Qwark28
Joker waiting room
Check out this awesome Guide for Black Adam by Qwark28.
Since the BA forums are very disorganized, I've decided to expand on Black Adam at a pace where people don't get lost in old misinformation and gimmicks.
Black Adam is one of the characters you'd expect to be top tier. He is. He has 3 things that almost all top tier characters have. Zoning, counterzoning, rushdown.
Lightning hands is a -3 on block safe blockstring ender that has an airborne hitbox and can be meter burned to send them fullscreen if you catch them not respecting your D1 - lightning hands. Lightning hands is a worse wakeup that is used against characters who have no meaty moves to stuff lightning hands after its invincibility frames are over. It provides pushback and a -3 virtual disadvantage. This wakeup also catches badly timed jumps and is also punishable by jumping at the right time. Many characters can whiff punish it with projectiles or fast advancing moves such as Doomsday's venom. The lightning hands only hit at sweep distance and should mostly be used to end blockstrings safely and put some distance between you and your opponent. FYI, this isn't soulsteal ala Injustice. Don't use it with that logic in mind.
Black Adam's trait are the Orbs of Set that do 4% damage on hit and 1,5% chip damage on block each. They have a very fast startup and do not provide any hit or blockstun. Their main use is to allow Black Adam to cancel his normals into the Orbs of Set, effectively giving him a lot of frame advantage, so much that depending on the followup and move cancelled from, you can't backdash to escape the followup. They are also used to chip an opponent out or discouraging their entry lest their moves get blocked and they receive 12% from the orbs hitting them. Most moves cancelled into trait have a good enough frame advantage to guarantee a 22 which can't be backdashed, the move hitting mid making it a perfect compliment to trait. Standing 1 and the followups of it can still be poked. The best use of the trait cancel IMO is from B2, Adam's best advancing move which can be used to trait cancel into a throw that must be teched, uninterruptible ( except by pushblock ) and almost guaranteed pressure and access to an almost-suicidal-to-block divekick setup which I'll elaborate on later on.
While there is little mixup potential to be feared when Black Adam has his trait, his strength comes from the ability to take advantage of people trying to poke or press a normal after his +f on block moves to link his faster normal into Orbs of Set which allow him to do up to 47% from a D1 Trait cancel.
Since the BA forums are very disorganized, I've decided to expand on Black Adam at a pace where people don't get lost in old misinformation and gimmicks.
Black Adam is one of the characters you'd expect to be top tier. He is. He has 3 things that almost all top tier characters have. Zoning, counterzoning, rushdown.
Best Normals
Standing 1 - 6F punisher that extends to an overhead combo starter string. Bad hitbox
Standing 2 - 10f mid which extends to an overhead combo starter, decent hitbox, used to compliment trait frametraps.
B23 - 15F +3 on block overhead which allows a free D1 check. Adam's best string and spacing tools, launches for full combo on hit.
J1 - Used as an air to air tool. Will beat out most other airborne attacks for full combo.
J2 - Used as the main jump in punch normal and to create ambiguous crossup situations.
J3 - Used in situational or gimmicky lightning bomb frametraps and certain combos that lead into decent setups.
D2 - The uppercut of death.
Best Frametraps:
B23
EX Divekick
B1
All are backdashable. All can be MB divekicked afterwards to punish backdashes
Most strings cancelled to trait are heavily +, you need to use mid hitting strings though if they like to poke through the trait cancels depending on the move.
After B23 and B1 you can always get a D1 lightning hands if they block. They have to respect that. You can use D1 to trait to punish any attempts to interrupt your D1 for a full combo punish. No character can armour, jump, poke and sometimes even super. The main use of these normals are to condition your opp to stay put or risk getting comboed.
EX divekick gives a backdashable B23 or another EX divekick which I think can only be supered or MB armoured out of.
B23 is hands down his best move. Stuffs all but the best wakeups which usually are also the riskiest. Linking trait after costs nothing and you can get a free combo for stuffing their wakeups. Orbs also count as hits that break armour.
SPECIAL MOVES
Black Adam's divekick is his best strength and his number 1 antizoning tool. It is relatively fast, travels a great distance and has many setups in which it is used for a combo punish, it grants Black Adam the ability to move around the screen better than anyone. The regular version has varying - depending on where it hits and almost no hitstun after it touches you the opponent and the MB version is +9 and has deceiving hitstun.
he divekick on block is punishable depending on where Black Adam hits, all characters can punish a max height divekick. All characters can punish a divekick that hits the chest. Most characters can punish a divekick to the stomach. Few characters can punish a divekick to the knees. Only Superman can punish an instant divekick below the knee.
Some characters like Batman and Salmon Grundy cannot punish Black Adam's divekick unless its done very sloppily and hits above the chest ( Unless Batman has trait ). Divekick allows Black Adam to move better than any character in the game, this helps him in many things, from escaping the corner to getting back to fullscreen after Batman has released his bats and is dashing towards you, effectively forcing him to waste his trait. A little-known fact is that the divekick has the same properties of Wonderwoman and Superman's ground smashes, it crosses your opponent if done in a certain way.
EX Lightning is ridiculously good and serves to make Adam a zoner and counterzoner. The 6% chip is designed to let him get the lead back for the price of a bar, since he gets a free lightning or black magic after most projectiles on block or whiff. The pushback properties and
meter build it has make it only cost .70% of a bar and effectively keep out people for a pretty long time. B2 EX lightning cannot be interrupted by a D1 and is a guaranteed way to push your opponent back when they get closer than you'd like. It is best used whenever you have a lot of meter and you wish to check on your opponent and let them know they have to respect an unjumpable on reaction tracking move that breaks 99% of this game's armour.
Black magic is designed as a strictly counterzoning and whiff punishing move. Your goal is to get it to trade with a non-knockdown and some knockdown projectiles, it does damage and allows you to recover faster than 90% of this game's projectiles on a trade and gets you a reliable free ex lightning for that chip I mentioned. It's important to know that even if you trade against most projectiles that cause knockdown on hit you're still +.
Lightning Cage is your go-to wakeup, punishing careless rushdown and jumps for 47% or less damage for certain setups.
Lightning cage is a wakeup that catches those who carelessly rush Black Adam down on wakeup and punishes them for about 10% and a side switch which was designed to help him after the opponent has chased him across the screen and managed to knock him down. Lightning cage is his best wakeup but there are ways around it. One can carefully time a jump during which the Anti airing hitbox of the cage will not him them and they will effectively full combo punish him. While the cage does have a hitbox for AA, it was designed specifically to catch badly-timed jumps and will not be effective against a properly timed one which must varies depending on the knockdown but is very easy to time still. Option B is to whiff punish the cage which can be done by several characters for full combo but it's less advised to do so.Lightning hands is a -3 on block safe blockstring ender that has an airborne hitbox and can be meter burned to send them fullscreen if you catch them not respecting your D1 - lightning hands. Lightning hands is a worse wakeup that is used against characters who have no meaty moves to stuff lightning hands after its invincibility frames are over. It provides pushback and a -3 virtual disadvantage. This wakeup also catches badly timed jumps and is also punishable by jumping at the right time. Many characters can whiff punish it with projectiles or fast advancing moves such as Doomsday's venom. The lightning hands only hit at sweep distance and should mostly be used to end blockstrings safely and put some distance between you and your opponent. FYI, this isn't soulsteal ala Injustice. Don't use it with that logic in mind.
Trait
Black Adam's trait are the Orbs of Set that do 4% damage on hit and 1,5% chip damage on block each. They have a very fast startup and do not provide any hit or blockstun. Their main use is to allow Black Adam to cancel his normals into the Orbs of Set, effectively giving him a lot of frame advantage, so much that depending on the followup and move cancelled from, you can't backdash to escape the followup. They are also used to chip an opponent out or discouraging their entry lest their moves get blocked and they receive 12% from the orbs hitting them. Most moves cancelled into trait have a good enough frame advantage to guarantee a 22 which can't be backdashed, the move hitting mid making it a perfect compliment to trait. Standing 1 and the followups of it can still be poked. The best use of the trait cancel IMO is from B2, Adam's best advancing move which can be used to trait cancel into a throw that must be teched, uninterruptible ( except by pushblock ) and almost guaranteed pressure and access to an almost-suicidal-to-block divekick setup which I'll elaborate on later on.
While there is little mixup potential to be feared when Black Adam has his trait, his strength comes from the ability to take advantage of people trying to poke or press a normal after his +f on block moves to link his faster normal into Orbs of Set which allow him to do up to 47% from a D1 Trait cancel.
He has the best throw in the game because of his trait. A correctly linked B2 trait-throw does 23% just for blocking, if your opponent can't tech then they're seriously doomed. Orbs are also used to extend and add damage to combos as well as punish people for doing blockstrings.
ANTIAIR
Black Adam has no antiair. He relies on whiff punishing and escaping jumps with his forward or back dash. Jumps that whiff can be punished with B23 or a divekick. Lightning cage also has AA properties but is only useful when done on wakeup to catch people who don't know when to jump against him on wakeup. D2 can be used against certain high moves like Nightwing's flying grayson and to punish certain air normals as they're crossing you up.
MOST NOTABLE SETUPS
Other than the ones that are already well-explained.
This is a setup I have not seen any other Black Adam player use. Ending combos with 13 allows you to dash in and take advantage of the untechable knockdown to do an instant MB divekick that will go through them and punish them if they're holding back to block. This will catch wakeups, meter burned F3/B3s, backdashes, jumps and some wakeups. You can use this to bait fully invincible ( which often also means punishable ) wakeups and punish the non-invincible ones with B2 which they have to respect.
There are also other crossup setups involving 13 which I'm not very familiar with but you'll find in Celerity 's new Black Adam combo thread.
You can find other useful information like a couple of other setups and combos in the threads made by Vulcan Hades and Celerity respectively. Be sure to check out the matchup discussion thread to answer any matchup difficulties you come across. Credits to PND i2 Gaug3 for finding the Divekick properties of going through your opponent. A mudball in A F0xy Grampa 's face for finding tech against Black Adam recently. A stay free to THTB for being bodied by my Greek 10 euro internet connection.
