How to beat people who spam Reversals

[Loli Bacon]

Hey guys, topic title.

Some issues I have with this in Arcsys games.

1) to bait a reversal, you have to either A) force it to whiff or B)block it. Some issues with this that I'm having.

2) Blocking a reversal means they can Rapid or Roman cancel it if they see it was blocked. Therefore, they then switch from defense to applying pressure. Best to force it to whiff.

3) Forcing a DP to whiff (being spaced correctly) means they can just jump away and get out for free. Thus to beat this, it's best to poke to keep them in place.

4) If you poke and they DP, they not only stop your pressure, but they get damage and get to apply their own.

DPs are too low risk/high reward. Sure, the player can make a mistake and do it when it would whiff, but good players don't usually do that. How do you beat this? Because of this RPS on offense that's NOT in my favor, a lot of the times I find myself winning more if I just stay away and zone. How do you beat this mindset of "They're near me. Use a reversal"? No matter how much I bait, I can never get them to NOT either A) DP, B) Chicken block if I baited a DP or C) Backdash oki because I tried to force a DP to whiff, so they're too far to punish.

Thoughts? This shit makes these games extremely boring and tedious to play. I don't mind DPs, but being able to rapid cancel them is retarded.

[NecroTheReaper]

Dp wiffing doesn't necessarily be out of range. It can also mean backdash through its actives, or even bait it with OD in BB and go for a nice unburstable combo of your choice. I play Relius who has a lot of means to bait dps (though I failed plenty against Tsubaki's damn wiff canceling), so maybe it just feels easier to me.

Also, there are a few dp's that aren't really punishable in certain situations. Since I've only thoroughly played BB, I'm gonna use it for references. A lot of people talk about Izayoi's DD reversal bein safe on hit even though its minus on block, but it pushes people out so far on block that it can't really be punished except by a really fast, long ranged move. Making it wiff is just about as dangerous if she's in her GA mode, cuz then she can wiff cancel it to teleport right behind you.

Basically, all dp's are different. You're gonna have to find ways to punish em individually. What works againsy A won't work against B (typically autoguards work this way)

[Rhiya]

Just play RPS harder, basically, and know that the RPS isn't the same against every DP.

[Celerity]

Reversals are not low risk/high reward, they are the opposite. The damage you get from baiting a DP (oftentimes leading to your most damaging FC combos) is much higher than the damage the opponent gets for hitting you with one, so even if he is successful 80% of the time, he may be losing the trade. It usually costs meter to get meaningful damage or make a reversal safe, while it costs nothing for you to bait one. That's why you'll see top players use reversals much more sparingly than the average player.

[excelence]

Reversals are not low risk/high reward, they are the opposite. The damage you get from baiting a DP (oftentimes leading to your most damaging FC combos) is much higher than the damage the opponent gets for hitting you with one, so even if he is successful 80% of the time, he may be losing the trade. It usually costs meter to get meaningful damage or make a reversal safe, while it costs nothing for you to bait one. That's why you'll see top players use reversals much more sparingly than the average player.

This! ... i'm pretty certain all the dp moves on BB had bad P1 proration, and on ch state for 1 million frames, i'd suggest checking character boards, since each character deals with dp reversal differently.

[Loli Bacon]

Reversals are not low risk/high reward, they are the opposite. The damage you get from baiting a DP (oftentimes leading to your most damaging FC combos) is much higher than the damage the opponent gets for hitting you with one, so even if he is successful 80% of the time, he may be losing the trade. It usually costs meter to get meaningful damage or make a reversal safe, while it costs nothing for you to bait one. That's why you'll see top players use reversals much more sparingly than the average player.

So the answer is to bait it and punish it with a combo? That's not my problem with DPs, as baiting is fine. The problem is more indepth than just getting hit by DPs.

If I were to bait a DP, that gives the opponent the chance to chicken block out or to apply their own pressure. If I try to meaty to stop the chicken block, I get DPd. If I'm pressuring and there's even the slightest hole, these players will mash DP. However, if I start baiting these reversals in the middle of my blockstrings, they get the opportunity to jump out or to mash out. The threat of the DP is where most of the low risk comes from, as it forces me to constantly play like I'm playing against someone with downs, which gives them the upper hand. Landing a DP may not give them damage, but instead of resetting to neutral (as it should; you get benefit enough from getting out of pressure + damage) it gives them field advantage and allows them to rush in.

Baiting a DP and dealing tons of damage is nice, but I can't keep momentum afterwards because if I were to do things on oki, that RPS is still there.

How do you deal with this RPS and how do you get players to not DP during blockstrings/frametraps?

[Effenhoog]

I think it's really been covered here. Like any game, you have to bait DPs. If you bait it and they RC it, then you have forced them to spend a resource to do so.

Baiting DPs in all games is essentially a guess, based on the opponent's tendencies and the risk/reward potential of both players' various options.

If you bait DP too often, they are going to catch on and use that opportunity to jump out or even take the offensive against you. You have to prove that you are willing to go for more offense on knockdown just as much as you bait DPs, and that when you do bait DPs you know how to make them pay for it with your strongest punish. You can't just focus on baiting DPs, keeping up offense is a constant flow decisions and the worst thing you can do is be predictable with it.

It can also help if you find a way to make it look less obvious which choice you are going to do. Walking forward a bit or whiffing a jab or something before switching to block for the DP bait rather than just sitting there ready to block from the very beginning can make it hard for them to guess what you are going to do.

[Magaki]

Most rewarding meatys are slow. Meaning that it's easy to notice them once you wake-up. If you want to take a minimal amount of risk, just mash 2A once they wake-up. Then you can decide to stop mashing and block if you think that the opponent is going to DP or keep mashing and starts pressuring. True, they can RC it if you block it but only a few characters can really make a DP whiff while taking minimal risks.

If it's with wake-up reversals, there are plenty of ways but they are all risky.

-Cross up/Fake cross up the opponent on wake-up to make the inputs reversed. Doesn't work in the corner for obvious reason.

-Being close to the opponent once they wake-up (aka, not at point blank range) and backdash once they can. Most characters can do that but some are better than others.

-Character specific option selects (Noel's OS against Azrael's Growler, Valk's w5C against every DPs in the game except Ragna's and Litchi's, etc)

Anyway, I think you should first explain who you main/sub because your characters might have additionnal tools to deal with it that you're not aware of (Azrael's 6A or his 623C for example.)

As for blockstrings and frametraps. It's obviously impossible with frametraps because frametraps consist of having a gap between 2 moves. That's the risk of frametrapping, it loses to DPs.

On the other hand, there are quite a lot of ways with blockstrings. First if you look at the input, 623, you can notice that the opponent isn't pressing 1 in it. Aka, even if they are in blockstun, they aren't blocking low anymore.

It means that if you do a blockstring with no gaps in it with your opponent mashing DP, a low will hit him. Here's an example with Valkenhayn:

6B is +8. A lot of people tends to mash DP after that because If you do 2B, it frametraps. And it frametraps with brjA too. In other words, people consider that it's when they can start mashing DP.

2A got 7 frames startup. In other words, if you do 6B>2A, it got no holes. So if you do 6B>2A>2B, you get a blockstring that ends with a low with no gaps in it.

Again, it depends of the character but it's a situation that is quite easy to reproduce with any characters.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Another thing really important you have to keep in mind is whether the opponent is using a DP randomly, when he's anxious or when he DPs in very specific situation in blockstrings with gaps in it for example.

For the first group, just rush recklessly in order to make them think that you're extremely aggressive and a DP is the best way to calm you down. Should be enough to make them get too confident and abuse it. That's when you can start baiting and get high rewards. It's easy to mess with people's pace when they act randomly and make them predictable. It's more a question of patience in that case.

For the second group, they tend to DP when they are in scary situations. Knockdown in the corner is quite typical. The thing is that they do it out of habit and not because they want to making them extremely predictable and easy to beat. Just repeat the situation that scare them and make them regret it.

For the third group, bad luck. Those are generally high level players that carefully studied your character and its potential. If they DP in a very specific blockstring, use another one. It's not really a strategy that will last however because they can (scratch that, they will) IB.

You can also do gapless strings like I explained with 6B>2A>2B.

The only real solution here is to adapt and improvise.

[Loli Bacon]

Thank you all for your feedback! =D I'll see what I can do with this information.

[reaVer]

Out of the bunch, Magaki has provided the best answer. The rest didn't even come close.

Loli Bacon: you have to understand that DPs are perfectly valid. What people tend to ignore is the true purpose behind a dp, which is also they come back with answers "just bait it" "it's easily punished" etc. Because proper dps are hardly any of those. The same applies to a lot of other reversals. Their purpose is to turn a complex situation into a simple one. Given the standard okizeme situation, the attacking player has the ability to attack overhead, low, delay throw, delay attack and guard. 5 options that can be hidden from view through FRC bubbles or other means making it difficult to apply a fuzzy guard timing to counter at least 2 out of 4 attacking options. The chances of guessing right are at about 20% for the defender and 80% for the attacker.

Now, lets look at the effects of a dp. If the one on offense attacks, he will eat the defender's hit regardless of what attack option he uses. To avoid getting hit, he has to guard. The defending player's other option is to do nothing or attack normally, which would be beaten if the attacker attacked with a meaty. This is a 50/50 mixup which means you can get it right 50% of the time with purely guessing. This is a much more beneficial situation for the defender because now he has two guesses, 50/50 and 20/80 and would raise the odds to a whopping 60/40 in total. This is why dps are used and why they are effective, regardless of skilllevel. This also means that if you have a dp and you have something very hard to deal with, you can almost always use the dp as a sure means to counter said issue.

Unless the issue manages to evade dp hits. I'm not quite familiar with BB, but it should be in there. GG most definitely has it however: safe normals and safe jumps. With the correct timing and distance you can make your attack immune to the effect of dps. For normals to be safe, they have to have a recovery time that is lower than the start up time of the dp and for a jump to be safe, you need to land without recovery before the dp hits. The other means is distance, dps almost never reach across the screen and that means that if you have a poke long enough, you can use it without him being able to dp it consistently. Doing this proper means his dp will be sealed and he cannot use it without punishment.

I haven't played BB recently, but I know from the CT era that my fights against Ragna's and Jins were vastly different from for example nu's for this very reason. I had to bait Jin and Ragna almost constantly, hampering my offense and slowing down the game considerably. With OS I have to do similar things against Sol because he has an attacking advantage over OS.

As with any situation, you always have two options: play it or avoid it. If you're in a position where you find that your opponent has a mixup advantage over you because he's doing his inputs during knockdown, you can decide to forgo that game and don't knock him down in the first place. Now he has to respond to gaps in combos and has the grace of falling down if he was hit by an air combo, something that dps don't really handle well. You can also decide to knock him down, but don't go for the okizeme game. You can fake either option and take the other one. Dashes are fast and usually unreactable, giving you the ability to prevent the mindset of "I should use my dp now" yet still come in for attack and have him think "I should've used my dp".

Of course, there are actions that automatically trigger responses from the opponent. In GG, standing next to your opponent while he's down will nearly always trigger him to attempt to throw you. If you look at Japanese matchvideos you will see that this is one of the most prevalent cases where counterhits occur because the attacker is using this to bait. The same way, slow and clearly visible attacks will most likely trigger a dp. If you have a fake on your attack, you can use it still guard and have him waste a resource. In all cases, be mindful of what your opponent is trying to do. He wants to return the game to neutral or his offense and DP is the meterless option to do this. It is however not limited to just dp, after dps there distortion drives, counter attacks, catches and if all else fails, there is still burst. The burst is something you can always expect when you successfully baited someone's dp as it's the secondary means for getting out of pressure/combos.

[mAc Chaos]

Baiting DPs is like playing poker. You have to convince the opponent or at least bluff them into thinking that it's too risky to DP, and that they should block. And they will try to do the same to you, making you scared to attack.

A lot of it comes down to the player you're up against. Some players will back off and play it safe quickly, so you get a bigger opening to attack. In those instances, you want to push your advantage. And then some other players will never back off ever, and in those cases you'll have to bait more. Your job is to figure out what kind of opponent you're up against and adjust to it.

[Tronotron]

Newbie questions: So reversal=DP=dragon punch, which is a 632A type of move?

[Rhiya]

Move with invul from the first startup frames, basically. Lots of 623s are like that, but not all.

[ReynTime180]

Newbie questions: So reversal=DP=dragon punch, which is a 632A type of move?

Yup, except for that last part, a dragon punch motion is 623X, not just A

[TheRealBobMan]

Newbie questions: So reversal=DP=dragon punch, which is a 632A type of move?

I think if you nitpick, reversal is just doing any action on the frame you regain control. So you could reversal jab on wakeup or reversal jab out of pressure, not that it's a good move. Can even do stuff like silly reversal VCL with I-No (the move is airborne on the first frame, so if they meaty a low for oki, you'll go over it and CH them even though VCL has zero invulnerability frames).

Generally how I see most people use the term (including myself) is anything with invulnerability, like Dusk said. Reversal backdash since they start up invincible (at least in GG, this seems like a BB conversation and I don't know about that game). Reversal super. Reversal throw (throws are instant in GG so you can do that if they're in range).

DP will commonly refer to that type of input (623X), or to a move that animates like an uppercut, but it doesn't encompass all types of reversals.

[Celerity]

To me, reversal is pretty much what BobMan said. It doesn't need to have full invuln, but it's any move commonly used to make the opponent's attack whiff due to some invuln property, or catch them during startup because it's so fast.

DP is just this overused term without a real definition, but it's more narrow than a reversal. The input isn't important, but usually DPs share similar hitboxes and punishability when they are blocked. You can see this in characters with traditional DPs: Ragna, Jin, Makoto, etc. Very few people would refer to a full-screen reversal super or a parry as a DP, because they're not "dragon punch-like". Still, some people do use the two terms interchangeably. Every R-Action in P4U is for some reason called a DP, even though very few of them fit that description.

[Manta]

There's a world of difference between a move with invulnerability and a move with frame 1 invulnerability. Only the latter can beat meaty attacks.

[TheRealBobMan]

There's a world of difference between a move with invulnerability and a move with frame 1 invulnerability. Only the latter can beat meaty attacks.

Right, sorry, I meant invulnerability starting on frame 1. Like backdashes in GG. Throws aren't invulnerable, but because they're instant you can use them before your wakeup invul ends and beat meaty attacks. So long as the meaty isn't throw-invul anyway.

[crimsonstardust]

Ok I'm having a bit of an issue with deal with players online that like to just mash crouching jabs on wake up. I'm not really sure how to deal with this sort of wake up situation, usually I feel like I timed my moves right and should be punishing any possible attempts but I usually get beat out in those situations and loose momentum, should I be treating these situations like I'm looking for a DP type reversal and just bait the mashing out with a meaty or something like that? Cause I usually find myself eating more damage if I try something like that. /:

[tataki]

Is this regarding GG or other games? DPs are overall much stronger in BB and P4U compared to GG, for many reasons.

[crimsonstardust]

Well mostly for BB, but I'm mostly asking in regards to wake up crouching jab, it's a little easier for me to call out other reversals but wake up mash crouch jab is the issue I'm running into.

[Colpevole]

any meaty attack (aka any attack done AS they're getting up) should beat wakeup crouch jab.

Edit: If the timing isn't working right, you can try putting a projectile or also just staying out of the range of a crouch jab as you attack them to beat it out as well. DP RC works too.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Colpevole

[TheRealBobMan]

Meaty with something that recovers right after their wakeup invul ends, so you can both stop random mashing and bait a DP. A properly timed jump-in is really easy to see coming, but it's mostly safe against that kind of play. Some DPs start really fast and make this difficult, but you probably have an option. Because it's easy to see coming they're going to commit to blocking and you'll have to work to get something off of it, which means you'll probably open yourself up again when you try to mix up. The thing is, if you condition your opponent with moves that their best option is to block, it becomes a little easier to get away with the stuff that's less safe.

Also, it's not that bad of a situation if you bait a DP and wind up baiting a jab reversal. Yeah, you gave up your oki opportunity, but you're on defense assuming you didn't hit a button and get counter-hit. They have to put pressure on or go for a mixup to get anything, which means you can still get back in or reset to neutral by taking advantage of that.

If you're just poking late as they're getting up such that you're getting hit by reversal jab, you're doing it wrong, in most cases anyway. Meaty attacks beat this clean. Meaty into a frame trap to score a CH against them yourself.

[Airk]

There are two possibilities for what's happening here.

#1: Is that you're just screwing up the timing. Try to use an attack with more active frames if possible to make it easier. It's significantly harder to time a meaty jab that only has two active frames than it is to say, throw out a Ragna 5B which has 8, since the jab only has a two frame window to 'cover' their wakeup.

#2: It's possible your opponent is using quick getup to rise before you're expecting and throwing off your timing. The usual way to beat this to to toss out a quick move much earlier than you would for a meaty that is aimed to beat a neutral tech. The reason you want a quick attack here is that you want to recover in time to do something if they do just neutral tech.

[NTR_]

just dp them back yo