Guy vs. Yulie Ahtreide (WA4) - Yulie struggles a fair deal with limit fighters of this type. Guy can troll her all day long with his healing IP and still gain ground to unleash something capable of OHKOing her ass.
Guy vs. Ershin (BoF4) - Ershin, on the other hand, is built pretty well to handle the likes of Guy. Faster, tankier, gets enough time to drop something like five Deaths while denying Guy any IP gauge building.
Guy vs. Moor Gault (WA3) - Faster, 2HKOs. Not a pretty sight.
Guy vs. Aila (S3) - Well, Aila has a pretty elaborate game plan here: open with Clay Guardian to improve her sustainability a bit, fish for a Battle Oath proc, alternate heals and buffs in the meantime and start pressuring once Battle Oath's up and ready. She only 3HKOs Guy post-Berserk, but her stun rate is solid enough and, coupled with the speed split (even with her physical's she's above average speed and her buffs are openly fast), she could conceivably get a lucky streak, and she has decent enough evade to pose a further threat to Guy. Problem is sustainability, though: I don't know how long either Clay Guardian or Berserk last... but I feel Guy's pressure outside of IPs is lacking enough for this to work well enough, and he can't block the random stuns along with only getting 50% healing. I feel Flying Ax shenanigans won't work, since, once Aila starts 3HKOing, he just gives up way too much sustainable weapon damage, and Aila damage be spiky enough for him to try to be conservative on heals (and he -has- to run Tough Hide healing to boot). Could definitely be argued, not an open-and-shut fight here.
Guy vs. Koromaru (P3) - Similar ballpark to Ershin here: Koro is faster enough to see a 5-4 and may not even need it because the evade buys him an extra turn most likely. Guy's really bad against fatal status.
Guy vs. Cecil Harvey (FF4) - Guy and Cecil don their prettiest atire and wigs to re-enact SO2 Rena vs. PS2 Amy in impressively pathetic fashion. Guy's likely pulling off fully buffed Deadly SmashES here, that's just sad.
Guy vs. Aelia (VP) - Drops Guy dead by her third turn. Guy does -not- have the offense to stop that from happening ever.
Guy vs. Emeralda Kasim (XG) - Emeralda's so much faster and only misses a 3HKO on Guy if he doesn't run his cheap IP healing armor... at which point he may as well admit defeat, because he ain't 2HKOing her either.
Guy vs. Henry (FE13) - ^_^
Guy vs. Yangus (DQ8) - Man. Guy really sucks against instant death, even inaccurate, even slower.
Guy vs. Slaking (Pokemon) - EDIT: Nevermind, Slack Off gives Guy FITS.
Guy vs. Ellen Carson (Romancing Saga III) - Ellen has multiple ways to win this. Tiger Break pressure causes serious problems here, by her fourth turn she starts 2HKOing him straight and she may well win the fight on her first double. Alternatively, she runs Dimension Chop, which is likely safer? Anyways.
2-10. Damn, Guy has some issues. This is a good Middle pool, but man, NEB's so right about the slow tank with averagish damage build being kinda bad. IPs keep him from Light, but don't really let him make lots of waves in the higher divisions.
Janus Cascade vs. Yulie Ahtreide (WA4) - Janus' damage is just so -awful-. Since his durability is pretty much PC-level to boot, he ultimately can't properly pressure Yulie and he can't even KO her with Rising Nova+counter if she's under Protect. I dunno how I see his Rising Nova access as, but I might well just make him roll the dice as he does in-game, since it's pretty closely tied to his mechanics. Which obviously doesn't help against Yulie much.
Janus Cascade vs. Ershin (BoF4) - Ershin's "noteworthy" damage is all magical, which, regardless of how I view Janus' Heal Berry counters, spells bad news for her and Janus is considerably faster. He's likely to get a couple Rising Novas this way, sealing the deal.
Janus Cascade vs. Moor Gault (WA3) - Dat 2HKO physical.
Janus Cascade vs. Aila (S3) - Aila fishes for Berserk, heals up if necessary and 2HKOs Janus' ass once Battle Oath procs. Evil Ashley seriously doesn't like buff/heal games, even one as sketchy as Aila's.
Janus Cascade vs. Koromaru (P3) - First fight in which the scaling on Heal Berry matters... or does it? Koro physical offense ain't good enough to outslug Janus with those counters, especially once Rising Nova becomes relevant... and then, Heal Berry spam, even if not scaled to magical immunity in practice, should -at least- slow down Koro's offense to the point where Rising Nova spam becomes a thing, which makes the whole thing kinda ugly. Janus is so bizarre a slugger.
Janus Cascade vs. Cecil Harvey (FF4) - Absolutely awful. Janus indeed can't make damage stick against Cecil at high HP, but... he's actually not that much better off until he's one hit away from death. Janus effectively 5HKOs Cecil until the first Rising Nova... which is pretty terrible, at high HP Cecil just alternates Cura and thwacks and likely goes in for the kill once he hits 50% HP. If Janus lands two consecutive Rising Novas, Cecil's kinda screwed, but I'm not sure I buy that happening on average anyway. Dear god.
Janus Cascade vs. Aelia (VP) - Aelia should live to her third turn and blow him up. There's the odd chance she -doesn't-, but ramming into decent evade on the non-Rising Nova thwacks doesn't help Janus' case.
Janus Cascade vs. Emeralda Kasim (XG) - Same deal as Aelia.
Janus Cascade vs. Henry (FE13) - Henry just parks in front of Janus and 2HKOs with Waste counters. So bad.
Janus Cascade vs. Yangus (DQ8) - Yangus offense not very good and Janus outspeeds him by a lot. So yeah.
Janus Cascade vs. Slaking (Pokemon) - Janus 12HKOs Slaking when Rising Nova isn't an issue. He could just trollspam Yawn until 10% HP and OHKO with FLAIL if he wanted. This said, Janus can't outslug even with Truant and Rising Nova x2 + counter, which would be his wet dream, so Slaking just Slashes twice and goes for a stroll.
Janus Cascade vs. Ellen Carson (Romancing Saga III) - Ellen opens with War Cry, Tiger Breaks twice, collects victoly. On average, Janus doesn't even get to land a Rising Nova... which may well not KO her ANYWAY because a single Tiger Break staves away a 2HKO threat by itself, and it just keeps stacking.
3-9. Janus tries to be deceptive about his slugging power by adding up his pelts with counters and that RNG game with Rising Nova, but it just doesn't pan out in practice all that well, does it? Decent speed, but PC HP, reliant entirely on physicals and 7HKO damage and an unreliable limit... yeah, that's bad. Not sure how I feel about Healing Berry spoiling, either.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Yulie Ahtreide (WA4) - One of those cases in which shock vulnerability spoils a dueller. Even if Yulie gets a turn to Protect, it may not be enough and she doesn't have the punch to keep him from tossing a Brave Blade, since Yusuke's faster.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Ershin (BoF4) - Inari's very poorly built to deal with Ershin - instant death and status resistance along with massive physical durability? All those things he hates.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Moor Gault (WA3) - Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. Moor Gault wins pretty much as soon as he lands a hit on Yusuke... which, granted, may not happen soon enough, since he's slower and that DEF is simply awful... but I have my doubts it's enough to 2HKO Moor, and he should land his FIRE damage turn two to boot. That's pretty much death.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Aila (S3) - Aila: heals status. Blocks Dizzy/Shock. Heals HP. Um yeah, that's not going to work out, Inari.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Koromaru (P3) - Shock isn't helpful, dizzy isn't turn one and Koro wins once an Agidyne connects. Inari falls flat on his ass again.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Cecil Harvey (FF4) - Cecil immunes at least -two- of Inari's relevant status options and can heal off Brave Blades. Not a winning recipe.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Aelia (VP) - Aelia immunes Curse (VP's Blind equivalent), doesn't she? And she also immunes paralysis... um. Bad.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Emeralda Kasim (XG) - Doesn't Emmy even have fire damage in one of her money techs? This is ugly as hell.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Henry (FE13) - Good lord. Inari also hates the counters and Bolganone wrecks him a new one. IF you see each bullet triggering a counter (there's a precedent in-game, since Counter/High Counter trigger against individual shots and interrupt the turn), the status route is a complete wash, since he only gets to fire one bullet per turn.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Yangus (DQ8) - Dizzy should reduce the ID below turn 2 -for sure- (it's ID attached to a physical, after all) and Inari himself 2HKOs Yangus under Dizzy. So at least he's not getting completely swept.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Slaking (Pokemon) - Slaking just opens with Slash and then devotes his turns to Slack Off if Inari attempts the status game. That durability is a really tall mountain for Yusuke to climb.
Yusuke Kitagawa vs. Ellen Carson (Romancing Saga III) - Ellen's ID is turn two against Yusuke. Ellen effectively 2HKOs if he uses Brave Blade at any point in the fight. Ellen is faster. The ID doesn't care about Dizzy. And Ellen can even spam shoddy healing to mitigate the damage to some degree if she gets dizzied. Inari's just screwed.
2-10. He's an Inari. Man, Yusuke's problems are worse than I thought. Hates healing, hates 3HKOs faster than he is, hates status, hates life. This pool's pretty solid, but I dunno, he bit it to clearly underwhelming Middles like Aila and Cecil. One of the fights he won was pretty much via status spoiling and the other honestly wouldn't be out of place in Light - where he probably actually does belong, even if performing pretty damn well.
