HowlingDragoon

Is the 2BB part even worth bothering with? It's an easy place to screw up the combo, and won't it nerf the damage on the specials? I do need to work on that combo, but for mid-fight rather than Training Mode. Not confident in my ability to land both Veritas and Decus in heat-of-the-moment reaction, so I usually just went with 236B -> 22B. Yea high/low block response is a big problem atm. Standard Ragna generally destroys me, because he mixes it up easily without leaving much opening. You mean like, when blocking? Stupidly enough, I was hesitant to charge all night specifically because I knew I'd get tagged. Felt safer to go in gung-ho rather than guess at it mid-fight. I guess that's what 2D is for, derp. Anyway, thanks.

Ah, I guess this got replied-over to a different page, so never mind the editing. http://tinypic.com/r/3508bi8/7 1st Fight: First fight of the session. EPIC choke-up. 2nd Fight: First win of the session. Still throwing way way too many random moves out though. http://tinypic.com/r/in7ndf/7 3rd Fight: I keep switching between these modes of "hey, not too bad", and "are you even looking at the screen or just the controller you're mashing on" - sometimes several times in the same round. 4th Fight: Ah, someone playing worse than me for once. Also featured: extremely greedy offensive burst. http://tinypic.com/r/67o6ll/7 5th Fight: Guess I'm not the only one who bursts badly. BTW, not going for the jerk-Astral here; just trying to make sure I don't get out-poked from the win. =P 6th Fight: Typical Jin fight. Pretty much destroying me until they start throwing out scrubby blockstrings, at which point I eat 'em alive. 7th Fight: Sadly, these 3 were basically my peak and it just went WAY downhill from there as the night dragged on and I got tired. Oh well, fun times were had. =D I'm aware of a lot of what my more severe problems are but that doesn't mean I don't still do them. Looking at it all at once, I seem to do an okay job of picking holes in opponent's offense, which is good because I can't maintain a defense for crap.

Okeedoke, TY. This probably won't be till tonight, as I've otherwise got ~25 mins to reinstall my screen-cap software, record the stuff, compress it & upload. I'll edit this post and slide 'em in when I'm done. =D

Ah, did my first bout of online last night and it was pretty pathetic, even before I kept trying to play while exhausted. I want to screen-cap some of my match replays from the middle of the evening (after I got "adjusted" but before I started tiredly button-mashing) and upload a video of them to be picked apart. Would that be something to post here or the Beginner Mode forum? Oh yea, things got a lot better for me when I started abusing the hell out of 5B rather than trying to use more varied normals. Jins, for example, pretty much only beat me on blatant error/inexperience, meaning I actually got in a decent amount of wins vs. Jin. 'Cause, like, you have to explicitly screw up for 5B not to punish your standard Jin blockstrings every damn time. Even managed to pull out an actual launcher -> j236D-> j.214D combo ("Dive Cannon", haha) 3 or 4 times, though I don't think I actually won any of the rounds I did them in. But yes, chaining that from a ground combo in a real match -is- enough to make me feel good - stop picking on meee~.

Heh, I'm talking more like two weeks of regular practice to learn basically the same stuff with over 50% consistency. Either way, Tsubaki has tight enough combo requirements that just about everybody seems to be annoyed by it. It's not really something I feel bad about anymore even if I'm still polishing my 236A -> 214A -> 22A. Like, I can go on Ragna and start pulling off most of his shenanigans fairly well after 15 minutes following a 3-minute 'net combo reference. And I'm not even talking about the fact that I'm doing like 3-4x more damage that way. =P What I'm trying to find/practice now is 3-4 move strings that require me to be on the ball, but are quick/simple enough that I can actually go online and play to relearn spacing, reflexes, etc while continuing this practice. Like, strings that are just barely enough for me to train my execution while learning the overall game, but strict enough atm that I really can't button-mash heat-of-the-moment style. 623C -> j.236A -> j.214B for example.

Yea, it's like one thread down. It's just a matter of reflex/muscle memory, and my ability is nearly geriatric in that regard, or at least my learning-rate is. I simply need to dump an embarrassing amount of time into it to train my fingers to stop acting stupid. BTW, I'm on a CRT TV so I don't have to worry 'bout that. Actually I'm on an 18-20' SDTV that won't even take component-cable input. It keeps pace with pretty much any output it can actually give me, but I have to pull the Widescreen Mode trick to even read words. At least it's not fish-bowled. =P

Oh yeh, I got that down except for the need to polish my execution in general. The new one for me to be an idiot about is the S.Jump cancel in the following part of the Challenge. =P

Oh, I know that's at least part of it. Tsubaki has a fairly complicated normal chain, and you have to be really spot-on with combo timing compared to some of the other characters I've tried. I totally didn't have the input down on the first actual combo in her Challenge Mode until last night, and by "having it down", I mean able to pull it out about 40% of the time without stressing, rather than like <10% while being really attentive. So it's a little from both columns, really. Well, more like a lot from both columns. =P

Hey, I went ahead and made an account just to say how much I appreciated seeing this thread. My situation has been very similar to the TC's, where I've been playing fighters without really "playing" them for a long time, and have had nearly-identical problems with the typical practice advice. The adage about "just keep practicing is the only way to learn" was proving useless for me, since what I really needed to learn was how to learn. The replies from Chozo003 and SolarMisae were especially helpful. I'm clearly not past the "execution" stage of learning, and the difficulties involved have been an incredible discouragement for me, with how slow I've been to pick things up. The TC's statement about this is extremely 'me': In particular, I've never been sure whether the stunted pace I felt myself learning at was overly expectant/insecure about a fairly normal process, or whether sluggish motor-skill learning issues were turning what should be a normal practice endeavor into something closer to this: http://www.snafu-comics.com/comics.php?comic_id=227 End result it becomes too discouraging to stay consistent with, leading to a looping behavior the next time I try to learn after not having touched BB for months. And this is all just basic execution stuff I'm talking about. Regardless of whether the slow pace is normal or not, I think my personal best bet for "learning process" is going to be following Chozo003's steps here: ...Basically matches the kind of behavior I use when I do see actual improvement. Perhaps the most backwards or "Catch 22" type part of the scenario is not knowing how far I need to get at "knowing what I'm doing" to be able to even learn anything from going online and getting pounded on. Overestimate it, and end up staying offline trying to learn things that can't be learned that way. Underestimate it, and run into TC's problem where you don't have enough grasp on things to actually learn from losses. In fact, I've cared so much more about doing well in CS than in CT, and done so much worse at it, that I don't know that I've even done an online match since CT. I know I haven't on my main profile, at least. Anyway, reading through this thread mattered enough to me to make a point of saying so. Thanks I guess?