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Raiden Match Footage

Marlow

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Echo playing solidly. One of the few people who stuck with the character and continues trying to make him work.

Great stuff. I'll have to go back and watch more of that, I'm only able to watch the first couple minutes right now due to work, but I like what I'm seeing. Especially the movement and use of teleport seems on point. Great job at walking back constantly and picking good spots as to when to teleport and fish for an opening.
 

Marlow

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It seemed early there were a couple times where he just did a B3 instead of a B31, was that an execution thing, or was there some reason he would deliberately be going for that?
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
Great stuff. I'll have to go back and watch more of that, I'm only able to watch the first couple minutes right now due to work, but I like what I'm seeing. Especially the movement and use of teleport seems on point. Great job at walking back constantly and picking good spots as to when to teleport and fish for an opening.
He makes multiple great reads on Liu Kang's projectiles and punishes, making him scared to throw out anything, but they both never punish the teleports and give the opponent a lot of free pressure on what should -ve frames
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
It seemed early there were a couple times where he just did a B3 instead of a B31, was that an execution thing, or was there some reason he would deliberately be going for that?
Probably staggering and baiting FB attempts, though B3 is like -9 or -7
 

MKF30

Fujin and Ermac for MK 11
I like how he likes to take risks with the teleport, LK can punish him if he anticipates it but it's like Raiden player has the LK player on defensive side in these matches.
 

Marlow

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How useful is Raiden's amped teleport? Can that be used to try and bait a teleport punish attempt by the opponent?
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
How useful is Raiden's amped teleport? Can that be used to try and bait a teleport punish attempt by the opponent?
You can but I don't find it worth the offensive bar because if they mash pokes they can punish you on the second teleport and if they are late on the punish they just punish your second teleport when you could have blocked by not amping.
 

SparkySanders

Unga bunga dude
if you don’t abuse tp grab, the amp one is a good way to catch someone sleeping at the wheel to get the grab brutality near the end of a match.

I also had a circumstance in which the opponent went for a yolo fatal and the amp tp made the fb whiff for a clutch win.
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
Kombat (Raijin) VS Deoxys (Upgraded).
My analysis:
Really solid Raijin play, but his lack of familiarity shows when Kombat isn’t able to fully capitalise on his hit confirms into Raijin’s superior damage. However his usage of buffed DF2 is sufficient to give Deoxys a hard time, not to mention using instant jump 1s and 3s or just DB2 to deal with Jacqui’s bionic jumps. DB3 also works great to increase survivability with all the pressure Jacqui puts on.
Deoxys also showed some unfamiliarity with Raijin, since he lets Kombat get a away with stuff like doing B12 into DB3 (-20 iirc) on block and respecting B12~DB3 (-2) on hit.
 
Kombat (Raijin) VS Deoxys (Upgraded).
My analysis:
Really solid Raijin play, but his lack of familiarity shows when Kombat isn’t able to fully capitalise on his hit confirms into Raijin’s superior damage. However his usage of buffed DF2 is sufficient to give Deoxys a hard time, not to mention using instant jump 1s and 3s or just DB2 to deal with Jacqui’s bionic jumps. DB3 also works great to increase survivability with all the pressure Jacqui puts on.
Deoxys also showed some unfamiliarity with Raijin, since he lets Kombat get a away with stuff like doing B12 into DB3 (-20 iirc) on block and respecting B12~DB3 (-2) on hit.
exactly
 

Marlow

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Unfortunately not the best showing for Raiden. Dalphanate didn't play great, although he seemed to do a bit better once he switched to Raijin. Overall just a bit too impatient, which Raiden can't to afford to be.
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning

Unfortunately not the best showing for Raiden. Dalphanate didn't play great, although he seemed to do a bit better once he switched to Raijin. Overall just a bit too impatient, which Raiden can't to afford to be.
Dalphanate likes to press a lot lol. His game plan revolves mostly or even solely around B12. He hardly uses F32 outside of corner combos and he only uses F2 to close distance, and doesn’t really use F4. I haven’t watched all of it, though the MU is definitely stacked against Raiden. He loses at both close and long range, only really getting mileage off whiff punishing. TW covers the zoning but Raijin is more effective in getting Sonya off pressure and getting more safety. What do you think of the MU?
 

Marlow

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Dalphanate likes to press a lot lol. His game plan revolves mostly or even solely around B12. He hardly uses F32 outside of corner combos and he only uses F2 to close distance, and doesn’t really use F4. I haven’t watched all of it, though the MU is definitely stacked against Raiden. He loses at both close and long range, only really getting mileage off whiff punishing. TW covers the zoning but Raijin is more effective in getting Sonya off pressure and getting more safety. What do you think of the MU?
Seems like a pretty rough one. Sonya gets to set the tempo of the match. It feels like Raiden spends most of his time needing to adjust and react to Sonya. Maybe it was just because Dalphanate was playing better with Raijin, but it seems like Raijin is the better variation to go with in this matchup. Easier to stay safe, and easier to avoid getting chipped to death. As was said in the video, he wasn't getting anything from teleport or Storm Cell, so if one set of tools isn't working might as well switch to the other. I really need to put in the time to better learn both TW and Raijin, this video is a good glimpse of why knowing both is key.

Also, just another comment on the matchup (and this is going to sound pretty nerdy), but in Magic The Gathering there's a pretty influential strategy article from 1999 that people still reference a lot called "Who's the Beatdown?". Basically this guy noticed that a big reason people would lose in Magic was mis-assignment of who is the beatdown deck and who is the control deck. At any one time in a game of Magic, one person is “the beatdown” – the one applying pressure, and the other is “the control” – the person trying to defend themselves. The player who mis-assigns themselves is inevitably the loser.

Obviously there's not a ton of overlap between MtG and Mortal Kombat, but I've always thought that the "who's the beatdown" framework was a pretty decent way to look at matchups, and can be re-worded slightly to "who's the rushdown?" to make it applicable to MK. In the Sonya v Raiden matchup, Sonya is pretty clearly the Rushdown.
 

Marlow

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I also think that video is a pretty decent summation of what Raiden is as a character right now. He's pretty clearly outclassed by a top tier like Sonya, but at the same time I didn't feel like Dalphanate was getting beat soley because of character selection. There were times where he was able to make some nice reads and decisions and win some games, and a decent amount of his struggles were somewhat user related, with him failing to block some projectiles that he probably should have blocked, or simply playing too unsafe or aggressive with the teleports. To me it shows that Raiden is definitely a low tier character in this game, but still viable. With some decent tweaks to his frame data he should shoot up nicely into Mid Tier status.
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
I also think that video is a pretty decent summation of what Raiden is as a character right now. He's pretty clearly outclassed by a top tier like Sonya, but at the same time I didn't feel like Dalphanate was getting beat soley because of character selection. There were times where he was able to make some nice reads and decisions and win some games, and a decent amount of his struggles were somewhat user related, with him failing to block some projectiles that he probably should have blocked, or simply playing too unsafe or aggressive with the teleports. To me it shows that Raiden is definitely a low tier character in this game, but still viable. With some decent tweaks to his frame data he should shoot up nicely into Mid Tier status.
No character in this game is trash tier. It's just the amount of work you have to put in. I'm happy with Raiden being just solid with the few tweaks I've suggested. Other stuff we should be able to work out through discussion and grinding, not whining and complaining
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
Seems like a pretty rough one. Sonya gets to set the tempo of the match. It feels like Raiden spends most of his time needing to adjust and react to Sonya. Maybe it was just because Dalphanate was playing better with Raijin, but it seems like Raijin is the better variation to go with in this matchup. Easier to stay safe, and easier to avoid getting chipped to death. As was said in the video, he wasn't getting anything from teleport or Storm Cell, so if one set of tools isn't working might as well switch to the other. I really need to put in the time to better learn both TW and Raijin, this video is a good glimpse of why knowing both is key.

Also, just another comment on the matchup (and this is going to sound pretty nerdy), but in Magic The Gathering there's a pretty influential strategy article from 1999 that people still reference a lot called "Who's the Beatdown?". Basically this guy noticed that a big reason people would lose in Magic was mis-assignment of who is the beatdown deck and who is the control deck. At any one time in a game of Magic, one person is “the beatdown” – the one applying pressure, and the other is “the control” – the person trying to defend themselves. The player who mis-assigns themselves is inevitably the loser.

Obviously there's not a ton of overlap between MtG and Mortal Kombat, but I've always thought that the "who's the beatdown" framework was a pretty decent way to look at matchups, and can be re-worded slightly to "who's the rushdown?" to make it applicable to MK. In the Sonya v Raiden matchup, Sonya is pretty clearly the Rushdown.
Your analogy does apply I think. What is troublesome in the MU is that Raijin loses to good zoning, but TW loses when in close pressure situations. Those 2 complement each other well but the problem comes when Sonya has both. Though I would agree with you that Raijin is probably the way to go. However, there is absolutely nothing stopping the Sonya from sitting fullscreen and chucking rings, since we can only at best trade and get the knockdown and use up meter, but she has a KB and better projectile overall. We always have to advance on her, and when we do get in she still out-damages us. Raijin's safety might still be a game-changer though, allowing us to maintain offensive pressure with Raiden's superior mid-range game and whiff-punishing ability
 
Fully agree with Mandalore here. In my experience as Raijin vs any Sonya, the key is to control the gap between close and mid range.

Sonya is still riduculously strong. Easy KBs, fast strings, crazy good projectile. You make 1 mistake against a good Sonya player and half your life bar is gone.

Oh and Marlow, if you need help sharpening your skills with Raijin, add me on PSN, I'll help you out. PSN is "UnshavenOne".
 

MKF30

Fujin and Ermac for MK 11
How useful is Raiden's amped teleport? Can that be used to try and bait a teleport punish attempt by the opponent?
It's good to use here and there for playing some serious head games with your opponent and/or confusing the hell out of them. Though I personally rarely do it I like to just cancel one teleport into another then cancel that second one with the amped one, so he's literally bouncing all over the place but I wouldn't recommend this against a very aggressive player as his teleport close can get punished on reaction.
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
Solid play from PI using TW against SD noob. I think the most important thing here is the FB reversals after F3 staggers really opening up possibilities for throws.
 

Marlow

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Solid play from PI using TW against SD noob. I think the most important thing here is the FB reversals after F3 staggers really opening up possibilities for throws.

Seemed like he did a pretty good job spacing his F2 and F4 as well. I also like how he used Raiden's projectiles, he avoided getting punished too much on those. You're right, his use of F3 was really nice to see.

His B31 started getting blown up a bit more as the game went on, seemed like from about middle of the video on Raiden had a harder time getting his offense going once HB started FB reversing it.

What do you think of the Noob SD matchup? Just watching the video it didn't seem terrible to me.
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
I could use some insightful help on using raijin! @UnshavenRaven
I’ll add you on psn when I get off work
Spamming the ever living crap out of DF2 when buffed does wonders. It’s nice chunky damage that adds up especially when people keep trying to poke out of your buttons and you cancel into DF2 for the nice knockdown. DF2 on hit allows for free quick charge set up or one dash gets you into F4 range.