Overview
A full on guide for Shaolin, the monkey wannabe.
Getting a grasp of what Qi stance actually is
I will explain what Qi stance is and what it can do,it is simular to Highlander’s Offensive Stance, but you cannot move. The lights that are better for you to use in qi stance is the top light because it stuns, and the side lights are slow enough to react for an easy light parry. All the Qi stance lights has crushing counterstrike, Just like warden but in all directions. External crushing counter strike is possible too, but you will have to launch your light in the same side of the enemys attack.
For example, a kensei throws a left heavy on external, you will have to be throw your Qi light on left guard. for top attacks, you gotta use top guard. You cannot be punished after a guy parries your CC because you used another guys attack to cc so the guy that locked on to you can parry, the cc cant be punished with pk zone either.
Launching attacks from Qi Stance
Just noting this here: Qi Top heavy feinting back to Qi stance was removed.
So, heres the cool part, launching attacks from qi stance, like i said above, lights have cc properties.
Now lets move on to heavies, They track dodges (Undodgable) and is feintable, so you can either throw the qi side heavy, let it go or feint it into a guradbreak. The top heavy throws out a 40 damage unblockable, and which is also feintable, Cant be soft feinted, By hitting the guardbreak in Qi stance, you can throw out a kick which you can throw out a guarenteed 20 damage poke, a 40 damage parryable smash, or an unblockable stick sweep via hitting Guardbreak which you can throw 2 lights and go to qi after that.You can also go into qi during Light heavy chain, And you can throw out double lights into qi stance/ triple lights after the stick sweep.
Heres a screenshot of a Qi crushing counterstrike. Your Qi crushing counterstrike does 35 damage.
And here is a screenshot of the sweep
Fighting from Neutral
By neutral, i mean when nobody is throwing attacks, like at the start of a duel when you both locked on.
So, fighting from neutral is an important key of winning, you have reflex guard, and most of shaolins good attacks are from Qi stance, so you will have to miss your attacks, basiclly doing backstep lights or heavies in order to miss the attack, then you can go into Qi stance by holding the attack key that you were throwing.
Backstep attacks are launching a light/heavy while holding the button that you use to move backwards.
But, you cannot just rely on Qi stance all the time, right? so you gotta throw some neutral lights too
Shaolin has triple side lights that stuns the enemy, you gotta hit light once then wait for a moment then hit the other 2 lights fast. You can also throw out 2 side lights then go into Qi stance by holding the second light like the third light chain, in this case you only throw 2 and you hold light on the second hit, if you throw too slow, it becomes the 2 hit light chain. Shaolin also has a pretty bad dodge heavy, can be used to counter bashes. (Not always) And your forward dodge heavy attack can also be feinted.
Upon guardbreak, your 800 ms top heavy will be guarenteed, a fat 25 damage for the enemy to eat.
Opening up Turtles
Yup, those people that spams block/parry, im going to explain on how you open them up.
So, I tend to whiff light/heavy to get into qi, if the enemy is an assassin or kensei, i will throw some qi side heavies because they tend to use dodge attacks, and its an easy 30 damage, its just pretty slow, besides that, i would throw top light and also mix them up with Qi top heavy feints. If the strategy above doesnt work for me, i start putting in kicks to force them to start doing dodge attacks, launch an attack right after you get into Qi stance and they will most likely dodge attack/light attack after eating a few of your hits, then crushing counterstrike kicks in. You cannot dodge from Qi stance like above, and the side heavies dont have dodge properties, so you will have to either crushing counterstrike, or you exit qi stance, perhaps hit a few deflects considering dodge attacks are easy parries and deflects. Just a note, you can deflect undodgable attacks.
Qi Mixups to confuse opponents
This isnt to be confused with the Opening turtles section, this section is all about qi mixups, i was talking about neutral earlier.
So, once you get into Qi stance, mind games are about to begin, you should throw more qi side heavies if your opponent is an assassin or kensei, of course, they will start to be only blocking or parrying, even worse, deflects. So you can feint into guardbreak, its pretty useful against kensei, i dont recommend feinting into guardbreak against zerks and orochis because they would throw out dodge lights during your guardbreak. So sometimes i just feint my heavies and see what they do.
For lights, i only throw top lights because side lights are even slower than Nobushi’s lights, and i use side lights for crushing counterstrike, you would get guardbroken during Qi stance and cant cgb, so i would either wait 1-3 seconds or throw out an attack right away, its better to use less kicks against assassins and kenseis, and raider, because raider would gb you out, in fact, most characters can gb you out of the kick after dodging it. I basiclly get the opponent to start thinking by throwing neutral stuff sometimes, then going into Qi stance, feint a top heavy into guardbreak or double lights into Qi stance, once your opponent is busy thinking, he wont be focusing much on kicks, most shaolins just use kick so they would almost always dodge the kick, so you have to get him busy and then start throwing kicks, i either poke or sweep, as said before, sweep guarentees a triple/double light so i go into qi stance, throw either a kick or side heavy, then i actually use the top heavy for easy damage, because they would also be watching for top heavies, so as said above, you gotta mix em up.
An easy 40 damage on his head, hurts alot for most heroes, espically you are already mid fight.
For fighting zerks after a kick, you can throw a top heavy feinted to bait out his dodge attack, easy deflect/parry.
If you have any questions about the mix-ups then feel free to ask me in the comments.
Applying pressure when Out of stamina
You heard it, out of stamina, best way to throw in pressure.
When your opponent is out of stamina, he will most likely only block or dodge since he cannot feint his heavies.you can throw out backstep heavies and do a qi mixup, or light then a delayed light in another direction.
And here comes our favorite part:
The max out of stamina punish, basiclly, after you parry or gb throw someone out of stamina, he falls on the floor, and you can throw down as much damage as you can during that time, that is a punish.
The oos punish for shaolin is:
Top heavy- 25 damage
then go into Qi stance and top heavy
Top heavy- 40 damage
Doing a total of 65 damage.
For heavy parries, you get a 12 damage light.
For light parries, you get a 25 damage top heavy.
For the max oos punish, its only guarenteed on back throws and parries.
Because you get hyper armour when getting up, you will have to time the top heavy right to land a hit where your opponent doesnt get hyper armor and guardbreak you.
End of the guide for now.
Well, thats basiclly it for shaolin, you have basiclly learned what shaolin is about. Good luck poking people out there! Be sure to throw a few of those stars above and maybe even add it to your favorites!