Essay

It's about inputting the 3 very very briefly. I attempt it sometimes on oki for variety/distraction and in weaving around fireballs in neutral, but it's very easy to hold it too long. Sometimes this still gives room for a late-airdash mixup on oki (if your fingers were inputting a redash anyway), but it's pretty easy to punish if you get too high and out of position. Try Throw RC 6696 P-Dive. Leads to 5H, has good corner carry and is universal.

As far as I-No-specific defensive options go, don't forget j.D FDC. It can bait an opponent into an air-to-air commitment, cause certain corner setups to cross up when the attacker doesn't expect it, punish obvious command throws (I've even punished Zato Nobiru-covered command-throws thanks to the forward momentum), and help navigate around zoning, among other things. I'm not going to say that you should mash it during pressure or anything, but hilariously enough I've had that work out on occasion.

I got to playing around again with the old Potemkin crouching confirm IAD combos showcased at the start of this video (which were, btw, possible in 1.0) and found a series that could consistently get full corner-to-corner carry on the big lug into a meaty note. Near as I can tell, there's a bit of a trick at getting the spacing for the initial rep right (so that your j.K-S doesn't overshoot). Here's my findings so far: Example starters to set correct spacing: - Point-blank j.K, [5K/2P]-[c.S/2S]- - Point-blank j.H, 5P-2S- - Point-blank j.S, 5P-2S- (finicky depending how high your j.S was) - I-no-length-away 2S- (i.e. not quite a back-dash away. A landed match-start distance dash j.S or a j.H from slightly further-out will put you there) - A slightly closer 2K-2S - Almost (but not-quite) point-blank 2K-c.S- - Any (?) airdash j.S-H, 5P-2S- - Point-blank [j.S-K]/[j.K-S], c.S- - Point-blank j.K-P, 5P-2S- Rest of the combo: 5H jc IAD j.K-S-H, 2S-5H jc IAD j.K-S-H, 5H jc IAD j.K-S-H, 2D (xx 214P) Damage ranges from 123 off 2K-2S to 185 off of j.S, 2S starter. Starting the combo from half-screen or closer means you'll probably want to drop the post-IAD 2S and just use the first or third combo featured in the video. Otherwise, know that I strongly recommend always using the same timing for the j.H at the end of the IAD string. The delayed j.H obviously lets you link the 5H, but also ensures there's not too much push-back before the 2S, which would also cause the combo to drop. My timing cue is something like: Dial in the j.K-S immediately and then delay the j.H to the moment right where you know I-No starts to lose the forward momentum and descend from the airdash. EDIT: 186 off of airdash j.S-H, (slightly-delayed) c.S opener. You can get a little more damage off of comboing into HCL at the end too, which might make sense if blitzing the meaty note turns out to cause problems. Bwuh? All this time I thought I learned this from you on one of your ACP streams a few years ago. o.O

The input buffer increase has helped me stop trying to j.D FDC with burst sans button hold technique! I used to be about 50-50 with it using a very careful delayed plink, but now I get gold burst without fail every time. This is great because I'll finally stop my insane burst-gamble completely and smarten up. IAD's definitely seem easier all around though. Last time I sat down in training mode I was just starting to learn how to do IAD loops with Sin, and literally overnight I'm pulling off triple IAD loops with close to a 100% success rate.

You should learn the shortcut too. It's legit and much better for pre-buffering and reacting with the super in some scenarios (like when you want to place the super in the airspace in front of your head without committing to a jump until you react). I'm wouldn't argue that the other poster should learn to clean up his inputs, but this motion does avoid the down-back that VCL needs. You (mis?)typed 23663214S though, which is worth practicing too.

I sometimes use the old KOF shortcut 2362364S to avoid that problem. You can also buffer 236's with that motion and just react to things with the super by finishing with an 23694S input.

I started doing both of these more frequently two weeks ago and, yes, they're great. 10/10. Would mixup with again. Doing this right before they recover? Sounds like a good way to mix things up when opponents get accustomed to un-slowed meaty timings. I feel like there'd be a lot of nuance with how you could time this, and it could even play a role in blowing up the BS attempts that will become more frequent after the patch drops.

These things have always been my favourite use of j.D FDC'ing, even back when there was landing recovery. Against players who'd try to reaction rising air-to-air me when when I'd jump in the corner, it would often result in a safe side-swap, and was a godsend in some matchups. Now that it's safer in Xrd, it almost feels dirty the way it interacts with some moves.

I really like the timing on the meaty 66956 j.K from the midscreen combo, but I'll have to play around to see how it's affected from comboing into HCL~D at various heights, because there are characters the ffVCL > j.S link won't work on. In video 2, you stumbled on a key aspect of I-No fundamentals, and it is something that you want to be able to do consistently off of any HCL/dive/stray knockdown you can when playing around potential reversals. With practice, it won't feel "setplay-y", as you internalize your opponent's wake-up timing and the start-up on their reversal options, and just manually time it. Use it with short dashes; use it with held dashes and let go a bit with the right timing; use it with FDC hops now... the sky's the limit, my friend.

I just noticed we no longer have a dash-momentum jump (669). The new 66[3] is interesting, but doesn't quite fill the roll. No huge loss, though I'm left wondering as to whether a dash momentum jump might have slightly expanded combo routes against finicky air-hitboxes like Venom's.

Anyone else notice this? 2rio tries to Longing Desperation out of a Zato unblockable and it looks like the start-up flat out gets stuffed by meaty drill-mine. Was it already known that the overdrive is no longer invulnerable through to the active frames? Would explain why I see it less in Xrd.

Oh nice. That's all it takes? I already input 2K > 6P+H in some matchups to throw hit-invulnerable wake-up moves, so what's one more button? I'm just curious what the actual timing feels like, because it's probably not the same as wiffing 2K into throw. Is it actually the 2K and 6P that are potentially getting YRC'd in that example? And thank you for translating what you could from the frame data.

I asked, and Mr. Wizard told me it was an outright ban on all Cronus Devices, despite the rules only mentioning "Cronus Max" devices. I imagine for a side tournament like ours it's up to us though. (?)

Jourdal posted a condensed version that seems to pick from that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2e-TPWOLVw