As a testament main I have found is that you can overcome these weaknesses, using a very special technique. you gotta get goofy with it

I think Kizzie had a good take on Testament. They're supposed to be a control character, not a mixup one. Problem is, it's kind of hard to control with problems such as what LK demonstrated here with the fS on block. The extremely extended hurtbox on grave reaper leads to the most awkward interactions I've experienced in this game. Fast, low profiling, advancing moves, such as JackO's 2D and Baiken's 2H, beat anything Testament can do at fS max range, being hit by an air move on your 236H is mind boggling... The teleport. Why is is so slow when you need to set it up before hand and can only teleport to that one location. Asuka made this move feel so weak in comparison

In the corner, you can largely ignore most of testament’s pressure by doing Fd+ superjump. In order for testament to call these things out, they need to take pretty big risks in their pressure. Also, a bunch of their is kinda knowledge checky. For example, a lot of testaments try to do 5k stain proc iad into a 50/50, but if you block the stain proc crouching, you can hold forward to walk right out of their pressure and get a guarenteed throw punish.

Some characters can just start off swinging and they're in win condition territory. Testament gotta cross borders before they can swing for the win.

> “ultimate” midrange character according to devs > entire kit gets beaten by Ky f.S in midrange > gets completely obsoleted by Ram in every way

Buff teleport speed, the game lets you do a fake tp but its completely pointless since its not fast enough to whiff punish. It just ends up being a really awkard stall that doesnt give you any sort of advantage

Hey, I'm a decent (top 8ing reasonably 30-40 person locals in a large US city) testament player who's the source for up every WA conversion on dustloop for the character, so I'm somewhat qualified to speak on this. Testament has no unstained, single Wild Assault, and no tension conversions that can break the wall from literally anywhere. Counterhit f.S, Counterhit c.S, and 6H hits can all lead to wallbreaks from not quite full screen. The problem is that with the exception of ch f.S these are all hard hits to get, and you have to confirm the ch f.S into charged wild assault, which is an 11f window to confirm and therefore not very easy. Edit: I did just find one for 6h and counterhit c.s, so this isn't entirely true. Those, however, remain very unlikley hits and these aren't impressive damage combos given the starters involved.

I think another problem testament has that you lightly touched on is just the amount of anti zoning tools that are prevalent in this game. Things like HC shot/jacko minion toss/nago clone/white wild assault etc. make it hard to even set up and play my game in a ton of different MU’s. The fact that I get outzoned by Jacko even tho I’m the dedicated zoner is kinda sadge. Although Imo I think test is better than people say and there is a lot of stuff that can get pushed

My biggest issue with the character this season was that you can't get the good re-stain combo off of wild assault; without that everything just feels really clunky. That combo is super underrated and was critical to them being strong after the dash-cancel changes, but it's not super accessible, especially now.

I think another thing about Testament is that along with needing to apply stain state to access some of their best situations, there are a lot of times where stain state just wont do a lot, especially compared to other characters win conditions. The tools Testament has around stain don't allow for super consistent mixups after popping on block all the time. Even in the cases where a good setup does exist, 5k stain pop IAD JH high low for instance, weird inconsistencies and holes in those mixups tend to make it less rewarding then something like Bridget yoyo set which serves a similar function. There are a lot of cases where the mixup after stain pop tends to be a simple strike throw one and it's hard to apply stain for Oki after a throw, which can make it hard to loop a repeating stronger then normal strike throw situation. It often feels to me that Testament needs to both apply stain and use 50 meter for a decent mixup, and even then most of those mixups are far from being 50/50s. It often seems weird to me that apart from arbiter sign, most of Testaments readily available mixup options don't utilize stain state very well. Because stain is popped on the first non projectile attack you hit your opponent with after applying it, both meatying and safejumps often provide little additional mixup with stain than without. Arbiter sign is itself not the best tool for opening someone up unless they are asleep at the wheel. This all combined would seem damning for the character if not for the fact that they gain much easier access to stain then most characters do to their setplay, and trap type tools. I just can't help but feel when playing the character that greater access isn't enough to offset the lower reward. It feels like arc sys wants the characters strength to lie in other things like neutral, extended but not super threatening pressure sequences, and generally good buttons, but it doesn't like their performance in those areas is good enough currently.

Testament can break the wall off roundstart with WA. But only off a counter hit, unlike Ram who can do it off normal hits. Unless there's been a lot of development I don't know about. I started playing with Testament, and I feel like Arcsys is scared to give this character too much because of how powerful stain is as a... kinda do-everything tool. Until they figure out how to thread that needle better I'm gonna play a different character. Gio is mad fun this patch

Testament has been my main since their release and it's been a struggle this patch for me. While I think Red WA is fine on them, they don't get as much of a benefit off of it compared to others because of their wincon being so symbiotically tied to stain, so it just becomes a tool to guarantee pressure into the corner or to strip them of defensive options on wallbreak reset. I don't know how strong it would be, but considering Bridget has a semi-similar gameplan to Testament, it would be interesting to see Testament with Blue WA instead of Red. Idk if it would be too strong, but at this point to me, it would be either improving their approach with stain or giving them another option to guarantee more consistent pressure with BWA.

If there were more ways to set the position the succubus it would feel alot better, I think they wanted to retain the feeling of traps by having the succubus stay in place. The threat of being stained is supposed to make being near it scary but, it really isn't commonly used in that way. Most of the time when you apply stain it's from hitting crow after a hkd or by ending a combo with it. Stain is powerful but, if you're just playing neutral you can remove it just by blocking a poke their is an imbalance between how long it takes to set up vs how long it lasts.

as a test main since they came out I was worried you werent gonna know the REAL struggles and stuff and you did a beautiful job of explaining all the hard parts of playing this character even if on paper they are strong thanks LK

Also fun thing about testament this patch, even when they have stain and have meter and have you in the corner, deflect shield is almost the perfect mechanic to counter their win con cause you can push block the stain pop and effectively push testament back to neutral again, even on the throw otg setup with crow. This character is just unable to just be truly truly winning unless the opponent hits 0 hp. They aren’t even to able to access wall break even with orange wa due to the way their combos tend to be structured off their strongest normal hits. They just feel bad to play with and don’t even feel good to win with

It's funny how two characters with a very similar gimmick mechanic play around it largely pretty differently and still manage to have almost the exact same problem with their balance being wildly fluctuating matchups as a result of a toolset focused almost entirely of taking advantage of the gimmick in a way that makes their offense less interactable by default at the cost of awkward neutral and bad defense

The answer is yes. I can type essays on it but since the community has finally opened their eyes I don't see a point. Buff Testament, I will downplay until fairness has been achieved.

personaly i love the gessing game that testament make you play with your oponent, it keeps the fight interesting

This was so educational !! Thank you LK !!

I really appreciate these kinds of videos.

Testament’s range issues hurt so much. They can’t interact too much from fullscreen, so they get bullied by zoners, and they don’t have scary speed, burst options, or many close range options, so they struggle up close too. It really sucks :(

Another issue I’ve run into is that I have to choose between HKD with wild assault or wall break with stain

Something I don't see mentioned a lot, but a huge issue with Testament is that stain/succubus is wayyyyyyy too flimsy. Literally any hit will break either, so any opponent that can love-tap you full screen will make you go back to square one. Coupled with being required to get up close to get a meaningful combo off stain, your risk-reward is pretty bad.

As a testament main, i feel like some buffs to 5H and a new, quicker way to apply stain would be ideal, like a new way to command the crow instead of straight forward or towards the succubus

It's almost a 4-step process... because you've got to get them in the corner first, it's not like you can make it happen easily. Then you need the succubus to then get the crow. Then you need to be in a position to safely pop the stain. If you get stain through blocked crow, they can also do stuff to avoid your attempt to stain pop but I suppose if you HIT the crow then you're safe to followup. Also, there are times when the crow doesn't apply stain (unlucky/bad timing when they're knocked down) which really messes you up. Testament doesn't really get anything off neutral swings (unless you can react to CH fS and WA) and has poor conversion, so even if you do read someone you get almost no damage off it. Whereas most of the cast can hit you in neutral and take 60% off your health. I love the character and love the playstyle, but the risk of playing normally is so high and the reward is so low as well as being elusive.

As someone who just Started playing test a bit ago, it seems like they don't have an abundance of good moves like other characters and unholy diver one of their better moves feels really buggy or at the very least incredibly unintuitive, specifically the interaction between the succubus and the UD because the UD is supposed to target the succubus but I have found on several occasions that the UD simply ignores the succubus on the field and I don't know if I'm just bad or if the timing is just unnecessarily tight. Those are the only issues I've picked up on because all the other ones are more or less just me being bad at the game.

I think one of the major things is that Test (or arcsys) can't decide whether they should be a full screen zoner or mix up set play character. So instead you get this awkward inbetween of just being kinda bad at both. Like LK said you dont really get any reward off your buttons even with WA. But closeup aswell Test's mixups are pretty flawed and have huge holes in them. Meanwhile you have a character like Ky who has really good zoning, decent oki/setplay, and absolutey stupid conversions. That along side Ky's good buttons and mobility makes him kinda just a better Test in my eyes.

im a bit new to ggst but not fgs (skugs was my main fg) and i have 33 hours in the game (floor 6 player) and yea i can def feel things like it being hard to convert certain buttons esp 5s w/o stain or WA. on the topic of WA i feel like that test doesnt get the most value out of wa bc 2s gets you alot of dmg and you dont get access to it with WA typically, not to mention that WA is usually used to convert off of things you normally dont or as corner carry but not as a wall break option as stain is usually better but that comes with its own problems. also testament generally has committal options generally from my exp, from crow to fireball, or arbiter as stated but most of these require a second step which can get you called out again and in arbiters case can let you get some oki/mix but has the most solutions to being beaten. and this character doesnt do that crazy dmg usually but ive been enjoying them alot! fuck ky and nago tho they make wish i was learning a diff character 👍. ultimately i js think its power creep and js how game has evolved to where test has to make alot of callouts in a row

Anybody knows what LK's is saying about what was discovered for Baiken which makes him consider her high tier?

Brsides just a new move, I think they should buff charged projectile. Kinda hard to get value with the full charged projectile with a much faster pace

I just got back into ggst and playing testment and they seem pretty fun and easy to play. But I don't see em often

I still find the character very rewarding to play but I feel alot of my wins are based around how I can condition my opponent's neutral. Thats the biggest variable

Another thing that makes test tough to play is that 6h which supposed to catch jumps just wont sometimes, millias and chipps especially

Testament unfortunately doesn’t have the ability to wallbreak anywhere on screen with WA right now, if their wild assault could actually launch the opponent in the air that would actually benefit greatly, allowing Testament to do something like c.S 6H, which normally doesn’t connect grounded

Glad I saw this video. As a Testament player I've been hearing they are low tier. But I didn't know the specifics. Wild assault definitely changed the game, and not in Testament favor so much. I'm going to stick with them though. Imo they are still fun and easy to play. Just not tournament viable at all!

They're arguably my favourite character of all time but playing as them always makes me sad. Their moveset just feels... Clunky. Anti zoning tools make maintaining neutral damn near impossible, 236S/H has such an awkward hurtbox, stain is a fun mechanic but setting it up feels awkward, teleport is so situational, and their advantage state just... Isn't very flexible, I feel like I'd have a lot of fun playing as them if their offense was just tweaked a bit. 6P, 6H and 2D are super satisfying buttons, popping stain feels great, and conceptually their moveset is really cool

As a Testament main since their release, I don't want to sound like certain downplayer, but, YES, Testament is doing bad right now, but not because of being necessarily bad, but for being too honest and inconsistent in a game when almost everyone in the cast has something crazy going for them. For starters, despite being described as a "Neutral focused Mid-range Zoner" Testament doesn't do really good in neutral against most of the cast. 5S and 5H are slow, doesn't do a lot of damage, don't combo into anything interesting if connects and doesn't really reach that far if we compare it with most of long-ranged 5S and 5H of this game. Testament loses to Axl, Faust, Ram, Nago, Bridget and even Ky in neutral because of their normals alone. Same goes for almost the rest of Slash and Heavy Slash buttons of their kit, good, but easily outmatched. Then there is their poor and inconsistent set of special moves. Grave Reaper and Unholy Driver are okay, but nothing crazy, I want to focus in the other two: Arbitor Sign and Possesion. Arbitor Sign is an interesting tool for controlling neutral and keeping enemies far from you in paper but is WAY too inconsistent: Not only is really slow, so it can be predicted by patient opponents, but it directly doesn't hit them if they are too close, too far or simply in air. It could be useful against other zoners like Axl or Asuka, but is so inconsistent that is literally USELESS against Chip and Millia because of how fast they are. You can get an idea of how bad a move is when it's unusable in a matchup. And the teleport, Possesion, sounds and looks cool, sure, but in practice, is just an High risk, low reward tool. Not only you need to set the Grave Reaper first to use it properly, but it is has a lot of both startup and recovery, meaning that you can be punnished even when you do it correctly, which is just absurd. There's a reason of why almost any Test players out there doesn't use this move. And the most evident flaw this character haves in my opinion, is one that I alredy talk before, their whole kit. I hear a lot of people saying that almost all Testament play in a really similar way, and the worst part of it is that they are almost right: They only have 4 moves in total, and 2 of them are incredibly inconsistent. Testament is one of the characters that more dessesperatly needs a new move, something that could make their gameplay less repetitive and more aggressivly, because aggressive play is another thing Testament almost doesn't has, except when the opponent is in the corner, explaining why a lot of people find them annoying, because most of the time they are going to be trying to keep the opponent away spamming proyectiles, doing the same Grave Reaper> Unholy Driver all over again. Once again, Testament is not a terrible character at all,they have a lot of flaws but still haves their pros, just like this video showed, if you want to learn them, you can still do it and have fun with them. This whole Bible wasn't just for downplaying them, this is just my (maybe a little bit exaggerated) view of the character, therefore my opinion, you can disagree and correct me if you think I mistake in something. That being said, I hope Arc Sys gives some cool changes to my non binary fella, they need them :(.

Whenever he says "wild assault" it sounds like "owada soul".

My favorite thing to do is get a combo that starts without stain, gets stain, and then stain pops all in the same combo

As Testament player I feel seen. Thank you.

Test is the only character I can play so I main them but despite that i feel Test is pretty weak. The way Test's kit is balanced i think is just flawed. Test is meant to be a zoner but a lot of characters just have better fireballs. Sure Test can delete projectiles but thats honeslty pretty niche. And its easy to just be out zoned by other zoners. Chaos has a fee beatdown versus a Test and she basically goes 5/5 against fucking Axl. Stain is an objectively powerful mechanic basically making any move plus. But getting stain state off is convuluted or at the very least requires resources. On top of that to make up to the free plus, which is only a single hit btw, Arc made outmost her entire moveset negative on block against most of the cast. I wouldnt calm Test balanced ritht now. Why the hell doew Baiken get so many plus buttons AND A 1 FRAME COUNTER but Testament's teleport is a 16 frame start up and only puts you in neatral outside of combos (which is also hard to combo with cause its so many frames anyway and then you have to still do a move). Testament's teleport can definitely be buffed to be faster on startup and either their negative buttons buffed or just their bird in general. Testament hasn't even been buffed since their release unless you count red wild assault which buffed fucking everyone including Ram. If they are going to keep buffing they top tiers then they need to stop being so scared of buffing the lower tiers. I could keep going tbh. Like lets not get into how much of her shit is dependent the succubus she places

Just give Testament faster startup on grave reaper and allow for a little better teleport

Thanks for the vid as a floor8 Test main

5:30 this thing has to go imo just like dp rc

Testament right now is pretty sad to play All other characters have so manny options plus more damage

Testament being low maint is really nice. I hope the character gets explored more.

This is all because we lost Romolla

this video is making me have another character crisis.

It really doesn't help Testament that even outside of balance concerns, they keep getting things that FEEL bad. Why does nostrovia still feel so inconsistent? Why does 2H increase gravity? Why does jD whiff after jH hits someone crouching? Why did they nerf 236H pressure? Even if they were good, these things are SO frustrating when playing the character in terms of how they feel and play. And you see these issues come up and result in frustrating drops or needlessly punishing situations even from players like Kazam playing in super competitive brackets.

I just lost to one in a tournament so clearly not against me!

I’m a testie main and it seems That if you can get your offense rolling it’s very hard to stop, but getting it going is the hard part. Once you get her curse going it’s a guessing game since any hit you do leads to high damage and reset (2k curse hits 5s, 6hs hit with the bird reset the curse) then you have to guess between over head(quick dust) or low k. Let alone if you do that combo loop and end with her three hot super that sets up the curse again. And since Romain cancels aren’t super important for her you usually have a super in stock🤔. Just my experience with her. Also not, hoo boy if they press pressure on you damn does testie have the worst time to get them off of you

Take a shot everytime he blinks. You'll be radioactive by the next day.

as a testament main, i can confirm that testament at least to me feels sorta like they're missing something (maybe new move can fix this?) but if you look deeper, testament has a lot of holes. testament's preassure can usually be beaten by 6p, they conversion of stray hits is really bad, the crow thing you showed it perfectly where you just have to call out and another thing is that testament does of course get buffed by red wild assault but its a lot more complicated because of testament's low hp and the fact that testament actually doesnt get good combos or at least good damaging combos off red wild assault unless if its from like 6h and 1 more is that combos are very linear and not as in routing but you have to in a way hit grave reaper h. you can do c.s into reaper or 2h but you have to do that and although its a good move you dont have any alternatives. lastly the worst part of testament is getting outzoned and outsped. just look at the potempkin and axl matchups and just watch how they destroy test because testament is so slow and not to mention after aerial reaper you are put into special fall until you hit the ground

People calling Testament the worst character in the game just gives me the impression that they haven't tried to play Potemkin at a decent level.

Yessss validate my losses >:^)

5 months later they still struggling.

Is my sanity struggling in guilty gear strive?

Really love playing Testament especially right when he released. Honestly though I feel like his tool kit is a miss, almost as if trying to avoid the old toolkit made them too cautious. To this day I havent found a consistant way to utilize the teleport. Rough in these streets.

Give him back badlands or the traps like at least Hitomi or Zeinist

I think a lot of people that play fighting games get too far away from the fundamentals: blocking, spacing, and movement. Do things that your opponent isn't expecting. For me I don't focus as much on combos as I do wearing my opponent down with normals, creating space, and blocking. It might be old school but it works.

I stopped playing Strive long ago, but it sounds like the New Testament just doesn’t hit right. Almost like they’re nothing without their traps.

He’s struggling because slayer isn’t in the game

they/them!

As an Anji main. No ones struggling bro but me

The thing about Test is you dont have to be better to win. You can get really good results against high level players without having strong neutral. Other characters are far more punishing when you aren’t playing perfectly, but Test can get away with autopiloting.

Need to stay this way as that 6P is absolutely absurd

no

testament is an extremely unpopular character with very few people who care enough to compete at a high level. guilty gear players seem to have this misconception that popular character = strong character and unpopular character = weak character even if the data doesnt bear that out

I don't play them, so no.

I play against one of the top test players in NA regularly and I think most people just dont know how to play them properly.

"Worst character in the game" Theres no community ive come to despise more than the strive community.

don’t care hate this character 🗿

no