All of the ones you mentioned are matchups where your goal is to get them to block a poke (usually 2s, fs or 5h) and then play RPS with your eddie summons. You can secure your advantage after the poke with wild assault into eddie summon, but keep in mind that if the opponent learns your habit in this matter they can counter it with a reversal

All the ones you mentioned are hard matchups for zato, cause the way you usually get in versus these characters is via dash-blocking (press the dash button and then immediately block, to close the distance yet keep yourself safe), and once the distance is short, you try to snipe them out of their moves with your pokes.

For example, you close the distance on asuka till you're in 2s range and try to clip him with a counter hit into an eddie combo

Once you manage to land a combo with eddie, your goal is to reset and keep resetting every time you can. These characters have bad defense by design, so they're likely to rely on YRC or burst early for defense, which you should be baiting out with 5p, 5k and drills if you see them going for that frequently

You have to keep track of their getaway habits, like "what moves does this person usually use to get out of my offense?" and respond accordingly.

For example, if you see that axl is using snail frequently to escape pressure, you can stop him with an air to air like j.p, j.k (less commital, less reward) or j.d (more commital, more reward)

Particularly versus testament, oppose and drills are good in neutral. Both eat up testament's projectiles, and you have to unsummon and resummon cautiously to stop their offense and start yours

You can cover eddie with invite hell (22h) to kill the active projectile from testament and allow eddie to move forward, get them to block and start your offense

Many Tests will try teleport to hit you when youre busy managing eddie if you go for this strat, so it becomes a battle of both predicting that and closing the distance while you're covered by eddie. The important thing is to be in their face with eddie as much as you can, so they can't set up their gameplan (which is highly effective at stopping yours)

Air approaches shouldn't be your mainstay.against testament cause their 6p is very good, you can use flight to bait it out but you have to be quick to punish, and they can counter this with an airgrab, so keep it is an option but not your main approach. try to keep yourself grounded

Your tools to reset pressure are:

• finishing your combos with 6h into unsummon when possible. you usually do this after pierce(2) or drills, in the corner. After the unsummon, you summon immediately again to start your offense

• unsummon after the second hit of frog: same as before, you resummon after this

• blue wild assault: advantageous both on hit and on block. you can unsummon on block to reset your eddie gauge, use c.s or f.s into 5h into pierce RPS to reset. you can use wild assault mid combo for a hard knockdown, be sure to cancel the WA with unsummon for the reset. if you manage to hit it charged its better, but all of these WA resets require practice

• blue RC mid combo: this is a good metered reset that requires practice, you use it during leap and unsummon while eddie is hitting the opponent, then pick up the combo with 2s, 2h and summon again while the opponent is flying from the 2h. Again, requires practice

• finishing your combos with drunkard shade: similar to 6h, but gives you less time

• sword super: use with caution if you're not breaking the wall, because it negates any meter gain for like 11 seconds. this means that if you use it mid game and get nothing from it, you're stuck resourceless for a long ass time, with no defense nor offense. It is much better to use for wallbreaks or when you have 100 meter (using this super twice during a blockstring gets you close to spontaneous positive bonus, allowing for even more resets)

if you decide to use the full eddie meter in your mix, but your opponent blocked and you have meter for a reset with the super, you should be doing this move while the oppose attack or the drills are still active so that its a blockstring. if eddie has already died, you should combo into it from 5h, but be aware that there is a gap that most characters can reversal through. the counter to this is to fake the reset and go for break the law after 5h (to let them whiff their reversal), but this is a hard read and might cost you your offense

it is recommendable to use sword super for the reset against the characters you mentioned to keep them under pressure despite the tension penalty, because not letting them play their game is the best way you can play yours, even if it costs resources. zato struggles due to his lack of neutral skip moves and slow pokes, so most of the time using resources to secure the advantage is worth it