Lili counterplay

Overview

Without frequent sidestepping, fighting Lili can be an absolute pain. Her pressure would be absolutely top notch if not for how many of her moves are linear and how much she has to give up to try and track you.

A basic gameplan is to step a lot to try and make her use slower options in an attempt to track you, then capitalize by pressing on the openings it creates. If Lili goes into backturn on her offense, however, the situation changes—and instead of sidestepping, you must either check her with a mid/low, or backdash out of her range.

Remember to Ukemi

Lili's Platinum Grace (qcf+3) is an incredibly strong oki tool that heavily punishes opponents that stay on the ground. Though this move even surpasses Kazuya's Steel Pedal in terms of damage, the catch is that Lili does not have a reliable hellsweep or safe launching mid to mix you up on wakeup like a Mishima would, so doing a regular tech recovery is far less scary.

The situation does change in Heat, but the general idea is to always get up against Lili so that she cannot set up her terrifying ground game.

Punishing Backturn

There are three key ways that Lili goes into backturn to establish mix:

• Her 1,1 jab into elbow sequence.
• Two of her plus on hit lows: d1,2 and ff4.
• Her long range backflip launcher, df+3+4.

Though these have varying ranges of advantage frames and thus different ranges of what you can press, she can always try to read your press with her BT powercrush. If your character has a plus on hit low that is ~i18, it can OS this along virtually every other option while keeping your turn. Without that, it's usually a good idea to simply backdash and block, as her best BT moves are a bit short in range and have a chance of whiffing—they're also at least -11 on block, so you can block the mids and punish.

Another highly important aspect of her backturn is that both the mid and the low are tracking high crushes. Avoid doing highs or stepping! Even the most minus transitions can easily high crush.

• 1,1 and backflip are both -4 on block, so the mix is completely interruptible by ~i16 mids.
• d1,2 into BT on hit makes both low and mid followups lose to crouch jab (can still use BT powercrush).
• ff4 into BT is the most advantageous on hit at +10. This one must be held. It's also a bit tricky to punish on block too, as i12 and above can lose to BT powercrush.

Fuzzying the mix

At most ranges, backdashing into crouch guard will beat all backturn mix.

The main options that Lili mixes with in backturn are:

• BT.d+2 (the fast low)
• BT.3 (the homing mid)
• BT.d+3+4 (a slower, longer range low)

The first two options alone are quite threatening, as they have the same timing, cannot be sidestepped and give good damage followups (on normal hit for BT.3 and counter hit for BT.d+2). They are, however, quite lacking in range, and most characters can backdash BT.d+2 to make it whiff at anything beyond point blank range. Since a mid isn't typically going to open you up while you're backdashing, many Lilis will attempt to use BT.d+3+4 to catch your movement and sweep you off your feet. This is where the fuzzying comes into play: backdash against the first two options, then crouch block in time to defend against the BT.d+3+4 sweep. Proper application of this completely negates a lot of Lili's backturn setups without wall, which is why you might see a lot of top level Lili players simply sitting there in backturn to see what the opponent does until they ultimately leave any range that being in backturn is effective and the situation is nullified.

Key Moves to Punish

Move	Punish	Purpose
Backflip df+3+4	Sidewalk (neutral) ~i18 low (on block) Throws can be ducked and crouch jab can lose to BT powercrush	A very long range mid launcher that is shockingly hard to punish on block. Likely Lili's most contemptuous move, especially in certain matchups. Though an ~i18 low is a guaranteed punish, such moves tend to be low reward. It's fairly safe to take your turn with a mid, as it's -4 on block and the worst you'll be getting hit by is her BT powercrush. Some characters don't have a good low to negate said powercrush, so the safest option is likely to backdash and do an i11~13 punish on any of the mid followups.
df+3	Sidestep	A plus on block mid resembling a Mishima splits kick, used to maintain pressure.
qcf+3+4	Duck and punish (OR Interrupt Dew Glide)	A plus on block two—hitting high kick, and Lili's best tracking move. Used in her pressure and off of moves that put her into Dew Glide. If used off of Dew Glide, it's always interruptible on block. When ducking it, wait for both hits.
Piercing Thorn H.f,F+3+4	Sidestep/walk OR i11 WS move (float) Must sidestep up while against wall	A high damage dropkick that has many active frames and gives a wall slump in Heat. The wall slump forces crouch, so you must only step into the background to get out of her looping it repeatedly. Thankfully, it's more linear than it looks. She can also frame trap into this from her advancing elbow move, qcf+1, so be careful and watch her timing.