Kyo (XI)

[Tel]

NGBC Kyo may have been brainless, but he was loads of fun to use, and is probably my favourite incarnation of Kyo for sheer fun factor alone. No doubt about him being quite the monster though. That aerial R.E.D kick and Mu Shiki DM made all the difference between an okay, safe Kyo and an awesome one.

I think XI Kyo is incredibly well balanced. Like you point out, he's powerful, but you can't name anything about him that's broken. He's a character to have to work with to get results, but he's not terribly hard to pick up and the results are satisfying. In fact, other than the no-brainer NGBC version, I believe XI Kyo is perhaps the easiest version of Kyo to learn ever. Mastering him... now that's another concept altogether. I think this is exactly the hallmark of an A-rank character. Fun to use, not too hard to learn, but lots of nuances and subtleties to master.

[Shirakani]

$100 says they're going to make the Ungodly Three not quite so godly in the ps2 ver, like 2k3. Bet you anything Kula and Gato are going to get the Duolon 2k3 treatment.

Iie-Kyo:

Ah, well, ok...As to WHAT you do...IMO, the whole high low corner game is just to land either the Dokugami chain, or a nice long taggy combo. Kyo isn't used as leader much due to the fact KGO's LDM's are just that much better. Ok, i'm not denying that in terms of doing long taggy chains. I myself am guilty of doing long taggy chains into Oswald or Kula's LDM, who on this board ISN'T??

But, my whole reason for putting Kyo as leader isn't actually to land the Kamikura. Sure, on it's own it does pretty nice damage and all, but i abuse the psychological THREAT of it. I change my gameplay somewhat to try and provoke someone into counterattacking. Hence when i corner them, i throw 'open' Aragami's with no followup, or hesitate as long as possible before doing a followup, etc. I don't intend to HIT them, not at all, i'm trying to get them to do something that makes them Kamikura bait. Contradiction? Possibly, coz i'm not really aiming to land it either...If i can land it, sure, good.....land it on Kula or Gato, even better. But i don't AIM to hit it, as in i don't give off the vibe 'ok, i AM going to grab you'. Moreso i aim to give off teh vibe 'you know, i could have totally owned your ass inside out 3 moves ago but i let you off light.....realise that, realise your weakness.' That's the worst mindrape you can possibly do to someone, making them realize that you HAD them cold, but let them go, that you can own them where and when you feel like it. Of course that's not true, even if you're a Kyo master, XI is setup well so no one really owns anyone, but in the middle of a high levelled match, how many ppl are actually going to stop and THINK about the fact that they just got toyed with?

What i'm trying to say is, abuse the 'Clark threat' as much as you can. You never see anyone grounded too long vs a Clark do you? For obvious and good reason. The Kamikura is 0 frame/instant, definetly not a 'fake' threat either. When the 'threat' works, it works INSTANTLY, and can be demoralizing enough so that they leave a huge hole in their game just long enough for you to get that taggy combo in. By the time they realized you faked em out, they've already lost a char.....hopefully said char is a Gato or Kula or Oswald.

IMO that's the best way to fux0r someone over in the corner. Just playing to the threat, abusing the psychological factor will force someone to open themselves up to the REGULAR attack aims a Kyo player will have in XI.

Dunno if that makes sense or not but that's how I personally play. I've noticed that aiming to do what i said above is practically impossible if Kyo isn't leader. Nobody is fearing a high damage instant command throw.

PS: I still wonder what use Kusanagi will be at all, when compared to XI Kyo....Assuming they put Kusanagi in 'as is', ie his Kyo 95 incarnation...well...what use is it?...

[Tel]

I gotta agree with you there. People tend to be rather paraonoid if leader Kyo has two stock bars. The threat of getting hit by the LDM alone sometimes cause people to make mistakes they wouldn't have made if Kyo wasn't the leader. On the other hand, if you don't use his LDM much, it tends to genuinely surprise opponent when you do bust it out. It's the same case with Eiji IMHO.

[Shirakani]

I gotta agree with you there. People tend to be rather paraonoid if leader Kyo has two stock bars. The threat of getting hit by the LDM alone sometimes cause people to make mistakes they wouldn't have made if Kyo wasn't the leader. On the other hand, if you don't use his LDM much, it tends to genuinely surprise opponent when you do bust it out. It's the same case with Eiji IMHO.

Exactly. Kyo has been a corner hammer and rush char for so long now that it's way too easy to keep thinking of him that way. If an Iori corners you, you EXPECT a Kuzukaze attempt somewhere. If Kyo corners you, you generally expect one hell of a hammering over your guard, and hope you don't get guard crushed before you can get out of there.

So, if someone forgets the Kamikura, hit them with it, and watch them fall to pieces. A true expert will never fall apart like this but then again, true experts don't FORGET the move and the attack angle either, and they've already taken it into consideration in their defense.

So if your opponent starts to get really shaky after you surprise them once, you have the match practically won if you milk the fear for all it's worth. In 2k1 it was harder to do simply coz the Kamikura wasn't high damaging or an 0-frame grab. Now that it's as bad as one of Clark's DM grabs, the exact same fear is there...only difference is...with Clark, avoid the grabs and you shut him down. With Kyo, avoid the grab, and you open yourself up to his REGULAR hammerings...

[Empyrian]

I gotta agree with you there. People tend to be rather paraonoid if leader Kyo has two stock bars. The threat of getting hit by the LDM alone sometimes cause people to make mistakes they wouldn't have made if Kyo wasn't the leader. On the other hand, if you don't use his LDM much, it tends to genuinely surprise opponent when you do bust it out. It's the same case with Eiji IMHO.

Must give kudos to the rational voice here. Giving Eiji a grab LDM makes him pretty insane.

I still feel that Kyo is best as an auxillary character who should start your matches. He should also be your main QS starter character too.

Making him leader or last character is well, quite workable too. That is if your opponent is not using any of the Heavenly Kings as last character. XD

[Tel]

Kyo's LDM has more of a surprise factor than Eiji if you ask me. Since Kyo doesn't rely as heavily on basic throws than Eiji, you can catch an opponent off guard if you use his LDM after pressuring opponent for quite a while, more so if opponent is about to be guard crushed.

Eiji doesn't have that kind of pressure capability, unless you decide to spam his sweep > dp+A. So it's hard to really find a way to pull off his LDM against someone watching out for it, unlike Kyo where you have plenty of options to mix things around that you can still connect his LDM against a cautious player.

[Empyrian]

Eiji only needs that few moves to screw everyone. Then when you think you got him... oh well. XD

Well, Eiji cracks an opponent's psyche differently. In short, patience is his forte.
Get life/judgement advantage = very good.
Even you have a disadvantage on either front, the opponent in his haste to finish you off may commit a mistake and oh boy it hurts.

And like Kyo, you don't even need to land the LDM all the time. You just need to show them that at down A range, Eiji pwns u. Eiji also pwns you when you are trying to run/keep away from him too.

Thus the magnificence of the Heavenly Kings when they are leader.

[Shirakani]

I am thankful that the Ungodly Trio aren't at 'HIS' level in 2k3. They may have 'ideal' LDM's but they're not broken, and depending on skill, they can be beaten pretty evenly. Ownt? no, but beaten convincingly? yes.

Like Empy said also, you don't NEED to do the LDM to make them fear it. One of my worst (best?) habits with leader Kyo is to corner someone, pressure them hard, then do two empty hcb's then hop back and throw an Aragami or Yamibarai instead. if your opponent isn't a fool, he'll KNOW why you just 'jiggled' like that...and he'll definetly understand that you just let him go...

Kinda like how i used to play Takuma in 2k and 2k1, when i cross over someone, i'd do the cB 3x, cA......stop....hop back. They know they would have been eating DM/SDM, but i let em go. Repeat it 3-4 times and they totally give up the match when the skill difference becomes obvious. Best way to beat someone is to totally destroy their will to fight, not just beat em superficially.

If your opponent IS a fool tho, then why are you even wasting time on mindgames?

[J]-[UN]

Thats the biggest load of BS I ever heard...

If you tried that on a good player where matches are usually close you're just asking for your ass to get handed to you.

If you tried that on noobs, chances are they won't play with you again regardless of whether you combo'd or not since they know they can't win.

Though if you actually managed to cross up someone 3-4 times in a match with takuma, that pretty much proves the opponent wasn't decent in the first place.

[Shirakani]

Thats the biggest load of BS I ever heard...

If you tried that on a good player where matches are usually close you're just asking for your ass to get handed to you.

If you tried that on noobs, chances are they won't play with you again regardless of whether you combo'd or not since they know they can't win.

Though if you actually managed to cross up someone 3-4 times in a match with takuma, that pretty much proves the opponent wasn't decent in the first place.

On a GOOD player, hell no you don't try empty jiggle fakes, lol. I already said that if the player is an expert, there's no point to do it coz he/she's already taken the added angle of attack into consideration and plays accordingly.

On n00bs or intermediate/'normal' level players, well....that's the WHOLE DAMN POINT of the argument isn't it? To show the difference in skill and totally crush someone's mindset so they just quit. These sort of mental fuckovers are only for if you're dealing with your average player who has some skill but not a tournament player's mindset. If you're playing vs tournament level players, you don't fake.....you go for every possible abusable angle you can think of. Every trick in the book, dirty or not, is valid. But even so with tournament level players, doing something like that out of the blue can throw them off for just long enough for you to take advantage of it. It isn't a given by any means and yes, it can be asking for an asswhooping, but hey...your opponent's human, and nobody's perfect. Even the best player in the world will let his guard down for a sec time to time.

The Takuma thing was just an EXAMPLE of how you can let someone know 'oi, gtfo you gots no skillz.'

[J]-[UN]

oh ok...

[Iie-Kyo]

Against intermediate level players/Kula-abusing scrubs, I normally try to cornerfuck them and pound them into obvlivion. The problem with some of these guys is, they may not know that you just let them off easy by purposely 'whiffing' the motion for the Kamikura or a 1337 mad damage combo, since if they are an intermediate player, it's hard to see such things, especially if the 1337 mad damage combo comes from mixups rather than forcing them to leave a wide opening.

IMO just pounding them into the corner and not letting them get out is a better way of proving to your opponent that you are just that much better than them. If they're a Kula with an LDM (happens a lot when you beat the shit out of their first two), just make absolutely sure they don't get a dp + C out to stop you. If you can bait it, you can either take advantage of the wide opening, or "let them off easy" by doing something stupid.

This similar to what happened to my friend when he lost to a scrub by judgement. Next game every time he knocked the opponent down, instead of playing an okizeme game on 'em, he just got up, mentally giving him the message "Yeah, get back up, is that all you got cos I'm not through with you just yet."

Certain characters are REALLY good at doing this, Kyo's one of 'em, Shen's another. The mentality you have to adopt to play them properly naturally gives you that sense of thinking.

[Shirakani]

Yeah, that's the thing really. What i've said here is probably not going to work for someone else, and what they do prolly won't work for me. Depending on the crowd you're playing against, certain tricks will or will not work.

Doesn't change the fact tho that Kyo having the Kamikura available is a more fearsome Kyo than one without. Playing to that fear can be a great asset in a match. I too have a tendency to corner ppl who are nothing but 'tier abusers', ppl who only play top tier chars for advantage, and show them that tier does not equal skill. (HE does not count, in 2k3).

Cornerfucking someone though, especially with Kyo's high low game when they're hard pressed to defend, or if their only option of defense is to emergency tag out to save their most powerful character can be equally demoralizing. They know it themselves then, that they just had to 'save' their character coz they didn't have any means to save him/her.

[Shirakani]

Oh boy, here we go..

Who was it who said NGBC Kyo was OMFG BORKEN? Guess what, NGBC Kyo is gonna in XI for ps2...

Here we f'ing go indeed, time to rewrite the tier lists...If SNKP put NGBC Kyo in EXACTLY as he is in NGBC...I'd say the 3 heavenly kings is about to become 4 heavenly kings...

[-Defuser-]

Oh boy, here we go..

Who was it who said NGBC Kyo was OMFG BORKEN? Guess what, NGBC Kyo is gonna in XI for ps2...

Here we f'ing go indeed, time to rewrite the tier lists...If SNKP put NGBC Kyo in EXACTLY as he is in NGBC...I'd say the 3 heavenly kings is about to become 4 heavenly kings...

Nah,Due to the Damage scaling in XI and the physics ,There no need to nerf EX kyo,he is basically XI kyo without yamibarai but with new moves that do pitiful DMG,gurantee there will be no gold mode aura after his mushiki.But im interested how he is able to DC into his mushiki...

EDIT: Most likely he can't do 3 Dp+A either...

EDIT 2:As for that godly high priority Air R.E.D Kick,hmmm he needs that if he wants to keep up high in the A ranks.

EDIT 3:But if SNKP are lazy so they didn't nerf...I can imagine the tag combo for XI Kyo and EX Kyo: J.D, C, F+B , Qcf C , Qcf C, Qcf A, Qcf K, HCB C, HCB D, Dp A x 3 quick Shift DP C SC Qcf Qcf C. <= if there is a option to have unlimited skill stocks,throw a DC Kamikura = Godly tag 100% combo lol.

Oh man Think of the possibilties with this guy = Endless experiomental fun