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I don't understand KI's neutral game. How can you play footsies when everyone has on-reaction 5-frame full-screen punishers? I whiff a jab and I get punished. It's even easier to punish fireballs on reaction, making them useless for zoning.

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Yeah, it's pretty tough, isn't it? KI has strong offensive tools.
There's a few things I think are important to know:
1) Shadow counters are great. Most really strong offensive tools are susceptible to shadow counters on block, which means that even though they are safe on block and invincible to lots of stuff, they have weaknesses.
2) Most horizontal traveling moves, while safe on block, are negative (usually -2 or -3, some are even truly unsafe like TJ's tremor and Cinder's MK trailblazer), which means they are giving up their pressure when blocked. Putting yourself at negative frames isn't the end of the world, but it does mean that they need to block/backdash themselves after doing this move, or else risk a reversal or something; pressing more buttons afterwards is usually a recipe for getting hit. There are very clear moments of "now it's my turn" in KI when dealing with horizontal special moves, even if you don't get a strict punish.
3) Combo breaking works well in the KI engine because the tools are often *so* overwhelming that the game designers just expect you to get hit sometimes. It's why combo breaking is something all players need to get used to, because it's not just "a failsafe if you play bad", the game is fundamentally designed around it.
That all said, you can still play some really strong footsies in KI, once you establish a few base things (you can shadow counter obvious pressure, you will take control of the match back after your opponent puts himself at -2), but like all fighting games, if you're looking to play footsies with your typical online player, it might be hard to find the meat. It also might resolve itself a little faster than other games (like SF4), because the strong offensive tools means somebody will win the footsies war relatively fast. But the footsies game is definitely there.
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Latest answers from Infil

New to KI, got it because of the sale. Reading your guide, wondering what "shadow OK" means? It's used in the context of linkers or openers or enders, but I don't know what OK is abbreviating?

It just means "also applies to the shadow version of this move". For example, a damage ender could be the normal version or the shadow version, so I'd list it as "Tiger Fury (shadow OK)". You'll also see "air OK" elsewhere, which means "this move can also be done in the air".

Poor noob here, playing on a 360 pad on Steam. I prefer the PS4 controller (tho I don't own one) for its superior d-pad, and know I should get an arcade stick. Until I can afford either a PS4 controller or arcade stick, should I avoid QC input characters and stick to Wulf, Riptor, etc? Thanks!

Zachary Alvarado
Lots of people do quarter circles on 360 pads just fine, so I wouldn't use that as a reason to avoid QC characters. If you find it impossible to do and you like a back-forward character, then go ahead and play them, but I wouldn't avoid QC characters because of your controller.
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Are you doing kilgore ?

Haven't decided yet. I think it's probably 50/50 that I'll do him, or that the guide will stay in its current form.

I'm wondering about maximizing meter gain for characters without a battery ender. During a combo, does the attacker gain meter more or less proportionally to damage dealt? Or is the game biased towards some moves gaining more shadow meter per damage dealt than others?

Harold Foong
I think it is character dependent, I don't think there is a standard for whether a move gains more meter in a combo because it does less damage.
That said, most combos don't build a ton of shadow meter; to verify this, just look at the meter you build when you are comboing someone after round 1, you usually only get about 20% of one bar for the entire combo of heavy autos and linkers. So whatever advantage might exist on a per-move basis is going to be pretty minimal.
In general, the best way to build meter for characters without battery enders is to make them block moves in neutral. You get more meter if your move was blocked than if it hits, and this is especially true of projectiles. So someone like Mira, who has no battery ender, builds a ton of meter because she is constantly making you block st.MP xx light bats, and this string (and others) just generates a ton of meter for her.

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Great work on the guide man! I was wondering now that the Rash beta has ended, what did you think about the character? Does his moveset need anything and if so, what?

I think he's a very well animated character! I didn't get to play him very much unfortunately, but I do know his moveset will be tricky to balance (characters with air mobility usually are), so I look forward to seeing what they do with the zipline/tongue move in particular.

Thank you for answering the question on cinder but I am confused because the shadow fission is then breakable. I read on hisako's page that her 2 hit into shadow is unbreakable damage that leads to a combo. Why is it different for cinder because his shadow follow up is always breakable.

I rewrote my combo breaker page just the other day (so check it out if you like), but KI's combo breaker system starts to work every time you get hit by a special move. So, Inferno is a special move, so anything you try after it becomes breakable, including cancels and stuff.
Hisako (and Orchid) have rekkas that are really... weird. They don't trigger the "this is a special move" until the 3rd hit, so you can do raw 2 hit rekka into shadow move and this is not breakable because the game thinks you haven't done a special move until the shadow move. On the other hand, if you do a normal canceled into 2 hits of rekka and then further canceled into a shadow move, THIS becomes breakable because of the 3-Move Rule (check my rewritten combo breaker page: http://ki.infil.net/cbreaker.html); the normal is your first move, "2 hits of rekka" is your second move, and the shadow is the 3rd move. The game still thinks you haven't done an opener or you haven't done a special move, but the 3-Move Rule catches this specific case.
I will go through my Hisako page and make sure that I make clear what is and isn't breakable about 2 hits of rekka into shadow move... it's possible I have some misinformation here.

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Could you include a section on each character that explains how best to fight AGAINST that character. I'd love to know each character's weaknesses, the best counters to certain moves, the proper way to deal with certain kinds of pressure, etc. Thanks!

Hopefully there is a bit of that scattered in each of the pages already! But ideally, yeah, it'd be cool to have a section like that on each character page. Unfortunately it's a ton of work, but I'll keep that in mind if I have some time in the future for expanding the guide at all!

This is a cinder related question. There is this odd thing about inferno that I have noticed. It is not an opener but can combo into shadow moves. If I do a full range inferno into shadow fission on hit Cinder teleports over to the opponent. The shadow is breakable. Isnt it the opener for that?

Yeah, some special moves can't be canceled into linkers/auto-doubles, but CAN be canceled into shadow moves (and then these shadow moves can be openers if you want). Inferno is like that for Cinder but it's not the only move in the game like that. Orchid/Hisako can do the same after 1st or 2nd hits of their rekka specials, Aria can do the same after medium Allegro in blade body, most characters can cancel their fireballs into shadow openers, etc.
Inferno is a little unique because you MUST cancel into shadow inferno/fission in order to continue the combo (you can't do a manual after it or continue the combo any other way), but it's not the only move in the game that isn't an opener but lets you cancel into shadow openers.

I don't have KI to test this, but if you manual a special move, do you get the special linker version of the move or the neutral version? e.g. with orchid doing Ichi Ni San after a grenade hit in the middle of a combo. Was wondering if you could do unblockable rekka in middle of a combo

You get the neutral version, and it will be breakable via the same rules. You also get the neutral version if you do special moves directly after jump-ins (even though the jump-in is an opener, all special moves are links/manuals for some reason), which can make for some tricky break situations (if you do a shadow move, for instance, it's breakable but you get the "opener" version which might have different timing than the linker version).
You can do Orchid's rekka string as a manual in some situations, including as a link after grenade if you set it up correctly, but the unblockable HP one has a lot of startup and it never combos. But yes, you can try to reset with it.

When you decide to crouch attack, do you instantly go through with the crouch attack start up frames (just crouch attack frames) or do you first have to crouch, go through the crouching frames and then add the crouch attack frames? (Crouch + Crouch attack frames)

Interesting question that I don't really know how to answer without recording footage at 60fps and doing a frame by frame comparison. My guess, however, is that if you manage to crouch on one frame and then press a button on the next frame, you will immediately go into the startup for your crouch attack and "cancel" however many frames are left on the crouching animation.

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