Jun

Versatile poking, lockdown, and defense-oriented

Jun is a versatile poking, lockdown, and defense-oriented character, excelling at chipping away an opponent's health and frustrating them into pressing into her strong whiff punishment, reversals, and counterhits. She is also known for her extreme safety. She can have a safe df+2 which launches crouchers, and a safe version of the Kazama f+2 launcher, as well as some other safe launching and evasive options. What's the catch? These Kazama Power moves cost health to use, essentially giving the opponent a tiny "punish" without them actually hitting you. This "downside" is further mitigated by her Heat reducing the health-cost of these moves, as well as Jun having a few special moves which recover her health, and her heat smash being designed to heal her. Using the moves which damage and heal you, grants her a unique resource, Kazama Essence, which empowers a number of her key moves when the gauge reaches 100. Jun retains much of the powerful defense of a Kazama-ryu practitioner, having access to a number of the key moves of the style, such as f+2 (Demon Slayer), d+3+4 (Can-cans), b+3 (Dragon Wheel Kick) and b+1+3 (a reversal). Unlike her fellow practitioner, Asuka, she has much better pokes and movement, allowing her to safely and effectively wear down her opponent with strong tracking on her jabs, df+1, and poking lows, as well as setting up her counter-hit tools and mix-up strings. In return she loses some of Asuka's Sabakis, and she cannot hold her reversal for a more lenient parry timing. She also has much better early punishment than Asuka, being able to launch punish lows at at i14, and having an i10 wall-splatting punisher from bothstanding (uf+1) and crouching (FC.df+1). Is anyone else having Akuma flashbacks? To further differentiate her from Asuka, Jun also has three stances. Izumo is focused on her mix-up game, Miare is primarily combo filler, mostly existing to take her into Izumo with plus frames on block outside of combos. Genjitsu is really the star of the show, giving access to stable okizeme and approach options. Genjitsu has a relatively safe power low and a hit-confirmable mid-mid string which both hit grounded, a power crush option, and the stance itself parries lows and throws on start ups, draining health Jun's opponent. As far as weaknesses go, Jun's aforementioned Kazama Power has some actual downsides too. Her health costs tie into a lot of her strongest moves, not just her safe launchers. Her combo enders, mix-up options, as well as some of her heat engagers and mix up strings cost health too. Her lows and other mix-up options outside of stance are also not very threatening. This means while running offense, Jun can often spend a lot of health without managing to land more than a couple of low pokes against patient opponents. Even though she has some options which heal her, in general you'll spend more than you gain, with moves such as her hell-sweep being a rather bad return on health spent before she gains access to her Kazama Essence install. Jun also lacks a standing launcher at i15, only getting a mini-combo and some health back. Overall though, Jun has many strengths and relatively few weaknesses. While she lacks comeback potential, and can struggle to snowball a round very quickly, she has some of the most reliable pokes and homing options and rewards players who can make strong defensive reads very well with extremely high damage output.