r/Reina

I'm a noob to Tekken with around 4/5 hours, I've played 2D fighters before but never a Tekken before. I decided on playing Reina because she seemed the coolest and most fun to me. I spent a few hours learning her neutral/stances/frames etc. and the last hour or so on combos. I learned this combo first which I can do accurately probably 90% of the time, followed by this one which I can do around 40-50% of the time. I ended up optimising the first one a bit more by adding a df1 F in it before the combo ender which got me to 74 damage, but I think the second one isn't optimised so if anyone has advice on how I can improve it that would be appreciated (or any other combos that are reliable to execute you'd recommend for learning). I don't struggle a lot with EWGF in her combos but something I do struggle with is the timing for going from her sentai animation into another attack (like when I do f2 3 F sometimes SEN-1 will come out after instead of my intended df1), so if someone could give me any advice with how to improve the timing of that part of the combos I'd appreciate that.

Also if anyone could tell me some of her most important neutral tools and their purpose that would be really helpful. I've learned her main buttons/strings but don't entirely understand what situation each one of them would be perfect for (e.g. her f4 seems quite good to me but I'm not sure what kind of situation I'd use that in, or her b2 seems good to deal with sidesteps but I'm unsure if there's a better option). Similarly I have memorised all the options out of sentai but if anyone could help with explaining the why of each option that would really help as I'm struggling to learn this from videos (e.g. what kind of situation would I want to use SEN-4 as opposed to SEN-1+2). From what I can tell her unsoko's main strength is the movement and the range of the 4 out of it, but I don't understand it as well as I do sentai and I also feel very lost with her heaven's wrath stance so any help for that would help so much too.

She does feel a bit overwhelming and tough on execution, and since I've never played Tekken before the movement also feels hard at times lol but I really want to learn Reina well. If there's any general tips to know I'd appreciate them too!

Also just wanted to edit and say that this community is so helpful and nice, nobody's made me feel dumb for being a noob or anything lol and I really appreciate all the effort in offering advice!

Let's evaluate this in terms of risk/reward.

d3

Risks:

1. Getting the timing wrong and eating any move in the game. Now that's standard for any parry, right? No exceptionally large activation window, also pretty standard.
2. But then, if you did parry, you can still mess up the cancel timing. Yeah, about that. Why do you need to still hit a pretty tight timing on the cancel if you read their aggression correctly? It doesn't even make sense visually. Stance cancel in general is not a "natural" mechanic, and it is usually found by players in order to maximize damage in combos. Many stances in the game can be cancelled, but even not knowing how to stance cancel, you usually have a different option for your combo, which is weaker. So that's adequate risk/reward. If you can't cancel the stance, you get less damage, like with Reina's wra cancel into wr4. You can't do it - you get less damage, seems fair. But for Reina's d3, NONE of the immediate options fit into the 10f window. So you must get that cancel to deal any dmg whatsoever, and if you don't you're not even +, it's just neutral.
3. Another risk here is mashing 112 because of muscle memory and getting launched if you didn't cancel correctly. Now, of course, any decent Reina player will try to hit confirm, but given that both parry and the cancel aren't exactly easy, hit confirming 112 means you need to perform 3 advanced-level actions in a row.
4. Another risk here is getting cd1, which is even more minus than 112. And yes, with good reaction you can probably save it with 3 or 4, but again, requires another timing-tight action. I will remind you that this whole thing started with a successfull parry.

Reward: 112...
And yes, even though it says +10, you can still hit moves up to i13 if your timing on cancel was exceptional, but this is not reliable.

b1+3

Risks:

1. Again. getting the timing wrong and eating any move in the game, fair enough.
2. Only parries the first hit of the string and you eat others.

Reward:

1. You take the damage.
2. Yes, the damage is recoverable, but depending on the move you've parried (eaten), you are not guaranteed to get it back.
3. WRA transition with no frame advantage. No guaranteed option and a good-timing cd block needed to guarantee safety.
4. Yes, you heard it right. You parry the move to eat it's damage and are required to do a good stance cancel to guarantee that you won't eat a 10f string, since your fastest option is wra1 at i12.

I honestly can't decide which one of these parries is more of a joke. For comparison, both Victor's parries guarantee a heat engager/wall splat and don't require any cancels

i played so bad, but a win is a win right? ;-;