I use OBS, but I record at a lower quality to keep performance up and video size down. The SG/US connections feel dodgy enough as is sometimes, so I’m afraid to have too much running that may also affect performance.
There’s a Killer-ranked Riptor that I get matched with a lot who has been griefing me in Ranked since I moved to the X1/Win10 pool. He used to just stomp me mercilessly, so I made a goal that, eventually, I would overcome his experience and good MU and win. I’ve watched him end our matches with less and less health over time. Today, I patiently dealt with his fire breath and finally got him 2-0 with over half a lifebar left each time.
Thanks @STORM179 and @s0undy44 for the advice/encouragement and, additionally, @Cabp15 for facing me multiple times in Ranked and giving feedback right after.
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FT10 set with @LetalisVenator’s Raam and Aganos.
I have to work on adapting quicker to opponent’s buttons choices and cadences. Stomp is strong in the Aganos fight, and I should have put away my sweep a game or two after he’d shown willingness to low-crush over it. Some execution stuff was also definitely lacking, particularly for attempted round start influences 
The only thing that I saw, especially early on is an over eagerness to parry. 
It seemed to wiff more than connect… Still watching the vid though. It’s tough to choose a side though as you and @LetalisVenator are two my most favorite people to watch in KI. 
Haha. Yeah, if I whiff something in front of someone my first reaction is usually to counter. Ideally I’m supposed to move from there to stealing turns back (as the opponent starts to wait to bait it), but again, definitely not adjusting as quickly as I should there.
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I can see what you mean by cadence. The amount of times he managed to land counter hits was way up there when he played Raam, even some with Aganos.
I do have a question. A lot of times if Letalis hit you with a jump normal, you’d lockout immediately after. Are you trying to do something or you just don’t like catching jump ins?
I do like a lot of times at that 3/4 screen range where he tried to chunk up as Aganos, you snapped with something to not let him have that for free.
At 31:30, seemed like you offered Letalis a couple more break points than necessary. You took the round, though. Probably just chalk it up to heat of the moment, I think.
Kinda jarring to see the game stutter for a second when it’s deciding what to to when full wrath heavies contact armored normals that launch on hit.
Not one backdash out of Storm. I think that’s just how you play, but interesting to note nonetheless.
I feel like I saw Letalis lean on lights after opener a lot between both Aganos and Raam.
Twice with Aganos, I saw Letalis build up his ender levels after the round ended but let the combos drop in favor of getting just a single chunk. I figure he didn’t want to have too many chunk going for the payload ender as my best guess? Or maybe to just purely burn Storms instinct?
Overall, great set though!
I lock out in those situations for different reasons. If it’s a late button on the jump-in the lockout is often me thinking the jump was gonna be empty and attempting to tech throw. If I’ve got instinct, it’s usually me trying to pop it at the last second to see the mixup or attack (this is pretty easy to do offline, but online I’m often too late).
Nah, I wanted him dead then and there and didn’t think cashout would kill so extended the combo. I thought I needed level 3 at least for the shadow to kill, so just extended the combo to that point and then used it.
Haha. Have you seen Hisako’s backdash? 
She doesn’t even begin moving backwards until after her backdash invincibility is gone. I think the Thunder MU is the only fight where I ever intentionally backdash as Sako. More to the point though, backdash won’t help against Raam, and against Aganos there’s no point. I’m super unafraid of anything Aganos can do to me on wakeup.
Aganos really doesn’t want to be over-chunked against Hisako. She can’t strip them anyway, so having 1 chunk is basically the same as having 4. Every chunk slows his normals though, and as you can see I’m always trying to clip his sweep on startup to get going in neutral. The slower he is, the easier it is for my HP to tag him while he’s trying to maintain spacing. Two chunks is fine (Aganos is hosed if he’s chunkless so the extra safety is nice), but anything above that is going to work against him. @LetalisVenator can correct me on his thinking there if I’m wrong, but that’s my read of chunks versus Hisako.
Honestly in season 3 i cant really think of an mu where aganos wants to be fully stocked on armor. I rarely even go for 3 unless im confident i can set up an instant kill combo. You dont want your buttons to be slower as it just makes it easier for someone to challenge you. If i ever end up with 4 chunks ill shed it almost immediately.
Even characters with excellent backdashes dont want to do it too much vs raam or aganos. Has one of the 3 worst in the game outside aganos and glacius.
Aganos level 1 pulverize ender gives him the longest hkd. So ill go for that one over the others usually. Raam probably has the strongest one chance damage in the game. With kryll stacked he can get over 40% off a level 1 and will typically get around 33ish. Plus light stab makes it a little harder for people to be ready for a throw reset.
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I will go to bat that Hisako’s backdash is easily worse than Glacius’. His lasts a touch longer, but at least the big snowcone actually moves when he does it 
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I make that comment each time I see Sako backdash.
“Might as well lean your chin forward with all those frames”
Jokes aside, I was thinking about trying to add in backdashing as a defensive maneuver; sounds like I shouldn’t bother (as Sako)
Checking in with (what’s hopefully) my progress. Got matched with this guy twice today after not seeing him in a while. Omen’s still one of the most challenging MUs for me, but I felt far more in control than before
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A few things that I noticed…
One thing that you have to work on is not allowing your opponent to set the flow of the match. You gotta set your dominance and not give it up.
Omen can be a bad matchup for most characters, but Hisako still has great buttons.
Learn to Tiger Knew her Rekkas. This allows an immediate overhead attack. The light version is plus on block and the heavy can cause a stagger.
Use her Shadow Rekkas to get past projectiles. This will also allow you to close the distance.
Be careful with parries. If use it too often then they are going to expect it and then bait it. Sometimes you just need to block. Play the mind games.
Lastly, NEVER pop your Instinct away from your opponent. Hisako’s Instinct is one of the best in the game, as it allows her to parry any physical attack no matter high or low. It also keeps her wrath meter full so you can punish Shadow Counters, and lastly every attack gains Counter Hit status. However much like Sadira’s Instinct, it is only effective if you are close.
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I appreciate the patience that you showed with your opponent’s combo game. Not breaking every combo and looking like you were picking and choosing your spots. One thing i will note, when you are low on life (in that 10-15% range or so on green bar) is one instance to not be afraid to shoot for a break. At that percentage, all it would take is a general one-chance break combo to kill you anyway.
I do want to ask what possessed you (no pun intended) to pop your instinct at what are pretty unusual instances. Hisako works much like my own character where a strength of her instinct pop is halting the action defensively for a moment to see what’s coming and react, usually, some kind of action. Be it a parry, command grab, etc. Did you have a read perhaps?
A bit of a MU thing to note, but Omen flying at you without coverage from his fireballs is begging to be AA’ed and Hisako has two that she can swat him out of the air with for attempting that. As you get along playing her, and noticing things like that, a cr HP should become your instinctive reaction rather than parry.
Storm could probably verify, but i think Hisako is similar to Kim in that at point blank, his reversal will whiff her. She may be too small for the fireball to hit her. And if so, that’s one less thing you have to concern yourself with when you knock him down. I noticed that you jumped a few of their wakeup reversals. Trust me, Hisako is one of the game’s characters that is a monster when you have to wakeup into her nonsense.
Another question for you, a quiz of sorts. Did you notice a particular pattern your opponent did when they performed the slide ender on you? (and i ask that no one other than Code answer that)
Confirm lockous into you best damage and your ideal enders. Saw multiple instances across the set of games that were missed opportunities. There was a crucial one in the last game where you had lockout/KV left to extend, ended early and your opponent took the game because you didn’t kill him when you had the opportunity. I’m not sure of your familiarity with KI just yet, but a lot of little missteps like that can compound to work against you in a tight game.
Keep the pressure up. Keeping away from your opponent when they have instinct and full meter makes total sense. But i’m a proponent of not letting my opponent get away from me once i knock them down.
I will say, in the case Ragnarok makes about using Shadow ORZ to slip past projectiles, use it with discretion in the case of Omen. His fireballs take paths that can and do interrupt you after the projectile invincibility of your shadow wears off and leaves you open.
Hope these help and i look forward to seeing if you notice what i notice.
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- First off, your patience in the combo game is much, much improved. Great stuff!
- You’re still keeping your distance when you knock people down. Omen wants that distance, as he controls space in the midrange much more effectively than you do. Once you work to get in on a character, don’t let them regain neutral spacing for free. And as Sneerful says, Hisako often low profiles under Omen’s reversal (possession, m.influence, and cr.MP/MK will all do it) so there’s even less reason to not pressure his knockdown.
- You’re still walking backwards. Don’t. If you don’t want to approach, hold down+back. Every (excruciatingly slow) step you take backwards is a step you have to make up later.
- Remember to damage loop. If you see a lockout, switch to heavy AD->light linker->heavy AD->light linker.
- When to counter against Omen: when he is jumping within range of your nagitata buttons. If he’s coming in from further away than that, then just AA him with cr.MP or cr.HP. If he’s close enough to cross you up or otherwise do some aerial ■■■■■■■ then just counter - at lower and intermediate levels he’s more likely to push a button than not in those situations.
- Against Omen at range you should be buffering for shadow ORZ. It can be tough to punish single rasha tosses, but you can easily make him pay for throwing more than that, and punishing the single toss can be done if you’re particularly on the ball. Rashakuken is how Omen dictates the pace of the fight, so the more you force him away from that the more you mess up his gameplan. Getting tagged by a weird pattern isn’t too important here - they’re low damage and you’ll get the meter back anyway.
- Good job on your hit confirms. You’re turning most of your hits into combos now
- Omen is one of two characters who you have to counter low when he shadow counters you. It’s good that you tried to counter, though!
- When you see Omen shadow form, mash counter. He’ll generally come out of it with a button.
- When someone is mashing first-ish frame breaks, just do heavies. Let them lock themselves out and then murder them for it.
- Use your instinct twice a game, and use it close in to see what the opponent was doing. You get nothing out of popping it full screen.
- Work on your tiger knees. Even if it costs you games, it’s more important that you learn to do them under pressure than that you win a match or two. Those high air-ORZ’s you’re doing right now are unsafe on block, and won’t help you against most of the cast’s reversals.
- Let your wrath refill in neutral. If you’re empty, sit still for a second or two to let it come back. That’s worth a lot more than that random jump or MP you’re sticking out.
- Saying it a second time for emphasis. Damage loop on lockout. In the last game you could have killed him, but you did a suboptimal combo that spent your lockout time in an inefficient way.
Don’t take the list above as anything but constructive criticism to help you continue to grow. Overall you played much, much better than what you posted last time As Sneerful said, right now it’s a lot of little things that are adding up to work against you as opposed to huge and glaring errors. Work on those piece by piece as best you can, and you’ll continue to get better 
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A lot of the criticism I expected/predicted watching myself, so I guess that’s also a good sign.
- I switched controllers, and the TKs are the last thing to come back to normal. I’m drilling them a lot, but I’m not even landing them 100% in the practice room.
- I still haven’t figured out the border between bravery and recklessness with keeping close pressure, but I’m admittedly super skittish with Omen (and Shago), because the sliding kick gets me a lot. I also now know what the “11
” next to that guy’s name means, so I was even more nervous. That’s why I kept distance and figured, if I didn’t pop Instinct at distance, I would get hit before I could pop it. - I’m still super weak on AA’ing. I do drills for it sometimes, but still really bad
- I’m also still weak on knowing where I am in the Combo to take advantage of things, because I started out with Combo Assist, but it’s very high on my TODO list
Thanks for the tips on Omen’s reversal and shadow form. In previous matches with this guy, I would get hit by his reversal (which he loves using) a lot trying to TK ORZ. I figured I had to respect it, so very good to know.
@SneerfulWater57 I did not pick up on a pattern, even after rewatching for it.
Thanks everyone for your time watching and writing such great feedback
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Yeah, forgot you switched to Hitbox. If you’re failing TK’s on that, it’s usually because you’re hitting up too fast. Your TK needs to include a cardinal direction left/right - turn on input display and see what you’re getting most consistently. If the input you see is “
”, you won’t get it. There needs to be a 
in there. Proper TK input will look either like “ ” or “ 
”
When they’re knocked down, you should be right next to them nearly all the time. If you think they’re going to DP then counter or block or do a TK to make the reversal come out wrong side, but don’t let people get up for free. When you stand at HP range on their knockdown there is no mixup - the opponent basically should never get hit in that situation (shadow influence excepting).
Their slides have no invincibility. If you strike them as they stand (called a meaty, can do a forum search to find the precise definition) then you will stuff that out for free. Shago has a DP that you can’t make come out wrong side so you at least marginally have to respect him on knockdown, but Omen is absolutely free to Hisako on wakeup. There is nothing to be afraid of there. If he likes his reversal too much, just possess or influence or meaty him - all of these options will beat or avoid orda and give you free damage.
Instinct is instant and freezes the screen - it is not possible to be struck before popping it if you reversal it on wakeup. Even if you aren’t using it on wakeup, use it when someone is trying to mix you up to see what exactly they’re doing or trying to hit you with. Hisako has the best defensive instinct in the game - you miss a significant opportunity every time you activate it at range.
Anti-airs will come with practice and time. Just keep trying for them and you’ll get better at them 
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There might be an easier way to TK… If you perform the Down to Foward motion and then wait half a second before pressing a button it will give you a TK every time. That is what I use with Sadira’s TKs and Hisako’s for that matter.