What to do against tusk overall?
Waiting for a miss on his sword attacks usualy wont let him in range for any starter, at middle range I can command grab but anke slicer wont land he has time to block, jump over or even re do the attack that will deflect me.
I went 20-50~against a friend today and any time I messed a single mixup on his wake up he would DP > DP > DP > Shadow DP to cash out, if he has instinct he can even continue, and there goes 40% damage with very low chance to break.
In neutral game if he opens up normaly it is very scary to break as one counter break will eat over 70% of my hp.
He can be way more agressive than thunder, his moves are safe in the mid range and one miss will punish you in a way Thunder would need two bars and two lockouts if not a counterbreak to keep damage on pair.
You overall gameplan in this MU is to be patient. That is the key to win that MU in my opinion.
You want to be outside of his s.HP range. Its a bit more than 1/2 screen, maybe 2/3. You can actually whiff punish a lot of his sword normals with HP Triplax. Just go into training mode and figure out the ranges it takes some time.
On block its pretty hard to punish him, but i have to do some more research on that. But making his moves whiff is probably the better option.
Since tusk is pretty slow and you normally stay far away from him you can use COTS pretty easy to give you more mobility/mixup options. One thing i noticed if you go for a crossup dash on his buttons you sometimes get hit on the other side aswell because the hitbox actually goes behind him.
You dont need to go for super long combos. Just take your 15-20% an back off to the safe range and let him come to you.
All other things you mentioned are more player than character related. If you know he goes for DP’s on wakeup, just block. Like i said being patient wins this match. Also keep an eye on his meter if you are scared for the DP, DP, Shadow DP cashout. A lot of tusks love to wakeup with sword normals aswell, because its a bit safer than DP, you can beat that with a meaty command throw.
Also his shadow sword linker is super easy to break, but then again when to go for breakers and counters is a player related thing and it all comes down to your ability how well you can read your opponent.
Thats pretty much all i could gather in this short period of time playing against tusk.
Hope that helps.
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Whenever he does a DP and then dunks you to the ground for a follow up, that’s an HP. That is definitely not a very low chance to break. Things get more complicated in instinct mode, but at least it runs out fast if that’s all he does.
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Yes thats how I had some success, now the break thing is the whole Tusk gameplay that makes breaking have to much risc, you may get a counter break for 70-80% or eat a 40-50% everytime, most of the fights that made me mad were the ones I did control the first round completely then by one single mistake (lockout or wiff) my whole life bar is gone then we are back to neutral with no effort.
Overall, I had to do 4-5 combos just like Goldbaum said to get his first life bar down safe but one or two from his side is a kill.
I tought Thunder was a top damage dealer but yeah…
Some of his normals hit you behind, his shoulder dash attack follows, the sword attack many times will hit you in the middle of the instinct dash as well. All his dp have priority over ours, shadow dp his has priority and wont trade at all.
Once he wiffed a c.hP I instinct>dash foward to be in range>ankle slicer (to hit low instead of mid) I got hit by his deflect from the second c.hP he just spammed in a row.