Why Johnny is the fairest character in the game

I'm going to explain why there's no reason you should be losing to Johnny, by covering how terrible he is at the three core stages of the game: Offense, Defense, and Neutral.



Preface: I am going to ignore everything about Johnny being at mist finer level 2/3. If you are good and outplay him he will never have landed a coin on you. If you let Johnny get coins on you, you are not applying the following theory properly. Even so, the final part will explain that it still doesn't matter.









Part 1: Johnny has no mixup



TK Mist Finer Level 1 - completely reactable. You can see his sword come out and still react block. Even if your defense is bad it does no damage, just ignore it.



TK Mist Finer Level 2/3 - completely reactable. You can react to him entering mist stance. Just block it and laugh at him being back to level 1.



Throw - Just jump on reaction to his forward dash or fuzzy jump. He should never be close enough to you to throw without dashing because FD'ing his normals pushes him back to half screen.







Part 2: Johnny's pressure is all fake



Johnny has no legitimate way to get close to you.



Dash - reactable. Just jab him out of it.



6K - not only reactable, but its basically a suicide move. just hit him out of it, or block, since its punishable on block.



2H - Just IB it and option select fuzzy forward jump back airthrow every single time. If he does mist finer, just react (see Part 1).



Walk Forward - Hit him.



Coin - Johnny cannot spare any coins to use for pressure. Doing so will mean he will run out before he can kill you. Also very reactable.



Air Dash - React.



Mist Cancel gives him frame advantage, but not enough to walk forward back to the same spot he started. He will always be moving backwards even if he is +. Meaning he must do one of the above actions or he will eventually lose his turn in which case you win.





Now that you've read Part 1 and Part 2, you should realize that you're only getting hit by Johnny if you're not looking at the screen.







Part 3: Johnny has no defensive options



If you're not playing Johnny then your character has the unfair mechanics known as mixups and setplay. All you need to do to beat Johnny is touch him once and let momentum carry you, or build up his guard bar then kill him in one combo. To silence those who are still doubtful, here's a list of things you might think are defensive options and why they're not real:



Super: Always punishable if you're not bad. Can be low profiled or jumped over. Requires meter, which he should not have unless you let him hit you somehow (see Part 1).



Dead Angle: See Super



Blitz: See Super. Also, even if Johnny succeeds, he is simply putting himself at disadvantage, since he now must play around his opponent's return blitz mind game, which has higher reward than his (See Part 2 first paragraph).



Mashing: Johnny's defensive normals are all too slow. Only works if opponents are bad.



Blocking: This is also known as delaying the inevitable. Also raises users guard bar, increasing the damage taken next turn.



FD: Gives your opponents more plus frames. Since Johnny's normals suck (see above), opponents can just do infinite blockstrings. Eventually you will run out of meter (See: Blocking).



Backdash: Slow, reactable, easily option selectable while doing infiinite blockstrings (see FD)





Now that you've read Part 3, you should not be losing once you touch him. See Part 4 for how to touch him.







Part 4: Johnny has no neutral



His pokes are awful. They lead to no damage and are terrible on whiff. Johnny must read in order to make contact with you. All you need to do is FD brake and whiff punish him. If you're not doing that it means he's just outreading you (Re-read entire page). The only normal that is not whiff punishable is 5K, which is getting nerfed in Rev2 so that it can be whiff punished.



He cannot even move around to adjust his spacing, so you should never have difficulty outspacing Johnny.



As mentioned, both forward and backdash are reactable. He cannot even approach from the air because Zweihander has 50f of startup and you can simply airthrow or hit him before he can do it, unless you're bad at reacting.



He can YRC, but all you need to do is YRC back. You should have more meter than him from infinite blockstrings or punishing fraudulent pressure.



Eventually all Johnny can do is walk backwards into a corner, at which point if you're not already on him, see Part 3.





Part 5: Even if you fucked up it still doesn't matter



No one is perfect. Maybe somehow you stood still and let him coin you twice and also let him hit you again, so he did a full combo on you.



Well, luckily, because Johnny has limited coins which do forced proration (65% iirc), he can't even kill you properly even if you eat every single "mixup" (See Part 1). Treasure Hunt can give him the coins needed to kill you, but only if he has meter. We're assuming you made enough mistakes to give him 50 meter. If so, you could be fucked, but as long as you block one mixup, you won't die and thus can just follow Part 1/2 into Part 4 into Part 3 to win.

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