Mind over matter.....or guts?

General Discussion
1
  • I’d rather bait Counter breakers all day
  • I’d rather deal with mix-ups all day
  • I’d rather not deal with either one
  • I’m a calculating machine…I’ll take it all on…and win
0 voters

As the poll says, what would you rather deal with on a regular basis?

Someone who is very good a counter-breaking (almost trigger happy like)but has poor mix-ups and openings options but once they get a combo going you’re very hesitant to try and break despite them doing predictable things thus they land tons of easy damage without much resistance.

Or would you rather deal with someone whose can mix up you 7 ways from sunday but their combo/counter break game is very poor, but once they get you in a mix-up you feel utterly helpless despite all your tools.

So…for you…what’s worse? Or maybe you’re just a machine and can easily sway from both challenges…

2

I ultimately don’t want to deal with either of them. BUT, if I had to choose one I rather go for the mix-up option. While they are super annoying to deal with, once you have a good grasp of the match-up and have good patience, you can get by them. Also because their breaking game is so poor, I can get back at them big time for the trouble they caused me.

3

Push the difficulty to eleven. I want to be better. Let’s not make the journey easy.

4

It is essentially someone lands one combo and makes you fear combo breaking because they are oh so good at counter breaking and sniffing out break attempts. But their post combo game is poor that you could attempt to turtle and might pull out a win,

VS

Someone who can think of every mix-up for their character nail it near flawlessly and put you in an near endless loop over small damage (15-20% combos), but their combo game is the exact opposite of the counter breaker type. They end up getting combo broken if they stretch their combo past 3 moves at best (which is why they have low damage output overall). But they are they are good a snuffing out your defense/neutral game.

5

from my humble perspective, counter-breakering is a mechanic that counts on your opponent “winning” during an offensive. In such a situation your opponent is in a position where he or she is more likely to lose than win.

In that regard, you, the person counter-breakering, have the odds in your favour when you are attacking. To me statistically speaking it is not in your best interest to bait counter-breakers because you’ll do better overall by just continuing your offensive and letting the opponent lock themselves out.

Its far “safer” to deal with mix-ups both in terms of as the aggressor and the defender. Unless youve got a real good read, dont master baiting counter-breaks. It’ll just end up messy.

6

End of the day, me getting caught by a counter breaker means I lost in neutral in the first place, and am now being punished. I’ll take the damage and then we’ll go back to a neutral(ish) situation. Someone with a really good grasp of oki/vortex, on the other hand, really only has to hit you once for it to snowball into something really nasty. I’ll take the upfront “can’t believe I fell for that” damage over the slow-drip “holy crap I can’t block any of this nonsense” style.

Oki in KI is strong - you can get a ton of mileage out of knockdown mixups if you know what you’re doing. Counter break damage is a lot more cut and dry. While I think counter breakers are absolutely essential to opening up options within the combo game, I think strong oki mixups is the more dangerous long term skill.

1 Like
7

I’m a fully grown man-child, and this is hilarious.

2 Likes
8

That’s kinda like saying, “who would you rather fight against, Shago, or anyone else?”
Me, I really don’t care. I try to adapt either way. Personally though, I tend to be more of a mixup player, because I’ve got a fairly weak breaker game.