Honestly, just do your best to block or avoid these. Air shots don’t really do a whole lot for Arbiter unless he wants to blow his wad to confirm a kill on you or something, and I’ve never seen a single one try this yet. They’re annoying and that’s pretty much it unless there’s some Arbiter tech I don’t know about (which is likely), so I can only speak from experience fighting them.
I haven’t ever tried to challenge this move due to its speed, and blocking it gives Arbiter nothing. If s.LK can reach him that sounds good to me, though I’ve honestly not tried this myself.
This move is really scary until you get used to seeing it, and once you do it can be deflected on reaction since Arbiters are really keen on throwing this thing out immediately after having an attack blocked, which only helps your timing more.
Sticky Bomb:
You didn’t ask, but I think all Tusk players should know this.
When stuck, Arbiter will usually start moving in on you with an attempt to launch you in some way, meaning he’s likely to be pressing buttons since he thinks you’re scared of the bomb (and he’s not exactly wrong).
- A choice Conqueror into the ground bounce followup will give you enough time to block the explosion while simultaneously recapturing Arbiter with his own bomb, which I’ll admit gives me a half-chub every time I manage to convert off this.
Sometimes they break the follow up, but that’s fine since the bomb threat will be over either way.
I’m still working on this one myself, but you pretty much have to start playing Galaga and do everything you can to bob and weave through his blizzard of balls. So far I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that you will get hit by some, so the objective is to spot the ones you can afford to get hit by quickly and recover. There’s pretty much no way for you to stop him from setting up all three on you unless you’re in slide distance, and even then you’re probably going to get hit out of any combos you manage to start.
If it comes to this, disengage to block whatever you have to since Glacius can obviously convert effortlessly at that range.
A surprisingly effective option that started as an accident has been to purposefully block hail at spots where you can either see or suspect a Shatter approaching, which will allow you to block the Shatter since you’re already in block stun.
This can be preferred since jumping isn’t always an option while trying to move in on Glacius.
LP Conqueror or Shadow Conqueror are your only invincible options, but in general I wouldn’t try flying through hail with it if you can help it.
Heavy swings are best reserved for sudden deflect opportunities anyways, or cr.HP if he jumps and tries to poke you of course. Otherwise if you can spot a Liquidize attempt, Backstab crossup can mess with him, or a deflect (but you obviously have to be sure about doing this).
I too have been grinding my teeth fighting ol’ Shago, but it’s still not as bad as the Glacius or Omen matchups in my opinion. The ones who try to pizza cutter all day aren’t a big deal, but the ones who run away shooting fireballs and tele-sliding are a headache. My best advice for the slide is to block (easier said than done, obviously) or jump and punish with something on the way down. If he tele-slides he’ll generally fly perfectly into j.MP or j.MK territory. Only go for j.HK if you’re a snipe show.
Otherwise it’s just a matter of memorizing his teleport patterns and habits, which super sucks but it has to be done.
If need be it’s completely legit to pop Instinct while he’s above you, dash out and Conqueror him into oblivion if you’ve got some Instinct combos in your arsenal (I highly recommend getting some. I can share what I have).
Against Shago you have to fight tooth and nail to keep up with him, and you’re definitely on the right track by using your kicks, but you should always be using your kicks regardless of the matchup, especially HK.
Same way as Shago’s. Omen’s slide has a larger recovery than Shago’s from what I’ve seen (I don’t know why you have to press a button on Shago immediately as he hits you, as the discrepancy is not intuitive at all, but thems the breaks). If you block and grab punish you’ll avoid being hit by any fireballs he may be towing. In fact, grabbing is an essential part of Tusk’s game precisely to avoid junk on the screen from several characters.
Spine Splitter (b+HP) will eat projectiles with the explosion, as will Air Shadow Skull Splitter. The latter of which is only to be used with Instinct mode, or for the kill.
I’ll admit, I haven’t gotten much use out of Skull Splitter almost at all because I keep forgetting it’s there; there’s simply no time to begin deploying it whenever someone is harassing you with projectiles. Keits’ demo against Jago was one thing, but his fireballs are the least problematic out of literally anyone else vs Tusk. I also find if you do destroy projectiles this way, they’ve already created more by the time you’ve finished anyways.
This in particular is an aspect about both Glacius and Omen that kind of cheese me off; both characters were presented as needing time and room to set these things up, but unfortunately said setup is guaranteed from what I’ve seen. Since characters can move and jump between rounds these guys can bust a move away from Tusk before the match starts and get all their fireballs on the screen before you can input your first Immortal Spirit.
And about Immortal Spirit: Get to know all three distances of this move. Being able to cancel the run itself into its followups is nice, but there are times where you don’t want to dash the longest distance, and instead want to only go part way and be free for a big boot or other such setup. Knowing what strength of dash to use is a big part of navigating through Galaga fights.
Her daggers can be a pain if thrown from the air, but if she wants to toss them from the ground it’s an easy command dash underneath, and now she’s forced to reach that corner to get it back. Air daggers can still be avoided with Immortal Spirit, however, you just have to be ballsy about it.
If she likes to jump around a lot just smack her; despite being slow, Tusk is actually pretty good at controlling the air around him.
That’s all I’ve got for the moment. Hope it’s useful for you, and all our brothers.