A Guide to Hinata w/ double Pain support.

I. Pros and Cons - Basic intro to any character
II. Terminology - things you should know
III. Kaiten!
IV.Chakra Denial - A look at Hinata's Awakening.
V. Specials - A look into the U1, U2, and tips on landing that U3
VI. Teams - Because without Pain you can never know peace.
VII. Combos! - The easiest way to do damage or to get punished.
VIII. Strategy - Making the opponent play your game.
IX. Final Notes - One last look back

I. Pros and cons

Pros:
~ Easily the highest damage U1 in game. (Higher than U2 damage)
~ Short KnJ windows on combos. They aren't safe but with a little luck/latency they're actually usable when paired with...
~ Some of the most cancelable combos in game. This allows for...
~ Chakra Denial. Her mode eats up chakra better than almost anyone elses.
~ Quick Throw
~ In addition to the crazy damage already mentioned; Kaiten is a powerful 360 defensive tool.
~ Chakra item and 2 defense down tags. (No bomb ball or explosive tags but these are still a bonus)

Cons:
~ Short range fighter
~ Short throw range
~ Married to double Pain support. (Sure you CAN use others, but you shouldn't... more on this later.)
~ Ho-hum Chakra Shurikens
~ Mediocre U2

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II. Terminology
If you need to know about the terms used, here is a basic list of the terms used in this guide as well as in other places.
Buttons referenced are 360--If you are on PS3 Y = Triangle, X = Square, A = X, B = Circle.

U1 = Kaiten = "Protective 8 Trigrams 64 Palms" = Y->B by default.
U2 = Ultimate = "Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists" = Y->Y+B by default.
U3 = Team Ultimate = Y->Y->Y+B by default.
KnJ = Kawarimi no Jutsu = Substitution Jutsu = RT or LT by default.
Mode = Awakened Mode.
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III. Kaiten!
As anyone who has ever played online almost certainly knows, Kaiten is Hinata's U1 which produces a 360 degree protective shell around her. If someone comes in contact
with the shield they become "stuck" to it for a short time while the game counts up a 64 hit combo on them, at the end of which they are thrown away from Hinata. The short of the story is that Pain's "Almighty Push" jutsu (and support) does obscene amounts of damage in several packets but each packet knocks the player back so they only ever recieve one of them... UNLESS they are stuck in Kaiten. The net result of this is that a well timed Kaiten + Almighty Push should do at least as much damage as 2.5-3 U2s from any other player (Hinata included). Throughout the rest of this guide I will refer to this as the "Team Kaiten".

When you are first starting out you may find that your Team Kaiten is only doing 1 life bar... maybe even less... This is not unusual... it just means that you missed 1 (or more) of the ticks on Pain's "Almighty Push" or the opponent had very high defense + buff(s).
If all of the ticks hit the TK should do right at 1.5 lifebars worth of damage to most opponents.

The moral of this story is that this allows Hinata to play with a strategy that no other character can really pull off:

A. Remove 1/4-1/2 of the opponent's total health (1/2 a bar or more)
B. Land a Team Kaiten and instantly win.

Obviously landing a Team Kaiten is never a BAD thing... but if you follow this strategy your opponent can never awaken. While this is not an "instant win" versus any character, this can remove some of the better tools available to characters such as Guy, Itachi, Naruto, Sasuke, or really anyone with an above average awakening.
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IV. Chakra Denial
Hinata's mode improves her speed and attack power per normal. It also adds a flat chakra reduction for the enemy to every hit that she performs. Because combos in general
are pretty subpar in UNS2 this is no where near as good as it is in most other CC2 ninja games (where it is an integral part of her strategy)... More importantly going into mode removes support and thus negates the most powerful tool that Hinata has in her bag (Team Kaiten). That said, if your opponent's life is less than 1/10th and they are below half chakra with no chakra item I'd probably be headed into mode. The speed and attack up will ensure that 1 kaiten is an instant kill regardless and with every hit being harder, faster, and chipping chakra the pressure is definitely going to be on them.
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V. Specials
U1- Kaiten begets "Team Kaiten" which is pretty much the best Jutsu in game. (Better than Dynamic Entry?!? Say it ain't so!)
U2- It has a pretty run of the mill start up and isn't in any way bad... that said if you're using this it's probably because you screwed up a Kaiten.
U3 - Not applicable. You have been reading the guide right?
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VI. Teams!
Pain. But what if... PAIN. But I don't... PAIN. But he's so cheap... PAIN!!!!!!!
I honestly don't know what else to say.

Hinata really does have alot of depth... but ALL of it comes from the metagame that is created by having a U1 that does 1.5 life bars. If you don't have Pain you don't have that metagame and this guide is not for you. If you use Pain + someone else then that's going to leave you only having half as many Pains to play around with in exchange for... nothing that is going to be as good as a Team Kaiten possibility I promise.

I've always played with Pain set to balanced for one reason only... because I rarely use chakra shuriken on Hinata and I only want him coming out when I call him. You'll have to play around with this setting to find out which works best for you though.
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VII. Combos!
Hinata's tilt combo is quick and extremely short range... pretty much like everything else about Hinata. It chains directly into her base combo but is completely lag free if you don't chain into it. In practice this functions as a "super" cancel point as you can position a little during what are normally cancel frames. That said, it's still pretty terrible as far as tilt combos go. EDIT! Hinata's tilt combo is also cancelable per normal at the first hit. YES this means that anything which her tilt punishes leads directly into a team kaiten. UNFORTUNATELY I have not yet incorporated this into my game because the timing is ridiculous. Once I've got this technique down I'll try to incorporate it further into the guide.
TL;DR If you see a jutsu coming that you absolutely KNOW hinata's tilt beats you should tilt into team kaiten--it's guaranteed damage. If you're unsure or just aren't sure if you'll clash or whatever due to timing do NOT team kaiten because you're going to waste an assist and likely get punished.

Hinata's base combo branches after the third hit.

The down combo chains directly into the Arial combo:
B, B, B, VB, B, B, Aerial combo begins immediately. The two 'B's after the VB are in air quick strikes. If you feel really ballsy and want to combo after entering mode this would probably be the safest "true string" to try. The third 'B' of aerial combo is by far the least safe... I'd try not to hit it.

The cancels.

B->Cancel.
B, B->Cancel. (This actually hits the third B "for free" before canceling out but you only press twice...)
B, B, B, B->Cancel.
B, B, B, >B->Cancel
B, B, B, ^B->Cancel
B, B, B, VB->Cancel

I'm sure there are cancels after that but I don't combo that far down the chains due to lack of safety.

If you happen to be thinking to yourself "If you're just going to cancel after one hit why not just spam kaiten like everyone else" then you are missing probably the only "hard" part of hinata (I use the word hard somewhat jokingly but still...)--You want to practice doing Team Kaiten or throw on react.

If the B connects you almost can't go wrong doing a team Kaiten. Even if they KnJ it there is a very strong probability that they will KnJ into either the Kaiten or the Push. This has nothing to do with the skill of the player you are against it's just wherever they get placed after the KnJ. They won't be taking the full damage by any means but you are still perfectly safe.

If the B does not connect then you are at the very heart of hinata play...
Do you continue on to the next hit of the attack? Grab? Item/shuriken? Chakra Dash? Regular Kaiten? (They're cheap, spammable, and pretty safe on block!).

None of these are 100% safe. If they were then everyone would play Hinata every time. BUT they don't all have the same KnJ windows and the punishment for one tends to be very vulnerable to at least one of the others. If done well this leads to a situation called "Nitaku" much like rock, paper, scissors but where if you lose you eat a throw/U1 (absolute worst case a U2) and if they lose they die. This very much weights the statistics in your favor.

I'll try to write a guide to nitaku in the next few days and clean this section up using proper terminology and a link to that guide but the short of it is that at every cancel point you are going to make a choice and the opponent is going to have to guess what your choice is. If he guesses wrong he is going to be punished. Some may claim that this sounds nothing like UNS2--that despite having these wonderful nitaku points all anyone is going to do online is spam KnJ...

While yes, these scrubs are playing nitaku badly, this does not mean that nitaku does not come into play--it means that you get to weight the statistics in your favor. This is what understanding nitaku is all about. Let us assume for the moment that the opponent is a KnJ spammer and we EXPECT him to KnJ after the first hit of our combo. What is the correct Nitaku choice? Team Kaiten. Statistically he'll lose about 3/4 to 1 life bar every time he makes this choice so if he chooses KnJ twice you've basically won. If the oponent does not understand that KnJ is basically unsafe versus Hinata and continues to use it then by all means you should be punishing him for it.

Let's say that your opponent does not auto KnJ and instead you guess that 75% of the time he will continue to block on the second hit and 25% of the time maybe he will KnJ it? Then your correct Nitaku decisions would be to either grab or to continue on to the second hit of the combo.

Perhaps you've now played your oponent several times (or he's played players like you quite a bit) and he now understands that there is a built in "choice" after that first hit. If he thought about it a little bit he'd realize that he actually has a third option instead of simply block or KnJ... He anticipates that due to his percieved fondness for block you will consider a throw after that initial first hit. This opens up a third option for him, He could throw a shuriken. Shuriken beat throws and at this range a shuriken into a throw attempt will give him quite a bit of frame advantage and anything that isn't punishable by KnJ is now 100% safe (Fang over Fang, Dynamic Entry, etc...)

This is where Nitaku comes into play in UNS2. I don't want to give the false impression that scrubs are using this on a daily basis, they aren't. Versus scrubs you should just B->Team Kaiten or B->throw based on whether you think he's going to try to KnJ after the first hit or the second. If you don't have to worry about item/shuriken then why go more advanced than that? If you think the opponent is advanced and shuriken->DE as a counter to your throw is a strong possibility then (and only then) it's time to start adding some more options to your nitaku bucket: chakra dash is the hard counter to shuriken but highly punished by KnJ, shuriken clashes with shuriken but is safe on KnJ. As the level of nitaku play increases so do the viable nitaku choices. Probably my main hope for this site is that we can get the level of play of the community up to a point where nitaku choices besides U1, Throw, or next hit make sense.
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VIII. Strategy

What there's ninja strategy? Yeah... ninja strategy. Hinata is all about making the opponent play your game, and probably the most powerful way you did this was simply by picking Hinata. Why? Because regardless of who your opponent picked (unless it's a mirror) you are better in melee range and worse at distance than their character. Kaiten is the single best close range tool (being essentially an instant win for landing a single unblocked hit) and Hinata has less range than ANY other character. Her shuriken are bad, her chakra shuriken is bad, she's married to double Pain (one of shortest range most defensive assists in game), her jutsu has the same problems as the Pain assist, and even her tilt is basically just a short standing melee attack. She has short throw range, mediocre run/jump speed and no teleport... She doesn't even have speed boost or slow down items!

I say all that to say this: If your opponent understands the match up at all then by virtue of picking Hinata (w/ pain assist) you have basically forced your opponent into a strategy of running away from you THE WHOLE GAME and trying to win on chip. Since we always know what the opponent's strategy is going to be this means that Hinata's strategy never really changes. You just have to get to your opponent. Ninja move canceling is your friend. Picking last is your friend... if your opponent picked a long range char to begin with he's got a full toolbox. If he picked a melee char then he may not have many more tools than you.

Be sure to practice your puppet user and item user match ups--they're by far the hardest.
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IX. Final Notes

I am by no means "The Hinata Master" or anything... but there wasen't a guide out there and I feel that Hinata is easily one of the better characters in the game... Probably B+ tier. So I thought I'd throw something up in the hopes that it will spur some discussion and maybe lead to a better guide being put forward. I don't like that the X-comboers / puppet users are a hard counter so I'd be hard pressed to put her in S or even A tier but for a 100% melee toon with no teleports she has a lot going on.

Tehm.

Love the guide. Hinata was actually one of the characters I was planning on writing about next, but now I'm glad I didn't because it seems that I have no idea how to use her lol. Hinata + Pain = Scary.

The only thing I can think of to add are the facts that her grab/U1 cause SB. When I use Hinata, I try to do SB > U1 > SB > U1. People love to quit after that.

Only issue with this, I know I'll get a lot of "boos": and "yays" at times

The pain/hinata pin exploit is banned in tournaments, at least the ones I'm hosting.
Plain and simple is its bad enough someone can KnJ Rasengay everything in sight. I don't want people losing full bars of health because you happen to have these two on support.

Aside from that it looks.... eh...... decent?

I don't like it really, I don't feel it has enough depth.
The cancels are nice though very vague

Most of the guide is based around "pain/hinata pin omfg" madness when hinata has so many better things to give.

Like the team of Neji and kiba being an easy quick guard breaking into jutsu
Or her combo with sage mode or regular naruto balance to c.kunai cancel an air combo into her U1/U2

I feel this guide has a bits way to go, but its a good start

Skyler-X wrote:

Only issue with this, I know I'll get a lot of "boos": and "yays" at times

The pain/hinata pin exploit is banned in tournaments, at least the ones I'm hosting.
Plain and simple is its bad enough someone can KnJ Rasengay everything in sight. I don't want people losing full bars of health because you happen to have these two on support.

Aside from that it looks.... eh...... decent?

I don't like it really, I don't feel it has enough depth.
The cancels are nice though very vague

Most of the guide is based around "pain/hinata pin omfg" madness when hinata has so many better things to give.

Like the team of Neji and kiba being an easy quick guard breaking into jutsu
Or her combo with sage mode or regular naruto balance to c.kunai cancel an air combo into her U1/U2

I feel this guide has a bits way to go, but its a good start

I finished at around 5am and it's still not finished... I'm still fleshing it out. Strategy section is now up and when I get a guide up on Nitaku I'll link that and maybe discuss the combo options more in depth.

I should point out that this guide is only and will only ever be about Hinata with double Pain assist. Yes there are other options but they don't play ANYTHING like this. Yes obviously having a jutsu that takes 75% health is a character defining thing... The goal of this guide is not to say "do this and win"... That's a given. Ultimately the goal of the guide is to be in countering counters to Team Kaiten. Because ultimately, if your opponent can't counter it then you've already won--it only has to land once.

Tehm

Edit: Not really sure what you mean by vague on the cancels. You can cancel into throw, shuriken, chakra shuriken, chakra dash, kaiten, team kaiten, or item. Those are the places you can do it. As mentioned in the guide, because of the difference in KnJ windows and available counters to each of these options every cancel point automatically creates a nitaku situation. (I'm not sure what the english term is. But it's like Rock-Paper-Scissors... I throw something out and you have to just guess what I'm going to throw out. Guess right I get punished, Guess wrong you do, otherwise they clash.) So basically because of the simplicity of the UNS2 combo system this means that Hinata only really has a single combo with multiple nitaku points:

B, NITAKU, B, NITAKU, B, (*, V, >, ^)B, NITAKU.

+ Tilt, NITAKU I guess.

Because she can not jutsu in air that's really the only "combo" tools in her toolbox that I know of.

Nice guide. I main Hinata and I most says that it's a very complete guide. I use to go for Pain as support but I started using some combo cancels to improve the mind games and attacking supports for the strike back into U2.

[quote="tehm (Wed Dec 15, 2010 8:50 pm)
I finished at around 5am and it's still not finished... I'm still fleshing it out. Strategy section is now up and when I get a guide up on Nitaku I'll link that and maybe discuss the combo options more in depth.

I should point out that this guide is only and will only ever be about Hinata with double Pain assist. Yes there are other options but they don't play ANYTHING like this. Yes obviously having a jutsu that takes 75% health is a character defining thing... The goal of this guide is not to say "do this and win"... That's a given. Ultimately the goal of the guide is to be in countering counters to Team Kaiten. Because ultimately, if your opponent can't counter it then you've already won--it only has to land once.

Tehm

Edit: Not really sure what you mean by vague on the cancels. You can cancel into throw, shuriken, chakra shuriken, chakra dash, kaiten, team kaiten, or item. Those are the places you can do it. As mentioned in the guide, because of the difference in KnJ windows and available counters to each of these options every cancel point automatically creates a nitaku situation. (I'm not sure what the english term is. But it's like Rock-Paper-Scissors... I throw something out and you have to just guess what I'm going to throw out. Guess right I get punished, Guess wrong you do, otherwise they clash.) So basically because of the simplicity of the UNS2 combo system this means that Hinata only really has a single combo with multiple nitaku points:

B, NITAKU, B, NITAKU, B, (*, V, >, ^)B, NITAKU.

+ Tilt, NITAKU I guess.

Because she can not jutsu in air that's really the only "combo" tools in her toolbox that I know of.[/quote]

If its only about one thing about the character then you can't really call it a "general" guide to hinata.
"General" implies that you are noting all of the tools and giving each one a bit of insight as well as some diversity.

If this is all about hinata/pain (which is banned so there isn't much point in it) then call it "The general guide to playing hina-pain." or something. But you should note more options for players who don't like to use said option. Give some of her basic teams. Team Kurenai. Secret Lovers. Something other than the one option.

As far as combos go, with her defence down tag she can go from down string into the first set of air strikes into the tag U2

Or in other words

Basic (d) ((until first set of air strikes)) -> Air dash -> iCancel into U2

Thats just one of them. With her ability to go into air pokes, she can keep some combos going and sometimes bluff a KnJ out of the opponent.


I have nothing against the strategy, but if you are going to write a "general" guide then you need to make it more general imo.

Otherwise its more of a "Advanced strategies" kind of thing.

quote fail...

Ok, I don't get why people throw in the word 'general'. Just call it a guide. And Skye wouldn't rant.
Anyways, general or not its a guide. Its character specific, so its in the right place.
Furthermore any technical information about the game is valuable whether or not its banned from tourneys.
Give the guy a break Skye, hes just trying to enlighten us with what hes found out about hinapain.

I'm aware that this guide is about how to utilize Hinata/Pain, but dismissing Hinata's U2 like that simply won't do.

Hinata's U2 is extremely outrageous. While it seems very plain and mediocre at the beginning, it's truly her most effective and broken tactic. I can beat people with just U2, items, shuriken, and moving (aka no other attacks, blocking, supports, or knj).

What you need to realize is that it is extraordinarily fast while still having a decent effective range. What this means is that anytime they are within range of Hinata's U2, they cannot attempt to execute any attack (except a U3) or they risk getting hit by her U2.

A great deal of the effectiveness of her U2 comes from the fact that it has standard dashing U2 invincibility (normal attacks, shuriken, items, throws, and physical jutsus) once she starts moving forward. This means that if they try to do any of those things, you can fly straight through their attack and hit them without having to wait for the active frames on their attack to end.

The speed of her U2 is truly amazing (at max range it's basically as fast as a U3), as you can actually throw a defense down tag, wait to see if it hit the opponent, then cancel into her ultimate and it will still combo. So yeah, basically it's a short range U3 that you have access to all the time...

At least her awakening was mentioned.

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