I ran into another Smoke user and it turned out to be a me tally challenging experience. It started off well, with an easy victory in the first set but then my opponent found an annoying tactic that worked quite well for them.
In the first set, I cruised to victory, as my opponent didn't have a response for my barrage of attacks. I thought I had this ranked match in the bag but things didn't exactly go as planned and it only got harder from there.
I generally hate playing against players that spend the entire match running away and looking for an opportunity to sucker punch you. They simply wait to block your moves and then punish you.
The strategy worked for my opponent and I got punished quite regularly. This lead to losing the second set and moving the match to the third set.
I wasn't feeling very confident and at this point, I also hadn't figured out a way to counter my opponent's spammy style of play. So I had to be patient at certain points and also find opportunities to punish my opponent.
For the most part though, I tried to be aggressive and run after them. Sadly, that's the only way to play against people like this. The downside is that you get punished a lot but the positive is that I get to do more combos and have more fun.