Everything you need to master Mai | GUIDE | STREET FIGHTER 6

Hello there. Uh, for those who don't know me, I'm Eevee. I am a 2K plus player. I mained her pretty much since her release. Often even fighting some pretty big names over here in the Japanese fighting scene, as they're often looking for sets with like 2K plus some players. And this will be my beginner to advanced guide for Mai.

So, Mai is considered since her release to be a top five character by pretty much most people around the world. And even though she's a character that is fairly, fairly easy entry, she has some specifics that may be kind of awkward to get into, and hopefully I can help you iron those out a little bit. So, I'll be putting timestamps for every session below. First, we sort of buttons, and then specials, and then some options that you can do in neutral and you should be using in neutral, some good combos and some conversions. And then we'll go over some general game plan stuff. And later on the video, we'll take a look at one or two pro players' replays where I'll try to explain the thought process behind their choices so you guys can take a better look at how it will all come together. So, yeah, without further ado, we'll start with her buttons.

All right, so to start off, let's talk about her forward frames. So, Mai has two main forward frames and a third one that is a little bit more unique, so we'll talk about it later with stand kick. The main difference between the two light punches is frame data and length. So, overall frame data for the same or both, both are 30, 13 frames. But stand light punch has worse reach than crouch, and on hit, stand light punch is plus five, where crouch light punch is plus four. And this becomes really important because some moves cannot be special canceled from crouch light punch, only from stand light punch. For example, if I set the dummy to block after first hit here, as you can see, medium dambo combos from a stand light punch. But if I try to do it from a crouch light punch, it does not combo. The same goes for OD cartwheel, right? It does not combo. This is really important, especially in the corner. If you get like a light combo in the corner, going for the MD ambu sets you up for a really good oki and it's optimal on damage as opposed to something like this. The oki up from this is still really good. You still get a strike throw, but this sets you up for a me overhead. Hold on, let me right.

So, in general, if you can land your light string in a stand light punch, that is generally better, except when you can't reach. Be careful when you can't reach because this can whiff as it has less range. So, if you don't know about the range, if you think the range is iffy, just go with light punch. If you don't, then go with stand light punch.

So, another thing to note from her from her light punches, since her stand heavy punch is a nine frame starter, you can only do driver's jab into stand heavy punch if you do a stand light punch. So, this does not work if you do a light punch, a crouch light punch, as you only get a plus eight after a crouch light punch. You need to do stand light punch to do this. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck doing medium punch here. Okay, difference number two. So, on block, stand light punch is minus two, while crouch light punch is minus one. This can be kind of important because when you're trying to shimmy someone, especially after a driver stab, you have a better chance of getting out of range if you do it with a crouch light punch, right? As opposed to a stand light punch. The difference is very minimal. It's like one frame, but you know, why take that chance? If you went for a shimmy, use crouch light punch the most time. The main reason you'd want to use ten light puncher is because Mai can get a really, really cool trade combo as if you do this, you're going to be left at a plus two. Your crush minion punch will trade with any light steam mash. So you can do something like this, which is a lot of damage. But outside of that, going for that crouch light punch tends to be better just because you get more frame data to play with. You can do something like this and then walk up throw more efficiently. You can do this to counter hit something. It's not the biggest difference in the world, but generally you want to drive rush into crouch light punch. You know, better range plus three instead of plus two can be really good. So, all right, going next.

Crouch light kick is minus two on block and on hit it is a plus two, which gives her a driver's crouch light kick into crouch medium punch like this as a combo. This is a really good way for you to catch people trying to walk back or fuzzy block your overhead. Right when you're doing this and they're standing up like on a timing. So, because the overhead hits a little bit delayed, some people like start crouch blocking and then stand block after a little bit of time. And if you delay your driver's crick, you can catch them doing that. But yeah, this can be really important for situations where people are trying to walk back to gain distance from you and avoid your pressure because the driver squad light hit will catch them walking back as they're not blocking low and you can go into a full corner carry here. Also, OD fan, a lot of people block the OD fans and back dash or walk back, and the crouch side kick is usually what I use to catch them for doing that. So, kind of like this. Really important.

So, okay, last but not least, stand light kick. Mai's stand light kick is a little bit of an awkward normal because it has literally no range. So, you can't really use or like kick to poke or to catch like punish counters like scissor kicks, but this button has its uses. Like you can get really good damage, especially when you get someone to the corner and you set, set them up for a um overhead medi because the overhead med leaves you at a plus four instead of doing a light into instead of doing like something like this which deals basically no damage at all. It can do a much, much more damaging combo that can lead even into SA1 or SA2, which is this. As you can see, that's all comboed. This leads into DP here in the corner if you want to set up a Mei. This leads into SA1 if you want to get the stacks. And this leads into SA2 if you want to close out the round. This is really good. This is really important to know. But yeah, this is the main news that I can give you from St. Luke. Other than that, don't really use this button much. Those are her lights.

All right, so going over her mediums. Stand medium kick is probably her best non-committal poke. It has really good range. It is plus five on hit. So if you catch someone trying to walk up and press on you, on counter hits, it's plus seven, which gives you really, really good conversions like crush medium punch and crush medium kick depending on the range. Right, like that. This is really strong.

Next is stand medium punch, which is probably one of her strongest buttons, even though it's not recognized so many people. The stand medium punch on Mai is actually insane. This button is probably one of the best tools to catch a crush medium kick or or like a low whiff. You will catch people with this button like crazy. As a counter poke, when you're trying to whiff punish people, when you're trying to poke people, you should use this button a lot. Also, this button is kind of awkward to whiff punish as it's really fast. The recovery is only 15 frames, right? So, even if you're a little bit late, you're just going to whiff. You have to be really on point for you to catch this. And if you miss to whiff punch, this can be quite safe as opposed to something like a stand heavy punch. If you try to whiff punch something with stand heavy punch and you whiff, you're going to be sitting there for like a whole minute. But if you wish some, if you try to whiff punish something with stand medium punch, there's a really good chance they're not going to be able to catch you. So use this button a lot, especially versus people that are using a lot of crouch light, crouch medium kicks. This button is insane.

So next is her crouch medium punch. You mainly don't really use this button in neutral. The range is quite ineffective and it leaves you quite open. But on the other hand, for pressure, this is probably one of her best buttons. It is plus five on hit, which means it gets a link with crouch slide punch, which is the only one that reaches, by the way. And if you catch a counter hit, which is what you should be using this button for, this button will combo into itself and give you a really, really easy counter hit confirm. And if they're crouching, you can do something like this. Also really good for drive rushes. So yeah, if your driver is jabbing someone and they're trying to like steal your turn by doing a jab or a late jab or maybe they they're doing a delay tag, doing a like a delay crush medium punch or instant crush medium punch is going to be really, really beneficial for you, cuz you get pretty much a free combo from this and it's very easy to confirm as well. Other than that, when someone drive rushes at you, since she doesn't have a good stand light kick, a lot of the times you'll be using a crouch light punch since it has more range than stand light punch. And the best button to follow up a counter hit crouch light punch is going to be crouch medium punch. So if someone drive rushes at you like this and you interrupt it, going for the crouch medium punch there is really good, or maybe you can like do drive rush, right? If you want a full corner carry. And because she moves forward a lot when she does crouch medium punch, you can very reliably link into SA1. Something you can't do with like crouch medium kick. So like in situations like this, it is very rare that that SA1 is not going to hit. So yeah, if you're cr, if you're, if you're checking a drive rush or if you're stealing pressure with crush light punch, you should be going into send into crush medium punch after.

So, okay, for last crouch medium kick. Her crouch medium kick is seven frames. Its uses are very similar to Chen Lee in general. She doesn't have the best range in the game when it comes to crouch medium kicks. But since it's seven frames, you can do things like walk up jab. Walk up jab on Mai becomes really good because one, she has insanely fast walk speed, and two, she can combo into crush medium kick, which reaches very far. So in situations where you're trying to walk up to press a button like this, going for the crush minimum kick after the jab there is really, really good. You can also drag rush into your common combos from this. You can also combo from this very comfortably without even spending bar if you go for like cartwheel or if you check that they're standing. You can do, you can even do this. Although this can whiff if you're a little bit too far. So be careful. It is also a crush minium kick. So when you're trying to like catch someone adjusting spacing in neutral, crush medium kick into dervish, the classic. It's really, really good too. Yeah. Mainly those are the uh main uses for the crush medium kick. Remember this is really important. If you're going to walk up for a jab, don't do crouch jab. Do stand jab because stand jab gives you much, much, much better range for you to confirm your button into. If you're trying to walk up into a stand jab, uh, into a crouch jab here, very often this crouch minium punch is going to fail because the range is not going to be there, right? This happens actually quite often. So instead of going for this, you should probably be going for stand light punch because this will always work and this is really strong. Abuse this as much as you can. Just be careful not to try to SA1 here since you're doing it for too far. This can whiff and try to reserve your meter. Don't, don't, don't be spending into grab rush every single time since you can confirm from two hits going from this into the ambo or this into cart if you're crouching is probably the best way to go. So yeah, those are her mediums.

All righty. So now moving on to her heavy buttons. So starting with stand heavy punch. So Mai's stand heavy punch is rather similar to Luke's stand heavy punch actually. She moves forward a lot when she does this, which gives it insane range. This is a really good button to reach people. But really be careful not to whiff it. This button since it moves you forward and when you whiff it's going to leave you extra vulnerable. Like if you catch someone doing stand heavy punch on the neutral and whiffing, you can murder them from it. There are a few quite important things that you need to know for the stand heavy punch. Number one, it only has three active frames. So like if you're used to playing Ryu, Goki, Ken, for example, since they have a lot of active frames on the stand heavy punch, it can seem like Mai's stand heavy punch doesn't stop people from walking in that well because Ryu, Ken, and Akuma, what can often happen is they will press stand heavy punch, right? And you can walk into it like after the fact that they pressed it. So like characters like Ryu, Ken, Akuma, characters that have like a huge active frame window on their stand heavy punch can be really annoying for you to walk in because the stand heavy punch feels like it lingers a lot and Mai kind of doesn't work like that. So when you're trying to like walk up on them and he throws this out, like very often you're going to get hit by like a late stand heavy punch, kind of like that. If opponent is walking forward here, there's a really good chance that you're just going to whiff if you don't, if they're not in range when you press, since it has very few active frames. Outside than that, really good button, really good range, and you can combo very comfortably into Kachosen for a [ __ ] ton of drive gauge. And yeah, you should use this a lot because Mai can be one of the best characters when you're looking to pressure drive gauge, right? So, that's her stand heavy punch. We we go into more specifics later.

So, next up, we go for her stand heavy kick. So, okay, Mai's heavy kick is a really good button. First off, the range on this button is insane. Second off, minus three. Third off, on punish counter, you get a full combo. You get a fat combo because of that crumble right there. This combo can be meterless like this, or you can burn meter and like even get a super. This is a great poke. Great poke. Just be really careful not to whiff it. Range and speed makes it a really good poke. It is only 14 frames of startup, which makes it really hard for people to perfect parry you and reaction like consistently. Just be really careful when opponents are trying to make you whiff this because if you whiff this button, yeah, you're pretty much dead. Look at how much drive gauge damage it deals. So, the more you can force people to get hit block this, the better. As Mai is a lot about pressuring the drive gauge, as I said with this. So, yeah, be using this button to poke. Try to stop people from walking in, make them doubt, and make them try to play around the stand heavy kick footsies. But yeah, this button is going to be really annoying for people in neutral because a lot of people are going to be are going to try to be playing footsies against you around the stand heavy punch range, which is the button that gives you the most reward. And the stand heavy kick reaches like quite a little bit outside of the stand heavy punch range. So when people are trying to force you with stand heavy punch like that, stand heavy kick is going to like force a block or get a free hit in a lot of the a lot of times. So yeah, this button is really annoying to deal with. Just don't whiff it with this range though. If you whiff it's on you.

So, all right. Next up, crouch heavy punch. So, crouch heavy punch is a weird one. On hit, it is plus four, which gives you a natural link. But oddly, even though she moves forward, you can link it to stand light kick, which makes the damage from this be quite quite bad. It's nine frame startup, but it's really not that good of a button when it comes to whiff punish. But, in general, you're probably not going to be using this button a lot. Mainly myself, mainly I don't really use this outside of one specific combo which is in the corner. You can get an optimal damage combo with this from like driver rush cancel. So if you're going like this, this is not her optimal damage. Basically, you can do like this and yeah, and from that sequence right there, you can get like SA1. I mean, that's pretty much it. This is pretty much the one situation I'd recommend you using this button in. I've tried experimenting with like whiff punish with this, but it the range and like how slow it is makes it really awkward. Even, even situations like throws, like you would think like catching throws with this is really good, right? But this is only plus eight, which means you don't get a stand heavy punch. And out of stand heavy punch, really the only thing that you can use is like a crouch medium punch, right? Or this. So usually in general, if you're shimming someone, you shouldn't be going for that. They should be going for crouch medium punch instead, as you can combo into stand heavy punch. If you're trying to be like giga optimal on the shimmy on the middleless shimmy, you can technically go for something like this for most damage. But in general, you just want to be using crouch medium punch as it is much faster and it gives you like stand heavy punch, which is a very comfortable combo sequence to you to go into. So something like this right here. You can combo into anything you want, like even SA3. And if you go for this route, you can only combo into SA3 if you go for crush medium punch. And that can be really awkward. So yeah, use this specifically on that combo. Try not to mind this button that much. So yeah, when it comes to unique attacks, Mai only really has two: her overhead and back heavy kick.

Overhead is quite nice because it's kind of hard to see and you can catch people a lot by doing like delayed overhead after crush medium kick drive rush like that, and it will be a plus six after a drive rush, which gives you a neat combo into like crush medium punch or etc. So you can do something like this and it gives you a lot of corner carry for it. It's really good. There are also ways for you to set this up as a medium on the corner and get a plus four naturally in a sequence in a sequence like this. But yeah, I'll go over those more in depth during the Oi part of the video.

The other one is back heavy kick. Back heavy kick. There's quite a bit to talk about because their back heavy kicks are only normal that forces stand. And Mai on Mai forcing stand up is really important because if the opponent is crouching, you're not going to be able to hit them with your heavy dambo, which is your main launcher. So when you're going like from a driverish combo, the button that you can use to force someone to stand up is their back heavy kick. You're going to have to get used doing something like this to force a stand and go into the heavy damu. It has other uses as well. For example, in the corner, this button is very easy to hit confirm into the target combo. And like in the corner after you connect the full target combo, you can get like a DP follow-up or even an SA1 which can be really, really strong, something like that. Or like you can do SA1 and because of that, this button can be like a really good delayed media option to catch people trying to like delay tech. Another thing that is worth mentioning, driver version to back heavy kick gives you a plus three and you are in throw range right here. But if the opponent walks backward as soon as he blocks the move, they can dodge your throw. But there are ways to catch that. If you do crouch light kick into crouch light punch, you are going to be in range to combo that. So, something that very often happens is when you think the opponent is going to backwalk to try to dodge your throw, you can get a free crush light kick into crush light punch and carry them towards the corner. I like that. If you can sneak this button after a dry rush unblock, this can be quite beneficial for you because you get to play the mini game of throw or crush light kick. It is also plus three. So, if you go for like crush min, they try to stop you, you're going to be able to hit them. So, yeah, keep that in mind.

All right, so going over her jumping normals really quick. Light kick/medium kick is going to be your main crossup tools. You're going to be going for these to try to cross someone up. Airtoair is a really good idea for you to do light punch or medium punch. Medium punch is going to give you a better reward as it juggles them and combo into her dive kick. And her medium is also really nice for combos like after OD card wheel. Her further reaching button is going to be heavy kick. So if you're jumping from a little bit further out, you should be using this one to catch them. And if you're trying to catch a whiff throw because you're like neutral jumps, you should always be going for stand heavy punch here. There's no reason for you to go for anything other than jump heavy punch.

All right, so last but not least is going to be her air throw. Air throw is actually quite nice as an air, especially if you're trying to stop someone from getting away from the corner. Even if you jump backwards right here, you're going to be able to keep them in the corner by air throwing them. So yeah, don't sleep in the air. Air grab is a really nice tool for you to have in some situations. Yeah, that's going to make it for the normals. So from here on out, we're going to move on to specials.

Starting with cartwheel, which is Shinobi. This move is not really used outside of combos, like combo extension and combo enders. Mainly combo enders because of the great corner carry that it has and it gives you pretty good oki from like no matter where you hit midscreen, corner. So this is usually your go-to for combo enders and like when you want to extend a combo via via OD version. Some people like to use this move as oki because you can hit it meaty and make it become plus, but I don't really think it's good at all because it's very telegraphed. So, if you go for something like um, I know, I know people do this that you plus three, like the plus three is nice, but this move is so telegraphed that if you do that, it's going to be really easy for people to deal with it. Like reversal number one. If you're good at perfect parrying this, you're going to get [ __ ] as well because it hits like frame one. So, it's not even that hard to get right. As I drop it. There you go. One more time. Yeah, it's really not that hard to do, especially because it's so telegraphed. You can see her doing the cartwheel like from 10 meters away. The only way that you actually get to bait this is if you try to whiff the active frames on the cartel. But if you can see right there, there is like 16 frames of recovery even after the cartwheel. And even if you hit like the active window, the 16 frames of recovery is going to be quite enough for them to like dry rush in and get you and get a hit in. So it's really not that good. So I would recommend refraining from using this as oki. But you know, some people like that [ __ ]

So moving on, we have duo. Damu is different depending on which version you use. Main difference between these is the light version is minus four, which makes it a kind of a good poke, especially if you're too far for a frame to connect with you. It is also really good in a situation like, for example, let's say you're burnt out, but you want to confirm something into SA3 because it's going to kill. This can is going to be like annoying, but you're going to get an regardless. The medium version hits both standing and crouched, but it doesn't launch. So if the opponent is crouching right here and you do medium damu, they're going to get hit. The damage is all right, but they're not going to get launched, so you can't really juggle after it. On the other hand, heavy, although it whiffs on crouching, heavy du is her go-to combo extension when it comes to specials, especially if you're going into like a super like SA3, SA2. It's very important to note as well that OD du is really good, especially if you're mid-screen. If you want to combo into like SA1. For once, it hits both crouching and standing and it combos from like mediums as well. So, it's really nice if you catch them crouching like that. And yeah, you can combo into SA1 even mid-screen, which makes this very invaluable. It also has like probably one of the my favorite combos on Mai starts from OD du because when you get OD dwu into SA2 and they're close enough to the corner like this, you can follow this up with like DP or SA1 even. And it makes it a really good option for you to get someone to the corner and get your stacks because it deals a lot of damage, right? So yeah, if you want, if you can't put yourself in this situation by like doing a, let's say you do something like dry rush jab onto someone's block and they are trying to track your throw there and you do like this crouch medium punch delayed so that you can catch the throw. Going into this one is devastating, like half health worth of damage and really good situation to put yourself into. Like you have flame stocks on the corner and opponent is going to have to block all this [ __ ] you know?

So, okay, moving on. Engine, which is her DP. This is her main anti-air. It's not the best when it comes to range. A lot of characters can bait this. Like, for example, Jamie can dive kick the [ __ ] out of it, and you're going to whiff a lot if you're trying to DP every single time he does it. So, yeah, be ready if Jamie is wondering. He does jump into insta dive kick right here. You're going to get baited real hard. It's really hard for you to catch Jamie dive kick or like Kimberly Elbows, another one. Akuma demon flip or demon raid I guess in this game. Be really careful when you're trying to use this. It has like very little horizontal range. As you can see, look at this. Yeah, horizontal range is really bad. So mainly how this works is that the range expands a little bit up top and down below there isn't that much, but there's kind of a little gap in between there. So that if you, if you DP, if you like anti-air a little bit too late, or and they're already like too close to the ground for the extended range to catch them, you're going to find yourself like anti-airing air a lot of times, especially when people do like empty jumps. Kind of like that. Now granted, this probably happens with a lot of characters as well, but yeah, Mai is quite annoying because the horizontal range on this again is pretty bad. So you're kind of forced to go into like heavy, but even if you do heavy DP, there's a good chance you're going to whiff because of how the hurt boxes work. Like as you can see right there, especially on empty jumps, be really careful. This is an awkward DP to use. And yeah, it's her main DP. It's also invincible on wake up if you burn the OD version.

All right, so moving on before going to Kachosen. This is Musasabi. This is her dive. Her dive is pretty trash. You should never look to use this on neutral unless you really know what you're doing. I'll give you an example. In the situation that you're playing, let's say against a dial. A lot of the times he doesn't have charge. You will want to use stand medium kick approach, heavy punch to stop your your jump-ins. You can delay her her jump-in a little bit because she stops in the air a little bit before falling down. So, for example, let's say Guile doesn't have charge and you see that he doesn't have charge because you stood up to adjust positioning and you jump in. If you do something like this, can be really annoying for him because like that his medium kick is going to straight up whiff under you because you like stop a little bit in the air before. But other than situations like this, you should never really use her dive kick on uh on neutral. Never, never, never. Just do a regular jump-in.

Okay, so this is Kachosen. Her fan is one of the best pressure tools in the game. A normal fan isn't that good as it loses to normals and like some other specials. You can just punch through it and often you can hit Mai while doing it, right? Like that. This is kind of risky for you to use, but that doesn't mean it's a bad uh special, especially when someone wants to walk up to you. Although, yeah, it can be riskier, especially compared to like other fireballs. It's still a fireball, so you can use it. It's just not as reliable. So, if you keep that in mind, you can still like you can still make this work. Like sometimes by trying to stop people from walking up on you to press a button. It can be really annoying for people. Don't sleep on this. Like it's not the best, but it has its uses. The OT version of this move is what makes this move special. So, first off, regular OD fan. A lot of people like to go like even round start OD fan into Bergus mixup. I don't necessarily think this is the best thing ever because while this is really strong if you do this against someone who doesn't know how to deal with this, there are ways for the opponent to make Mai have to guess on her offense. And the issue with that is the opponent is going to make you guess even though you're the one spending bar. In general, you want to be using OD fan when you can get two uses of it at once. So, for example, if the opponent is a projectile character, you want to use your fan to try to beat his fireball. If you can beat his fireball with an OD fan, you get a punish counter, right? And from that punish counter, you can get pretty much a free combo. So, apparent like this. And in case the opponent doesn't throw out a fireball and you still toss out the OD fan, then you can go for the pressure. So that means you're not just tossing this out to get the pressure, you're trying to beat his fireball. And in case that fails, you can still go for the pressure later, which becomes sort of like a coin flip. If the opponent guesses how you're going to approach, he can stop you. If you guess how he's going to try to stop you, you can punish that, right? And that is like one of the reasons this special is so good. So, if you toss the OD fan out and you don't get a punish counter because your opponent did not throw a fireball, for example, and this thing gets blocked or normal parry, then that means your opponent's going to have to deal with your approach plus the falling the second hit of the fan. And this can go plenty of ways. One of the things that happens really often is opponent's going to get hit by the first fan and hold back to clear the distance so he doesn't get hit by the second one. And right here as Mai, you can dash up and try to hit him with a low so that it stops his backward movement and then you can get a follow-up after the second hit of the fan hits their head. Right? So something like this. This happens very common. If you're close enough, you can go for a version of this that doesn't necessarily use another drive gauge for drive rush. But you have to be really close for that to happen. Something like this. So most of the times what's going to be happening is you read a fireball, you toss this out, you drive rush to get the uh to get the low. This works for both back dash and back walk, but back dash can be a little bit more risky, especially if you're a little bit further away that you can dash up and press like set heavy punch because during back dash, it doesn't opponent doesn't block your normals, right? So, this can be very dangerous, right? Like like that. They're trying to like back dash out of this thing.

Okay, so next up, there's a tech where people can dragon punch you through the fan and they trade hits with the second fan if you're trying to approach too fast here. Kind of like that. And as you can see, the opponent takes 240 damage. I take 1,100 damage. That is because the second hit of the fan deals basically no damage and you take full damage of the DP here by trying to approach. So be careful when people are doing this. Be careful to not approach doing forward dash specifically. This catches for dash really well. You can do something like drive rush and press a normal as long as you have enough distance between you and the opponent because what basically happens is you hit them before the the special move comes out. But essentially what they're doing right here is they're trying to catch a forward dash. So in general, if someone is doing a lot of like DP after you toss a no def fan, walk up and let them take the hit. If this happens, this situation is not bad at all for Mai because you can just walk up and get pressure, right? And they get closer to the corner. If you're really greedy here for a follow-up, you can do dry rush and catch the juggle off the fan like that. Damage is not that good, but the corner carry is really nice.

Moving on, something else that a lot of people like to do is OD reversal you after the fan. So, this can be really good if you're trying to pressure them with a normal after the fan hits as you will invincible you through your normal, right? But this can be really risky cuz your opponent's losing a lot of bars doing this. And same idea if your opponent blocks the um defend and trade with the thing. A lot of a lot of the ODPs though, like unlike Mai, they won't trade. They'll just clear right through your fan. Characters that have like a good forward movement on their DP may not trade with the fan, especially if you're able to block the reversal. So Mai specifically, if you block it, she gets hit there, but you can definitely get a follow-up right after. So if they're doing OD reversal right here, just treat it like any other time they're going to try to OD reversal you. Just block or shimmy instead of going for the pressure. And yeah, if they clear through the fireball, then you can get a free combo. If they don't, then try to pick up the juggle as best as you can. And if you can't, you just take the Yokei.

So, all right, next one. Uh, sweep. Sweep is actually a really good thing opponent can do here to stop you. Sweep is going to be great against drive rush and for dash as they you get knocked down if you get hit. If the sweep gets blocked though, you can pretty much get a free combo here. But it's really nice because you can also catch her like walking back to try to shimmy me. You can dash up and bait to sweep as sweep usually has like 9 to 12 frames of startup. But it's still really good meterless and you can get like quite a few hits in because Mai usually is trying to approach you whenever she tosses out the fan.

So, okay, here's the issue. When you're throwing out an OD fan, as you can see, there are ways for the opponents to hit you on your way in. And the only way for you to stop them from hitting you is if you lay back and wait for the hit so that you can block it and punish, right? The problem is, so let's say if the opponent is mixing up really well between like back walk like that and medium DP like that, then you have to basically take a guess whenever you want to approach. And if you're guessing correctly, you're going to be burning two bars for basically nothing. So opponent backs and you're trying to bait to DP. You're going to wait. They're just going to walk past the second hit. You get no pressure. If you try to approach and they do DP, you're going to get a traded hit. You're going to lose on the damage and you're going to lose two bars. So, in general, people that know how to rotate their defenses are going to be really annoying. And this is like one of the main reasons why tossing out the OD fan as soon as you can in neutral and going for pressure may not be the best of ideas. There are proper ways for you to use this tool that pressures them in multiple ways instead of just going for the one dimension fan into pressure that they can try to counter you whenever you do. If the opponent's really good at the game and they got their perfect parries down, then you're going to be having a little bit of a bad time. If the opponent's really good at perfect parrying, then it becomes really risky for you to pressure them because there are 10 new ways that it can stop your pressure. And those those ways can be actually kind of annoying. Like for example, they can do safe stop like forward moving pokes. Like for example, they can do this because it moves them forward. They get to like poke you while you're trying to come in and the fan will land on top of them. And when you're trying to do this after a block, since there's blocks them from the fan, they get interrupted. But because of the perfect parry, oh [ __ ] I did the wrong one. Yeah, because of the perfect parry, they can uh they can press. There's also stuff like they can OS the driver rush after the barrier here. And this is really [ __ ] annoying. The last thing that you're expecting is someone to be able to pressure you instead of you pressuring them after you throw out a no def fan, right? Cuz like either way, if you're waiting for the opponent to do like an MDP so that you can punish or if you're trying to pressure them because you think they're going to back dash, if they dry rush on top of you, they're going to get you. So like really, really the only way that you can deal with this is if you do something like OD fan into normal. Like even if I get him to instantly like light punch right there after the fan to try to check the drivers. Check this out. Yeah, I get to him before he gets to um before he gets to light punch. Like at most I get a trade. I guess if I'm a little bit further out, then I guess it's less dangerous. Maybe he can try to check. But yeah, it's going to be awkward because you're burning two bars for you to be guessing what they're going to do. Yeah, especially if the opponent's really good at perfect parrying these. Try not to throw these that much on neutral. You're going to be on the guessing side very often.

So right then, what are the good ways that you can use fan? So okay, main one whenever they want to toss a fireball at you, right? You can try to get through the fireball with an OD fan, much like you would do with like Ken. Another one is if the opponent is low on drive gauge because they're going to be incentivized to try to bury your followup to try to get some meter, right? Especially if you're doing something like this. It can be devastating for the opponent's drive gage and they can be fairly close to burnout, which is deadly against Mai. And if they're pairing right here, there are plenty of ways for you to punish this parry with a throw, especially because you can throw them from like a little bit further out, right? Kind of like that. Can be really good to learn. So going for fan pressure when they're low on gauge can be really beneficial for you. Another one is when the opponent is close to the corner. This is probably the best situation that you can toss an OD fan. And the reason is quite straightforward, right? If the opponent's in the corner, that means back walking and back dashing become unavailable. So, they're going to have to deal with your pressure without being able to walk out of the range of the fan, which means doing something like this becomes insanely strong. Look at their drive gauge. By the way, don't want you guys to pay attention to what happens to the drive gauge when I do this. You see that? If I'm a little bit more risky, even I can do something like this. Look at that. Look at how much that drive gauge that deals. Yeah, this is really dangerous for them. They're kind of forced to like take your pressure right here. But yeah, since they're close to the corner, if the opponent tries to do something funky right here, like NDP you like that, then the punish becomes a lot more scary because you can do stuff like like this, which deal quite a bit of damage, right? Yeah, it's no joke. Especially because of how good the Yoki is after you do something like that. Another thing that becomes really scary right here is throw because going for a walk up throw is much easier when they are not like allowed to walk back. So when opponent is in the corner, this is when OD fan is the best. Like this is like if the opponent's in the corner and you have enough gauge, then going for this as a form of pressure is pretty good. Which is why I recommend try not to burn yourself out throwing OD fans in neutral like this and going for like a 50/50 when you can play solid neutral. Get a hit in and one single hit in Mai can corner carry with someone like crazy right after you get like a single hit in confirm that into however you can. Maybe maybe you have to drivers right combo in the corner and if he's right here then then a little bit of gauge that you can recover while keeping them in the corner. It becomes fan party.

So, okay. Now, moving on to charge fans. So, charge fans [Music] are really slow to throw them out in neutral. And what's probably going to happen very often is the opponent's going to see you charge this [ __ ] and they're just going to jump on top of you because this is pretty much a free jump-in. There are ways for you to implement this. For example, after someone gets knocked down, uh, let's say you do something like this. This can be okay. Like for example, if I make the dummy four jump after knock down there, you will see that I'm

still be able to anti them, right? One thing to note on charge light specifically, as the second bounce is really fast, if the opponent tries to press something right here and he gets counter hit, the pen is going to combo into itself, which means you get a very very frequent firm right here. So yeah, be looking for the counter hits.

Also, if you're facing someone that is tall like Marissa, JP, Sagot, if you're facing a tall character basically, the as long as they get hit standing up, the fan is going to combo into itself naturally. So yeah, this is a very free combo. Charge medium fan is pretty much the same as OD fan. Charge heavy fan can be useful because it's really fast projectile on the screen. And if the opponent gets hit by the first hit, the fan is going to linger for a long time up there, right? And because the fan is lingering for like 10 seconds up there, you can you get a lot of time to approach them. And a lot of people are going to be scared shitless because like they're usually like used to the medium fan timing. So tossing out the OD fan and going for something like a late throw or like a button can be really nice. [Music] and you catch him while they're trying to perfect parry defend.

Next up, people don't talk about this that much, but this thing right here is one of her best ways to approach someone safely. Tossing out only two fans lets you recover really fast, much faster than people are used to. So, something that's going to happen really often is opponent's going to see you doing the charge fan and is going to try to jump over you. And that gives you pretty much a free anti-air. So, like this can happen very easily. [Music] Yeah, another one is this.

Okay, so midc screen. I don't think this is necessarily that good. When it comes to corner pressure, this thing right here is probably one of my favorite wake up tools online because it's 28 frames of startup. You can get fairly easy medies off this after her most common knockdowns on the corner. So something like this will give you a meaty fan. Also something like this. will also give you a min. So if the opponent is low on drive gauge, so let's say you poke the opponent's drive gauge a little bit and now they're sitting at like two bars, right? Right here. It's really scary for them to only reversal you because if they do, it's instant burnout, right? So you can like use that to set up really good okie for yourself by doing this. If the opponent doesn't have, for example, if the opponent is burnt out, is low on drive gauge, and doesn't have like something above SA2 or doesn't have like a super that goes through fireballs, this is going to be really strong, man. Because after this, like let's say they block this, you can do pretty much anything you want right here. So, first off, the first two fans are two block strings. There's a gap between the second and the third ones that the opponents can technically reversal through. So, if I set up set him up to reversal, you will see that they can reversal through this. But this isn't necessarily safe because you can block after the second hit and bait the reversal. Yeah, this is pretty diabolical. If you if you can notice, if you notice right there, if you toss out two charge fans, you're at plus 12, by the way. Like, it's really strong. So, if you if you think they're going to reversal, stopping right here, getting the plus 12, you can even go for a shimmy if you want is really good.

If you don't care that they reverse you because they have like low drive gauge as you can see the dummy right has right now and you toss them out. What follows is they have to deal with the two fans falling on their head. And in between these two fans, there's a little bit of a gap. And during that gap, if you hit them with a high or low, they're going to be comboed by the fans. So if you're really good with your timing, you can do something like this. And they're going to get hit if they're blocking high or like this. and they're going to get hit if they're blocking low. So, for example, let's see. I'm going set up the dummy to only block lows right here. Switch block type to crouch blocking only. So, opponent's only blocking the low, right? So, if I do this, he's going to be able to deal with it. What about if I go to the overhead?

Yeah, this is a full combo. And if he's only blocking high again, full combo, it's not the greatest of damage. might isn't necessarily a character that's going to bring you a lot of damage, but it's really strong. Uh, so what what else can happen? Okay, so let's say the opponent is scared of your high low mixup right here and he presses parry to try to like catch both of them. What can you do? Well, there's a gap in there. This is pretty much a free throw. And if they start the parry beforehand, going for something like this is really strong as well. I catch people with this a lot actually because right here they're trying to preserve meter basically they're losing almost all meter they have left. So yeah, going for something like this can be really annoying and like if they're trying to parry in between the two fans like deal with your mixup. You can just react with the throw. There's also a small little gap there after the first fan hits that you technically can get a throw if you see the parry like that. The gap is really small though, so it's very easy to miss. So you guys have to practice this if you want to see it. Oops.

So okay, I said this is really good, right? What is the caveat? There is one caveat. When it comes to fans, there's one really good way for you to counter them, and that way is perfect parry. So So I'm going to make the dummy do a meaty charge defend on me. [Music] So you can see what's what you can do. Yeah, you can perfect parry the first hit and throw them out of it. Someone is really good at this, they can get it really consistently, but it is a little bit of a harder skill to get. But yeah, it's not that easy. So probably not everyone's going to be ready for this. Just be on the lookout that this is doable.

So, all right. Want to see something cool? What happens if I set the opponents to perfect parry after the first hit and I tell them to normal throw me after they block? So, if I do something like this, they're going to be able to block the fan and throw me right after. Right. So, what happens if I do that when I have flame stocks? Let's see what happens. As you can see, they cannot perfect parry into throw because the fan hits twice. They can technically perfect parry it twice and then go into throw, but it's much harder. You go into flame stocks with like a a corner combo, stuff like that. And you wake them up with like a regular charge fan instead of the OD charge fan because the regular charge fan when it's on flame sucks hits twice. So if the opponent tries to perfect parry you into back throw, they're going to get hit by the second hit of Bam. They have to perfect parry twice before back uh back throwing you, which is a lot harder. So something like this is going to happen, right? Basically got a free combo right here. And yeah, you can look the situation again. It's really nice. So yeah, don't sleep on charge fan, especially on the corner when setting up for pressure.

So, okay, I just told you to not overly rely on OD fans in neutral to try to start your pressure because a lot of people are going to make it really hard for you to get something going every single time and often you're going to be low on drive gauge in order to be able to keep rushing with OD fans. So, what do you do then? Well, first and foremost, Mai has a really fast walk speed and you should really be using this to advantage to play neutral. If people are good at stopping your OD fans, then you're going to be forced to play neutral. Luckily, she has really good buttons and she has really good walk speed. But yeah, it's kind of hard for me to like tell you exactly what to do because footsies is very intricate. In general, you're going to be wanting to force your opponents to block as much normals as you can or get hit by as much normals as you can by like walking in and pressing buttons on their face. And if the opponent is trying to catch you walking in and they're like pressing something when they see you walk up, then you can try to bait that and with punish it to get a huge reward and carry them to the corner so that you can get your actual good pressure started with OD fans and throws and etc., etc.

If you play against a character that has like an annoying fireball or something really good, try not to panic. Parry, walk up, parry, as long as you can get in range to threaten a jump in or an OD fan. If you OD fan right here, there's a really good chance you're going to catch them and even if you don't like you get to try to force a mixup. Like yes, you're going to be burning two bars and if you get nothing from it, that's going to suck. But you're not just burning two bars to get the pressure. You're trying to get a read under hadukan and if you read correctly with these two bars, you're going to get a full combo, right? So it's worth to use it. Something like that.

So yeah, outside of that, you're really not just stuck playing punk mode here in neutral. For starters, her drive rush is really fast. Especially if the opponent is being like overly passive, just trying to like see what you're doing and trying to like bait your normal so that you so that he can whiff punish and get his pressure started. If you see that your opponent is like being really passive and not putting buttons on the screen, then going for a dry rush into mixup is going to be really good for you.

So, okay. When you want to get the party started with like a raw dry rush, these are the ones that I like the most. Dry rush crouch light punch. This is really good because this is really fast. It is also plus three on block. So you can go for something like a walk up throw here. And if the opponent is trying to attack your throw right here, you can do crutch medium punch after rever jab to catch them. And if they're doing something like delay throw, for example, let's say they're delaying their throw for four frames here to try to catch both your walk up throw and your instant crouch medium punch right here. You can also delay your crouch medium punch to get the same reward that you would get like that. You can also do like crouch medium kick and catch them going for something like a back dash or a back walk after you do rever crouch light kick punch. It can be a little bit expensive on the mirror, but you know, you can also do crouch light kick into crouch light punch after the driver's jab here and you're going to be able to catch them trying to back dash or back walk out of your pressure and you get like basically a mirrorless combo into a really good corner carry.

From the drive rush, there's also drive rush back heavy kick. This is really nice. If you get the hit in, you get a full combo. If you don't get the hit the hit in, you're at plus three on their face. So it's a similar situation to this. Another way to deal with people that are being overly defensive is to press like very long range buttons in their face when they're trying to hold down back in neutral. So something like stand heavy kick. Like I've done stand heavy kick like three times in a row on someone and like depleted the out of their drive gauge. And now you're like in a really good spot to try to do something with OD fan because they're really like soon they're going to be like running out of gauge, right? Like the opponent doesn't want to be in this situation.

What happens next is the opponent is going to be very incentivized to use parry to stop your drive gauge pressure. And as my like you have a very very easy way to create a situation where your opponent wants to parry because otherwise you lose out of drive gauge. But you can also very easily go for a walk up throw if you think the opponent's going to parry. So something like this happens very often, right? Opponent's low on meter, you go for something into fan, opponent blocks the fan and because you blocked it, you get to go for another followup. Even if it isn't block, it's going to be devastating for his drive gauge, right? Look at that. Especially if you guess that the opponent is not going to parry because he's going to be scared and you go for like stand heavy punch into another send heavy punch. So something like this, it's going to be devastating for his drive gauge. And very often opponents are going to try to parry you right there after that single fan hit so that they can stop you from going for like something like a stand heavy punch into another stand heavy punch. So a situation like this will happen very often where you're going to be able to just walk up and throw their parry especially because the parry gives them like a bigger hurt box for your throws. So you can throw them from like really far away where usually you wouldn't be able to. And yeah, if they get hit by this at the end of the day they're just going to lose a ton of meter which makes your pressure even more deadly.

But yeah, in neutral in general, you want to be playing footsies with your long pokes. Stand medium kick. Don't forget this move is really good because it's really hard to punish. That medium punch really nice. 15 frames of recovery. Like it's basically nothing for a medium, especially a medium that is really good range. After you get a hit on the opponent, let's say you walk up for a jab and the opponent tried to press something when they saw you walking up, but since you pressed the jab, which is a four frame, you got a counter hit. This happens quite often. That counter hit can lead into crouch medium kick as I explained earlier. And from this medium kick there there are going to be a few options that you can do. Number one is you can just cancel this into heavy do amu and get like the furthest corner carry you can for the le least amount of drive gauge possible. Number two, you can go for a drive rush to try to squeeze in a little bit more damage and a little bit more corner carry. You're going to be wasting meter though. So unless you're like really healthy with in drive gauge, I don't think you should be going for this. But it is a really good option to keep in mind. You can try to go into something that gives you SA1. For example, you can do this or you can do this. Mai's SA1 gives her five flame stocks. And these flame stocks are really good on my because especially in matchups where people have really good fireballs. It allows you to out pressure them in neutral because your fireball it becomes better than theirs. It's only for five of them but is really good because you get to be proactive when it comes to pressuring the opponent with your normals. Like let's say you're playing neutral against Ryu. If Ryu tries to go for a hadukan at the same time that you go for a fan, this going to give you basically a free way to walk up to them. So, you are going to be the one with the advantage. The opponent is going to have to either get hit or block the following fan. And while he's doing that, you are free to approach for however you want. Like walk up, jab, you can try to walk up, stand heavy punch, like if they try to block it after the um the hadukan. So, it gets scarier for the opponent to try to contest neutral, which means you get like free range to like walk up and press buttons on their face. A lot of the times you get so much drive gauge damage on people just by like walking up and pressing buttons on them. So yeah, it becomes really annoying for the opponents to deal with your neutral after you have the stocks. I think stocks is basically what makes my great really stabilizes the out of her neutral because before you had to take a chance with something like a no defense through a fireball or a jump in to be able to deal with this fireball. Now it's on the opponents to do that.

There's also the fact that if they do try to throw a fireball and you have SA2, this super is insane. Her SA2 by itself is really shitty to go over fireballs. As you saw right there, you don't go fast enough. You only have invincibility during like the first flippy that you do. So, if you don't get through the fireball during that flip, you're going to get hit by the fireball like that. It has to be like really neatly like this. But since the range is not the greatest, you have to be like really close to the opponent when you do this for you to be able to hit them. There is although a way for you to get through this if you do aerial SA2. You can go over the fireball and hit them. But number one, the Oi from this is terrible. Number two, the damage from this is even worse. It is something to keep in mind, I guess. Like let's say the opponent is really low on health and you want to like finish the round and you see them throwing a fireball right here. You can do like quarter circle forward, quarter circle forward into up and kicks and this is going to work. But yeah, after you get SA1 and you get access to the defense, then my neutral becomes unleashed. So whenever I'm playing my against a character that like relies on fireballs or something to get pressure and neutral and like I get in a situation where I'm able to do SA1, I think yeah, going for the SA1 in this situation is by far one of the best things you can do. So like something like this. From here on out, the opponent is the one that is going to have to take chances like trying to jump over a fan of mine to get something started. Like even her DP gains range. Like every everything about my gets better once you have the stocks.

With that said, I don't think SA1 is the absolute best against every single matchup. For example, characters that have like a good way to go over your fireballs is not going to be that beneficial for you to start up that SA1 in neutral. So like Cammy can be awkward because it's going to be hard to abuse the fireball as much as you can against another character because she can like dive kick over them, right? Another one is like Dawim, Zangie, Bison character that have really weak defense. Lily, Marissa, Aki. I think in those situations, it's better that you just go for the corner carry most of the times because these are characters that really fall apart when they're put on the defensive because they have like really bad ways to deal with offense. Kimberly is a good example because she has really bad defense and she has like a really easy way to get over or under your fireballs whenever you can. Take her to the corner. Don't worry too much about getting your S1 started like neutral. It's not going to be that beneficial for you in the corner though. It can be really good.

So, okay. Another another thing to think about. So, let's say you're playing neutral against someone and they're wiggling back and forth like this, and you're fairly confident that if you try to reach with a crouch medium kick, they're not going to crouch block in time, and you're going to be able to get a hit because basically, they're just trying to adjust pacing as as well as possible. In these situations, going for a crouch minimum kick drive rush is going to be really good for you. It's basically the same idea as OD fan. You don't want to use this as your prime way to get a mixup. Like let's say opponent is sitting right here crouch blocking. You don't necessarily want to go crouch medium kick into dry rush if he's just crouch blocking because the odds that your crouch medium kick is going to hit them are very low. Right? So you're going to try to catch them walking like this. And if you think there's a good chance your crouch medium kick is going to hit, it's worth for you to try to walk up to a crouch medium kick and spend the bar right here to get the party started. even if they do block your crouch medium kick right here. Like at worst, you're just setting yourself up with like a plus three in throw range. Same idea as the OD fan. You don't use this as your prime way to get pressure. You try to hit people and if you think they're going to get hit or if you can confirm the hit, something like stand heavy punch or stand medium punch. If you can confirm that because you see the hit spark, are you here? Or maybe you're looking at the enemy's HP. I don't know. Some people do it differently. If you can like confirm the hit or if you think there's a good chance to hit and you have the bar to spend, spend that bar and worst case scenario, you still get a mixup. That's in general how I think about DRC. It's really important to practice as well. Put the dummy on random block and hit the stand heavy punch or the crouch medium kick on them. And as you're drive rushing, you try to confirm the hits into a combo and the blocks into a block string or a block makes up something like this. [Music] Yeah, something like that, you know.

All right, so going next, we're going to go over combos. All of the combo notations will be listed in a Google doc linked below. While on the video, I'll be going for like the reasons why you should be doing that combo in the first place. So, I've built this part of the video separated between ranks. So, I'm going to start with beginner, like up to platinum, and then we're going to go over intermediate around diamond until like just reach master and then we're going to go over early master to midmaster, which is around until 16 to,700 MR. And after that, we're going to go over 1,700 MR and up.

So, starting up, this is what you should know if you're trying to get like up to diamond. If you're around like gold, platinum, or or below, and you're trying to get up to diamond, number one, learn to cancel your light strings into a special cancel. So, something like this is going to be really important. So, the idea is you're going to chain your lights and you're going to end the last one with a light botchi. Botchi is the cart. And to ensure we're doing this correctly, we're going to go over to dummy settings and set the dummy to block on random. The reason why we do this is because we only want to cancel into bachi if we see that your combo is hitting. So something like this. See he he blocked the first one. So we don't go for it. Oh, he was blocking. We don't go for it. Something like that. Eventually when we once we get to diamond like up to master, we can learn to confirm off two lights. But since we're just beginning, it's okay for you to for you to just cancel it if you see that the full combo is hitting because one more light right there gives you a lot of time for you to think about it, right? Instead of just trying to cancel it up two lights, which is what we're going to try to learn once you get over to diamond. After that, remember to practice this from jumpins as well. If you see the jumping landing, we confirm into light batchy at the end. Oh, one more thing. Always, always, always, if you get this combo, dash up to the opponent. This is really important and you need to make a habit out of this. You should always dash up to your opponent to be on top of them as they wake up. The reason why is because, as a rule of thumb in this game, you want to be able to make your opponents on be on the receiving end of your pressure as much as possible. And if you're able to have the opportunity to mix them up as they wake up with like a striker throw is going to be really valuable and lead to a lot of wins. So whenever you can dash up and go for the Yoki.

So learn to confirm your lights. It's really important. Number two, Mai doesn't really have good ways to combo normal into normal unless you use a dry rush. So So learning to drive rush cancel from your normals is going to be really important for you to learn good like big damaging combos early on. So let's say your opponent does something dumb like unsafe on block against you. Something like this. If you see this happening, you're going to have a really big opportunity to combo them and do a lot of damage. And the way that I want you to do this is press a normal stand heavy punch if you have a lot of time. Crouch medium punch if you don't. I want you to press this normal and drive rush cancel from it. And from the driver rush cancel, you need to do back heavy kick. The reason we're going to use back heavy kick here almost all the times is like I said before, because this forces stand. So you don't have to think about trying to see if the opponent is standing or not. Because if you go for this combo, the opponent is always going to be first standing. So you go for a stand heavy punch, drive rush, back heavy kick into crouch, medium punch, heavy do, and then light botchi. So okay, let's put it all together. Block the unsafe move. Punish with stand heavy punch into back heavy kick like this. And don't forget, chase them. Go after them and get Oi. After you learn this, know that you can also do this from jumpins. If you get like a big jump in hit, you can go for the same combo. Let's say you jump like over a fan or haduken. This is really important to learn. One of the reasons this is really important to learn is because this sequence right here after the driver's cancel looped. So if you want to deal like most damage because you think the opponent's going to die if you go for super, this is going to be really useful. Eventually, [Music] we'll learn to get better at this and like do more damaging variations. But right now, since you're a beginner, this is really important to learn. So, once again, press a medium or heavy normal that is cancelellable, drive rush, cancel it, and go into back heavy kick, crutch, medium punch. So, something like this, heavy du botchi. And if you want to confirm into super there, you can. Don't forget you can do this from jumpins as well. So, as a beginner, I don't think you need to worry that much about having big like intricate combos. As long as you have something that is good for your lights and something that is good to punish people for doing big dumb things, I think that it's enough. So, for beginner up to platinum, this is going to be it.

All right. So, next, this is for you who just got out of platinum. You got into diamond and you're looking to optimize your game a little bit better. So, the way that we're going to go about this is we're going to try to optimize your conversions so that you can get more value from your hits. So, starting up, we're going to learn to confirm off two lights instead of three. This is important again, set the dummy block to random and do two lights into light bot. And if you see that the opponent is getting hit by the lights, then you go into bot. If you see that they're blocking, then you don't do anything like that. This is going to be fairly important for my moving forward. So, we need to learn this as soon as possible.

All right. Next up, we're going to learn corner combo ender variations for when we get a good combo in the opponent at the corner. So, when you're in the corner with my, you don't want to be going for the same combos that you're going midcreen. The reason is because you can get better situations out of different enders. For example, going for light DP after the heavy video ambu there is going to give you a better OK situation. So something like this is going to be really good for you because it sets up a really good auto time meaty with dash up back heavy kick. Because it sets up a really good auto time me with like dash up back heavy kick which I'll teach you more about later on the video. But so let you guys know what it looks like. It looks like this. And yeah, you get a plus seven on there. And if you're blocking, you get a plus three. We'll go over that during the mixup and pressure part of the video. Another thing that you can do is instead of going for a special ender at the end, you can go for a super. So something like this will work if the opponent is cornered. SA1 or SA2. SA2, SA3 works midcreen as well, but SA1 only works if the opponent is at the corner. So learning to link into your supers is going to be really important. So something like this, it's really nice.

One more thing that we're going to be looking into is counter hit confirming. So, if the opponent gets hit by a counter hit crouch medium punch, as it shows there on the frame meter, they're going to be at minus 7, which means you can get another crouch medium punch. This is really good because this gives you a really, really easy way to confirm into your specials. So, what I want you to do is crouch medium punch into another crouch medium punch into your combo ender or a drive rush cancel extension or something like this if they're standing. And if they're crouching, you're going to have to go straight into heavy botchi over there like this. This is also really good for counter hit lights. So, counter hit light punch into crouch medium punch. will work the same way. And if they're standing, you can go for heavy ambu. As I said before, it's going to be a little bit different if the opponent is standing or not as to what you're going to do during your combo, right? Because if the opponent is standing when you do like a driver brush cancel, going for the back heavy kick here is not going to be necessary if you especially if you're going like from a heavy punch because you can do stand heavy kick here which deals more damage than back heavy kick. So going for a heavy punch into stand heavy kick if they're standing up and if they're crouching you go for a back heavy kick. And the reason I want you to do this is because if you're going to fully burn out, there is no reason for you to do this double back heavy kick if you if the first back heavy kick is already going to force the standing. So you can do something like this instead. You do your crouch medium punch or your crouch medium kick or your stand heavy punch and you go into drive rush. you're forced to stand with the first back heavy kick and after that they're going to be standing for the rest of your combo. So the next time you do a drive rush cancel, you can go for stand heavy kick for a little bit more damage. So learning to see if the opponent is standing or not during your my combos is going to be really important because a lot of her stuff with some people that are crouching.

As we're going to be going for drive rushes, I think it's really good for you to learn some dry rush specific combos. For example, drive rush overhead is going to be really nice for my comboing from a drive rush overhead is fairly simple. You're plus six there, which means you get crouch medium punch. And after crouch, medium punch, you just have to go for your combo ender. So if the opponent's standing, you can go for heavy dambo. If the opponent's crouching, you need to go for this. Or you can go for another dry rush cancel if you have enough meter to spare. So you can do something like this. Or if they're crouching, which is going to happen often because they're getting hit by the overhead, you can go for something like this instead. And if you want more time to confirm into something and you have enough meter, you can do a dry rush after your crouch medium punch. So something like this will be really good. So if you think your opponent is looking for the overhead and he's stand blocking, then you can go for crush like instead after the drive rush. And the combo rout is going to be very similar. You go from crush light into crush medium punch into combo ender or drive rush extension. So it looks something like this or like this if they're crouching. And if you want to go for another driver rush extension, you need to do this. It's pretty much the same as the overhead version, although you're going from a light, which is light kick. So, the damage is going to be skill quite a bit. So, be careful when going for like dry rush extensions on this one cuz the damage is not going to be worth it a lot of the times.

Up next, we're going to learn some better punish counter specific combos. First off, go over here to the dummy settings. Set it to punish counter so we can practice this. If the opponent whiffs like a big reversal or something that isn't safe and you want to punish them, like if you shimmy a throw for example, I want you to be going for crouch medium punch into stand heavy punch. This will combo as a punish counter. So if the opponent goes for something like this and you block it, this is going to be really good. This also works for when you shimmy someone. Let's say you throw looping someone in the corner and the opponent is escaping your throws a lot. You're going to enter shimmy, right? So after you shimmy, this is what I want you to do. Crouch medium punch into stand heavy punch into your combo ender/drc extension. This is a really good punish counter specific combo. Again, another one you're going to have to be learning is stand heavy kick gives you a big crumple as a punish counter. And for now, if you're around diamond, the thing that I want you to look for is if you get this punish counter on neutral, you need to dry rush in for a heavy punch. After your driver rush in for the heavy punch, you can either do SA1 if you want the flame stalks or you can do your regular combo ender heavy du into light boti. You can also cancel into SA3 right there.

All right. So, since we're going for a few SA1 combos right here, I think it's important that you learn a thing or two about flame stock combos. All right, so major differences I want you to think about right now are the combo enders of your combos. After you go for a heavydoot into light botchi in your combos, the second hit of the light bot is going to hit a little bit late. And because of that, you're not going to be able to cancel into SA3. So, as you can see right here, you can't cancel into SA3 right there. So, the way that I want you to do it is I want you to cancel before the second hit. So, as soon as you do botchi, you're already mashing for SA3. So, something like that. [Music] So, the SA3 comes out before the bot. And number two, if you get a DRC combo or any combo into a heavy dambo right here, know that you can combo heavy duo into medium dambo. into DP. It has to be heavy DP right there. Otherwise, it will whiff. So, this is going to be changing your commander a little bit as long as you have the stock. So, if you go for something like this, you can do medium into heavy DP. It's really nice. We're going to go into a little bit more intricate flame stock combos a little bit later. For now, if you're on diamond, I think this is enough that you should know.

Okay, one more thing last before going into early master. You should be starting to learn how to link from your O defense. Let me take out the punish counter right here. So, the way that I want you to think about this is you're going to throw out a fan. You're going to hit them with a normal. And after that normal, you're going to use the second hit of the fan to link that normal into another normal. So, something like this is what I want you to get really comfortable doing. You can start like very simple. You can do OD fan into driver scratch medium punch like I just did right there. And then you wait for the second fan to hit and you go stand heavy punch into combo ender/drc extension. So something like this. Alternatively, if you're going for a dry rush crouch light kick right here because you think the opponent's going to be walking back after you fan, which happens quite often, the combo stays the same. know that you're going to have to adapt to the opponent if he is crouching or standing when you hit them with the normal. So if they're crouching right here instead of going for the heavy amber route, you're going to have to go for the heavy botchi. So something like this. So for now, this is what I want you to think about.

So okay, going over to early master to midmaster. So, if you got master and you're in the 1,200 MR, 1300 MR and you're struggling, it's time to learn to squeeze as much as you can out of your conversions. So, first off, this is where you should be starting to use stand light punch into your combos. As you know, stand light punch combos into specials where that crouch light punch cannot. So, if you hit someone with a light string and you're close enough to end light string into stand light punch, you can do something like this. or something like this. And those are going to be really important for you.

Okay, so first off, let's say you're around here in the screen and you get the opponent with like a light string like that. Going for a drive rush cancel is going to burn three bars. Okay, let me save. Let me save current state. Going for a drive rush cancel is going to burn three bars and it's going to carry less than going for an Obachi. So, let me show you. This is how much it corner carries. Right. Right here. Let's go for another route. So, as you can see, it costs less bar because you only use two instead of three for the dry rush. And the amount of corner carry you lose is barely noticeable. It's only a little. So going for a stand light ender right here into Odbachi is always going to be better than just go than going for the driver's cancel unless of course you want to route towards like burning meter because then you can like straight up going to super or going to a driver's cancel.

Next up MD ambo. So MD ambu is going to be really good for you because especially in the corner it sets up for a really good overhead me setup like that. It deals less damage than the DP here, but the DP only gives you regular oki and you can't go for light DP because it will whiff. So you have to do heavy in the corner. After MD amubo, you can do frame kill into medium overhead to get another combo. So this is going to be the sequence I'm going to teach you. You do your light string and into stand light punch MD ambo and then you're going to whiff a stand light kick as soon as possible and go into overhead. Let me turn on the frame bar to show you how this looks. As you can see right there, I got a plus4 instead of a plus two. After the media overhead, I want you to go into stand like kick target combo. After the stand light kick target combo, you will do preferably OD dive because you can get a follow-up after. And that follow-up can be either light DP for to set up a really good OI with this or you're going to do SA1. This is why this overhead setup is really important for my because you can get a free SA1 if the opponent doesn't block your mixup. Damage is quite high and it gives you a lot of opportunities to finish the opponent off because you have flame stocks in the corner. If you're doing your light strings, remember to end it instant light punch if you're close enough. And if you're ending it instant light punch in the corner, know that you can go for the overhead setup.

Okay, so up next, another thing that you should know is you can combo crouch, medium punch into crouch, light punch like this as a natural link. This isn't really hard, but the reason why you're going to be using this is going to be a little bit complicated. This is the same for back heavy kick into target combo here in the corner, which can give you light DP or SA1. The reason why you're going to be going for these is especially if you're throw looping. someone in the corner and the opponent is going to wake up with a back dash to beat your throw loop. Because if you don't know, back dash beats a my throw loop and gives you a punish. The crouch medium punch or the back heavy kick here are really good ways for you to catch that back dash. So something like this happens. Going for the back heavy kick or going for the crouch medium punch can be really good. And the crouch medium punch into crouch light puncher gives you a lot of time for you to confirm this. especially if you want to confirm this into like a super. So, knowing that this works and knowing that you can combo after this in the corner is really important.

So, let's say you get a combo into the corner and you're able to go into heavy duo because your opponent is standing up or because you're forced to stand up with like a dry rush back heavy kick. What I want you to do here is I want you to go for light DP as a combo in there. And the reason why I tell you to do that light DP you can get a really good mey with forward dash into back heavy kick. This is what it's going to look like. You're going to get a plus seven there from your back heavy kick, which is really nice. And unblock, this is going to be plus three. So, whenever you're doing a my combo in the corner and you can go into light DP, this is going to give you one of your best oki situations, which is the me back heavy kick. If the back heavy kick works, if they don't block it, I mean, if you catch them like back dashing or not blocking, try to jump out, that back heavy kick is going to be comboing into crouch medium punch. And because it's back heavy kick, it doesn't matter if the opponent was standing or crouching, it's going to force stand no matter what. So, if you go for a sequence like this and like you get the back heavy kick to hit there, you can very easily get another combo off it and this licks into itself as well. So, it's really nice. So learning to do this oki and learning to go for light DP at

The end of your combo is going to be really nice. One important thing to note for this to work properly, your light DP needs to end in plus 29 frames. So if you go for something like O DD ember right here because the opponent is too high when you hit the light DP, he's going to be plus 31 instead of plus 29 and that is not going to give you the med. So to fix this, all you have to do is wait until the opponent is closer to the ground to hit them with your DP like that. It's really not that hard. You can get used to it very easily. Just look out for it.

So, one more important thing. Once we get a hit in the corner and we're going for like a dry rush extension, it's a good thing to know that there is a better ender to your combos than this, which is after the driver rush, you go for a crouch heavy punch into back heavy kick target combo. But be careful because this sequence cannot be cancelceled into SA3. It can only be cancelceled into SA1 into light DP for the OI or SA1. This is going to do more damage than going for your regular send heavy kick into heavy duo.

All right, so going over your counter hit confirms as I set the dummy to get counter hit. A few ones that are really really important for my is stand light punch into crouch medium kick. You can either do heavy botchi if you just want the corner carry and the meter or you can try to DRC it for you to get a a little bit more damage. I think it's best that you learn to just extend this with a special cancel especially if the opponent is standing up because you can do this and this should work fairly consistent. But yeah, if you're if you can't because like in the situation is too hard, then going for a driver after crouch medium kick is also also works right into whatever you want.

Another one is crouch light punch into crouch medium punch. This is the same idea. Either go into that if they're standing or into this if they're crouching. You can also do SA1 here. Whereas from stand light punch to crouch medium kick, you can't because the crouch medium punch moves my forward quite a bit. And because it moves my forward, it gets her closer to the opponent for you to be able to hit S1 because it doesn't have that much horizontal range. So going for something like this is going to whiff while going something like this is going to hit.

With that said, going for the crutch light punch in neutral here is usually not that good. The crouch medium punch can often whiff as it doesn't have a lot of range unlike crouch medium kick. So this as you can see right there whereas the stand medium punch into crouch medium kick is not remember you cannot combo into crouch medium kick from crouch light punch. So whenever you're looking for a counter hit here you should never never never do crotch light punch into crouch medium kick. This is a mistake. This is a big mistake. Avoid doing this. If you're going for crutch light punch, go into crush medium punch. If you're going for stand light punch, then you go into crush medium kick. And yeah, if you if you really want like the SA1 ext here, you can just do reverse extension into it. Something like this. This should work really well.

So, if you catch someone with a counter hit crush medium punch midcreen, cuz let's say you did something like driver's jab here and you frame trap them, often times they're not going to be in range to do another crush medium punch. As you see right there, this actually happens quite a bit. It's like it's not that uncommon for you to be out of range of the crunch medium punch here. So, I want you to know that you can combo this crunch medium punch into crunch medium kick. It's going to be the same idea as going for two crush medium punches here. But know that if you're a little bit too far, going for crush medium kick is going to be better just because it's certain it's going to hit. Your damage is going to suffer a little bit though because crush medium kick adds more scaling to your combos.

With this idea in mind, another one that is really nice for you to know is stand medium kick counter hit combos into crouch medium kick. So if you're poking someone in neutral and they try to walk up hit you and you like catch them with a counter hit, you can go for crouch medium kick into combo ender. Another situation very similar to this, if you're trying to poke someone in neutral with like stand heavy kick and they try to dash up throw or get really close to you and you get a counter hit with your stand heavy kick, know that you can combo this into crush side punch. I will sometimes get a counter hit with this and they'll be close enough for me to get a free combo here.

So know that this exists and be ready to confirm into like a crush light punch into a dambo there for to get like good corner carry and knockdown. So, whenever you hit someone with a counter hit and you confirm that into a combo, like into another normal, something like this, this gives you a lot of time for you to see that you're hitting the opponent, which allows you to confirm into stuff that is not driver rush cancel, something that is better. Like, so for example, this is like one of my favorite combos on my if you're around midcreen right here and you get like a counter hit, crouch, medium punch into crouch, medium kick, you can do odamu for a for a really good combo. I absolutely love this combo. It gives you five stacks, corner carry, and 5k damage. And this only works if you go into ODMU. But going from ODMU after a driver's Cancel can be quite expensive as you're going to burn five bars and it deals less damage as well. So, if you can go for something like this or for something like this because you confirmed off your counter hit, that's going to be really good for you. And especially moving forward, there's going to be quite a lot you can do with uh confirming your normals into OD specials instead of dry rush. It's very meter efficient as well because you start to recover your drive bar much faster after a after a OD special compared to a dry rush cancel. as you can see. So yeah, confirming your buttons into OD special instead of driver's castle is going to be really good.

Oh, remember that ODM also hits crouchers. So regardless if the opponent is crouching or standing right here, this is going to work as long as you're in range. Just be careful not to whiff because yeah, if you're too far like for example like this, the first hit can whiff there. So, you're going to have to confirm based on the range. It should always work from a crouch medium punch, though.

All right, going next. I told you guys to use crouch medium punch for big punishes for it to go into something like this. And this works really well for both like a shimeade throw or a big reversal miss. But technically, going for a stand medium kick here deals more damage than going for a crouch medium punch. So, if the opponent whiffs a big reversal on you, instead of going for a crouch medium punch right here, you should be going for a stand medium kick. So, this is a really good thing for you to keep in mind. And while we're talking about punish counter, whenever you hit a stand heavy kick mid-creen, you don't necessarily need to burn bar doing a driver rusher to pick them up. If you're close enough, you can go for dash crouch light punch, which gives you a lot of corner carry. And if you're close to the corner, you can even get a DP after or SA1. Or maybe light DP.

So yeah, if they're closest to the corner and you're close enough to get him after this 10 heavy kick, you don't necessarily need to spend bar here.

It's all right. You've been playing at master rank and you're trying to get your MR up. So it's time for you to really really start working with linking your normals with your fans. So, first up, your OD fan goes over a hadukan and you get that punish counter. You need to know how to pick that up every single time. So, right here, the easiest thing to do is to go for a dry rush. You can also do drive rush heavy punch if you're fast enough, but you don't necessarily need to be dry rush for for picking this up. But this is very spacing dependent and like timing dependent if you're able to like get a really good punish counter through the hadukan there with your fan. You don't necessarily need to be spending your barf dry rush. So learning to pick these up is going to be really nice for you. Yeah, it's not really that easy. It requires a lot of practice. So mess around with it and get like really consistent at picking this up because this is going to be really important for you.

Another thing is I want you to guys to start learning your OD charge fan shenanigans. I've showed this before, but if the opponent is like close to the corner and low engage and you want to force them to like deal with you by their like throwing out a lot of meter at you or or burning out or like having to block your mixup, then yeah, you can go for OD fan charge right here. And learning to pick up from these fan charges is really important. So, first off, you're going to do OD charge fan. After the they get juggled, you do lightly embu. And then you wait for the second jungle fan to hit and you slightly delay another light 2 amboo into light TP or SA1. So something like this or again SA1 going to be really nice.

Another thing for you guys to think about if they wake up and block this how you going to deal with that? So, first off, there is a space in between the third and the fourth fan there where you can hit them with like an overhead or a low right here. And this is going to combo into the second into the other fan. So, if we set them to only block crouching and we go for an overhead right here, you will see that I'm able to combo this. And if you set them to only stand block here, you see that we're going to be able to combo that. So going for something like this can be really good. So something else you have to keep in mind. If you only throw two of these and they block it, they're going to be plus 12. And this can be really good if you're like looking to beta reversal or like a drive reversal even. As you can see, you're able to block. But be aware, you can't do this if you go for light DP here. If you go for light DP, you get hit like on one of the last frames. You have to go for heavy. Yeah, you can get a full combo. There's also the fact that this tradeup just wins against SA1's, right? Because they have no projectile invincibility.

So, the next thing I want you to think about, true flame stocks, combo optimization only really start to be worth it after you get really comfy at confirming buttons into like OD specials instead of DRC. And this is mainly because of how much meter you just dump if you try to go for like a DRC into OD move five bars. It's totally not worth it. That said, there is a thing or two that you can do better at this level when we're talking flame stocks. For example, if you want to refresh the usage of your SA1, you can combo heavy embu into SA1 here midcreen, as long as you have two flame sucks or more. Another one that's really important is if you're like if you're a little bit over halfway across the screen, you can do DRC combo into heavy duo and after that heavy duo, you can combo into SA2 and that will give you a follow-up if you reach the corner with heavy DP or SA1. So something like this, right? Yeah, here you can get either heavy DP S1 and it's quite a bit of damage. Pretty nice for you to keep in mind.

There's also a better full bar conversion if you have at least three stocks right here, which goes something like this. You do your regular route into DRC so that you can force the stand with like back heavy kick and then you do heavy du into OD boti into jump medium punch and then you do od dive into SA3. this route right here. This route right here is a better meter dump sequence than going for a straight up regular combo for many reasons. Number one is because going for a regular DRC combo midcreen can be awkward because of this interaction right here where you need to either time your light boti so that your opponent is closer to the ground and you get both hits or you have to cancel before this second hit hits like that which lowers your damage output by a little in timing it can be like unreliable as well. But even then, as you can see, this version of the combo deals less damage. So, if you're going for a full burnout combo here after you have SA1 and you want to like combo into SA 3 or even SA 2, going for this route is really good. Yeah, you can even do SA2 here. This is really good to close out rounds. Just keep it in mind.

All right, so now you're pretty good at the game. You understand why and you're looking into ways to push your character strength even further. So right here in the corner, OD fully charged fan has a proper conversion that you can do that deals a little bit more damage than the than the one that I taught you earlier. The way that you do is you do one light two embu into heavy shinobachi. And after the shinobachi, you're free to go for light TP or SA1. And right there, you can do SA1 if you want. This deal more damage than the alternative, but it's a little bit harder for you to confirm into because you need to be very very ready for you to be able to go into heavy duty because if you do it too late, you're just going to drop the combo here. Even if you delay just a little bit. So going for this, it's a lot easier to not drop, but you lose on like 200 damage. So if you're really trying to optimize this interaction right here, you're going to heavy botchi there.

Another important thing for you to worry about here is once you get flame stocks in the corner, it becomes really hard for the opponents to perfect parry your charge fans because the regular fan hits twice instead of only once. So, they have to perfect parry it twice before trying to pressure you. So, as you can see right here, I'm going to set the opponent to perfect parry on block and do a normal throw. And I'm going to do a OD charge fan after the SA1 so that you can see how he deals with it regularly. OD fan. He can perfect parry one hit of your fan and then throw you. Right now I'm going to do the same thing, but instead of burning the OD fan right there, I'm going to do a regular charge fan. So yeah, he was not able to perfect parry into back from me. When you charge the OD fan, it's only one hit as opposed to when you charge the regular fan. It's two hits on the first instance of the fan. So if you're going to set up the medium fan rate here, go for a regular fan instead. It makes it harder for the opponents to perfect parry and punish you.

So, if you're going for that interaction, you have to be ready to pick it up because if the opponent perfect parries here and goes into a punish for you, he's going to be counter hit by the second hit of the fan. But the second hit of defend doesn't have a lot of hit stun, so you're going to have to be really fast to pick it up. So, I'm going to save state right here. As you can see, you only have a seven frame window right there. Be ready. Throw out the fan and follow it up. I usually follow it up with a jab. You can technically do it with a crouch medium punch, but it's very very tight timing. You have to be like really looking for it, and I'm not comfortable going for those like mid game. I prefer to just take the the jab there. Yeah, technically you can do it. So, I guess kind of like this. Hold on. Yeah, like that. As you can see, it's pretty hard.

So once you have flame stocks, if you have three flame stocks or more, you can go for a really good conversion into SA1 right here. But you have to reach the corner when you do it. But you can carry them like pretty much like 40% of the screen and get him to the corner before you do the SA1. And the way that you do it is you need to confirm something into ODMU and then you go into OD cartwheel, jump medium punch into MDP. right here. You can go for this combo. So, as you can see right there, it deals pretty good damage. It refreshes your flame stalks and it carries like very far into the screen. The only caveat is this becomes a little bit harder if you don't have a good way to confirm into it. So, for example, if you're going from a dry rush, this can be quite expensive because you need to burn five bars for this combo. So sometimes it might not be worth it. But overall, especially if you get like a mini crush, medium punch or a drive rush starter like drive rush crouch light kick or maybe you get a punish counter because opponent tried to reverse you midcreen and you can go into this combo. It's going to be really really good for you. So okay. Yeah, damage is pretty nice. Corner carry is really nice. You refresh your flame stocks to get into the corner. This is a really good combo for you to learn and keep it in your back pocket. It's going to be useful for you.

Another good way for you to go into this combo is something that happens quite often is you throw out a fan on a read, your opponent wants to throw a projectile and you like win against this projectile right there. As you can see, they don't get knocked down, right? So you can kind of drive rush pick it up into heavy do ambush and still be standing up. That's it. Kind of like this. The damage is really good and like you only burn three bars of drive gauge. So keep that in mind.

So at four stocks or more you actually get a better full bar punish combo conversion if you go for this right here. Hold on. So the way that it looks is you do punish counter stand heavy punch into OD charge fan and then after the OD charge fan you jump in with a heavy punch and you do heavy punch into the ambo and then you go into OD cartwheel into jump medium punch OD dive etc etc. So I guess it looks something like this. As you can see, the damage on that combo is actually pretty nice, especially for my standards. You can technically go for no DDU there to deal a little bit more damage, but that is going to fully burn you out. So, only if you're really looking for the kill right there. Let's say like let's say opponent's at this amount of HP and they try to wake up reversal you go for OD ambo here for a little bit more damage. Oh yeah, that's a lot of damage. That's without CA. By the way, you can get like 200 on top of this.

Another important thing to note is how much drive gauge you just recover during that combo anyway. So even if you pop SA1 and you hit the opponent with the combo, you're going to get like 70% back from your bar kind of like this. Look how much drive gauge I got there. So like literally if you pop say one and you like throw them twice in a row or I guess one punish counter. Hold on. Like you get one throw and you get the opponent to like block a stand heavy punch fireball. I think right here you already have enough bar for it to get your full combo on. Right. Watch this. Yeah, look at that. That alone gives you enough bar for you to route into S3 there. It's really good. This is the same for situations where you have like full bar you want to spend for a punish counter combo. Going for something like this is going to be more damage. then going for a standard like stand medium kick into DRC combo. So yeah, keep this in mind. So yeah, keep this in mind. This can be really good.

So as I was editing the video, World War II happened here in Japan. And in World War II, Yamaguchi went to top eight with Mai and he showed off this really cool combo, punish combo that I want to show you to guys. And from this he goes into a very very optimal conversion right here. So the combo that I did there he basically did punish counter stand heavy kick after a big reversal and from the sun heavy kick he went into crouch medium punch and odamu right. And after that ODM, you can fit a light cartwheel. And that cartwheel will have the opponent juggle high enough that you can combo into SA1 if you're close to the corner. So depending on your skin screen positioning when you get the punish counter, you can go for this combo right here. Mind you, you kind of have to walk forward a little bit if you're a little bit too far after the punish counter. But if the opponent does like a really big punish counter, there's a really good chance you're just going to be like really in front of him anyways. So just mind the spacing when you do that.

So, Odu light cartpilly one. Mind you, this light cartpill right here is manually timed. So, I suggest that you guys do something like save state right here as you do this odu so that you guys learn to time this and get the correct juggle every time. It's not really that hard. As long as you hit the first one all the way high enough, you're still going to be able to get the follow up right there. So yeah, this is what I recommend. Save the state right here and practice the timing. But yeah, you do this into like cartwheel into SA1. And after this SA1, he plays around with OD fan with the opponent in the corner just how I showed you guys earlier. And from this situation, he gets a really good confirm from O def fan into crouch medium kick right here. And this gives him a send heavy punch when the opponent's close to the corner. But because he just activated S1, as I just showed you guys, on the better punish route that you can take, going for an OD bot here into an OD dive gives you a follow-up. And that combo alone gives you a lot more damage than a regular like conversion that you would. So he goes for this and then he he gets this into send heavy punch and he goes into odi bachi and ends up and ends it with a DP. This by far like the best way for you to deal damage from that situation. As you can see, this whole route right here did 2732 damage. Now I'm going to go for the route that he went for. 3,100 if you have the if you have the flame stocks and you can spend them all because it's going to end the round. Going for a combo like this is going to be really good. Remember the less that you DRC the more dual combo is going to deal. So if you can go into like heavy punch and heavy to ambu into odbachi there it's always going to be the better combo. So yeah, just keep this in mind.

So there's a few meaty overhead shenanigans you can do in the corner with flame stocks because flame stocks change a little bit the frame data on your DPS after I have heavy embu in the corner. As you can see, if you do a light here, you're going to be at even if you wait until the opponent is close to the ground right here. You're still not going to get like plus 29 for you to get your regular combos. But there's a really good way for you to get a medium overhead, which is you do this combo. And you end that with medium DP right there. The medium DP is going to give you a plus 34. And on plus 34, you can whiff a stand light punch and get a mediohead. So something like this, right? This is really nice. If you still have flame stocks here after that interaction, as you know, the OD dive forces the opponents to juggle a little bit longer, a lot longer than the regular one does. So you can do something like heavy damu into DP after that dive right there. So I'm going to go from the top. Confirm from a heavy damu into medium rambu and you do medium DP with flight punch into the overhead stand like kick target combo OD dive into heavy damu light DP there or you can do like SA1 if you want. So as long as that dive is using flame stocks you do heavy damu doesn't have to have flame stocks for you to combo by the way as you can see right there. So yeah, this uh the medi overheads are really good to keep in mind because you can open a lot of people up. Not everyone is expecting a medi overhead, especially because this is not a very well-known route. There's a ton of shenanigans you can do from this. This is really good.

So the more that you play with my the better you get at doing things like ad libing a juggle after the opponent tries to jump out of your OD fan. So situations like this are going to occur very commonly in your game. You're going to go for pressure right here. opponent is going to like M DP reversal and get hit by the second hit defend right there. Learning to pick these up is not a bad thing. It's not something you necessarily need to go for every single time. I need to look for every single time, but sometimes you're going to have the opportunity to do so and not dropping that can give you like a lot of good momentum in a match like good corner carry for example. So if you go for like something like a driver's heavy punch, this can work. Or maybe you're a little bit too far and you can't go for the driver's heavy punch. So you go for something like crouch medium. Familiarizing yourself with picking the opponent up after he's juggled on the fans is going to be a nice way for you to like get a little bit more mileage out of it. You don't have to necessarily go for it every single time though. Just remember stand heavy punch best case scenario. You can also go for crouch light punch or crouch medium punch. And in the corner the pickups can be a little bit more intricate because since the opponent's at the corner, it's very easy for you to like chain into a super and you don't even have to like to burn meter. Sometimes you do stuff like that or you can do stuff like this. So it becomes very risky for the opponents to for the opponents to try to jump or MDP reverse. So you when he's at the corner, as long as you're like willing to impose that threat of picking them up right here and going for like a big reward, the opponent's not going to be happy with these. But yeah, get familiar with picking them up. Do the best you can. Sometimes you're even going to be able to pick it up like meterless by doing something like this. It's going to be it's going to be hard, but it's going to happen eventually as long as you like keep playing my and keep like looking for these over and over. Don't force yourself to overly go for them because you can get very predictable if you're just waiting instead of like pressuring them after a fan because the opponent's just going to do walk back, right? If you're always waiting for the for the pickup right there, opponent's just going to walk back out of your fan and you're just burning meter for no reason.

Okay, so that's probably all I have to say about combos. Remember, the game is always evolving and better combos might come out in the future. The character might change, so keep an eye out for those, but for now, this should do.

All right, so now that we're closing in at the end of the video, summarize things a little bit. M has really good walk speed and really good normals, and you use those alongside a good read on your OD fan to get a good hit on the opponent. And after you get a good hit on the opponent, you can corner carry them really far. And after this corner carry, you're free to mix them up with strike throws and they're going to be pretty much at your mercy here. Don't forget, try not to overspend your drive gauge here on neutral just so that you can get in because if you do that, your corner pressure is not going to be as effective as if you had full meter when the opponent's at the corner. Because in this situation right here, going for like a throw into OD fan is really strong, especially if you're looking to deplete the opponent's drive gauge, right? because it gives you a really easy way to force your opponents to block something and after they do you can just abuse their drive gauge and egg them on until they hit parry. Yeah. And if they try to hit Barry there right right there it becomes really easy for you to just catch them. And by that point it's going to be devastating for their health. So catch the opponent carry them to the corner. Pressure them as best as you can. Try not to overuse your meter. And remember to pop SA1 when you can, especially if you're looking to secure a round because it gives you a lot of stability in neutral, forcing the opponents to be on the defensive instead of you.

All right, now last to finish up the video, let's take a look at a few pro replays. First off, we're watching Yama versus Nemo. Nemo needs no introduction. Yama is a player from Zeta Division, the same one as Kakaru. He got fifth place last World War in Japan. He's a really, really good player. right now facing against Bison. He's basically trying to footies the opponents as best as he can cuz Bison can be quite dangerous if you're just walking up to press buttons as he has really good normals themselves. So right here he gets a really good crouch stand medium kick and as you can see he has three bars but he doesn't confirm this into drive rush. Goes into crouch medium kick and heavy du. The main reason is there's really no need for you to go straight into drive rush if you can just confirm into heavy duty ambu as the corner carry is going to be similar and the damage is not going to sc is not going to be that much bigger anyways. And right here Nemo is in a really bad position because he took this throw. This perfect parry right here is something that a lot of people practice. Used to be a lot easier before the parry changes because you didn't have to parry it while holding back. You could just parry it while crouch blocking, but right now since it's not a low, you have to hold back and then parry, but you can definitely practice to be able to do this yourself. So, right here, he goes for a stand heavy into crouch medium punch. That combo only really works if you hit stand heavy kick very close to the opponent. And the only way that you can get a punish counter heavy kick close to the opponent is one, he whiffs something with a really big recovery, like a reversal, or two, you perfect parry something that has a lot of recovery. So, in those situations, you can do this combo. Otherwise, you can need to go for something else. Pops SA1 and now it's pressure time. So, right here, Nemo's in a really bad spot. That's nice. Okay, so watch this. Right here, he goes for the crutch, medium punch, and OD fan. This OD fan with flame stock is plus one on block, which allows him to go for a jab right here. And this jab would not be interrupted if the opponent went for anything other than SA1. And after this jab, he goes into crouch, light kick, then heavy punch, which gives him a perfect timing to combo with the fan. So yeah, getting used to the timing that the fan hits so that you can combo into itself is really important, right? Not much happens with this round too. Nemo gets a really good hidden early on in the game, carries them to the corner, and after he carries him to the corner, he continues to pressure with him and basically gets him to the corner where he takes like five throws in a row and dies. So overall, Nemo played this really well and did really good reads on his offense, which gave him the win on the round. Let's go over to round three. Very nice. So Nemo feels really threatened in this situation that Yamama is going to go for a walk up button, especially if it's a crouch medium kick. And because of that, he threw out this knee press, but this knee press was slightly out of range with gauge a really good punish again. Remember, he does not burn meter for this. If you can get the combo readerless, go for the combo meterless corner carry so that you can use your gauge in the corner. Goes for the driver baits the throw into SA1. All right, so he's in a similar position as he was last round. As soon as the fans start to come in, we're going to be nice minion kicks on Bison. Very nice. Insane confirm by the way. That combos on counter hit. Doesn't necessarily need to go for this, but I guess he's talenting. So, the importance of watching that VOD is for you to see Yama doesn't necessarily go for OD fans that often because Bison doesn't really have things that you can OD fan through. So he basically plays only relying on his ne on his neutral.

So now let's take a look at Yama versus Kosa. Kosasan, if you don't know, is a professional player here in Japan. He is in the Sai console. And fun fact, he's one of the only professional players in Japan who plays on pad. He's a really good Ryu. Let's give it a watch. Gets counter poked with a crush medium kick. Oh, that was a very bad whiff on stand heavy punch. So, as you can see, whiffing a normal like that is going to be very, very dangerous for you. Get stuck in a corner. Nice back dash, but Ryu doesn't get punished by that. Very nice shimmy. Yeah, he kind of got destroyed this round. Let's go for the next one. Instantly put in the corner round start. He has to get out somehow, right? He has to make a read. There we go. Wait, I don't necessarily know why he went for the medium hadukan there, but I guess could have been a mistake. I don't know. So, Yama capitalizes on it. I don't think necessarily he wanted to punish counter the hadukan. I think he just wanted to take his turn. But regardless, he goes for the crush minion punch drive rush and he does not pop SA1, which I think it's weird. You would think popping SA1 there makes more sense, but maybe he just wants to save so that he can get SA3 and finish the round with SA3 in case he needs to. Go for the wake up crouch medium punch gets blocked. Now he's back at neutral. A lot of driver rush pressure is being very defensive. Cross cuts the opponent trying to leave the corner. Inching forward only a little bit. Oo, that was so close. Oh, damn. Kosa dropped it. That was supposed to be lethal, but Kosa dropped the combo. Damn, look at how tense this is. Oh, a damn it. So, right here. Right here. Goes for a crush. medium kick into drive rush during after crutch medium kick drive rush. If you input your reversal, the only way that the reversal comes out is if the opponent does something that is not four frames. If the opponent hits a jab or something that is four frame, you're going to get true block string. So, your reversal isn't going to come out. If you don't know, that is an option select which caught Kosku going for a back throw right here to try to put Yama back in the corner. So, now he's threatening the burnout and Kosan needs to do something right here because if you get burned out in the corner by May, you're going to be Oo, he tried to go for the Dish, but I think the driver shimpoo was a little bit too slow. Let's check. Yeah, he tried to go for the D rush, but it was a little bit too slow. And yeah, because last time he was a little bit slow on the driver rush, this time he makes sure to press it as soon as possible, but he gets blocked, so his drive gauge goes on the dump, goes on the drain. Ooh, very nice. Caught him trying to dash forward. He needs SA2 here, though. All right. I had to burn SA too, but I got the round which is really important. Final round. Oh, so send a heavy punch into dry rush right here into the jab to get the mix up. Gets the throw and throws out a fan. And Kosa does this SA1, I believe, because he thought Yama was going to charge the fan. If Yama tries to charge the fan right here, let's see. Yeah, I think this is what Kosa expected Yama to do. And in this situation, Yama just gets hit. Yeah, I don't know if this was a read or not or he just wanted to pressure, but yeah, he he baited Kosa for into doing that reversal and and got him for it. So, okay, nice. Great crush, medium kick, and Kosa's in the corner. Pops SA1. This SA1 is really good because it allows him to pressure with fans while he regenerates drive gauge, which is really important because he's really low on drive gauge. gets a really sick MIDI counter hit right here, which gives him a really good combo. This is really important to note as well because this combo has no driver rush cancel. He's recovering drive gauge all the way through. Watch how much drive gauge he recovers. That was almost two bars. So now he's really healthy when it comes to drag gauge. And he can use a lot of like old defense and shenanigans to try to open cost up. Let's see what he does. Okay, one more throw and he's dead. Oh, he tried to go for the throw, but it's a little bit too far. Unfortunate. Goes for another throw and Kosa is ready. Oh, nice. Yeah, if you're close in that situation, it's going to be really hard for you because almost every hit you can take right there is going to be lethal. Yeah, that was really good by Yama. As you can see, you don't necessarily go for a lot of hailmary O defense over and over in neutral. And you don't necessarily need to be going for a lot of dry rush castles on your conversions as long as you're looking for the correct stuff. Play your neutral, get good hits in, and spend your meter wisely.

All right, so that finishes up the video. Hopefully, I was able to give you some guidance on how to get better at my In case you don't know, I do free coaching on my Discord. I will coach any character, but some I've put in more time than others. I also have a Twitch where I stream fairly often. hop in, play some ranked games on random characters and listen to some metal. I also do VOD reviews while I'm live. Again, for free. All you have to do is hit me up. This video took me quite a while to make, so anyone that found this helpful, I'm really glad I was able to help you out. Looking forward, I'm going to be taking a little bit break on my as Viper is about to come out and I've kind of waited for that character for almost 20 years. And my next guide will probably be on Viper. Hopefully, I can use the experience I gather editing this video to make a guide for Viper that is even better. But yeah, anyways, thank you for watching. Good luck with your practices and peace out.