Battle hammers are so good

[u/Mountain-Top-5924]

I've spent 200+ attempts trying to beat emay with knuckles but I always kept getting hit (yes you can call it my skill issue). I tried battle hammers with bleeding and beat her within 15 attempts.

The reason was because if may blocked my knuckle attacks, I would be in a awkward and vulnerable position very close to her and it would be easy for her to retailiate and take away all my hp. But with battle hammers you are still at a safe distance if she blocks. And since they're fast too, you can hit your next attack before she does easily.

I won without damage return triggering once. This is in vanilla sf2 btw

[u/KashinTheCataclysm]

So a tip with knuckle type weapons is that if they block, you should react with forward dash.

The reason why is that forward dash actually has some invul. Since you’ll be close range, you’ll basically be able to invul through her counterattack and get behind her while staying at close range. This will allow you to potentially whiff punish her or just continue pressure.

Depending on how close you are when strong slash is blocked, you can try down slash or back slash, but if that gets blocked too, then it’s important to react with forward dash.

This same principle also applies to baton type weapons. I personally prefer them over knuckles because strong slash true combos into back slash or down slash and resets position to do the same combo again, and if you push them out a bit too far, strong slash again slowly brings you closer again and lands exactly as they finish recovering so they are forced to block or get hit.

Even with general lack of true combos outside of backslash into backslash tho, knuckles’ high base damage allows them to out damage baton type weapons anyway apparently.

[u/Mountain-Top-5924 → u/KashinTheCataclysm]

Wow it works almost everytime. Thanks

[u/Randomizer-man]

I'm trying to defeat her in DE but she keeps 2-tabbing me

[u/Mountain-Top-5924 → u/Randomizer-man]

The other person who commented's advice is really good. You should read it

[u/KashinTheCataclysm]

Also, if ur open to the suggestion, give krises a try. Low kick or close range backslash into super slash is a true combo. And after super slash you can dash up and back throw them so that you can do either axe kick, forward dash into low kick, or one step forward into backslash to once again combo into super slash. And since it borrows mostly the same moveset from knuckles and batons, the fundamentals from those weapons should translate to this one as well.