BookBurning
Voidwards
A guide to Rain by Book Burning.
[NOTE: This is freeform thought as of now that I will compile into a very organized guide as time goes on. However, I figured I would share what I wrote tonight since there was no reason not to. This is my Rain style and how I view Rain, others may disagree with me so take it or leave it.]
Rain is a Footsy based Rushdown character and never think otherwise. However you must be intelligent while rushing down, he is very punishable and too often do I see Rain’s not capitalizing on what he does best. I’m going to make this an important part early on because people need to understand this right off the bat.
Teleport is very punishable; use it wisely or you’ll get blown up in high level play.
I can’t stress this enough, teleport is -20 frames. His only saving grace is that it leaves him mostly airborn during the punishable frames allowing only a small selection of characters to get a full punish from it, yet even then this seems as if it can be inconsistently. Use it intelligently, don’t just randomly throw it out, you’re not Raiden. It’s a good tool situationally and situationally only.
Okay with that out of the way and moving on, let’s talk about Rain’s pressure.
Rain’s pressure is defined by his RH cancels. Use them whenever you can, and always, very rarely should you pressure without it. Why? Because most of his strings are actually positive on block if he cancels them into a RH.
4 RHC leaves him at plus 2 frames.
43 RHC leaves him at plus 2 frames.
11 RHC leaves him at plus 1 frames.
D4 RHC leaves him at plus 3 frames.
B2 RHC leaves him at plus 1 frames.
All on block.
The exception to this is when throwing out 33 or 3 RHC which leaves him at around -3 frames, but don’t disregard this move. At 9 startup frames, standing 3 is good and I’ll often use it as a punisher into a RH or a 33 lightning or sometimes to just attempt to read and stuff other attacks, but if you use it as a pressuring tool, idealistically, your pressure can end there if the player reacts appropriately.
Now with this in mind, we can kind of look at Rain in the same sense that we can look at Kabal in terms of his rushdown capability. Rain’s intelligently played Rushdown leaves the opponent a very small window to poke out or jump out, but they have to guess if they are thinking of doing either of these. If you believe they’ll poke or jump, just release the RH. They’ll get smacked in the air and you can follow up with a full combo and if not, keep pressuring.
This is character situational of course, there are some frames were a character can armor out of his RHC pressure instead of a poke, roughly about 6-8 frames. So keep that in mind for characters that have armor.
Also try not to throw too much in these strings unless the situation calls for it. Rain’s pressure is amazing on chip and for building meter with occasional RH release mixups. Use it as such; a throw ruins everything for 12 percent damage. Believe me, you want the meter more. Now let’s take about his bubble, and why it’s so great because of a particular move.
B2 RHC.
B2 has amazing range for a normal move and cancelled into a RH, it leaves you at plus 1 frame advantage on block It has an usual airborn startup to boot which actually works in Rain’s favor, particularly when it is applied to a bubble reset. Why? Well, because you can actually execute the move while the opponent is still airborn as they fall from the bubble, hit them right as they land and reset. Not only are they reset right in front of you, but they’re reset with you being at a 1 frame advantage. I’ve actually stuffed special moves using this and initiated meter drain glitches on my opponents. While resetting them with this, you have a couple of options.
My favorite is going straight for more RHC pressure in order to build meter, I waver between 4 RHC, 43 RHC and D4 RHC, all which leave me at a good advantage as they block. 43 RHC after a D4 RHC is also a good link because if they try to jump out with their negative frames, the 43 can actually pick them up and you can release your RH to combo them after the 43. Meter makes Rain a very scary character, and using this, he builds meter very quickly allowing your opponent to always be afraid of armored dashes and EX teleports.
Another option that I don’t like really is you can force a throw break attempt. Again, you get 12 percent damage at the sacrifice of pressure and possible meter building. But it is useful depending on the situation.
And the third, is baiting. There are moments when it’s a good idea to take a step back after resetting them with B2 RHC and bait a move and then come back in for a quick punish, I’ve actually whiff punished several moves this way by backing up and then immediately executing a b2 1+2, hitting them with the overhead and launching them. This can be kind of gimmicky though, so my best advice is to punish them with a simple 4 lightning. Using 43 lightning can work as well depending on how close they are but there are moments where the 3 of 43 will actually whiff if they’re too far away and ruin your combo.
These 3 options is what makes bubble such a good move, you get a pretty free reset at the expense of B2 RHC allowing you to power your meter. Now since I mentioned Armored dashing once, I’d like to go deeper into armored dashing and why it’s so important.
Armored Dashing.
Armored Dashing is possibly Rain’s best tool because as a character who has such an incredible damage output, the ability to absorb moves while simultaneously attacking into any string is scary for your opponent. Rain’s need to get this down and if you don’t then you’re gimping yourself because you’re being lazy not practicing it. It’s simple really, all you do is execute an EX RH and then just dash cancel out of it.
If you want to attack with armor then interrupt your dash cancel with a string of moves But make sure you’re not holding the block button while doing it. That seems to be the biggest culprit when it comes to Rain’s failing at armored dashing. At the highest level when Rain has meter.
Nobody can pressure Rain up close without fear of either being forced to break or losing roughly 50 percent of their health. Nobody. Even Kabal is going to get his teeth kicked in if you get this down. This move alone, in my opinion, boosts Rain upwards on the tier list quite a lot. Don’t use it? Well, then you’re not playing Rain, you’re playing a character far below him on the tier list.
Now all this information I have given is all under the assumption that you are up close to your opponent and aggressively attacking them, but the biggest complain is the one I hear the most relating to zoning type characters. I’m going to go in depth with these characters, what I feel the actual matchup numbers are and you know what? You may be surprised. So on to the next section.
The Defensive Rain Player:
Rain vs Sub-Zero: A 5/5 matchup.
Surprised? I bet you are and if you’re not, then congratulations because you have the ability to see this matchup for what it truly is. Now what we’re going to do is look at this matchup from Rain’s perspective and list the reasons why most Rain players think this is a difficult matchup.
Reason 1: I cannot get in.
Reason 2: I cannot trade projectiles.
Reason 3: I cannot get out of the corner.
But what’s the true reason? The true reason is because in this matchup, you’re forced to play a different style than you’re used to. You can’t simply be aggressive anymore, but that’s not to say you can’t be aggressive utterly. Let’s look at Sub-Zero’s main tools in this matchup.
Ice Clone
Ice Ball
The answer for both of these is actually lightning. Lightning becomes a god-send in this matchup. You don’t want to trade however for obvious reasons but the fact remains that Sub-Zero cannot throw an Ice Ball or a Clone without the fear of lightning checking him.
Ice Clone has -37 frames of recovery after using the move; this allows you to easily check him with lightning and drag him over to you using a waterball link after lightning hits. Sub-Zero cannot throw out an ice clone mindlessly, or else a Rain, on reaction, is going to blow him up. Lighting has 22 startup frames.
Lightning vs Iceball is also very good, Lightning, since it has absolutely no travel time is a quick move with a total of 23 execution frames. Just throw it out if he’s turtling. What’s he going to do? He can’t punish it if he’s far away and on top of that his iceball is going to occasionally get stuffed, allowing you to drag him over to you once again.
Now let’s say Sub-Zero is advancing inwards towards you with an Ice clone at the forefront and slowly pushing you to the corner like any intelligent Sub-Zero would be doing. What becomes your best tool now? Armored Dash.
Simply use it to bust through the iceclone and counter attack if he’s in range, if he’s not, then bust through and push back, creating a mixup situation. I say mixup because now Sub-Zero has two things he can do. He can come to you and attack up close, or, what he’ll most likely do is poke into another iceclone. This makes it much easier to read and, atleast with me personally, I can see when he logically is about to throw down a clone and immediately stuff him with lightning.
Armored Dash forces clones or upclose fighting, both which work in your favor. Use it. Sub-Zero doesn’t want to do either of these. Going toe to toe with Rain can be deadly and using Ice-Clone leaves him open to being lightning food.
Teleport.
Don’t teleport mindlessly against Sub-Zero, you’ll get blown up. However, if you’re fast, you should be able to teleport safely as he is throwing an iceball. You have to be quick and do it on his startup frames, but believe me, it’s doable. Teleport is not useless here, but should only be used as a counter-tool.
There is no reason logically why this matchup should be a 6/4 in Sub-Zero’s favor. It’s a 5/5 and if you’re struggling, then you need to level up in this matchup and learn to play as a conservative Rain with bursts of offense when the opportunity presents itself.
Rain vs Kitana: 5/5
I think the only person on Earth who has agreed with me that this is not a 6/4 is @Osu16bit; so thank you to him for agreeing with me.
The reason this matchup is a 5.5/5 is because Kitana can't simply zone Rain in terms of damage output, she eventually has to come in to win the battle OR sit on a life lead and then zone. Up-close, she'll have a problem dealing with Rain's armor and RHC pressure strings and another big deal is the fact that Rain's standing 1 is such a good anti-air. I'm not saying this matchup is easy, but I do believe it is a 5/5. You have tools to counter a zoning Kitana and intelligently placed, all of Rains tools seem to work well. Lightning can check her during early jump animations, waterbubble can catch her on the way down and EX gesyerkick checks her in the air when timed at the correct frames. On the flipside Kitana builds meter quickly with fans while Rain can build meter with empty RHCs in between to compensate and then build loads of meter once he is able to pressure her up close.
I know that some of you don't believe in 5.5 matchups or whichever, but I don't know how else to put it. I think it's just slightly in Kitana's favor but not enough to be a game-changer. If you don't like decimals, put it at 5/5 because I sincerely believe it's not a 6/4 if you play slow and steady.
Kitana has to come to you at some point to win. I know I'm not the most coherent on this particular matchup, but this is the best I could do when putting it into text.
Kenshi: 6/4 in Kenshi favor.
This matchup is tough and I almost want to put it at a 7/3; I believe this is Rains worst matchup. Teleport gets blown up by shoulder and you're going to have to essentially be dash-blocking a barrage of crap on your way to Kenshi. It is winnable though. In this matchup you want to do whatever you can to put pressure on Kenshi as fast as possible. I'm not saying mindlessly run in like Rambo but you want to do your best to get next to him and lay the beatdown on him. Tele-Flurries can be jumped over, but you have to try and read and his overheads can be dashblocked (Obviously) or simply dashed under depending on where they are placed. DON'T TELEPORT in this matchup, I repeat, do NOT teleport, but this is one matchup where you are actually more free to jump if you keep your distance away from Rising Karma.
Also, stand block while advancing, do not crouch block by any means unless you're in range of his B&B low starting combo. Luckily when you're at this range, this is your time to attempt to make a move. Armor is your best friend here, most Kenshi love to shoulder but you can armor through it and counter attack during the shoulder animations. If he chooses not to shoulder and instead blocks, then release your flurry of cancels, but SPARINGLY. Kenshi does have armor, try to bait it out to eat his meter.
This matchup is hard, atleast to me and Rain has to fight an uphill battle to win this one. Sorry. Kenshi's ridiculous.
The mindset of fighting Zoners.
Honestly I think the saving grace that we as a rushdown, footsy oriented character have is that, in my personal opinion, zoning isn't that great altogether in this game. It's a good tool but nobody in MK9 is Dhalsim from Street Fighter; they either have to come to you or watch as you come to them with dashblocks and hardly any pushback at all. Vses zoners you want to change your mindset from pure rushdown to conservative footsies. Try to get in without getting hit by projectiles, dash block and if you're confident in your reads, lightning to stuff projectiles. The only reason Zoner's don't absolutely demolish Rain altogether is because Rain's damage output and pressure is so good. You can build your own meter with pressure and if you do hit them, you deal massive amounts of damage that makes up for whatever damage you took while getting in. (Hopefully)
I tend to be slow paced in these matchups and try to footsy with d4 RHCs. The plus 3 advantage on block gives me a nice small window to get in just a bit more or go straight for an offensive string against said zoner. You can win vses zoners, just use your head and don't go apeshit until you are next to them, and even then, go apeshit in spurts.
[Continuing more later.]
RH Cancel, 
.
