Some good Gargos players traps me in the end of screen and keeps punching and order the minions to attack whenever they see me trying to move. If I try to jump, punches hit. If I try to roll, minions hit. Against not-so-good players I usually can f.roll + jump evading the portal punch and attack but against the skilled ones I can barely move.
Is this matchup so difficult as it seems for Maya?
I don’t play Maya but it’s always a good idea to get a big lead on Gargos before he can get minions out.
And once he has them out you can either use quick lateral moves (Maya doesn’t have any) or just block and then jab the minions to death. This can be tricky but it’s doable especially if Gargos is holding back and trying to zone.
First than everything Gargos has an horrible defense so you shouldnt let him be full screen with 2 minions out or you will be in troubles.
I believe the best for a situation like that is just block the portal punch and then the minion atack, you will have enough time to hit at least one of the minions after that with your light kick or light punch and then block the next portal punch. Since the last Gargos nerf he doesnt charge meter so fast like before so you dont need to worry to much about him summoning infinite minions like before.
If the punches keep hitting your jump attempts then he’s doing the one that catches jumps which means you can just walk and block and jab the minions after they attack.
No, good Gargos players don’t do this. Because good Gargos players typically play against other good players that know how to get around that and get up close. Every time Gargos does a long-range PP he is doing about a 1 in 3 guess reguarding how the opponent will move. No, good Gargos players attack mostly from mid-range, do a lot of up-close grabbing, or do a lot of ambiguous flap-flap cross-ups.
But to the Gargos players that do use the portal-punch/minion full-screen approach, start working on getting in close and staying in close. Work on trying to get a hard knock-down and take out the minions while he’s down, or work on positioning yourself where you can hit both the minions and Gargos at the same time.
Yes, it seems very tricky because sometimes the minions don’t stay near enough for the light punch/kick to hit them, and half of the time the portal punch gets me when i’m trying to hit them. I’ll try this tactic a little more to see if I can improve my reaction times.
Thanks. I’ll try to go for more hard knockdowns and give priority to wipe the minions instead to continue my combos. When he breaks my combos the minions I didn’t wiped before are still there and I need to do all that extra work again to approach him. I think this is what is killing me.
Also, I kind of forgot about Maya’s somersault move (her backflip opener/linked/shadow). It’s probably worth experimenting with this to see if it moves horizontally enough to dodge a portal punch. The shadow should go through portal punches because they are projectiles and also tumble through the minions as well.
Sometimes, just take the hit to dunk the minions. Gargos does minimal damage from a distance (and isn’t super damaging in most instances anyway), so a lot of times it’s worth eating a portal punch combo to tag the minions.
I think Maya must be hard for Gargos: good air movility, good priority in air , nice neutral, nice pressure and very fast proyectiles.
Can you avoid the portal punches with dash? (by dashing under after hitstunt?) and thworing a dagger to punish?. Whenever I play against Maya I prefer to not let her zone me much, however she can easily get out with her movility, that’s why I want to not let her escape (where she can start her dagger tricks over and over again).