Bender
Product Manager. xBone tag: I3end3r.
No, he has a frame to backdash my d4 (the only attack that comes close to reaching in time). He can also armor my d4 and I eat a full combo. Even if it hits him, he is too far away at that point to followup with anything useful. He can either (1) Neutral jump and blows up any followup pressure. (2) Armor. (3) Choose to backdash now.you are +8 if you block thunder strings
this is better than being +0
this is like saying attacking any character is risky in neutral cuz they can just armor it
if you are +8 and stick out a poke and raiden decides to press a button he gets hit.
if he tries to armor your poke that's still raiden trying to take away YOUR initiative, if you block EX shocker you can punish, if you crouch poked you avoided EX vicinity blast. if you blocked EX superman or EX db3 you punish.
if you think he will block just run up and do a mixup or another bait.
My only point is you can't mount any offense on Raiden and I have one of the better rushdown characters.
Again, I wouldn't care about being able to get a poke off/ pressure started if it weren't a 6 frame mid startup string. Because it is so good right now, the consequences of doing the full string should be a little greater. 90% of the time I try to do anything, I end up putting myself in danger