BlazBlue
I've played BlazBlue a total of 5 times now, and
I'd say I'm doing quite well. Granted, I have experience with many
games, including Guilty Gear (same developers), so I know what to look
for. Here's how the process has played out so far.
Step 1: Hear about BB being revealed at AX2008.
Step
2: Hear about people getting into it months down the road; learn about
the game a bit through reading and watching videos (accumulating
knowledge).
Step 3: Play it for the first time at AX2009 (2 or 3 times). Get used to how it feels. Decide I'm going to start with Bang.
Step
4: Play it day one of Rina's going away tournament (2 or 3 times).
Make a conscious effort to learn the buttons and a few moves - from
here I realize that Bang's nails give him the same spacing tool as
Millia's hairpins in Guilty Gear, but with added effects.
Step
5: Play it day two of Rina's going away tournament at the arcade. So,
it's my 3rd time playing, and I beat some guy at the arcade 3 times in
a row - he didn't understand bursting, so he didn't know that doing it
causes you to take extra damage for the rest of the match. I can't
combo because I don't know any Bread and Butter combos yet (or even
which moves gatling into eachother), and I barely know how to throw
nails (gaining experience figuring out which one is good every
circumstance), but my spacing experience transfers over from Guilty
Gear and I'm able to play safe and get openings. Granted, I can't take
full advantage of each opening, but because the guy bursts early, even
my 1 hit rewards for proper spacing build up and I can win.
Step
6: Read up on it a bit more, look into the mechanics further than just
knowing about bursting. I now understand a bit of how damage scales,
how grabs work, etc.
Step 7: I play it at a friend's house
(he recently got the game for his birthday). I get about 5 minutes
with training mode while my friends are busy, so I have time to learn a
combo (just one simple combo) and learn each and every one of
my normals and what they do. Playing with them helped me to learn the
matchups, and now I have a combo to take advantage of every opening I
get - which is a lot because I already know how to space safely. They
know the game better than that other player, so I'm not winning much
(we eventually start taking turns playing online), but I can keep up
with them and some of the online players.
Step 8: Watch some
videos of Bang players. Just boosting my ability to see what's going
on so that I can follow up even better, or maybe I'll learn a combo I
don't know (I really didn't, but I was looking for some).
Step
9: Play for the 5th time, just the other week (he's had it for like 3
weeks now). I know my moves, and I can consistently use that combo, so
now I work on my mixups. I realize that I have some overheads, a
sweep, my drives can punish if I use the block frames correctly (even
with a teleport to attack from behind, but I don't know the input yet -
I get it on accident sometimes, but I know it's there), and I finally
learn how to grab (and use my command grab). Now instead of fishing
for an opening, landing a hit, repeating, I land a hit and combo (get a
reward for it) and end the combo in knockdown. From here I can mixup
for further openings and keep the match in my favor with even less risk
(I'm not approaching for every opening now, we're playing an okizemi
game, more skill that has transfered over from playing Millia in Guilty
Gear). At this point I can consistently win vs. my friend, we're going
50:50 when he plays his main, and I have much less experience - I just
know what I'm doing.
See how it has played out for
me? First I got used to the game. Then I learned my moves (still
getting used to the game). Then, my knowledge from another game
transferred over, so I was able to practice my spacing and learn it
quickly (even some technical skill transferred over - I can instant
airdash with no problems). From there, I learned a simple combo to
take advantage of every opportunity I can get from my spacing. Then I
used my knowledge to be able to apply mixups - I can make him think I'm
going to grab on wakeup and jab him for the combo, or I can make him
think I'm going to jab and grab him. I can go high low or middle too,
or I can even anticipate an attack on wakeup and punish with the block
frames on drive. He guesses wrong, I get a follow up without having to
fight for it (this wakeup game is called okizemi). If I know what he's
going to do (Yomi), I can keep the pressure on and keep my advantage.
I can push this further in a way similar to what I can do with Millia
in Guilty Gear too. Bang's nail using the 236B input bounces and has a
second hitbox in the air - it's not as useful as Millia's moves with
delayed hitboxes, but I can throw one of those after I get a knockdown
to apply further pressure. You want to jump to avoid my grab, you're
going to get hit by that explosion and give me a follow up. Or maybe
you're playing Tager, in which case you're tall enough to where that's
going to hit, so you have to use a move with invincible startup,
backdash (invincibility), or block.
If you started
playing BlazBlue, where would you start? Would you have spent hours in
training mode working on combos? Great, you know how to take away 50%
of my life, provided you understood that it's a true combo if the
"heat" meter stays red (when it's red, that means it's untechable), or
that you know that grabs can be broken, or command grabs can be broken
when comboed into. Now you just have to land the hit necessary to
start that combo... but can you get past your opponent's spacing?
Maybe
you started practicing with people. Your spacing is pretty good, but
every time you get an opening, you gattling your jab into itself 4
times before landing 2 other hits. That combo SUCKS. You're prorating
heavily and scaling your damage down with those jabs, so that follow up
doesn't do anything for you.
Or maybe you've never played a
fighting game with air dashing before, so your mobility is lacking
compared to other players - you just can't keep up. Maybe you get used
to airdashing quickly and can keep up, but you can't instant airdash,
so some of your follow up opportunities are still being missed. : (
Maybe
you're good at landing your sweep, but every time you go to punish, you
get punished yourself. Boy, it sure would help if you knew about
wakeup invincibility... on that note, maybe it'd help if you knew
about startup invincibility on most distortion drives too - that'd keep
you from blindly rushing down someone who has 50% heat with your laggy
attacks.
Another thing to consider is... where would you
go right after you started? Maybe you picked up an overall sense of
everything to begin with...which skill will help you more? Maybe you
learned one skill really well... which supplements that one in a way
that'll cause your performance to improve most in a short period?
So now what? Break
it down, work on each individual aspect of your game. If I had to
prioritize, I would say that learning these in this order will give you
the greatest advantage when starting a game from scratch.
Game
Mechanics (if you know your fall speed, you're not going to SD in
Melee. If you know how burst works, you're not going to take an extra
50% damage for the rest of the match in BB. Basically, you're not
going to screw yourself over, and you'll eventually learn new tricks to
screw your opponents over)
Spacing (don't get hit - save for games with ring outs, you literally cannot lose if you don't take damage)
Combos
(if applicable, knowing a simple combo magnifies the reward for landing
a hit - more advanced combos will come later after you learn some
technical skill, but increasing the reward for each successful hit you
land will do wonders for your game)
Yomi (If you know what
your opponent is going to do based on his spacing, patterns, or just
intuition, you're able to counter and keep your advantage or obtain
one. You're going to get even more openings because of this, or be
able to perform bigger follow ups, provided you have some... True yomi
is considered to be "mind reading", but it can be developed through
experience. The key here is that in many situations, people will
condition you to react a certain way and bait you to do something
they're going to punish - you have to just know that this is what
they're doing when they do it and act accordingly. Trying to develop
an understanding of every option that's avalible to both players, their
consequences, their counters, counters to those counters, and counters
to the counters to the first counter, will help here. Every option
you're aware of being able to take is another option that might be
useful, or even the best option at the time - and from there, the
psychology of "what does he think I think he thinks I'm going to do?"
comes in)
Technical Skill (it's necessary to get even
greater rewards for your openings, and to give yourself more tools for
acquiring those openings safely. Everything should come naturally -
you shouldn't have to focus on performing a difficult input during a
match, so once your technical skill is second nature, you'll have
greater follow up opportunities, safer approaches, and more viable
options) I have another example to throw showing
how knowledge makes a difference. Last night, I played a buit of GG
with some friends, and one is an Axl main. I'm playing May right now,
and both of us have the common weakness of having moves with slow
startup. The difference was, I knew the framerate data, he didn't
really know it for the both of us. Another thing he didn't know was
that using Faultless defense (you use special meter in exchange for not
taking chip damage, and I'm pretty sure it reduces the amount your
guard gauge fills up) puts you in longer block stun.
Out of
many of my pokes, I got block strings - last night, I started to end
them against him with my 5HS, which has a 5 frame advantage on block.
He would faultless my block strings, leaving me with a sizeable frame
advantage. Knowing that his moves were slow to start up, and that Axl
doesn't even have any moves with throw invulnerability, I went for my
command throw "Overhead Kiss" out of the majority of my block strings
(tick throwing). Basically, his best option would have been to try to
throw out his fastest attack, or to jump out, but he didn't know that
was the best way to avoid the grabs. Now, I'm not sure just what kind
of window I had, but I know that my command grab has several frames of
startup (vs a normal grab which has instant startup), and I know you
can't grab someone for 6 frames after they're in active hit/block stun.
Now, my command grab prorates the damage I do, but it sets up
for a free combo called "Lame loop". Out of my grab, expect to lose at
least 1/3 of your hp (more if I spend tension to loop past 3
iterations). Out of a counterhit (a non-prorated setup), expect to
lose about 1/2 your hp, if not more (matchup and tension spending
dependent).
So basically, out of the majority of my
blockstrings, I got to take away 1/3 of his hp. That's besides any
times I actually hit him, or landed a counterhit. Awesome.
We
can both combo, though we're both somewhat lacking in technical skill
(we both play high damage characters, though he has many inputs with
difficult timing involving FRCs and using aerials off the ground, aka,
tiger knees, and I have many inputs that require buffering a charge in
a short period of time in the middle of a block or attack string - we
would consistantly do more damage if our technical skill was higher,
but we both can combo enough to where we're using our characters's
abilities correctly). Spacing wise, I have more experience with the
game than he does, so I can get past the fact that his character is
great at spacing and mine has a hard time spacing (I have to fish for
counterhits for the majority of my combo setups). If he has time to
practice up and get more experience, he'll do much better vs me since
his character should be able to space the hell out of me. The matchup
is going to get a little wierd at that point - I'm going to
consistently rape him in damage if I do land a poke, whereas he can
poke the hell out of me, but his uber damaging combos require tension
and some difficult setups. After yesterday, he knows what not to do,
so the knowledge advantage is gone...
But that doesn't mean I can't turn my frame advantage into a yomi game. : )
I know he wants to jump out, so I punish with something else instead of going for my command throw, ect...
Sorry
this has little to do with smash guys. It's more about the concepts
here that you should familiarize yourself with than "here's something
you can do in Smash", because if you learn to apply this, it'll help
you in every game you play.
*Edit*
Guess
what? It's been a few months since this was written, and I've since
found that Axl does have a move with throw invulnerable startup. I
guess I need to pay closer attention to the framerate lists. The yomi
game out of a blockstring is now a little more complicated, because
it's one of his specials, and it's easily punishable if I bait him to
do it (though it's a setup for a combo if I let myself get hit by it).
But this tells you something. Have you ever seen data this detailed on AiB or SWF?
http://www.dustloop.com/data/ac/axl.html You
probably haven't. I know because I've looked for it. If you want to
be good, not even the best, you need to care about this kind of stuff.
Get off your butts and practice. : )