Advanced V.G. 2/Saki

Overview

Move List

Combos

Strategy

Resources

Introduction

Saki will cut you.

Saki is a simple character with a simple gameplan: make you explode. Sporting solid aerial normals and a HK button that almost plays footsies for you, Saki is able to turn a good number of errant pokes she'll land during neutral into incredible damage with her Mizuchi super, leading to combos that often deal upwards of 50% damage in one shot. This simplicity is both a blessing and a curse, however -- her lack of solid pokes not attached to the HK button leaves her ground game feeling fairly linear, and her reliance on two-bar combo conversions for her damage makes resource management a very important question for her.

File:Avg2 saki mini.jpg Saki is an explosive midrange footsies character who can easily convert her strong pokes into enormous damage if she has the meter available.
Pros	Cons
Not Overly Complicated: Saki isn't a particularly demanding character to pick up. Once you learn how to reliably super cancel Tetsu into Mizuchi, piloting the character becomes fairly straightforward, making her quite stable overall. Awesome Normals: Saki is blessed not just with an absolutely phenomenal HK button, with cl.HK, 5HK, 2HK and 6HK covering almost all of her bases in neutral, but also with a fantastic set of aerial normals, giving her lots of options to play in the air -- a skill which does not go unnoticed in a game like AVG2. Ridiculous Damage: Mizuchi is one of the most damaging supers in the game, and the ease with which she can fit it into her combos makes her incredibly explosive when meter is on the table.	One-Note Neutral: While Saki's HK button will certainly take you places, it won't take you all the way there. Her reliance on her HK normals stems not just from how strong they are, but also how underwhelming her other grounded buttons are by comparison, thanks to a mix of poor speed, range and limited chaining options, which makes her neutral overall somewhat more predictable than other characters. Inconsistent Defense: Though she isn't completely helpless, Saki can struggle a little bit on defense, thanks to slow abare buttons, an incredibly slow backdash and a DP that, while invincible, is incredibly slow and lacks horizontal range. This means that unless she wants to spend meter, Saki will need to try her best to block it out when she's on the back foot. Meter Hungry: Since most of Saki's threat comes from her two bar combo conversions, resource management becomes an exceptionally important consideration, and can often cause players to make tough decisions about spending meter on defensive options or saving it for an explosive combo.

Attack	Defense	Dash Jump	Dash Brake	Backdash	Wakeup Speed
B	A	Yes	Yes	47F (None)	16F