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VR-Raiden

[P4AU] Ken Amada vs Margaret

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  • Use this thread to discuss the Margaret matchup.
  • Please focus more heavily on discussing how to play the matchup properly as Ken rather than who is at advantage/disadvantage.
  • This post will be updated as info arises.

Round Start:
  • 5D (putting Koromaru away), Blocking, IAD if you feel brave

Neutral:
  • Patiently approach Margaret with Ken while keeping an eye out for certain normals like 2A+B, AoA, and D command grabs.

Offense:
  • Once you actually put pressure on Margaret there's not much she can do about it. Do your usual pressure.

Defense:
  • Have Koromaru put away until you are able to go on the offensive.

Punishes:

On Block:

  • ...

On Reaction:

  • AoA - Punish with 2B or B+D

Character Specific Notes:

Combos:

  • ...

Mixups:

  • ...

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Having played this matchup a lot, I'd say it's pretty bad for Ken.  LK has it pegged at 5.5/4.5 Marge's favor, I'd personally put it at 6/4.  Whatever it is though it's definitely one of Ken's worst, relatively speaking.

 

- Marge has a distinct advantage at round start.  Her options are generally just better than yours because she can hit Koro and you can't do much about it.  If she opens the round with sweep, it will hit Koro out of any action EXCEPT 5C which will go over it, and it will lose to your sweep since yours is slightly faster.  Her 5B will beat any Koro option (including 5C i believe) and will also counterhit your 5B or sweep.  I haven't extensively tested what beats what at round start but suffice to say that Marge hits Koro very easily at round start and that gives her tons of cancel options.  If for example you start the round by jumping, she can do 5B to hit Koro then God's Hand you out of the air, or 5B > Gale Slash to kill Koro and be too far away to be punished.  It is possible to bait her out by unsummoning Koro at round start and then baiting her now-uncancelable poke but it still requires a pretty good read on her actions and if she does nothing you're left without Koro vs. Marge's superior neutral.

 

- Marge's neutral is strong for the same reason that she can cancel off Koro whenever she wants.  Sweep hits Koro anywhere on the stage unless he's in the middle of a move that puts him airborne (so basically just 5C and 214X) which means that as long as Koro is active she can basically sweep whenever she wants for free and you can't do anything about it.  Her moves also do a LOT of damage to Koro (sweep > Divine Vacuum basically OHKOs him) so expect to be playing without assistance for a good deal of the match.  Your best bet honestly just seems to be to throw out 214D a lot so Koro isn't totally useless while you approach and try to bait out a bad attempt to hit Koro.

 

- Her j.C is Adachi tier.  Don't challenge it.

 

- Fireball/Iceball (j.D/j.2D I believe) is dangerous and she can scoop a full combo off it.  Koro's actually pretty good for blocking the fireball in this case as Marge has a fair bit of recovery after this move, but he will take a big chunk of damage in the process.  If you do have Koro in a place where he can 2C/214C to intercept a fireball, make sure you go in hard immediately after it so it counts.

 

- Ken doesn't really seem to have a ton of options for frauding his way out of Marge pressure so you're gonna have to react legitimately for the most part.  Roll is an easy way to get out of pressure in general but it's not foolproof as she can bait it with a hop or space 5D to grab you even if you roll.  I believe you can safely backdash 5D/2D mixup if you react properly to Ardha coming out.  The moves you want to watch for are God's Hand (you can react to this easily by watching the space above your head, the golden hand appears quite early) and 5D/2D (5D catches standing and can be spaced to catch rolls, 2D looks like 5D and can catch jump-outs and hops).  Personally I've found that it's difficult to react to both God's Hand and 5D/2D at the same time if you are watching the Personas as they come out, but fortunately you can safely down-back and ignore the Personas actually hitting you and focus on watching Marge's animations themselves.  God's Hand and 5D both have pretty distinctively slow animations (God's Hand = Marge turns away and opens her book, 5D = Marge pulls out a card and holds it in front of her face) so if you just focus on watching for these two animations you can roll/hop on reaction and get a free punish.  Basically think of it as watching Liz when she goes for 5C > 5D/2C.

 

- In the event you get her blocking, you can pretty much go full ham and there isn't a ton she can do about it.  Marge's R-Action is a command throw like Liz's (albeit faster) which means it will lose to jumping mixups pretty handily.  Late airdash j.A beats it for the most part BUT beware as she can still time the grab to invul the j.A itself and catch you as you land, and it will counterhit and be untechable.  Doing the airdash a bit higher allows you to call out the DP safely but it makes the mixup less ambiguous.  Otherwise just run standard pressure and watch out for Power Slash as it can reversal you from pretty far away.

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imo this is one of if not Ken's worst matchup. Margaret can pretty much zone you out the entire time and shut down Koromaru almost without even trying. Keeping Koromaru put away until you're able to inch close enough to apply pressure is something I highly recommend. You can also roll during the starting frames of her D command grab. Staying patient and making the most of your openings is key in this matchup, especially since she can do a ton of damage off any confirm from anywhere on the screen.

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imo this is one of if not Ken's worst matchup. Margaret can pretty much zone you out the entire time and shut down Koromaru almost without even trying. Keeping Koromaru put away until you're able to inch close enough to apply pressure is something I highly recommend. You can also roll during the starting frames of her D command grab. Staying patient and making the most of your openings is key in this matchup, especially since she can do a ton of damage off any confirm from anywhere on the screen.

 

5D can be spaced to catch rolls.  Backdash is your safest option for when you see Ardha appear and aren't sure which grab it is.

 

As for match start stuff:

 

- If Margaret does Gale Slash, you can crouchblock and punish with 2A.  TBH I'm not sure why so many Marges start with this move since it's not really safe.

- If you think Marge is going to start with 5B, hold D (to unsummon Koro) and neutral jump.  She will go under you and you can punish recovery with j.B.  Unfortunately you won't get a ton of damage off this since Koro will be offscreen but you can still scoop like 2k and oki.

- If you think Marge is going to sweep, do jump forward 5C j.B.  You can also sweep since yours reaches and is faster, but 5C is safer.

 

If you guess wrong you'll have to block but I don't think she can actually punish any of these options since 2B won't hit during air unblockable frames.  If you guess right you get a punish so you can force Marge to start playing a little bit more conservatively at least at the start of the match.

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For round start there's so much she can do to gain momemtum fast that Ken can't do much about including 5B or a simple 5a so I'd recommend just being defensive from the start. As for spacing out command grabs, it's possible but I haven't really seen too many Margaret's doing it, it's usually done in blockstrings from my experience on JP netplay.

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You can space the blockstring so 5D will catch rolls.  The grab hitbox is actually quite large so as long as you do it far back enough it'll catch both standing and rolling.

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Hey been awhile.

I also like to note if Margeret jumps you can actually summon the dog back in and use 5C to get Koro behind her.

this way if she lands you can have him 2C her for trying to jump out or have him 5C her for trying to do any other silly business.

Situation specific but hey its something useful.

Air dash mix up is good if you think she is gonna wake up DP out of a mix up, you can even backdash on landing to make her whiff too.

 

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