How to handle Pai

Though this is a Pai forum, I thought it might be useful to also have a counter-Pai thread thrown in. Anyone care to contribute her biggest weaknesses and strengths? It's nice to have multiple angles on what to watch out for and what to exploit (especially from frustrated Pai players).

 

I still haven't gone against a really strong pai player yet, the thought of it strikes fear into my heart tho.

 

That was kinda vague.... care to elaborate using examples?

I kinda disagree with the strength thing, as well. I find that pai's combos are quite beefy and easy to execute on most characters (on launch), even if her single standing attacks don't do too much damage.

 

All her dmging combos come from CH's though, the rest aren't all that scary. She's very CH dependent. Her game as far as I know it revolves around getting a CH to lead to big dmg. Akai is right though her overall power is low when compared to other chars. Her lows except for 3P are all fairly easy to block on reaction if you're looking for them. I never thought of shutting down one of her guessing games to force the pai player and me to trade hits. I like that stratagy.

 

#1 for sure. I play MVC2 at a fairly high level. Reflexes aren't in question. It's mainly after I do a move that trips Pai (dunno the technical term, but the character isn't knocked down, yet is crumpled on the ground and cannot be hit by high attacks, but can be comboed into a low attack), where she completely skips any recovery animation and just counter hits me in the middle of a string with /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d_.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif. It's my fault for not remembering to go low, but I play Eileen more often than Lion, so I'm used to the same basic combo connecting mid instead of whiffing high. Muscle memory and all....

 

After playing a lot against Pai earlier and figuring out more of her nuances (as well as one random glitch occurring and never happening again when the situation was recreated), I found that memorization of her options really was the best way to handle her. Her basic strings usually have the options of starting low or high and finishing with a mixup, and only a few strings had high-low-high or low-high-low, but each give a fair amount of warning from her body movements, especially when she turns her back. Her greatest advantage seems to be when she's at a slight distance, where she can anticipate your move and either cartwheel back and beat it or start her mind games at her pace. Forcing the Pai player to play against you at your pace and eliminating her options, as you said, is the most effective methid I have found.


Sorry for the double post, but I think that adding this to the previous one wouldn't be pertinent to what I was trying to accomplish.

Now to work on playing against Shun Di...

 

Yeah... it hits low, as far as I can tell. It's a kick attack in the string, but if I just substitute the kick with a /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif, I'm safe. As I said, it's mainly a problem of habit.

That still kind of annoys me, though. You'd think that one would design a game to put the person hitting the other in control. AM2 really forced a whole new level of strategy into VF different from other conventional fighters.

 

Akai I wasn't saying I get countered a lot by pai I just remember seeing someone say that about here on the forums. It's what scares me away from seriously learning her

 

My guess is that the ideas behind the design of low attacks being at a disadvantage on normal hit is to discourage a game of pure random low/mid poking as a dominant tactic.

The guessing game is still there, but the incentive for low attacks is to interrupt more often than simply hitting. A normal hit is not enough for a lot of low pokes, you want to interrupt.

Making low punch a special low (meaning it can be blocked both high and low) also fits into this sort of thinking.

Because of this, throws become a potentially better mixup option against someone blocking high.

In any case, it's all well considered and you'll realize that design decisions like these allow your options to be fairly robust instead of limited to a very tiny useful moveset per character.

To sum it up: every option has a downside or a set of answers for it. And I think that's the way it should be.