Matchup: Midori vs Geiger

Curious how other players see this matchup. Personally I find it impossible against good Geiger at this point. I am a new player though, so I’m hopeful there’s some options I’m not aware of (though Thelo gave me a long list of things I could be doing and none seem to help -_-)

Geiger seems to be able to do either of 2 things really well.

  1. He can just throw gears at you and sit back for a bit. You can Axe jump the gears if you’re far enough away and slowly close in, at some point he’s in the corner. At this point I don’t know what the options are even, Midori is close but not quite close enough to hit with his normals. Geiger will probably start using the delayed gears to prevent jump ins. Should you try to jump on reaction he can still just Flash Kick you out, if Midori jumps on prediction he either gets hit by the delayed gear anyway. At this point I still don’t know how Midori can put on pressure. The only 2 things that seem to get Geiger hit is predicting a normal timed gear piece with a jump in or predicting a backfist and hit with sweep. But as far as actively applying pressure goes, I don’t see Midori’s options.

  2. What I really find more hard to deal with is the when Geiger just throws a delayed gear and walks up behind it and just applies pressure that way. He can still air flash kick and you can’t jump the gear without him hitting you because he can decide the spacing.
    There’s also this 4 or 5 hit block string he seemingly can do where he let’s his jump and gear hit you one after the other so that he can jump again while Midori is still blocking from the gear. As far as I can tell he gets a guaranteed chip damage at no risk, since parry doesn’t work because of the gear part of the combo. So he can just apply pressure/“rush down” since Midori can’t contest his jump in or parry.

On top of that Midori dragon seems to be even worse than normal form. Suddenly you can’t jump gears anymore cause you don’t have the floaty jump so Geiger can just Flash kick if you get too close. If you walk towards and block to gain ground you take at least a few damage from chip alone and even then the block stun form the gear is enough so you can’t tail sweep if he constantly throws in gear, so by the time you can tail sweep he can block and then just throw another gear at you.
You can’t use the armour throw because by the time it reaches Geiger he just Flash kicks last second and since it’s off ground you can’t throw and he gets two hits in. You can’t headbut because gears, you can’t grab from airborne because gears and flash kick.

On the other hand Geiger’s super works great for him, he can get out of the corner, should he ever need to, or walk under an axe kick while you close in (not sure how that works exactly, since I don’t see Geiger do it that often, it “looks” like with proper spacing he should be able to just punish the jump by coming out just behind Midori and then combo, but idk if that’s actually possible.
I also don’t know about the Air super, since I don’t remember ever seeing that used against me in that matchup, but it’s probably just another slightly worse version of the delayed gear pressure described earlier.

All in all I find this the most frustrating and unfun matchup I’ve encountered so far. I don’t know if it’s a newby problem or if it’s actually that bad, but it feels like no button Midori has does anything unless Geiger screws up first somehow while on the other hand Geider has 4 to 6 buttons that either make it hard to get in or apply pressure or make it so he can get out a sticky situation.

Anyway, curious to hear how others experience it and what the opinion is on of much it favours one side over the other

I think Geiger’s air super is pretty good against dragon form, to stall. Just need to find a safe time to place it, so you can force Midori to block it or run away. (That said, I need to play against really good Midoris who will punish my unsafe air supers, so I can get a feel for when it’s reasonable to use.)

As Geiger I find this to be a fairly good matchup, but man, that steerable axe kick is strong! And I feel like Midori has some jumping normal options that beat anti-air backfist, so unless I use Time Stop, his fairly far jumps are pretty good. (And yes, he can punish various far jumps with Time Stop -> Flash Gear. Though if you empty jumped, maybe you can use air B after he Time Stops?)

Nerf Heikai plz
too OP

3 Likes

One tactic I like to use (and should be better since they fixed Flash Gears hitbox) is to jump and butt stomp over Geiger. If he doesn’t time his flash gear correctly, you’ll cross him up and hit him. Or maybe you’ll eat his gear meter as you cross over.
If he doesn’t flash gear and has to block, you’re in! Now you can actually do stuff to him.

Another way of getting in is empty jumping over his gear to juuust outside of Flash Gear’s range. If you do it right, they’ll Flash Gear and whiff, and you get to throw punish!
If they get wise to that and stop Flash Gearing… then jump a tiny bit closer, make them block Keep them guessing!
Another one is to jump over a gear, then use a very low to the ground air flying kick. This can catch them off guard quite often, as they might not be able to react with Flash Gear in time.

My top tip for Dragon Form: Never enter it unless you just knocked him down. Because Dragon Form is really only useful in this matchup for it’s fantastic mixup potential. Trying to navigate neutral with a massive hitbox is very difficult, to say the least.
If you really must try to get in as a dragon, try jumping over gears, then tail walking forwards while he can’t throw a new one. Then Tail Swipe when he tries to throw one! This will get a much needed knockdown, and you can try to cross up with the headbutt (though losing the knockdown on headbutt is super sad).

It is quite a difficult match for Midori, but the number one thing to remember: Patience! Geiger thinks he has all the time in the world. You have to show him time is on your side.