GGACR/Order-Sol/Strategy

General Tactics

http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showthread.php?3474-Accent-Core-Order-Sol-101-Primer-READ-HERE-FIRST-NEWBIES!

Dustloop Order-Sol tutorial thread. Read this first to get an idea of what the character can do/what his general gameplay is all about! Below is a section, regarding basic strategy (taken from post #4 of the thread linked above.)

Order-Sol is designed as an offensive, speed-oriented character. He has a variety of options for both pressure and combos that are intended to be simple yet confusing and damaging if your opponent guesses wrong. Don't think of HOS as a traditional mixup character; as he is far from it. With only three overheads, three lows, and a throw that only yields damage when you're in the corner, HOS' mixup is relatively tame compared to other speedy characters. Instead, HOS relies on conditioning your opponent into thinking they can either escape or punish your assault, at which point you can use one of his numerous options to deal with their intended tactic and claim your damage or setup. Condition your opponent or bait them into doing something wrong with HOS' varied pressure options and punish them accordingly.

As such, you need to be remain aware of what exactly your opponent is capable of doing to counter each setup/bait you employ. That way, you know what your options are, and the most viable counters to whatever your opponent may do. You must limit their options through punishing their mistakes and conditioning them to sit and guard; that's the only way you can control the pace of the match. If you fail to do so, you'll be on the losing end of their offense, either by being zoned (a weakness for HOS), or unable to start an effective offense due to lack of Charge/Tension. Understand your options and your opponents' so that you can maintain control as much as possible.

The question that most HOS' should face eventually is "How do I keep control of a match?" Sure, if you're playing other relative beginners who don't understand the matchup, you should have no problem with winning via HOS' easy and damaging combos. Newbies will eat GB cross-ups and late GBs all day, and CH Fafnir will get you over 150 damage any time someone throws out a poke without thinking. The problem comes when you're facing opponents who understand what HOS can do and know his weakpoints. It is at that point that you *have* to capitalize on HOS' strengths. Luckily, HOS' gameplay is designed so that he stays effective at all levels of play. Through the use of fast normals that leave HOS with frame advantage or almost no disadvantage, good CHs that lead to solid damage, and specials that force your opponent to sit and guard, HOS can push forward and keep control as long for as you know what to do. A few pro-tips for a solid offensive and "mixup" game:

1: Fish (bait) for pokes and punish them. 2P, 5K, and 2S are all good close-range pokes for this. 2D can get you under alot of normals/specials and net you a knockdown. J.P and j.HS are good for air-to-air and air-to-ground, respectively.

2: Throw! At some point you'll notice that your opponent will just sit there and guard your offense until they can find a point to escape. Inspire fear and make them WANT to poke or escape by throwing them often. Don't get carried away though; throwing IS risky and can leave you either eating a combo or getting thrown yourself and losing control.

3: Bait for potential throws/escape attempts by your opponent and punish them. 6K and, to an extent, 2H are great for throw baits. Both are combo starters if you nail a CH, and they're safe on guard (6K if it's CC'd or special cancelled). J.P, air throw, or anti-air/jump with 5S(f) and 5H if your opponent wants to hop out. Backdashes can be punished with either a 2D or a RI. Bait shoryus and overdrives and punish them effectively to deter your opponent from doing them again.

4: Don't get zoned. Easier said than done, right? Long range is not HOS' specialty. HOS does not thrive from mid range. Close range is where HOS shines, and that's where you should try and stay. If your opponent pushes you out and attempts to keep you out, then you need to find a safe way back in. This doesn't mean you should be barrelling in on your opponent constantly without regard to safety or the consequences of your actions. Make intelligent decisions and close the gap if there is one. That way you can continue to use your intimidating inside game and score some damage.

5: Make them fear. Going hand-in-hand with points 1, 2, and 3, fear is HOS' main pressure and damaging tool. The moment your opponent fears is the moment you control the match. Getting in and constantly being in their face, poking with normals and using specials effectively, and consistantly breaking their guard will wreck havoc on your opponent's ability to escape and guard your assault for prolonged periods of time. This means that the corner is your friend. Your opponent being in the corner is an absolute nightmare for them. HOS' most damaging combos all involve the corner, and your Throw becomes much more intimidating when you can follow it up for 120+ damage.

Another important aspect of playing HOS effectively is resource management. Not only do you have Tension to spend, you also have Charge. Without Charge or Tension, your damage is subpar and gimmicky. Having both Charge AND Tension allows for HOS to have numerous launch opportunities and increases the damage output of your combos, along with potential knockdowns and setup. A lack of Tension and Charge means a weak offense. Charge and Tension are essential to getting damage and winning matches!

What that means is that you need to be more careful and conservative when deciding to use something that costs either Tension or Charge. You must balance effective use of your Tension, along with safely getting and keeping Charge to combo with, in order to be a real threat. Staying away from using Overdrives, only using Fafnir as a punish or strategically (no spamming!), and maintaining Charge to combo with will increase your offense and damage drastically. Now, this doesn't mean you should be prude and hoard all your resources. Charge and Tension are useless if you don't spend them periodically. The same can be said for excessive use. You cannot be an effective HOS if you stay at Lvl1 and blow all your Tension/Charge as soon as you get it. Resource conservation and management is a key factor to your success as a HOS player.

Some tips on obtaining and maintaining a healthy Charge/Tension bar:

1: Action Charge often. Just don't overdo it. Be mindful that you are vulnerable when you AC, but the risk is worth the reward. You can also FRC the AC and either guard or punish someone's attempt to punish your AC, just to keep them guessing and hesistant to come in on you. Prime times to AC are after a long/mid range Lvl1 BHB (not used as much in ^C as it was in Slash, but still viable for "protected" Charge building), after a knockdown from Lvl2 BRP, after cancelling 2D into a Lvl1 GB on knockdown, and after ending an air combo with Lvl# SV. You can also squeeze in ACs are most Lvl3 specials hit, but those ACs are for flashy combos more than constructive meter building.

2: Manual Charge and Charge Cancel. Smart use of Manual Charge and CC can easily give you that little push you need to reach the next Charge level. CC'ing already has the benefit of extending your in-close offense and putting some fear into your opponent; the fact that it can build Charge as well just makes it more applicable for your game. If you need the meter, try stalling your Manual Charge after you cancel 2D or 5H; your opponent may not react as fast as they need to, giving you some free charge time. You can occasionally back off and Manual Charge from long range as well. Not only is that a relatively safe time to Charge, but characters that function at close- and mid-range will usually want to come in on you and stop you from gaining "free" Lvl3; giving you an opportunity to punish them if they make a mistake. Long range Manual Charge does not apply to zoning characters obviously, as they tend to WANT you at that range so you're ineffective. Still, any opportunity to give yourself some meter is a good one.

3: Utilize Charge Keep. Don't blow your level as soon as you get it. Charge Keep is a great tool to use. Instead of pressuring with Lvl2 BHBs and BRPs, use their lvl1 versions. Not only are they almost nearly as effective at maintaining control, they let you keep your Charge to combo with once you break your opponent's guard. Ending a pressure string with Lvl1 BHB AC FRC while you have Lvl2 is a safe (but relatively expensive) way of getting to Lvl3 while still being offensive. If you're going to end your air combos with a special, do it with Lvl1 and save that meter (unless you're taking a knockdown with Lvl2 BRP or need the damage from Lvl2/3 BRP/SV). If you can manage to AC either of those then boom, free high Charge. If you conserve your meter with Charge Keep then you can almost always have some Charge to combo with if you do get an opening.

4: Don't spam Overdrives/FB. I know, I know. They look cool, and some of them even lead to decent and free damage if you manage to hit with them. But look at the cost. Overdrives aren't cheap with a cost of 50% bar per use, adding in the Charge cost if you actually want to get decent damage out of them (only Lvl2/3 Overdrives can net you good damage that doesn't involve the corner). Using that many resources at one time should only be used if you need the damage to kill or turn the tide of the battle; haphazardly blowing your Tension and Charge on such a big gamble can easily get you killed. The same can be said of Fafnir, to an extent. Sure, the reward for landing a Fafnir is good, but what if you don't land it? If your opponent baited that Fafnir then you just blew 25% Tension on pretty much nothing, while your opponent only needs to spend a minute fraction of their Tension FD'ing your failed Fafnir to make sure they don't even suffer any chip damage. It's even worse if you do a SECOND Fafnir after the first one was blocked. Cut your losses and move on. Intelligent use of FB and Overdrives is fine and encouraged; just don't get carried away with them.

General Tactics: A second Opinion

I want to preface this with the fact that GG is a very open ended game, and there is no one right way to play a character. While playing HOS, you will pick and choose advice to follow and over time develop your own style and your own general gameplan, and that is fine. This second general guide is just to give another outlook on the character from a different viewpoint. Nothing in this guide is to be taken as gospel truth or regarded as the only way to play the character or approach situations.

Work in Progress

GENERAL NOTES

Order Sol is, at his core, a very rushdown heavy character with a slight focus on Okizeme. Your most comfortable position should be in your opponent's face where they can't do anything about your fast, safe buttons, and where you can continually apply pressure and make them sweat. When playing like this, momentum is an extremely key factor in matches, it can be the difference between your opponent feeling too pressured to challenge your mixup, or them being able to shut down all your approaches and ice the game. The most important thing Order Sol should be able to do, in any matchup, is continually keep the pressure on, and make the opponent feel overwhelmed, and keep the momentum in their favor. That being said, this doesn't mean to throw caution to the wind and just run at people, nor does it mean that you can never hang back and trap your opponent into doing something. Improper or reckless pressure is easy to read, and can lead to you suddenly being fullscreen, eating wakeup mixups, and a total reversal of momentum. To properly pressure your opponent and keep momentum, you need to be smart about your offense, you need to mix things up, and you need to feel out your opponent and what they are likely to do in response to your pressure, and how you can account for that. Nothing gets in someone's head more than having their answer to your pressure be called out and punished for big damage.

In order to generate this momentum, knowing how to get Knockdown, Charge, or both from your most common starters and counterhit fishing normals is absolutely essential. The difference between Lv.1 and Lv.2 is enormous in pressure, damage potential, and even game speed (looping hard KD vs chasing techs) and knockdown gives you an entirely new offensive opportunity.

OFFENSE

While Order Sol is technically almost always on the offensive, this section will focus on what to do once you have already gotten in and are ready to start your pressure and offensive game. Most discussion will focus around Lv1 being assumed, but Lv2 and 3, your options are much the same, just stronger.

Close Range (5K range)

5K and 5P at this range are good buttons if you want to check your opponent pressing buttons, bait reversals, or are resuming pressure from a frametrap or intentional gap. You will probably want to buffer the next normal you want to chain into when you press one, so that you can confirm if you got a hit, block, or whiff. You will normally only be able to get one or two normals in from this range before you are at medium range, so if you want to keep your redash or rejump pressure tight, you are going to want to do it from here. At this spacing, basically everything you press can be confirmed into a full combo, so you want to focus on your normals either preempting an opponents, setting up for specific situations, or other such things. Common tactics at this range include: Redash/rejump from P or K normals, Frametrap-ing with gatlings to 6P or 2H, or establishing pressure. Since you are so dominant at this position, you can get away with a lot of unconventional strings or very loose stuff to frustrate your opponent and reduce their will to block (5Kxx5Kxx5K, 5Kxx2P->5P, 5K->c.S->6P)

Medium Range (2S range)

This is where you will find yourself most often in pressure. Either your first couple normals in the string were blocked, or you are chasing them down and just got in, or some other circumstance happened to lead you here. While not uncontestable, HoS is still very strong at this range, and can enforce a number of deadly mixups and frametraps that should leave your opponent scared to press buttons. One of the greedier options at this range is BRP, which can not only score you a combo or a mixup situation afterward (opponent blocks after blocking, throw; opponent mashes/throws after blocking, can be DPed), but closes the gap between you and your opponent and resets you to close range. However, you have to be careful about using this move, since its guaranteed throwable for 1f is the opponent has the reactions, and that's assuming they don't just 6P or SB it. The other big overhead to use at this distance is 2H, where people often don't see it coming. 2H mid blockstring is risky if the opponent is still disrespecting, but on hit can be RCed into KD, and on CH will lead to a full combo, making it a very risky move for your opponent to challenge, and making it constantly weigh on their mind.

While BRP and 2H will condition people to block high, your 2D should be used at this range to condition people to block low. 2D nipping at people's ankles is a very frustrating move for the opponent, as its +2 on CC, can lead to a full CH combo if they deal with it wrong or screw up, and can come out of basically any one of your normals, making it so that your opponent should be low blocking almost constantly because of the threat of this. 2D redash and 2D frametraps are a strong way to make sure the opponent feels threatened.

From this distance, 2S is also a large threat. Being disjointed at the tip, its very effective for catching mash and making safe pokes, and on Ch will confirm into 6H for big damage and stun, which can then be RCed for a full combo or repressure.

Long Range (5H/f.S range and beyond)

NEUTRAL

DEFENSE

Okizeme

A PREFACE ABOUT GUNBLAZE: Gunblaze is a really weird move. While the hitbox viewer disagrees, HoS hitbox doesn't seem to finish moving to the other side of the opponent until the move is finished, while his character dot seems to move with the move. Because of all this, there are two things to keep in mind whenever you are doing gunblaze. First: You are vulnerable the whole time. GB is low to the ground, but sweeps and low pokes will still hit you, even if it looks like HoS is on the other side of them (you will actually take the hit on the other side if it happens late enough). If they are right next to you and the GB isn't meaty, they can throw you for free. Second: Gunblaze, like most things, is effected by crossup protection. Unless you disable it by crossing through the opponent once, the opponent will be able to block gunblaze either same side or crossup. However, using Faultless Defense gets rid of crossup protection, so if the opponent loves to FD, delaying gunblaze becomes a legit mixup, and the move gets very hard to block.

Most all these gunblaze oki's come from cancelling into it off 2D. If you got KD some other way, you probably can't do most of these.

Manual Charge - -> Gunblaze (meaty): Can be blocked either way (crossup protection), hits low. Good to get a bit of charge, and still keep frame advantage.

Gunblaze(whiff)xxGunblaze: Crossup + low

Gunblaze(whiff)xx6K: Throw invuln, hits mid. Used to punish people pre-emptively blocking the 2nd crossup gunblaze

Gunblaze(hit)xxRun up 2K: Hits mid. Used to get meaty gunblaze, and challenge the post meaty. This will beat people trying to jump out of the GB stun

Gunblaze(whiff)xxRock It lv1: Hits mid. Used like the 6K mixup. If you are point blank when doing the Rock It (you should be), then you can actually tick throw off of it if they block it.

5P(whiff)xxGunblaze: Hits either side low. The classic Eh-sama oki repurposed for HoS. Whiff a normal over them just before meaty timing, then Gunblaze. Opponent wakes up mashing becaouse you whiffed something, and you get a nice fat counterhit.

Gunblaze(whiff)->ACFRC->2H: Hits High. Perfect meaty timing for 2H, you an link 5K after and get a full combo, or RC it for one if you don't trust your timing.

6K meaty: Used to bait throws. generally seen after corpse carrying the opponent for a bit, or off a fake empty jump. If it counter htis you can gatling to 6H and make them regret trying to throw. Can be CCed or gatling to 2D->options to keep it safe. Stays out surprisingly long, so bonus points if it does something stupid like trade with a reversal or beat a super.

2H meaty: Crouching overhead. Unless you hit a 2F window, you need to spend RC to combo off this. +0 on block though, so its not that big a risk outside of getting reversal-ed.

6P meaty: Surprisingly effective. Hits from a distance, staggers on hit so you can get pressure or a combo. Keeps you safe with its range, and clashes a good number of things it has no business clashing (VV, Robo lv3 DP, ect).

5H meaty: The secret anti-johnny tech. 5H moves your hurtbox forward by a lot, so some wakeup options just whiff straight through you. Mostly for hard callouts and to style on people. Will beat wakeup That's My Name by going straight through Johnny's character box.

jS->jK: Classic 2 air hit jumpin. Should be used to begin establishing a jump in routine so that you can start the fuzzy shenanigans with this.

jS->jP->land->throw: One of the many mixes on jS jumpin. jP is a lv1 move, so blockstun is super tiny. Because of this, you an land and almost instantly throw your opponent. Really good mixup if your opponent doesn't want to anti-air you.

jS->jK->dj->jH->jD: The dreaded fuzzy. Really good, hard to see, can be picked up after with 5k for a full combo. 4 overheads in a row

jS->jK->dj->jH->jD->air BRP lv2->RC->jS->jP: Completely useless. If your opponent get hit by this, feel free to put the controller down, you already won the match. https://youtu.be/m-0RVAQB4dA?t=26

Running jump over opponent -> airdash back over -> jD: The Melty Blood classic. Hits same side, and jD gets a combo on counterhit, or a knockdown on normal hit.

Running jump over opponent -> wait -> airdash back into opponent ->jS: The Melty classic part 2. Hits crossup, and gets a combo to knockdown. the timing difference between these two is really small, so its effectively a 50/50 for the opponent if they want to try blocking it.

Tips and Tricks

Fighting Order-Sol

Matchups

Undetermined:

NOTE: The old matchup subforums can be found here: http://www.dustloop.com/forums/index.php?/forums/forum/54-order-sol-matchups/

Things to note when discussing matchups:
-General ratio
-Optimal/inoptimal spacings
-Strong/Weak buttons
-Things to watch out for
-Character specific confirms
-etc etc