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[+R] Kliff General Gameplay Thread

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Since discussion is so quiet, why not talk about matchups? In the general sense I mean. I'm pretty wary of assigning numbers to anything because I feel I'm soooooo far from playing Kliff optimally, and because I don't have the breadth of matchup experience, but it couldn't hurt to chit-chat about how matchups are going. I guess it's more of a learning curve rating than a matchup rating. I think May might be even, for example, but damn is it a lot of getting stunned while you try to figure out what's going on.

very easy: :SO::OS::AB:

easy: :AN::BR::JA:

medium: :AX::DI::FA::IN::JO::JU: :KY:

hard: :MA::MI:

very hard: :PO:

not enough experience: :BA::CH::ED::RO::SL::TE::VE::ZA:

I've been practicing vs PO a lot recently and I feel that's the best way to really improve. It's like training with weights on, everything else seems so much easier afterwards.

Edited by lofo

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Ok, might as well compare and discuss. Sorry I haven't replied earlier, I dunno why I keep missing the new posts here...

Very easy :

easy : :IN:

medium : :SO::JO::FA: :KY: :BA::SL:

hard : :AX::OS::AN::JU::PO::VE::JA:

very hard : :TE::ZA::CH:

can't say : :DI::AB::RO::ED::BR::MI::MA:

As for why... most of these are based off personal experience, and not necessarily having trouble fighting the players, but just lots of feelings of "man if these tools were in the hands of an even stronger player I'd be in a lot of trouble".

Sol : I just feel like Sol has to play differently against Kliff. Neither character can approach the other easily, and even in pokes... Kliff has the longer range, but it comes with hurtboxes, so smart use of Gunflame and VV shuts down a lot of poking, because those counterhits are scary. Sol's 2d is also good at this, I think. Sol's mixup is also part command grab, so 214p is that much riskier.

Order Sol : Very hard to get him off you once he's there, that's normal, but he doesn't have much to worry about from Kliff. Gunblaze ruins a lot of things, and makes it very hard to approach him with our slow air movement. Rock It is just hard to fight, it's risky to call out, you miss and get CH, or you just block it and he's plus and you're in trouble. He has a lot of other good tools, maybe I'm just approaching this matchup wrong.

Anji : Fuujin and guard points... pretty risky to fight this character from far. If I'm not mistaken, Anji has good matchups against Potemkin and Faust, who are somewhat similar to Kliff in their neutral plan (oh god please no one quote me on this), in the sense that they use long range pokes.

Jam : Her 2s is hard to fight. It's also hard to keep her out because puffball can ruin your day. One CH and you're probably dizzy. Her parry also makes offense really annoying because safejump into mixup is nowhere near as reliable.

Axl : I'd mostly put him as Hard because he requires a lot of patience to fight, you need to alter your gameplan a lot, and there are also a lot of situations he can put you in that are very hard to escape. For example, when your back is near the corner, and he's outside of f.s range, doing Rensengeki. Eventually you get chipped out, but you still need to be really patient.

Potemkin : Not as bad as I initially thought. I feel like you fight him evenly at neutral, maybe even having a little advantage, but the risk reward on everything is rigged. It's hard to take advantage of a knockdown because he has so many good defensive options, and once he gets in it can be over. Anyways, just keep him out, contest his space, don't get pushed to the corner. If he jumps he has a hard time dealing with 623H (look out for clash with his j.d and do it again), and he has a hard time getting in on the ground because f.s 2h gatling kills hammerfall and has a lot of range.

Justice : Really feels like Justice wins at neutral. Once you get in, her counter makes your safejump no longer safe. She also has a reversal super that can be frc'd, and a forcebreak to get out if you give her space. Assuming once you get to her she has a lot of meter. It's not a one sided matchup, 2H is really good here, but I can't put this one on the same level as the other medium matchups.

Ino : Air pokes are good against her, dodge is very useful to beat stroke the big tree and dives. Fast jump startup means you can use airthrow defensively here. She also dies very fast.

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Sol: Such an easy matchup. Sweep and jab are amazing, smart pushblock into punish and backdash into punish just rips his offense apart. DP is not that scary since f.S and P-roar can't be DPed, and unless he's YOLO GVing or something there's not much to worry about (and P-roar stuffs that for full combo). If he whiffs a DP, mega combo time for Kliff Damage. Really the only thing Sol has going for him is that it's somewhat of a nuisance to jump over gunflame, because if Kliff tries to hit with j.S or j.H, the hurtbox will go into the GF and get CH.

HOS: I find him pretty easy to zone out. Everything he has is just so stubby. He's good when he finally gets in, I guess, but that's true of all his matchups. f.S and P-roar just rock him. Anecdotal, I know, but Level5-Chan opted not to play this matchup against me at CECC, so I think he agrees with me. ;)

Anji: Fuujin is pretty easy to play around, Kliff has lots of active frames on his stuff. Is he's good at psychic guardpoints, that's scary I guess, but I generally play this rather defensively so as to not give him much room for them. I don't have much experience with this matchup, but so far I havn't seen anything that worries me.

Jam: Not really scared of her. Puffballs are brutal on hit, so play around those hard. If you read she's going to do one, they are slow enough for a psychic stun slap into monster combo, so she shouldn't be mashing on them. Make sure you stay close enough that she doesn't get cute with raw cards and be careful of parry gaps in your strings (notably air strings). Any time you touch her, you can do monster damage, because every combo route works on Jam. Get a midscreen throw? 50% damage into corner knockdown. Otherwise this is just another matchup where Kliff super speed pokes are tough for them to deal with.

Axl: I'm not that scared of rensen. If you're kind of close and he doesn't FRC, drill will punish it. If you're far, you have more time to handle it, so IAD j.S over it. Chains are kind of annoying given Kliff's mobility and catch counters can wreck sloppy offense, so I could see this being rated as hard. Honestly one of the hardest parts of this matchup for me is getting around his unblockable. When I try to reaction jump it, I get tagged on the feet on the way up due to Kliff's floaty jump. Blah. I need to experiment with superjumping it or something.

Potemkin: I don't know what miracles you're pulling off, because I play this matchup a lot and my record is still generally 2-8 or something. At any range closer than the tip of f.S, he rocks you on hit or trade. Random Giganter means instant stun. Sweep combos don't work on him. Everything he does is huge damage. Heat Knuckle beats air pokes from half screen. He's functionally immune to stun. Honestly, it's hard to think of anything that could make this matchup worse. Maybe I'll try to get some recorded footage of this matchup so we can talk about it.

Justice: My experience is that it's dead even as long as you don't drop combos. I guess that could qualify as hard, but any time I lose this I know exactly why. The big thing about this matchup is that your combos need to be on point, because she definitely wins the neutral game, so you don't get many chances to make things happen. When you DO hit her, though, it's Combo Video Time. Meter is pretty easy to collect in this matchup, to the point that I'll hit a full bar and say out loud, "Ok, here I come! Don't get touched!" If she wants to play safe she often has to FRC her missiles to avoid reaction R-Roar.

I-no: Oh god, I hate this matchup. Kliff's mobility makes notes hard to dodge, and her double airdash is hard to catch. If you ever block it's mixups forever. Stance is weak vs her mixups because

Setups/baits

214P (aka. Two Steps Forward, counter-stance): Don't let him think this is a free ticket out of your pressure/oki. When your hover normal wiffs through him, you want to be option-selecting a throw with c.S or 6P. Every time he performs the stance in a round, it becomes more and more likely to fail, and, if that happens, your hover normal > c.S/6P will naturally connect instead and you'll get your BnB. Sometimes you want to be safe-jumping, in which case I recommend something like: [hover j.S (hold block) > (1K >) 6P+H...]. If you end up blocking his chop follow up, punish hard before he recovers and throws you. If he stances but decides to wait, you'll (wiff 2K and) throw him before he can recover to throw you.

Vs her dives I don't usually stance them, I could try that I guess. My regular I-No opponent rarely uses StBT because he knows it's risky, I think.

Surprised you rate Venom as hard. In my experience he does some stuff, then you CH him out of whatever with your amazingly fast huge pokes, then you Combo Video him for all of the damage and he never gets out of your post-combo pressure because he's Venom.

My limited experience of Kliff vs Slayer has not made me afraid of him. +R Slayer is a wimp and Kliff pokes are great.

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I think the Sol/Kliff matchup is pretty close to even. Sol has good defence against Kliff so he doesn't just scoop to the corner pressure, which means Kliff has a hard time just blowing you out (also Lofo tells me that Sol is hard to combo?), but from the other side, it's hard to do a real combo to Kliff that also knocks down, because he's so floaty, so it's rare that Sol actually gets to lock Kliff out from playing. That means the game often returns to the neutral phase, where Kliff definitely has an edge with his huge pokes (your sweep is ridiculous. it outshines sol's sweep so much. damn), but Sol's new Fafnir and FB Sidewinder tools let him convert in the neutral game much better than he used to. A simple f.S 5H Fafnir confirm forces Kliff to either guess or retreat after he wiggles out, which lets Sol get some momentum started.

edit: lofo tells me that actually sol is easy to combo, i misheard

Edited by sagacious

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The more I play, the better Kliff's 5P gets. It's fast, mashable, and beats all sorts random stuff (mappa? HOS fafnir? V dolphin??), has decent range and speed, and is a generally good "get off me." Chain it to c.S at close and sweep at far. It also whiff-cancels into 6P so you don't need to worry about them IADing over you mashing it or whatever.

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Yeah same here. When it's a guaranteed punish, you can go straight into drill too when they're too far for c.s.

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Hmm, I don't normally find myself punishing with ground hit 5P, but it sounds like it could be useful there.

Was just fiddling around and found this string that only works vs ABA. (far hit) 5P sweep 2S S-roar [FRC dash vault(hits) 2S S-roar]. It can be tough to get 5P c.S to connect vs her so this seems like it might be useful.

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I like to meaty with a safejump into fuzzy guard when available (generally off plunge or j.drill knockdown), taunt when I can chain into it (like after sweep), or P-roar otherwise. The P-roar can get really meaty with a good knockdown (like corner S-roar), enough that you can dash in after it and 2K with no gap, or dash in for another P-roar or an overhead or whatever.

I generally wouldn't use a meaty charged normal because they are slow enough to be blocked on reaction (unless they're mashing reversal really hard, lol) and the followup options on block are mostly limited to cancelling into P-roar, and at that point I'd rather just meaty with the P-roar itself for better frame advantage.

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So...

how do you guys feel about delayed normals (6P, 6H, 2H) after scoring knockdown?

Is there a reason to do delayed normals as opposed to meaty 236p, taunt, mixup, or a safejump? Seems like they might work well as an occasional gimmick, would have to try.

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I sometimes try it when my opponent's backed in the corner. I'm surprised how often this works (not that often, but damn does it feel good when it does), especially if my opponent tries to jump over 6H.

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When doing general corner pressure I will sometimes do 6H into P-roar if I read they might jump. Generally they block it in time, but they need to FD it if they block, which will take out a big chunk of their meter, and it's still plus on block. If they miss FDing, it does a bunch of damage, cool. It's less of a commitment than j.P/airthrow/623H since opponents tend to respect 6H and just block it if they're waiting in the corner, then the P-roar resets the situation to your favour.

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pochp and I were discussing j.D and its FRC a while back. I finally got around to testing it. It doesn't get rid of the landing recovery (wtf), though you can FD cancel it, and locks your inputs for a long time during the drop. I seriously went up a couple screens with j.D-roar spam then dropped while holding turbo-P and could barely get it out before landing, it's ridiculous. It's basically the j.D with all its drawbacks and not even a hitbox. I guess you can keep the momentum while blocking? Still seems like a contender for most pointless FRC in the game.

edit - Lol ok actually I made a mistake testing, it doesn't lock your inputs that long. Might still be usable for something.

edit - Also I'm not sure now that you can FD cancel the landing. I tried it again and can't get it, and am thinking I was mistaken before. I am pretty bad at testing I guess. :sweatdrop:

Edited by lofo

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Yeah I thought j.D frc was neat... until I tried to mash buttons out of its recovery. Just awful.

The only real use I can see of it is, if your opponent crosses you up (either in the air or crossunder) so you're facing away from them and you are out of jumps, you can do j.D frc to fling yourself across the map to avoid a possibly dangerous antiair situation. But even then... 63214S has a really nice hitbox for clashing with antiairs so meh

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Yeah I thought j.D frc was neat... until I tried to mash buttons out of its recovery. Just awful.

The only real use I can see of it is, if your opponent crosses you up (either in the air or crossunder) so you're facing away from them and you are out of jumps, you can do j.D frc to fling yourself across the map to avoid a possibly dangerous antiair situation. But even then... 63214S has a really nice hitbox for clashing with antiairs so meh

Yeah I've used it for that a bit lately in matches when I'm really high up and can't tell which side is which and don't want to risk accidental j.214S. I'm not sure it's actually "good" though, even if it works. Maybe a waste of meter?

Also I made an error testing and it doesn't lock your inputs on the way down, so maybe it could still have applications for mixups, hmm. But the landing recovery really limits what it can do. You could FRC into more overheads on the way down, but that doesn't really accomplish anything and you can't threaten a low/throw due to the recovery. It really is terrible. :(

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Yeah I've used it for that a bit lately in matches when I'm really high up and can't tell which side is which and don't want to risk accidental j.214S. I'm not sure it's actually "good" though, even if it works. Maybe a waste of meter?

Also I made an error testing and it doesn't lock your inputs on the way down, so maybe it could still have applications for mixups, hmm. But the landing recovery really limits what it can do. You could FRC into more overheads on the way down, but that doesn't really accomplish anything and you can't threaten a low/throw due to the recovery. It really is terrible. :(

Not at my game right now, but if you do a j.D FRC into a move and the move is blocked (ie. falling j.P), do you still have the ridiculous landing recovery of the FRC or do you get a more "normal" recovery of blocked j.P?

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Not at my game right now, but if you do a j.D FRC into a move and the move is blocked (ie. falling j.P), do you still have the ridiculous landing recovery of the FRC or do you get a more "normal" recovery of blocked j.P?

Probably not...

Testing this right now in training mode:

So say, I FRC his j.D then I use something like air Skull Crusher or Limb Severer. It'd kill whatever momentum he had with j.D and Kliff falls at regular speed. I could also dash forward/back or double-jump and Kliff would fall at regular speed. It'd likely be the same for air normals, even though it may not appear so since j.D gets him to the ground really fast. And remember that for the most part you keep whatever momentum you had from an FRC'd attack.

EDIT: I was testing this with the dummy set to Jump state and Guard On. Jump state so I can mash j.P after I FRC'd his sj.D (FRC off a normal jump brings Kliff too close to the ground)

Edited by Nephinel

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j.D FRC into a normal can cancel the recovery on landing : http://youtu.be/vHpx2rtuopk ... sometimes? It doesn't always cancel it. It seems kind of glitchy. So its use is probably the same as j.D, which baits certain moves such as anti airs, but in a safer way, except I wouldn't rely on it because of its glitchy nature.

I tried FDing. In general, if you FD while falling, once you touch the ground, you'll still be in FD. If you do j.D FRC FD, as soon as you touch the ground, the FD disappears for a small period of time before activating again... so there's still recovery. I also of course tried to press buttons when landing, which didn't come out. I also tried j.D FRC airdash, which has landing recovery, and even j.D FRC airdash j.s j.h : couldn't get a normal to come out on landing... sometimes.

My conclusion : don't use it, j.D knocks down on CH which is already enough. You can also combo j.D 236236H on normal hit (so like, j.D 236236H FRC 214K 2S 236S... whatever near the corner) so if you're looking for reward, that's probably a much more reliable way to get it.

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How well does IAD j.ksh work on characters with invincible uppercuts?

Robo-Ky did not let Kliff get away with doing j.ksh as a blockstring.

IAD j.ksh was uppercuted between an IB'ed j.s and j.h

Should IAD j.ksh be used differently against characters with invincible uppercuts? Or not used at all in certain matchups?

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It's a pretty frustrating weakness. Kliff's air options are annoying in how much commitment they require, but I think you can still make IAD strings work. The obvious alt strings are IAD j.SH (skip the j.K so if they are waiting to see j.KS to IB into DP, this will strain their reaction time) or something like IAD j.K(P)KS (P whiff-cancel, still need to play around with this to make sure it works properly, but the idea is to hide the gap after the j.K). IAD j.K(P) is also a decent whiff into throw set-up, so it's a decent string for hiding that.

There's more than just DPs that cause this issue btw. Jam's parries are of particular note.

Edited by lofo

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If my opponent's shown me he's going to DP that string, I just try to avoid using it, it's a risk I don't need to take. I should really try those j.p whiff strings lofo wrote. The only string I'll alternate with is j.k delay j.s land bait dp or whatever, which just changes the gap's place, but isn't that safe either.

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I can't agree with giving up the string really. Kliff's IAD string options are rather limited and IADing is a key part of his pressure. I think it's just too important to give up. P-roar traps are nice but you need more than that and Kliff's neutral game isn't strong enough to win off that alone. Against slower reversals you might be able to do the j.S later so that you can land in time to block it. Not sure how reliable that is.

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Jam's parries are of particular note.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I'm a little surprised people don't slashback so often against Kliff.

Thanks lofo. I'll keep those strings in mind.

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medium: :DI:

I've come to change my mind on this. Initially I felt that Kliff's damage could make up for the difficulty getting in, but it's just not enough. Dizzy's extreme mobility makes her hard to catch, and all of her summons are extra hard for Kliff to deal with. His low mobility makes dodging knives, bubbles, and icicles a chore, and fish can make swinging his sword quite difficult. Worse, his big moves have very high levels, so tagging a fish puts him in a very long hitstop. Her summons are just too fast to catch with a full screen Reflex Roar (why is its travel time so damn slow?)

If you get a far knockdown such that you can't quite meaty and try to IAD in, she can blow you back to full screen with wake up Imperial Ray. Oh and she's immune to air throws, so you can't snatch her out of the air into death combo. Plus she has all her normal strengths like amazing oki game and Kliff's mediocre close defense makes it rather tough to get out. The whole thing feels like I'm playing a fragile Potemkin without flick, slidehead, or heavenly pot buster.

In conclusion,

3916_b3ee_500.jpeg

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