okay since this game and forum are dead and anyone reading this will be doing so from the future where ggpo2 has support for naomi games i figure i'll post my last and only good piece of advice right now before i forget
alright so this is aimed primarily at intermediate/high intermediate players but if you SUCK you can try this anyways. anyways remember how when you first started playing guilty gear you just grinded nonstop against the maniac cpu and then once you could beat it you were done with arcade mode? WELL YOU WERE WRONG, because arcade mode serves one, very useful purpose, even if you're "good".
put simply, the cpu is random. you can't make any sense of anything it does which means it's not a very good way to train for playing vs real people, with one exception; it can teach you how to space.
pretty much you just do this: stay near the cpu, approximately at the range where 5K whiffs but f.S doesn't. then when you see the cpu do something, you judge the movement (this wonderful thing called reaction is actually pretty FUCKING good) and either do f.S or (dash) jump and airthrow; your fireball and dp respectively.
this will teach you how to control space with two of the most difficult and rewarding moves johnny has. it's the best way there is to learn how to space airthrows in a realistic application (outside of whiffing j.HS in actual matches and people laughing at you) because you're actually reacting to a jump and trying to get in range (unlike setting the training mode dummy to jump). it's also a good way to get a sense for when to use f.S vs when to use 5K; f.S is a very good move, and you should be forcing people to respect it and get past it (then once they do that that's when you mash 5K). the thing is that f.S is also really hard to use (whiffs some crouchers, some moves low profile under it, have to be good at mist stance dash jackhound to get damage off of it, etc) so a lot of johnny players just become LAZY FUCKS and never use it but you don't wanna be one of those now do you? of course it's hard to use f.S vs some characters (axl makes you his bitch at that range, zappa has to press a button to get hit by f.S, etc) but that's why you learn to use it vs the cpu and not when you're qualifying for sbo.
so yeah just do this for maybe 20 minutes a day or when you're on the bus/train on the psp port or whatever and you'll realize pretty quickly that you've been missing out on two of johnny's best tools to control space with and then you'll feel dumb but then you'll beat everyone that lives near you because chances are they don't know how to space themselves. whelp that's it I'M OUT