Some notes watching some of the vids in the tourney (didn't get to all of them):
- Platform campy Zackray is something I thought I'd
never see, but it definitely worked against Tsu's
.Without a good hitbox to poke at
from a distance while he's up a lead and building up Waft, there ain't much Tsu could've done aside from making risquΓ© approaches, all of which worked in Zackray's favor.
- Two things I'm seeing with Pythra:
- The more I watch Pythra the less I'm convinced they're "easy" characters, more specifically Mythra. Tsu going for the easy-bake 2-3 hit strings in favor of Mythra's more complex damage routes really did not work in his favor against Zackray, who could easily even out the same amount of damage Mytrha did in 6-7 hits in about 2-3 with Wario. Having a better neutral than Wario really doesn't mean much if you can't match his damage output.
- One interesting development I saw with the two was when Tsu decided to swap between the two. He didn't really go for the traditional "Mythra-neutral-damaging-racking" into "Pyra-kill-bot", but instead used it as a means to stall their landing a la Bucket orOrbitars. One notable use of this was in his game 3 set against Zackray's, where he stalled via switching to Pyra to narrowly avoid Wario's second UAir and then proceed to NAir reversal him to delete his second stock.
- Zackray's making the
nerfs look like they never happened at all, even the UTilt one. I was floored when he still managed to get the late hit against Tsu game 3 and win against a 100% deficit because of it.
- Akikasu's
is like an enigma to me, which honestly is the best way to describe his gameplay, because aside from Tea and Atelier, most players couldn't figure out what he was going for, not even Zackray. The best way I can describe it is... aware? He plays Hero's bait-and-switch shtick to the core, but he also doesn't suddenly start swinging when the opponent's getting close either. He sometimes approaches back but he doesn't really press a button if he knows the opponent won't commit to their approach. When he does, he knows just how to punish their approach, leading to a "to punish or not to punish" mindgames-esque tactic that felt very effective against other powerful bait-and-punish characters like Wario and even more aggressive characters like Chroy. This extends to his advantage state as well, knowing fully well that Tea was going for his usual Hydrant drop to stall his movement while recovering, and punishing accordingly by simply being right next to him while Bounce was still active. He only seemed to stumble a bit against more "methodical" aggression from Tea, who used Pac-Man's aerial drift and boxing buttons to play just outside of his OoS options while also making sure he can't do anything too crazy with his command selection.
- Speaking of which, also daily reminder that
is still an unfair character. Those Side-B conversions off of not just Galaxian, but Bell were some of the most disgusting plays I've seen from Tea in a long time and it honestly did wonders in helping him seal those stocks outside of yolo F-Smashes.
- Other notes include whiffed smash attacks being the death of people's sets (i.e. Tsu's whiffed Pyra FSmash against Zack and Zack's whiffed USmash against Aki), aaaaanndddd Raito and Paseriman really not having a good day today. Especially the latter, who didn't even manage to make top 48 (which has to sting after the ridicule he faced from that Set A/Set B experiment a while ago). Also some top 8 shoe-ins (KEN, Kome, Raito) didn't make top 8 but that's not really anything new for Japan.