qwerty

Your leftovers are better than most people's entrees.

I wouldn't say they're completely arbitrary, but you are essentially right, yes. I'm not trying to see this thread go off on a tangent it probably shouldn't, so I would just drop the subject entirely for now.

For what it's worth, I don't think the gap between Pot and Bedman is that significant, nor is the gap between Bedman and Slayer. Pot ended up kind of lucking out with the way he can utilize YRC, otherwise he would definitely be at the bottom. I think you're looking too much in to the letter next to the character and not enough at what that actually means. Anyone that plays Guilty Gear knows that bottom tier characters have historically been at least somewhat viable. All I'm saying is that the tier gap in this game is slightly larger than it is in say AC or +R, which doesn't say much in the grand scheme of things considering how well low tier characters can do in those games.

The first rule of discussing tiers is that they are relative to each game and only apply on an individual basis; being placed at D tier in one game does not necessarily equate to being D tier in another. I consider Slayer to be the worst character in the game, and while I do think he is at a pretty serious disadvantage against everyone, he is far from unusable. It's moreso that he's easy to telegraph and has to work much harder to reap the same rewards that other characters get for relatively little effort. Similar to Bedman, except Slayer doesn't have the kind of control at neutral that Bedman can have in the hands of a skilled player, which is why I place him lower. Unless someone discovers some new tech with Slayer that greatly expands either his options at neutral or his mixup options, I see no reason not to place him at the bottom of the cast. Again, a far cry from unusable, but definitely the weakest in the game, and by a significant margin at that.

It's not so much that Bedman "has" anything on Axl as much as it is Axl just not being that good at locking people down in this game. He can make some good reads and reap the benefits accordingly, but he usually has to spend some meter to do so, not to mention he commits pretty hard. Ky is in a similar situation except that he can lock down Bedman pretty well if he has a seal placed over him and at least 25% tension. Besides that though, Bedman will never have to sit there and take it against either of them.

The issue with Bedman is that he requires a crazy amount of momentum to turn a round in his favor. I legitimately think he only has two even matchups in Ky and Axl, and that's only because they can't shut him down the way most characters can. If you're doing well with Bedman, then good on you. I just call them as I see them.

FWIW, I consider Zato and Ram to be higher than Millia, though I get the feeling this dude is simply feeling himself over netplay... If I had to make a tier list right now it'd be: S: Zato, Ram A: Millia, Faust B+: Venom, I-No B: Sol, Ky, Elph B-: Sin, May, Chipp C+: Leo, Axl C: Pot C-: Bedman D: Slayer

A lot of that gap between good and great is in consistency and composure. There are a lot of good players that would very well be able to stand amongst the greats if they didn't crack under pressure and make careless mistakes. Besides that, I think having a good sense of timing is critical at the highest levels of play, and knowing the spacing of your opponent's character counts for a lot as well. Not falling into comfortable sets of tactics helps make you less predictable, and will also go a long way in winning consistently against good players.

Everyone gets hit by everything, at some point. It's a matter of figuring out how your opponent is conditioning you to play defense, and doing your best to avoid those bad situations to begin with.

Those are comeback mechanics, just very well designed ones. Hellfire I wouldn't say is as refined as those, but it's also not that significant, anyways. The extra damage is partially offset by the opponent's guts if they're low on health. This is based on observation alone, but it seems like the opponent's tension pulse increases when they get hit by Hellfire supers, as well.

Even if you are somehow at -3 or worse after an air tech, you still have one of the most generous throw tech windows of any fighting game currently on the market. You are clearly not understanding what I'm saying. In regards to having more control, well, maybe you should learn how to play the game before you demand that it changes to suit your shortcomings. I think you'll find that you already have all the control you could ever need.

I think this is the last time I'm going to attempt to illustrate this. If you have a point in a combo where you're at the perfect spacing to hit your opponent with a reset (typically when you're right below them) and you know the other guy is going to tech out on the first frame, you have the easiest reset in the world just waiting to happen. In Xrd this extends to other situations as well, such as Venom hitting you with a ball, you teching, then Venom doing teleport -> YRC (among other situations, but we'll stick with the basic ones for examples sake). Right now, the way most people tech out of combos in Guilty Gear is by mashing/strumming. This allows for quick, though not necessarily instant recoveries (try mashing out of that one challenge in Xrd to see this in action). Double-tapping allows you to choose two points to tech out, if you don't want to leave as much to chance. This is the more precise method, whereas mashing/strumming is the less precise, but convenient method. As you probably know, many people choose the first method. As you have probably noticed, most of those people start mashing/strumming the moment they get hit. If they could hold a button instead, then they would likely default to that (it is quicker, after all). This is where the issue with held or buffered techs would come in to play: instead of getting multiple tech attempts frames apart, you now have multiple consecutive (frame by frame) tech attempts. This means that the timing for when you tech is more consistent. This in turn means that accounting for techs in your combos becomes much easier, as now you have one "earliest" timing to watch out for (which does currently exist, but very rarely occurs in practice) instead of being more or less forced to adapt to slightly different timings that may actually end up putting you in a bad spot. So basically, this becomes an issue of when to tech on the first frame vs when to tech slightly later vs when to tech much later. Teching on the first frame is guaranteed to get you out of a combo, but the likelihood of eating a tech trap is highest because that is the expected thing to do as it is the easiest, fastest way to get out (assuming we have held/buffered techs). Teching slightly later is also expected, though as the aggressor you have to be a little more careful in how you space yourself since you don't want to be the one getting airthrown or hit with an air normal. Lastly, teching out much later is the least expected in most situations because not only is it not the instinctively "right" thing to do, it also opens you up to the possibility of being unable to tech at all, either causing you to eat the rest of a combo or get knocked down and be forced into a low jump mixup. Again, it's not that 1F techs don't exist right now. It is definitely possible to tech on the first possible frame even by accident. That is just the thing, though; it's not really expected that you'd do it. It's hard to get a 1F input for anything, let alone a 1F input during a combo that you probably don't even expect to be dropped. Likewise, if you can get it, it can sometimes throw your opponent off guard, though as I explained before it does often times put you in the bad position of being above your opponent (which is especially bad if he still has his double jump option). Now we can cover a little bit as to why this is so much different from the same situation happening in Blazblue or Persona. In those games, throws have a significant amount of startup. I don't recall P4's offhand but BB I know is 7F. That's slower than a lot of air normals, is it not? So you can theoretically beat a throw with a j.A/B, if you so wished to. Not to mention the generous tech window on throws in BB. Xrd, on the other hand, has 0F throws. They beat meaties, so they're definitely going to beat anything you throw out in the air (unless, of course, it's throw invincible). Xrd currently doesn't have throw techs either, so there goes that line of defense. Lastly, Xrd also has YRC, which will slow you down as well as eat your input, which would make any attempt to mash out of a reset a moot point anyways. Which goes back to my original point at the very beginning of this discussion: it's not a meaningful defensive option to be able to consistently tech out at the first possible frame. If anything, you are making it easier for people to hit you after your air tech, because they can start throwing in option selects to beat it at certain points of their combo. Which turns it into a horrible option in any situation except when the opponent has dropped a combo either at a point where he can't OS, or where he's so far away that teching a few frames later would be irrelevant anyways. I would like to think that this makes everything as clear as can be. If you don't get it right now, I don't know what to tell you, man. Come back at a later date and see if it makes sense then.

It's significant enough to matter in many situations, especially in Xrd where they can react to your tech, YRC and airthrow you. I see Venom players do that all the time. Delaying your tech even slightly can put you low enough to the point where he can't get into airthrow range. I do agree with your second point to an extent, in that delayed tech has always been incentivized in this situation, but I think you're somewhat missing the point of not wanting 1F escapes being the defacto way to tech out.

You guys are not getting it. Nowhere did I say that people would always go for black beat combos to try to bait early techs. What I have been saying is that in the case where the aggressor wants to go for a tech trap (and there are plenty of reasons to do so), the decision becomes much easier to make when you know that the other guy is probably holding a button to tech out immediately. Like we can all agree on, going for tech traps instead of finishing your combo is the exception to the rule; which is why holding down a button while you're getting hit will become the defacto default action, as mashing currently is for many people. What you are not understanding is that this additional method of teching out is the easiest to beat because the timing is consistent, which means that the spacing (for each direction you can tech) is consistent as well. This makes beating those early techs the easiest option, and one that, again, would often times be done via an option select, so it's not like the aggressor would have to change much or anything if he wanted to beat that. Of course this is not the ONLY way to tech, which some people seem to think that I am assuming. It is however, the safest, easiest, most appealing method. That is, of course, until you start getting reset to death, in which case you start late teching. This is not really a mixup though, because the "guess" is between a guaranteed action that you have a guaranteed counter against and a possible action that you may or may not have a counter against. It skewers the risk:reward and fundamentally changes the decision on how and when to tech. This is going to sound mean, but I'm afraid there is no other way to say it: you do not understand Guilty Gear well enough to make that assessment.

If we're really going to go this route... 1. Already addressed. Comparing this aspect of GG to BB or P4U is meaningless because those games have so many fundamental differences that it's not worth comparing in this sense. Neither game has 0F throws, the OS' that Guilty Gear has, the abundance of air unblockable normals, etc. (As an aside, I see BB players, particularly in the US, go for pink throw resets more often than I should care to admit) 2. Already addressed. It does affect how people make the decision to tech and I have already explained that. When the option to always make a perfect escape is there, it is always going to be an appealing option. Likewise, it is going to be what the attacking player prepares for the most. That fundamentally changes the dynamic of tech trapping and teching. Mashing isn't precise and isn't meant to be, that is why it's called mashing. You can always double tap or simply rely on visual cues if you don't want to mash. 3. I already understand the argument for hold techs, and you will never hear me say that I like eating black beat combos. Still, I'd rather deal with the occasional black beat combo than deal with a mechanic shoehorned into a system that was never meant to accommodate it. Obviously tech traps are an exception to the rule of thumb (that people will typically opt to complete their combo), but they are a very strong tool nonetheless, and would only be stronger if the attacking player could bait held techs by just slightly delaying a jump cancel or whatever else. 4. A gamble cannot be guaranteed by definition. Having a guaranteed out cheapens the value of early techs by making them easier to anticipate. 5. Already addressed. The dynamic changes greatly, as there would then be an extra kind of tech that both players have to take into account in regards to deciding what kind of combo to do, what kind of OS to use, when to OS, etc. Lastly, delayed tech is not a counterpoint. If anything, it compliments my argument. With early teching becoming more of a gamble, delayed teching is effectively incentivized.

Of course you can delay it. Can we stop mentioning that please? I have not once said or insinuated that wasn't the case. You can also burst whenever you want in a combo, yet people burst at obviously burst safe points all the time. Yes, even in Japan.

I have addressed everything worth addressing and even graciously admitted I was wrong about the double tapping thing. You have argued little, and I even addressed your first post in its entirety. It has been MoralHazardPay who has been keeping this discussion going (and interesting). You came off as antagonistic from the very beginning, and I really don't like to be mean on the internet anymore, so please, stop if you're not going to contribute.

It all depends on spacing, really. I can think of more than a few situations where you can get a guaranteed airthrow regardless of which direction the opponent teched in Xrd. Ky and Venom in particular use this kind of thing all the time.

Can't you negative edge throws though? I'm pretty sure it does apply to techs, and indeed all button presses that don't result in normals.

I get what you're saying. Really, I do. But we need to go back and acknowledge the root of the desire for held techs, and that is the ability to get out as soon as possible so you don't eat a combo. If you have a consistent way to get out of dropped combos as early as possible, most people (even many good players) will instinctively take that because, as we all know, eating a black beat combo sucks. The issue arises when we start talking about ways to bait that, which would require little to no commitment on the behalf of the attacking player. Obviously, better players will start to delay their techs more if they're getting hit by resets, but there is still always that tempting option to just get out ASAP. As it currently is, getting out of a combo on the first frame is actually quite difficult and in many situations is not desirable because it places you directly above your opponent. So in a sense, the current system is preventing the kind of thing that I don't want, which is teching becoming even more of a hazard to the defending player in those kinds of situations. What the addition of held techs would do is add that extra layer of "what if"; if the opportunity to get out of a combo immediately is always there, it's always going to be a tempting option for obvious reasons. Ultimately, though, at higher levels, it is going to turn into a game of doing combos that hide option selects that beat those perfectly timed early techs. Why would those be so strong you may ask? Because the timing would be perfect every time, and would require little to no adjustment on the attacker's behalf. If there is a clearer way to explain my issue with it, I don't know what it is. I feel as if I've exhausted every effort there is to explain it.

I have been more than reasonable with you dude, but you are starting to push it. If my arguments are so wrong, debunk them. Otherwise, you're just adding to the already pitiful signal to noise ratio of this forum.

It is a great thing... for the aggressor. Which is what I've been saying the whole time. The current mix up is between early techs with variable timing and late techs with variable timing, which makes the aggressor have to consider much more in the case of the former. If we want a version of Guilty Gear that rewards offense even more than it already does (which, judging by the disdain for throw techs, may very well be the case), then sure. The reason I play Guilty Gear though is not to open people up constantly, it's to play a smart spacing game on both offense and defense while having ample options for both.

I agree on principle that you should be at an advantage with an extended throw range (and indeed you are even with throw techs), but there are exceptions to the rule. If we're talking a totally escapable tick throw/proximity block situation, then yes, I agree that you shouldn't rely on throw techs to get out of those. Yet, we don't see people do that because there are better options in those escapable situations, like you said. Which brings me to my main defense of throw techs: for situations where you would otherwise eat shit, they are the last line of defense. Sure, you have an extra 4 pixels on Sol, so you should be able to tick throw from four pixels away. But let's be honest; you are not just doing standard tick throw setups with Dizzy, especially not in +R. Chances are you have a fish, spike, bubble, or some combination of the above on top of Sol, and he's probably going to be forced to block for quite some time. If he knows a throw is coming somewhere in the middle of that, I don't see why he shouldn't be able to tech it. Slows down the pace of the game? I beg to differ. It's not like you aren't at a pretty serious advantage already, and you can definitely continue to press it after a throw tech. It's a brief pause, kind of like an "oh shit" moment, at worst (which is also exactly what throws are in regards to the pace of the game). Then of course, if you still find yourself not liking throw techs, I have to ask: would you rather get counter thrown instead? I do agree with your sentiment towards the end, though, and if anything GG shows that you can have a plethora of defensive option selects and still maintain a fast, steady pace.

Using that same situation, if you were to hold a button for whatever advance input buffer (let's say 5F since that's what BB and iirc P4U have), holding from frame X-1 would net you a tech in any of those situations, would it not? Double tapping would still work exactly the same in a game with no negative edge like Xrd, but in a game with negative edge like +R, you would still have incentive to double tap (which is in fact the best argument against it in that game). Still, I don't see how any of this changes my original point of held or buffered techs making teching out of tight windows more expected and changing the dynamic of choosing whether to tech at that point or not.

I understand there is a difference, but I don't see how what I'm saying wouldn't apply to both; you'd just have to time a buffered tech in a 1F window.