Under Night In-Birth/UNI2/Byakuya/Strategy

Overview

Strategy

Starter Guide

Combos

Matchups

Frame Data

Data

#UNI2_BY

Disclaimer: This is a community written page and may contain opinions that not all players may agree with. Use at your own discretion.

General Gameplan

Byakuya's primary goal in any matchup is to get into a range where his buttons will outrange or outspeed his opponent's. While he does not have relatively strong tools to control the pace of neutral, once he gets into his ideal ranges, he becomes very difficult to contest that space against due to the speed of pokes such as 2B, 5B(B), 2C, and 66C. Once he lands a hit in neutral, the strong corner carry and meter gain from his combos allow him to bring the opponent to the corner from almost screen position and end in 623C, a long duration web snare that allows him to set multiple webs for oki that limit the opponent's wakeup options, allow Byakuya to bait throw tech timings, and enhance his reward on standard strike throw - i.e. webs allow you to get a combo on a successful throw and loop the same oki situation, and meaties with a normal + web snare hit are some of his strongest starters.

Neutral

Against characters with stubbier buttons than Byakuya's (Akatsuki, Eltnum, Linne, Mika), he can opt to play a shorter range keepaway game by preemptively poking/keeping control of space with with his B normals and walkback whiff punishing with 66B/2C/5C (this will come up a lot more often against characters with similar range buttons, such as Enkidu, Gordeau, Kuon, Londrekia, Waldstein, and Wagner, but is not necessarily exclusive to them). He can also aggressively take space with his quick and accelerationless dashblock (similar to Akatuski's step dash) and leave himself at a range where contesting his 5A is difficult for most of the cast.

In zoner matchups (e.g. Chaos, Hilda, Merkava, Vatista, Yuzuriha) and against characters that can establish their approach from further away (Seth, Hyde, Carmine, Nanase), Byakuya has the choice to Concentrate (5D) while his opponent creates space away from him to disincentivize them from doing so, simply let his opponent run their zoning and collect GRD that way, and contest long-range options with his nearly fullscreen 66C. Once he has 100+ meter and Vorpal, 22C is another strong option for catching upbacks and jump landings and converting into a full combo from anywhere on the screen. Be wary of sending 22C as soon as you see an opponent in the air if they have options to maniuplate their air movement, as almost any form of stalling air momentum or otherwise altering movement will cause it to whiff. Knowledge of your opponent's air options and keeping track of them will be necessary to use 22C well - Every character can Air Assault at the apex of their jump to make 22C whiff, but characters with notable air movement options to keep this dynamic in mind against are Eltnum, Kaguya, Kuon, Linne, Merkava, Nanase, Orie, Seth, Vatista, Waldstein, and Yuzuriha.

Approach

Matchups where the onus is on Byakuya to close in on his opponent will require a lot of patience and playing for Vorpal. Dashblocking is a low risk way to close space against zoners, and will be your primary method for closing space until you are in range to hop over low pokes with Assault j.C, poke with his C buttons, or call out backjump with 66C or deep dash 5B/3C. With Vorpal/Chain Shift, 66C, 236BB, and 214X-X-C all work as options to close space and cancel into Chain Shift to get pressure started.

Keep Away

Byakuya's win condition is getting in - it's usually not in his best interest to keep his opponent away, unless the opponent has oppressive point-blank pressure or he is trying to time them out. As mentioned in the neutral section, he can opt to maintain tip 2B/5B spacing via back walk and extended strings, and punish his opponent for overextending into those button ranges. Web sets (214X), while slow on their startup, are very effective at closing out ranges opponents want to enter to try to hit Byakuya once they're out. Opponents will have to choose between dashblocking into them, hitting them and risk getting whiff punished, or clashing a projectile with them. This is particularly useful against Seth, who doesn't have an easy to use projectile to police the ranges that Byakuya would be inclined to set webs in neutral against.

Offense

Byakuya's strongest offensive trait is his massive normal cancel windows. Switching blockstring timings between rebeats, no cancels, and stagger timings make his standard pressure very scary to mash on, especially when any hit leads into a web setup and corner, if the opponent is not there already.

Okizeme

lead up enders and tools to help in keeping pressure on opponents waking up

Gimmicks

tools that have situational, limited, or questionable usage

Defense

how to defend against, break, or escape pressure

Reversal Tools

tools that are invincible, strong, or fast at getting out of pressure/okizeme

Option Selects

inputs that cover multiple situations

Counter Strategies

Learn what pressure is fake, and what air normals to shield

Byakuya can be a visually intimidating character at first glance, but on block his normals and their large cancel windows are the problem not his specials. Common fake pressure would include:

• 236X is often fake without CS. 236A is -6 on block and 236B is -7, if Byakuya extends with 6X he finishes at even greater frame disadvantage. Alternatively Byakuya can use 236X-4X, however a universal punish to this option is to dash block during the web set and then punish.
• Make sure to shield air web normals (214A~A~A/B/C) not only are his only options Mid or High, shielding these normals stops Byakuya from inputting another normal until he lands and can allow you to punish him. The A and C normal can only be punished by 5f or faster options.
• Both j.2C and j.2[C] will lose out to shield. Shield the second to last hit of j.2C, take note that j.2C is only plus if the last hit connects late. j.2[C] is a telegraphed move, whilst only one of its hits need to land to potentially reward Byakuya with advantage, shielding only one of the hits will give Byakuya additional landing recovery. If Byakuya relies on j.2[C] to start pressure, play patient and shield it to shut it down.
• j.C is -5 on shield when done instantly from an Assault, be wary that it's +6 on block however.

Force neutral to play out where Byakuya is uncomfortable

• Patience is a strong tool for a Byakuya player, a large part of his approach involves building grd and dashblocking until he's in midrange and his normals are at their strongest. Whilst normals like 2B are powerful tools at the right range their large recovery windows make them easier to whiff punish. Where possible avoid playing Byakuya at his strongest range, an example technique is to shimmy at the tiprange of his normals to try and bait him into whiffing a poke however don't overuse this as Byakuya could instead use 66B to catch you out.
• Don't give Byakuya air control, letting him jump in on you succesfully gives an insane amount of mileage to him. Practice anti-airing his air normals, and make sure your aware of what air normals you should be shielding.
• Guard thrust (214D) can be effective in this matchup, in general resetting to neutral where possible is powerful agaisnt Byakuya as he thrives during blockstrings especially as a strong Byakuya can turn any hitconfirm into a web setup with the meter.
• Byakuya's air to airs lack horizontal hitboxes, and his 3C anti-air suffers from it's 13f startup and late invulnerability. Alternatively 5B is another of Byakuya's anti-air options however it lacks head invuln and is only an AA due to it's good hitbox. If your opponent has a weak anti-air game your jump-ins can gain you a lot of mileage. Byakuya alternatively can try to anti-air with 236C, however it's quite a linear reversal and can be jumped or assaulted over if Byakuya mistimes the input.
• Generally experimenting with different jump arcs and using assaults can cause issues for Byakuya as he often needs to be pre-emptive to make his anti-airs work, use this to your advantage as it can cause a Byakuya player to have a harder time implementing moves like 66B or 66C as Byakuya will have to play more defensive to handle your jump-ins.
• Characters with good range and/or projectiles can be a nightmare for Byakuya, however don't get overly cocky. 66C is a fairly strong anti-zoner tool with 15f of startup, and it can easily catch players who throw out fireballs or pokes too recklessly. If Byakuya whiffs a 66C or gets it blocked he can commit to CS to keep himself safe. It's also important with some characters, like Hyde, to not constantly throw out fireballs as it can result in feeding GRD to Byakuya.

Don't be too scared of web pressure

Whilst Byakuya's post 623C web setups can seem obscenely oppresive, every character in the cast has options to handle them. Researching web pressure is critical to understanding the matchup and a good portion of your lab time for this MU should be focused on finding options to deal with webs. A strong byakuya will pay attention to what counterplay you pick and try to play around it. It's important to remember that the situation still favours byakuya, especially when in the corner, but you being in a web setup does not gaurentee a free hit for Byakuya.

• Check the combo section to find some common Web oki for both midscreen and corner situations so you can recreate them in the lab.
• Remember that webs only dissapear if Byakuya is hit or either player techs a throw, if Byakuya blocks a move pay attention to any webs still on screen as they can hit you during a blockstring.
• Webs cannot Meaty on your wakeup. A 'meaty' web has effectively 14f startup as a result. This is because when you come into contact with a web, it does not immediately connect.

External Links

Overview

Strategy

Starter Guide

Combos

Matchups

Frame Data

Data

#UNI2_BY