Author: Corey "Missing Person" Lanier

With the reveal of Jin Kisaragi of Blazblue, Linne of Under Night In-Birth, and Yosuke Hanamura of Persona 4 Arena, Arc System Works gave us a glimpse of the meters involved in the game’s core mechanics in the latest trailer. Novriltataki delved into what he could see from the trailer, and gave the FGC some useful information to go off of.

In this video, he notes that assists have their own meter, with assists costing one half of the meter. Otherwise, the assists seem to be freeform and operate in a similar style to Tekken Tag Tournament 2‘s assist mechanics. He also discusses the super meter, noting that supers will cost two bars of it, while the bar can hold three stocks of meter. What will this discrepancy mean for gameplay itself? That is yet to be determined.

Source: novriltataki

With Black Manta’s recent release into Injustice 2, players are clamoring to figure out all the tech they can before he is made tournament legal next month. His interesting float mechanics are making for some interesting things, and we could see a decent number of players adopt him as one of their characters pretty soon.

This combo video shows some of the capabilities of Black Manta, with some heavy use of his float mechanics to deal out decent amounts of damage. One particular thing of note is that Black Manta can link normals in the air, if you make use of float cancels.

Source: Apolo Loussalier

Street Fighter V‘s Rashid has controlled the air for a long time, but how well does he control the ground? With these meaty setups off of his low V-Skill, Nail Assault, he can control the ground perfectly fine.

NurseLee has concocted several devastating meaty followups to his Nail Assault, which makes his pressure far more difficult to deal with. He particularly finishes with a perfect safe jump that will make Rashid’s air game even more dangerous. This works only on quick rise, but if executed perfectly will make every DP whiff, leading to massive damage.

Source: NurseLee

Have you ever wondered what the worst groove in Capcom vs. SNK 2 is? Most would argue that it is S-Groove. While there are some interesting tools within the groove, including dodging and meter charging, there are many issues with it, including only having access to level 1 supers until you are in red health territory. It essentially makes the groove similar to C-Groove in functionality, but much weaker in practice.

However, its strengths and limitations can actually play as an advantage to several characters, including Kyo, Benimaru, and Athena. Silentscope explains how — as well as how to use everything within the groove — in this tutorial.

Source: silentscope88

Have you ever had difficulties opening up your opponents’ defensive options, so that you can dole out the necessary damage to win? One thing that separates the top winning players from the rest is the ability to establish proper block pressure.

While most people understand the concept of creating safe block strings, there are still some struggles with actually creating opportunities beyond this. This requires being able to create frame traps and extending block pressure to make it difficult for opponents to escape without eating damage. This tutorial, which shows the concept via Guilty Gear Xrd, gives a primer on the concept that will help you get started.

Source: novriltataki

While most characters have an amazing amount of damage potential off of combos in The King of Fighters XIV, but not too many of these see the line of duty in competitive play. The narcoleptic warrior Meitenkun falls into that category, where he has the ability to dole out mass amounts of damage but no one uses him that often.

With this combo video that shows his most optimized damage off of every amount of meter, it may be time to throw our pillows aside and stop sleeping on Meitenkun. With him being able to reach 80% damage off of 4 bars and 100% damage off of 5 bars, it’d be best to keep him in mind on the character select screen.

Source: playergodaines

M. Bison may be one of the lower characters within the rankings of Street Fighter V, but the best players of the character can catch many off guard. This becomes a big problem for newer players, as some of M. Bison’s strengths can prove insurmountable. His gimmicks and ability to well space his normals and meaties makes it very difficult to get out of his pressure once he starts it.

Fortunately, this video by New Challengers shows exactly what you can do to deal with Bison. Going over some of his frame data and hitboxes, you may have found all the answers you need to deal with him.

Source: New Challenger TV