Tough Love Arena/Onion/Matchups

Onion

Overview

Combos

Strategy / Counterstrategy

Matchups

Full Frame Data

Matchups

• This section is subject to changing due to new strategies/discoveries.
• Take this matchup advice with a grain of salt as how a matchup "should be played" is largely subjective and this section lacks a large amount of competitive expertise.

Noodle

Neutral

• Mix up how you deal with Soup.
• Loop for habits with Whip. Hopkick > RC is a useful preemptive punish on Whip.
• Walk and block them to the corner.

Offense

• Try to keep the corner for as long as possible.
• Sweep Hopkick can be useful for baiting out Frenzy or keeping your turn during pressure.
• Pay attention to what Noodle does after a spaced Sweep.

Defense

• Block Soup oki most of the time if not all the time.

Beef

Neutral

• Use the threat of Sweep as a whiff punish to Heavy Punch to get closer to Beef.
• Empty Hop is a relatively noncommital answer to Lemon as long a Beef doesn’t have meter or if Onion is far enough away.
• Mixup when you try to walk in on Beef, when you try to whiff punish, and when you try to make hard callouts.

Offense

• Keep your offense as varied as possible.
• Stagger pressure is useful for beating out Parry.

Defense

• Be ready to react to Gutpunch > Lemon.

Onion

• It's a mirror match.

Neutral

• Play footsies well
• Don’t use Jump very much if at all.

Offense

• Keep your offense as varied as possible.
• Stagger pressure is useful for beating out Parry.

Defense

• Sweep is a useful counterpoke versus overextensions.

Rice

Neutral

• Walk and block to push Rice to the corner.
• Jump is useful if you can space it right outside of Rice’s 5L range.

Offense

• Be ready to cover Teleport as a read.
• Pay attention to what Rice does after a spaced Sweep.
• Meterless Hopkick is useful for staying in versus Rice.

Defense

• Look for when they try to use frametraps and punish with Parry.

Pork

Neutral

• Use the threat of Sweep as a whiff punish to Heavy Punch to get closer to Pork.
• Mixup when you try to walk in on Pork, when you try to whiff punish, and when you try to make hard callouts.

Offense

• Use tight frame traps to limit Pork’s ability to reliably Chop out of pressure.

Defense

• Be unpredictable when you have to guess.
• Leverage Parry and your walkspeed to get out of block pressure.

Garlic

Neutral

• It’s a Spice ditto, so having good footsies will be important.
• Don’t use Jump very much if at all.

Offense

• Stagger pressure can be useful for beating out Backflip as a whole.
• Keep your pressure varied.

Defense

• Be unpredictable to make getting control easier.
• Sweep is useful for stuffing out most options involving Dash as long as Garlic is spaced out.

Resources

Onion TLA Combo Flowchart

Onion Combo Guide