SF6 - The ULTIMATE Mai ROOKIE to MASTER Rank Up Guide | Step-by-Step Walkthrough

So anyway, to get started, just like with the Juri guide, when you are playing any fighting game character, not just Mai, not just Juri, not just Ryu, whoever you're playing, the first thing you want to do is figure out your buttons. Just press your buttons. It doesn't matter. Just press Go in the training mode, press every button on your on your controller right now. So, this is your jab. This is my medium punch. This is my light kick. This is my medium kick. This is my heavy punch. And this is my heavy kick, right? That's the first thing you should do on any fighting game character in any fighting game if you are new. Even if you aren't new, if you're new just in general, if it's a new character that you're trying, this is what you should be doing, okay? That's number one.

Now, when you're sitting here and pressing buttons, don't just like, "Oh, wow, this button reaches really far, right?" Think about what the buttons are used for, right? So, jab, obviously, it's like a fast get-off-me tool. You can use it as a pressure tool. Jab is kind of a jack-of-all-trades tool, right? That's pretty much every jab. Same with the crouch jab. They're basically the same button, right? If you look at her stand medium punch, right? This has really good range. So, what can we utilize this for? You can use this as a poke. Poking is essentially no like very like pretty much zero risk like very small risk with a small reward of damage. So, let's say I'm playing neutral with this person, right? And I I hit him like that. You see how he loses Turn off regen real quick for him. So, do you see how Ryu lost about 5% of his health? If you keep poking like this over time, this adds up. You see? See how this is adding up? I'm not doing any combos, just poking him, and this is adding up, right? That's what poking is for. So, poking is very important in Street Fighter, in every fighting game, but Street Fighter a lot. Street Fighter is it's a very important mechanic, right? So, this can be used as a poke, right? Cool. Awesome. Let's check her other buttons. Medium kick. This is very obviously a poke because you cannot drive rush cancel it. Can I drive rush cancel stand medium punch? You can. Do not worry about drive rush canceling stand medium punch or anything. Don't worry about drive rush in general until the gold section. Until the gold and diamond section, we are not going to be using any form of drive rush. Drive rush is completely off limits. Please do not use it. You do not need it to win. Just trust me. You just trust me. You do not need drive rush to win at all. Just do not use it. This is very obviously a poke stand medium kick because you cannot drive rush cancel it. Low forward or her crouching medium kick. You can You can crouch You You can drive rush cancel this. Like I said, don't worry about that. You can use this to poke, right? And you can also special cancel it, right? You want to see if any of these buttons are special cancelable as well. What special cancelable means is basically, can you cancel that button into another into a special move? A special move is like a fireball, for example, or Ryu's sand, or anything like that, right? So, this button is special cancelable, right? Heavy punch is special cancelable. Her crouching medium kick is special cancelable. Her stand roundhouse stand or stand heavy kick is not special cancelable. Her stand medium kick is not special cancelable, right? So, this is basically what you want to be doing pretty much every time you play a new character or boot up any form of fighting game that you're you're fresh to, or if you're just an overall beginner to the genre, this will benefit you a lot no matter what skill level you are if you're on a new character, okay? So, pokes are going to be your best friends, okay? Pokes are going to be your absolute best friend in low ranks, okay? Because we're not going to be doing pretty much any like high damaging combos at all. What I want you to utilize in rookie to gold is just getting used to your character's buttons, okay? So, we're not going to be worrying about drive rushing. We're not going to be worrying about doing any cool or fancy [ __ ] We're probably not even going to really be worrying about fire balling too much, okay? I'm going to give you three buttons that we're going to be or four buttons that we're going to be using pretty much predominantly throughout rookie to gold, and that is stand medium kick, stand medium punch, stand heavy punch, and stand heavy kick. These are the four buttons I want you to get used to using. I want you to find the right spacing for this. So, basically, what spacing is is finding a perfect range for your buttons to where you're not too close to them, so you don't get hit out of the startup, but you're also right at the like the tip of the range to where it's going to like it's going to hit, right? So, spacing. This, for example, this is bad spacing, for example. This is good spacing, right? See how I'm hitting her with the tip of my attack? Same here. This is good spacing, right? This is good spacing, okay? This is bad spacing, okay? So, I want you to find these ranges. You don't have to be perfect or anything. Just play around with them. And these are the buttons we're going to be using, okay? Cool. Awesome.

Now, the next thing I want to talk about is her fireball or her fan. It is quarter circle forward punch button, okay? Right? You have three versions. You have the light punch version, medium punch version, and the heavy punch version. The higher you go up, the faster it goes. So, light punch is the slowest, medium is in the middle, and heavy punch is the fastest, right? Now, you may be asking, "Why would I just not use the fastest version every single time because it's the fastest?" Well, you see, it actually has the longest recovery frames, which basically means it takes the longest before you can start moving around again. So, if you notice, I will throw a fireball, and then I will be spamming my my uh my punch button. So, watch. You see? See how long that took? Now, with the light version, it's a lot faster, right? So, the light version is generally the version we want to be using, okay? Right? So, we want to be using this a lot. I don't even Don't even worry about charging the fireball. You know, if you hold down the That changes depending on what button or what what punch you use as well. But, we're not going to focus on that. We just want to use this version of the fireball. Don't even worry about using the charged version at all. Just focus on using this. We have five things we're going to be using, right? So far, medium kick, medium punch, heavy kick, heavy punch, okay? These are the four These are the four buttons we're going to be using. And on top of that, I want you to use light fireball, okay? That's it. That's all I want you to That's all I want you to use for right now, okay? There is one other thing I'm going to teach you before or two other things I'm going to teach you before I go in, and that's it. I don't want to teach you too many things because I don't want to overload your brain. I want you to focus on working on one or two things a game rather than working on all of these things at once, okay? So, I'll get back to that later.

But, the next thing I want to focus on is anti-airing. This is easily the most important thing for anybody to learn in a fighting game, whether you just started, whether you're intermediate, whether you're advanced, whatever. You just want to get good at anti-airing. But, if you're a beginner, you want to learn anti-airing as soon as you possibly can. You could literally win a game by just anti-airing somebody. Because guess what? At these ranks, they jump all the [ __ ] time. They They do nothing but jump, pretty much. There's going to be a lot of jumping in this in this uh in this this rank. So, now, you might ask yourself, "What is Mai's anti-air?" She actually has two anti-airs. She has a DP. Um it's That's a acronym for a dragon punch, right? But, we're not going to be using this because DPing is pretty hard for beginners, and I know that. Or sorry, you do forward, down, down forward, right? That's the That's the input. So, boom, boom, boom. That's slow, right? So, it'll look like this, fast. That's how That's how it works, right? That's how it looks if it's sped up. If you look at the left side of the screen at my inputs, this is how it looks when you speed it up, right? Pretty quick, right? We're not going to be focusing on that because that's pretty hard for beginners. So, what I do want you to focus on for your anti-air is her back heavy kick. This is actually a really good button because it is um it is actually invulnerable to jump attacks. Now, the timing of it is kind of tricky because it's kind of a fast starting button, right? And if you guys watched the Juri guide, you'll know I taught you how to use your crouch heavy punch, which is also a great anti-air button. This is pretty much no different. So, I'm going to go ahead and set Ryu to um I'm going to go ahead and set Ryu to uh to jump forward at me, right? The way you can do this is you can press your R3 button, I believe. It might be different for your controller, but I think it's R3 for me. Go ahead and record him jumping at you, right? Go ahead and set it to Go to your uh recording settings. Go to replay. Click always Scroll to always repeat playback. And then press your L3 button, I think is what it is for you guys. I don't know what it is for you guys, but it I think it's what it is for me. And all I want you to do is press the play button, right? And he's going to start jumping, okay? Cool. You see this? He's going to start jumping. What I want you to do is practice the timing of this. What I want you to do, practice the timing of her back heavy kick. That's it, right? Because if you do it too early, you see I'm going to get jumped in on. You see that? It's kind of easy to do it too early, right? So, practice the timing of this. This is a really high reaching button, and just do this for a few minutes. 5 minutes, probably no more than 5 minutes, and you'll probably get the hang of it, I promise. Just practice this for just a little bit so you can get the timing down. This is very important. It's boring to do, but this is very important. Probably the most important thing you'll learn, to be honest, in this entire guide, is anti-airing. Please, just do not skimp on learning to anti-air and getting decent at them, okay?

So, when you knock somebody down, let's say you knock somebody down, for example, somehow. Let's say uh you hit like a lucky sweep or something, right? So, I'm going to teach you something called oki's MA, oki for short. Basically, this is basically it's another word for it in Street Fighter is a meaty. That's typically what I use. Um so, basically, a meaty uh to put it simply is when you knock somebody down, you use a button to stop them from pressing a wake-up button um when they're getting up, basically. It's the best way I can explain it. So, essentially, if I time my button correctly, you see how I'll hit him right as he gets up. If I set Ryu to block, right? You'll notice that Ryu is going to block right when he gets up, right? If I set Ryu to uh press a button on wake-up, like a light punch, for example, you'll notice he'll get stuffed. So, this is called meeting, okay? This is something that you should definitely learn early on because you're going to get a lot of mashers, okay? This is the last thing I'm going to teach you cuz I don't want to overload your system, okay? So, when you get a knockdown at all, when you get a a knockdown at all, it doesn't matter what it is. If you get a knockdown, all I want you to do, I want you to just do jab jab jab. So, it'll be three jabs into a light fan, okay? That's all I need you to do, okay? So, it'll look like this. Right? Just like that. You don't need anything else. Just trust me. The whole goal is to stop them from pressing on wake up. It doesn't need to be fancy. As you'll notice in these upcoming games, I will literally be just meeting them with jab jab jab into fireball.

Now, one more tip before I go over your brief rundown, um I want you guys to pay attention to people's DIs. People are going to use this a ton, and I mean a ton. Everybody DIs down here. They love to use drive impact in low elo. They even love to use it in higher elos, too, but in low elo, it's rampant. So, my one tip to you is look out for those, okay? Now, I'm going to go ahead and give you a simple combo if you do happen to react to a drive impact, okay? So, now we're using a drive impact. So, the combo I want you to do is just stand heavy punch, right? Right there, stand heavy punch, okay? Into quarter circle back medium punch. So, it'll look like this. And bam, just like that, as you can see. So, that's all I want you guys to do. It's very very simple, not hard at all. I'll be using utilizing these four buttons as well. This is it. Then fireball, and that is pretty much it.

So, now that we've gone over everything, I'm going to give you a brief rundown of what I want you to do. I want you to only focus on you getting used to my's buttons. We're only going to be using four buttons, stand medium kick, stand medium punch, stand heavy punch, and stand heavy kick. Those are the four buttons we're going to be utilizing. Now, all I want you to do is focus on getting like spacing with those buttons and getting used to her pressing those buttons. Another thing I really want you to focus on is getting used to her back heavy kick anti-air because people are going to jump a lot, so get used to that. We're not going to be drive rushing at all. We're not going to be doing any cool combos at all. No combos at all, pretty much. You do not need combos, okay? And the last but not least, we're going to be working on meeting people, oki zeme. So, when you knock somebody down, dash forward, do three light jabs into a light fan. I don't want to info dump too much on you early on because I don't want you to focus on more on multiple things. I want you to focus on one or two things every game. Try not to utilize everything at once, okay? Like take it in stride. Take it slow, okay? So, like one game, focus on just anti-airing and spacing your buttons. Another game, focus on anti-airing and oki zeme, like you know, [ __ ] like that. All right, same thing. Oh my god. Oh god, this might not be a sacrifice we have to make. Go fireball. He doesn't seem like a jumper. I think even if he jumps, he's going to teleport, so. So, you see how I'm at far range? You see how I'm using my far range buttons? And when he gets close, I'm going to start jabbing. Pretty much all I want you to work on. And throw a fireball here and there. All right, I don't think I'm going to do this. I don't think I'm going to [ __ ] play international. But yeah, like I said, all I want you to do is [ __ ] like this. Go send me a jab, get him off me. He's far. Use my buttons, my long range buttons. Want to jump in there, throw a fireball. Throw another fireball. Throw a fireball. My long range buttons cuz he's far. Keep using it. Same thing. I did that out of habit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Goon squad legend. Oh, my bad. That was the wrong button. That's just you saying right house. As you can see, I'm literally just I'm literally not doing any combos and I'm winning. You know what I mean? Like [Music] Anti-air, throw a fireball. I'm going to jump at him. Oh, wow. As you can see, I'm literally just sticking to the game plan. That's all I'm doing. Oh, god damn it, bro. Oh my god, bro. If I dude, the muscle memory on me, bro. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. [ __ ] like that. Same with this. Yeah, that's fine. I tried to do a DP I saw myself, thankfully. Oop. I'm literally stopping myself from DPing, guys. Okay. Okay, so we're going to stop jumping at this guy. Um because he's not going to stay still. So, we're just going to wait for him to jump. That's how I'm going to adapt. I'm just going to play slower and wait for him to jump. Cuz he will jump. And I'm going to re I'm going to try to react to his fireball with a jump in. Every time he sweeps, use our meaty combo I taught you. It's a jump, and I don't know how I missed that anti-air, but I mean it is actually pretty hard for me. But you I'll get more used to it. I got to stop parrying out of habit, too. Yes, god damn it. I parry on habit. You should You should try to parry fireballs, by the way. I should told you that to begin with, but don't worry about it at all. Nobody's really You don't have to worry about parrying. I'll bring that in in the next section. I'm just doing that out of habit. That's fine. Step out of this corner. We don't want to be there against her. Maybe she'll jump. Oh, that's fine. That's a DI. I will eat that. A lot of the [ __ ] she's doing is really fake. She can't be just spamming the same button like that. That's she's minus. Maybe she'll jump. We're going to throw a few fireballs. I'm going to jump. Throw this. Fine. Can you see this? You guys see what I'm doing? Just poking her, and she's just not She's literally just eating it every time. Very boring, very boring game plan. I understand you want to get to the fun stuff, but trust me, to get to the fun stuff, you have to play You have to play the boring stuff first. Okay, so this guy just spams DI a lot. All we're going to do is wait to react to his DI. That's all we're going to do. We're literally just going to wait for her. He has no meter, so he's probably going to jump. That's fine. We'll do that. This guy is just going to DI a lot. See, this is what I'm talking about. You just got to So, a big part of being a good fighting game player is adapting to what people want to do and shutting down that specific option cuz like people are going to play a certain way, and there's nothing you can do or there's there's They're not going to They're not going to be told otherwise. Okay? You're not going to be able to tell them otherwise. See, this guy is trying to walk up grab me now. So, if he tries to walk up grab me, what I'm going to do, I'm going to jab him like this. See that? Jab is your best friend against people like this. Oops. I think I'm going to start sweeping on DI for the knockdown so I can do the meaties. Stay down. Yeah, I'm just going to wait I'm going to wait for him to walk up to me and and I tried to do the DP and thank god I got hit. Oh my god, I did not mean to do that. I'm sorry. Oops. That's a habit. But as you can see, this guy has no idea what to do and now I'm just waiting for his DI. Jab is your best friend. I'm honestly not even going to really going to poke that much. I'm just going to jab him. Jab and anti-air like this. See that? See this? That's okay. I'm going to jump again. That's okay. I'll eat the throw. I haven't tech'd a single time this entire session, by the way. Okay. Yeah, all this guy does is go dash throw. Yeah. There you go. Grab me out of my fireball. That's okay. Yeah, all this guy's game plan is now is just fire is just dash forward throw. Going to do it again. You can DP? You can DP in your bronze? The hell? We keep checking that. We keep checking that dash forward throw. You see how he's See how he keeps trying to dash forward throw and I'm keeping him away with my uh my fan like this. Really simple. Every time he tries to walk forward pretty much, pretty much check him. That makes sense. See that? Literally not doing anything special. Like yeah, I did a few random combos on accident here and there. I promise they're on accident. It's just force of habit. That's it. I think this guy's going to jump maybe. Okay, I'm going to jump. Buttons. So far this guy plays pretty standard. Done a few throws here and there. That's fine. That's punishable. It's a really really simple punish for you guys. I don't confuse you or whatever. That's fine. Sweep the sweep. Remember guys, sweep if they ever sweep if you ever block a sweep, their sweep is always punishable with your own sweep. Remember that. Throwing a fireball. Keep it really simple punish. It's fine. It really started lagging really bad. What the hell? I'm going to jump at him here. There. That's it. That's all I'm doing. All I'm doing, man. I'm not doing anything crazy. I'm keeping it as simple as possible for you guys, so it's easy to understand. All I'm doing is poking, using my buttons. That's it. Not doing pretty much any combos. Using my fireball here and there. Guy doesn't really jump. Just unfortunate. Make sure I don't complete any combos. Sweep the sweep. Nice. Oh. I did not mean to do that. I didn't sweep the sweep. That was supposed to be a sweep. My god damn it. I'm sorry. [Music] [ __ ] dude. I did it out of habit. I'm sorry. [ __ ] me. That was [ __ ] muscle memory. God damn it. It's okay. It's okay. Back to the game plan. If this guy's walking back and forth like this, he's waiting for you to play. Just throwing some lows here. Forcing him to block lows. See what I'm saying? Just throwing some lows. Cuz he if he's going to keep doing this, he needs to start blocking his feet, right? If he wants to play neutral with you, just he needs to block his feet, right? Going to fireball, fireball. He might throw one. Nope. Nice simple combo. Nothing crazy. Throwing a low. Throw a fireball. Fireball. Low, fireball poke. Nope. Sweep the sweep. Go for the meaty combo I told you. Even if it doesn't combo, I don't care. It's just so you It's just to keep you safe. It's not about killing. It's not about comboing. It's literally just to keep you safe. That's the whole point of that. So, it's a little different. Guy jumps. Throw a fan here. Walk with it. Walk with it. We punish that. Jump that. Punish that. Punish this. Maybe he jumps. Oh, I was too far forward for the anti-air to hit. Throw a fireball. Oh, swept. I keep sweeping. That's okay. You can just wait for him to sweep. Walk forward, grab him. Throw a fireball here. Maybe he jumps out of the corner. Mhm. So, if you get a punish counter on I should have said this sooner, but if you get a punish counter on your stand medium kick, you can always go into a sweep. There's a sweep. We waited for it. We punish it with our own sweep. Throw it through our simp simple [ __ ] oki combo. Same thing here. Same thing here. Just keep doing it. It's fine. Yeah, we punish this. I'm just going to punish it with the thing I said. Just like that. Simple oki combo just like that. See, I'm not even looking at the whiff punish or anything. Well, I guess technically if they're if they're hitting something that's counter punishable, that's whiffing, but yeah, you get the idea. Like learn really simple [ __ ] first. Jump at him. It's fine. We punish that. I'm jumping too much. Try not to make Don't make jumping a habit. Don't do what I'm doing. Just play neutral. Get used to your buttons. But you definitely want to jump sometimes. If that makes sense. That's good jumping by him. You see how slow I'm playing though? Like I'm I'm not taking really any risks. I'm waiting for him to kind of make a mistake and just sticking to my game plan. If that makes sense. There's a sweep. He loves to do that. [Music] Never mind. Oops, my bad. Fine if he jumps out of that. It's not a big deal. He made a mistake. Fine. Unlucky timing. I'm throwing a I'm going to sweep for a mix in a throw here. These are pokes. He whiffed the sweep. We punish it. There you go. Very very simple stuff. Literally only doing this. The only reason you guys are I'm having you guys do it like this is because if you do it like this, you learn one or two things at a time instead of trying to learn multiple things at a time. If there's only one or two things on your brain, it's a lot easier to master things one step at a time if that makes sense. You notice how uncomfortable he is? Oops. Nice anti-air. A fireball. Oops, that was not what I wanted to do. [Music] I'm not really too worried about the DI because I'm not getting hit by it if that makes sense. You guys see how I'm not even reacting to the DI and I don't care? Is that like You guys told you how Remember how I told you you don't have to react to every single DI? Remember how I told you that? This is what I mean. Like you guys if it's not really hitting you, it really doesn't matter. You can just let him do it. Like if you're in the corner and they're hitting you with it a lot, then it it's a big difference, right? Going to try to jump out of the corner, maybe? No, we're going to stop that nonsense. Poke. Poke. Poke. Uh-oh. Good jump out by him. Okay. And DI him here. Just do this simple [ __ ] Got medium, do our combo. I saw you. Oops, I used the wrong fireball. I could do a fireball. That's fine. Punish him like this. Oh. Might be dead. He knows the combo. Oh, he dropped it. Aw, damn. He had that round. Once you get a certain Cuz a lot of people down at lower elo, they only know how to do one thing. Like this guy automatically I can see that he likes the DI, so I'm only going to use DI our [ __ ] special cancelable buttons if that makes sense. Cuz this guy likes to DI. Fine. Punish it really simply. You guys You guys see what I'm doing? I'm doing literally nothing and this guy's just killing himself. He's literally killing himself. You guys see this? Simple punish. Simple punish again. Simple punish again. Anti-air. And burn out. Yeah, don't DI like that. Especially against these players, Chad. DI-ing in this rank is not good because they're going to be doing a lot of random [ __ ] like jumping and stuff. Modern Zangief. Ooh. This is uh This is what I see in my nightmares. Try to see what kind of guy this is. Throw a fireball. Maybe he's a jumper. He is. Okay. Oh, I missed my punish. Use our pokes. Poke. Oh my. Get poke. We're [ __ ] punishing this. Nice. Do our meaty combo. Use our pokes again. Punish this. It's fine. He killed himself. Good job. Don't Don't be scared to initiate your game plan just like I taught you just cuz it's Geif. Trust me. You guys see I'm literally doing what I taught you guys and it's working. That's okay. It's also okay. I did not mean to do that. I'm sorry, guys. You guys You guys see how this guy's just killing himself over and over and over and over again and I'm doing literally nothing. But playing neutral. I'm just pressing buttons. That's it. Going to jump. Going to gamble. That's okay. He likes to DP. You know he likes to jump. Ooh, that was my fault. Oh [ __ ] that was habit. I'm sorry. It's fine. That's also okay. I'm going to take a mental note of this if he DP if him DP-ing a lot. Just like that. I'm not going to go for a hard punish. Just going to do this. Oops. Not what we want to use. It's okay. Simple punish. Good from the DI. Going to sweep for oki here. Do our combo like that. That sucks. That's why you don't want to That see what I Remember what I said about not always canceling into a fireball? That's why. Because it'll happen That'll happen a lot. You don't want to do it that often. You won't see me do it that often. I just do it sometimes unless I hit somebody. Ooh, he had me. And I DI his DI. Simple combo. Look at the poke here. I'm going to jump at him. That's okay. He's in burnout. He's probably going to jump at me. And I missed the [ __ ] anti-air again cuz I suck. Jump. You finally hit one. Jesus Christ. I'm very, very bad at anti-airing in this character or I'm very bad at using her back heavy kick anti-air. Probably going to jump at me. I was too far forward. Going to jump at him. Simple combo. Poke at him. That's Oh my god, I cannot anti-air Ed. Dude, I can anti-air everybody else with the back heavy kick. I can't anti-air Ed. Notice how I'm adapting and not uh Go. You guys notice how I'm adapting and I'm not throwing fireball or I'm not doing a button into a fan anymore? Yep. Just noticed that he likes DI-ing a lot. Okay. Oh, what the hell happened? My controller disconnected for a second. What the [ __ ] was that? That is very annoying, but you just got to walk him down slowly until he makes a bad decision like that. And I [ __ ] up. Okay, I didn't mean to do that anyway. Uh that was an accident. I'm sorry. Force of habit. Yeah, we're going to sweep him and then go for our meaty. [ __ ] up my meaty. He's probably going to jump here. There it is. If you guys You guys are literally watching me beat these players with one button and I'm not playing perfectly at all. I'm making a lot of mistakes. So if you guys are also losing, then you guys just aren't not playing well enough. That is just the That is just the the cold truth for it. That's just the cold truth for I did not mean to do that. If they jump, I'm going to jump at him. Ooh. That is the cold hard truth of it. You guys are just not playing well enough because it is very doable to beat these people. I'm going to jump out of the corner. I didn't make it in time. That's fine. It's very doable to beat these people with just one button or two buttons like I'm doing right now. Looking looking for DI. There it is. I'm actually going to back throw him in the corner here so he's forced to do something stupid. He's probably going to jump. Oh, that works, too. There's a jump. Do this. Okay. But yeah, like You get what I'm saying, basically. That was I'm sorry. Happy to again. Do a simple combo or a simple punish. Oops. So, as you guys are seeing, more often than not, playing extremely patient like I am and just using your buttons and keeping a really simple game plan actually works very well. It's in the water around here. This is just how people who don't play fighting games play. They just like to press buttons. He's a jumper, chat. You guys notice how he's He's a jumper. He's a jumper. You see this? You guys notice how he's a jumper? The first thing I noticed was that he's a jumper the second the game started when he back jumped. My pokes. He's not very happy that he's not allowed to jump. You guys see that? It's okay. I'm going to jump. Oh, that's okay. It's not okay. I meant it. You You guys notice like literally the first thing I noticed is when he did two back jumps like, "Okay, this guy likes jumping." He did a forward jump and then a back jump. Oh, he also really likes pressing buttons. Almost DP there again. Thank god I stopped myself. He's trying to get three jabs. That's not good. I'm going to try to jab. It's like not very range heavy. My fuda. Could have been my fuda. All right, we have finally reached gold. If this guy wants to play another, I will play one more with this guy and then I will go over the gold to diamond section. We finally made it to gold. I couldn't punish that with sand. Oh. I'm gold one. Hang on, that is not good. Uh-oh. Why was I get gold? No, I've been playing for like an hour, maybe. I do overhead. I don't even mean to do that. I mean to press forward or just medium punch on. I'm gold one. That is not good. I should have I should have realized that. Whoops. It's getting really laggy. Oh, he's just waiting for me to jump. Okay, good answer. Jump. Oh man, it's getting really laggy. I answered late. You guys really see how I'm not doing anything though? He's just like killing himself. So, you guys have finally made it to gold. It probably took a little while. Maybe it didn't. Maybe you guys just [ __ ] cracked. I don't know, but I'm assuming it took you a little bit. It was a little frustrating. Maybe you even try to Maybe you even try to like stop using just what I told you and try to switch your own game plan. I promise you just stick to what I'm telling you. You guys just watch me do it. It's very doable just to beat people without any combos, just using [ __ ] buttons and spacing correctly and anti-airing correctly. That's all you really need. I promise you. I could keep doing that up to diamond, probably. But, I feel like at this point, when you reach gold, you understand the game at least enough at a level to where you know how to pressure you know how to press buttons on your controller a little bit better than, you know, you used to. So, this is where we're going to go ahead and put the put the big boy put the big boy pants on a little bit and we're going to start learning how to drive rush, okay? So, drive rush. How do you drive rush? Okay? So, drive rushing, you hold down the parry button. Whatever your parry button may be, it might be different for you. I typically tap both buttons at the same time, but you might have a macro. Typically, I think by default it is on your LT button. So, um you can you hold down your LT button and double tap forward and you'll drive rush, okay? Or if you want to press both parry buttons, it should be Y it should be your Y and your X button, I believe. Or no, it's your Y and your B button, sorry. Y and your B button, hold it, it'll hold it'll show you like glowing blue. When you're in this form, you double tap it and you'll get drive rush, right? But, drive rush is actually pretty crazy because any button out of this you're plus in, basically. You're plus in almost every single button that you use in drive rush. So, if I set Ryu to block, so, you know how this button I'm not going to teach you guys frame data, but basically minus is bad. Minus three or So, if it's minus four or more, you can get punished. If it's plus, it's good. If it's minus, it's bad, okay? So, see how this is minus three? Right? See, this is not our turn. That means Ryu can press buttons. If I try to press another button, right? So, I'm going to set Ryu to go ahead and press a button. Can because I am minus here, if I press the button, right? I am minus three, right? That means it is Ryu's turn because I am in minus frames, okay? So, if he presses a button here, I will have to block it because if I don't press press if I try to press another button after this, this is what happens. I get hit out of it, as you can see. So, basically, what drive rush does, remember how this button is minus three? Right? Look at it now. It is plus one. So, drive rush basically makes buttons more safe and plus. Like, for example, this button, minus three. This button now, plus one. This button originally, minus three. This button, plus one, right? So, first thing that we're going to use it for is comboing, okay? Comboing is mainly what drive rush is used for, I feel like. So, we're going to go ahead and go over that first. So, essentially, in a combo, let me uh start with blocking. So, essentially, how it works is the same exact thing. The only thing is there's two ways to drive rush in a combo. So, let's say I go for this, right? See that? I just double tap forward like that and I'll get a drive rush. Okay? Or you can tap your parry button and it'll come out as well. Those are two ways to drive rush mid combo, okay? You can do this even if they block it, right? This character, unfortunately, kind of requires you to be able to hit confirm just a little bit, okay? And it's better It's better to practice it early than wait till later, okay? This is not something you absolutely need. You guys can absolutely just stick with this if you guys want to. There's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. You can stick with this, okay? But, if you want a little bit more reward, okay? You want a little bit more reward, I'm going to show you a combo that you can use off of knockdowns. So, before I go over hit confirming, I'm going to tell you what it is. Hit confirming is basically you seeing somebody get hit by something and then confirming it into a special move, okay? So, for example, there is a way to practice this. You can set the block to random, right? And Ryu will block at random. As you can see, sometimes he'll block, sometimes he won't, as you can see, right? So, there's a very easy way to practice this, okay? You can go This is the combo I want you to do. Crouching light kick, crouching light punch, standing light punch. Okay? This is all I want you to do, okay? So, if you see the first attack hit, I want you to hit confirm it into a quarter circle forward light kick. And her light kick is like this the little flip kick thing, okay? Now, you can do this anywhere on the screen, okay? But, it is a little bit range dependent. It's easiest to do it in the corner, right? So, if I see this first crouching light kick hit, see, I didn't see it and I didn't hit confirm it. Didn't see it, didn't hit confirm it. Didn't see it. Saw it, hit confirmed it. So, as you can see, I'm not hit confirming it unless I see him get hit by the first light kick, okay? Just like that. All this is Just go ahead and practice this for 10 minutes. Every time you boot up the game just practice this. There's nothing wrong with practicing this.

Now, as for the drive rush combo, this is why I taught you guys to go ahead and utilize her pokes and neutral and get used to her buttons. Because I'm going to be honest with you guys, she doesn't have a easy to hit confirm combo that she can really do, okay? This is her typical go-to uh optimal combo for you guys. I'm going to I'm This isn't This isn't the most optimal thing you can do, obviously, but I'm going to keep it simple and at least close to optimal for you guys, okay? There you go. So, slow it down for you. Stand heavy or stand heavy punch into drive rush cancel. Right? Into back heavy kick. Remember the anterior button we're using? Back heavy kick, right? Cool. So, stand heavy punch, drive rush, back heavy kick, crouching medium punch. This is crouching medium punch. Right? Cool. Awesome. Okay? We're almost done. Into quarter circle back heavy punch. So, heavy punch, drive rush, back heavy kick, crouching medium punch, quarter circle backward heavy punch. Like I said, I'll have these notations on the screen. Cool. We got one more move to go. One more move to go, chat. One more move to go, YouTube, okay? One more one more move to go. Awesome. Okay. Finish it off with quarter circle forward light kick. Remember what I taught you with this? Same exact move. Very awesome. And you know the cool part about that is? The cool part about this combo? Guess what it goes into? Your oki setup, like I taught you. Um don't worry about it being like too difficult for you. Just keep practicing it. It's not a big deal. I promise you will get it. I'm going to go ahead and drive impact back. So, let's say you reacted to a drive impact or something like that. Let's say somebody you reacted in time. Right? Cool. Previously, I was doing this, right? Now, we're going to be doing something like this. So, you remember the combo I taught you earlier? It's the same thing just without drive rush, okay? It's the same thing without drive rush, okay? Instead of doing back heavy kick, what you do is you do stand heavy punch, quarter circle backward, quarter circle forward or quarter circle backward heavy punch, quarter circle forward light kick, okay? So, stand heavy punch, quarter circle backward, heavy punch, quarter circle forward light kick. Really simple, okay?

I'm going to teach you guys to start utilizing one of my strongest features. This is actually her entire character, to be honest, like this is her strong suit, okay? And this is it's her EX fireball and her normal fireball. I'm going to teach you guys how to use both, okay? Let's talk about her normal fireball. Obviously, you guys know how to use this from the last section. Remember that drive rush thing I was talking about? You hold down your parry button and then tap double tap forward. This is going to go hand in hand with what I'm teaching you right here. So, what I want you guys to start doing is throw the fireball and start drive rushing after. Now, as for your offense after the fireball, all I want you to do for the offense after the fireball is poke. Drive rush in, go for a poke into a fireball, into another fireball, okay? I'll do this. Do that. That's all I want you to do, okay? Keep it very, very simple for now. I will go ahead and teach you a lot more advanced stuff later on, okay? Just keep it simple for now. I'm going to talk about her charged fireball. I ignored this in the rookie to gold section. I'm not going to ignore it here. Her charged fireball, obviously, if it hits you, it bounces up even on block. It's a very, very strong. Same same tendency as the one as the normal fireball. It stays on the screen until it hits something or until it goes off the screen. This is really strong because Marisa drive rush behind it, like I said, but it gives you a lot more offensive pressure, okay? You can do the same thing I just taught you, right? Just go ahead and poke out of it. You can start utilizing her charged fireball. Block string is going to go a little little bit different, but not actually all that different. Marisa's block strings are very, very short most of the time. Like I said, block string could literally just look like this. That's it, okay? But, you can add something to this. You can add a fireball. Do not add a fireball every time because it's very susceptible to a DI poking. Remember that poking thing I taught you? Remember special cancelables? Remember your special cancelable normals? Stand medium punch, stand heavy punch. You saw me do this in the last section and I did it out of habit. But, you should start doing this. It's good. It's very, very, very good. Start doing this. This is basically Marisa's block string, to be honest, like you don't Marisa is not like Juri where she can just sit there and pressure you all the time with with buttons. She's kind

Of like a a poke character. Plays neutral. This is kind of what you do, right?

The final thing is punishing supers effectively and like when they do dumb [ __ ]. Um, so, like when they do like DPs, for example, and stuff, like wake up DPs or anything like that. Um, let's have them do like a wake up super. So, let's say I I hit this guy on the ground. Let's have him do wake up super. Remember the DI punish combo I taught you? Use the same exact one for this. Use this for DPs and supers. It's great. Does decent damage. Don't need to worry about it.

Now, if you want to if you want to kill people, right? If you want to kill people, right? You can cancel super out of that combo I taught you, okay? Out of any of the combos I just taught you, you can always cancel super out of your quarter circle forward light kick. It's double quarter circle forward back into the level three. Okay? It's very simple. So, for example, remember that drive rush combo I taught you? You can just sit there and buffer it, spam it out, whatever you want to do, and it'll come out. So, if somebody were to do this, I can punish him just like this. As you can see, pretty big punish. That's pretty much this section.

So, I want each So, I want you to focus on. Keep the same game plan. Keep the same general game plan of playing neutral, but add a few more layers onto it, like fireball, drive rush. Start utilizing a better meaty oki semi combo. Start learning how to hit confirm. You do not have to be perfect, guys. Not worrying about it. Do not get too frustrated with it. Takes time, okay? Don't worry about being too perfect at it.

On top of that, so now they this section I want you to learn how to be a little bit more optimal with Marisa. Learn how to utilize her tools a little bit better rather than just sticking to a very basic game plan. Use that same game plan in this section. Go ahead and use her buttons very effectively. Press buttons effectively. Play neutral with people. But, add extra layers onto it, like I said. All right. Punish combo I taught you. Charge fireball. I'm going to go and throw fireball and drive rush behind it. Oops. As you can see, I'm still playing neutral. I did not mean to DP there. I am sorry, guys. It's force of habit. Punish combo I taught you. Go ahead and do the meaty combo I taught you. Oops. [ __ ] What's up? Button into fireball. Maybe he jumps or does something stupid. It's fine. We'll go ahead and punish like that. Poke into fireball. Very simple [ __ ] Hit confirm I taught you. React to DI. I'm going to go ahead and do the drive rush combo I taught you. Actually, that's one more than I was supposed to do, but Sorry about that. It was kind of a habit. I don't know if she's dead. I think she is. Yeah, she is. Sorry about that. I completely forgot about I'm expecting a jump. Use my pokes. React to DI. I'm going to do the DI combo I taught you guys and to the oki setup. Hit confirms. Hit confirms. Didn't press nothing. That's fine. Oops. I tried to DP there. Thank god I stopped myself. He keeps jumping. That's fine. Oh. Hit confirm that. Confirm that. As you can see, we're still following the same simple game plan, but I just added it onto it. Oh. I wasn't close enough to punish it. Hit that sub. That's okay. Going to jump, probably. Going to use some of our pokes. Punish that. Level three. As you can see, I'm still utilizing my pokes. Still playing super patient, waiting for him to make a mistake. The only difference is is I know a lot more. I'm basically utilizing a lot more of Marisa's kit. Setup, just, you know, jabbing, jab, jab into fireball, you know? So, I'm getting a lot more damage off of it. Not doing anything I'm I'm not doing anything I said I would I'm not doing anything I told you guys to do. Like I'm doing everything Can't speak right now. I'm doing everything I told you guys to do basically. That's what I'm trying to explain. Okay. Stop. You know the drill. You know the drill. I'm going to go ahead and level three here. Catch up in life lead here. Going to drive rush here, but no big deal. Not like I could have killed him anyway. Fireball drive rush. The hell was that? Did he do that? Like I said, keeping it simple. I'm using the same game plan I used before just with a little bit more layers, as you can see.

So, this guy likes to jump a lot. And he likes to DI. So, we just wait for him to jump on our offense. That's okay. Figured out how to DI. So, we're going to go ahead and refrain from using our fireball a little bit less or a little bit more. So, less fireball more waiting for him to make a mistake, right? The second you somebody like uses DI or DP against your fireball, go ahead and cut back on it a little bit. But, if they're not doing anything against it, then don't worry about it. That's okay. So, yeah, what we're going to do is just wait for him to jump. Wait for him to make a mistake. It's all we're looking for. Oops. As you can see this guy does not care. Go ahead and do our meaty combo. Hit confirm. Hit confirm into level three. Cuz like I said, I told you guys you can always get level you can always use level three no matter what off of uh quarter circle forward light light kick, no matter what. Remember that. You can add that to your hit confirm combo. Okay, this guy is just a a big ball of randomness. He likes to jump a lot, likes to DI. That's pretty much what he's in and has to do. I'll go ahead and fireball. Oop. Oh. He landed in DI. Didn't expect that. Okay. Ooh, I missed the punish. See, I'm not throwing fireball as much. I'm just I fireball after button. I'm literally just utilizing really simple [ __ ]. That's all I'm doing. Go ahead and do a fireball meaty here. Boom. Fireball again. Oops. Okay. Poke him. Poke him. They're pokes. They're pokes. I missed time my ants here. Sucks. React to that. And he is dead. Dope. I'm going to go ahead and try It's going to be hard to kind of utilize fireball drive rush against a Bison, but I'll try. That's That's That's why right there. Yeah, okay. And he's a modern Bison, so you know.

So, um So, guys, anybody who's watching on YouTube please just follow what I'm telling you. This works very I'm telling you, it works. People will just No. Look, I'm going to keep doing the same thing. Here we go. Ooh, I did not mean for that to be ex fire. He's just walking forward. No, no, he's generally trying to jump out of the corner. That meaty combo is working wonders, man. Bison already is like really baby mode. Modern Bison is crazy. Oops. I'm going to throw a fireball force when I come in. Oh, I dashed one too many times. Like somebody's running away like this throw a fireball walk at him. Go ahead and force him into a bad situation. That's fine. He can wake up level one. [Music] Yeah, if somebody's like jumping backwards like that, just throw a level one at them like that. Or throw a charged fireball or fireball in general at them. Force them to make a bad decision. Fireball drive rush. Use my pokes at max range. Hit confirm that. I'll go ahead and throw him cuz he's pairing now. I jump at me. Okay, that's fine. I'll hold that. Take your meter, too. Come on. He jumps at me again. There it is. Kill him. Advance. Just I'm doing the simplest stuff. I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible for you. Go ahead jump on start. He thought the same idea. He had the same idea. We got a DIer. Okay. Go ahead and DI him. Do our DI combo I taught you guys. Really easy. Go ahead and do our oki. Same thing. Keep repeating this. It's okay if he does something on wake up. We don't care about that. Keep doing this. Is this like These people are not real, bro. Surely they like try to block one time. But, did he like disconnect? Okay. Ooh, nice combo. He gave the controller to somebody else. I promise you he did. Oh. That's my bad. Oh, man, I missed my combo. I missed my corner thing. Is he Is all he knows is combos or did he like give the controller to somebody else? No, I think he gave I think he like all he knows is combos actually. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and do my combo here that I taught you guys. I'm going to drive rush once to keep it simple. Yeah, I'm pretty sure all this person knows is combos. That is the difference between somebody who literally just lab combos and somebody who actually like [Music] plays the like played the like learned how to play the game properly if that makes sense. You notice how this guy doesn't know what to do in neutral, but once he like gets on top of you he can like hit the combos or whatever. Okay, that's fine. He's just DI'ing every time I anti-air him. See, like he knows the combos and stuff, that's fine. Hey, how did my DI not come out? So, he has pretty much no defense. All he can do is run offense. Hit confirm that. He has no parry now, so he has to hold all of this. He doesn't know how to. See, this guy has no idea how to block. He can do all those little combos that he's doing, but it doesn't amount to anything if he doesn't know how to play the game properly. That was a bad fireball. Like you can know every combo in the world if you can't you don't know how to play neutral, you're kind of [ __ ]. See, he just keeps flowcharting this for no reason. It's so weird. I don't know why he's doing this, but See what I mean? He knows how to do literally anything but play the game if that makes sense.

Hey guys, welcome to the plat to diamond section. Um in this section I wanted to do it off-stream so I could give it a little bit more attention and focus on it a little bit more without any distractions. So, just to get right into it in the last section you just finished hitting platinum, right? You played in gold for a little bit. You got used to spacing out your buttons from the previous section before that one. Now you're more used to punishing optimally, use your fan a little bit more, and you're also used to drive rushing as well. So, you got a pretty good under basic understanding of the character, but now you want to move on to the more advanced stuff. Um this isn't going to be too advanced. I'm going to save that for the diamond and master section, but this is going to get you in going in the right direction to get there. That's the whole purpose of this section, okay? So, like I said, on this in these guides I always like you to start small and focus on one or two things at a time rather than multiple things. So, I'm going to do just that. Um this is going to be kind of an info dump for you. There's going to be a lot of things to focus on in this section, but I want you to dwindle it down to like one or two key things each game, okay? And don't be afraid to try stuff in your ranked games or in your casual games, it doesn't matter. Just practice, that's all I care about.

So, in the last section I taught you a hit confirm combo just like this. It looked like this, right? It looked something like that or like this. Whichever one you prefer. Um I want you to keep practicing that. That's first and foremost and the shortest thing I want to add. Just please keep practicing this. I know I know you might not be perfect at it, but keep practicing it and I promise you it is going to become so easy for you, okay? So, just keep practicing hit front confirming and overall it'll become a skill that you keep using throughout every fighting game you ever play from that point, okay?

So, now that's out of the way, right? I want to start iterating. You can keep using her back heavy kick anti-air, but but if you would like to start using her DP, this is what I preferably use, right? You can start doing so. So, in the plat to diamond section I will start using her DP and you guys can do it too. If you guys I went over what a DP is in the initial section of the guide. Again, back heavy kick works just fine if you're used to that, but DP is um is overall a little bit more consistent, right? So, when if you guys want to practice the DP, it's really easy. Set your thing to record. I'm going to do a neutral jump and then I'm going to jump in using an attack just like that. I'm going to go ahead and go to my recording settings, go to replay. Make sure always repeat play always repeat playback is on. Go ahead and reset and we can practice the DP motion, right? Keep practicing it. Out of all the DPs you traditionally always want to use medium DP um for Mai specifically because her light DP, you'll notice, it doesn't really have good range. So, if I set her to I'm going to go ahead and turn this off. If I set her to jump Now, if I were to use medium DP in this same situation, I would not miss here. And you'll notice this is medium DP, as you can see. Same timing, same everything. It's not missing, right? But if I use light DP, it misses as you can see. But if I use medium DP, it always hits. Unless I'm super late. But as you can see, it hits. So, that's why traditionally I would like for you guys to stick to using medium DP for now, but I want you to practice it. Like I said, if you don't want to use DPs, that is perfectly fine. I understand the input for it is daunting. To reiterate the input, it is forward, down, down forward. So, in slow motion, forward, down, down forward. That's what it looks like, okay? Sped up, that's what it looks like, right? Sped up, there you go, right?

Start utilizing throws a little bit more. I didn't like the I didn't use them too too much in the previous sections because I wanted to show you that you don't you you only need the game plans I taught you to win up until that point. But now people are going to start blocking a little bit more, hopefully. Hopefully. So, when people start parrying or when people start blocking a lot more, this isn't going to work, right? You're not going to be able to do this every single time like you used to saw me do a billion times in the last section. You can't just keep looping this. Eventually, they're going to start blocking, hopefully. So, when they start blocking, that's when you start mixing in something called a tick throw. It's called a tick throw. A tick throw is basically a button into a throw, right? That's basically the easiest way to explain what a tick throw is for you. So, you do a button into a throw, okay? And Mai has this very strong game plan where she can do this after her her her hit confirm combos or off of any combo for that matter. So, um you want to start using tick throws, button to throw and you just want to start using normal throws. So, for example, if I have this person in the corner and let's say I get a knockdown, instead of doing a meaty here, I want you guys to use a throw, okay? And go back to this game plan, right? Same thing. Or maybe you want to do two throws in a row. And then three throws in a row. And maybe even a fourth one. This is something called throw looping. Overall, I just want you to start utilizing your throws a lot more because Mai gets really good oki off of her throws because if you throw somebody in the corner, you can either dash again and throw. You can dash in and get two lights just like this. Just like that. Or you can just throw a fireball. These are your three options off of a throw, right? And you you do have a fourth option if you want. You can just use your pokes. You can just walk forward and use a poke just like that. Keep your range, use your pokes, right? But overall, the first three options I told you is the ones are the ones I typically use, okay? So, throwing is very very effective against people who like to perfect parry a lot and start blocking your your meaty combo, okay? So, I want you to start adding throws into your arsenal. They're very very strong. Mai does have throw loops if you know what that is.

I'm going to teach you a another layer of Mai, okay? This is this is going to be a little bit more advanced, okay? So, you've gotten used to using her fireballs, her charged fireballs, [ __ ] like that. Now I want you to start incorporating her EX fireballs, okay? Her EX fireballs, you could you might have been doing this beforehand. I didn't necessarily tell you to, but it's her fire her EX fireball is her it's her game plan, to be honest. This is this is what makes this character, you know, a complete a complete pie. This is her strongest thing in her kit is this EX fireball, okay? Now, her EX fireball is obviously really good because it's fast. It doesn't lose to other fireballs. It actually beats most fireballs in the game as far as I think it beats all of them in the game as far as I know. Unless they EX fireball you back, this is going to be every fireball. And I'll show you right here. All right, cool. If I have Ryu go ahead and do a fireball, as you see, I'll beat it. I'll beat it every time. As you can see. See that? So, her EX fireball is extremely strong and I want you to start using it a little bit more. But keep in mind it costs two meter every time you use it, so pay attention to your meter cuz this can run out pretty fast.

Now, when you are playing against a character with another fireball, this fireball is obviously extremely strong as I just showed you. But I want you to add another layer onto your fireball game, whether you're using a charged fireball or an EX fireball, okay? So, I'm going to start with the charged fireball. Charged fireball, when doing this setup, I want you to use your charged medium fireball, okay? See how it goes a little bit higher than the light one? This is the light version. Doesn't bounce too high. This is the medium version. See how it bounces higher? I want you to use your medium version for this. So, you have two options out of this, okay? And I want you to pay close attention. When you throw your medium fireball, you drive rush after, okay? Actually, you have three options, sorry. You drive rush after this, okay? You can go into a low, okay? Right? And you see how the fireball hits him after I hit him in a combos? Does that make sense? After I hit him with my crouching medium kick, do you notice how the fireball hits him in a combos? You see that? It's very cool, right? So, you can go into a low. Just like this. Or you can go into an overhead. You see that? So, this is called a high-low mix-up, okay? Overhead or low, they have to block. Or they can parry, that's their option, okay? And I'll tell you how to beat parry after I'm done telling you about the high-low sequence, okay? So, in this high-low sequence, you do get a full combo off of it, and I'm going to teach you that, okay? So, when you do this mix-up, if you hit them low, you wait for the fireball to hit after you hit them with the low, right? Do the low, wait for it to hit, just like that. You see that? And then I want you to use stand heavy punch, but I want you to use, okay? So, it'll look like this. Just like that. You see how I combo? And then after that, remember that optimal punish combo I taught you? This. Remember that? That's all I want you to do afterwards. That's it. So, sped up, full full speed, it looks like this. And as you can see, that fully combos. It's very very very good because it gets the enemy in the in the corner, so, yeah. Very very very strong, right? That's off of the low. Now, let's go into the overhead. Go ahead and do the fireball thing. So, remember this? Overhead and the fireball combo? We're going to go ahead and keep it really simple. We're just going to go ahead and throw this. Overhead, heavy punch, right? Over our overhead, wait for the fireball to hit him, and then heavy punch. And then after that, we're going to go ahead and do quarter circle forward heavy kick. That's what we're going to do. Okay? Really really easy. They're blocking low, they'll get hit with the overhead. If they're blocking high, they'll get hit with the low.

Now, you guys might start realizing, wait, they're parrying my my my mix-up. They're parrying my high and low. Well, there's a third option that I'm going to talk talk to you guys about. So, I'm going to have Ryu block the first attack. And then after that, I'm going to have him parry. You guys might be wondering, how do I open somebody up who parries my mix-up? Does that make sense? And don't worry, guys, I have the answer for you. See how he's parrying, so he doesn't have to guess? How do I open somebody up who's parrying my mix-up? Oh, you can just drive rush throw. And he they lose 20% of their life just for that. So, this is a [ __ ] this is a huge mind game that you guys can be utilizing in your games. And I want you to get used to it cuz this is a big section of how this is a big part of how my play style game plan, okay? This is a humongous part of how my play style game plan in neutral. Her fireball is very important. You make them guess into an overhead, make them guess into a throw, and you make them guess into a low. Just like that. Awesome. Cool.

So, that's all I want to talk about. Um, apart from that, keep doing what you're doing. Now that you know how to play neutral a little bit better, you're using your buttons more effectively, you have more optimal combos, and I want Keep in mind, I want you to keep these same combos that I taught you earlier. These same combos. And we'll get to the really optimal stuff in the diamond and master section. Realistically, this is all you really need for right now. I want you to keep using it. Same with the punish counter combo I taught you when people do supers and unsafe stuff. And keep in mind, keep also using your level three super, please. We're not going to touch up on any of the level one stuff because we do not need it yet. I'm going to save all that extra advanced stuff until the diamond to master section. So, thank you guys for watching. I appreciate it. On to the next section. Good luck in your games. I'll see you in the diamond and master section. Good luck.

All right, Zangief for the first match today. So, we're going to use our buttons to We're going to keep use our poke buttons to play keep away. We're going to use our fireball a lot, and I'm definitely going to utilize the drive rush uh the fireball drive rush thing I taught you um with the low and high mix. Um, throwing him, you can definitely get away throwing anybody. But if he does back dash or throw, which I'm not I'm assuming he's highly not going to, but Also, like I said, I told you guys to start trying to use a lot utilizing her DP. I'm going to try to mix in both, but I am mainly a DP'er, so uh yeah. DP, throw, fireball, poke. Punish Oh, whoops, my bad. Got my punish. DP him. Overhead. Go for our easy meaty combo. Do it again. Okay, he blocked it. That's fine. Wait for the jump, maybe? Punish him. Nice. Go for our meaty combo. Yep, there it is. Same thing. Real simple [ __ ]. Real simple [ __ ]. Wait for the jump, maybe? Poke him. Use our pokes some more, maybe he jumps. Punish him here. Bam bam. Go for our meaty combo that we always go for. He's starting to block it a little bit, so I'm going to go ahead and grab him. I'm going to grab him one more time. I'm going to go back to meaty him here. Like that. Punish him here. I could have killed him. Okay. Maybe he jumps out of the corner. There it is. Throw a fireball. I'm going to throw one more. Nice. As you can see, didn't do anything ridiculous, just real simple meaty stuff. Real simple easy and easy stuff with a lot of meaties in involved. Punish him. I'm not going I didn't show you that combo, so I'm going to keep that out. Did that low set up there. Then charge fireball into this. Punish him here. Oh, he's crouching during that? I'm going to throw him. I'm going to go ahead and meaty him, too. Oh, missed my my meaty. My punish jump. Fireball, another fireball. Punish him here. Nice. Okay, I'm going to jump at him Actually, no, keep the keep the same game plan. There's no reason to swap it. I'm going to do charge fireball. I'm going to throw another charge fireball. Going to overhead. Oh, I dropped my combo. Bam bam bam. Punish him again. Bam bam. Go for our meaty. I'm going to do it again. Do it one more time. Maybe he jumps. Oh, punish him. Why is he crouching when he does that? I guess it is a crouching attack. Another Zangief. Same same game plan. We're going to use our buttons to play keep away, and we're going to look for anti-airing, and throw fireballs. The thing about Zangief is Zangief you don't really want to be close to him if if you can help it, unless you get a hit on him, so Just going to play really slow. Throw our fireballs. We're going to do charge fireball. Oh, that's really bad. Oh, he hit us. Nice. DP him. I'm going to go charge fireball into a low here. That's fine. We know he parries, so now we can start mixing in the throw. Guys, we're on that list and he doesn't care. That's okay. Mix it, you dick. Oh, that's okay. Oh, he [ __ ] up. I'm going to jump out of the corner. Somehow I didn't make it out of the corner. Oh. This is not good. That's fun. Okay, so this person loves drive rushing. That's okay. I'm going to drive rush at him. Bam bam. Do our meaty combo that I taught you. Probably going to jump. Punish that. Throw him. I'm going to throw him one more time. It's fine, he meatied it. Check his drive rush. He doesn't know it's not his turn. I'm going to punish that. Bam bam bam bam bam. Go into our meaty combo that I taught you. Poke him. That's fine. Uh-uh. I didn't want to complete that combo cuz I didn't teach you that, but you notice how I whiff punished him and went to the drive rush. I could have went into the combo I taught you earlier, though. I'm going to jump at him. That was almost really bad. Punish him again. Bam bam bam bam bam. Really simple stuff. Meaty combo. I'm going to go ahead and throw him here. That's fine. It's going to do a lot of damage, but he's on modern, so it's not going to do as much as it should. I know a billion of you guys just sniffed your screen right now. Probably going to drive rush or something. Uh-uh. I'm going to level three here. Get him within one touch. I don't think I could have killed him if I drive rushed cuz it's Zangief, he's too tanky. I'm going to go ahead and throw an EX fireball here. Bam. Bam. I'm going to start the round with an EX fireball and the drive rush everything. Yeah, he really loves parrying that, so punish that. Try this. Drive rush fireball, or drive rush throw, I mean. Meaty fireball after that. Bam. Okay. Bam bam bam. Jump at him. Oh, that's not good at all. We're in the corner now. Throw another fireball. This. Overhead. Use our pokes. Punish that. I'm going to go and chip him out with fireball. He's dead. Nice. Very very good. Very very simple stuff. Punish that. A A A A A. Charge fireball for the meaty. Use my pokes. Poke again. Poke. Poke. Poke. Oh, that's good. A A Meaty M. I'm going to keep meaty him. I don't really care about a wake up super. It's fine. I'm going to keep doing the simplest meaties for you guys. He the [ __ ] makes an EX fireball. M. Walk up throw him cuz he's blocking a lot. I'm going to throw him again. It's fine. Throw another fireball. Maybe he drive rushes. EX fireball. Oh. I do it. Be mad no matter what. I could literally use one button and beat these players, but anyway. Got an EX fireball. It's okay. Maybe she jumps. React to react to that. Use our simple combo for DIs. Bam bam. Bam bam. Going to our meaty. I'm going to do another meaty. Okay. I'm going to throw him. And then I'm going to go ahead and meaty fireball him here. Use our pokes. We got it out of our pokes with a random DI. That's okay. React to that. Bam bam bam. Awesome. That guy likes to DI a lot. So instead of using my standing medium kick and standing heavy kick, I'm going to go ahead and start using my other pokes. [Music] Oh, my thing didn't come out for some reason. It's fine. I'll hold that. I got hit out of it. I jump. A A DP him. Oh. React to this. I'm going to go ahead and do this. A A The other the drive rush combo I taught you guys. All right. I'm going to start off with an EX fireball. Hopefully he doesn't jump. Do our drive rush. That's fine. Look at how much screen space he gave us. Poke in the fireball. DP him. Do a charged fireball. That's fine. Oh, my bad. I blew up my combo. It's my fault. I'll go an EX DP here. I'm going to go fireball. DP him again. A A A Burnt out. I'm going to go ahead and do a drive impact. Very easy stuff. That guy likes to jump a lot. So I'm going to play it safe. Oh. There we go. Charged fireball. DP Yeah, our [ __ ] DP. I'm going to do our low. I'm poke. Oh. Oh, that was bad timing. Sucks. I'm going to do our oh. I'm burn out and bam. From the jump, do charged fireball. He didn't bite on the low. I'm going to do another charged fireball. Go for an overhead this time. Oops. My fault. DP That's not going to hit me. A A Drive rush to punish it. And so forth and so on. I'm still using my pokes. I'm still using spacing. I'm still using fireball, right? All that stuff. Still using drive rush. It's fine. This guy is a pretty pretty loony. I'm going to play really patient with him. It's fine. Oops. Bad punish. A Oh. Punish this. Bam bam. I'm going to go ahead and do Wow, that hit me. DP that. Drive rush for a meaty. Sweep his sweep. Do our meaty combo. I'm going to go ahead and DI him here. And then do the other DI combo I taught you before. Okay. DP is jumping. Meaty fireball. Use our pokes. That guy likes to play really scared. So we're going to go ahead and do that. Poke him. This guy is using his pokes pretty effectively. A A A A A A A M M M React to that. A A A A A Double throw. As you I'm trying my best to keep it as simple as possible. Not doing any fancy stuff. Just adding layers on what we previously learned. I'm going to try to do charged fireball. Into overhead. That's fine. So we know he likes to parry a lot, right? So what did I teach you if he somebody's parrying a lot? Somebody's parrying a lot. Somebody's parrying a lot. We just got to throw him out of the parry just like that. Is it Fine. I'll hold that. Oh, I tried shimmying him. Sorry. I didn't even teach you guys shimmies yet, so I probably shouldn't do that. M M DP that. Maybe he tatsus again, does something random. It's fine. That's good. He's in burnout. M M M M I'll hold that. That's fine. And he's dead. M Bam bam bam bam. This guy likes drive rushing a lot. He's going to do that a lot. I'm just going to go ahead Oh, that's not good. That's okay. Do our only EX fireball. Oh. That's good jump out by him. Should have been more patient. DP that. [Music] Um Oops. Bad combo. Sorry. DP that. I'll throw him here. Maybe he jumps here. DP Oops. So that guy was actually pretty decent. He used his buttons. He spaced his buttons. He used his fireball. Like a lot of stuff that was good. I see that guy just jumps and gambles on wake up. It's all he really does. So we got to play patient. Throw the fireball. There's the jump. DP on wake up. There it is. We punish it. Very simple punish. Go for our meaty. Maybe he parries this time. I'm going to back up. There's the parry. We punish that. I'm going to throw him again. Good tech. A little bit of space. Throw another EX fireball. Oops. DP that. That's fine. He's completely in burnout. Got to make a decision here. Oh. Oh, I did not mean to charge there. I haven't taught you guys that yet at all. Oh. Not close enough. [Music] Yeah, so much space he's giving us. And he just ends up in the corner the more he backs up. You guys notice like how far he's getting into the corner because he keeps backing up. I'm not going to complete that combo. I'm going to drop it on purpose. The cuz that's not a combo I taught you guys. Fine. Can't do that, bud. [Music] Oh, I didn't get DI'd for some reason. Fine. That was actually pretty good from him. He cycled through his options. Like he he tried he tried new [ __ ] rather than just jumping at me all the time. Which is good by him. Nice light kick. [Music] Oh. Sweep into DI. [Music] Oh, nice. Throw him in the corner. I'm going to dash forward throw. DP that. Pick up DP maybe. It's fine. We punish this. A A DP that. Go for a meaty. Seems to not like the block on a meaty again. That's fine. Throw him. Oh, all right. This guy likes to DI a lot, so we're done using non-cancelable pokes as well. Just like that. [Music] I'll turn around and throw him in the corner. [Music] Man, this guy is uh just sending it. And he's dead. [Music] This guy on defense is not very great. And on offense all he does is DI after everything. So, we just got to keep that in mind. I'm not going to throw too many fireballs cuz it's game. I'm going to do EX fireball. Have that. Bam bam bam. He gets really flustered on defense, so we're going to make very Ooh, I did not mean to do that. That was a misinput. See, he doesn't really know what to do for against my offense, so just going to keep making him guess. [Music] Fine. Nice. Fine. That was very very flustered whenever he had the block. Nice. Oops, didn't mean to do that. Go for a meaty. I'm going to do another meaty. Throw him. [Music] Throw him again. That's fine. Meaty sweep, huh? I'll take that throw as well. [Music] Oh, I didn't use medium fire or medium what's it called? [Music] That's what I get for not using medium DP there. That's what happens. Remember what I said how light DP sucks? But you want to stick to medium DP for the most part. Nice whip punish. [Music] Throw him. Ooh, bad DP by me. It's fine. Play slow here. Wait for him to make a mistake like that. And him sweep, that's okay. Drive rush throw, that's okay as well. He's dead. I'm going to jump on him. [Music] He had the punish. You guys notice how I'm like not trying to play neutral with somebody who doesn't want to play neutral? Does that make sense? Like I'm not playing neutral with somebody who doesn't want to play neutral. You guys notice how I'm just sticking to like a really like simple game plan of him like just playing the fireball war and forcing him to jump over it cuz I know he's going to. Like I'm not trying to play [Music] See, I'm not trying to play no [ __ ] no no neutral with the guy who doesn't want to play neutral. You can't do that in this game. You can't force somebody to do something they don't want to do for the most part cuz of how many options they have in this game. So, I just kind of have to adapt and play defensively. Oh, he almost had me. He loves that drive rush sweep. Keep trying to space it, but I think it's a waste of time. A A Go for a meaty. Do that. I'm going to take throw him here. My is very good against [ __ ] what's it called? Very good against drive meter. Whip punish him. [Music] Oof. Fine. Go for a meaty. [Music] DP. You see how I'm not committing to anything really? I'm just poking him. Kind of how you have to play against Gief. Do the combo I taught you. Bam bam. Ooh, that's really bad. Oh man, it's even now. Okay. He got really lucky. That was a really good jumping by him. Go for overhead cuz he's blocking low a lot. [Music] [Music] Ooh, I did light DP instead of medium DP and that's what happens if you do light DP instead of medium DP. Oh, he [ __ ] up. I'll level three him here. I don't think he's dead cuz the scale is pretty bad and he's Gief. Now he's dead. [Music] Only supply five. Wi-Fi Gief, bro. Even worse. I really need to start looking at the connection, man. [Music] Wi-Fi and from Germany is just insane. Same game plan as the last Gief. Use our buttons. Same [ __ ] as usual. Just use our buttons. Play keep away from this [ __ ] and then punish him when he whips something. Or punish him when you go in for a fireball, you know? Back throw him. I'm going to back throw him. Actually, I'm just going to normally throw him. All right, I'm going to use a poke now. Poke. Oops, didn't get my what's it called? [Music] I'm literally doing nothing crazy at all. I'm just waiting for him to make a mistake. I'm punishing him and I'm poking him. And fireball drive rush. It's literally everything I've taught you. That's all I've used this entire time. Oop. I'm mixing in throws, EX fireball. Nice. [Music] Ooh, oh my god. My life just flashed before my eyes. That's the best case scenario. Nice. Nice. She need to play a little bit more patient. All that round told me. I also need to bait that out cuz he's going to keep using that. Yeah, that's all he's going to keep doing. That's fine. [Music] Jesus Christ. [Music] [Music] Ooh, wasn't it? Close enough. He is dead. That actually was not laggy at all. But the the Wi-Fi and the flag, but I'm not doing too much like commentary like on the game because like I've explained everything I need to explain to you guys on how to play from plat to diamond. I'm using the [ __ ] game plan I taught you guys. At this point, you should just be learning on how to play. Like, you know what I mean? Like it's You should understand how the how it works now. Ooh, what a jump in. [Music] He's going to jump like every time I jump. Let me see. Simon says Simon says jump. [ __ ] Oop, my bad. Man, this guy mashes a lot. It's fine. He burned himself out. I'm going to apply to you guys. I like I love Little Caesars, but the problem is I don't my the closest Little Caesars is like 25 minutes away. I'm not driving 25 minutes for Little Caesars, if that makes sense. I'm going to do the same thing, by the way. I'm going to block. And he's dead. He did the simple combo I told you into level three. This is an example of a player who plays kind of crazy. Okay, he doesn't he doesn't feel like playing me again. Ooh, luckily Mai is pretty good against Ken. Put that. [Music] Big jump in. He's using my pokes. He's using my pokes. He's using my pokes. He's using my pokes. Okay, he DI'd really good. My normal combo. I did not mean to do that. That was supposed to be standing roundhouse. I just pressed the wrong button. It's okay, though. That is okay. This guy he loves DI'ing, so I just got to pay attention to that. [Music] I like that. Nice back jump. I'm going to go out and be level three to burn him out here, and he's going to be in the corner. This is where Mai is like this that's Mai's strongest suit is like she really does so much damage to the drive gauge. And after the like she takes you to the corner every time. Deepest sweep. She takes you to the corner like every time she touches you. That's tip That's really her strongest like pros, to be honest. Uh like she she's great at that, to be honest. She touches you, you're going to the corner. But like a lot of characters do that, but Ken Ken's like a prime example one. Man. This guy has not learned anything. Ooh, that was bad button press. [Music] [Music] Oh my god, I wasn't even looking at my screen. I'm not going to lie to you. I was reading chat. What do you mean What's just like in KOF? I wasn't paying attention. What do you What do you mean just just like in KOF? [Music] [Music] What do you Oh, yeah, Mai. I completely forgot she's from KOF. Yeah, that's true. I didn't I've only have like 30 hours in KOF 15. Like 30 to 40 of them. Like I had I had like 36 of them. I didn't play any Mai, by the way. I wasn't I played Blue Mary. Blue Mary is my favorite KOF character. What the hell did I hit me? I love me some Blue Mary. I really hope she's in the uh City of the Wolves, to be honest. Like the one character I'm praying for in City of the Wolves is Blue Mary, bro. It is a Fatal Fury game. That's where she's from, so I feel like there's uh a pretty good chance. [Music] I would DP twice in a row. That's unfortunate. I'm going to all of his meter for this, so I did not mean to jump there, by the way. Ooh, big jump in from us. I'll hold that. Nice jump in. I'll hold that, too, gladly. Ooh. I don't think this guy has ever seen anybody block that. Uh until now, of course. It's probably worked like a [ __ ] ton against people. Uh it's pretty much checkmate for him, to be honest. He can't really play the game anymore. Yeah. Okay, diamond is done. How long did that take? 4 hours? Yeah, almost 4 hours. So, from plat one to to diamond one, it takes 4 hours if you win. I think I lost uh literally one game. So, now that you are finally diamond, you have fully mastered Mai's basics. You understand how she functions for the most part. You're doing fireballs. You're doing button into fireball. You're doing fireball meaties. You're doing [ __ ] EX fireball into drive rush lower high. You're doing fire normal charge fireball into lower high. Um, you're doing semi-optimal combos. You're punishing things. You're overall playing pretty decent, and you finally have an understanding of how Mai works. At this point, you can probably understand like, "Hey, I like this character. I'm going to main her, right?" If you've made it this far. So, I'm going to start giving you the more grimy advanced [ __ ] that I use. Um I'm not going to go over every single thing I use, but I am going to go over the most consistent options that you should be using in your games if you're trying to rank up from diamond to a master uh level Mai. Um but when you get people into the corner, instead of always using this block string, right? Instead of always using these meaty options, which I'm still going to be using these

meaty options throughout the mid-diamond to master climb. I'm still going to be using this. There is something better that you can get off of this after uh quarter circle forward light kick, okay? And that is back heavy kick, okay? So, you dash forward back heavy kick. It is auto timed, okay? So, you dash forward back heavy kick. You see I'm plus one. I'm plus one. So, that means if they mash anything here, they will get hit.

Now, that means I have to jab them after. Okay, so let's set Ryu to jab after waking up or jab after blocking. As you'll see I'll beat him, okay? You might be wondering, "Well, what the [ __ ] do I get off of that, right? What the [ __ ] do I get off of that if they mash?" Well, you can actually go for a jab. So, so counter hit jab links into low forward. It has to be a standing jab. It cannot be a crouching jab. I don't know why. Just how she works. But if you get a just stand if you get a counter hit jab, which means they mashed, you can do low forward. So, that means you can do something like this.

Now, I do want to reiterate, there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping the like continually doing this, right? It is very, very, very good. There's a reason I'm going to keep using it. But I'm saying if you want to mix up your options and make people like People are probably going to think they're they can press a button here when they can't, right? You can mix it up a little bit, go for a back heavy kick meaty rather than just always going for the same looping thing. And see how it works out for you, right? I'm going to stop there on the meaty things and I'm going to come back to it later after I teach you guys how to optimally combo. The reason I taught you how to back heavy kick is cuz it's going to become important after this, okay?

So, next thing I want to talk about is the fun part you guys have been waiting for, the optimal combos, okay? Now, the funny part is is it's basically the same as what we've been doing. You remember this combo? It's very similar, actually. It's very similar. But instead of going into back heavy kick, you replace back heavy kick with stand heavy kick. It does more damage. Boom, boom. You see that does 2941. This does 2856. So, it does more damage, okay? And that does add up a lot, okay?

So, what you need to understand is you cannot go into a drive rush stand heavy kick off of stand medium punch um or a crouching medium kick. You cannot go into stand heavy kick off of those two buttons, but you can go into it off of any other button other than like light buttons. So, you can go all into it off of crouching medium punch. You can go into it off of stand heavy punch. All right? [Music] Those are the buttons that you ideally want to be using when you're going into stand heavy kick.

Now, you may be asking, "Well, what if uh when I do this, they're crouching, right? Because here's the thing about this, right? What if I get a counter hit or whiff punish and they're crouching and I go into the combo? As you'll see, this will miss, okay? That goes back to our last combo, right? That goes back to the combo you previously using. Okay? Back heavy kick forces people to stand. You'll see Ryu will stand and then crouch again after a split second. You see that? So, as you can see, this will always hit. But this will miss. That's because back heavy kick forces them stand and stand heavy kick does not, right? So, if you hit a crouching opponent, you can go into back heavy kick combo and do this instead.

But you can add an extra layer onto that. After you make them stand, you can go into stand heavy kick after another drive rush, right? This is more optimal than doing two in a row, right? So, as you can see, if I do two in a row, it will do 3202. If you do the stand heavy kick instead of two in a row, it will do 23261. So, it's overall more optimal and trust me that does add up. Now, let's say you whiff punish something from a standing opponent, right? Let's say this this Ryu goes for a stand heavy punch or something, right? I whiff punish him, right? He's standing, right? I can go for two of these. Look how much damage I'm about to do just off of this. Off of a very simple combo. Stand heavy kick crouching medium punch into stand heavy kick crouching medium punch. Yep, 5506.

So, slow down the combo for you. To reiterate, just just re [ __ ] recap what we're doing. A stand heavy punch into stand heavy kick, crouching medium punch into quarter circle back heavy punch into quarter circle forward light kick. So, it'll look like this sped up. All right.

Now, I'm going to teach you the highest damaging combos you can do for Mai mid-screen. So, let's say you want to kill somebody or you already have them in the corner, okay? Let's say you already have them in this screen position, right? You don't really need to do quarter circle forward light kick because you already the only reason you're doing that is for good for good corner carry, right? Now that you have them there, you want to maybe want a little bit more damage cuz they're already in the corner. I can just do this. You can do heavy DP as an ender instead of quarter circle forward light kick off of your combos. And it has really good corner carry, as you can see. He still ends up in the corner. You see that? So, you can start doing that instead. But I would what I would recommend is if you're anywhere near mid-screen, I would pretty much always go into the quarter circle forward light kick because it has better corner carry, you see?

Now, I want to talk about basic corner combos. I obviously you're probably pretty tired of doing this in the corner nonstop, okay? And you're still going to be doing that. But when you're at this range and you whiff punish something or you get a hit, maybe you want to drive rush at them, okay? That's fine. Guess what? The combo still work in the corner, same exact way. But we're going to be doing something a little different. Instead of doing heavy DP, we're going to be using light DP. And you guys may be wondering why because it does way less damage. It does 300 less damage than a heavy DP, as you can see. Right? Well, there's a reason for that. Remember that oki setup I I told you guys, the back heavy kick? Well, I got something for you. I got something for you. Remember how dashing forward and back heavy kicking on this was plus one? Right? Remember how they can't they can't mash on this, as you guys can see? Right?

Well, guess what? When you do light DP, right? If I do light DP in this combo and then I do dash forward heavy kick, I'm plus three. Which means that if this person were to mash, I can do a crouching medium punch instead of a stand jab. See? Off of crouching medium punch, guess what you can get. See? Goes hand in hand, right? Goes hand in hand. You see what I'm saying? Also, off of crouching medium punch, let's say you don't want to spend meter. I can do quarter circle back medium punch. Okay.

So, you guys may be asking, "What happens if I mistime my meaty and they mash, okay? Let's say they mash, right?" They get their mash off and I [ __ ] up my meaties, right? Okay, cool. I'm going to teach you something. So, if they trade with you off of your uh crouching medium punch, you can actually guarantee get another crouching medium punch off of this. Or she she has a trade combo with this, okay? As you can see, I got a trade combo off it and I can loop it. See how I can just keep looping my options? You see this? Going through all my You see that? See my corner pressure? Fantastic, right? So, instead of using heavy DP, unless you can kill in the corner, I would recommend using light DP in the corner. And you do have to be directly in the corner. Even if you're a little bit outside of the corner, like even if I'm really close to the corner, like for example, even if I'm like really, really close to the corner, see how I'm like right here? It'll still miss. I have to be directly in the corner, as you can see.

I'm going to come back to the mid-screen combo and talk about her level one. Okay? Her level one, I've been ignoring it this whole time. Her level one is actually her entire character. She becomes she goes from like a decent character to like a very, very strong character when she gets level one. Now, what does her level one do? You might be wondering, once you get level one, you see those little flame stocks You see a little number five below my health bar? And you see how Mai's on fire? This buffs all of her special moves, okay? It buffs her fireball. It no longer loses to fireballs anymore. And her charged version is even stronger. It goes through fireballs. As you can see, it hits multiple times. The charged version and the normal version, right? So, obviously becomes very strong. All of her other moves do more damage. Remember how her heavy DP did 1200 damage? Well, guess what? It does 1300 damage now. Her light her quarter circle forward light kick uh off of this does more damage, right? Everything does more damage and she has more combo opportunities, okay?

We're going to teach you I'm going to go ahead and teach you guys how to combo mid-screen into Mai's level one. There's multiple ways to do it, okay? A lot of ways I'll do it. But basically what I will tell you is you want to use your level one as much as you possibly can, okay? Do not save level one. If you think you can get a level one off, try to get it off, okay? Maybe you want to save your level three to kill somebody, that's fine. What I'm telling you is try to get your level one off as soon as possible, okay? You remember this combo I told you? It's old combo I taught you. Well, guess what? It's still very relevant. Instead of doing quarter circle back heavy punch, you're doing quarter circle back double punch. So, you get in the EX version, right? And off of EX version, you go into level one. Okay? You go into level one. Now, you might be asking why don't I just do it off of heavy punch? Well, guess what? It misses for some reason. They should Capcom, buff Mai. This character [ __ ] sucks. But, you have to do EX version, and then it will hit.

Now, let's say you Maybe your reactions aren't that good. Maybe you don't want to spend that much meter. Well, or maybe you've already drive rushed after whip punish. Well, that's fine. You can go ahead and go into the normal combo I taught you. Either or, you can go into this one, or you can go into this one, and then you can level one after the crouching medium punch. Okay? You can level one right after the crouching medium punch. Boom. And it gives us great screen position. I can fireball, fireball. Right? So, it's fan-fucking-tastic how great this character is when she gets her her level one off.

Now, another thing I want to talk about is using her level two before I go or sorry, actually let me go to the corner first. So, you guys might be asking how do I activate level one in the corner? Well, you remember how I said you need to use her EX version of this? You don't need to do that in the corner. You just need the normal version. You can do it off of this. See what I mean? And then when they're in the corner, obviously they're in a really bad spot because they have to eat all this. See? When you're in the corner, remember you don't need to spend meter. If you're out of the corner, you need to spend meter to get her level one off, if that makes sense. So, when you're in mid screen, spend meter. You're not in mid screen, don't spend meter. Basically is what I'm telling you. Corner, don't spend meter. Mid screen, spend meter.

Her level two. I have not used it at all this entire session, guys. I've been holding off. Her level two is actually really, really good. Let me show you why. You see where we are Do you see where we are on the screen? Look where we are now. We're in the [ __ ] corner. Right, he's in the corner, okay? Remember this combo I taught you? Just I just keep We keep coming back to this combo. You can level two off of this. Right? Fantastic, right? Well, you can also level two off of this. Fantastic, right? Awesome. You should be using this if you can have great If you If you want to get to the corner, it's fantastic. It also does a lot of damage, so you can use it to finish off people. Very, very good. Very, very good. Why am I showing you her level two? Well, like I told you, her level one buffs all of her abilities. It buffs her supers included. Her level one as well does more damage, as you can see. That's not all it buffs. It buffs her level two as well. And when you have a buffed level two, you see I can get an extra DP when I'm in a corner. Isn't that sick? That's so sick. I think that's so cool how she can She just unlocks her [ __ ] potential, right? As you can see. So, it just doesn't It turn Her level one turns her into an absolute damage [ __ ] machine. So, now that we've touched on level one and the importance, you guys need to start using level one as much as possible because it makes her go from a mediocre character to a really decent character. Okay? So, definitely when I start using her, using her level one as much as possible cuz her everything everything gets better. Her pressure gets better. Her damage gets better. Everything gets better about her when she has level one on the screen, okay?

I want to start um talking about whip punishing into full combos, okay? This goes hand in hand with everything else. You guys might You guys are pretty used to poking, right? Poking, you poke, right? You poke, right? You're playing neutral with somebody. You guys probably saw me whip punish a few people. So, this goes hand in hand. Say I'm playing neutral with this person. I whip punish. Just like that, I have level one. Whoops, sorry. Right? Or maybe you don't want to You don't want to take the risk of this missing because if you're too far, this will drop, as you can see. Maybe you don't want to take that risk. That's fine. You can drive rush cancel and go and go for level one. So, basically what I'm telling you is try to get used to using your buttons and turning them into better damage when you see people whip. Obviously, you're good at spacing now because you've practiced spacing your buttons. So, now you're going to be good at spacing the enemy the enemy player's buttons as well after you've done it for so long. I'm not You don't Let me tell you, chat. You do not need to whip punish every single button they throw out. If you If even if you only whip punish one button a game, that's fine. That one button could lead to you winning the game. So, don't try to think too much about it. Just kind of try to react. Right? And as you can see, this is the payoff I get, right? That's That's another thing I wanted to touch on. It's It's pretty self-explanatory. If you see them with a button, you press a button. Her best options to whip punish it are her stand medium punch, stand roundhouse, her sweep, and her low forward. Those are your best things. Another thing you can do if you whip punish her stand medium kick is you can go into level two. Isn't that sick? So, I basically want you to start turning your your your buttons into more damage. I want you to start turning your buttons into more beneficial situations and more damage for you guys.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm going to teach you one really, really cool whip or really one really, really cool combo for um when you have level one stocks and somebody DPs at you, okay? Okay, so let's say you're in level one, you knock down this Ryu, right? Let's say you knock down this Ryu. He feels like doing a wake up DP, right? That's so much damage. Oh my god, bro. Oh my god, 62%. Yo, what's up, fellas? Editor Beagle here. I just want to add a quick disclaimer before we get to the last section of this video. Um during the diamond to master gameplay section, uh during the last part of the climb, I don't really go over what I'm doing as much as I was earlier. I don't really hold your hand as much. I kind of just play like I would normally play in my own elo. So, um hopefully you guys can learn from that. I thought it would be appropriate for me not to really hold back anymore. Um so, yeah. Enjoy the video. Just wanted to give you guys a quick disclaimer. Enjoy.

I'm saying if you're like getting whip punished and stuff, you shouldn't change up your game plan, but literally you can completely stop stopping to press but like you just don't press buttons. It's crazy. You know I'm going to check that, bro. You watch me. You're literally watching me jab. What the [ __ ] happened to my sand pierce? What was that? Ooh, that's bad. He could have punished me, I think. He's not dead. I wonder if I did EX, would he die there? I haven't really labbed her Yeah, I can't do all this stuff. [ __ ] [Music] Okay, my friend. Okay. I always I think for the old most part Not for the most part. I think pretty much every I think pretty much every classic counterpart is better than its modern counterpart. Could have done a way better combo. Unfortunately, little pop up there. That's just in my head. God dammit. See, if you said any other character than Mai, I would know, but I'm pretty sure Mai is not too bad on modern um from what I'm seeing. Um but I would say So, here's what I'm saying, okay? And I'm not even trying to shill or anything since you just got here. This guide is going on YouTube. The reason I'm not commentating too much on it right now is because I've already done pretty much everything. All I have to do now is get this account to master. So, I've already done like all of the the uh what's it called? All like the the tips and tricks and stuff. Now, I'm just getting him into master now. Yeah, you can definitely use that video as a like a baseline for for for classic Mai, too, by the way. Like a lot of the tips in that in that guide don't just apply to Juri. They apply to like all fighting games and how to learn them. So, That was just a classic, I think. I think overall, classic is traditionally better than modern because of the [ __ ] that you lose from with modern typically isn't worth losing when switching to it. I [ __ ] up. I didn't mean to do that combo. [Music] [ __ ] knew it. You are dead. I think I have to level three here, but I don't want to watch the animation. Yeah. I just level three'd. [Music] [Music] I'm going to stop counter poking him with that. [Music] Believe it or not, my friend, you are not plus on everything. Yeah, that guy gives you everything. Gives you things to lab, it gives you things to practice, all that thing all that [ __ ] I could have done stand. Never actually lab punishing that at all. Oh, nice. [Music] Oh, got lucky cuz I did a cross button. Doesn't work on me, man. Sorry. How does that Come on. [Music] Very fine with me. [Music] I think the next works there. I can lab it after. Oh, that was like the last frame. Holy [ __ ] I did the I did one too many. Oh my god, I [ __ ] it up. Whoops. I didn't mean to do that many [ __ ] fireballs. Only supposed to be two. I think Oh my god, what the [ __ ] Modern Geef, bro. Bro, [ __ ] yourself. Don't emote at me, [ __ ] Hey, the I need a restraining order against this [ __ ] Look look look at the [ __ ] he's Look at this [ __ ] already. This [ __ ] already. [ __ ] mouth breather. Look at him. What the [ __ ] This is such a such a banger remix of the Gal theme. I can't lie. I'm not going to lie to y'all. I might learn Guile, bro. Guile I've always liked Guile, bro. I just never played him in any Street Fighter game. I played him a little bit in four, but not like that, you know. Not like that. I just like playing him just like a little bit like a wee bit. What the [ __ ] are you doing? Anti-charge characters. Charge characters are actually my favorite character like genre of character. I can't lie to you. That's why Rog is my favorite Oh, that's not why Rog is my favorite character. There's multiple reasons as to why Rog is my favorite character. Oh, you don't do that [ __ ] Finally a [ __ ] with a normal name, bro. Not some gooner. Then again, look at my name. My [ __ ] It was about to be my fooder, though. Now we think about it. You really think about it, though? He's about to be on some peak [ __ ] Mhm, I didn't mean to do that. What the [ __ ] I wasn't in range. [Music] It was good, Nabe. How are you, bro? [Music] I didn't get cross cut. [Music] Good time. Have you Have you fought or you just doing it like to train? [Music] Dude, he goes hard as hell. What do you have to like work or something? Oh, we on some gorilla [ __ ] huh? Modern Honda, I didn't even notice, man. I don't think she has a good answer for his uh I I'll take a level one. If If you If you want to see the level one, I don't give a [ __ ] I'll eat it. This [ __ ] Okay. Lower You can just kill yourself. That's fine. For some reason my driver didn't come out. That was unfortunate. I don't know why my driver didn't come For real. I don't think that I think this is the first time this gorilla [ __ ] hasn't worked on somebody. Brother, you can't do DI after everything. Well, maybe he can. I mean, it's up to him, really. I don't even think this is going to kill him. I know it does. Apparently. [Music] Ed is a [ __ ] character. I don't think Ed is a [ __ ] character. [Music] I think you play whoever the [ __ ] you feel like. That's what I'm thinking. Don't matter what people say. Okay, level one, don't come out. Oh, that didn't hit him. I even delayed that. I wanted to end it. He Do you know that's unsafe, bro? Where I'm from. What up, man? See it. I see it, Detroit demon. Don't spin knuckle me. I'm ready for that. Ooh, that's not good. Ooh. That is not what I meant to do. Don't spin knuckle me, brother. [Music] Don't do that, Audi. Nice. [Music] Please don't end. Uh I do it's when my girlfriend wants me to do it. Cuz I uh we couldn't do Valentine's Day, so this is going to be our Valentine's Day, so Hell no. Keep your ass in that [ __ ] the [ __ ] [Music] [Music] I don't think that guy has ever seen anything like that, unfortunately. Like damn, this guy doesn't like to just drive rush at me and kill himself. [Music] There it is. That was good timing, too. That was right when I went to go through a fireball. [Music] [Music] Oh, I wasn't arranged for that. Come on. I could drive rush and kill him. [Music] I did so much [ __ ] damage, bro. Nice. I bet that shit's not real. I I I honestly don't like this match up, bro. Like that's good that you can do that. Like through his fire ball, but like he just slid under my stand up house. I've never seen anything like that. Oh, that was supposed to be DP. I didn't get it though. He can do that in this match up? Oh, hell no. This match up sucks for my This match up sucks for my He could do that? That's crazy. [Music] Wow. [Music] The modern mile, see what you got, king. King. Queen. Whoever you are. I don't discriminate. Okay. [Music] Did you? [Music] [Music] Pretty much GG's. [Music] Pretty much GG's, my boy. [Music] I didn't think about Chun-Li doing that. In this match up, she probably could do that pretty easily cuz the recovery time on her fireball. That was checkmate, literally. She lost. Nothing she could do there. She could even level one there. His fireball beats her level one. Like if Ron started if I get a level one off like this, it's over. Like actually. The game's game's probably over. Unless I just play like [ __ ] [Music] I get my Good parry. Should have EX DP'd. I shouldn't have burned myself out either. [Music] Oh my god. The charged fireball, she does not need that to be honest. Like her fireball is the best part about her. She don't need nothing else. Like her EX fireball is low-key stupid as [ __ ] That gives me so much real estate. Okay, he likes perfect parrying. I'm with that. I swept I don't know. Sweep is pretty short, so A faint? Yeah. [ __ ] [ __ ] she's going to be able to do that in City of Wolves. Don't worry about that. There's a little literal fainting in that game. [Music] I did not think I would punish that. It was so late. What the hell? She went over me? Oh, I should have done meant to do level one. Okay. Some good damage. Ooh, that's good. You trade there with that? That's low-key broke. That was a really pretty fireball. I don't think she has enough The Capri? Yeah, you need I need to kill this person. In game. We do not need the Capri back, bro. You can you can keep her out of the [ __ ] game. [Music] He not dead. Close. [Music] Let's see these [ __ ] Nice foot seize, bro. You get a trade combo? What the [ __ ] You get a trade combo there? That's OD. Seize once again, my bad. [Music] I played like 50 Miami years today, man. This game sucks. Chum buns for life. [ __ ] are gooners. Don't blame them. [Music] What am I going to do? I was supposed to be DI. What the [ __ ] How the [ __ ] did I get that? No, you can't do the jump that, brother. I was supposed to be DI. I shouldn't even have to spin this. I played the corner kind of sloppy though. Oh my god, Bardock is my goat. [Music] I just got meter, bro. [Music] What the hell? [Music] Yes, ma'am. I didn't mean that genuinely. [Music] Bro, how am I supposed to tell if that's going to cross up or not, bro? That [ __ ] hit same side and then hit other side. [Music] No, all you got to do All you got to do is play this game to get master, which it should is stupid. You should have to win most of your games to get master. Nice. Good reaction. That's unfortunate, brother. Me, bro? He's crazy. Shoot that guy for 30 seconds, please. That guy needs I have to take a lap, bro. You're going to take a lap right after this game. [Music] Nice shimmy. [ __ ] do not get shimmy'd in diamond. What the [ __ ] That's not going to work, brother. Bro, people don't get shimmy'd in diamond. I'm telling you, bro. I don't think they know what it is, but still it's like crazy. I've not shimmy'd one person in diamond. How the [ __ ] did I get that? I'm going to do this to put him one touch. I think I actually could Nah. It would have scaled too hard. This was going to put him one touch though, so it's okay. We're almost there, chat. Almost there. Plat plat to diamond, diamond to master. It gives you all kinds of tips on how to play this uh this character. Uh type exclamation point YouTube in chat and uh you can watch it. [Music] Why would you do that? Oh, no. He had me. I thought for sure he had me there. [Music] Oh, my bad. I mis timed it. Oh, he's crouching. No. That trade combo is so loaded, man. I labbed that [ __ ] all the time, but he went for a low forward. Damn, that [ __ ] went that far. I tried interrupting it to be fair. [ __ ] you are too scared to press buttons, bro. You were playing really You got good ass buttons. See, you you just you just playing too scared of me, bro. [Music] Guys got to learn so much from the back when I was going to FGs. Yeah, this is going to be the same exact format. Going to be the same exact format as I Jerry got, bro. Brother. You are so readable with your fireballs, unfortunately. [Music] I give it to him. He has good neutral He has really good spacing. I didn't think that was going to link. I sip you. They're bad, too. That [ __ ] is not a bad position to be in. Cuz the guy sucks. Guy is playing a little bit too solid for his own good, man. Like you're playing exactly how you should play, but see in this game that doesn't really amount to much, brother. This is not a Street Fighter. I mean, it says a Street Fighter game by title, but this is not a Street Fighter game by Street Fighter game if that makes sense. Or this is not a Street Fighter game by a game play, I guess I should say. He didn't really take any unnecessary risks. Oh my god. One bar for my final game. Oh, hell no. Oh, hell no. Didn't you [ __ ] Didn't you [ __ ] just lose the hockey game? Isn't that your sport? To US. Hell no, get the [ __ ] off me, [ __ ] There's no dude, chat, there's no way I'm with punishing this man. There's zero percent chance, bruh. [Applause] Oh my god, I can't see him. Get me the [ __ ] out of here. I dropped that [ __ ] whoops. Hey, there's a chance maybe I can whip punish him, hang on. Oh, [ __ ] That's what you did, you did neutral jump? Woohoo, we're done. Oh my god, let's go. I've never seen this rank before. Holy [ __ ] that took way too long. Hell no. Hey y'all, what's good? It's that time. It's the end of the video. I just want to say a few things before we go. If you made it this far, you watched even half of this thing, even a quarter of it, I really appreciate you. I just want you to know, thank you so much. I worked so hard on this. This took so long to do, to play, to review, to edit everything. So, if you made it this far, I just want to let you know I really appreciate you. Thank you. If you guys could show me some support by dropping a sub on my YouTube channel, liking the video, spreading it around, you know, even sharing it in your Discord servers, I'd really appreciate that. Not to mention, I stream almost every day on Twitch. I am a mine main, so I'm obviously live in her every day. I'm trying to get better at every day. So, if you want to learn some stuff, all that kind of jazz, please come. Go ahead and give me a follow. twitch.tv/funkybeagle. And yeah, I can't wait to see you guys there. The amount of support that I get on these guides have been astronomical and it makes me very, very happy. And I will definitely be doing some more in the future. Not just for Street Fighter, but also for like City of the Wolves, 2 2XKO, you know, whatever fighting games that come out in the future. So, thank you guys so much. Have a good one. Peace. [Music]