I find that with Kazuya it's very nice that you can pace whether you want to go in or not at about range 2. You can space yourself properly with mist step and sidesteps at that range when full dashes or crouchdashes put you into a sort of range where commitments are somewhat unreactable (as in you can't sidestep on reaction to your opponents forward movement to generate a whiff) especially if the opponent is also looking to catch you coming in. When the gap between you and your opponent grows too large you can do a single crouchdash, cancel it into a forward dash and then cancel that into a sidestep quickly and assess the situation by gauging your opponents movement choices. This puts you in perfect range for f3 and the sidestep re-aligns you towards your opponent. If they backdash, you simply do a mist step and depending on the range you cancel that into sidestep or a crouchdash, if you see the opponent move forward you just f3 and there is a very good chance of the opponent moving right into it or looking to commit and you might even catch a CH with the f3. At max range that move is safe against the whole cast (-13). Chucking electrics is something you pretty much have to do with Kazuya but having f3 helps out a ton. With those 2 you can set up going in by wavedashing into ws4 and having it make contact and establish some pressure without having to commit to anything unsafe right away.
I've never been good with Devil Jin. I just finds that he is lacking in tools to execute some specific type of gameplan, yes you can play him however you want but I just find that he isn't devastatingly effective at certain things like Heihachi, Kazuya and Bryan. With Heihachi and Kazuya the gameplan and the tools to execute it with are very clear. Without fF3 and f4 or a safe mid homing move, randomly chucking iWS2 from wavedash is absolutely mandatory with Devil Jin if you actually ever want to do any real damage against those pesky duckers or keep those step-duckers in check, uf3 and cd3 are just... well I find setting them up safely to be difficult unless you are using cd3 in certain oki scenarios. Uf3 is just way too slow and anybody who is any good at sidestepping will step it. B4 is not really suited for getting in and controlling space with at neutral, it's more of a long range counterpoke and a follow-up to df1 and ws4 on hit to keep the opponent in check. You can hit someone a million times with fF2 and it doesn't fkn do anything and on top of that you can have it stepped if you are not careful how you use it. Despite his good throws he has no mids to set them up with as frame traps on a standing opponent as df1 and ws4 have pushback on hit and you can backdash to make a buffered laser throw whiff, maybe bf2 series would serve as a better set up but still, only way to have the laser throw buffered instead of you staggering at neutral in front of your opponent like you are having an epileptic seizure is to block something that leaves the opponent close enough and at enough of a disadvantage, or you can use jabs but then again, what's the point of hitting with 1 or 1,2 when you could be hit confirming 1,1 into a knockdown.
Nothing says that you have to play all of the Mishimas and while I do acknowledge that Devil Jin is probably the best of the 3 when properly played, I just fail to see what it is that you have to do when the match starts and what to look out for, how do you set up your offence without taking risks right away. I am not comfortable with his mids, because you can't safely make sure that someone isn't ducking and receive a proper reward for catching them doing that. If I want to get a higher volume of mids blocked my only choice with him seems to be to set up running 3's at close range, but I'd still prefer to have access to that f4 and fF3 as well as a safe mid homing move. DVJ also lacks a good long range option where Heihachi has fF2 and Kazuya has f3. All in all it just feels that he doesn't have good answers to the opponent just stepping, ducking and chucking out standing 4's at neutral. With Kazuya and Heihachi, when properly spacing and choosing the moves to use I can be 100% sure that I won't get magic 4'd or hit with something else out of my chosen move. I feel like iWS2 from wavedash is the move that ties Devil Jin's kit together and I just don't like the fact that you absolutely have to use it frequently because it's unsafe.
BTW I just hopped on after installing the patch and the game feels a lot more responsive.
while not being launched it still sucks if they knock you down. I do think Kaz is by far the hardest person to play if you don't know the matchup well and there is a lot I don't know. Everyone at a decent level knows exactly what kaz can do and that makes it much harder.
