[Xrd] Slayer Gameplay Discussion

[Zerosleep]

Getting mopped by any half decent Leos - just want to say I hate this matchup! I read the matchup thread but still can't get the hang of it

[_Sey]

I was reviewing some of Hase matches and I noticed that he sometimes like to air reset with 2K > P Dandy after jD in the corner.
Does anyone know why?
I'm going to guess that it has to do with messing with the opponent's reversal input kind of like what you can do with YRC, at the same time I think it's somewhat risky, won't Slayer just get hit out of dandy most of the times if they air tech and mash something quick like jP or jK?

I've seen him go for wallsplat > 6P, dandy K~ too but that makes a bit more sense, helter will always crossup the opponent after 6P in that situation so he's pretty much setting up a corner version of midscreen whiff UP oki, and depending on the characters he may even open up the option of going for a 2K > 2P > 2S combo.

 

Oh, another thing I noticed is that Hase seems pretty adverse to using reversal BDC Bite on wakeup even in "favourable" situations, how do you guys feel about it?
I'll admit I've lost waayyy too many matches because I was to eager to reversal bite people out of "bad" oki (e.g Kys doing run up 6HS with barely any life left) just to end up messing up the input and losing, but even if in situations where I DO land bdc bite I sometimes just wonder if the risk was worth it at all.
Sure BDC bite is a strong "defensive" option but it barely has no reward unless you are like... 1/4 to the corner, have 100% meter and are playing vs. a character that can get hit by bite > dot.
Slayer's BDC options (bdc jump, bite) are often said to be pretty strong but I often feel like they are actually... pretty bad, sure bdc jump can help you get out of some tricky blockstrings but as a wake up tool it's barely OK (and just bad/useless against some projectile oki setups).
BDC jump also obviously forces you to deal with the air-to-ground situation (hilariously bad against most characters and/or characters like Faust) or commit to iad j214K YRC.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have some reversal options instead than none, but watching Hase/En's matches it often feels like they just don't use those options much at all.

This got me thinking that the decision of not going for BDC options could be a strategic approach to certain matchups.
A few months ago Nage tweeted about "how to use burst effectively" and he noted how some characters/players would rather not use burst in situations where a successful burst would create too much distance between their character and the opponent, instead opting for enduring the oki/pressure situations just to be able to stand closer to the opponent and find a way to retaliate from there.
I think this sort of thinking could apply to iad j214K YRC too! sure you could use it to get out the corner vs. Ky/Faust/Chipp but you are also giving up ground and will end up having to get close to them again, which will likely not be easy, now compare iad j214K YRC to enduring their pressure and then finding a way to get them to block, I don't know, ~dandy K>HS and in doing so reversing the corner situation... that would be a much better situation for Slayer, though much riskier and not guaranteed at all.

dat theory fighting/meta discussion
 

[Thomson]

That is something i started doing aswell.

The main benefit that i've seen is messing with the opponents timing (not only reversals). 
It helps especially against those who use reversals such as DP's to escape, using the 2k OTG can mess up their timing leaving them vulnerable.
On tech with buttons they'll get beaten by dandy>UP most of the time and you'll be able to connect a c.S with the opponent being in the air and 
if that doesn't work you can still do 2K -> 6P

Doing Dandy > YRC is in my opinion not the best choice if you only try to eat inputs.
Against most characters with a reversal you can use it to actually take out the reversal/not-reversal guessing game.
If you time it correctly against Sol you can actually see if he did a reversal DP or not and react to it accordingly.

6P as ender is something that i'll usually avoid.
I see this as something that should be used very rarely because other than the big surprise effect it'll
also not do alot of damage and more importantly let your opponent out of the corner.
Also personally i'll usually avoid combo enders where that is possible (atleast while still playing -sign-).

Some time ago i was looking into just optimizing what i was doing and since then i would rarely use dust during corner combos
aynmore since to me it seemed more efficient to go for shoter combos and then being able to add an air extension at the end.
ex1. (near corner) Starter, K Mappa, RC, 5D, K Pile, K Pile, (5H if possible) 2D
ex2. (near corner) Starter, K Mappa, RC, K Pile, 5H, 2H, jSHD (SKD on lights)
In my mind (atleast for -sign-) the 2nd variant deals more dmg in most cases, is more reliable and sets up oki aswell.
The only reason that i could see for ex1. was stun but without exactly knowing how stun worked i could only see a marginal difference at best.

I'm personally interested in how this will change with Revelator as i see most Slayers using sidedust when possible.
My guess at this point is that anything into 5D, Running H, Running H, K Pile, 5H if possible 2D will be equivalent to
what using double K Pile after Dust is right now. Does anyone have more specifics on that maybe?

[probe]

Forgot to post the meaty 2D stuff I was working on a few months ago, so here it is:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s727/sh/f42ed867-4a4e-43f1-805e-f94eb03f9ff9/3785222d4240ed49b93e9554bbf8b6ed.

I feel this stuff could be pretty useful against FA, KY, LE and EL (possibly SO too) because it's pretty easy to time the 2D or 6K against them and you get a 2PSH combo in the corner off meaty 6K. Not sure how useful it'll be on the rest of the cast since I either didn't find a good corner combo against them, or timing the meaties wasn't very easy. I also didn't do anything for Pot or Zato, will probably do it later. The timings for hitting meaty 2D off a 2D knockdown are probably a little off, since I remember Daymendou made a post about that earlier but I didn't refer to it much while testing this stuff.

[fogelstrom]

15 hours ago, _Sey said:

Stuff

 

I personally do not understand why Hase and En doesn't exploit BDC Bite and BDJC all the god damn time. Maybe JP players got super good answers to cover them or something?

Also personally I feel that using sj.IAD FL YRC or just FL to get out of the corner against any character is worth it. I'd rather deal with Faust in neutral than sitting pressured in the corner. But I feel more confident in counterpoking midscreen.

 

14 hours ago, Thomson said:

Stuff2

About the new homing dash I remember reading somewhere that double Kpile is still possible? But it's just such a minimal damage and stun that it's just not worth it because there is always a chance that you might fail the initial input so they use 5H, 5H for stability. But that's just something I remember reading somewhere at the top of my head so don't take it as facts.

Also for your combo examples and you'd hit raw Mappa, RRC, 6D you should be able to do kPB, kPB, 5H, 2H, c.S, j.SHD2K, j.PK, dj.KD
And if you go for Mappa, RRC, kPB straight away 5H, 2H, c.S, j.SHD, dj.P/KSHD2K, j.PD should be possible if I'm not mistaken. 
I'm unsure about the combos because I rarely get the RRC so early on in the corner so I have to cut it down to <whatever>, kPB, 5H, 2H, c.S, j.KD

[KrsJin]

^ Yeah, corner is so scary in this game against half the cast. Meter and even doing less damage on an opponent to get out is almost always worth it. Trying to get use to Foot Loose YRC just because of that.

And thank you for that vid. It not only gave me that idea to use 2K for that situation but the standard air combo helped solve an issue I was having by replacing something with j.P, j.K dj.K where I was dropping it a lot against some characters.

[daymendou]

Dust > K Pile > K Pile is still possible but does less damage than Dust > 5H > 5H > K Pile. One big benefit of using 5H > 5H > K Pile is less pushback since you are special canceling 5H into K Pile instead of recovering from an initial K Pile. Pushback scales with hitstun length so the shorter hitstun length from 5H > 5H > K Pile makes 5H > 2D ender more stable on many characters.

Occasionally you'll see shorter followups like 6H > K Pile or 5H > K Pile in order to get 5H > 2H > c.S to connect in longer combos.

I do see K Pile > K Pile very rarely but I can't think of a reason why to use it over 5H > 5H > K Pile

Midscreen you will see weird stuff like 2D > 2D > 2D. I read that it is possible to combo into K Cross, though I have never seen that used.

[daymendou]

Played the Revelator demo at AA last Saturday and here are my observations on Dust:

• Midscreen Dust cannot combo into K Dandy (black beat). 6H and 6P also seem to be too slow to combo midscreen.
• If you combo into P Crosswise, the next hit will knock them down back to the tumbling state, so no air combos.
• Dust > 2D > 2D > 2D > 2D does around 79 damage on Bedman? I forget who I tested it on.
• You cannot TK out of the followup animation, but it's no longer needed to do K Pile > K Pile. You can input K Pile normally after the sliding animation ends but it's very tight.
• On Sol, Dust > K Pile > K Pile > 5H 2H > jKD does about 176, Dust > 5H > 5H > K Pile > 5H 2H > jKD does about 181. Since Dust has Initial Proration, I believe 5H > 5H should be even stronger from Mappa RRC Dust, etc. The situation with high RISC should also favor 5H > 5H.

[probe]

What do you guys think about Hase's use of BDC specials? In general, I see it work out pretty well for him in that he avoids a button or pressure and gets to be on offense or at least a better position, but he also takes a lot of hits and knockdowns from getting hit out of Mappa or Dandy. In particular I see him get hit out of P Dandy BDC stuff since he does it so often, but I guess his offense is strong enough that he can afford to take the risk. I also don't really see other Slayers play that similarly to him in terms of this (maybe Taka, but he just tends to go crazy with Dandy), but I've only really seen Mikado Slayers so who knows.

[fogelstrom]

I wish I played as good as Hase did with BDC P Dandy. I really think it's worth the risk/reward and not only is it a risk/reward it's conditioning. I personally can't stress the importance of conditioning when playing Xrd Slayer. If you teach people that even when you are slightly negative on block like after K Mappa on block (like you should never do anyway) that they just can't go ham on buttons because they have the frame advantage. This adds another yomi layer for both players and situationings like these are when Slayer makes the hard gambles like to choose between 6P and 2H for CHs what have you.

Yeah Hase gets hit a lot and knocked down for taking that risk but it's calculated risks and imo worth it that is easily shown by Hase

[fogelstrom]

Tanabata at it again...
 

I assume this is a OS utilizing auto-guard or something?
 

 

[daymendou]

Played a lot of Revelator in the past 2 days

Jacko may end up being Slayer's worst matchup. 5H and 6H are extremely annoying to deal with. Magician and crossup IAD jK(?) cover BDC very well. She is very finnicky to air combo into knockdown. I think once people get used to setting Ghosts very quickly, it will be very hard to play against any Jacko

Johnny still has a substantial learning curve so players are not getting knockdowns every time yet. 2S is very good but can be played around. 2H will be a big problem once people get Mist Cancel timings. His damage output is very high but he also feels easy for Slayer to air combo in this version.

Jam feels very easy right now. 6H can be annoying but none of her counterhits feel threatening.

Charge Blitz is annoying and the knockback really benefits long range setup characters like Elphelt and Jacko. While you can get 200+ on punish, it's not easy to react to. Midscreen, you can crossup with Long Dash then 6H or K Pile, but in the corner you might have to jump back or backdash immediately, which can give them a free escape. Usually I felt safest punishing with throw before the Blitz Attack

If anyone has the demo, I would like to check if BDC Charge Blitz has enough invulnerability to guarantee the high+low reject.

Side Dust is very helpful for stabilizing near-corner RC combos. I think the basic 5H 5H K Pile route doesn't work with a 6+ hit starter but otherwise it works from a surprisingly large range

Burst DOT is very funny. Definitely a threat with Hellfire and 100 tension. I think characters that build a lot of Burst (Chipp, Millia, Ram, Jacko) will have to respect Burst DOT

[Rurouni Kei]

I've been a long time Slayer player (since Isuka) and man I got to say Xrd Revelator is the worst Slayer by far. He feels slower, he feels like he slides around at the end of his attacks which messes with my timing and grove. I also honestly miss the moves he had from Accent Core Plus R, over all I hope they fix him in the next installment. Does anyone else feel that Slayer is off in comparison to before?