Advantage

It's no exaggeration to say that Terry's advantage state is top tier. He can easily convert stray hits into high damaging combos due to his special cancelling mechanic.

is infamous jab jab Power Dunk starts with a frame 3 move and converts into almost 30% dmg. Not only that, it also works at pretty much all percents and even kills at reasonable percents.

If your opponent is very good at SDI, you can still switch it up by going for Rising Tackle instead. It deals only slightly less damage, but kills off the top, making it a reliable confirm no matter what part of the stage you happen to be at. Bonus points for landing this on a platform.

But all that is just his most basic BnB, refer to the combo section for more.

Terry's advantage doesn't stop after a combo though, most of his finishers send at an angle, that allows Terry to continue his pressure. Opponents are usually stuck in hitstun long enough for Terry to reposition himself to catch their landings or starting ledge traps.

It's not uncommon for opponents to skip straight to kill percents before being able to finally reset neutral.

When comboing opponents, Terry should take note of their escape habits. Do they like to jump, air dodge or mash a button?

While Terry has plenty of true combos, mixing up into non true frame traps can allow for resets or even earlier kills.

The most important check that Terry should do early in the match/set is to see if the opponent knows the SDI to escape jj xx PD (hard in). If they do, you'll need to go for jj xx RT instead or risk losing your advantage state from them falling out mid combo. If they don't, however, you can set up kills at 80 near the ledge with jj xx csPD.

When you chase after your combo finishers, you should make sure that you have enough distance to react to and avoid your opponent's panic options. Doing so will allow you to find gaps more easily to further extend your advantage state for another combo. But most importantly, it will minimize the risk of getting reversed and losing your turn. You already got your combo damage in and will have a better stage position, even if you don't (over)extend for another one.

Example

As airborne opponents cannot shield, Terry can make great use of his sword like disjoints to trap their landings.

Grounded coil RT will iframe through pretty much any aggressive button that your opponent tries to land with. Once you have made them respect the option they'll either have to air dodge or use a movement option (if they have one) to avoid it. This essentially creates a 50/50 situation where you can instead go for something like a down tilt to cover the air dodge lag.

Shield/Parry is another important option to cover aggressive landings. Shield also allows you to transition into SDA which has upper body iframes.

Up air can also be used for its fast hitbox, but the low active frames require precise timing/spacing.

To cover their landing horizontally, Terry can use dash attack, cBK or CS, all of which can be extended with a preceding lPW.

A cornered opponent no longer has the ability to freely space their own moves nor can they easily space around your options anymore. The best position for Terry to take advantage of this is slightly out of roll distance.

This will give you enough time to react to your opponent's escape attempts in most matchups. Use backdash and back walk to create whiffs, coil RT or double jump up air will cover their jump crossups. If they stay in the corner you can setup lPW into pivot forward tilt, tkPD or simply see how they deal with it.

Poking with forward tilt can either safely reduce their shield health and setup for a poke/break or just hit them for good damage.

If you happen to have Go, lPW into PG is really scary when you can't escape backwards.

Being cornered also makes them much more likely to shield, which Terry has a lot of tools to pressure with.

Special cancels give Terry natural mixups on shield. As you can cancel at any time after hitting shield, you can essentially create an arbitrary gap for frame traps.

Out of the cancelable moves, jab 1, down tilt and ftilt are the most potent ones. Jab 1 and down tilt are both -6 and can be mixed up into a tick throw, especially with jab 1 since the threat of jab 2 will usually dissuade the opponent from mashing an option.

Down tilt into jab 1 is pretty much free shield damage against characters with no fast out of shield option (<f9). It will also catch spot dodge and roll in if you hold jab.

Forward Tilt has range, is disjointed and deletes a third of the total shield health. Not only is it +11 on cancel, it also has considerable shield pushback making it pretty safe even if not cancelled. Up tilt is similar in that regard but has much less range. However it is better at covering jump at close range.

Cancelling forward Tilt into CS is a potent shield poke, with some characters even getting poked from a full shield.

Terry's aerials when spaced correctly are also safe on shield and tack on additional damage to make pokes or breaks easier.

In general, you should use immediate cancels if they like to buffer out of shield and intermediate normals like jab 1, down tilt, forward tilt and up tilt if they hold.

Refer to the combo section for shield break and poke setups.

On Overcommitting
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