>>2017>Can't Patchy punish grazing with instant air j6A, or at least get in with hj9 j2A if the spacing allows it?kind of, air j6A is terrible outside of land cancel because it has almost 20f of startup and it has immense recovery so it's usually reserved for extremely hard reads, and the reward isn't great either so the risk/reward is very skewed against it. on landcancel it's a different story, but the problem is that it almost entirely halts your vertical momentum so you have to use it almost exactly as you touch the ground, which isn't hard but it limits its timing quite a bit, so it can't be spammed very quickly at all. j2A is better for that but it's even slower so it's really prone to losing air-to-air
>Also, if you think about her like a dedicated zoner, isn't slowly chipping down on the opponent health is enough?issue is, she doesn't really work as a dedicated zoner. yes i can get away with zoning and chipping down, although usually relying on the opponent's movement flubs rather than any real traps. grazing in place up and down gives you permanent graze frames so, if done well, there's no reason to approach her while she drains her own spirit. also most of her bullets are not that dense at all, a bunch of characters can out-snipe her easily at full screen like Sakuya/Iku/etc, and characters with large melee moves can even counter-zone her instead because slow movement means you don't get to weave in and out of their ranges as easily while grazing
>Also, isn't it easier to play zoner-like characters when your opponent doesn't like to block because it gives you more opportunities to punish reckless approaches?in a normal fighting game yes, definitely. projectiles are usually meant to force the opponent to approach patiently, and if you don't block a fireball you'll just get hit. when grazing exists it's a bit different though because they can approach more freely, so the idea is that you don't force the opponent to approach slowly but rather you force them to graze towards you and then punish that with melee moves, or you force them to graze away from you and corner themselves. the problem is that against triangle grazing you can't really force the opponent to graze anywhere near you or give up stage control, so now they won't approach you and if you don't have the tools you don't get to punish that