Mai Shiranui overview & gameplay guide
Character specification
Character Trivia
Successor to Shiranui-style ninjutsu. Following an important tip-off from dutiful monk Sokaku Mochizuki, this modern-day kunoichi proceeds to South Town with purpose—her intense flame and ever-refined techniques lighting up the darkness therein.
Difficulty
MEDIUM star star
Fighting Style
Shiranui ninjutsu
Mai Shiranui Gameplay Trailer
Gameplay Overview
Mai in CotW is one of the more defensive characters in the game, being well-rounded with emphasis on neutral control and mobility.
Mai can command the neutral with her great moveset that consists of a projectile, brakable anti-air, and some of the game’s best neutral pokes. These alone do well enough, but as icing on the cake, Mai retains all of her mobility options from older games, such as her wall jump, making her better still at playing the keepaway game. For when Mai lands a hit and has the advantage, she has multiple ways to keep her turn, including multiple plus-on-block special moves and ways to reposition at will.
Mai's weaknesses come in the form of inconsistency.; while she has lots of plus frames, she doesn't have any great mixup options, and her multihit specials are weak to Hyper Defense. Her normals are great, but she can struggle to connect some of them against crouching opponents in neutral, her fan toss is uniquely strong in exchange for not having an anti-fireball super, and her damage is lower than other characters until she gets a super stocked.
If a highly neutral-oriented take on a CotW shoto with some stylish optimal combos sounds like fun, consider trying Mai out.
Pros & Cons
thumb_up PROS
- Good Footsies: Mai has great range on all of her normals, especially her light attacks which usually don't have much range across the cast. while 3D lets her safely fish for counterhits from midrange and serves as a long range, safe low attack. Combined with her great walkspeed and other pokes like Low Dodge and 214A, Mai can play a very effective footsies game if used correctly.
- Zoning: Mai is equipped with a DP and a great fireball, letting her play a traditional shoto fireball game, supplemented by an occasional airthrow. Additionally, her EX fireball excels at countering other EX fireballs specifically, and it can let her rapidly approach in cojunction with her command jump. Her walljump and backwards command jump also give her better runaway than most characters.
- Mobility: Mai has access to a variety of advancing attacks, a command jump, and also excels in the air with tools like her divekick, wall jump, and j.2B to stall momentum, letting her mix up her approach and stay unpredictable.
- Explosive Punishes: When full on resources, Mai's corner combos are some of the hardest hitting in the game, especially when punishing with a powerful counterhit like j.214P or 214D. Double super routes allow Mai to get higher damage out of her Power Gauge, and her most difficult combos can exceed 780 or 800 damage, likely ending the round immediately.
thumb_down CONS
- Just hold downback bro...: Mai's offense is as basic as it gets, and she doesn't have any majorly powerful tools to make it that threatening, lacking good high/low mixup tools in particular. This invades other aspects of her gameplay too, as her only consistently rewarding heavy poke whiffs on crouchers at range, which hurts her risk reward significantly in neutral and pressure.On top of her plus on block REV special moves having significant pushback on block. Opening up opponents with Mai takes considerable effort.
- Low Average Damage: Mai tends to deal below average damage on hits when she doesn't have a super available, and all of her grounded normals lack extra reward on counterhit. Note that her super/corner combos are very powerful, however the best ones are also VERY difficult.
- Weakness to Hyper Defend: Every Rev enhanced special Mai has is multi-hitting with a long animation time (the ones viable in pressure at least), making them easy to counter for experienced players. Both of her close heavies are also multi-hitting.