The goal of this post is to be as informative as possible about fighting against Raider both in onesies and in team fights. This isn't about weather or not Raider himself is balanced. I am borrowing FH Dojo's info here simply because not everyone likes watching videos as a way to learn. The main reason I wanted to make this thread is specifically because in order to climb the ranks in FH and become a better player you will eventually need to learn how to pair down mix ups. In case you're not familiar with that concept it basically means you're taking actions to reduce as much risk to yourself as possible whilst also beating as many options as possible. You can look at this as making a soft read. Finally before I get into the post here is the video itself both for giving credit sake and also if you're a visual learner. There are time stamps in the description.

General tips and info about Raider: Raider can basically 3 hit chain of any kind from any situation outside of his finishers. During his heavies and zones Raider has 3 options for his mix. He can let his heavy/zone fly, he can soft feint to tap, or he can soft feint to GB. His soft feint to GB nets him 24 damage, his soft feint to tap is 12 damage, his chain zone is 38 and neutral is 24. heavies themselves net anywhere from 24-36. Chip damage for blocking is 3 at the lowest for tap and 7 for a top heavy finisher. These numbers are important to understand so you can partially make a guess on what is and isn't risky for you depending on HP values and stamina bars.

Probably the most important thing to remember not only against Raider himself but when making a read against any hero is to vary up your response. If you're making the same play every time in a response to a mix it makes it incredibly easier for the person in the mix to punish you more harshly. The only other tip that you need to know for what not to do against Raider is you never want to go for an interrupt. This is because if the Raider decides to buffer any of his actions regardless of hitstun he will trade with you and you really don't want to do that.

So the first thing you need to understand is that as far as universal options go against Raider's regular chains go is that no option you do (blocking, parrying dodging) beats more than one option. In regards to parrying your best option is to try and parry the side heavies. This is specifically because eating a storming tap is always going to be better for you since it's only 12 damage versus eating 24 damage or more. Yes you can be caught by a soft feint to GB on wrong parry timing but this is where we start talking about pairing down options. Essentially if you're only focused on side heavy you only have to worry about if he's going to commit or if he soft feints to GB.

You might think "well if he's just repeatedly going for tap i'll just be eating damage." This is true. This is why you have to make the risk to go for a parry on the side heavy. However I will note that when we get into character specific options a lot of them also beat/avoid tap as well. Again it pays to vary up your response but we will get to that later. There's two things left of note in the general section and they're both about his chain zone. The first one is you always want to dodge INTO the chain zone instead of away. The way it's hitbox works makes it nearly impossible to avoid if you dodge away from it. Which leads into the second point, Dodging the chain zone is always something you can do regardless of hitstun and it will always net you a GB if he commits to it. On average the general GB punish is 24. This number is important because Raider gets 24 on a soft feint to GB.

Dodging against his chain mix up (in onesies) is your best option against this mix. It avoids both the committed to zone as well as the tap. Meaning the only thing it loses to is soft feint to GB. Seeing as how your likely punish and his are the same number this means it's always an even risk vs reward. More than that though this makes the mix up again easier for you to deal with. As you only have to worry about the soft feint to GB. So Raider no longer has the advantage here and has to think about what he's doing a bit more.


Character specific options: So here is where we will get into specific options for specific mix ups. I will not be listing every single character because there is considerable overlap, instead I will be listing those options in their own groups and only naming characters based on punishes unique to them alone.

Full block: Any character who has access to full block can punish both his committed to storming tap as well as his opening heavy upon seeing the heavy start up animation. The only counter Raider has to this is soft feint to GB. It is worth mentioning that while this is all true of the neutral mix of a regular heavy it's not true of mid chain heavies. For example Conq has a slow start up for entering his stance so he cannot eat a heavy and then go into full block to beat either tap or chain heavy. Where as someone like Aramusha and BP can. This is something you'll need to learn in regards to match ups.


Superior block: Any character who has access to superior block attacks can beat two options as well. In this case you're superior blocking his side heavies. This option gives a little more than a light's worth of damage but not as much as a heavies like most full blocks usually give. This will beat both his committed to side heavy as well as his soft feint to guard break. It still loses to storming tap but making the right read for this nets you as much damage as tap if not more so it's worth going for occasionally if you have the option. Raider Can make the hard read to feint and parry for a top of 27 damage so it's not entirely without risk. But it's very difficult to do.


Dodge bash: Any character who has access to dodge bash can beat multiple options. You are avoiding the heavy/committed to zone. You're also avoiding the tap from this and him chaining into an attack doesn't matter because you will stuff it. The timing will vary depending on how fast your dodge bash is. Raider doesn't really have an option to counter this as hard feinting to dodge into GB is too slow. He can potentially hard feint on a read to avoid the bash but it's unlikely he'll get a punish out of it. Worth mentioning that if you've eaten a heavy trying to dodge bash is not a safe option anymore.


Dodge attacks: So like dodge bashes dodge attacks cover multiple options in the mix up. However because DA's are not bashes they are subject to more nuanced situations. A lot of people struggle with the fact that Raider can chain into a hyper armored attack on whiff. What you can do here really varies depending on your character. Some can just block the follow up HA heavy while others cannot. Kyoshin as an example can block the follow up heavy but PK can't. This is just dependent on your character's recoveries for their DA's so it's match up knowledge you need to know.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is hitstun. If Raider has put you in hitstun via a heavy DA's who start 300ms into the dodge will be beaten by Raider soft feinting into GB. Additionally Raider can soft feint to GB if you decide to wait it out after DAing his mix up to potentially catch you in recovery. This would require strong match up knowledge for the raider as well. Though the one chain you don't have to worry about with DA's is from his neutral zone. If you eat his opening zone you can still DA his entire mix up because the chain link times from that mix are not as good as his regular ones. Basically think of DA's like this, they're capable of beating his entire neutral mix up but depending on your specific DA your options afterwards depend on your character. And if you've eaten a heavy your options are reduced to parrying or blocking for his normal chain mix. As DAing in that situation is not in your favor damage wise.


Black prior: Bp has a wealth of options at his disposal to counter raider's mix. He can flip for 24 damage on every option raider does besides soft feint to GB and this is available even on block meaning his flip is just as powerful if raider is in chain. BP also has access to CC lights. Finally he has his fwd dodge heavy. This does 24 on cc and 20 if not. It will beat both tap as well as soft feint to GB. So in most cases it's generally worth it to use that attack if you think he'll be doing either of those options. Adding all of this together means BP on average will be punishing Raider about as equally as Raider can punish him. You've got a lot to mess around with in terms of defense so you should be mixing up how you punish Raider.

Conq: Like BP he has a few options. He's got full block and dodge bash. But like BP he has a unique option of his zone. While his zone cannot parry anymore you can still use the same timing to punish heavies and storming taps. This also works as a defacto counter in chains for the most part because of the 100ms start up of superior block on the zone. This leaves raider with only feint to parry and granted that's not difficult to manage since his zone is really reactable. But he's only getting a heavy parry worth of damage from it. Conq's zone does 8 damage on first hit and Raider gets a light for a heavy parry which is 12. So basically look at it like this, you can beat his entire mix that doesn't deal with unblockables drastically making the read easier for you. And if you read wrong and he feints into parry you're only losing a 4hp difference. It's very worth going for.

Kyoshin: Kyoshin doesn't have a unique option like BP's flip or Conq's zone but I wanted to mention him specifically because of his dodge attack situation. Kyoshin can simply just block the follow up heavy after DAing however that's 5 chip damage. But he can also fast flow to punish that heavy. It also beats soft feint into tap. Raider however can make a read for this and soft feint to GB. In this case Kyoshin has 2 other options. He can go for his bash (it doesn't beat HA,) or he can go for an UD heavy finisher. Both will stuff soft feint into GB. I bring this up because it's a very good showcase on how each hero does not completely shut down the other person despite winning a mix up. Sure 5 chip damage doesn't sound like a lot but because you've blocked that heavy You can't use your dodge attack to beat his mix again since soft feint to GB will catch you.

Kyoshin can fast flow after that block to again beat a heavy or tap but again will be vulnerable to soft feint to GB. If Kyoshin just continues to opt into the safer route of blocking everytime that chip will build up and make it easier for the raider to take health lead or even win when he finally makes a punishing read. So it pays to take risks for Kyoshin so he's sent back to neutral and free's up all of his options again.

Shaman: The final character mentioned in the video. She has DA's with quite good recoveries so she has some options. However her unique thing is specifically her recovery after deflecting. She can continue to deflect Raider's options which forces Raider to have to feint into neutral for a potential punish. Feinting to neutral means Raider no longer has chain advantage and is stuck dealing with DA's again.


Team fight tips and closing statement: With Raider it's really quite simple to understand, if you external block him you drastically reduce the effectiveness of his mix up. This is because you're blocking all blockable attacks on a single side making it easy to CGB if he soft feints into it. Additionally you can dodge away from his mix up as well if you're trying to avoid block stun/GB setups since his soft feint options won't reach you (providing you're moving away walking wise.) However it should be noted that if you're already in hitstun from any attack you cannot dodge to avoid his mix up. Characters that have superior block on attacks can even punish his options externally including his soft feints. The only thing you really have to keep in mind besides if you're in hitstun or not is his neutral zone. It has absurd tracking/forward momentum. Meaning if you're attempting to early dodge to avoid a setup of some kind he can hit you with neutral zone.


So that about wraps everything up. I didn't touch every single character for brevity sake as this post is already quite long. I may also do a thread using the same video for Orochi specifically in the near future. Spaniard is specifically working on a long video for both Raider and Orochi giving more match up specific knowledge against these two. So I think it's just better to wait for that than simply write out every single match up. This after all isn't meant to be a detailed guide on how to beat Raider but merely to help you do better against him. If you made it this far I appreciate you reading it. Thank you.

@knight_raime
Wow
Wow
Wow

Christ...Raime..!

@picoancus

Yeah it took me about an hour to write the whole thing out. Was really trying to be careful with my wording because this info is pretty specific.

@knight_raime tiandi pretty swaggy for outplaying raider

@knight_raime I am a member of the dojo as well pretty good stuff.
also on the discord.
I normally can do really well against them with PK, but sometimes the zone is problematic. Also deflect is a no no, many times they kill me with HA cause you know bad habits on my part. But yeah warlord with his full block is much better.
Anyway is one of the most larger text blocks you have made I think, a trademark for sure, but it was written very clearly I think. Very uhmm "dense" boned individuals could have problems to even digest the first paragraph, but for me the fact those individuals could not grasp you normally ,is a good sign of your quality thought process.

@deathtocakl

Explain?

@MayanKingGaming

I'm not in the discord actually, that place (imo) is for people who actively play/seek to improve their gameplay. I play FH casually and that's mostly been the case since it's launch. I just have a vested interest in the game's competitive scene as I do any fighter that I actually enjoy. Yes generally deflecting Raider's mix isn't a good choice. Shaman, zerk, Shinobi and Orochi are really the only one's who should be attempting to do so outside of specific scenarios. Granted I don't know the recovery for every single deflect but I can't think of an assassin outside those 4 that would be able to block in time for the buffered chain heavy. I want to say Maybe Nuxia but I don't play her enough to be certain.

If you are referring to the very first paragraph before the video that's not abnormal for me. I'm very bad with intros. Really I was just trying to state that this wasn't a debate related thread but rather an informative one that deals with the concept of soft reads. As i've mentioned those in passing a few times and the community still seems to not understand reads in general. I appreciate the feedback though.

@knight_raime

I can tell you now Nuxia deflects are pointless against him.

still though great job at explaining everything... even if i cant pull of the shaman deflect thing

@knight_raime for the raider players that enjoy trading with hyper armor, you can land an opener and then recovery cancel into a crushing counter.

Very swaggy outplays. Sort of same deal goes for orochi bash. Dodge, neutral light, recovery cancel crushing counter.

@undondory

So if you deflect with Nuxia she won't be able to block a buffered chain heavy? Unfortunate.

@deathtocakl

Ah gotcha. I don't have much experience using the CC aspect of Tiandi's dodge light but yes what you say does track logically from what I understand.

@knight_raime you can pretty much think about it the same way you think about bp/ara/orochi recovery cancels. Just only with tiandi openers though.