Guide - Tarkatan Rekka mind games without an option select

[Tweedy]

I played M2dave tonight and in a pm he asked me about rekkas. I gave him a rundown and I figured i'd just post this for errbody. This to me is mostly common knowledge, but I get people asking me every day about the rekkas, so hopefully this will clear things up. Praise Lord Alien.

The first rekka is always -15, no matter what.

The 2nd is -15 or -13, depending on if I medium delay the first one or not. The medium delay before, allowed the Alien player to finish gapless and at -4, which was obviously CEO Tanya levels of fucked up since his 50/50s jail into rekkas. They nerfed it so now you can only make them -13, if you leave no gap.

If Alien fully delays and ends with the low, he's around +1 or +2. Maybe +3, +3 max.

So it's basically a 50/50 between, will Alien do the low or stop at the 2nd rekka. If Alien stops at the 2nd rekka, you can punish Alien with your fastest combo starting normal. If Alien does the low, you can backdash or armor. If Alien sniffs out a backdash or armor, he can stop at the 2nd and chase you/punish you. He can also do the unsafe overhead rekka to catch backdashes, or just to mix you up. It is 24 frames, but if he throws it in rarely, it'll catch people. Staggering the first rekka works sometimes too. It's -15 but if it really catches someone off guard, the lord can fit a D1 in there.

Also, if Alien medium delays the first rekka, he can make the low a true string. You gotta be real careful when trying to mash out armor after the second rekka, because of that. If you block it all when that is done, Alien is around -15.

Just practice the punishes. Your fastest combo starting normal should work on everything besides the fully delayed low. There's weird blockstun to it, as always in MKX.

Alien can also do the straight rekka and catch backdashes in the corner. If he does that he's punishable, on block.

@ArmedCalf
@EXILE CoRzz
@God Confirm
@Pig Of The Hut
@Rude
@General M2Dave

Not sure who else to tag.

 

[Tweedy]

I think some things are actually more minus than -15.

But as a general rule, just practice punishing everything besides the fully delayed low, with your fastest comboing normal.

 

[M2Dave]

Thank you for the help and analysis.

I will practice, but I have major doubts whether the punishes are practical. I rarely see the best players in the world punish the rekka punches consistently. As you stated, the block stun is strange, and I am not even sure you can perform normal attacks on the first possible frame in this game. Tremor has the fastest advancing string in the game. If he cannot punish consistently, I guarantee nobody will be able to. But I do lack match up experience as most of my experience comes from fighting Acidic.

 

[Tweedy]

Thank you for the help and analysis.

I will practice, but I have major doubts whether the punishes are practical. I rarely see the best players in the world punish the rekka punches consistently. As you stated, the block stun is strange, and I am not even sure you can perform normal attacks on the first possible frame in this game. Tremor has the fastest advancing string in the game. If he cannot punish consistently, I guarantee nobody will be able to. But I do lack match up experience as most of my experience comes from fighting Acidic.

He definitely can. I played Raptor last week and he punished all rekkas consistently with Takeda's standing 1, which is 2 frames slower than Tremor's F1. In other sets I've played very recently, Ominous and Dragon have punished me quite a bit.

I think a lot of people see the best players not punishing it, and think that that's that. Reality is that they are very possible to punish. Maybe it's taken so long, due to the frame data not telling the whole story because of delays altering the data, the hotfix making them actually punishable, awareness of that hotfix, such an emphasis on armor.

Because it's really just a matter of sitting in practice mode for 5 minutes and figuring out the block stun, like any other move in MKX. I'm not saying it's easy in a real match. Obviously it's not because of all of the mind games that come with the rekkas, but it is very possible.

@Red Raptor @EVB Dragon I don't know if Ominous has a TYM

 

[Rude]

He definitely can. I played Raptor last week and he punished all rekkas consistently with Takeda's standing 1, which is 2 frames slower than Tremor's F1. In other sets I've played very recently, Ominous and Dragon have punished me quite a bit.

I think a lot of people see the best players not punishing it, and think that that's that. Reality is that they are very possible to punish. Maybe it's taken so long, due to the frame data not telling the whole story because of delays altering the data, the hotfix making them actually punishable, awareness of that hotfix, such an emphasis on armor.

Because it's really just a matter of sitting in practice mode for 5 minutes and figuring out the block stun, like any other move in MKX. I'm not saying it's easy in a real match. Obviously it's not because of all of the mind games that come with the rekkas, but it is very possible.

@Red Raptor @EVB Dragon I don't know if Ominous has a TYM

What about Quan Chi?

 

[ArmedCalf]

Can you back dash the 3rd on reaction? That was one of the things I was going to try and improve on in this MU, like I would back dash thinking the low was coming and eat an f1. I just sort of got a habit of back dashing and fel into a bad groove.