Sunday, August 7, 2011

Kara BC and you.

Not much to say on this, except Talbain players don't do this nearly enough. Taken from Dustloop. New notes in italics.

---

Talbain has the ability to cancel AND kara-cancel most of his air normals into Beast Cannon or ES Beast Cannon. There are a variety of useful implications for these, whether your opponent is meeting you mid-air or plans to deal with your offense from the ground. Let's start with air...

- When meeting an opponent in the air, Talbain's ability to cancel air attacks into BCs provides you with a useful tool to deal with people who Chicken Guard. For starters, you can cancel his medium attacks into BCs instead of canceling them into more mediums or hard attacks. This will slightly alter the usual timing between attacks, and even alter the spacing (since the BC startup will completely stop Talbain's forward momentum), making it an viable counter to people who chicken guard too frequently against Talbain - a phenomenon that gives many wolf players trouble. No matter what happens in this situation, there is some sort of benefit:

1. If the BC connects after a blocked attack, you get a knockdown off of an air-to-air instead of a reset. I don't think I need to explain why this rules. Moving on.

2. If the normal-to-be-canceled hits the opponent, your Air BC will put you back on the ground with wildly-altered timing, depending on your height relative to your opponent's. In most situations, this is actually SLOWER than just landing normally. However, the wide variety of different possible timings (even if it's slower than normal, different timings make it more difficult to mindlessly AG Talbain), and the possibility of landing behind your opponent at certain heights make this a powerful option. Also, each additional BC is that much more meter you have to play with!

3. If they successfully counter your attack with a chicken guard, you are going to be slightly farther away from your opponent than you would be if you had retained your forward momentum. Not exactly a game-changer, but not useless, either. (I suppose I should put in here, as a disclaimer, that you shouldn't just always get hit because "It's better to get countered when you do an Air BC." If you think your opponent is anticipating this, do something that will defy their expectations - simple as that.)

4. If they block your attack and don't go for the chicken guard, the Air BC will keep you close to your opponent. Also, the Air BC will usually reach the opponent after they hit the ground. Damn near anything they try apart from blocking will get beat, and in almost every situation, the Air BC will reach them quick enough to hit the opponent out of THEIR pre-jump frames, meaning they can't just jump out of it or land and try to chicken guard again. This doesn't come up often, but it's worth knowing.

*Bonus: If you're playing an extremely catatonic player, you can use kara-BC to build additional meter by jumping backwards and doing J.Mp, J.Mk xx BC. Hooray!

- A short blurb on chicken guarding with Air BC: It rocks. If you successfully block an air string, counter with Air BC for a free knockdown! This is also useful against people with long air chains to keep the offensive pressure on, or Air Dashers who like to attack from the farthest possible range (jump up, chicken guard the air dash from near the ground, counter with Air BC).

- Against grounded opponents, there's generally two ways to apply the cancel/kara-cancel BC:

1. If you know your opponent is going to attempt an AG, jump in, do something like J.Mk, and cancel it into an Air BC. This will keep them from immediately countering with something (unless they want to be rewarded with a knockdown), allowing you to stay in close even after being AG'd. The counter, of course, is that they could just anti-air you, or even worse, if they simply block both attacks, you won't land in time to block their counter-attack (i.e they get a free ground chain on you).

2. Using kara-BC, you have a pretty cool option select that can be useful against opponents with SRK-type attacks or other anti-air normals/specials. Though, in actual practice, it's not foolproof, it's still pretty damned useful:

As you're descending from your jump, press J.Mk and kara-cancel it into a BC. Preferably, you want to do the J.Mk from a distance where it'll whiff. What happens here is, if they jump at you, or try and counter you with a normal, you'll beat them with your J.Mk. If they try instead try an SRK, it will whiff and they will instead be hit by your BC.

Naturally, as I mentioned above, this isn't going to work out 100% of the time. If your opponent does a move that can beat your J.Mk, it won't magically win because you're doing a cool option select. Also, SRK attacks that move the opponent far enough forward will still beat this, so it's generally intended to beat Jab-SRKs/vertical Demon Cradles, slow anti-air normals (Anak's C.Hp, Jedah's C.Mk), and other anti-air specials (Jedah's Nero-Fatica, anti-air projectiles).


Start using this!

ES Beast Cannon patterns.

I wrote this information down for a few reasons:

1. I hear about people who don't play Talbain because they don't know the juggles/don't know how to juggle BCs.

2. I get asked frequently enough by people learning Talbain, 'what ES BC patterns do you use?'

3. I get really fucking sick of people saying that the best corner patter is 6/9 9 9 9 9. No it isn't!

Here's a post on this, taken from my compendium of random Talbain info on Dustloop. For the uninitiated, the numbers refer to what direction your BC is traveling; refer to the number pad on your keyboard. New additions in italics.

---

1. The Zig Zag: 6 9 7 9 2, OR 6 7 9 7 2

This is the most basic variation; it leaves the opponent in roughly the same position on the play field (relative to where they got hit), and the downward finisher sets up Talbain for a pursuit attack or just a long time to set up his wakeup game. The second version is good for switching sides with your opponent.

- Against some characters, it's easier to connect the final hit with 1 instead of 2.


2. The Staircase: 6 8 6 8 6/3

This is another very important variation, as it will corner an opponent from almost anywhere on the playfield. It's advantage in positioning is huge; however, the trade-off is that you're left in an awkward position: the opponent is in the corner, but you are cornered. Thus, your options afterwards are limited to either a late pursuit (places Talbain on the opposite side), or to dash away from the wall. Despite that, I hope the advantages of being able to corner your opponent at any time underscores how important this variation is.

- Note that this variation can not be started from an ES Anti-Air BC (9).


3. Stairwell: 6 9 4 9 4/1, OR 6 7 6 7 6/2/3

There's no technically important reason to know this variation, other than that it's by far the easiest to land all the hits with. It's good to practice this variation for no other reason than if you panic or hit an ES BC unexpectedly (not because you threw it out randomly!), you can have this variation in your muscle memory to ensure the maximum amount of damage possible. The second version switches sides with the opponent.


4. Corner Variation: 6 8 9 9 3

Fuck 6 9 9 9 9. If you really want a good corner variation, this is the right one. Every direction change has a logical explanation:

- 6 is the first hit...logically.
- 8 is the second hit, because 6 9 will whiff against Demitri and Rapter.
- 9 is the third hit, because 6 8 8 (or 6 9 8) will whiff against Lilith...and only Lilith, that bitch
- 9 as the fourth hit is the only reliable way to set up a downward finisher against the majority of the cast (you can use 8 as a fourth against wide characters)
- 3 is the only downward finisher that will reliably connect against the entire cast as well (2 works against fatties)

Thus, this is the only corner variation with a downward finisher that works universally against the entire cast. Learn it, love it.

(Also, what the hell? Why does 6 8 8 hit Morrigan and not Lilith?) 


5. Guard Cancel: 9 1 8 4 8

Though most of the variations can be started off of 9, this is probably the easiest one to do off of a Guard Cancel. Keep in mind that while you'll start out in one direction, you'll be moving in the opposite direction in the second half.


(This variation can also be useful if you are cornered, as it gets you out of the corner.)

- Not that I should HAVE to explain this; but for completion's sake, know that you can't do this variation off of any other starter than 9.

6. The Elevator: 6 9/7 8 2 8

 ...Because, hell yeah! Like the Stairwell, it's a good muscle memory habit to know that you can do 8 2 8 after landing a diagonal upper (9 or 7). Using 7 instead of 9 switches sides with the opponent.

In conclusion, if I see you do 6 9 9 9 9 I will kick your ass (at Vampire Savior).

Talbain unblockables.

There are a surprisingly high amount of unblockables in Vampire Savior, partially due to Fuzzy Guard, and partially due to downright glitches. Talbain has two. Hooray!

In this post - again, taken from Dustloop - I will explain the way to trigger the unblockables, along with my best explanation of how it works and some practical applications for them.

---

Unlike certain unblockables in VS, Talbain's are both a bit gimmicky and I don't use them much. For the sake of understanding, I've bolded where the unblockable attacks occur in the combo.

1. ES Beast Cannon unblockable: When an opponent blocks a BC that's going straight downward (2), the next hit, if done quickly enough (6 or 9) will be unblockable. I don't know exactly why this works, but it's not a crossup, because you can do it midscreen...although it's hard as hell to do. I'm 99.99% sure that you need to do the 2 into 6/9 fast enough for it to count as a block string in order to get this unblockable to work.

(No one is exactly sure why this unblockable works. However, I did take the time to dig up technical guru Xenozip's musings on the subject, with my additional comments in bold:

"...I do know that you can do the unblockable in a manner that the opponent leaves blockstun and can move around, at that point it doesn't matter which direction they push to block. So downleft/downright, left/right, nothing can block it. They will actually walk around instead of raising their guard as if [Talbain] isn't attacking. So, it's possible (probable) that it could be another proximity guard glitch. But rather than it being a distance thing, the game 'loses' Gallon's position/proximity on the playing field, and the opponent simply can not/won't raise their guard." (What  Xenozip is referring to when he says 'proximity guard glitch' is that when a character does an attack from very specific distances, the defender simply won't try to proximity guard the attack. This phenomenon is why Bishamon's ES Hayate is an unblockable attack against most of the cast.)

 "On a side note though, if the [Talbain] player does the last BC too slow the opponent can air block it. That's probably what Takahashi meant, in that if you do it at the right time they can't block on the ground and they don't have enough time to get into the air and block (since there's a jump startup window where you can't airblock).
" (Takahashi is an extremely high-level Japanese Talbain player who let us filthy Americans know about this unblockable to begin with. When Takahashi showed me the unblockable, he insisted thatTalbain has to be very close to the ground in order for the unblockable to work. Takahashi's English is not fluent, however; so Xenozip was making an educated guess as to what he was trying to tell me.)


As far as practical applications go:

- If your opponent is just sitting in the corner and blocking, you can do a 6 9 2 6/9 8 ES BC, and the last two hits will connect for marginal damage, and more importantly, a knockdown. Again, this COULD be done midscreen, but it's much harder and you have better things to be doing.

- You can also bait DPs to land the unblockable by doing 6 9 8 2 6/9. The 8 will (hopefully) dodge the DP entirely, and then you can come straight down on them and set up the final hit of the ES BC to be unblockable. If you are playing high level players, this will probably be the only way you see this unblockable come up in play.

- You can also mix it up by doing 6 9 2 and then landing. This allows you do just do a Throw option select, or even block to bait a DP.


2. Dark Force Unblockable: The very first attack that Talbain's Mirage does after starting a Dark Force is not unblockable, per se; however, it doesn't cause an opponent to guard if they are holding back. Thus, if you can find a way to make your very first attack in Dark Force a meaty attack, you can set up a situation where the opponent gets up into a meaty Mirage attack, which they won't be able to block.

While this sounds totally sexy, the reason why this isn't broken is because Talbain's Dark Force randomly picks between two different variations, where one set of Mirages hits faster than the other. Since there's no way to predict which one you're going to get, there are no 100% guaranteed setups for this unblockable (e.g you can't get a knockdown, activate Dark Force, and have a 100% chance of landing any meaty combo you can think of).

 What we do have, however, is a setup which will either get the unblockable or wind up being extremely safe, courtesy of high-level Japanese Talbain player, KENGALLON:

 - Activate Dark Force, P Throw, C.Mk xx Quick Move, C.Mk xx ES BC (3 Hits)

What's happening here, is that we are baiting a tech hit with the P Throw. If it's teched, Talbain can do his C.Mk kara-canceled into Quick move at the earliest possible  moment, which is a 100% setup with one of his DF speeds. If the unblockable connects, we have already done Quick Move, and will have enough time to link a second C.Mk into an ES BC for 3 hits.  

It's important to remember that Dark Force is a defensive maneuver. When you activate the Dark Force, it's not to do the unblockable; it's simply another way for us to get a knockdown and safely escape pressure. In other words, if you P Throw your opponent and they don't tech, deactivate instead of standing around like a jackass. If your C.Mk doesn't turn out to be unblockable, do what you need to do to ensure a save deactivation. If you don't feel confident trying the unblockable setup, run a safer tactic. Enjoy.

Mixing it up as Talbain.

Playing a mixup game with Talbain seems to be hard for most players. This is partly because he doesn't appear to have a wide variety of options to choose from, and partly because, until you fight players who know how to deal with Talbain, you can win most matches by jumping at your opponent and pressing Fierce.

So, here's a post I've made recently on the Dustloop Forums in response to a question about how to avoid being repetitive. Additions to the original post are in italics.

---

The immediate goal in mixing up with Talbain is not necessarily to land hits; but rather, to avoid getting AG'd, as AG really hurts Talbain compared to other pressure rushdown characters. (this isn't to say that it doesn't hurt other pressure characters; however, most pressure characters have a ground dash that mitigates AGs to an extent, as well as having more obvious frame traps.)

Here's some tips on how to accomplish that:

1. Know your pressure strings.

When you're in on the opponent, do small, intermittent block strings, mixed in with Quick Move (D+3K) to stay on top of your opponent. Doing repeated C.Lps, C.Lp -> C.Lk, C.(light) -> C.(medium), and C.Mp -> C.Mk with varied timing in between will catch your opponent's AG attempt. This won't do a lot of damage, but it will give you an effective way to gauge your opponent. For example...

- Based on whether or not your opponent is getting hit by the strings with frequency, you can tell if they are trying to AG, counter attack, or are simply sitting there blocking.

- Based on how frequently they are AG'ing your attacks, you can determine how long you can keep up the pressure strings before attempting a mixup/frame trap.

It's important to cancel C.(light) and C.Mk into Quick Moves at time, since Talbain has no other way to move forward while applying ground pressure. Quick Move has a bit of a mixup built into it as well:

C.Mk xx Quick Move is the standard cancel; it is safe on block, and it keeps Talbain at roughly the same distance away from his opponent from when he started the move.

C.Lp/C.Lk xx Quick Move is the fancy cancel; this maneuver will actually cause Talbain to gain some ground on his opponent and allow for some more tricky stuff (walk-up throw, easier dash cross ups, or even just variable blockstun pressure), but it is NOT safe on block. You CAN be hit out of this cancel, so it's important not to just do it all the time, and especially not against an opponent who is jamming out on AG, as they'll hit you out of this without even thinking about it.

2. Be aware of all your mixup options.

When establishing ground pressure, you actually have a lot of options:

- C.Mk xx ES BC: this one seems really obvious, but keep in mind that this is a frame trap from certain distances. If you know your spacing, you can do this from a distance in which it won't combo, making it dangerous to just blindly AG. This might seem scrubby, but it's probably Talbain's most important deterrence against people who just one-hit Tech and immediately rush in afterwards.

 - Dash: Depending on your opponent and your placement on the field, you have a few different options. D.Lk/D.Mk are the typical overheads, and will be used most of the time - D.Lk can also cross up against shorties (Talbain, Morrigan, Lilith, BB Hood, and Q-Bee). D.Mk -> D.Lk is a good one for midscreen against tall characters (Demi, Anak, Vic, Rik, Jedah, Bish), especially after landing a damage chain, as it usually sets up the spacing just right. (Also, though it's a bit of a gimmick, you can do D.Hp, and land with Wild Circular. Good to do if you know your opponent is accustomed to blocking after a dash.)

 - Normals: There's a lot of untapped potential in Talbain's normals for mixup. Light attacks obviously will continue block pressure, but also, C.Lk is especially good for baiting Guard Cancels. Throwing in C.Mp or S.Hp after a Quick Move is really effective for variable block pressure, since the slight differences in timing will catch people who AG mechanically. S.Mk and T.Mk are good proactive defensive options, as they are good for pegging people who try to jump out of your block strings and cause resets.

 - (Walk foward), C.Hk: This is Talbain's only low knockdown option, so while it's not that flashy, it's still a powerful tool. (To clarify, this part of Talbain's mixup is normally done after a Quick Move. Where your opponent can be looking for anything - more pressure normals, an overhead, a jump, an instant Air BC, you can just do C.Hk. You may need to take a step forward after the Quick Move, since the range of Talbain's sweep is relatively short.)

 - Tick throw: You could command throw; but, even if the opponent techs the throw, they are likely to be cornered, which is wonderful for you. I'd just do the normal throw. Command throw can also queer up the Throw option select. (Since it seems that most people don't know this based on the types of QQ I hear about Talbain, the OS Throw can NOT be done with a command throw. If you jump out of a command throw, your opponent will get a throw whiff animation. Thus, if you get pegged by an early jumping attack, your opponent did not do a command throw to begin with - they just tried a normal throw.)

 - Anti-Air BC: Also another proactive option for people who try to jump out of your block strings. This is a wonderful option against high/low rushdown characters. (It's a wonderful option against high/low rushdown characters because their air dash more-or-less commits them to a state where they can't block. Good players will know tricks to make you think twice about using a move like Anti-Air BC every single time, though.)

 - Normal BC: The normal BC has a mixup in and of itself; you can do 66 with staggered timing between the first and second hits to try and catch AG'ers, 64 to avoid being reset by an AG attack, 6 (cross behind) 4 for a cross-up, and even 6, throw/command throw to catch people who are too catatonic. (Another thing you can do with 66 is intentionally press the second 6 before you even connect the first hit. If your opponent likes to try and Option Select AG, this is a really good way to screw with them, as their OS attempt will completely miss.)

- TK Air BC: The proper way to TK Air BC is 23696+P. This is admittedly not particularly good at punishing any specific thing; however, it does lead to big damage if it hits, and it's very safe on block if done low to the ground, allowing you another mixup option, or even the opportunity to bait an attack so you can hit them with your own GC.

 - Jump: The jump has its own built-in mixup, too. You can mixup between jumping in with a normal (vary the timing and the attack for AGs) and empty jump into command throw for people who are blocking too much, You can also do J.Mk xx Air BC, which is an extremely low-risk frame trap (when done from far away), combo (if done right on top of them), or reset (if they tried to jump away). Jumping in and chicken guarding is beautiful against characters with DPs, as you can then counter the blocked DP with J.Hk or Air BC. Finally, jumping backwards and doing Air BC is a slightly more defensive variation of TK Air BC. (It's also a good idea not to forget Kara-Air BCs, too. J.Mk xx Air BC when Kara-canceled is a good way to keep up a proactive defense. You can also do J.Mk, J.anything (I prefer J.Lk) xx Air BC, as most people will assume that you aren't going to do an Air BC if you're doing empty air chains.)

- C.Mk xx Dragon Cannon or C.Mk xx Quick Move, Dragon Cannon: This is an extremely gimmicky option used only for opponents who are on the verge of losing a life and are panicking. Don't do this if you have the opponent in the corner, or they will have all damn day to react to it.

 Here's a match of me vs. MightyMar which showcases several of the options I've mentioned here. Keep in mind that, since Anakaris can't tech hit, many of the really long ground pressure strings I did are a bit stronger here than they are against other opponents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc-iWhJRvp8

3. Reset smart.

 Take advantage of good air resets. If your opponent is going to land far away from you, do a meaty dash (Be careful if your opponent is trying to GC this!). If your opponent is going to land close to you, mix up which side you are going to be on when they land and do a ground chain. If they are landing close, and you think they are going to jump or AG, do a meaty S.Hp -> C.Hk for a knockdown. (Do C.Hp -> C.Hk against Q-Bee, because she is a jackass and will crouch under your S.Hp.) Do a throw sometimes. Jump straight up and run a jump mixup.


If you wanna mix it up with Talbain, you've gotta dig a little deep. But, it's worth it; if you wanna WIN with Talbain in high-level play, you'll learn how to mix it up!