Ask me stuff. I’m 1400MR and there’s a ton of other stuff I intentionally left out because I wanted to put in the absolute minimum to keep any part of this from being overwhelming/bloated.
I play with modern controls, and I like how Manon plays, but I feel like she is kind of gimped because certain special moves are not accessible when using modern controls, and for seemingly no reason. Do you think Manon is still feasible with modern controls?
If you can do the motions for her supers and her command grab with any kind of competence, just play Classic. She loses some really important stuff in Modern with almost zero benefit, because none of the things you’ll be relying on Modern for are gonna be things you use as reactions.
Of note, from a list of her missing tools:
- Stand MK is a great tool for whiff punishing from further out than Stand MP, AND it hits with a low hitbox so it’s insanely useful against Marisa and Zangief, since those two only have armor on their torsos when they’re doing their charged attacks.
- Crouch MP leads to the same combos as Stand MP/MK, has even crazier range, and is still pretty safe to whiff in neutral.
- Her big wheel kick thing (QCF K) is both an incredibly useful combo ender for oki on the heavy version, while the medium version actually does the most damage, AND it functions nicely as an anti-air, AND you can cancel the first hit of the heavy version into level 3 super from disgustingly far away.
- A lot of better players than me really like to use Stand HK as a long-reaching poke.
- You just do not have the overhead without spending meter for it. ONLY being able to go low, with the move that makes you absolutely explode on block makes it just a “KILL ME NOW” button. The medium version also being gone means you can’t counter Juri fireballs on reaction, so you’ll just have to hold that shit. The medium version is also great corner carry as a combo ender.
- I don’t know which version of command grab it lets you have, but if it’s not the light one, you are severely crippled in terms of where you can threaten your core gameplan. Having to spend meter for OD just to get some extended range is again unnecessarily limiting, because all 3 versions are fast enough that no human can react to them once they’re coming out. They all do the same damage, just with different startup speeds and travel distances.
All this on top of the fact that if you aren’t using the motions at all, your giant scary command grab damage is significantly nerfed. I highly recommend you do not play her with Modern controls if you can get your hands to do any of her stuff in Classic.
I played modern Manon until recently, once I hit Plat it just turned into a really frustrating grind, because modern is so limited people figure you out real fast, she’s missing some crucial tools so you gotta win even more interactions to do same amount of damage. Manon is already very meter hungry and modern just makes the issue much worse. I’d suggest switching to classic.
Hey thanks a lot for the nice guide! Learned some new stuff.
I recently switched from modern to classic after hitting platinum and my biggest struggle has been linking normals, going from C.mp to B.hp, I get it like 75% of the time, is there a trick to getting it more consistently? Also canceling specials into super, like medium spin grab to level 3, qcf HK special to level 3, Ballerina kicks to level 2 in the corner. Just can’t get the timings down.
Also how do I fight Cammy? Jeez that character is a nightmare, it feels like it’s never my turn, her grabs are so difficult to deal with. Jab jab grab, meaty grab, c.hp grab, its so frustrating.
2MP > 4HP feels like you have to wait a weirdly specific amount of time before you can actually hit the cancel. Just practice that two button sequence in training mode facing both ways for like 20 minutes. Then as a bonus practice cancelling 4HP into level 1 and level 2 as combo enders.
Hit grab into level 3, you input the spin and during the spin you input the entire level 3 super, timed so you’re hitting punch as soon as the hit grab lands.
214MK into level 2 requires a pretty high bounce like you can see in the Silver section of the guide, as you have to wait again a weirdly long time before you can get the super to come out. I drop that shit all the time.
Punish divekicks by blocking and throwing her. Punish badly spaced spiral arrow with heavy command grab. If they like to do her heavy target combo into divekick, you can just jab into 236LP to get a free medal on reaction to her leaving the ground. And if they try to do the fake infinite blockstring (where they do spin knuckle into jab a billion times) on your burnout, just hit her right after her jab, or do a super in the gaps if you have meter. Hooligan can be jabbed on reaction, especially if they like going for it from full screen. Wake-up perfect parry also works pretty often against Cammy players that just wanna do meaty pressure every time.
Most of the time against Cammy, even if you’re getting mixed, there’s no need to panic. Compared to a lot of the cast she does low damage off most hits, so comparatively you’ll have to guess wrong more times to actually die from their stuff.
I only noticed just now that you replied 🤦♂️
Thank you so much! Especially for those Cammy tips!