Mucky

In my experience, trying to rationalize why you're feeling nervous doesn't really help to stop feeling nervous. It's like trying to swim upstream, lool. Best bet is to embrace it, like SKD said. One way to do this is to reframe your anxiety into something more positive, like excitement. I mean, just calling it anxiety is essentially telling yourself you have a disorder, since that's the term used for actual disorders. Not to say that I know anything about your life, but nobody needs to be bogged down by thoughts that there's something psychologically wrong with them while there's a tournament to win. Depending on how severe it is, you may want to try breaking it down to its most basic blocks and knocking them off one at a time. Being on stream: Stream lobbies and netplay tournies can help desensitize yourself to this. It might also help to know that, aside from the spectator aspect of it, streaming inspires the sense that everyone is together in the same room, like the oldschool days of gaming before netplay existed. So, in a way, it's not too different from having to be with a crowd in an offline venue. Being in an offline environment: TD's advise to socialize is good. Having people you know, even a little bit, helps to feel less like an alien. Let them know some things about yourself, too. In an ironic sense, you'll feel like there's less eyes on you, like "who is this dude playing right now." Pressure to perform well/win: Not sure what to do with this one, lool. I would say this pressure comes down to a notion that you have something to prove. For most people at a tournament, that "thing" can be as basic as "I can win this," which you seemed to realize as you wrote your post. Trying to understand what it is specifically that you want to prove can help you deal with it more efficiently, or perhaps re-evaluate why it needs to be proven in the first place.

Because you can't just start a blockstring with a standing move and then go into the 8-10f low? This is almost on the same level as "react to jump startup"

I actually tried to do this once. Honestly, 4 states isn't enough to fully simulate how a real player does mixup, even with a basic character like Ragna.

he said player, not food critic

5D goes active on the 23rd frame. It's not that slow. Trying to challenge it is like trying to challenge Ragna 6B.

You know what? Fuck it. This shit has gone on for three nights already, and I have had enough. You are obviously lying through your DIRTY TEETH when you say you don't want to talk about this, because you keep taking these cheap-ass potshots on twitter, and now here. So here we go. WE FUCK NOW. This whole thing started from one flippant comment I made on twitter. "fuck gapless blockstrings." Yet the first thing out of your mouth is "LOL TRY INSTANT BLOCKING." Then you immediately contradict yourself in your conversation with mac, where you say Rachel's blockstrings are meant to be gapless. In other words, trying to instant block Rachel is pointless, and so is your fucking rebuttal. Which brings us back to where we started. Next day, you say TD is irrelevant. That's a fucking laugh. Yes, he plays differently from you. Guess what? He also WINS MORE GAMES THAN YOU. I've played hell of a lot more games with his Rachel than I have with yours. I can count on one hand how many times I've landed a 720 on him across all the games I have ever played with him. You, I land a 720 at least ONCE A MATCH. I play like an idiot, know fuck all for CP Tager combos, and I've still won at least half of the games I've played with your Rachel. Would you say that's a coincidence? I would say that not only does TD play smarter than you, he also has better execution than you. According to your logic, he has no reason NOT to do what you try to do. And yet he doesn't. Why do you think that is? Have you ever stopped to think that you don't understand your character as well as you think you do? Or that the character you play is versatile enough to be played in more than one way at a high level? Go on. Try telling TD that he's playing Rachel wrong. Let's see how far you get with that. YOU'RE NOT LOSING BECAUSE OF DROPPED COMBOS! What, do you drop EVERY fucking combo, in EVERY fucking match? Because if your problem really were just dropping combos, I highly doubt it would've gone on for THIS LONG. It's the first thing any player irons out in their gameplay. And then you go back and forth different answers. Oh, I don't really care, tsubaki is bad, rachel is too hard, blah blah blah. WELL GOSH, I DON'T SEE ANYTHING ABOUT POOR EXECUTION THERE! DO YOU? You take "perfect" to be a completely axiomatic term, throwing it around without elaboration or justification. You throw it around like a fucking 10 year old who just learned his first cuss word. You want your arguments to have substance? Then try putting some thought into what the word actually means, and how we're supposed to relate to it as fighting game players. As HUMANS. Imperfect human players for which this romantic ideal of perfect you have floating around in your head is NOT POSSIBLE. Why are we supposed to care about this? You keep talking about how Rachel is unstoppable with a perfect offense. Why is it so hard for you to imagine an opponent with a perfect defense? What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? You even concede this point in your own post, yet you continue to argue it ANYWAY. Is this Animal Farm or something? Is your character's perfect more perfect than another's? Is that what you're trying to argue? That's not even the real issue here. The real issue is this: Every game, every set, every fucking time I see you posting in this thread, you're regurgitating this shit time and again. And every time you do that, it comes off as an attempt to protect your precious ego. Well FUCK YOUR EGO, man. Remember the things Star-Demon would say? "I shouldn't be getting by this, or that." "I can't believe I dropped that combo." "I'm so bad, woe is me." You might remember the outbursts he had, and maybe even chuckle at the thought. Or maybe you don't, it's been so long that the exact times are too hazy to pinpoint. But try to think about what he was really doing back then. He was crying out for attention, telling that sorry story to himself, over and over. He did it because deep down, he wanted to convince himself it didn't matter to him so he could feel better. There's plenty of other people who do the same thing. Don't think for a second that you are any different from him, as you are now. I'm not gonna sit here and coddle your feelings. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you the things you want to hear. You can resent me all you like after reading this. I don't give a fuck. I am absolutely done giving a fuck.

Stop putting words in my mouth. For fuck's sake.

I'd be careful with assumptions like this. Walking 720, sure, but walking 360A is pretty legit with magnetism.

it could have its own new column at this rate mAc Chaos: Serial Chain-Grabber Claims Another Victim

then why do my rooms always get flooded with hakumens

sometimes I get grabbed so many times that I think I'm playing Smash Bros

I knew you would like it. <3 I'll put all the names of the songs I used in the description.

guys i made a video about netplay

fuck yo netplay stage

why am i in a room with 5 hakumens why am i trying to play stick WHY AM I STREAMING THIS my head

Hope I'm not too late with this! TAGER ANALYSIS CT: Basically a grab machine, and not much else. His ability to combo off regular hits was piss poor, especially on standing opponents. Circumstantially he could get explosive damage, which is saying a lot since CT was a game where 3-4k damage combos were thrown around like candy. His normal throws were useful in this game, since they did more damage than his command throws and had non-Spark Bolt variations. He was legitimately scary up close, but his biggest weaknesses were his huge ugly hitbox and poor walking speed. Couple with that with the top 3 characters all being zoners, and there wasn't a whole lot for Tager to do except get timed out. CS1: Meh. He retained most of his CT combos, and his combos were more consistent overall, but his damage output was hit pretty hard thanks to his reduced character combo proration and the introduction of SMP. Gadget Finger wasn't very good at the time. A few characters had jumps with such fast startups that they could get out for free (Litchi, Arakune, etc.). It was a good move on paper, but frame data prevented it from being useful. Personally I don't know why people say they liked this version of Tager; he didn't improve very much. CS2: oh my god. They just kept making his damage worse. His forward throw became subject to the new corner-only concept, immediately relegating it to those awkward moments where they anticipated a green throw that never came and ended up getting a free throw. All it did was send them hurtling toward the other side of the screen, with precisely enough time for both players to down a shot. That about sums up how useless he felt in this iteration. CSX: Probably the first iteration where Tager made big strides. He got a lot of his damage back, Gadget Finger was finally good, and magnetized 5A was insane. IIRC this was the iteration where the magnetism on his D moves was changed to only pull during active frames. It took some time for Tagers to adjust, but overall it made his 5D and j.D harder to challenge. 2D was really strong here, and it made Noels cry. He had a lot of great punishes, including one combo that did 7.5k damage. FEELS SO GOOD. Tier-wise I don't think he moved up a lot, but he didn't feel awful to play anymore. CP1: Continuing the pattern of improvements from Extend. GP and aerial 360 were nice additions, GP in particular contributing to some high damage combos. Magnetized 5A was promoted from insane to absolutely ridiculous, being a consistent 3.4k-ish damage. I don't really like what they did with his AC, but it didn't impact his game very much. Overall, things were fine. Things were dandy. CP1.1: And then they nerfed his backdash. CP2: When I first saw Dogura claiming he's become S-tier, I was skeptical. To see others agreeing with him has prompted me to take a closer look at match videos. Some of his changes have mindblowing implications. Hammer followup gaining guard point not only makes poking Tager more dangerous, it also allows him to bait bursts and CAs. In all previous versions, Sledge was a guaranteed CA/burst for the opponent, but here it carries a huge risk. His ability to convert hits into combos was already pretty good in previous versions, but it's gone through the roof in CP2. Midscreen 6C gives Tager an unconditional 5k, midscreen 5D is an unconditional 3.5k, and random j.D hits pretty much always lead to a combo. Though I wonder if people are going too far by saying he's S-tier. I still haven't been able to understand how Nu is getting steamrolled. No fancy version tier list.

that's literally the best part of playing tager

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Seems to me you're describing the lose-lose situation that happens with pretty much all videogame consumption these days. Buying the game is implicitly supporting the company, yes, but not buying the game could mean a lot of different things to a company. For example: Let's say CP Extend sells less copies in its first week of release than CP did. What could ASW take away from that? "Maybe we shouldn't gouge our fans like this" is hopefully a possible consideration for them. But there are others. Like, "Maybe we didn't put enough new content in this product," or "Maybe people are losing interest in BlazBlue." I'm not a business major or anything like that, so I can't get too deep with this. But it's not easy to predict what a company will do when a new title sells less copies than an old title, or if they even expect as many sales as before. Honestly, I wish they would just let people download the new gameplay update and leave the extra characters and story content for Extend. But the most they will probably do is reduce the price some time after release.

is this a new option select?

Yep. And if ASW actually cared about the opinions of its foreigner playerbase, they wouldn't have stopped porting their games to the 360. By all means, hold on to your money if you think that's what's best for yourself. Just don't act as if your non-purchase is sending a clear message to a Japanese developer company that you disapprove of their business practices.

Two things: 1) Just because Nu's normals are deemed "unnecessary" now doesn't mean they've become unusable. A healthy mix of D's and normals has always been Nu's approach to this matchup, and if Nu players aren't using normals when they should be, that's not the MU being harder, that's Nu players being bad. 2) "Just tag em with magnetism and drag em in." Where are you getting this from? Gravity bodies Tager HARD; it's even suggested in our matchup forums as a counter to magnetism. "He hardly moves anyway" isn't an advantage for Tager, it just makes his options even worse when he's stuck waiting for gravity to run out. He can't drag Nu in for free in 1.1 and he's definitely NOT going to be able to do that in 2.0. I just don't see how Dogura's experience lets him say with any degree of certainty that Tager has an edge on Nu. All Tager's changes have done is give him better confirms, which doesn't necessarily help vs zoners. 3.5k off raw 5D only matters when he can land the 5D to begin with.

I don't know what's more unbelievable: That Tager is a hard matchup for Nu, or that he stands alongside Taokaka as such.

Personally, I am a fan of spark bolt whiff > 720.

maybe he expects you to green throw with tager

sadly, Tager probably doesn't do as well vs Noel as he did in Extend