Airk

Yeah, I'm in the process of discovering the problems with 5B in this matchup myself. Not only does it go over crawl, but it goes over 2A into you getting counterhit. 2B is starting to become something I use more and more, since a ton of Tao's stuff has no range, so she's going to be right up in your grill anyway if she's not flying through the air. At long range, 236C beats most of her crazy flying air stuff; It won't get you a combo, but it will at least you a knockdown for pressure. I haven't even really seen many videos of this match, so not a lot of input.

I think those are just "here's my sucky Ragna/Hakumen/Tager, what am I doing wrong?" threads. I think Star-Demon was thinking of critique/commentary on vids in general. Or maybe not.

This is all I've ever seen anyone do. Actually, most of the time I see players confirm from 5B to j.B > j.C > jc > j.C > j.CC etc. If you can confirm into 2CC, then you can do 5B > 2CC > 236B > 214B > 22B for carry, or if you want to spend charge you can do something like: 5B > 2CC > 236D > stuff or 5B > 2CC > 214D > 2CC > IAD Stuff

I sortof went over this earlier, but there's just NOT TIME to do a lot of explaining in match commentary. You have to try to talk about something quickly but clearly before something else equally important happens. Or, to put it another way, don't knock it until you've tried doing it yourself. It's not so easy.

So as I mumbled in the "call to arms" thread in BB: General, I sat down and tried to to a match analysis of a video the other evening; It took a surprising amount of time, so I figure I might as well get something out of it. Specifically, I'm going to post it here, and people can 'critique my critique' as it were. My figuring being that this serves a couple of purposes: #1: It just generally gets people thinking about what's going on in the (admittedly more or less randomly chosen) video in an analytic way. #2: It puts me to the test - I want to see if my understanding of what's going on here matches that of more experienced players. So. The video is the Norisuke (Tsubaki) vs poppo (Litchi) match posted on the previous page of this thread. Here's what I wrote up (I realize that some of this is just describing the action, but I did my best to include explanations for why things were happening whenever possible, and that's really the point of this exercise): Opening: Tsubaki opens with a instant air backdash for space, j.C to catch dash ins. Litchi pursues with sj > Air dash 11s: Tsubaki anti-airs the jump-in on reaction instead of charging as Litchi was probably expecting. Since the punish carries MOST of the way to the corner, Tsubaki sacrifices some charge time to run in and close the corner... 19s: But the IAD j.BB is too low to catch Litchi as she leaves the corner with superjump>Airdash 20s: At fullscreen distance, Tsubaki uses 236C to close in - Litchi makes the mistake of trying to punish, since 236C is very plus on block at this range. Note the 6BB > 236C > 214C > 22C here for extra damage since Litchi is hit crouching. 28s: Tsubaki uses this knockdown to charge instead of applying further corner pressure, since the last cornering didn't really work out. 29s: 236C again, but Litchi doesn't punish. Jump cancel 5B to go for a difficult to anti-air jump-in. (Not sure about the extra j.A in there) 30s: Tsubaki backdashes to try to bait a poke? 31s: Litchi has been using superjump > Airdash too much, and gets caught with j.BB into j.214D for the corner combo. Observe the 5CC > 2C > 236B > 214B > 22B combo to retain positioning and get charge, rather than a 6CC > air combo ender. 37s: Tsubaki has been using backdash on her opponent's wakeup alot and then re-closing the distance. Litchi neutral jumps over 214D for a punish. The daisharin combo allows a position reverse to put Tsubaki in the corner. 51s: Tsubaki doesn't want to be dealing with Litchi corner pressure, counter-assaults out - avoiding a wakeup DP due to staff oki(?), though wakeup super looks like it would have worked as well. 53s: Litchi misjudges the spacing on her jump out and gets caught by 5B, Tsubaki confirms very nicely into a basic air combo, but declines to use 214D because she doesn't have a charge to follow up midscreen. 55s: Litch is trying to get back on the offense using the staff for cover. Tsubaki backdashes again to get outside of poke range, and decides to air block rather than risk trying to trade aerials with Litchi 58s: Tsubaki gets a surprising crossup j.b as she lands. Litchi bursts because with one charge that combo would have killed her. 1m1s: Litchi is getting desperate here, and throws out a random Daisharin to try to create some pressure. Tsubaki superjumps > doublejumps and uses j.214C to get out of the way. 1m7s: Another counter-assault from Tsubaki - she doesn't need the meter for the kill, and the falling staff would otherwise create an opportunity for Litchi to apply pressure. 1m9s: Litchi is feeling the pressure here - the 2nd backdash got her nothing except all the way into the corner. She calls the staff to try to pressure 1m12s: Tsubaki does an abbreviated blockstring, probably attempting to bait the DP, which she does, though she gets clipped by it anyway. 1m15s: Litchi performs a staff launch as Tsubaki dashes across it to get a combo started. She drops it, but gets a CH on her next attack - probably Tsubaki trying to punish the drop, or mashing tech too much. 1m20s: Litchi ends her combo with the DP to place the staff for pressure, but the next air engagement sees her fail to confirm into a combo, and the situation resets to neutral. 1m24s: Another fullscreen Daisharin to try to restart pressure, but Tsubaki dodges it pretty much the same way. Litchi tried for a different position than last time, but still can't punish the dive. 1m27s: Another short blockstring - the staff is about to land and there's no time for more. 1m29s: Airdash forwards over the staff to avoid it hitting when Litchi activiates it. 1m30s: Longer blockstring, because staffless Litchi has no reversal, into 22D - a strange decision midscreen with no charge. Maybe hoping for the kill - which catches Litchi trying to jump out. 1m33s: 236C for positioning, risky. 1m35s: Litchi AGAIN with the superjump to airdash to get out of the corner. Tsubaki might have caught that with s.jB but gets only j.b instead. 1m36s: 236C to close distance again, but Litchi is catching on and jumps. Again ending with the DP for staff positioning 1m38s: Litchi gets a staff hit, but is playing too conservatively to do anything with it. Situation goes back to neutral with very little time remaining 1m44s: Litchi throws out a 3C to try to get some damage, loses the neutral exchange. Round 2: Opening: Tsubaki opens with 22A and Litchi with Itsuu - 22A is a risky opener here because if Litchi had done the correct Itsuu followup, it would have led into a nasty CH combo. As it is, Litchi was autopiloting an AA itsuu to try to call out a jump. 1m54s: Tsubaki tries to punish whiffed Itsuu, but too slow, Litchi is jumping out. Still, Litchi gets hit by a low. 2m: Litchi AGAIN goes for superjump > Air dash out of the corner, Tsubaki's habit of backdashing to avoid wakeup DPs isn't paying off here - a late jump to air throw might work better for punishing this(?) Reset to neutral. 2m5s: Tsubaki uses the space to charge. Litchi uses it to place the staff with 2D to set up her offense. 2m6s: Tsubaki is expecting a dash in behind the staff and jumps over it, Litchi avoids the j.C with a superjump > backdash. Tsubaki throws out two random(?) 5Bs. Neutral again. 2m8s: Litchi mixes up her offense and holds onto the staff, giving her the range to catch Tsubaki after an airdash, but the damage off this is weak. 2m12s: Tsubaki forward rolls under the jump, but is put in blockstun by the staff and crossed up by the jumpback, but Litchi fails to confirm anything off it, instead getting hit trying to jump out again. 2m14s: Tsubaki goes for the 5B > 22A since she's too far for 5BB to hit, but 22A whiffs because 5B was an air hit. 2m16s: Tsubaki's dash in is interrupted by the staff, but at that range, that doesn't do much, and she dashes in again while the staff is returning. 214D was probably input before Litchi jumped. 2m21s: Litchi misses an anti-air (I don't THINK she was still in staff placement recovery). Tsubaki has lots of charges, so burns 2 for corner carry and added damage. 2m31s: A backdash by Tsubaki allows her to space a 22D unblockable OUTSIDE of burst range! Thoug her decision to charge causes her to miss the punish. She was mashing and is forced to rapid cancel 6CC. (Though she breaks a primer) 2m34s: A superjump by Tsubaki scares Litchi into NOT airdashing out of the corner immediately, though she manages it her second attempt when Tsubaki tries to dash in again. 2m40s: A dash-up throw on landing starts an ALMOST finishing combo. 2m50s: A desperation Daisharin hit puts Litchi back on the offense, but the staff bounces Tsubaki back out of the corner. Tsubaki starts playing very carefully because she probably thinks her opponent is expecting her to be reckless. ~End: Litchi misses a bunch of combos and is eventually killed by a random jab. :P Also: Mods, feel free to move this to somewhere more appropriate. >.<

I'm not entirely sure this is a good idea. If you watch a lot of the higher end Japanese players, they jump around a LOT; The thing is that by not jumping, you are severely limiting the ways in which you can move in neutral, and essentially ceding the air game to your opponent. Tsubaki's air to air isn't great, and she has a lot of trouble CHASING opponents into the air, but if she's there first, or if she's just moving through the air to force them to use other attack vectors, then it can definitely be to her advantage, particularly if you can move in unpredictable fashions. I think this is actually my BIGGEST failing in this game right now is my inability to use double jumps and airdashes in an unpredictable way to get in and dodge/bait anti-air attacks. I come from a long history of games with a much more traditional air movement model, so the extent of me using this stuff right now is like...jump forward > forward air dash. I almost never double jump in an intelligent way (I can use it in combos! :P) or do tricky stuff like jumpback > forward air dash, or jump forward >neutral jump. And I'm starting to really feel like I suffer for it. Watch some of Konan's matches, or some of the recent Norisuke stuff and you'll see them jumping and airdashing a lot in neutral, and I think they're onto something. Tsubaki has pretty good air-to-ground with j.C and j.CC, the latter definitely being part of her 'tricky stuff' so I definitely feel like staying on the ground all the time in neutral is bad. The time you don't want to jump, generally, is when your opponent already has - unless you're in position to nab them with an air throw, which definitely seems like Tsubaki's best air-to-air tool (leads to nice damage too.)

Others basically have it. Try 623B. 623D is a fine reversal for extremely small gaps, but if you're trying to intercept something that leaves you more time, 623B is the tool you want.

Not too much advice here either - especially at neutral, your air/ground footsies are well above mine, so I've got nothing to talk to on that point. You may want to explore throwing out 214D to beat out pokes, but that's about all I can think of. From the first Ragna match, as best as I can tell, you got lucky not getting DP'd in the face those couple of times - 5CC is absolutely punishable by ID if it's done on time. Basically, you should never just stop a string on 5C or 5CC - always charge cancel it if you don't do anything else; There's really no disadvantage that can ascertain to doing so. I noticed you RC'd 6B a couple of times, and I'm...not entirely sure about that. It shouldn't be necessary for pressure, though it does make it tighter, and as a starter, I'm not sure rapiding it to go into 2B > stuff gains you a meaningful amount of damage overall. I'm not going to say don't do it, but you might want to evaluate why you do it. Hakumen match it seemed like you could have added throws into your pressure game a little more - towards the end of the 2nd round, you had some midscreen pressure going on, and mixing in a throw there seems like it would have worked well. It seems like in general you only threw on people's wakeup, though I did see one pressure throw in the 2nd Hakumen match, so... yeah. Very nice!

So if the 'natives' don't look at it and the newbies don't care, what is the point of having it? It seems to me it should serve SOME purpose?

If people want, I definitely feel like I have enough of a handle on frame data to write up a "Using Frame Data in BlazBlue" sort of article. The GG one that was up did a pretty good job of covering the basics already though, so there'd be a fair amount of overlap.

This is all beside the point though. Obviously we can't "force" people to want to play seriously. You might've noticed, but the Internet doesn't serve very well for "forcing" people to do things. What we CAN do is: #1) Produce stuff that is valuable for people who are already playing competitively or for people who WANT to. #2) Produce stuff that is interesting to people who play competitively AND people who don't #3) Produce stuff that SHOWS why it's cool and fun to play competitively and help people realize what's going on. I think a lot of people are interested in playing MORE competitively than they are, but don't really know how, or how to find the resources. Heck, if you don't know what frame data is, because this is your first fighting game, you don't even know to look for it. I think you are correct that not many people are interested in putting in tons of internet legwork to get better. I think a significantly greater number of people are interested in getting better if the information on how to do so is presented to them in an entertaining and easy to access format.

On the second page of the thread you linked, Tataki, there are links to a couple of annotated videos, where someone has taken the time to put annotations in to explain WTF is going on and why people are doing what they are doing/why what is happening is happening. I feel like this could be a pretty seriously useful concept, and one that I think fills a niche that nothing else really does. Fundamentally, it's been said a lot of times that most people who watch videos of games don't really know what they're supposed to be looking for, or what to think when they see it. Just just kinda kick back and go "Oooh, combos and flashing lights! I coulda done that DP!" ; And similarly, while a lot of the time commentators on tournament matches DO know, and sometimes even try to talk about it, they just don't have TIME while the match is going on, so the commentary comes out like either "Did you see what he did there? He baited with OHHH MY GODDDD!" as something else cool happens, or the commentator is still talking about something that happened 15 seconds ago and misses the chance to talk about what's going on NOW. Theoretically, annotated videos get around both of these issues. They're almost the fighting game equivalent of the post-game wrap up for football where there's a guy "drawing" on the screen and explaining plays while making liberal use of pause and instant replay. I think all this is DOUBLY true for a game like BB where things seem to happen so fast and many people look at it and think "Lol, they're just jumping around like spazzes and trying to land a combo!" I actually took a stab at doing something like this last night when I first saw this post, and it took me like 20 minutes just to do an annotation style "writeup" on a single, two round match that I picked more or less at random, and I'm no expert, so I probably missed a bunch of stuff. So.. I guess what I'm saying is... do people think this sort of thing would be valuable for both the "armchair quarterback" sort who watches a lot of matches but doesn't necessarily think about them, or for slightly more experienced players? Or for anyone? I guess it's too much to ask to expect people who already "think" they don't like the game because it's an "anime fighter" to watch something like this and go "wow, that's complex" but maybe making this sort of thing would help the occasional person who say, saw some BB at EVO and was like "WTF is going on"? And if people think it would be helpful, how and who might go about making this sort of thing happen? I can volunteer my own time to some extent, but I'm not sure I'd be a good pick.

I see it a lot. -_- It's weak because it leaves him at -4?

The real reason this may be somewhat impractical is really trouble with what happens if Ragna starts going for 2D instead of Dead Spike after 5C. Although 2D might actually keep you in blockstun the whole time, since it's startup is the same as the blockstun on 5C. Not 100% sure on close cases like that one though.

Actually I think crouching only adds two frames of HITSTUN, not Blockstun.

This thread seems to have some info about that stick you're considering.

For some reason, I can't help but think of this:

Well, 720 is gonna blow you up because of the invulnerability, but I don't think there's enough window to do much of anything else. 214D is 15 frames blockstun on IB and can be D-cancelled at any point. If you D-cancel immediately on hit (which shouldn't be TOO hard, since you have the hitstop window of 14 frames to do it in.) then it's 14 frames before 22D hits. Which means Tager is still in blockstun and you're at +3 when he gets out (Even if he IBs the 22D as well). If you D-cancel a frame or two late, or if you hold your 22D for a frame or two, it'll give him enough time to start up 360B, or start a jab (6 frames and 7 frames respectively) and get CH'd out of it. Under no circumstances should he be able to jab or 360 you out unless you do your 22D late, or maybe if he uses 360A (Which he would only be doing if he anticipated the D-cancel, I think.) The same thing applies to using Voltec Charge - it doesn't get its guardpoint until frame 6, so anything that would CH a jab or a 360B will also hit him out of that. Assuming you are fairly precise about timing your 22D, you should be able to beat anything he throws out except DDs - both MagnaTech Wheel and GETB will blow you up.

Holy carp, I found something useful. Look at me guys, I'm contributing! Well, yes, the idea would be to mix it up and maybe even throw in jabs or something. Heck, would Atomic Collider even catch a non-magnetized jump back? If you have a 2nd charge, an immediate D-cancel to 22D would keep him in blockstun, and a very slightly delayed one would maybe CH. Very slightly delayed. x.x

Yeah; If I haven't said it lately, thanks a ton for doing all these converted videos. I hate using Nico if I don't have to. >.> So er, thanks for feeding my laziness.

As, or against? I play AGAINST him plenty, sadly, and I'm not very good at it, but atomic collider is almost never a factor in that unless I tech sometime stupid. =/ I've never had a Tager reactively AC collider me out of a jumpout. It's always been a guess. (Proof that it's a guess is that I can do the same thing later in the match and watch them throw out a random AC trying to catch the jump I don't do.) My problem against Tagers is usually that I don't jump ENOUGH, and therefore leave them free to throw me. =/ I'm sure you know this already, but Furry Tail is only + on block if it hits fairly near to the ground. If she hits you at head height, your blockstun will be mostly gone by the time she gets to the ground. This is technically true for Tager as well, but since he's so damn massive, he hits you at max height pretty much of the time.

I... guess I'm still not following. They're not doing anything that blocking the DP doesn't do. If they're not reaction to your DP with the jump, then if they "try to jump your wakeup DP" and you don't do one, they are at least giving up pressure. It seems like in both cases (Jump over, and "just block") that the options are: A) Opponent blocks/Jumps over, you DP, you get hit B) Opponent blocks/jumps over, you do nothing, they give up pressure/get hit. C) Opponent does not block/jump over, you DP, you hit them out of whatever else they were doing. D) Opponent does not block/jump over, you don't DP, you are still in pressure. Unless we think that this is something that can be legitimately done on reaction to a DP, it's still them committing to something on your wakeup. I guess this DOES mean that you can no longer DP-A and make it 'safe' with a D-cancel, but if you have a charge to do that, you can beat their jumpovers with DP-D because of the hitbox differences (I think, anyway. I've never seen any evade the D DP like this.). So I guess if you have only one charge, this makes a wakeup DP more dangerous, but with zero or two+ charges, it's pretty much the same? Or am I missing something that this maneuver does that blocking a wakeup DP doesn't do?

Honestly? Try playing against the CPU on max skill level. It should at least teach you some of what doesn't work and it'll help you work on your hitconfirms and the like as well. Also, if your internet connection isn't too bad, I could meet you for a few matches on XBL; I'm no expert, but I too can tell you some stuff not to do, and maybe some places to work on. (I'm a Tsubaki player as well.)

22A should STILL be safe. Even on IB, 5C or 5CC has 15 frames of blockstun, and 22A comes out in 10. That said, I would be surprised if Shrui was doing 22A (or even 22B.) because most people prefer to end strings with 22C, which leaves a gap even on normal block, though I think it has to be IB'd for Tager to counter with 360A. Edit: 22B might actually be a frame trap for Tager's trying to 360A you, because on IB, 22B will hit 2 frames after Tager gets out of blockstun, and 360A goes invulnerable on frame...3. I'm confused. Why do people complain about Tager having such a bad anti-jump game if you can AC jumps on reaction? @_@ Yes, he has things he can do to catch both options from a charge cancel, but he has to guess. I don't think either can be done on reaction? I mean, can you 2C people who are trying to jump out on reaction? 2C is faster to come out than AC and doesn't require a complex input. (Yeah yeah, AC reaches further up, but still.). Though obviously all this changes if you're magnetized. x.x Z.z But all they're doing is just that - jumping on your wakeup. They're committed to that action as a guess, they're not doing it in response to a DP.

Well, if he's in range of a grab (or magnetized) after a 22A, you'll get him, but you wouldn't be able to get him after 5CC. And I'd expect that the pushback there would be enough to keep him from being in unmagnetized range, but I've never tried it. x.x I'd really just suggest 5C or 5CC > Charge Cancel > Jump or backdash. That beats most of Tager's options and once he starts try to stick out normals or sledge or something to catch those, you can go Charge Cancel > 2A for a combo. The hitbox is pretty weak, but the the real problem is that people can beat it by jumping "almost" over it (i.e. over the part that HITS.) OTOH, I don't think it's possible to do that on reaction, so really it's not much worse than having your DP blocked.