Kain Matchup Discussion

[Ghurdrich]

Why do I suddenly have a very bad feeling xD

[Hollowed]

Hella nice input, Hollowed I'm glad we can get some serious discussion going on here. A lot of what you say makes more sense than what I say, but I'm gonna have to disagree with your assessment of Squall and Cecil. Squall's attacks are all easy to avoid, so as long as you're not throwing attacks out into the air for him to punish, then it isn't like he's going to dodge and punish everything you do. You just have to be the smarter one. I'd say that at worst, Kain is on even ground with Squall, but I don't think there's any way that this matchup is in Squall's favor. You have the better range, and better battlefield control (which means you're not all that susceptible to Beat Fang) and his magic isn't all that effective against you either.

Good points! Kain fares much better than I thought. Thank you.

Excellent analysis of Squall. I agree 100%.

I realized that Tidus won't be able to get ahold of Kain or punish if you attack him vertically.

Gabranth may not be so bad, either. While he's charging, you can take advantage of Kain's mixups. Assist dodge punishment will help you wrack up damage. Another strategy is to enter chase to gain EX and land hits. Once Gab enters EX, Kain has the range to punish his recovery. Jump can counter or just save you from many attacks. It could probably be charged to buy you time while his EX Gauge drains, but I'm not sure how safe you are from Innocence.

As for Cecil, you mentioned Searchlight, but I don't think Searchlight needs to be punished at all. It didn't get particularly buffed, which means it's still a pretty crap move. Anything will get rid of it: A BRV attack, blocking it, dodging it, even just moving out of the way. So unless you're in recovery (and you won't be, at Searchlight distance) there's not really a reason for Searchlight to be a threat at all. Dark Cannon can be punished by a simple Dodge>Piercing Lance or probably even better Dodge>Spiral Blow. I would take this fight to the air and try to outmaneuver his Paladin form rather than taking any risky shots of Jump vs Shadowbringer.

You're absolutely correct. It doesn't matter if you can't punish because it can't hit you. I find it best to stay airborne against Cecil for most of the match because you can simply jump over many of his attacks. It's very easy to counter him for the most part. Neither of Cecil's forms can really pressure Kain, so this one is pretty simple.

Lastly, for Firion and WoL, you say that you can't get them into the air, but I beg to differ. Obviously it'll be a bit different in PvP, but all it takes is one of Kain's Ground-Ground or Air-Ground moves, and you can launch them into the air. Even an aerial cyclone will do the trick, so you don't need to put yourself too much at risk every time. Plus although WoL is faster than you, he's definitely not impossible to block and counter, so there's no reason he should be hitting often enough to make the match 7:3.

WoL isn't as bad as I thought. Dayflash lost its combos, so he needs an assist to back it up. Ascension is easy to punish during recovery. Blue Fang got a tracking nerf so you can fight his spam with Cyclone pretty well. It's a good idea to reflect it to add pressure. White Fang is easy to counter with Piercing Lance or a dash+aerial attack. Avoid it if you can't punish in time since it's not a threat. What's nice is that Kain can knock WoL into the air with basically anything. Lancet can undo a lot of chipping.

Kain can also knock Firion airborne throughout the match, which helps you land more attacks.

For the first half > Jump, that is all.
For the second half, both pokes have poor vertical tracking. Something Kain can exploit! Especially with his sexy HP attacks.

THIS

[Lord-Zero]

I don't know if this has been posted before but...

Kain's Lancet can get through Terra's Tornado. Well, more like it can appear just below her where she's a sitting duck.

[Nexus_Nocturnal]

On Easy Mode Kain also has that REALLY good poke that shoots the opponent right into the air and can even wall rush. The range on it is faster than day flash too and it can set up for some awesome assist combos off the rush or you can use it to keep the enemy off the ground.

[Veysey]

Hollowed, I'm not sure that Jecht will be 5-5. Remember that Jecht will specialize in mixups and answering whatever his opponent does. He can cancel into blocks or follow up attacks now and Jecht Block is more potent than ever.

When I face Kain cpu on the top 3 in arcade, I can use his cancel feature to keep Kain dodging and he doesn't have a chance to retaliate. The best he can do is clash with uncharged streams or HP a guard. Dodge out of turn and Jecht will likely get him thanks to the range on lvl2+.

Kain (as you mentioned) has a hard time landing HP attacks because of Jecht Block and that full charges will usually clash. Kains best bet is to keep distance, use Aero and other baits, and build assist meter safely. Then use assist traps on Jecht since he doesn't excel at handling pincer attacks.

Really, from what I've played of Kain, it looks like he'll have a tough time with Jecht thanks to the HP situation but especially because he just doesn't have those pokes to throw around and easily catch Jecht off guard. The delay on Jechts attacks CAN be punished, but the window is significantly smaller than DFF AND I guarantee you that a dedicated Jecht main will purposely space/time those delays so it looks like you'll succeed but step right into a block. Don't forget that your options to block Jecht are extremely limited and risky as well. Kain might have some nice tools to try and compete, but Jecht ALWAYS has an answer - it's just whether the player themselves are experienced enough to choose/execute the right ones. (Akin to Exdeath - he's got the tools to be top, but few people will ever achieve that level)

Like I said... best bet for Jecht is assists and good spacing. Also, I'm not completely familiar with Kain yet, but I think his aerial options are better and he should be trying to bait out bad rushes. Rush has great tracking, but if an opponent is above him, it's a little harder for him to use Rush offensively and defensively at the same time. Oh, and I'm thinking that if you're good in chase TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. I honestly see Kains wracking up lots of damage through pursuit on some characters but chase with many others. He seems to have the tools to get into chase fairly easily. It's kinda hard to tell (cause I suck at chase in DDFF), but I don't think Jecht is one of the faster people in chase, so that might be the key to success.

On a final note... match-up discussions are really only based on theory at this point, so take it with a grain of salt. We'll see how things really play out once we get PvP going and people can really mess around with what does and doesn't work against a human.

Edit: Oh and I forgot to mention, don't underestimate Jecht. He can reach you in the mid range areas now thanks to the distance buffs on charges (which are VERY significant). He can punish dodges, he can punish blocks, he can punish attacks, he can stop HPs, he can attack faster, he can cancel better. All with ONLY Jecht Stream and Jecht Rush. Add in Block, Beam, TG, UJS (Which now has some pretty good blocking properties), and Blade and Jecht is built to destroy any one thing that enters his space (this is why assists will play an important role in bringing Jecht down AND why I think EX is very important for him). All melee characters will need to be very cautious around him now.

@Ghur: Jecht is completely different from DFF - he's one of the characters with the most significant buffs in my opinion. unbeatable? No. But EXTREMELY formidable in close to mid-range combat.

[Viva L'Empereur]

How well does jump work against Terra's tornado? I thought it canceled both characters out of their moves.

[Ghurdrich]

Jump clashes (cancels) with Terra's Tornado, no matter how charged it is, IIRC. But just watch out because a quick jump (no charge at all) will only barely get enough height to clear the tornados. AKA if she has any vertical distance on you at all, all a quick jump is gonna do is rocket you into the attack.

Anyways, glad to see you're still testing Hollowed. I'm still testing as well, so together we'll get to the bottom of this stuff xD (I just hope you're not just agreeing with me out of good will )

As for Veysey's comments... well... Look at me being all surprised, but you're exactly right xD Of course, it's hard to tell vs an AI Jecht, but at the end of the day, I do think this is not a favorable matchup for Kain. Celestial Shooter and Spiral Blow are really the best things we've got in this match, and, well, they're something. But they're not much. And they sure aren't HP attacks. I think it's gonna come down to mindgames on Kain's part, and a little bit of patience and timing on Jecht's part. And guess who has the easier time of it? xD

Anyways, to touch on something that's been brought up a couple of times. MY (AKA I'm not sure what you guys are doing) predictions are based on a hypothetical world where two rules exist:
The Kain player has access to all of his attacks in one shot (like you would at lvl 100 in the full release) and is played by a human (this is why you see me bring up Spiral Blow, because I make the assumption that you can have it in your moveset, whereas in Prologus the lvl 50 set doesn't have it.)
The Opponent can use everything the AI uses in Prologus, but is played by an equally skilled human player. (This is because I obviously can't judge DDFF changes based on things I can't see or do for myself.)

Of course that means there's a couple of immediate flaws in my logic.
The first bluff was called by Veysey. As a completely amateur Jecht player, I was unable to notice his changes properly, and since the AI is the AI, obviously it isn't a shining example of how to play the character. Therefore I had to fall back on my DFF knowledge. Likewise with UltimaMM who brought up the point that not all of Bartz's moves are in Prologus. So I had to fall back on my DFF knowledge and the moves I could see him do in Prologus.
The second was actually called by Amphoric first (though there's a couple of people who have brought it up since.) This is an AI matchup thread, but I'm treating it like a PvP matchup thread. The reason for this is to help ease the transition between Prologus and DDFF, and to help players get a jump start on to good habits they might want to develop against humans. For that reason, I also don't mention things like "You can exploit the AI by doing x" or "The AI likes to dodge and then use Weaponsmaster, so jump if you see him dodge" (I don't know if this is true, I just made it up xD)

Anyways, I hope that clears up a few of the lingering questions about stuff in general. Keep the awesome discussion going, guys!

[K´Genesis]

Hella nice input, Hollowed I'm glad we can get some serious discussion going on here. A lot of what you say makes more sense than what I say, but I'm gonna have to disagree with your assessment of Squall and Cecil. Squall's attacks are all easy to avoid, so as long as you're not throwing attacks out into the air for him to punish, then it isn't like he's going to dodge and punish everything you do. You just have to be the smarter one. I'd say that at worst, Kain is on even ground with Squall, but I don't think there's any way that this matchup is in Squall's favor. You have the better range, and better battlefield control (which means you're not all that susceptible to Beat Fang) and his magic isn't all that effective against you either.

If you guys don't mind, I'm gonna interfere here for a bit.
I've been playing a lot of PvP lately with different people and have been testing a lot of stuff, including Kain. I'd like to clarify the reality of a Squall x Kain match, among others, from my POV and see if you guys can put it to practice and look for different perspectives.

First of all, you guys left out a significant factor in 012 matches: assists and gauge management.
Squall is an assist gauge building machine. You have to assume, at all times, that he'll have at least one gauge filled because he will. And if he doesn't, it won't be for long. While Kain is playing the waiting game, Squall is spacing, Fire Barret spamming and even throwing random melee attacks for the sake of assist building. You cannot let that happen as Kain. Squall can now get a damaging combo(and most likely an HPA) from practically anywhere on screen and with virtually anything on his arsenal, without depending on wallrush, chase and whatnot. And when he's ready, he'll rush the fuck down on you, like there's no tomorrow.Which brings me to the second issue.

Squall's offensive, although nerfed by the loss of HC cancel, is nowhere near less deadly. He can be on your face at all times and mix-up his three aerial attacks with Thunder Barret and "random" blocks in order to always keep you guessing. Btw, Thunder Barret is extremely hard to punish as Kain, even when you know it's coming, so Squall can harass him all he wants. Blocking Squall is still a dangerous and unadvised tactic, so you have to rely on your instincts to break his offensive. When you do, he'll back down on defensive mode, which leads us to...

The waiting game, which is on his hands. Jump will be punished if Squall escapes without dodging. His other attacks are "waitable"(I'm that cool, I make up new words), while Squall's are not. And, most likely, a smart Squall will take to the air and Fire Barret away to make you come to him(reminding you that if you don't, he's building assist gauges and you're losing them). Then, Beat Fang will work its magic.


So, what's Kain to do?
Squall has become a chipper in disguise, so he won't maintain a high BRV count for long. My approach would be taking advantage of a good assist to punish Fire Barrets on reaction to score a Sky Grinder/Rising Drive(i.e. Kuja), which will hopefully Break Squall at a little less than base BRV for high damage and stay cautious on a Fire Barret/Beat Fang offensive at all times. A smart Squall will, though, hold on to his BRV and see if he can outskill Kain in the BRV game for a OHKO or 2HKO. Summing it up, do not playing the waiting game but don't let Squall sit comfortably as well and build assists as fast as you can without putting yourself at risk. Easier said than done.

Against mages in general, Kain has the natural upper hand. His T-Dash and high damage output, combined with the easy time punishing mages with assists makes this a lenghty but safe ride. Gungnir is also an excellent after-cast dodge punisher and should be used without restrictions(especially against Ultimecia). If, for any given reason, said mage decides to fight you close to the ground, Jump is also an excellent interruptor and is, usually, the best opening move to start the fight with, if the characters start relatively close to each other.

[Rinsuku]

Anyone have any strats against Vaan? My friend just keeps spamming torrent and Windhurst the entire time. For some reason I have a hard time getting past this. You can Jump Windhurst and turn it back at him, but that only works when he's really close. Torrent is just stupid. All I can do is dodge while he can just do whatever.

[majiger]

Dodge, Throw a cyclone or two, use Ground/Aerial Omni Dash + this allows you to turn away from Torrent and Windburst is easy enough to get through.

If all he does is HP spam then simply rack up your Assist Gauge and punish him with that :\ This means he doesn't know how to use Vaan's BRV game since he plays like the stupid Windburst spamming NPC.

Assists are the key against spammers now.