This topic is a spin-off from the “Useless moves and tech?” thread. Check it out if you’re interested…
Instead, the focus here is to highlight some interesting moves: normals, specials, combinations, etc. that your character has, but hardly or never gets recognized for.
I’ll start off with Jago…
I’d say crouching mk, but at this point, I feel like opponents watch out for it more and Jagos’ are more reluctant to utilize it as windkick has become sacrilege in the spirit of frames. So I’ll go with standing mp as it has decent range and is a good poking tool.
Grab > Shadow Endo. Definitely not the most obvious choice especially when arguing against damage and optimizing combos, but it does lend itself to one of the few options Jago has to force his opponent into a one-chance-break. It’s also amazing that a surprising amount of opponents don’t expect it during Jago’s instinct. Generally speaking, the opponent will take Jago’s offense and block the double endokukens, but a dash-cancel into grab opens up the opponent to a mixup.
Light endo during instinct. This is amazing as it keeps pressure going by allowing the second endokuken to take its time to reach the opponent allowing Jago to maintain pressure. I also find that this allows for greater potential of health regeneration as it avoids the risk of being combo broken and reseting the neutral position. Here is a video time-stamped at 27m31s showcasing this in a real match between Nate and Bass.
Using Maya axe kick as a ground overhead. The move is so slow that 90% of the time is blocked by the opponents.
But I found that if you cross-up your opponent with 2 yellow pips (tele daggers), enmity strike in air and then axe kick, it can become a little tricky to block, specially if you fake it and go for a low.
Honestly, I think this move should be faster on startup like other overhead moves I see in the game.
After a web cling ender, you can perform easy meaty set-ups using cl.mp. After whiffing cl.mp, you can perform cl.hp for a meaty counterhit, on block it provides + frames advantage to continue pressure with, and on whiff to catch slowish backdashes with M.Blade Demon. You can also replace cl.hp with a throw since you’re close enough.
In instinct you can also add a meaty web and jump over them for a meaty cross-up or simply neutral jump for a fake cross-up.
And all of this is if they quickstand. On slow rise you have more than enough time to change to a different vortex.
Shisakos light cross up slash. It does poor damage, doesn’t lead to anything, and is unsafe on block. But it’s unreactable and has the same speed and range of her st.hp. Simply throwing it out every now and then in neutral gets under people’s skin so badly. Especially people that can react to the medium and heavy versions. It makes them lose the security of simply down backing when they want to play it safe.
Good info!!! I actually never thought about that. In truth one of my biggest problems I have with Sadira and my main weakness is that I rely TOOOOOO much on her gimmicks versus her solid tools outside of jumps. This is one thing I’ve been working on, is to use her normals more often to get in as people that know how to shut down her air game, shut me down.
