A beloved member of the FGC scene in the Pacific Northwest, Rhiannon, has recently suffered a terrible accident–having been struck by a car while walking on foot. She now faces a very long road to recovery. A warmhearted person with a great attitude, she has been an immensely helpful member of the fighting game community in her region from day one. A GoFundMe page has since been created to raise money for her formidable medical bills. From the fundraiser page:
On May 15, our beautiful Rhiannon was struck by a moving car as she crossed the street after work that evening… Rhiannon was slammed to the ground underneath a parked van. Both legs were shattered in the impact as well as crushed ribs. Many bumps and bruises and sprains. Our hearts are broken when we think of the pain she must endure on a daily basis as she recovers from this horrible accident.
It will be a long uphill battle as she is unable to put weight on her legs for 6 months, and faces many hours of physical therapy. She has lost her independence, her apartment, and her ability to work. We sincerely appreciate any help to offset the huge expenses she has incurred.
A warning for the squeamish: the GoFundMe page contains photos of the injuries that some may find unsettling.
A huge thank you from her friends and family goes out to the FGC for all of the support she’s received already.
Sean English offers here an in-depth breakdown of Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2’s defensive options, as based on the current demo for PlayStation Plus users. Note that it’s aimed at players of at least an intermediate skill level. If you’re very new to the game or series, you’ll want to check out some of the Guilty Gear Crash Course series!
We start with neutral, which is posited here as largely being movement. Good movement keeps you unpredictable, out of threat range, and all the forward movement will be building your meter. From here we see a summary of tools to reduce risk and slow the match down: FD brake, YRC as a neutral tool, and defensive air throws to stop your opponent from getting away with murder.
Next is the inevitable situation: blocking. One of the more difficult parts of the game—especially when you’re new—is escaping pressure. The example used here is a long string into Carcass Raid, a move from Venom that has tons of frame advantage on block. You want to escape before it connects, and this well-edited video gives you a tree of options that set a framework for how you should be looking at escaping from pressure.
The rest of the video delves into the mechanics of instant block, faultless defense (FD), blitz shield, and burst. Most importantly it shows you how to use these effectively, including a little breakdown on good places to burst—another difficult thing to learn if you’re new to games with a burst mechanic.
Jay Rego has returned with his highly insightful “Analyze This!” series for Street Fighter V. This time, we see game one of Grpt|Fuudo vs. RZR|Xian’s grand finals set from the recent Final Round 20.
The game is slowed down to allow text overlay, while we get an excellent run down of the choices each player made, and the potential reasons why each player chose their option.
Along with the eye-opening tidbits offered on the match commentary, there are breaks in the match to educate you on Ibuki’s mixup options off of tricky V-trigger setups. Whether you play these characters or not, there is a lot to be learned here!
Jack-O is a wild character design. She employs several types of minions simultaneously to whittle you down. Almost like a new level of previous “puppet” style characters, but she does not directly control the minions. She’s underwhelming on her own, but if she gets going with a full squad she quickly becomes one of the most obnoxious characters to fight against.
6K (overhead) RC combo on Pot. The combo can be ended earlier for a setup, rather than max damage:
Close slash being +frames (hit or block) allows for links. This optimizes options against Haehyun & Potemkin, showing two oki routes off a 6P knockdown:
Speaking of 6P knockdowns, a common approach is to cancel to a ghost set (minion house), pick it up, airdash and throw it. Since at many ranges the house goes over the opponent, this leaves Jack-O open. Fake ’em out with recalling the ghost in mid-air, and come down with a meaty j.K. It even functions as a safe jump in the mirror match:
We then see a strong almost-setplay sequence following it. Using 5D6 is a great way to extend combos, but beware of using it if minions are already in play. They often hit at inopportune times and interrupt your combo.
Counter-hit 6P doesn’t net much of anything midscreen, but Silva shows here that you can—given you have enough meter for several uses of 4D—waste enough time with a combo to get S and K ghosts to level 2:
Sometimes you don’t want to commit to a combo that will only work on counter hit (CH). This shows how CH 2S will mess up your normal combo, but can still be converted on reaction:
This is very meter-intensive, but again sometimes it’s about wasting time so that minions can approach and/or level up.
Another example of 4D/j.4D loops, good for wasting time to allow better positioning and stronger minions:
Last but not least, don’t forget that your ghosts when recalled, keep their current level. If you get the lancers (K-version of ghosts) to level 3, the combo opportunities are insane.
A well-known Japanese Venom player known as 310 (@310_progressive) just got married a few days ago, and in a supremely sweet gesture a congratulatory hashtag was created:
Under this hashtag, everyone posted combos that did exactly 310 damage, against Venom using 310’s benchmark color (white and red).
Venom has a staggering amount of options with how his pool ball projectiles interact, and 310 is known for pushing the character and creating fantastic tech and combos. It’s fitting that a pioneer of his character should receive so much love in the form of creative combos. To do this much damage—about 75% of Venom’s life—often requires utilizing full guard gauge or the Danger Time mechanic.
Whether you can’t read a player’s tag, or just want a list of high-level players to look out for, this Arcade Player Reference Sheet is a bookmark worthy of any serious BlazBlue player.
In the same vein as the Guilty Gear version, this is a well-organized spreadsheet. Among it’s rank listings are personal side notes about players, alternate characters they play, which arcade they frequent, and—when applicable—links to their Twitter page.
While the rankings will fluctuate and this won’t be constantly updated, it gives you a good idea of where your favorite players lie amidst the competition.
Thanks to Spiel for compiling this, and continuing the trend of intuitive and useful references.
Whether you can’t read a player’s tag, or just want a list of high-level players to look out for, this Arcade Player Reference Sheet is a bookmark worthy of any serious BlazBlue player.
In the same vein as the Guilty Gear version, this is a well-organized spreadsheet. Among it’s rank listings are personal side notes about players, alternate characters they play, which arcade they frequent, and—when applicable—links to their Twitter page.
While the rankings will fluctuate and this won’t be constantly updated, it gives you a good idea of where your favorite players lie amidst the competition.
Thanks to Spiel for compiling this, and continuing the trend of intuitive and useful references.
Don’t let yourself got mauled by unsafe moves you don’t know how to punish! Useful for players of any level, here we have the newest set of frame data for The King of Kighters XIV, version 1.03.
In beautiful spreadsheet form, check the “readme” tab for helpful bits of universal information. You name it: character size categories, which characters have 3- or 4-frame normals, how long you have to throw tech, etc. Beyond that, there’s a tab for inputs–explaining all the used inputs–as well as number notation.
This comprehensive resource then has highly detailed tabs for each individual character. The characters and teams are color-coded, there’s a section for notes, damage, stun, etc.
A big thanks to staroceans (and the other contributors, sourced in the readme tab) for this compilation.
A largely unexplored character, Kum Haehyun is coming along nicely in the tech department. Thanks to Japanese player Maroshi exploring the uses of his fireball—the trajectory of which is controlled by the player—we see below a vortex of options off a corner throw.
The superjump is a nice touch as it allows him to completely avoid most any reversal super that might escape the corner.
Throw Oki
Same side high: ad/f (airdash forward) j.S > j.HS.
When going for the throw to start these mixups, make sure you option select with close Slash (6+S+H). Not only is an accidental 6H bad news up close, it’s incredibly negative on block.
Make sure you end your juggles with j.H with the opponent above your height for maximum timing to get a free 236H:
Another application of that meterless oki situation. After the fireball, 5H is used to bait the opponent into standing as the second hit is overhead. Another layer to this mixup could be using 6K which looks similar but hits low. Keeping them in blockstun with the 5H is a safer bet, though:
Don’t forget that comboing into 5D reduces some of the damage scaling of your combo, potentiallly netting you more damage than other combo routes after a roman cancel.
Tired of Leo’s backturned mixup situation? Wakeup super allows you to react—with the super freeze—and see what option he chose. If he countered, charge the super a bit to avoid it, otherwise you can let ‘er rip.
You’ve likely heard of “fuzzy guard” setups by this point. The premise is that when you block something standing—like an air normal—you have a set amount of time where your character is stuck in a standing block animation. While you can change your input to crouch block, you’re still stuck in a standing animation while the blockstun finishes. During this time your standing character is vulnerable to “instant overheads” using jump normals on the way up.
A quick video example from Ibuki in Street Fighter V:
After the cross-up, if you were to crouch block you’d get caught by the instant jumping light kick.
Fuzzy blocking utilizes this concept as a defensive perk. In Guilty Gear, it’s something akin to the usefulness of the jump back + throw tech option select in SFV. It can escape throws while also covering several high/low mixups.
While blocking, you go from down-back, to up-back (+two buttons for Faultless Defense), to back, to down-back.
How long should you hold the Faultless Defense for? It mostly depends if you went airborne or not, but if you have meter to spare it can of course be useful for its pushback function.
Here’s an example against a few mixups from I-no, who has some of the scariest high/low pressure in the game:
Considering your typical pressure timing: most characters lows start up in about 5 frames, while their command overheads are typically closer to 20 frame startup. (If all they have is standing Dust, that’s usually closer to 25 frames.)
Starting with low block covers the timing for a typical meaty low. If they put you in blockstun, you won’t be able to jump and you will then just be high blocking for a moment. If they did not put you in blockstun, you will jump out. This will cover many basic mixups: going low immediately, a low followed by an overhead, a (command) grab instead of any normals, etc.
It’s best used after you’ve shown your opponent you’re willing to block when on the defense. If you use it immediately on your wakeup, a basic gatling with a delayed low (2P > 2K) or multiple lows (2K > 2D) is going to hit you. Using it later in a pressure string can be more effective. Know your opponent’s options: what they can gatling into, how many lows they have, etc.
Once you’ve conditioned them to try higher levels of mixup, though—this is a good time to apply this. This strong defensive option is also useful when you suspect a command throw might be coming.
Another example vs I-no, but this can be applied to many airdash pressure strings:
A common way for I-no to extend her pressure is Chemical Love YRC air dash forward. The mixup used here is airdash j.S, j.HS into j.D (for a third overhead), or land and go low. Because the low comes out fast compared to when the j.D hits, this option used right after the j.HS covers both options.
It should be noted that if she’s using other strings like j.S j.K j.S off the airdash that this is much harder. Those strings require closer spacing though, so you can use FD (Faultless Defense) to push her out of range of j.K, giving you an out.
The timing of this technique takes some practice to get used to, but it’s well worth learning.
Fuzzy blocking is quite an asset. It takes some practice to find the timing and where it’s applicable. It’s not infallible, though. If it’s obvious you’re doing it every time you get knocked down, it can be easily countered. Used wisely, however, this can get you out of a lot of difficult pressure situations, including mixups you may not be able to react to.
