Zhao Yun

Introduction
Zhao Yun is Chaos Generation's bojutsu master who at first appears to be a fairly well-rounded space control character. And he is definitely that, but a little more digging will reveal an exceptionally scary character who can hang with the best of the close range monsters, and even outdo them thanks to an incredibly easy infinite combo from very practical starters, as well as the unique ability to unscale his supers.

Strengths & Weaknesses

 * Excellent range on his normals and a balanced set of special moves allow him to be a threat at any range
 * Strong combos, including many setups for a practical infinite
 * Is able to reverse damage scaling on his supers, causing them to sometimes deal more damage than their base value
 * Many multi-hitting moves, meaning low damage and high susceptibility to guard cancels
 * Poor defensive options without meter
 * His character model is significantly uglier than his art

Super Combo
Billion Stabs (236236P)

Like a super version of Million Stabs. C version does more damage than A version, EX version does more damage than both.

Barrier (214214P)

Zhao Yun plants his staff in the ground, summoning a field of electricity around him. Both versions send the opponent into the air, C version higher than A version. EX version hits twice.

Ultra Combo
Lightning Rod (236236BD)

Zhao Yun plants his staff in the ground directly in front of him, trapping the opponent in place before transitioning into a cinematic animation. Decent damage and easy to work into grounded combos, but cannot hit airborne opponents, limiting its use as a way to extend damage from most bread and butter combos.

Strategy
Zhao Yun gives you a ton of freedom to do whatever you feel most comfortable doing. Against characters who excel in the close range like Xiahou Dun, Wei Yan or Xu Chu, you can keep them at bay with your long range moves like Denkoudan, 6C/3C and 5CD, only moving in when you're sure you can press the advantage.

Against characters you may feel more comfortable approaching, finding your way in is easy thanks to these aforementioned space control tools. Once you get it, you can pressure people with 2B, mixing up with instant overheads and your powerful forward throw. Try to get your opponent into the corner, as Zhao Yun's pressure and combo tools really open up here.

Zhao Yun doesn't need MAX Mode as much as other characters, thanks to his limited looping potential and a practical zero-resource infinite, so he's much more suited to spending his meter on EX and supers. You generally have a lot of freedom with this character -- use EX San Setsu Kon to pull opponents in, EX Denkoudan and backward Quick Dash to keep them away... the sky is the limit.

Combos
Main confirm: 2B(3) (or forward throw) 1C 6A 623P

This also works after nj.A nj.C for an instant overhead confirm.

The Infinite: (after any launch) [j.A j.C j.D j.CD land 5A] xN

Works primarily at closer distances, so many midscreen confirms into 623C won't allow for an infinite unless you spend meter. Literally anything will let you infinite in the corner, though.

Super Unscale: [corner] 623C, C Stabs (1 or 2) xx super For some reason, super cancelling the early hits of C Million Stabs rewinds the damage scaling, causing the resulting super to deal increased damage -- sometimes more than the base damage of the super. This is still affected by damage scaling, though, so longer combos will mitigate the increased damage, which means this is best reserved for hard punishes.

The primary setup for the unscale is a combo into 623C in the corner, followed by a buffered C Million Stabs into a super cancel. The most damaging setup on most character is a super cancel into C Billion Stabs, which sees a tremendous damage increase, to the point that it can kill in many situations. Otherwise, Million Stabs will be super cancelled into Barrier.

How you perform the setup varies from character to character. The following is a table of what setup works for each character. Damage from the unscale setups against Lu Meng and Wei Yan is so reduced that it practically has no effect, meaning that these setups aren't really worth going for in these matchups.