[P4AU] Margaret Gameplay Discussion

[Fortune]

(just a pad player rip)

I don't think it'll take an extraordinary period of time but as you get acquainted with stick make sure you are pressing just the necessary directions and let the stick return to neutral during sequences involving airdash.

Since many of her moves have extra directional inputs and the lenient input buffer can give unwanted commands.

[Fortune]

Repost: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s492/sh/ec2d9a10-2261-48e1-a384-475c06b3bef1/80fc5e9d722d7201e6e3e08854cf450e 

 

Lord Knight Margaret Evernote tech, link was scrambled from earlier but I thought I fixed it. (crickets lol)

[Marz]

Repost: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s492/sh/ec2d9a10-2261-48e1-a384-475c06b3bef1/80fc5e9d722d7201e6e3e08854cf450e 

 

Lord Knight Margaret Evernote tech, link was scrambled from earlier but I thought I fixed it. (crickets lol)

thanks for posting this man, a lot of good stuff in there

[Fortune]

A rare new post!

Since there are finally whispers of 2.0 even becoming possible some players thought to write explanations on net changes for their characters. So I wrote down things to look out for if you're watching 2.0 footage to help distinguish changes and decision making.

Margaret 2.0 Change Explanations (Fortune)

I definitely encourage reading the 2.0 opinions of Ken and Yosuke as well. (Written by mixedmethods and Psych respectively).

[UltraMagnus-Jy]

Does anyone know how to correctly apply pressure with Margaret? I've going about my matches since I picked the game up where i combo whenever i can and then move back and away so i dont get hit. I played Radoric 2 days ago and got my arse handed to me. He told me that I have no pressure game and that's what's stopping me. He seemed to place J.2C on the other end ot the screen and frequently did J.C after knockdowns. I know how to use blockstrings but i thought that was prerssure? The standard one I use is 2B>5C>5B>5AAAAA. Up until now it worked but that's because i played yellow and Orange players mostly. I fought a few Red Narukamis and saws the usually jumped and either pressed J.5B or J.5A, all the while I have to respect it and block or else i'd get hit for trying to mash out with 2B. I looked to apply this to Margaret, having hit the training session shortly after and i couldn't do it. I've watched videos of Tahichi going for J.5B>J.5D>2A after a throw but i always he swatted by 2Bs from most of the cast. Has anyone got a good grip on her pressure and if so how do you do it? Do you need to see how I play or is practice what I need? 

[Fortune]

To the top of this page, I re-linked Lord Knight's evernote so you'll find common confirms/setups

What I've learned is that you mainly want to structure your pressure based on what you think your opponent is doing to escape. If they catch on, then you have to change it up to keep your mindgames going. Once you get your opponent to stop fighting back, then you can do death mixups and confirm into some way to kill them.

Many of our blockstrings are generally airtight. But you can still frame trap by alternating your button pressing to vary blockstun, pushback, and their instant block timing if they're trying to mash back. The distance also makes a difference in your advantage, when they get hit by the tip of 2A or 5B moves, they eat the blockstun while you were mostly done with your active frames.

There's also using different variations of blockstrings since the order of your moves can have different interactions. 2A 5C 5B 5A is a classic because it's an auto-blockstring, a combo that gives a lot of meter, and it hitconfirms from a low/mixup and you can do different things at any point.

Ex: 5B 5A 2A 5B > you now have 2A in the middle of the blockstring so if you think they're trying to upback or roll you'll hit them. 5B also has a lot of blockstun and you can still confirm afterwards with 5C if you hit them crouching. You can also do 5B 5A 2A 5C 5B. You can just straight-up do 5A 2A, especially when you have something like j.22C to cover and they expect another person. 5A has very little stun so you have what amounts to a far poke into a far low and you're instantly in. There's 5B 5A 5B reverse gatling, j.B jC... we have a lot of different ways to start blockstrings because of Margaret's long advancing moves so you'll see players design their own preferred strings.

IAD j.C is a standard safejump off ground confirms ended with 214A so that's important (and it works on mainly any DP slower than 10 frames). When you demonstrate that you'll hit them for 4.5K for trying to DP or mash 2B then they will sit still so you can apply other tricky setups. You also have anumber of aerial options that aren't "safejumps" but will keep you out of range for escape options and then maintain advantageous spacing to use her strong neutral game to keep them pinned down.

Other oki options include backdash j.22C and low j.2D which are designed for the persona to take the hit if they reversal and get another blockstring/mixup if they do not.

We don't have a typical 5A 2A jab stagger throw game but we still have many ways to introduce throws out of nowhere. If you think they're respecting 2A 5C 5B type pressure, then try dash canceling 5A or 5C for a throwbait mixup. Or just stop off after 5B and just throw them. Our throw is very powerful for immediate corner carry and we can combo into 2K in the corner (even from like a 4th of the screen away as long as they bounce off the wall) for no resources at all so defenitely use it when you have them pinned down and develop a good throwbait game (backdash 5C, jumpback jC, air backdash j2C, and run up j2B are powerful throw whiff punishes).

We have a fullscreen low-earthquake that the game considers a sweep. It's great at ending pressure when used correctly. Even if they roll, you should be at a decent spacing to be able to recover and block their retaliation as the roll ends.

Hop cancelling is another aspect since we don't have traditional jump cancels on block and we have a lot of pushback-causing moves (5B or 5C are generally the best to hop-cancel from) to make them fairly hard to mash with the correct spacing.

As far as anti-airing, you should consider your spacing and what buttons they're going to jump-in with. 2B usually doesn't work too well versus sword normals. (obligatory lol Narukami j2B joke). They're also generally highly active so using persona normals in this version will likely just break. I think it's harder for Margaret to anti-air good jump-ins, but her hitboxes are outrageous - 5A 2B 5B 5C all hit fairly high and cover a lot of space forward so it's good to learn how to control those areas and confirm off a stray air hit because we get a knockdown from virtually everything. Good positioning to avoid the situation as much as you can.

I tried to condense it as much as possible to give ideas without being repetitive so hopefully it helped a little and gave ideas since you /do/ want to training mode things and get an idea of how to make them crack under pressure and how to maneuver yourself and personas. There's many video references of high-level tournament play that's still relatively updated so it's a good idea to search to see what they're doing.