| Xiaoyu |
|---|
| Xiaoyu | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Heat |
|
| Heat Smash |
|
| Heat Engagers |
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| Stances |
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| Fastest | |
| Launch |
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| CH launch |
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| Wall splat |
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| Archetypal moves | |
| Mid check |
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| Hopkick | uf+3 – i16 |
| Orbital | uf+4 – i23 (CH launch only) |
| Stature kick |
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| Snake edge | df+3 – i29 (cancelable) |
| Slash kick | wr3 – i23 |
| Generic moves | |
| Remapped | (none) |
| Missing |
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| External links | |
| Lore | Ling Xiaoyu |
| #T8_Xiaoyu | |
| Discord | Ling Xiaoyu |
This page is for Tekken 8. For Tekken 7, see Xiaoyu (Tekken 7).
Xiaoyu is a tricky and evasive stance-based mixup character who excels in slipping past her opponent's attacks in order to land powerful mixups. She is a specialist character who thrives in the hands of players who love spending time in the lab, discovering setups with her many evasive stances and unique move properties.
Xiaoyu is defined by her evasion. Her infamous Art of Phoenix (AOP) stance allows her to slip under many highs and even mids, allowing her to turn an opponent's offense against them. This, along with her Hypnotist (HYP) and Rain Dance (RDS), are highly flexible stances that can be entered into manually, or from many move cancels. These allow her to present a very unpredictable and jarring offense that makes opponents freeze up, where she can land powerful mixups. Xiaoyu thrives on creating setplay situations, whether on oki, after certain combo enders, or at the wall. These can devastate the unaware opponent, making them unable to play the game. Heat makes her mixups even more potent, granting her a tremendous boost in damage potential.
Xiaoyu's evasion and trickery naturally make her frustrating and difficult to defend against, and she has an infamous reputation as a "lab character". However, she is just as much a lab character for her pilot, requiring good matchup knowledge to take advantage of her evasion, flexible and creative use of her stances to freeze up an aggressive opponent, and a breadth of effective setups to increase her damage output. She pays for her evasion with generally low poke and combo damage, and has to land many more mixups to equal the damage other characters get with a few. Her short poke range makes it difficult for her to approach, further necessitating creative stance usage.
- Queen of Evasion: Phoenix stance shrinks Xiaoyu's hurtbox down to almost comical levels, allowing her to slip under highs and even some mids. Her other stance Hypnotist automatically walks left to bait responses in pressure, and in RDS she has access to a suite of powerful movement options. Effective Xiaoyu players can slip through just about anything.
- Godlike Okizeme: Xiaoyu's evasion is even effective against opponent wakeup, and she has many moves with properties useful for rewarding setups. If she pays attention to her opponent's choices, then she can blow them up.
- Confusing: Xiaoyu has a lot of moves, and many of them have large decision trees with cancels or stance choices. Opponents can easily lose track of what's about to happen.
- Versatile Pokes: Xiaoyu is blessed with an armada of annoying lows and excellent mids. Many of these options are relatively safe on block, while leaving the opponent standing for further pressure.
- Great Standing Punishment: Xiaoyu has an excellent standing punishment suite, boasting a wall splatting mid at i12, a heat engager at i13, and she's blessed with the coveted i14 launcher.
- Range: Xiaoyu is tiny, and thus needs to play very compact. She can be effectively walled out by characters with longer limbs, like Bryan or Dragunov.
- Linear: Xiaoyu's moves don't track lateral movement very well. An agile opponent with good movement can make many of her options more difficult to use safely.
- Confusing: Xiaoyu has a lot of moves. Without steady practice, she can lose track of herself and get into trouble of her own making.
- Subpar Crouching Punishment: While Xiaoyu's early crouching punishment is good, with a knockdown at i11 and a wall splat at i12, it isn't good enough to make up for her lack of an i13 punish and an i15 launcher.
External links
- TEKKEN 8 - THE ULTIMATE LING XIAOYU GUIDE by Mr. Croft
| Characters (Tekken 8) |
|---|