I dunno, maybe its because of my style or my character, but I have yet to fight somebody who I couldn’t open up or at least get a few good combos going w/ lock outs and such.
I’ve at least won matches (while not sets) against Rico, CStyles, C Jayloco, Flipperantonio.
I’ve also been trampled,but that’s not hard once you get Sadira in the corner.
I guess it comes down to who has better mind games. 
@GalacticGeek Just learn Sadira, your issues would be resolved. 
And invite even more distasteful commentary? No thanks!
I revel on distasteful commentary! It’s like food for me.
Honestly though for every bad comment I get, I get loads of good ones. Sometimes I even respond to the negative comment with a positive one and give advice, of which becomes a positive conversation.
I don’t feed off of negativity like you do, but I do everything else you described. I’d just rather not invite the negativity is all.
It’s not about feeding off the negativity, although it can be funny. It’s about turning the negativity into something positive.
Also note, it doesn’t matter what character you use, the more you win in Ranked, the more people are going to gripe. It’s not a matter of if, its a matter of when. 
I did have 3 players run away pre-match yesterday once they saw I was a killer.
I had a close set with this Hisako player today:
She is my hardest MU. I could use some tips.
When you were fighting Omen during the 6:40 mark, he was really laying down the pressure on you in the corner.
You could get lucky and try to block everything that Omen throws at you. But what usually work against his pressure is shadow countering. Try Shadow Countering Omen’s jump ins and fireball pressure since Spinal doesn’t really have a fast or invincible reversal.
You also had plenty of chances of getting out of the corner but you chose to continue to get up in Omen’s face (I know Spinal’s Corner pressure is insane too, that is probably why you did it) even though that purple b@stard was born in the corner. If you can, try to bring it back to the middle.
Good matches - Lebouer is a good Hisako player
Obligatory opener->ultra suggestion. Nearly cost you the first match.
Pay attention to a Hisako player’s counter habits. This one liked to counter jumps, so that tells you something about what he’s willing to put up with in terms of pressure. Once he represents that at the start of the set, then I think it’s good to go into empty jump->low/throw pressure. Try to turn your opponent’s defensive habits against him.
If Hisako starts doing descent in neutral, punch her in the face. That ish isn’t safe.
I don’t agree with ever spending all three bars on shadow rasha. If I ever saw an Omen do that, I’d thank my lucky stars. One shadow rasha, fine; two shadow rashas, ok, I suppose. But three? That’s 3 unsafe mixups->additional shadow form mixup that I no longer have to worry about. Hisako can avoid those things very easily in all honesty - I don’t recommend dumping all your bar into them. Omen has much better uses for that meter.
Use Omen’s air mobility to help manage the neutral. Hisako can’t stop midscreen Omen flying nonsense any better than the rest of the cast, so use that fact to ensure that the fight proceeds at the pace you want it to. Once she knocks him down Hisako absolutely mauls Omen, so it’s important to manage the neutral well enough that she doesn’t get many opportunities to run her offense.
As a general rule, you should always hold up when being combo’d by Hisako. Until they prove they can shut down jumpouts, that should be your default.
Hope that helps 
Okay, so I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep, so I decide to get some KI practice in before my bout with @STORM179 (which, BTW, I may have to put on hold - my family wants me to take the car in to get looked at in the morning, and I had forgotten that I’m also participating in @hyperpyro12345’s online tournament - although I’m not sure when during the day that is).
My very 1st and only ranked set prior to posting this message happened to be against xXHoLoGrAmXxx, 1 of the best Thunder players I’ve ever seen! Granted, he had 4 pro stars to back him up. Whenever I talk about near or seemingly perfect players, this is the kind of guy that comes to mind. So, I wanted to share that with you in a clip I recorded. Sadly, I only got the 1st match of the 2, since the 2nd match’s replay was corrupted by lag (which is a real shame because I wanted to share that as well - I did better in the 2nd fight and even managed to take his 1st lifebar despite still losing).
To start, I want you guys to analyze how good this guy is rather than me, so that newer players can basically get an idea of “how it’s done” (that said, this is exactly the kind of player that I think will actually scare people away from the game simply because he’s so good).
Feel free to analyze me too, but I already know why I lost - after days of playing Thunder, and not wanting a mirror match, I went right back to my old full-screen ND habits (I keep thinking a l.PA into overhead ND should be easy, but everybody, pros and amateurs alike, can seemingly fuzzy-block it which perturbs me to no end).
Right off the bat, he immediately counter-hits me with a far s.HP the very moment I stop walking backwards and attempt a c.HK. I think he got lucky with the timing here. He probably intended to put me into block-stun for a follow-up CG. Still, he broke through my chunk armor as a result.
At ~0:14s, he hits me with a double c.HK - the 1st 1 legitimately surprised me but I was ready for the 2nd with a low block. If you look at the inputs, I did block low, but it still hits me. This is generally what I refer to when “my blocks don’t work” - and it happens more than I would like. I don’t recall attempting to throw him here, but I imagine that’s how he hit me, since the inputs also show a LP+LK. I chalk this up to “pushing buttons” which is a bad habit for many a player.
What I thought was really clever, however, was that he trained me to block low here, because after the 2 c.HKs, he immediately follows up with Thunder’s overhead at 0:16s, which hit me as I continued my low block.
The very idea that all of this transpired in the span of 3 seconds simply blows my mind. KI is blazingly fast!
At 0:22s, after he hits me up with a deceptively good and sneaky s.LK (which was another “but I blocked!” moment for me BTW - the inputs even show it, but I chalk this 1 up to hit-stun), there’s a white flash on Thunder as he hits me with a CotE, which I’ve never seen before. What is that? Does it mean anything?
At 0:28s, after activating instinct, we attempt to command grab each other. Sadly, he wins out, I would assume due to frame advantage. He takes the round as a result.
Immediately after his CotE, and before the end of the round, he performs CotS. I had no idea he could do this after a CotE as the round ends (similar to how my golem can chunk up after a standard throw just prior to the end of a round). Seeing this made me particularly happy as this can be used to gain immediate options at the start of the next round.
At the start of the next round I attempt to cross him up, but fail as he quickly reads and punishes it with a l.Sammimish, which ignores high attacks if I recall. His lightning-fast (no pun intended) reflexes here scare me, and also make me wish rounds would reset to neutral like other FGs do (I can’t even begin to tell you how often I get punished here for acting 1st, but because I can’t attack yet, they get the advantage and the starting hit).
At 0:49s, I accidentally performed a s.ND that I did not intend. Although it worked out, it occurs because just prior, I was thinking about how I missed a SC opportunity against his triplax, and it carried over into my inputs moments later.
At 0:59s, he punishes my s.LP for the 2nd time in the match with a s.CotE - I consistently forget, and am reminded of, just how much range that move actually has…
At 1:09m, I whiff a far s.HK. This is notable simply because over the past few weeks this has happened to me frequently and I fear it’s becoming a bad habit. I misjudge the spacing by just a hair’s breadth expecting it to hit. I hate it when this happens. Despite the whiff, I do it again to establish spacing dominance (probably not the best idea).
At 1:16m, he combo-breaks my LP AD. This is a bit of a conundrum for me, because a long time ago, I recall the developers stating that you can’t humanly react to l.ADs - they’re simply too fast to see and then react to. In other words you have to guess that I’m going to do it beforehand to break it. However, he breaks my LP AD late, almost as if he actually did react to it. According to Upload Studio’s frame by frame time stamps, he broke it in 0.13s, which I’m fairly certain is faster than anyone could possibly react. This leads me to believe that he really did guess, even though it may not feel like it. However, Upload Studio’s timestamp, in milliseconds (I think), only goes to 0.30s, not 0.99s, so I’m not actually certain about the math on this. Perhaps he did react to it? If so, then why would the devs say something that isn’t true? Would it be because Aganos’ animations are so easy to read? I’d like your input on this, guys.
Immediately after the break, I once again perform a full-screen ND reflexively, much to my chagrin, and gave him the win. It hurts even more knowing that I was sitting on 2 full stocks of shadow meter that never got used.
If you’d like to suggest or add anything I might’ve missed, feel free to do so.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Writing all that up on my phone was a doozy, let me tell you!
He’s not really doing anything special though. Just using his heavy buttons to get passed armor, heavy meaties against your wake up, then whenever there was a pause in the action he just waited for you to do something so he could block and punish.The rest is just you falling for all of his resets.
When you activated instinct he command grabbed after you activated it so it’s not that he just lucked out and won, he made a read that you were going to try and throw him with the instinct grabbed and he was right. As for his break on the light auto double I think you’re giving him way too much credit, you only opened him up twice and the first time he first frame locked out after the opener so he clearly just guessed both times you hit him, he just happened to guess right the second time.
I agree. He was pounding @GalacticGeek in the butt for most of the match. I think he assumes that his opponents will be mashing lights if they have a hard time opening his Thunder up. I used to have this problem awhile ago when I open people up with my Omen mix-ups and cross-ups and they get so frustrated that they have a tendency to guess break near the very beginning of my combo. But now I throw in counter breaker attempts to cut that ■■■■ out.
It’s a guess but a calculated one.
I have life to spare + plus my opponent is frustrated = guess a light breaker
Also as far as I could see, he never broke your Heavy Auto Double. I find that weird.
I’m curious which developer said this, because you can definitely react to light doubles and break them. It’s hard, but doable.
On the clip…Geek, are you aware you only blocked two attacks in that match? Once after placing a wall, and once when you really SHOULD have been combo’d, but the thunder player cancelled his normal too late. Even if I’m generous and include the times you get grabbed, he only grabs you while you’re actually BLOCKING once–every other time, you were throwing or pressing a button.
You claim your “blocks don’t work,” but we can see the inputs–both times you got swept on wakeup you were doing something. Either mashing LK or trying to throw tech. The counter hit message pops up too.
At 22 seconds, when the LK hits you, the combo counter goes up. Blocking works fine.
The whiffed 5HKs are confusing. At that range you should just be using sweep.
Also…like, I know you’ve been told already, but seriously, stop doing random natural disaster. It’s not good.
They’ve said it a few times during the Character break downs. I think they mentioned it during the Mira Breakdown video when they were discussing her unreactable 50/50 high-low move too. I’m not sure though.
I never said blocks don’t work. I’ve only ever said MY blocks don’t work. Also, in every case where I said as much in this match, I’ve discovered the reasons for why it didn’t work and mentioned it accordingly.
EDIT: Just noticed you did use the word “your” in your reply. Sorry.
In any case, I never “see” the counter-hit and punish messages, even during replays. My brain has been trained to ignore them (because I’m so focused on what’s happening in the middle of the screen. Also, I find the inputs on the side of the screen difficult to decipher properly at any given moment unless I’m going frame by frame.
My point is that you need to be more aware of yourself and ACTUALLY BLOCK. Your opponents don’t even have to put pressure on you, they just press a button and it hits you.
Light ADs are about 24-25 total frames of breakability (for comparison, Glacius shatter starts in 27, so if you can jump shatter, you can probably break a light AD). I think you have to watch specifically for them at the cost of reacting to most other things, but they are definitely reaction breakable.
To be clear, I think the vast majority of light AD breaks are guesses that work out. But at high level, it’s possible to react and some small percentage of light AD breaks will be reactions. Just ADs, though, reacting to a “standard” light linker I think is truly impossible, and all manuals that aren’t the super slow heavy ones are definitely too fast to react.
Basically this.
You lost because you are always “doing stuff”. Sometimes you just have to block, let some time go, take your time, and react more and predict less.
Because that’s the reason because you actually DO fullscreen NDs. You seem to need having the initiative. And sometimes(specially with Aganos), you just have to actually react to what your opponent is doing, instead of “predicting” what they are going to do.
As Aganos, you have to play a lot of time defensively, just being patient, setting your walls, and waiting for the point where you can use your armor to go through a normal or special and punish your opponent, or the moment to land a ruin, or whatever you need in any given moment. And your haste to being dominant in the match plays against you
Okay, but as I said, if it’s reactable, that means the devs themselves were mistaken.
