Thrill Kill/Cain/Strategy

Cain Overview Strategy Combo Strings

The Basics

Cain is a very powerful character, both with his long ranged special moves able to wall out your opponents and his launching strings converting into very high damage combos, even without the help of a wall. Being able to mix up your special move usage and getting good with his punish, mixup, and corner combos will allow you to be an incredibly annoying character who can two-touch opponents as well as shut down all of your opponent's ways of closing the distance on you.

Smart players will try and bait your zoning tools by doing a dash immediately followed by a block or crouch block. Most of your zoning tools, if blocked, can be punished depending on how close they are to you.

Useful Moves

- Flaming Shoulder Charge: While this move has slow startup, it's your highest damage launcher, it hits mid, travels a fair distance, has a large hitbox, and launches your opponent quite high into the air for easy conversions.

- Fire Eater: This basic fireball is very underrated. It has the fastest startup of any of your projectile attacks, and the slow moving fireball lingers for quite a long time. The only downside is its small range and it's tendency to miss crouching players, even though it hits mid. You'll certainly be using Dragon Breath and Incinerator more, but don't forget this useful little burp.

- Dragon Breath: A long ranged flame jet that launches on hit.

- Incinerator: Your hard-knockdown flame jet. You'll usually use this to end combo strings with as it does great damage when canceled into, but it's range is so long that if an opponent counters the tip of it, they'll whiff their counterattack.

- Flame Stomp: Your low-hitting ranged option. It has a bit of startup, but it completely prevents opponents from using most dash-in attacks or dashing in for an r-cancel punish due to how long it lingers. It's weak to smaller-hurtboxed opponents (like Imp or Dr. Faustus) or characters with very fast dash cooldowns (Oddball or Marukka) dashing diagonally forward at you to dodge it and gain ground. It's real power is being able to cancel to Dragon Breath, which can be a low-to-high hell to block.

- Ball Of Fire: A risky option, but if you attack with it when you suspect your opponent is about to start a combo, it's a great panic button to get out of the corner with. Just know that if it gets low blocked you're in a for a world of hurt.

- Quake Of Fire: This move's startup is immune to any "normal" attack (ones that don't result in a launch or knockdown), so you can flash through certain combos if your opponent is getting too close for comfort and you need to react immediately. Additionally, the ring of fire lasts for quite longer than it appears at the edge of its hitbox, which can trip up opponents who dash in too early to punish your use of the move.

/ - Running Slide: If your opponent is content with just sitting back and waiting for you to mess up somehow, you can press the issue with this running slide, which in some circumstances can convert into a full juggle combo. This is very useful against Tormentor, who is more than happy to store up chain heat while staying out of range of your flame jets. Just like Ball Of Fire, it can be punished if blocked, so don't get too predictable with it.

Punish Combos

These combo strings are used to punish an opponent after they make a mistake. Since they're all mid or high attacks, they cannot be countered after the first hit.

3 hits, 20 damage.

Your best punish combo by far. Your jab has fast 5^f startup, and Flaming Shoulder Charge is your highest damaging launcher. Converts into a 52% juggle mid stage and 68% in the corner.

Mixup Combos

These combo strings are used to get around blocking players by quickly switching between low and high attacks. The downside being doing so opens up opportunities for your opponent to combo break out of the combo every time the string switches from high to low or low to high.

3 hits, 23 damage.

A 5^f low starter against standing players. Very similar to your punish combo, however the Stomach Swipe hits high so this string won't work against crouching players. You can also use this combo to re-stand your opponent after either of your grab attacks.

>

8 hits, 41 damage.

Your crouch killer string. The complete juggle string is here instead of in the juggle extensions section because Flame Stomps's recovery is a bit too long to do your full juggle conversion on.

3 hits, 24 damage.

But like, what if you wanted to use every good single flame jet move in a single combo? With how Flame Stomp crawls along the ground, when Dragon Breath comes out afterwards it can be a complete and total nightmare for your opponent to block. You can even forgo the Incinerator and convert the Dragon Breath into a combo if it hits close enough to you.

Juggle Extensions

This is where Cain really shines. Once you end your combo with a Flaming Shoulder Charge, you can convert into some nasty damage with these bread & butter juggles.

>