Guilty Gear Strive: How To Beat May

Ever since its release, May has been noted as one of the strongest picks in Guilty Gear Strive. Her fast movement and unbearable pressure makes her a difficult enemy to face in fights. However, here are some tips to help you get some breathing room against May.

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May As A Character

In Guilty Gear Strive, May is a straightforward rushdown character armed with fast movement, hard-hitting normals and straightforward special moves that send her forward. However, May's attacks are too potent and superior than the rest of the cast. Other players are required to adjust to her options if they want to win against her options.

For many players, this relentless character delivers dread to the unprepared to her oceanic rampage.

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Disjointed Normals

Many characters can often be hit at their weapons when they extend it forward for a hit. However, many of May's attacks have disjointed hitboxes where she doesn't have hurt boxes on where her weapon is. In layman's terms, you cannot hit her anchor when she swings it which often leads to unfavorable trades and snowballs the match in her favor due to her high single-hit damage.

To avoid this, you'll need to respect her normals and hit her openings on places where her swings can't reach you. Due to how fast May moves, players will need to be quicker on the pickup when she does whiff her moves.

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Sound of Dread: Totsugeki

Many players who face May often repeat the words that just flat out murders them in battle: Totsugeki. In the Japanese language version of Guilty Gear Strive, May says these words when uses her horizontal version of Mr. Dolphin. In this attack, May rides on a dolphin and rushes toward her foe.

This move sounds like a simple, straightforward ramming attack but it's more than that. The Slash version of Mr. Dolphin (Horizontal) has 7 frame startup which rivals the fastest options of most characters in the game. The move also travels extremely fast and will cause the enemy to stagger if it counterhits.

All-in-all, May players can rapidly use this move to apply pressure for almost no risk due to how difficult to punish this move is. However, this move does have its weakness. When used too far, May's opponent can use a fast, slightly far reaching normal like 6P or 5K to knock May off her dolphin and start their own counterattack.

However, this weakness is easily negligible once she's at close range enough to cycle through her disjointed Crouching Slash normal and Slash version of Mr. Dolphin (Horizontal). Escaping this situation requires the player to defend patiently and wait for May to vary her timing or do something else to produce an opening to interrupt. This pattern is one of her win conditions and trying to carelessly interrupt it will get you a counterhit and a big opportunity for May to take away half of your health for free.

Things To Note

As May is a fast fighter, she can quickly dictate the flow of the match once she lands a hit. All of her weaknesses can be solved with some mindfulness on the May player's end. Her foes will have to pray for an opening or mistake they can find to get even an advantage that she can easily steal with one confirm.

Nevertheless, players will have to face a May matchup due to how popular she is and how difficult it is to play against her.

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