block (because the move is sufficiently minus), then you can’t try to interrupt someone who is punishing you, it is guaranteed.

The situations you’re describing come up when you’re negative on block, but still able to block even if the opponent uses their fastest move (so usually in the -2 to -4 range). In those cases, you can take a big risk with a DP and hit people who try to attack. If you try to attack with anything other than DP (or some other invincible move), you lose because his attack comes out first and you aren’t invincible (or, of course, blocking) when you choose to use a normal.

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Actually Jago can still be punished after the S.Endo move since it is -6 on block. However you have to use a shadow move with 5 or less startup frames to do so. For example Sadira can always punish on block with S.Blade Demon(2,2 startup) with reversal timing and a little leeway.

The stupid part is that shadow countering with the same move allows Jago a free punish since S.Counters universally start up in 7 frames. This forces good reactions on punishing the fireball, but allows players to deal with dp happy Jagos.

Shadow counters are universally 8 frames, just for the record, but also it doesn’t quite work the way you’re suggesting here. Shadow fireball could be -10 on block and still not punishable by shadow counter, because you are actually not being put in block stun by the final hit. All that matters is the recovery of the opponent in this case, and shadow fireball has very fast recovery.

I did a bit of studying into shadow counters a while back but I forget my findings now. I think every shadow counter, after it gets triggered by a hit, goes through 5 hittable frames before the freeze gets announced, and then it’s 3 more frames after that until the first hit (or maybe it’s 3, then 5, I forget exactly). It’s why you can stuff shadow counters, as long as you manage to hit that 5 frame window with something.

Also, everything that connects with a shadow counter window gets treated as a whiff by the game engine, which is why you can’t, say… instinct cancel when you get shadow countered (because you can’t instinct cancel a whiffed move). It’s also why someone like Cinder can blow up shadow counters with jab jab jab target chain (because he can do this on whiff normally), but you can’t blow up shadow counters by a “regular” chained jab.

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Yeah, the whole windick->DP->shadow fireball->DP->shadow fireball->DP thing is what ultimately made me join the train that said all invincible reversals should be punishable on block. I had a Jago hit me with that string, and when I flinched and got tagged by the third DP I was just like :neutral_face:

But yeah, that really was a thing. Blocking two DP frametraps in a row only to get blown up by a third was just not the business… :joy:

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