ASUKA R# - First Impressions and Overview (Guilty Gear Strive) 

I am politely asking you to subscribe (or else) Also I didn't realize I went so in depth on spells that I didn't look at his supers 😅. I'll save that for the beginner guide later.

Shadow Money Wizard Gang! We love casting spells.

The acceleration staff does a lot more than just make the projectiles faster. Projectiles affected by the staff do more chip, guard crush, and are way more plus on block (the yellow cube allows for a gapless uncharged dust when cast point blank). It actually gives him very strong pressure in the corner and allows him to regain more resources and keep up the pressure.

I love that he can keep spells in each deck when bringing them into another deck, I can imagine one exodia hand he can build if you have meter and good enough execution

His concept must have been far more difficult than playing him. If they didn't give each move attention, he would've been a spammer. If they gave test cases more than one role, he'd be broken on release. Kudos to the devs.

The hardest part of the character for me is just keep track of which spells are on which button. I keep accidentally casting empty spells or throwing away a book mark when I don't mean too lol

I think the insanely hard thing to execute will be that he can cancel anything. He can do spell reload in an infinity, the only thing limiting him is his mana. You have to be insanely quick in awareness to identify all his different moves while also having an awareness of the situation while being executionally optimal and limiting the gaps. He looks very hard

I've been playing him today, and damn, he's tougher to play than I even expected. I mean, I played Nine in BBCF, and always thought people greatly exaggerated how hard she was, and I've played some Happy Chaos and felt people exaggerated how hard he is somewhat as well; Asuka though, no, he's genuinely a brain-bender. Tracking and managing all those resources takes so much concentration that it becomes hard to focus on actually fighting the opponent. Still, gonna keep playing him, at least in the park. Much like with Nine, I love the archmage with crazy magic at their disposal vibe. Kind of doubt I'll become proficient enough with him to even think about maining him though.

Repulsor is a combo tool more than a zoning tool, I think. Notice that when Asuka's projectiles are effected by the staves their properties on hit and block change too. Acceleration increases pushback on hit and block and makes projectiles guard crush. Decceleration on the other hand, decreases pushback on hit and block. High Pass Gravity makes the projectiles push them higher up on hit, making combos easier. Low Pass Gravity does the opposite, and I think might pull them down faster on air hit/block. Repulsor and Attractor add push back/knock back away from and towards the center of the staves respectively. Meaning that depending on where you position the staffs you can get very high damage due to your projectiles effectively having a vaccum. Could also mean Asuka can avoid wall break with smart usage of either of these two. Attractor seems easier to use for sure though.

The biggest surprise for me when finally getting to mess with him was that he has 6 staves. I was expercting like the fast staff and the black hole ones to be the only ones. This shit blew my mind.

Well organized and intuitive stuff. love LKs style of tutorials

I like how the headspace to keep track of all this feels very "programmery" ie. assigning a bunch of variables from a global pool then letting shit run. a nice contrast to Bedman?’s more linear style (over-engineering vs a more direct style of programming?) . I bet the devs had a lot of fun figuring this out.

Alrighty, time for class! Got my calculus and statistics textbooks on hand for this character.

Great break down as always LK The staffs are really interesting with all the things you can do with them

projectiles with the rappelling one pulled Sol onhit when staff was behind him, maybe some cool stuff in the corner is possible with it

I found this to be really helpful. I haven't tried him yet (still at work) but all the tips here will save me some time and confusion.

Tbh, he really doesn't feel like a zoner. His buttons are actually juiced (dat 2d got me acting up) and ive seen quite a bit of mayhem caused by rushing forward Also forward gravity staff turns his shit into guard crush

"how do you kick in pants like that" If that wasnt a Ragna 5b joke, it shouldve been

what im excited about with the low jump staff is that he can do real quick overheads with j.D. Or at least it seems quick, I dont actually know if its faster than 6H

Man, playing Asuka is the most fun I had in this game so far

Maybe repulsor staff could be used for meaty setups as a way to make projectiles hit behind them very late? Or as a way to stop people from jumping your projectiles if you put it straight behind them as close to the ground as possible (didnt test the bounce angle, dont know if this works)

Comment for the engagement, thanks for the breakdown

So happy world playing in the background hits different Or was it Royal days - another version

repulsor rod could be good for pressure since it also affects the pushback direction of the projeciles, so the opponent gets pushed towards asuka instead of the other direction

I'd say the rule of thumb for the staffs is "is it a cube?" If its a cube, it'll be affected, otherwise It'll ignore it. Hence why his cube super is affected but the orb version is not.

The return of the plus on block 19 frame overhead rock you love to see it >:)

Thank you for this, i hope you share some tips on how to play him.

Definitely have what feels like a full grasp on what his spells and decks do. Will you be making a video showing how he plays in practice vs the other characters?

He's a zoner who plays with 4 decks of cards. I can't wait to get my hands on him!

If I may inquire, what do you think of the possibility of placing the repulsion staff behind or on top of Asuka?

Pondering my orb in those kickers

Anybody experiment with the lower jump height staff enabling fast overheads (like, j.d with the short hop?).

Does his heavy gravity staff, the one that shortens his jump, also make him fall faster out of combos or being launched?

0:40 Ragna begs to differ.

Does the repulse (and the other) rods influence opponent spells in a mirror?

Damn yeah Asuka is literally playing a deck builder rouge-like I kinda love it

Asuka is so fun

Don't know if it's because he's relatively new and people hasn't really got efficient with him yet, but I found out that Asuka is pretty weak once you close the gap on him. Most of his spell cast isn't fast enough and just get blown up by normal buttons. He does have 2D for close range defense tho, which imo is one of the best 2D in the game rn

I played Eternal Duelist and still do, so this character is right up my alley. I'm just blind as a bat and those icons and animations will take some getting used to.

I think sampler 404 might actually be his scariest spell. Enabling him to cast the same spell back to back is gonna be real crazy with the right spells.

The Gravity staffs also alter the knockback angles of his fireballs to match their movement direction and make them significantly more combo friendly, potentially turning them into launchers, including his P super.

he's definitely a character that takes time to be optimized

if the repulse rod is behind them then projectiles usually vacuum the enemy on hit or block. Given how plus all the projectiles are, that gives it some obvious usage in pressure (and probably some utterly degenerate combos). The actual repulsion probably doesn't matter, but it doesn't need to. Similarly the heavy gravity staff lets you instant overhead with j.D and the combo out meterless with the faster attack spells, I'm not sure it bouncing the projectiles really matters much on its own.

What about the supers?

Test Case 3 is the easiest for spam. Has reduced mana cost, mana recovery, instant reload, and duplicate

808’s and heartbreak mane

Woe, cube upon ye

That magic is cool but what about gun ?

Hey Lk do you any recommendations for an ps5 arcade stick. Been getting back into Fighting games and want to learn stick for fun

He's def my new main. Still got my pocket Zato, though, but he's too sick. A character that's major in the lore, but never been playable til now? Immediate hype. Never even played Casters in fighting games, but we're finna fake it til we make it 😤

i hate how test case 2 is the mixup one but doesn't have teleport. But then again it may have become the best test case, period.

Any opinion on the network patch ?

22:13 dont scare me like that

Soo Staff is sorta like Kokonoe gravitron

Asuka spell tierlist when?

Mentally, Asuka is just too much for me to juggle. I cant keep up with an aggressive opponent when trying to manage both my spells and mana. He needs passive mana recovery somehwere, under some sort of condition outside his spells. Thinking maybe when he FDs

I like the concept of the character it’s good to Try new things in the game but for me it’s just way to much micro managing to bother playing. But good to see.

btw is the online fixed? I stopped playing back in January cause of the issues, Asuka looks cool but if the game is still unplayable then it doesn't matter.

I dont play Strive but Asuka looks like every lab monster's wet dream

I love that giovanna looking ass color😊

Main question: how broken is he? How long can I cheese people until they learn his broken stuff?

Fun character to play...against other Asukas. Not so fun against HC tho XD

"Learning fighting games"

Oh so they DO know how to make rewarding and interesting resource management systems. So they just made Sin's food terrible on purpose then.

Can any of these be FDBd tho

Too hard for my lizard brain. Already got a character pair I'm comfortable with plenty of other tertiary ones to play.

I’m not saying that it definitely is , but some of that shit looks mad oppressive

Pimp character.

Minecraft Steve, is that you?

as a strive hater I have to say, this character looks sick as hell and I hope you guys wont have a top tier like happy chaos ever again, sounds like pain in any case have fun !

Imo its not worth learning him now. Respect for those lookin to master him tho

Just here to say: even though i love playing Asuka for the 5-6 hours i have with him.... This is just Testament with better normals but worse specials