Sword usage strategies

[Phrekwenci]

Hey folks, I decided to break off from the main question thread to try to get some opinions & insight.  The main point of this thread is to discuss at what point during a match should you have which swords?  Is it matchup dependent (eg. have both swords deployed against Pot and watch him sweat) and/or do you have both, one or no swords equipped throughout the match.  I think we can all agree to try and have the swords deployed when you get the opponent in the corner but for instance midscreen what's your gameplan?

[Sakaku]

It's match-up and momentum dependent, at least for me. I've played my fair share against Sol, May, Elphelt, Faust, Pot and Millia so I can only comment on these.

As a general rule of thumb I keep my S sword and have my H sword deployed. This allows me to zone them while still being able to poke, even though I'm still not the biggest fan of her f.S.

Depending on how agressive the Faust player is, I either do the same strategy or try to nail him down with both swords deployed. Same goes for Pot. For anything else I'll just leave this post here I made in the General Discussion thread.

edit: after fighting Millia more, I'm not really sure if keeping swords is the best idea. Whiffing one f.S will get you punished so hard where keeping it doesn't do that much.

 

Her neutral game is ... strange. It depends on who you're fighting against tbh. Against mobile characters like Millia and Chipp it might not be the wisest to deploy a sword randomly. They can just run past it and maybe even punish you. Batako keeps his swords against Sol most of the time unless he scores a knockdown f.e. Just watch match videos of Batako or Karinchu (who both have a completely different style) against a certain character and see how their gameplan goes.

As far as deploying swords goes, at least for me, is to never deploy both of them at the same time (unless you're fighting someone slow). Smart opponents will just react if it's either a 6S or 6HS sword and then dash/airdash accordingly in order to punish you. That leads to another point: Deploying swords will only cover one space next to the opponent. They won't just sit there, waiting for the sword to hit them. If you set the S sword be prepared to stuff them from the air and if you set the H sword, be prepared to counter poke with f.S. If your opponent is really jump happy whenever you set your swords, you can IAD j.P. This move is ridiculously good and depending on how you hit your opponent, even lets you start a j.8D loop leading into her sword oki. Setting swords with YRC is also a thing, making the deployments much safer.

Poking with f.S is okay I'd say. The move looks great but in reality the hitbox is smaller than it looks, the recovery isn't the best and the start-up is slowish as well, making it very hard to get a poke game going against chars like Ky, Faust, El (her f.S is what Ram's f.S was supposed to be imo, lol), May and maybe Leo.