THTB
Arez | Booya | Riu48 - Rest Easy, Friends
As of recently, I've dropped Baraka as a tournament character, and have gone into playing Reptile 100% again. I've been experimenting with different stuff (With quite a bit of help from Muffin Muggers), and here's what I've come up with.
1. Invisibility is way too underused. I'm not talking EX invisibility (It is, though). Regular invisibility. It is seriously the one thing Reptile players need to start taking advantage of. Yes, Reptile is not fully invisible. However, transparency is enough to make it fairly difficult to make out what Reptile is exactly doing. Not only does this naturally tend to force out mistakes on misjudging stuff like spacing, it really makes the opponent NOT want to deal with it at all. People generally take to some risky measures to get Reptile visible again. Which psychologically opens up the opponent, in truth. This mindgame aspect of Reptile is definitely something to always keep in mind.
As of late, I've been incorporating invisibility for this purpose, as well as getting it into my brain to get invisible whenever possible. I'm going as far as to blatantly turn invisible with nothing going on just because I can. Blocked forceball? Oh, down-up-four. So far it's been pretty successful.
2. The reset, I think, is one of the most important things to use with Reptile at this point. If they choose to block, not only do they lose wakeup attacks, Reptile is +8, and elbow is guaranteed (Which means you can use the EX elbow to get back in there with advantage, and use this conditioning to get in without using the meter). If they don't, they have to deal with oki shenanigans not unlike being knocked down by elbow on top of taking more damage than normal.
Tbh, in the long run, reset is a way better option. Both outcomes open up varying situations that aren't exactly in the opponent's favor.
3. EX elbow is extremely important for dealing with that dead zone of Reptile's, and is overall his best footsies option. The threat of being in elbow's range now switches, because if you don't react on the blocked EX elbow, it's +5 and you're in (I know Reptile's better normals are too slow to take advantage of this, but +5 is still good). If you get hit, you lost 17%, are knocked down, and Reptile is pretty much still in. Essentially, from maximum EX elbow distance, you are capable of getting in for pressure in a time span of 13 frames using something that has a fairly generous hitbox that goes active on the 6th frame. That's too important. Yes, you can be punished for using this, but you have to be scouting it basically to deal with it. Combine it with invisibility, and yeah...it just gets pretty funny.
Pretty much just an insight on how I've been trying to improve Reptile. This lab time has really given me high hopes about Reptile again. I still don't think it'll take him up to top tier, but this definitely is a step towards more refined Reptile play.
1. Invisibility is way too underused. I'm not talking EX invisibility (It is, though). Regular invisibility. It is seriously the one thing Reptile players need to start taking advantage of. Yes, Reptile is not fully invisible. However, transparency is enough to make it fairly difficult to make out what Reptile is exactly doing. Not only does this naturally tend to force out mistakes on misjudging stuff like spacing, it really makes the opponent NOT want to deal with it at all. People generally take to some risky measures to get Reptile visible again. Which psychologically opens up the opponent, in truth. This mindgame aspect of Reptile is definitely something to always keep in mind.
As of late, I've been incorporating invisibility for this purpose, as well as getting it into my brain to get invisible whenever possible. I'm going as far as to blatantly turn invisible with nothing going on just because I can. Blocked forceball? Oh, down-up-four. So far it's been pretty successful.
2. The reset, I think, is one of the most important things to use with Reptile at this point. If they choose to block, not only do they lose wakeup attacks, Reptile is +8, and elbow is guaranteed (Which means you can use the EX elbow to get back in there with advantage, and use this conditioning to get in without using the meter). If they don't, they have to deal with oki shenanigans not unlike being knocked down by elbow on top of taking more damage than normal.
Tbh, in the long run, reset is a way better option. Both outcomes open up varying situations that aren't exactly in the opponent's favor.
3. EX elbow is extremely important for dealing with that dead zone of Reptile's, and is overall his best footsies option. The threat of being in elbow's range now switches, because if you don't react on the blocked EX elbow, it's +5 and you're in (I know Reptile's better normals are too slow to take advantage of this, but +5 is still good). If you get hit, you lost 17%, are knocked down, and Reptile is pretty much still in. Essentially, from maximum EX elbow distance, you are capable of getting in for pressure in a time span of 13 frames using something that has a fairly generous hitbox that goes active on the 6th frame. That's too important. Yes, you can be punished for using this, but you have to be scouting it basically to deal with it. Combine it with invisibility, and yeah...it just gets pretty funny.
Pretty much just an insight on how I've been trying to improve Reptile. This lab time has really given me high hopes about Reptile again. I still don't think it'll take him up to top tier, but this definitely is a step towards more refined Reptile play.