Melty Blood/MBTL/Saber/Strategy
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Under Construction
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Neutral
Getting started
Saber has noticeable advantage when playing around keepout and whiff punishing as main parts of her gameplan. Her rushdown game is mediocre by itself, but has great potential when used sparingly as openings to do so appear.
Basic gameplan:
-> Try staying slightly outside of standard range of opponent to threaten whiff punishes with 5B, 2B, 2C or divekick, or keep them out of your space with ground normals, rekka and j.A/j.B if they decide to get into your face after seeing you not go further in.
-> Superjump into neutral jump, short ground dashes, jump forward are great non-committal movement options to base her gameplan around.
-> Dash into rekka can be used as an aggressive space control option aimed at putting up a wall of hitboxes and denying that space to your opponent.
-> Superjump j.[C] and run up/under 2C are high risk high reward rushdown options aimed at cannonballing into opponent's face and scoring a big counterhit or starting your pressure. It's better to look for openings like opponent whiffing something big that you can't whiff punish outright but can take that time to get in, or using them sparcely when opponent doesn't expect them.
-> IAD can be used in footsies range to go over low pokes and punish them.
-> Characters with strong zoning and keepout like Vlov, Roa, Aoko, DAN, Warc, PCiel, Ciel and Mario can and will zone you out of preferred spacing, so there are a few changes needed to approach playing neutral against them in a better way.
Basic gameplan changes against zoners:
-> Try to stick closer to them on roundstart but avoid putting yourself into early air-to-air scrambles. Saber's lack of 5f air normal hurts her greatly in that regard.
-> When playing such matchups, try patiently approaching with the same non-committal options backed by occasional shielding of projectiles in neutral.
-> Try getting into opponent's zoning blindspots. These depend on what options opponent has out of their current position. For example, Warc's air projectiles cover a 45 degree angle below her, so you can run under her and score an anti-air or landing recovery punish if Warc player is not careful.
Offence
Okizeme
Air throw ender
Standard combo ender for Saber. Gives access to spaced safejumps with j.C and j.[C].
Post-wakeup MD frame data if you did a safejump:
3C > AT is +2
3C > AT > 7 j.[C] is -2
3C > jA > AT is +1
3C > jB > AT is +1
3C > jC > AT is +1
3C > jB > jC > AT is +1
3C > jA > jB > AT is +0
1. 3C>air buttons>AT into neutral jump drift back j.C. Standard safejump option. Can be spaced to be safe against heat and EX command grab. Stays plus if the opponent MD's on wakeup. Not safe from shield BC, so you'll have to RPS in case they shield your safejump.
2. 3C>AT 7j.[C]. Alternative safejump. Safe against shield BC followup, but gets punished by EX grab reversals due to j.[C]'s additional landing recovery on whiff. Has a lot of pushback so your only gapless options after it are 5C and 236X rekka starter, but still provides a lot of utility and huge reward on hit.
214C hard knockdown ender
Alternative combo ender that leads into more mixup options.
1. Walk forward -> forward jump left/right. Can be really hard to see because the window to get autotimed meaty on either side is very small and there's no noticeable difference in it.
Ground throw
1. 236B~66/236A~A framekill rekka high/low. Which rekka framekill to go for is up to preference. Options are as follows:
-> 2A meaty with OS of your choice(2A>2AD shield OS, 2A>2C to catch backdashes, etc.)
-> rekka 3 overhead. Requires meter to convert or stay safe if blocked.
-> Throw. Leads into the same situation.
You can also consider doing IAD as a high reward low crushing option against shields and delay techs.
2. IAD>8 falling j.C safejump. Simple safejump, manually timed.
3. 66>IAD>dj falling j.C safejump. Simple safejump. Autotimed but strict on the input, so it might take some practice.
4. Coinjump 2A left/right mixup. Coinjump means doing a superjump after a normal jump with very slight delay so that the direction of the first jump can't be seen. [8]>2~8 is the input. You need to do the superjump about ~8-12f after the first jump for it to work properly.
-> Immediate neutral jump gives same-side if done correctly.
-> Slightly delayed neutral jump gives cross-up if done correctly.
