Kliff vs Justice

[pochp]

Discuss the matchup here. I'll add information to this post when I can get around to it. Not all the matchups are represented in my local scene, and the character is new, so please contribute!

Matchup can be frustrating sometimes, walk forward, jump, superjump are decent options. Taunt is useless at neutral, dies to her fireballs. 236236H is your best bet to beat fireballs, if not just get in slowly, you will take a lot of damage in the process, either from chip or bad decisions, but there's not much you can do about it. Both characters' pokes have good range too so you need to respect justice even once you get close. Somehow 2H seems to work very well for me. Justice's wakeup speed is kinda deceptive, and you have to be careful of her counter, but luckily it loses to lows and projectiles, so taunt oki or 236p oki is recommended.

Also, be careful of the Micheal Blade super, goes very far, fully invincible, and can be FRC'd. FB dash also needs to be kept in mind, as they have some invicibility. The air one is especially dangerous because it's right when you feel like you can start poking without being afraid of a bomb.

I feel like 236s at neutral is not terrible in this matchup, has anyone else tried this? It goes far and can hit justice out of fireball startup.

[Braver]

If you land in front of Justice after a blocked 214K, you can get grabbed for free. Maybe because she's so tall? Or maybe this is universal?

Not many good ways to approach Justice. She has tons of great GET-OFF-ME moves and GET-OFF-ME supers.

I don't like bursting her away too far. It is a major pain trying to get back in. I would only burst if her back is near the corner so that she is stays close to me.

Man. This is a tough match.

On a side note:

Does blocking Justice's tiger shots in the air gives back your other jump options??

ex) If I double jump then air block Justice's tiger shot in the air, I can double jump or air dash after.

Or maybe I'm imagining things

[pochp]

If you get a chance, try 236s at neutral to call out missiles, I wonder how it would do against other Justice players. Walking forward has worked better than jumping for me so far, you can 214p to avoid chip damage once you get close to the missiles, though my experience in the matchup is kind of limited so I'm probably wrong. But yeah it's not an easy one.

About 214k, I feel like against other characters, you can get thrown after it's blocked only if you space it really bad, but the taller the character, the most likely that is going to happen...

Yeah you get air options back after air blocking iirc. Can't test atm, but wiki confirms it : http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=Defense_(GGACR)#Air_Block

[Braver]

If you get a chance, try 236s at neutral to call out missiles, I wonder how it would do against other Justice players.

That works well but I wouldn't do it if I didn't have meter to FRC it or if then had 50% meter to full screen super for a punish.

Walking forward has worked better than jumping for me so far, you can 214p to avoid chip damage once you get close to the missiles, though my experience in the matchup is kind of limited so I'm probably wrong.

I gave up on walking since the upward-falling tiger shot would be a real pain and if it exploded behind you. It can end up pushing you towards Justice for a 50/50 mix up with an overhead or low. I'll definitely have to experiment more with walking forward in this match.

Jumping sucks too since Justice can set the tiger shots up in a way where you get pushed towards her for a chance to air unblock you. Makes me waste all my meter and health just to get to her :<

Haven't tried taunt on okizemi yet. Maybe we can get a few chances for instant overhead mixup if we force her to block it?

[lofo]

This matchup is weird. There isn't much high level footage of it, so it's more work for us to figure it out. When I first tried it, it seemed horrible, but eventually I got a bit better at it. Then the macro bug was discovered and our local Justice player was using that for a couple weeks until it was officially banned from everywhere worthwhile. I played against that a lot and learned more, and when I went back to playing against regular Justice it was like taking the weights off.

The most important thing in this matchup, IMO, is not letting her set the pace. When she's sitting on the other side of the screen dumping out hundreds of missiles it's easy to get flustered and make rash decisions. At that point you're giving her control and having to make guesses and she's favoured. To counteract this I play in the lamest way possible.

• Her meter gain is pretty weak if she does nothing but missile spam. Actually if she keeps doing it long enough she'll get a negative penalty, though it takes a pretty long time. In any case, not much tension pulse.
  
• When you block a missile, it's 4 (tightly packed) hits, so you can try to mash back during it to IB one of the later hits to build more meter.
  
• Once your tension pulse is up, you can build a lot of meter just walking forward, or even by wiggling back and forth. This is pretty key because it lets you build up to Reflex Roar effectively.
  
• If you stay on the ground and aren't at absolutely full screen, you mostly only need to worry about P-missiles, since Kliff is short enough to walk under the others. This means you have plenty of time to build that meter without taking too much chip damage by just walking and blocking P-missiles. It also means you can avoid burning meter on FD, which is crucial. Careful that you don't get in Michael Sword range, though.
  
• You still might want to jump in if you see a good opening. For example if she does a missile pattern like P,S,K, you can jump through the P/S gap and smack her while she's starting the K missile. If she gives you nice openings like this, you might as well take them. Just be careful not to leave yourself open going for this.
  
• If she insists on mashing out missiles before you have meter, S-roar is a decent call-out. I usually save it for when I'm really confident and don't FRC it, but FRC into 214K on hit is a pretty good way to get in and get started. I tend to save my meter for Reflex Roar, but S-roar FRC is a respectable anti-missile poke.
  
• Reflex Roar will beat missiles on reaction if she doesn't FRC, and she can't mash out lots of missiles and also FRC, both because of button restrictions and for lack of meter. The missile FRC is early enough in the move that I think you can even confirm she didn't FRC before you finish doing it. Once you get a hit with Reflex Roar, you can 214K to get in and it's Kliff time.
  

Once she wisens up to this strategy, Justice can't really zone you out, and you can take that control we wanted. Generally what I've seen at that level is that she'll make a P-missile and try to follow it in. She moves pretty slowly and it's hard for her to get close enough to really mix you up, so I havn't found this too scary.

General stuff

You'd think that P-roar would hit her through missiles, since it says it goes through projectiles in the frame data (like S-roar), but it doesn't seem to. I also seems to trade with Johnny's coin and gunflame, so I'm wondering if the frame data is wrong or I've misunderstood it or something.

214K is generally unsafe if you land really close and they IB. If they are somewhat tall it's even more unsafe. Vs Justice I don't even think she needs to IB. She even has an enormous throw range, so use it carefully.

For oki, I'm not that scared of her if I have a safejump. Her catch doesn't go active for 4 frames and if she doesn't FRC super Michael Blade you can sidestep it into D-slap. Her backdash is a bit annoying, but not as bad as Potemkin's. If you can't get a safejump, P-roar/taunt oki works fine.

If she does a random Michael Blade while you are walking, if you hold forward during the flash, you keep gaining meter as if you were walking forward during the time the flash is going. This seems to be a universal bug with walking and super flashes, but it's rarely useful.

Her FB dash is a nuisance. Not sure I know enough to talk about how to beat it yet.

Michael Sword is obnoxious. You can punish it with drill if she whiffs it, or sometimes beat it preemptively with drill. The best option against it is keep control of the range though. Her poor mobility helps here.

The Justice players I play against tend not to hit me with big combos, so I use my burst aggressively, either gold bursting or momentum blue-bursting.

[lofo]

Played this matchup some more last night.

For the opening game, Kliff sweep beats most of Justice's stuff, and Justice TK Michael Sword beats most of Kliff's stuff, including that sweep and backdash. Block is not bad vs it. She gets pushed to the corner and you're safe, then can punish with the tip of drill for a bit of damage and a knockdown unless she FDs out of the MS*. 6P clashes with it, then you can FD to block the second hit. f.S beats it clean and can score a CH into S-roar or 214K. I like the 214K combo better there, since it gives you room to pressure, even though it doesn't push her to the corner like the S-roar.

Justice can jump over sweep, but this loses to f.S too and if you block you can react to her jump-ins. Justice can also backdash the sweep, which puts her at a slight advantage in terms of frames against f.S and a large advantage vs sweep. This isn't too scary but block and react beats this too.

She has a variety of pokes that beat f.S, like 5K, f.S, Michael Sword, and catch counter, but all of these lose to sweep, though they are good vs Kliff's block due to pushback (cancel into Michael Sword). Of these, her 2S seems like it has the best payoff due to CH stagger on hit. Finally she can block low vs all of those Kliff options, which is low risk but doesn't really beat anything, since he can cancel into P-roar for frame advantage or is neutral in block vs block.

Final options

Kliff: sweep, f.S, block

Justice: TK Michael Sword, 2S, backdash, jump-in, block(weak)

edit - After playing with this strategy, I'm not sure f.S will beat start of round jump. Need to retest and maybe re-evaluate and edit.

*This is a really weird interaction. I can't figure out what is going on here or why it works the way it does. I don't know why she needs to FD for this to happen, it seems like she's on the ground.

-----

Unrelated to opening game, if she's pressuring you in the corner and cancelling into missiles, slap her with f.S. It might trade or she might FRC, but you only get hit by the missile once at worst, so it's not a big deal, and it keeps her from bullying you.

[lofo]

I've switched my opening mix to mostly sweep, 623H, block, with a little bit IAD j.K or f.S. I think there's no option she has that doesn't lose to one of sweep or 623H, and a bunch of stuff loses to both, so those are good to start off with, then block if you want to be cautious or IAD in if they start to get scared of your openings. I feel the opening is really important in this match because it can be the difference between getting in on meterless Justice and being pushed to fullscreen with missiles flying.

 

other random stuff

• You can poke with 2H to stop missiles or even safely detonate a missile. If you poke a missile with the tip, it will detonate and you'll get hit for a tiny bit of damage but not get knocked down or otherwise harmed. It's often worth the life to break her traps like this.
• You can dash under missiles and stop with 2P, it's useful when you don't want to dash the full length of his dash.
• You can instant overhead Justice into combo. j.KSH, just be sure to delay the j.H to get it to connect.