Skeletal's Ranked Challenge: Month One - Kim Wu!

Pretty sure it’s instant. It will catch meaties, so that generally means it’s active on the first frame.

Oh okay, so if your opponent thinks it is their turn because they just blocked axe kick and you are at -3, that means you can still counter a 4-frame follow-up jab. I’m curious about its active frames now to catch slower moves in retaliation.

We’re on the precipice of golden glory, boys and girls.

How will this end?

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I hope you guys are in the mood for a few videos!

Today, I purchased a brand new Xbox controller for myself. When not playing with my fight stick, I am now riding onto the field of battle wielding a special edition Copper Shadow controller! It felt very odd to have a brand new controller, and I also think the buttons, sticks, and triggers might be a little sturdier or solid than the standard controller, or at least need to be broken in a little bit, because I noticed my inputs were a little more difficult. By the end of the night, though, I had acclimated to the controller fairly well, as any decent gamer would!

I’d also like to give a quick shout out to @SadisticRage76, who defeated me with Riptor shortly before my full-steam run of victories!

So, you’ve probably noticed that in the last post, I shared a screenshot of my full Silver League Points bar and Promotion Match indicator! How did that turn out, you’re asking?

Well, before we get to the Promotion match, let’s look at a few which led up to it!

The first match I want to share with you was against a Jago player. I know, I NEVER have a Jago match to share with you, right?! This match was a bit of a weird one, with an opponent who was extremely fond of his Wind Kick inputs. I had a fun combo at the end with a Dragon Cancel and standard reset, which let me put a pretty large amount of damage away!

The next match is against a Shadow Jago: I was already excited from the loading screen, as it was a matchup of Level 50 Kim Wu and a Level 50 Shadow Jago - we also both chose Color 9, so it felt like we were gearing up for a pretty epic fight. I pretty much dominated this fight, which I felt was a definite result of having fought several Shadow Jagos with Kim Wu during this challenge, as I believe I have been learning more about the matchup as I go. I even escaped and punished his desperate Annihilation attempt at the end!

The next match also happened to be against Shadow Jago! This player was a lot trickier, and I was sometimes struggling to block or counteract his slides and divekicks, but I was pleased to find the right breaks off of his juggles! He also never changed his juggle strength throughout the fight, which made that easier. This player also decided to attempt Annihilation twice, but I was able to counteract it both times! I botched an input which caused me to end a combo with a wallsplat ender in the middle of the stage, instead of ending with an Ultra or at least the Dragon Kick ender; whoops!

The fourth video I have to share with you was another Sabrewulf fight. I found out that this guy loved to push buttons, and almost never blocked! Wulf is fast, but I was able to put Kim’s not-quite-ninja moves to work, and get the job done. I was able to read and correctly break most of his offense, and even though I lost my first life bar, I felt it was a solid win without too many mistakes on my part!

I’ve kept you waiting long enough, so here is my Promotion match!

So far, I’ve managed to win my Silver and Gold Promotion matches on the first try! not sure if that’s a testament to my ability, or lucky matchups which went in my favor! You’ll notice my overall win/loss ratio isn’t great, but I’m still proud of my accomplishment. I did not expect that I would make it this far, especially in only 15 days! Having this “blog” has given me the drive to make this Challenge successful, and while the Rank isn’t important in that regard, the fact that I feel like I have learned how to be a better player as well as how to play a new character feels like a major step forward for my KI game! I want to thank everybody who has participated in this thread through comments or likes for their support, in particular @TheNinjaOstrich for his constant feedback and advice both on and off the Forums!

I will continue playing Kim exclusively for the next week or so before I set up the next month’s character poll, and we will see how high I can climb! I will most likely need to change my videos to Replay clips, though, given the fact that a Gold vs Gold match will likely climb past the 5 minute recording duration of the Xbox One!

Thank you again for allowing me to shamelessly share this journey with you! I hope it inspires others to do the same and step out of their comfort zones in order to improve their Killer Instinct skills!

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Good job. I wouldn’t worry about any win loss ratio. That’s normal when using ranked as “practice” mode, lol

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Good job taking Kim all the way to Gold :slight_smile:

I’ve only got a few thoughts:
(1) If you instinct freeze and the guy just started a jump, AA dragon kick the SOB :smile:
(2) If you kill someone with a wall bounce, dragon grasp directly into firecracker ender. This is a good way to get a free dragon at the end without having to rely on firecracker’s terribad damage.
(3) In the Riptor fight, I highly recommend saving shadow sometime for shadow counters. A lot of Riptor’s meaties are 3 hitting and very susceptible to a good shadow counter. Although I guess, depending on range, Kim’s SC may or may not hit :disappointed_relieved:

Good stuff again, and congrats on taking Kim this far!

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It was a fun match. Thanks for the shout. It was great to play a match where someone didn’t feel the need to taunt or tea bag the whole time. You play Kim alot different than I do.

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I am shamelessly using this idea to do much the same thing, except with YouTube. I’m trying to figure out a better way than desktop recording for gameplay since I can’t figure out any other way to capture on PC. But the first character has been selected, so I’m preparing myself mentally and via a touch of training mode here and there.

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All right! The Killer Promotion will be the hardest match! Good luck! :slight_smile:

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Nice thread indeed n_n ! I admire your will to learn a character that you wouldn’t pick At first. If you want to have some matches to practice against Wulf let me know. I’m playing quite much against a Kim Wu XD

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Okay whooo I finally got a chance to read all of this! That’s a lot of matches played, but it’s very interesting to see your breakdown of the matches afterwards and read your thoughts and adjustments. Picking up a new character is hard but you’ve been putting a lot of work into it and it looks like it is paying off–congrats on your promo to gold!!

Also I laughed at the poor guy that wanted to bribe you to let him win his promotion–so rough for him lol.

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Thank you all for tthe kind words and guidance! I’m glad that I have the opportunity to share what I can with outlr awesome community. I will happily assist if somebody is interested in playing Kim Wu, and I hope you will all join me for next month’s voting and Challenge as well!

Waiting for your Killer Promotion to be vs. Me.

"OK. Killer rank, here I come! This guy is probably a scru-

(Expletive), it’s Ostrich!!!"

Lol

You’re assuming I’m afraid of facing you in Ranked?

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Lol. I welcome it. Bring it on!

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I believe that you’re the better player in general, but I think our matches when we’re not messing around are probably 6-4 in your favor, so I believe I have a decent enough chance to take you down! It would be incredibly epic if we both happened to be on our Promotion match at the same time, too.

That would be an explosive match! I wonder now if that can happen.

I just made it to Killer using nothing but Kim Wu. I’ve definitely changed my mind about her, I’m really liking her a lot now. She reminds me of Season 1 Orchid in that she was the hardest to learn but was still extremely capable.

@Natsuv2 yeah, I find Kim to be very fun to play but she definitely needed some extra time to be able to understand her playstyle.

On a secondary note to everybody, check out the new poll I posted in the original Introduction thread! There’s one week left to vote and decide who becomes my monthly main!

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Four days left until the poll closes, folks! Please take a look and cast your vote!

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