A little write-up on M1 Mugg vs JT at Phoenix Down LB R3

M1 at Old Chaos Shrine was me running grounded EX + BRV boost on dodge & block, but the latter fell apart a bit too easily. We then approached very cautiously, I don't think we landed a hit for the first minute. It did not reward me that much when AST meter decay kicked in. Perhaps I should've striked out OCS in favor of WoD...

JT catched on with my brv boost on dodge antics real quick, so that didn't work out too well.

I got the ex mode with relative ease, as I won the first three core races. My EX mode trigger did not pay off though, I expected us clash (Stream vs. Heaven's Light) and get AST punished, so I attempted to retaliate with the EX mode as we clashed. No hits were landed during that time either. :(

Meanwhile JT got the ex mode two times, the first time he landed the Heartless Angel on me, but without assist to follow up on. It was enough to ruin my time spent Jecht Blocking and dodging for easy bravery boosts. :\
Second time was no dice though, I attempted stayed close enough to him to not hit me with Sudden Cruelty, but not provide Heartless Angel adequate time to do the dirty work. And yet, he almost got it, still!

I screwed up most of my combos, not getting an hp when I could afford to spend meter or when JT didn't have meter to escape. However, I did get my LV2 change combo mistimings right and usually got away with no stagger or hitting JT's assist (which was Jecht in this matchup). To be honest, I don't remember how I landed all the HP hits anymore...

He ended up abusing chase a whole lot more than what I expected him to. In fact, he could have ended a match after 8 or so minutes when he down chase brv'd me to the ground and followed with the dash, but didn't get his Jecht assist out. Part of me thinks he thought Jecht assist would not hit me, because we actually landed on the uh... stairs (?) right next to the slope. It would have been a waste of meter for JT to have his assist spawn on the lower stair and whiff it altogether, and at that point either one of us could take the match off the next one or two hits, so there was that.

The match ended with me landing a LV1 Stream "out of blue", finished it Jecht Beam, when JT still had a bar of assist to escape. For whatever reason he did not react to it (in time?), but it was basically the beginning of the end, as you saw from the subsequent matches. A major shift in build to not only make his change from Oblivion to Godspeed redundant (why would you use that move against BBoD+G...?), but stimulate a bit of safer aggression. It paid off. o/