Airk

I guess I have my work cut out for me. :P When _IS_ Guts 3 anyway? I kinda accidentally missed the last one entirely because I didn't even know it was going on. x.x

Well, for reference, there's the Dustloop Wiki, which will fill you in on all sorts of interesting stuff! Also, there's the Frame Data if you're really looking to get down and dirty with what's what. Basically, yes; Technically, I guess a meaty is -any- attack (whether it has a lot of active frames or not) that is timed so that the opponent 'wakes up' into it, with the attack already being active by the time they can act. Meaty 5B for Plat isn't a bad option since it's relatively easy to time, can be done from far enough away that people can't roll past you, and leads into decent options. Enjoy and good luck!

Welcome! It sounds like you are doing everything right so far! Lots of stuff in this paragraph, a lot of which would probably be answered better in the Platinum forum, or at least, by someone who actually plays Plat, but here's some info to get you started: #1: It's going to be a little bit hard to summon stuff. Lots of Platinum players like to start by superjumping back and summoning an item, but this only works at low levels, because if your opponent predicts it, then can superjump/airdash forward and punish you. Probably the safest time to summon an item is when your opponent is knocked down, though you will also need to do in neutral, try to do it when your opponent is far away, at least. (This will vary from character to character - when and how it is safe to summon an item is very different if you are facing Lambda than it is against Ragna.) #2: If your opponent is moving around in the air a lot, Platinum has some good options for dealing with them - if they are coming in from more or less straight above you, her 2C is very strong. If they are more in front of you, her 6A is a good anti air. You can also jump and air throw, or jump back and use j.C. You'll want to choose the best tool for each situation, but those are some to get you started. #3: 5B is a good basic move for use in neutral, but I'd be careful with 3C. j.C is okay, but most likely if you want to jump in on your opponent you'll want to use j.2C or j.B. Also, if you are close enough, Platinum's 5A is pretty strong, though if you're that close, you may not be in 'neutral' anymore. The other game changers for Platinum's neutral game are bombs, missiles, and cat hammer (and present in CP). Her other items are either primarily defensive (Bat), or combo/mixup related (Hammer, Pan). One move you'll mostly want to AVOID in Neutral is Mami Circular ("Heart Car") as it leaves you in a very bad place on block. Again, this might be better suited to the Plat forums, but: #1: Pressure takes a lot of time to learn, don't get discouraged. #2: You have a pretty good jump of jump cancellable normals - 5A, 5B, and 5C are all jump cancellable - so you shouldn't rely on 6A or 6C to set up an overhead. Probably the best 'basic' place to go for an overhead frying pan is after 5B, since you can do either 5B > jc > Frypan or 5B > 2B for a low. You shouldn't forget about 6B either - it's an overhead, and can link into a 5A pretty easily at long range. #3: You'll eventually want to start doing jab stagger pressure. This is basically 5A > ((5A >) 5A > Dash) i.e. any number of 5As followed by a quick dash in and more 5As. Preferably with just a TINY bit of time between the 5As so that if your opponent tries to jab or throw, they'll get counterhit. This helps keep your opponent from mashing buttons at you and makes it easier to sneak in a throw. #4: There are certain setups where you can do a bubble or bombs safely. I'll leave that to people who actually know Plat. Just throwing them out after any knockdown doesn't really work. But if your opponent is in the habit of just doing a wakeup throw or something dumb like that, start doing a "meaty" 5B - that is, wait for them to tech, and then throw out a 5B so that it hits them just as they are able to move/block after the tech. If they do anything other than block or do a frame 1 invulnerable move (like Inferno Divider or Platinum's Bat) they will get hit. This helps keep your opponent honest. You can also do meaty 6B or 2B to get an immediate mixup. This one, sadly, mostly comes down to practice and trying to really -think- about it. I have many of the same problems you do (not jumping out, ever, and not teching throws). It might be worth playing some matches where you basically think to yourself "Screw it, I'm going to jump back and barrier every chance I get" just to see what happens and learn to do it sometimes. Also, don't feel ashamed to mash Bat. :P Really, it all just comes down to being relaxed, remembering that this really doesn't matter, and trying new things as you gain experience. Though some time in training mode never hurt anyone either.

So yeah, I don't think three of us makes for enough to have a tournament. :P

If you read the two post previous to the question, you'd know he was talking about Extend. Also, yes, people still play Extend.

Well, _I_ have no excuse to not show up for this, but I dunno if there're enough of us to put together a 10-15 person tournament. =/

You might want to waltz on over to the P4A XBL Match Finder thread and ask there.

Where's our +5 on block 214D? =(

This actually raises the interesting question of "Is this a special property of some moves, or is it a change to how 'followups' work?" Because there're times when it would be really nice to be able to fix a 5B (hit) > 5BB (whiff because f*ck you, 5BB) with a rapid cancel.

I'm confused. How does this reconcile with ?

Question about the matches with Zoular - you seemed to be going for 22A a lot in neutral/blockstrings (when you had 50 heat to rapid). What are you looking for with that?

oh right! I do remember seeing some videos of him playing Ragna, and yes, he's good. He just didn't come to mind because the last time I saw footage of him playing Ragna was ages ago.

Always interested in quality play in good resolution. >.> Though I wish you had a strong Ragna in your area.

Probably because Japanese players need to practice too, and don't feel comfortable enough with that version to worry about the extra damage. Kinda sad that our air enders are still mostly useless, though I guess they're sortof valid midscreen, which is better than before.

Just to add a little bit of advice here; When practicing, don't do this: HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button,HCB+Button, and then decide that you can totally do this motion whenever you want, because you can't. All you practiced, really, is doing HCB+Button after HCB+Button. Try practicing like this: Walk backwards: HCB+Button, crouch block, HCB+Button, walk forward, HCB+Button, three light attacks, HCB+Button, walk backwards, HCB+Button, jump foward, HCB+Button, etc. i.e. do the motion in as many different situations as you can imagine. This will be closer to the sort of thing you'll need to do in an actual match than doing HCB+Button x N.

Awesome! I confess, I wasn't really prepared to watch the tiny little postage-stamp-sized minimized videos.

Well, you see, the way you GET high PSR... EVERY MATCH? Turn the game off, boy, and spend some time in the men's room. Or the pharmacy. Good lord.

Challenge: Accepted. Bad Valkenhayn - give him no lows in wolf form. Done. Bad Tao - drives have landing recovery. Done. Bad Hazama - see Tao. :P (Oh, and remove his stupid jump C loop.) Done. There is no such thing as a design that cannot be bad. The devil is in the details. You might say "Oh, but they would never do that!" and to that I say "They do that all the time to other characters."

Yeah, I've never seen anyone 'surprise pick' an unlimited character either. Though I have run into a couple of people who ALWAYS let the character select timer tick down. Even in ranked. It's like "WTF, I can't see who you're picking, I'm already locked into my character anyway AND I've already selected, I'm not going to counterpick you." I can understand if you do this once in a while because you need to take care of something real fast before the match starts, but every time? Put the game down and go take care of business.

Just saw this (sorry for the delay) and thought I'd throw out a couple of comments. Sounds like there are a few different things going on here; First, there's blocking. Blocking isn't really a "fundamental" because it is at once too basic and too hard. It's too basic in that there isn't really much to learn about HOW to do it. It's too hard because it's basically reflexes and knowledge of your opponent's options, both of which are really just things you have to build up through practicing. It mostly doesn't matter what character you choose, though some characters are more likely to end up having to block than others. Next there's movement - it's true that playing Hazama isn't going to teach you jack all about how to move around the screen as anyone else, but that's not necessarily important - if you want to play Hazama, you need to know how to play Hazama, and it doesn't matter if you know how to move around as Ragna or Tao. While it's important to know what those character's movement options are, there's no real value in your being able to use them yourself. Just playing against the different characters will teach you how they can move around. If you _want_ to learn these characters, that may hasten things along, but it's absolutely not required. Similarly, Hazama doesn't really play standard airdasher footsies - there's no reason for him to do so, because he doesn't really have the normal tools for it, and the tools he does have are hands down better. You don't need to be able to play footsies to play Hazama. Lastly, pokes; First off, if you are somehow failing to use Hazama's pokes to get out of pressure due to whiffing, then you are trying to poke out of pressure at completely inappropriate times. You should pretty much NEVER be pushing buttons on the defense if your opponent is so far away that your jab will whiff. If you're just whiffing his 5A over the head of crouching characters, use 2A instead - Hazama has the fastest 2A in the game, coming out faster than some character's 5A. (He ALSO has the fastest 5A in the game, and one of the fastest 5Bs in the game. His normals, actually, are retarded good and he has no business having normals as good as he does, but that's neither here nor there.) But this, again, is just a matter of practice. Or you can just hammer on 2A whenever your opponent is close enough, until you learn when it's a bad idea. So basically to summarize - if you are concerned that learning Hazama isn't teaching you how to play other characters, you're probably right. But that's not necessarily a problem. If you want to main Hazama, main Hazama, and learn the skills to be good with him. He's stupid good, and continues to be stupid good in the next game. (Emphasis on the stupid sometimes. :P) If, on the other hand, you want to have some sort of generalized "Arc Sys airdasher skills" then yes, you should probably put in some time on someone like Ragna or Jin or Makoto to learn the more 'standard' aspects of the game. But that's only if you're interested in that.

It's really hard to say, since Valk was barrier blocking the whole time anyway, and the video quality is....not all that good. It doesn't -look- like his trajectory changed, which would've been the result of barrier blocking, but Valk was AWFUL close to the ground at that point, so maybe there wasn't time. And I can't really seem if there were any 'block effects' visible, since the video is so muddy.

Which, I should point out, does not have "abare" :P IplayWinner's glossary does though.

I don't play guilty gear, but this one I can answer. Abare is basically..."damage off of random hits." When you're both kind moving back and forth, and you throw something out with, really, just the intent to control space, and it hits (frequently on a weird corner of a hitbox, or at extreme range), if you can convert that into damage well, more-or-less regardless of the type of attack, that character has good abare. It's like...accidental footsies. "real" footsies would be you dancing out of range of an opponent's attack and then punishing the whiff with a specific move. Abare is you just kinda throwing something out there to control space and then being able to convert it if it hits. Similar, but a subtle difference.

The funny thing is that "level 1 PSR" doesn't even mean "offline warrior" - just as often, it means "new account."

Right, thanks! I had just realized it was probably the j.214 stuff that got us to the ground faster that was the key, and you just confirmed that for me. Honestly, I'm still sad when I see all the BS most of the rest of the cast is doing, but it's always better to understand why.