Nice chart. Btw I think Cyrax beats Smoke 7-3. Cyrax just has to dash block until he gets in. Once he does, Smoke is fucked. Smoke has good pokes, but his normals are very slow (think Mileena but with a 9 frame 2 and you get the idea). Factor in that Cyrax can punish a blocked d1 for 80+% percent and yeah...that leaves Smoke's options up close to d3, 2 1 4, throw, and d4/b2 3/3 d1 2 (if space permits) vs Cyrax's 100+ options. Smoke has to watch out for Cyrax's stupid low/overhead mixups, and if Smoke holds block too long he risks getting command grabbed. It's pretty bad. The one major edge Smoke has in this matchup is anti-air damage, as Smoke has the highest anti-air damage in the game by far (he can do 100% damage off an anti-air if he has the meter). Too bad the Cyrax player already knows this and won't jump. GG.
In terms of what to use meter for, Smoke has 3 options:
1) Save meter for high combo damage. Overall Smoke has a much harder time landing significant damage than Cyrax does, so good luck to Smoke waiting for that combo opportunity.
2) Save meter to break. This is fine and dandy until Smoke lands a combo, then your own damage is nerfed because you have no meter. Instead of doing 70+%, Smoke does mid 30s. Plus Cyrax has breaker traps and unbreakable setups galore, so yeah.
3) A combination of both.
All these options suck to be frank, not that Smoke will often have the freedom to build large amounts of meter anyways! Why? Simply due a little thing called ex-Net. Seriously...this is one of main reasons I feel the match-up is so bad. There so so many opportunities for Cyrax to do this is the matchup. Basically every time right he's about to reset you, he can just drain your meter. The opportunity even arises in the command grab loop. If Cyrax keeps doing command grab f2 etc, once Smoke is conditioned to not block the f2, then Cyrax can just f2 xx ex-Net into reset and Smoke is fucked. Imo this match-up would be 6-4 Cyrax if Cyrax didn't have ex-Net. That plus Cyrax's meter building up close makes this pretty shitty for Smoke. I would say this is 6.5-3.5 advantage Cyrax but since you're not using decimals let's call it 7-3. Seriously...a character that does ~80% combos shouldn't have the ability to drain your meter too. Broken ass robot...
