I haven't posted in too long so I'll talk abotu something I (think I) know a lot about. Makoto gets a lot of flack for being random. I think that goes a long way in itself to show that Makoto can make people feel like they can't THINK their way out of her offense. That is in part true for every mixup, but because Makoto can get a lot out of a single mixup it feels like this perpetual loop. One of the things that seems to help my play is to think of everything as a mixup.

In the previous Makoto strategy post I talked about getting in. It was a piece of text I had written a long time before I posted it and I don't know how much has changed exactly. Looking at the options I put down you can look at dashing in as a mixup with a lot of outcomes. You're 'mixing up' a dash with a delayed dash or with a Hayate. The same goes for jumping in, guess ony our opponent's most likely reaction and choose the option that counters it. That's all I'll say about getting close for now.

A strong point of Makoto's mixups is that many of them lead to another mixup. Landing an EX Oroshi and you can mix up again. For a regular Hayate, same deal. For an EX Hayate there's some character specific followups that again lead to another mixup. Instant EX Tsurugi, more knockdown action.

Makoto has many places where you can turn your failed guess around into more win. For example by parrying after your Oroshi gets blocked. More frame neutral situations like this happen all the time. If someone jumps out of your tick > Karakusa, depending on the tick and the strength of the Karakusa you will recover to parry any jump-in they might attampt (character specific).

Some tactics I'd like to share today are the following: When you're playing SA2 you want to be on your side of the screen to land the super combo. After an EX Oroshi or EX Tsurugi, you have enough time to jump over your opponent and have them all of hte sudden be on 'your' side of the screen. Yun and Yang stand up rather quickly in which case you'll have to be quick about it. The nice thing about this is also that people buffering a DP will have to wait longer and so players that suck at adapting will have a hard time doing so. Another tactic would be to use a crouching LP at the end of your dash as a tick to shorten the recovery of the dash. Nothing special? True, a ton of Makoto players do this, but I say specifically a CROUCHING jab because you can input a Karakusa by doing DF, D, DB, B+K. So sticking the stick in the diagonal down helps this form of execution. I prefer it over the standing jab and F+jab. Against Chun parrying low (then buffering Karakusa or what have you) after a connected Hayate is a strong miuxup option due to how many Chun players try to beat your followup with a crouching jab (2-framer). Against Ken this can be useful in three scenarios where either he tries to low jab/short you, does jab DP, does fierce DP without super canceling. In the last case the second and third hit will hit but not knock down.

Against Yun I have found that dashing is not as risky because of how confident Yun players are that they don't need to stop it. Dashing into a shoulder or croushing strong spam looks like it should deter you from dashing, but it's not as bad as all that. Sure, try to not dive into a 90% meter Yun, but when he's building meter and playing coy, have at him. If he jumps and divekicks as you dash it will be shallow and he won't be able to combo after it unless you don't block.

Another offensive tool I'd like to mention: Blocking. Yes, that's correct. Block at impasses where you are expected to keep attacking to observe your opponent. Not only will this give you information. But you can get lucky and block a reversal super, a DP or just sit there as they do a neutral jump which you can then easily AA.