I just want to say “Thanks!” but the new forum doesn’t allow me to make such short responses, so I am just wasting a bunch of letters and words.
I was always really unhappy with my old combo breakers section… I felt I didn’t explain enough about the particulars of how it works, and I used generally poor language and structure.
So I rewrote most of the page today!
The new combo breakers page is quite a bit better structured, clearer, and contains a few extra videos showing the special cases (like the 3-Move Rule). It also avoids a lot of the ambiguous language I used on the previous page. I also give a giant summary at the end for how the combo breaker system gets triggered.
Give it a read if you’re interested! http://ki.infil.net/cbreaker.html
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This looks great! It’s organized really really well I think 
In Thunder’s page, in his general strategy, call of sky is listed as a tool for stuational approaching and for punish jump-friendly characters, being this its old version use
I feel like every time I visit the site I find something new, either on site or in game.
Thanks for all the hard work, @Infilament
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Have you seen Ketchup and Mustard’s Casual to Competitive video series for MKX? They’re really well done and cover the same kind of basics that this guide does.
It’s a little bit more necessary for MKX, since its ‘Dojo’ mode might as well not even exist, but I wonder if it would be worth it to do something like that for KI. This guide is very in depth, but maybe too text-laden for someone who’s just slightly interested in playing KI or inexperienced in fighting games. I think it would be useful to condense the basics and general knowledge from the guide into an easily consumable series of Youtube videos.
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Not sure if worth adding to the guide since it’s incredibly situational and only adds 5% more damage but Aria has a more damaging 2 bar counter breaker combo in instinct if she has both Bass and Blade bodies. Basically just do:
HK double > Light Explosive Arc > HK double > Light Explosive Arc > HK double > Shadow Dissonance > Shadow Allegro = 66%
Sounds like a lot of work, but definitely worthwhile work.
@Infilament - Should you decide this is something you’d be interested in, I am offering my services as a Sony Vegas owner/user to help with editing, rendering, etc.
@LeoFerreis @Marbledecker: I like the idea in theory… I’ve been thinking a lot about how to actually teach fighting games to newcomers. I watched a bit of the MKX series and tried to put my mind in the state of a total beginner and I felt like I didn’t really understand what they were talking about a lot of the time, so IMO there’s room to improve here (it doesn’t help that MKX’s move list is just a long list of target combos, many of which are not useful). Unfortunately… it’s just too much work for me to take on at this time. 
I wouldn’t want to do it half-heartedly and to make it really good would be a month-long project for me.
@SithLordEDP: Cool combo! Unfortunately it’s probably too situational to put in my Aria guide, because then I’d have to list similar combos for 1 meter and with other body type combinations (or state that they aren’t better than the default, which just ends up being too much confusing text).
Well if you decide to give it a go, I’d help in any way I could. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’d pitch in either. 
New update today. Added brief notes on the latest patch to keep my history of S2 page up to date, but more important, I added each character’s shadow counter startup frames (with help from Keits). You might be surprised who has the best shadow counter in the game!
As always, info on all updates are found here: http://ki.infil.net/updates.html
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On special moves:
“where characters live on a dangerous border between Street Fighter fair and Marvel vs. Capcom broken”
Haha, I couldn’t stop laughing. So eloquently said. And it made me wonder if you love or hate MvC…
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If you want to get things like specific sounds without the music etc, you can always record an actual fight with the elements you need, then go back into fight archive with the music and ambience turned down all the way. Then go roughly to the point you know the sound will be and then go through frame by frame and just stop when you get to the sound, let it play and then trim it out. It’d be good to have sounds like the obtaining of instinct etc in there as they’re sounds that are really hard to notice at the moment IMO even for me and I’ve been playing the game for a while.
If you want any help with this, I’d be happy to chip in where I can.
I was just re-reading Aganos’ character page and noticed that you list ruin as an ender. We both know (now) that unless it has a wall behind it to create a wall crash or unless it’s a shadow ruin, it’s not a true ender (and even in the case of the former, I’m still not so sure).
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If you do a special move manual (non-shadow) ruin, it’s not an ender unless it hits a wall, but Ruin itself is an ender when used as a grounded cancel like all other enders are. No wall needed. Just do opener, double, linker, double, heavy Ruin. You’ll get the ender version.
Okay, I give up! This whole it’s an ender but not really an ender but it’s an ender nonsense needs to stop! 
There’s nothing too hard about it man. Most of the time, in order to do an ender, it must be a grounded cancel on a grounded opponent (think auto-double/linker stuff). If you want to do an ender (that is, cash out damage) on an airborne opponent, you have to hit him with a shadow ender. The only exception to this rule is the Aganos “regular ruin into a wall on an airborne opponent” thing… that’s a super special case. Otherwise, all enders are cancels from the combo sequence (90% of cases), or they’re juggles that use a shadow ender (the other 10%).
Ugh…
Just went into practice mode to try it. It’s no wonder I’ve been so confused. I’ve always said it is an ender, and it is - it’s even listed in the command list. It’s the fact that the devs said it wasn’t when referring to my setup that got me all confused - the way they explained it was just terrible (no offense, devs!) because, at least to me, it seemed like they were talking about ruin in general, not just in that specific circumstance. I’ll go back and re-read it though, just to see if it’s just me (it probably is).
That being said, for an ender (sans wall), ruin is really, really bad. It does crud for damage, isn’t a heavy knockdown, and has no real redeeming special qualities at all (such as being a battery ender, etc.). Sure, it gets you some spacing, but the recovery of the move and the ability your opponent has to quick-rise makes that almost negligible, not to mention the fact that it’s just far enough away to not really be at a useful range. It also hits the wall (the regular stage walls, not Aganos’ cyclopean walls), but it doesn’t cause an actual wall bounce, so it’s not a wall bounce ender (which, at least with the regular stage walls, I think it should be).
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Yes, you should probably avoid Ruin as an ender unless you have a wall to send them through. Without a wall, I would pretty much only ever use the chunk ender or pulverize ender (which does the most damage and gives a hard knockdown so you can set up a wall and do other stuff).
The devs said Ruin wasn’t an ender in your setup because you were using a non-shadow special move on an airborne opponent. These are never, ever enders… they are simply breakable special moves, just like how all other manuals are breakable. If I anti-air you with Jago DP, then juggle some more DPs, you can combo break those. Against someone airborne, Aganos’s non-shadow Ruin will cash out when it hits a wall (it’s a very special case), but you can break the Ruin before you get to the wall (because it’s not an ender when it first makes contact with the opponent).
Q: Does performing TJ’s command grab into juggle followed by a normal follow these manual and air-borne based rules? I ask because I’ve always been able to break that and as a TJ player, I almost never do it to give 1 less chance for a break (I usually go straight into a tremor), but I see a lot of TJ players do it anyways…