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KayEff

[CP] Ragna Gameplay Discussion

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Pressure has nothing to do with approach. Wtf. I'm done.

If your friend can't get his j.B to work during pressure resets then he's probably just not doing it as low and fast as possible. There is a high execution barrier involved.

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So, I guess we're all good to talk about arc-revo brackets here yeah?

http://kurushii.tv/Dustloop/BBCP/Graphics/ArcRevo_BBCP_Brackets.png

Tough looking brackets for the few Ragna players who made it, though I think Kogatan could go far. Never seen any footage of Tentama though, so maybe he'll be on stream if we're lucky.

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Oh god, I figured it out. You all think pressure = strictly blockstun. I'm done here.

Are you actually reading, or are you just trying to be cool by being short tempered?

I like to see pressure game not in such blunt numbers of frame advantage' date=' but rather the ease of conditioning. [/quote']

How does it not have anything to do with approaching? By approaching, I mean getting close to your opponent anyway possible. Do you play Arakune? I'd like to know your input, please provide videos demonstrating your point. The videos I see don't really show Arakune mowing over the world with j.b.

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Conditioning is not pressure. Pressure is putting your opponent under psychological distress. Conditioning is training them to react to a situation in a certain way. Both involve making your opponent make mistakes, however, they go about it differently (although you seem to address the former afterwards by "keeping them on their toes?" conditioning tries to make your opponent go "off their toes" if that makes sense).

Also, if you have read the last 5-10 pages of "discussion" I have a good reason to be short tempered.

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I can't really agree to that, since I pressure my opponent with intentions to condition them, I mean isn't that part of what conditions them?, the psychological distress? A means to an end, right? When I said ease of conditioning, I mean the character's innate traits that can make the opponent react certain ways, Ragna has those, plenty of them.

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No, what conditions them is patterns in play. Infact, I'd argue it's the opposite of distress. They are confident that you are going to do A in x situation. So confident, that they calm themselves and don't even think about the possibility of B or C.

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Approach is moving near the other guy from a neutral position. Pressure - for me anyway - is how long/well you keep the opponent in a disadvantageous position, usually blocking. They are not the same thing. You get pressure if you approach successfully, yes. That's like saying combos are okizeme since you get okizeme after combos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWgQ5DwEFMY

This video is Souji beating up Americans (and Canadians, shoutouts to Bibi and the rest) but it still has a lot of good examples of what we're talking about. 7:21 onwards showcases a good sequence with j.Bs.

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Every time Arakune was using the j.B pressure, all I could think to myself was "6A!!" ... with Ragna, that is.

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So, I guess we're all good to talk about arc-revo brackets here yeah?

http://kurushii.tv/Dustloop/BBCP/Graphics/ArcRevo_BBCP_Brackets.png

Tough looking brackets for the few Ragna players who made it, though I think Kogatan could go far. Never seen any footage of Tentama though, so maybe he'll be on stream if we're lucky.

something tells me that tentama is kuma in disguise, but i can't quite verify.

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I can't really agree to that' date=' since I pressure my opponent with intentions to condition them, I mean isn't that part of what conditions them?, the psychological distress? A means to an end, right? When I said ease of conditioning, I mean the character's innate traits that can make the opponent react certain ways, Ragna has those, plenty of them.[/quote']

This entire post is exactly how I feel. I'm feel like alot of people have a "do x to get y" style of play instead of actively reading while playing that's why i really just stopped responding. That said I did learn a little. I'm just waiting for something else interesting to pop up now

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...Don't wanna be that guy, but while this pressure talk is intriguing, let's keep it civil and keep it related to Ragna's own pressure options and avoid debating on the term as a whole.

Ragna's tools are good, but that's just it. Compared to practically the rest of the cast, the Ragna player has to dig deep and use plain but safe normals to simply land a hit, and most Ragnas can't get past that, myself included. This is because we can't seem to get out of the "do unsafe shit on a whim and hope it works" phase because Ragna actually has to at times. others do too, but Ragna gets blown up hard; since he's a 'beginner' archetype character by simply having a lower learning curve compared to Arakune or Hakumen.

So let's start using that to our advantage more often, that he s simply a good character with simple yet effective tools combined with good reading of the oppnent lets Ragna stay alive longer than just going in.

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something tells me that tentama is kuma in disguise, but i can't quite verify.

Oh nice, if it is him, I'm actually a little surprised he qualified honestly. Not to say that I think he's bad or anything.

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Approach is moving near the other guy from a neutral position. Pressure - for me anyway - is how long/well you keep the opponent in a disadvantageous position, usually blocking. They are not the same thing. You get pressure if you approach successfully, yes. That's like saying combos are okizeme since you get okizeme after combos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWgQ5DwEFMY

This video is Souji beating up Americans (and Canadians, shoutouts to Bibi and the rest) but it still has a lot of good examples of what we're talking about. 7:21 onwards showcases a good sequence with j.Bs.

What was shown was not Arakune's alleged broken pressure, but exactly what I said, the opponent not knowing their options.

IB barrier, it's a multi-hitting attacks, it's easy.

Backdash, some characters can backdash that easily.

DP, if Arakune does j.b from high up enough, it's not even a clutch reaction or desperate guess.

AA, believe it or not, some anti-airs can defeat j.b

a mash beats low jump ins

The only thing that must be respected is arguably rising j.b, and not only is it character specific, not air tight, but Arakune must be point blank, and if you let him get this close, you're doing something wrong as a player.

Souji is a great player, but nothing he did pre-curse was unbeatable, and it wasn't Souji's pressure game that made up the bulk of that, it was his movement which made his jump ins awkward. People who don't play him/don't understand him wouldn't really know that Arakune's movement is just as, if not more important than everything else, sine although he has movement options that others do not, he also lacks basic movement options that other characters take for granted.

It should be enough to know that Arakune will always come down at a fixed angle when doing j.4b to know how and when to properly avoid or block it. His ability to space it is compromised by the wide telegraphing of the move itself.

Again, you're free to think whatever you please, and I invite you to try the character yourself and put your words to conviction, could always use the traffic, but take it from someone who mains Arakune to have a higher tune of observation.

On topic: I swear there are more Kogatan videos than what is posted in the video thread. Is there an archive of some sort or would I have to search for them myself?

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This entire post is exactly how I feel. I'm feel like alot of people have a "do x to get y" style of play instead of actively reading while playing that's why i really just stopped responding. That said I did learn a little. I'm just waiting for something else interesting to pop up now

I think the scope of fighting games is just a series of means to a series of ends.

Why do you pressure the opponent?

Why do you do this combo?

These all have answers to them and more, do x to get y is, imo a fundamental part of fighting games, because nothing should be done without reason, without a goal in mind. Reading the player is a different chapter in the big book of FGs, since you can both read the player and "do x to get y". In response to Fluck, I know they aren't the same thing, but they operate very closely to each other, so it's not wrong to put them in the same pod. Combos are not okizeme, but they operate very closely to one another in addition to damage and positioning. Some character can't get all three results from a combo so they have to sacrifice one for another.

That said I still think Ragna's pressure is solid, it's kind of unfair to call it bad because it's not up there with the best of them, but I suppose we could agree to disagree. I'm done. Thanks for the convo, I enjoyed it!

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Approach is moving near the other guy from a neutral position. Pressure - for me anyway - is how long/well you keep the opponent in a disadvantageous position, usually blocking. They are not the same thing. You get pressure if you approach successfully, yes. That's like saying combos are okizeme since you get okizeme after combos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWgQ5DwEFMY

This video is Souji beating up Americans (and Canadians, shoutouts to Bibi and the rest) but it still has a lot of good examples of what we're talking about. 7:21 onwards showcases a good sequence with j.Bs.

Man, watching my matches in that is super depressing. Every time I got close *poof* curse. ;-;

Doesn't help that I didn't play the game for two months before that...or that I'm ass

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Why I say Ragna's pressure is bad:

Ragna really has no way of making the opponent take a risk to counter him. This is because he really has nothing to punish someone for just blocking all day. His ways of breaking guard are obvious without meter (lol 6B), and now with the nerf to 6B's gatlings, if your mixup does get blocked, you can't do anything and you lose pressure completely. This would not be a problem if 6B were hard to block, buuuuut oh well. His options to reset pressure without meter are, again, obvious. You don't even need to risk using up-back until he pushes himself out of the effective range for his lows, which is why Barrier and IB Barrier are so good against him. The idea of trying to read your opponent and make the right decision based on that is sound in theory, but against someone who actually understands how Ragna operates, they won't be making the decisions that would give you the opening you need, and your attempt to "read" their actions will get you countered on reaction. With meter this changes drastically, but you're not gonna have 50 meter all the time, especially with the meter gain nerfs in CP.

The reason I want old gatlings back (such as all his 6A gatlings) is to give him some flexibility in neutral. 5B-6A is his most damaging meterless combo route that works from 5B at somewhat reasonable ranges. It's most noticeable in pressure resets where you dash back in with 5B, since it results in a big combo whether it hits a grounded or an airborne opponent. This is the real reason that 6A received so many nerfs to its gatling routes in each revision; its anti air usage is irrelevant to those changes. In CS1, if you used this string and it was blocked, you could literally do anything you wanted afterwards. You could do a safe pressure reset/frametrap with 2C Fatal, you could go high/low, you could 6D to try and reset pressure completely, or you could JC it, which has its own applications. Now you can't even JC the damn move on block, which means your only option is to attempt a frametrap with a special. That is hot garbage in my opinion. Now you can't even use 5B-5C reliably due to the 5C hitbox nerf. It seems like they are trying to just weaken the character unnecessarily in the one area where he's actually good (neutral).

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Man, watching my matches in that is super depressing. Every time I got close *poof* curse. ;-;

Doesn't help that I didn't play the game for two months before that...or that I'm ass

It's okay John, you at least lost with a smile on your face.

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Why I say Ragna's pressure is bad:

Ragna really has no way of making the opponent take a risk to counter him. This is because he really has nothing to punish someone for just blocking all day. His ways of breaking guard are obvious without meter (lol 6B), and now with the nerf to 6B's gatlings, if your mixup does get blocked, you can't do anything and you lose pressure completely. This would not be a problem if 6B were hard to block, buuuuut oh well. His options to reset pressure without meter are, again, obvious. You don't even need to risk using up-back until he pushes himself out of the effective range for his lows, which is why Barrier and IB Barrier are so good against him. The idea of trying to read your opponent and make the right decision based on that is sound in theory, but against someone who actually understands how Ragna operates, they won't be making the decisions that would give you the opening you need, and your attempt to "read" their actions will get you countered on reaction. With meter this changes drastically, but you're not gonna have 50 meter all the time, especially with the meter gain nerfs in CP.

The reason I want old gatlings back (such as all his 6A gatlings) is to give him some flexibility in neutral. 5B-6A is his most damaging meterless combo route that works from 5B at somewhat reasonable ranges. It's most noticeable in pressure resets where you dash back in with 5B, since it results in a big combo whether it hits a grounded or an airborne opponent. This is the real reason that 6A received so many nerfs to its gatling routes in each revision; its anti air usage is irrelevant to those changes. In CS1, if you used this string and it was blocked, you could literally do anything you wanted afterwards. You could do a safe pressure reset/frametrap with 2C Fatal, you could go high/low, you could 6D to try and reset pressure completely, or you could JC it, which has its own applications. Now you can't even JC the damn move on block, which means your only option is to attempt a frametrap with a special. That is hot garbage in my opinion. Now you can't even use 5B-5C reliably due to the 5C hitbox nerf. It seems like they are trying to just weaken the character unnecessarily in the one area where he's actually good (neutral).

While 6B and 6A nerfs are questionable, let's not forget that CT/CS1 Ragna needed those strings, specially considering that his A's moves were minus on block and 2D mad unsafe.

Moreover, he ran out of range way sooner and easily than now since you couldn't reverse strings. IB being -5 could also reveal many gaps in his strings.

Things are just different, he's got new tools for pressure like DS DC for example, and his defence is still good as ever. You just gotta commit for good rewards now.

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A really, really, terrible and situational unblockable move. You can do something similar in EX.

It's like Atomic Collider with good hitboxes.

I...just...ugh

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Well, you can probably get a little more use out of it in BBCP due to 22C having better active frames. Plus there's a greater incentive now than there was before, what with 22C being the best starter for combo length in the entire game (on top of having good proration values). I mean sure, it's a gimmick, but I wouldn't just dismiss it entirely. It'll make for good combo video fluff, if nothing else.

That being said...

It's like Atomic Collider with good hitboxes.
Don't do this.

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I'd assume that it happened because of the dummy, but if i decided to be creative then i'd say it's air unblockable at a REAAAALLLLLLLLY low height since it lasts long. seems impractical so eeeehhh

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