Smoke_Of_Finland
Believe in the hop kick
I just started writing and came up with this incoherent babble:
I have come to the conclusion that without the broken tag damage and Bruce to pick up Kazuya's slack, I suck ass with solo Kazuya. It requires too much mental effort, neutral and patience to win players of equal skill level in short sets or single matches. The fast paced, compact poking style of Tekken is just vastly superior over the lame bait'n'wait style or at least it's way easier to execute. People will naturally play in a more cautious and safe way when facing Kazuya so they leave less openings to counter or punish and get any offence going. Kazuya must score knockdowns to set anything up. Like seriously, his neutral is about abusing electrics and optionally looking to ss and mist step at around range 1,5-2 in case the opponent likes to random duck so you can space f3 properly and use it from a sidestep as to not have it whiff and make sure the opponent isn't just looking to duck. Then if your opponent isn't too button happy you can go in and have that ws4 make contact, maybe go in with 1,1 or FC df3+4 from wave dash (to crush), maybe use ws3 to check sloppy sidewalkers. But that's pretty much it. The character is just way too stripped of options for compact offensive play. Any mids besides ws4, f4 or running 3 get blocked and your momentum is terminated.
All you need to do with poke heavy characters is to look at the opposing character's upper back to see and recognize strings as fast as possible, there is a lesser chance of you picking the wrong punish or counterpoke and failing to punish properly or whiffing your counterpoke to a sidestep or backdash setup. You can see their posture drop if they go for sweeping lows and maybe even block the slower ones, you can also see the hands come out and give yourself a chance to break throws. You see them move forward after both letting the game go back to neutral, just ss-block and you won't get hit by random shit and you won't block + on block mids. You don't even need to look at your character when you know where you are on the screen based on your inputs, like obviously you will see your character with your peripheral vision, but I have come to the conclusion that the reason I haven't learned to break throws is because I don't focus on that exact point on my opponents character all the time, I try to play too much neutral and let my eyes wander. I have been inputting the correct breaks but too late and it's just easier to break throws when they come from setups and you are anticipating buttons from hit- or blockstun and your opponent isn't moving around for extended periods of time.
Heihachi allows me to play the game exactly the way I want to play it. He is strong at all ranges and allows me to force the opponent to play the compact up close style of Tekken. But sometimes when facing players who like to backdash incessantly instead of fighting me back or for some other reason I'll pick Bryan. I just think for a more neutral focused game, he is superior to Kazuya and pretty much everyone else. Instead of being limited to just punishment, Oki and 50/50's you can do whatever you want to do except frame abuse on offence. Just let the +3 from blocked b1 go, same as the +4's from df21, 14 and qcb3 on hit. The db4 attempts from +4 are not really worth it anymore with low parries being a lot stronger, unless you face someone who will not duck no matter what you do or someone who doesn't attempt to fuzzy into low parry then stand back up. Df2,1 and 1,4 actually allow a backdash whiff setup on hit as well for the usual "sidestep cancelled into launcher" attempts that people who know the Bryan match-up like to throw out.They'll whiff that hop kick right in front of you. Bryan flows so seamlessly between neutral and poking as long as you know your ranges, with Kazuya you have crap ton of "blind spots" that you can't really fill with anything besides EWGF or fF2 and you are forced to take risks regularly to get anything going.
As for Josie I am undecided, the character plays in a completely different way to Bruce and I don't like what I've seen. I'll probably try her out and play Kazuya as well just because, but Heihachi and Bryan are my definite favourites. Chances are I'll mess around with Dragunov, Jin and Devil Jin as I have in the past but fail to clutch out matches miserably against players of equal skill once more lol.
I have come to the conclusion that without the broken tag damage and Bruce to pick up Kazuya's slack, I suck ass with solo Kazuya. It requires too much mental effort, neutral and patience to win players of equal skill level in short sets or single matches. The fast paced, compact poking style of Tekken is just vastly superior over the lame bait'n'wait style or at least it's way easier to execute. People will naturally play in a more cautious and safe way when facing Kazuya so they leave less openings to counter or punish and get any offence going. Kazuya must score knockdowns to set anything up. Like seriously, his neutral is about abusing electrics and optionally looking to ss and mist step at around range 1,5-2 in case the opponent likes to random duck so you can space f3 properly and use it from a sidestep as to not have it whiff and make sure the opponent isn't just looking to duck. Then if your opponent isn't too button happy you can go in and have that ws4 make contact, maybe go in with 1,1 or FC df3+4 from wave dash (to crush), maybe use ws3 to check sloppy sidewalkers. But that's pretty much it. The character is just way too stripped of options for compact offensive play. Any mids besides ws4, f4 or running 3 get blocked and your momentum is terminated.
All you need to do with poke heavy characters is to look at the opposing character's upper back to see and recognize strings as fast as possible, there is a lesser chance of you picking the wrong punish or counterpoke and failing to punish properly or whiffing your counterpoke to a sidestep or backdash setup. You can see their posture drop if they go for sweeping lows and maybe even block the slower ones, you can also see the hands come out and give yourself a chance to break throws. You see them move forward after both letting the game go back to neutral, just ss-block and you won't get hit by random shit and you won't block + on block mids. You don't even need to look at your character when you know where you are on the screen based on your inputs, like obviously you will see your character with your peripheral vision, but I have come to the conclusion that the reason I haven't learned to break throws is because I don't focus on that exact point on my opponents character all the time, I try to play too much neutral and let my eyes wander. I have been inputting the correct breaks but too late and it's just easier to break throws when they come from setups and you are anticipating buttons from hit- or blockstun and your opponent isn't moving around for extended periods of time.
Heihachi allows me to play the game exactly the way I want to play it. He is strong at all ranges and allows me to force the opponent to play the compact up close style of Tekken. But sometimes when facing players who like to backdash incessantly instead of fighting me back or for some other reason I'll pick Bryan. I just think for a more neutral focused game, he is superior to Kazuya and pretty much everyone else. Instead of being limited to just punishment, Oki and 50/50's you can do whatever you want to do except frame abuse on offence. Just let the +3 from blocked b1 go, same as the +4's from df21, 14 and qcb3 on hit. The db4 attempts from +4 are not really worth it anymore with low parries being a lot stronger, unless you face someone who will not duck no matter what you do or someone who doesn't attempt to fuzzy into low parry then stand back up. Df2,1 and 1,4 actually allow a backdash whiff setup on hit as well for the usual "sidestep cancelled into launcher" attempts that people who know the Bryan match-up like to throw out.They'll whiff that hop kick right in front of you. Bryan flows so seamlessly between neutral and poking as long as you know your ranges, with Kazuya you have crap ton of "blind spots" that you can't really fill with anything besides EWGF or fF2 and you are forced to take risks regularly to get anything going.
As for Josie I am undecided, the character plays in a completely different way to Bruce and I don't like what I've seen. I'll probably try her out and play Kazuya as well just because, but Heihachi and Bryan are my definite favourites. Chances are I'll mess around with Dragunov, Jin and Devil Jin as I have in the past but fail to clutch out matches miserably against players of equal skill once more lol.
