Ok so i wasnt crazy when i said K' is a stupid character. That tournament solidifies it.
Has anybody seen any good Kukri play? I've tried using him on my team since Day 1 and its just not working out for me, hes solely the reason why I'm losing the vast majority of my matches. You can't really zone with him since his projectiles don't even reach full screen and can be hopped over. Can't play footsies/neutral since his normals are either too slow/short. It's really hard to reliably AA the opponent especially during full jump. I can see where they we're going with him by having a character all about setups but i feel like hes put in a wrong game with how everyone can just hop around with random moves and not get punished for it. I'm really thinking about dropping him but i still want to give him more time.
I think his jumpin normals are not good. Jump HP, HK, and CD all have slow startup which makes it hard to hop with them and convert damage. On top of that they have a lot of pushback, often leaving you too far to get a close stand C even if you hit or get them to block. To make things worse, if you accidentally get the far version of C it can whiff over opponents, leaving you vulnerable. Getting them to block it isn't much better, it's very negative and not special cancellable. His close D has the same issues... low startup, and very negative, and can't be special cancelled. I feel like rarely ever use his heavy normals except the two below.
Far D has great range but is also extremely negative. I use it often but it has to be special cancelled to sand. His crouch D is also very good, only -2 on block but there isn't much you can do from that anyway besides cancel into sand.
Kukri is pretty good but requires a lot of work. The problem is that the character's strength is supposed to be strong mixups but his good normals are better suited for zoning than pressure. So it's hard to get a knockdown to start you off. Most of his normals are very specific or just flat out bad. They are so negative you pretty much have no choice but special cancel them to sand, pushing the opponent away from you.
His light attacks also have very little hit stun which can be a problem online, since the forward A whiffs on crouchers, if you get a low B and try to confirm into forward A it can easily whiff, leaving you very vulnerable. It's also pretty difficult to BC cancel for the same reason of low hitstun.
I feel like succeeding with Kukri needs 2 things:
1) Gotta be patient. He can't get away with mindlessly hopping on the opponent like some characters can. Play the neutral game with his sand Fireball and throw out stand B to stop hops, conditioning the opponent to stand still. If you can bait a jump and backdash early you can anti air them with the fireball before they land. If you can condition the opponent to block your pressure by ending light attacks with sand, you can maybe get away with jumping after them or doing his instant overhead. If you get instant overhead off then you have some decent setups from it. (Safejumps, meaty teleport sand clone, meaty buttons, another overhead.. etc)
2) Gotta be really good with confirming from his low B. Either go into qcf B into super or better yet, the forward A. Getting a close stand C is pretty hard with him, so is getting a clean jumpin. Your best bet is to convert off of lows so you need to confirm those consistently.
Good luck.
