Kazumi Guide
Overview
Newcomer to Tekken 7, Kazumi has been a favorite for both new and experienced players, all of them appreciating her simple and effective gameplan, condensed movelist, and easier execution. She’s an excellent fit for those who want to hone their game sense and focus on fundamentals.
General Strategy
One of the great things about Kazumi is how well her game plan scales from lower to higher skill levels. Regardless of your current prowess and experience, you will want to focus on a handful of critical tools to poke and punish your opponents. While you will be integrating new moves and techniques over time, your primary focus will be mastery of Kazumi’s basics.
Beginner
As always, when you start learning a new character, you should get the grips on the movelist and some basic combos to get you started. You need at least surface-level knowledge of all the options at your disposal and how to execute them.
Due to Kazumi’s strong focus on spacing, punishment, and poking, make sure to get a feel for the range of her moves in the lab or during your matches. Knowing how far away you can be and still hit is crucial, and it will allow you to poke more safely, create whiff punishment opportunities, and capitalize on them.
During matches, you should concentrate on a few easy-to-use moves like d/b4, ff4, d/f1, 1,1,2, d3, 4, and wr1/2. Play safe and play compact. If your opponents are overly aggressive (and if it’s low ranks, they certainly will be), don’t be afraid to throw out things like df1,2 or magic 4 to make them hurt.
Intermediate
Once you have a general idea of Kazumi’s gameplay, you can build upon this foundation. For a character that’s centered on pressure and poking, it’s very beneficial to learn about conditioning your opponents.
Strings like 3,1 and 3,2 are great for this as 3,2 is a safe mid-high that can be ducked, and 3,1 is a slightly punishable mid-mid that will catch those who try to crouch. Similarly, if opponents are too eager to challenge you after d/f1, the 2 follow-up will force them to either block or attempt to sidestep, which you can then either abuse by stealing their turns or punish with homing moves. Conditioning is where d/b2,3,4 comes into play as well. It’s an unsafe string with three lows that are -14, and opponents can block them even after getting hit. While it’s not that good on paper, you can delay your hits or go into a hopkick and other mids if opponents try to block or low parry. As you play, you will discover more opportunities like these to confuse your enemies, stay unpredictable, and condition them to behave in a way that’s advantageous to you.
Advanced
Now you know how to play in neutral, some combos, and how to condition or react to your opponent. It’s time to flesh out all of this and learn a few things that will make you a thoroughly well-rounded Kazumi player.
It’s about time to learn how to act in more niche situations to optimize your damage. Learn wall carry combos from various distances to the wall. Knowing how to follow up wall/balcony/floor breaks is also helpful but not as vital. There are more advanced wall combos to explore, which combine exceptionally well with Kazumi’s ability to push opponents to the wall.
Now that you have some experience reading your opponents, you can put it to use when applying Okizeme. Kazumi has many opportunities to land guaranteed hits, but her wake-up game’s highlight comes from the 1,1,2 knockdown. There’s a variety of follow-ups you can use, but applying them well will take some practice and understanding of people you fight against.
Let’s take a look at her moves.
Base Moves
Situational Moves
Punishment
Normal
Crouching
Combos
General note: If your combo was interrupted or ended in a wall splat, you could often continue with 1, d/f1, 1+2, or f3~F2, 1+2 for a consistent and reliable wall finisher.
Tips against Kazumi
Keep distance. Most of Kazumi’s poke pressure relies on being up close and personal with you, and creating some space will make it harder for her to start pressure. However, keep the range of your attacks in mind. Creating space will be useless if you start whiffing moves and getting punished for it.
Be patient. Trying to take your turn without thinking will allow Kazumi to snowball her pressure out of control. Make sure you aren’t predictable when you challenge her, like pressing after her 1 jab or df1. Instead of trying to hit back, you should also consider sidestepping right. If Kazumi tries pressuring with jabs, it will be easier to hit her after forcing a whiff this way.
Crush her highs. This is more situational, but if your character is blessed with solid high crush moves, you can frustrate Kazumi players that love throwing out magic 4 and jabs.
Summary
Strengths
Great pokes - Arslan Ash aptly calls her the Queen of Poking. Kazumi has an arsenal of solid attacks to pressure and chip away at her opponents.
Simple - Kazumi is one of the most accessible characters to pick up and play. With a focus on poking and a lack of high execution barriers, players can focus on strategy and fundamentals.
Good movement - With one of the best back dashes in the game and her flying stance, Kazumi has above-average mobility, which significantly complements her poking.
Impressive wall carry - Kazumi has some of the better wall carry potential in the game. Even without learning specific wall carry routes, you will often end combos with your enemy slammed against the wall.
Weaknesses
Low damage - Kazumi’s combo damage without a wall splat is below average. You will always want to get opponents to the wall to get a proper reward after a launch.
Weak mixups - While she does have some mixups, they’re generally so bad that using them is seen as an unnecessary risk for underwhelming reward.
Stubby hopkick - Even though it’s only a downside of one move, it has a massive effect on Kazumi. The exceptionally short range of her hopkick means that she doesn’t have a good way of launching -15 moves, allowing opponents to get away with some usually unsafe attacks.
Good Kazumi players to watch:
Arslan Ash - The player who truly put Kazumi on the map. Her toolkit was a great match with his great fundamentals, which led to many dominant tournament runs.
Knee - Often called Mokujin for his proficiency with every character, Knee’s Kazumi is no exception.
Applay - A fantastic content creator and Kazumi main who put out many videos that educate players about many aspects of Tekken, from the bare basics to advanced strategies. A go-to source for anyone who wants to learn Kazumi.
