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MikelAL93

[CP/EX] Kagura Mutsuki - Player Critique and Self Improvement thread

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Relax friend, the Kagura threads aren't as active as you think they are. There's a total of 5 or 6 us that post, I think.

 

The first thing that stood out most to me is your confirms and combos. You got a lot hits that you either didn't confirm correctly or did a really poor combo on, like 

here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YomFrRo5owA#t=32

here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YomFrRo5owA#t=34

here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YomFrRo5owA#t=115

and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YomFrRo5owA#t=192 among a lot of other places. The combos are really easy to fix, just gotta grind them out in the lab and use them in play. Be sure to go through our combo and video section here, they should help out greatly. The confirms half will be remedied as you continue to play the character, but you can practice that in the lab too.

 

The other elephant I see is that you are constantly using your stance moves at neutral. You would jump way into the air just to go for a stance move, and end up getting hit anyways. Our C moves may not be the greatest neutral tools in the world, but in most situations they are better than our stances. Try to start using more Orbs and C moves at neutral. Once you have them under pressure or oki, it will become a lot safer to use your stances. Also, stop using the command grab at neutral, it has a bunch of startup and is really short on top of bearing minimal rewards midscreen; there's just no way for Kagura to use it at neutral effectively.

 

While I'm talking about things not to use at neutral, this would be somewhere near the top of that list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YomFrRo5owA#t=203 This just isn't a good idea, and I think I can leave it to you to figure out why. No matter how many times your friend actually gets hit by it, it will never really be a good idea.

 

According to your video's description this was day one from a month ago, so I don't know how much improvement happened from then and now, but this is what I would recommend from that video.

 

 

 

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Helpful advice

Thank you for the feedback. While the footage is from a month ago, I do still have some of these as really bad habits.

Ive pretty much removed 28D from my gameplan unless its a combo finisher, as well as not using the grab at Neutral. Ive been practicing more optimal combos.

 

Ive never been too good at confirming, but I have seen improvement from then. Because I play netplay alot, I run into a lot of people who simply don't respect Kagura's pressure, so I find it even harder to enforce stuff like 6A and confirm said moves.

 

Ive also been quite fond of using j.C to get in lately, but I fear I may be over relying on it, Though, outside of that, 6A & DP, I dont know any other way to control air space.

 

And last but not least, Ive been ending my stuff in the usual 2DB > B Orb Oki. Honestly, Im a little sad I didnt do this sooner.

And A orbs in Neutral.

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Thank you for the feedback. While the footage is from a month ago, I do still have some of these as really bad habits.

Ive pretty much removed 28D from my gameplan unless its a combo finisher, as well as not using the grab at Neutral. Ive been practicing more optimal combos.

 

Ive never been too good at confirming, but I have seen improvement from then. Because I play netplay alot, I run into a lot of people who simply don't respect Kagura's pressure, so I find it even harder to enforce stuff like 6A and confirm said moves.

 

Ive also been quite fond of using j.C to get in lately, but I fear I may be over relying on it, Though, outside of that, 6A & DP, I dont know any other way to control air space.

 

And last but not least, Ive been ending my stuff in the usual 2DB > B Orb Oki. Honestly, Im a little sad I didnt do this sooner.

And A orbs in Neutral.

 

Have you ever tried literally using A orb after most or all 5C/2C's in neutral? It's a really good thing that I used to take for granted.

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Have you ever tried literally using A orb after most or all 5C/2C's in neutral? It's a really good thing that I used to take for granted.

Late reply on my part, but in the video there, I kept trying to use B Orb after C moves. I guess I should switch it to A orbs then, leaves less of a gap.

 

On the other hand, ever soince the 1.1 update, I need to know how to 6A now lol. Its just like Jin's now ._.

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@Kaido All comments should be taken with a grain of salt since that was netplay and lag/delay could impact your gameplay.

Ease up on 6DC, this Celica was letting you get away with it but constant usage is predictable and able to be punished by most of the cast of it whiffs.

Despite Celica having a projectile herself the opponent never used it, you could've gotten more use of [4]6A and B orb to cover your approach or force your opponent to come to you where you can catch airdashes with 6C.  Also get more used to delaying the A orb after 2DB when the opponent is going to just delay their wake-up to avoid the immediate orb.

As far as combos go, Kagura has changed a great deal in the corner so I'm not gonna be critical on that since this is your first day 2.0 Kagura.  On that note however...not getting good punishes off of CH 6DC is something to just lab time so you can get the most off the wall bounce.  CH 6DC > 6C > 6DA > 3C > 6DC > 2DB is a basic punish that should give you good damage and be easy to do in netplay.

As far as your mix-ups, the opponent was just crouch blocking and seemed to go for reversals when she had meter available.  5B>Delayed B can catch people attempting to mash normals or jump while still leaving you with the ability to jump on block or use 5C > [4]6A to keep pressure.  5BB>3C>2DC isn't airtight and IB'ing some parts can allow reversal options when there normally aren't.  When you force an opponent to block orb oki you can do the following mix-up options:

2A > 5B (basic low hitconfirm if they stand up after blocking 2A, also 5B is neutral on block before IB)

2A > 6A (Gatling option, +5 on hit, slightly minus on block but only punishable with IB, forces crouch on hit)

2A > throw (Tick throw)

2A > 2B > 5B (Double low hitconfirm)

2A > delayed 5B (more useful when the opponent respects 6A and assumes you standing up is going to be the overhead)

Learn where Kagura has gaps in strings to bait out reversals and (if your opponent is smart) will be less willing to throw them out in what they think is a safe bet.

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Hey All,

 

As I'm trying to take BB a bit more seriously now that Kagura improved a lot in this version, I figured I would post here requesting some critique.

 

Vs Jin 

 

Vs Azrael

 

Vs Koko

 

Some things I noted rewatching my own videos,

 

-sometimes I 6DC a bit too predictably

-I do a few drive strings a little too often, usually things that end in 5DA into backdash, which I get blown up for a few times.

- I feel like I crutch on j.c a little too hard. I think I use it mostly because I don't like the feel of committing to such huge ground pokes like 5c/2c all the time

- I drop 2da > CT a loooot in these sets. But I've been grinding it and feel like it's getting more consistent after this past weekend.

- sometimes I autopilot old kagura stuff still like 2da > 6da and die for it

- I find that I'm not always holding charges when I need them in combos, so I get stuff like 2DA > 5DA > nothing sometimes

-I get hit low a couple times for trying to flashkick in true blockstrings - I should be looking for bigger gaps

- I should charge anti air flashkick more, as I think I let people approach from the air too much

- should pressure more with fireballs and frametraps rather than just going straight to drive moves. I started doing it this weekend with pretty ok results. just stuff like 2a 5bb (4)6a and sometimes throwing in c normals too.  Helps break up the standard pressure and vary it up so it's harder to just guess/react to predictable drive strings.

 

I was also learning some matchup specific stuff in some of these sets. Got blown up hard by not respecting koko 3c enough, and after more sets, I don't feel like kagura has an answer to it really. you stay on the ground, she can do max range 3c 22a 3c 3c 22a  3c 3c 3c as much as she wants, because it's not negative enough to 2c her back, and if you jump, she still has good anti airs, or a lightning trap covering her from your approach.

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Koko's 3C primarily will check attempts to [4]6A or 6DC to start an approach.  The move does have recovery on whiff so you can bait it and then IAD j.C when she does it to check you at that range.

As for the lightning traps you just need to resist the desire to want to approach with a drive move because unless you actually hit her doing something the trap will go off and you will eat a combo.  If she tries to do this full screen just throw one of your fireballs to at least control the horizontal space and wait out the trap because even the B version goes off after a certain amount of time. 

Now side notes in regards to Koko.  On wake-up 5B can check multiple meterless options that she has because all of them have more recovery than 5B has on whiff.  5BB can be done if she backdashes or 22C's because the follow-up B does not come out on whiff.  Test it out in training mode to see how that combined with [4]6A oki will force her to block.  Another note if you are willing is to ODR the first hit of her 6B into [4]1236C as you'll invul through the second hit and I don't think she can do anything from that on whiff.

Outside of that I would advise more use 2A when starting block strings because 2A allows gatling into 5B / 2B / 6A and you can stagger 5B > B more than you think and even on block still jump or 5C and toss [4]6A if they block.  You generally had good blocks except with 3C because you either didn't know its range well enough or that it was faster than you could 2C as a poke.
 

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Sorry, I guess I forgot to thank you for the previous critique, so Thanks! I've tried to make a few updates to how I was playing previously.

 

And I'm back with a bit more!

 

I did a recent FT5 with our local Haku, and while I feel like I did ok after I warmed up a few matches in, I still feel really uncertain about this matchup. Counters are really strong against pretty much any kind of Drive pressure, but if you don't try and pressure him, he just builds meter and eventually hits you once and does all your life. (Which happens quite a few times in this set)

 

I think I should probably just stagger my drive strings a lot more if I'm going to do drive pressure to bait counters, but I think that's maybe pretty risky in itself. Lastly, woooooww Haku 5d can be held way longer than I think it can, and I just ran into it a few times thinking it would run out before my move actually came out.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFrs5RIG7cs

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