Yeah. I wanted to stay but Krayzie was rushing me to take off. That's why I didn't even say bye to everyone. He was feeling sick the whole time and just wanted to leave. He was thinking of not even entering the tourney too...
I definitely don't really use trait kancels from range. I actually don't really zone with Ares.. lol. The fact that he loses up klose and far makes it really bad.
I think it's great that you know how to zone and be lame. I didn't start doing as well with Arrow until I learned that. That said, I think Ares and Arrow are similar in some ways since they both shouldn't just be rushing down or zoning konstantly. They have to switch it up and when they do get in, they have to kondition people based on their poking game.
As for some of the offense. I think you should try using the advantage of your 22 more. I saw you 22~D4 a lot and while it's good for you that Theo wasn't interrupting it (at least at first, didn't see the rest of your matches) you lose out on pressure. Even D1~Teleport kan work as a follow up if they aren't kounterpoking fast enough. And if they are kounterpoking immediately then you already know the answer to that. B1 into D1 also works. Against most of the kast, at worst you get a trade (since you're minus 1 and you have a 6 frame D1). If they kounter poke, B1 MB tele behind into 22 will punish them. If B1 konnects or they kounter poke the D1, you kan hit konfirm into a kombo.
I had soo many things in my head for Ares pressure. It just sucks that he gets beat by some characters badly. I also only got to play against two characters so far with him: Martian (Krayzie and Bad Larry) and your Cyborg, so my experience with him is limited.
I was actually thinking the same thing about Arrow and Ares. They're both characters that sort of have rushdown and zoning and counter zoning tools, but don't really excel at any of them. It leaves a lot of freedom for different playstyles, but also sometimes means they really have to play to the match up.
TDC is so good in the match ups where you can get away with it. It builds meter(you need that meter), helps control space, and is a mind game. If you're trying to zone with Ares and you're not making use of the ability to hold and cancel trait you're missing a huge tool.
That set I played with Theo was kind of weird. I was shaking off the drive and the pre-tourney jitters and it was clear that neither of us were as familiar with match up as we wanted. Early on he was getting hit by everything I did, then it sort of flipped and I was getting hit by everything while I was trying to get familiar with spacing and trying stuff out and we were talking about the match up as we played and between matches. The tournament set we played went pretty different(although I kinda choked).
Basically what I do with 22 though is check them with d1 a bunch of times until I'm sure that they're gonna block it(or establish that they're just not going to block it and they're when you go for d1~d4) and then I start using 22~d4. The reason it wasn't getting interrupted was because he was respecting the d1 frame trap. When you do 22~d4 it'll catch them if they try to back dash or jump a d1 follow or because the delay was just long enough that they realized the d1 wasn't coming so they stood up or pressed buttons but missed the window to interrupt. If they block the d4 you get frame advantage, space(although depending on match up that can be bad), and does decent chip.
Establishing the 22~d4 opens a lot more mind games. It encourages them to poke, which means they'll get hit by d1 checks more often(d1 is your only option that's always safe, but it also ends your pressure on block so you want to be able to hit them with that sometimes). Also, using d1 and d4 after 22 a lot trains them to think that just crouching low is a safe way out if they just want to block their way out of pressure(lots of people catch on fairly quickly that just waiting to block a d1 or trait can be an effective and safe way out of Ares pressure) and while they're thinking mostly about the 22, d1 and 22~d4 guessing game is when I like to sprinkle in the overheads. I also think you should be able to train them that by the time they see the low sword on 22~d4 that it's already too late to do anything but block and then you should be able to try stuff like trait dash canceling(either forward into something like throw or d1 or backwards to create space or zone) and switching to OH sword but I haven't messed around with that a lot yet.
You have to adjust a lot to play style of your opponent. A lot of the time you can sort of break your opponents down into either "likes to block" or "likes to press buttons" and you can figure that out fairly early into the match. If they don't like to block all you really need is 22 and d1 because the d1 will hit them a lot and once it stops you can occasionally use 22 again after 22 and that'll be enough to make them antsy and start getting hit by d1 some more. Against players that like to block you need to do more to open them up, and a lot of the time stuff that's technically risky or punishable like 22~d4 becomes relatively safe because you know they'd rather block.
I really don't like the idea of d1~teleport. On hit you're giving up a combo or pressure and on block you're giving them two chance to punish(either because they had decided to counter poke the d1 and end up stuffing teleport or because they were just sitting there and punish the teleport on the other side). I use b1 into d1 a lot. If you watch my first tournament match with Theo, I know I hit him with it there.
b1~teleport is something that I think is a good idea. It was something I messed with a while back after the patch and forgot about just because I was focusing on other stuff but you actually used it against me and I immediately made a mental note to work it into my game. Early today I was actually practicing that and other block strings into teleport so I can get that into muscle memory and start figuring out the best ways to use it in real matches.
B1 pressure has potential to get pretty advanced, I think. Like you said, after a blocked b1 they can't stuff a teleport with a counter poke. If they do try to counter poke and you teleport you can punish if you mb'd and if you didn't mb the teleport you're safe and usually they're disoriented enough that you get to start pressure. B1 into far teleports is also something that's fairly safe in most match ups. Basically after b1 they have to guess whether you're going to d1, cancel into low sword, cancel into teleport behind, teleport behind mb, teleport away, or teleport far behind, cancel into invis(technically not safe, but safe if they see it and think its a tele and wait to punish), cancel into godsmack, or go into some other bullshit like 22 or jump or something.
I agree that Ares pressure is really awesome and sometimes I feel like I come up with a bunch of really sick ideas, but then in practice he has so many match ups where he just can't ever get it started. I sympathize with your MMH experience. I play with Bad Larry more than anyone else, and you can't use any of Ares cool tools against him. There's so much stuff I think about but then never get to practice because I don't get enough match up experience against the characters that it could work against. It almost makes me want to start playing online. Almost.
I was under the impression NW can't jump godsmack in staff stance, isn't it very difficult?
I don't know if I would say it's very difficult, but it is harder for him. Most characters can just hold up as soon as they see Godsmack, NW has to time it. If he jumps too early he'll land and get hit and he may have a slow up start up that makes reacting to it harder(Lex has a similar problem) but as far as I know he can jump out in any situation where other characters can. We used to have a local NW player who would jump out consistently when I played him(he'd usually get hit by about 1 stray Godsmack in a long set and his reactions always made it clear that he considered it an execution error not a match up problem). Although I'd believe that online it's very difficult and it may be hard enough that it's not worth trying in a tournament if you don't have regular Ares experience.
) but next time I'm over there we should get another set it
