TheRealBobMan

Consider button macros to be banned so that you don't come to rely on the tricks that are available because of bugs caused by the way the macros work. All things are determined by individual tournament organizers, so just ask when you go to an event.

I would be a little worried too, but don't forget that he's comboing Millia. We also don't have as much information when looking for damage scaling as we did with the guard bar, since RISK doesn't have the below neutral or negative values that we can see. They might even be planning on fixing damage output and/or scaling after this loketest. For all we know, they might be trying so hard to push this out the door that they're not really doing internal balancing and are just getting stuff implemented so they can tweak numbers after the public tears the game apart. Getting paid by arcade goers that also test the game beats paying an additional set of testers that might not be as good as Ogawa/Kaqn/Woshige/FAB/Sammito/Koichi/Heaven/etc. I mean, I'm sure they're not phoning it in with the balance either, but it might be a low concern compared with other things. I wouldn't even think of this as an option, but training mode is being included this early... a loketest BEFORE the launch.

So, it looks like the buzz saw builds guard bar (what's the new name for guard bar again?), but not quite as much as his 5H does, or even his 6P. Also, his tension pulse didn't seem to be very high considering how much meter he was getting for moving forward.

Considering that ArcSys promised the patch would come out, there'd be a lawsuit if they decided to not release it, which means there's a high likelihood that it will be released... eventually. So now we have a new way to pass the time. We can bet on when monkeys will fly out of your butt. I wanna guess that "all of their dudes" are on Xrd, so maybe within a week of Xrd hitting arcades, they'll finally put a guy on +R and get it finished... that day. And then on Tuesday 2 weeks from then (accounting for Sony testing) we'll have it. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe they just don't have the budget for 1st party testing (It's something like $40K) since they're trying to get Xrd out as fast as possible (need the money for that launch) so they're waiting? I might have even posted about that before and forgot... I'm sleep deprived. OVERTIME ALMOST OVER YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAA gonna get to play GG again soon YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAA ... *Ahem* I'm almost as excited for monkeys flying out of TAI-X's butt as I am for Xrd.

If you ever want to complain about the lack of +R, do it here: http://arcsystemworks.us/contact It's more efficient to send the complaints directly to ArcSys.

Yeah, I haven't seen that. Great vid except for the music. I've been playing around with j.D FDC and j.D cross-ups in general for a while in training mode, but never attempted j.D FDC airdash before. It's so damn flashy... I love it. On block, you can j.S > slight delay dj.D for a crossup, then go into HCL as was demonstrated in the video into whatever (you could also probably use Fortissimo). You can also do whatever in the air > late j.D for the high/low, and if they block that, dj.D for the crossup. But j.D > FDC > airdash is amazing... gotta learn that next. Uh... 8 frames landing recovery sucks, so it's pretty dangerous to use our 9 frame 2S out of a j.D FDC setup. You'd need a lot of regular FDC > j.K conditioning to make it less risky, since that can be frame tight. It should be safe to use strings like j.S > j.D FDC > j.K. If we land into 2K, it's really close... 8 landing recovery + 5 for 2K startup is already the block stun, and that doesn't factor the 1-2 frames for the FDC or the time it takes to fall to the ground... We wind up short a couple of frames that they could use to reversal out. That would apply to any lvl 3 move, so that includes HD > 2K > c.S > j.D FDC shenanigans, and it'd be even tighter out of 5K. Going for 2S makes the window of opportunity for the opponent 4 frames wider. Out of H-Stroke it's a little better since that's lvl 5, so we get 20 frames of block stun. Not sure if it's frame tight for our safety, but it's going to be easier to react to since it'd be close to 20 frames. If your mixup is really strong/varied, it'd be harder to react to that unless your opponent is being stubborn and mashing out reversals expecting a gap from TK dive or j.D. I bet using j.D FDC > land > throw would either be stupid effective, or always get you thrown by the other guy because he mashes throw reversals at all times.

You have no idea how much I love you for this. I can't wait to see more info about the guard gauge, and anything else you might find about Tension Pulse. "I remember reading (forgot where) that there is an "upper limit" that can be reached only by Instant Blocking. In #Reload at least, this is false. The 25,000 limit can be reached without IB'ing - it just takes a long time." I think you read that in the old system guide data that was moved into the wiki, but I believe that the upper bound can be surpassed by IB/SB. You don't have to use IB/SB to reach it, just to go above it. I also remember reading that the upper bound is thought to be different per character, so if you could check Zappa/Johnny/I-No, then compare to like Baiken, that'd probably give us a little insight into how that works.

Uh... yeah. You can also hold D to feint the attack and go into lows, throws, more overheads, or any gimmick you want. This is Slayer specific. May's 5D can similarly be held to turn it into a low that comes out a little later than the overhead would have hit. Some 5Ds have properties that make them useful besides simply being overheads. Chipp's has great range and it's + on block, Justice and Millia can low-profile under stuff with their 5Ds, Faust's 5D is a goddamn reversal (though it's only invincible for like 1-13 when it starts on 28), Eddie floats over lows, Testament has an FRC point on his and leans back which can dodge things, Jam almost looks like she's standing still and Kliff looks like he's crouching on startup... But yeah, this is about Guilty Bits. If you have other questions just PM me or stick them into the relevant topic rather than clutter this one. Though since it's come up, maybe info on these conventions should go into a Guilty Bits video. It'd definitely help new players hit the ground running if they knew that all characters had basic high/low mixup on the ground, or that all j.D attacks have landing recovery whereas all other air normals (not counting command normals) have no landing recovery.

ALL 5Ds are overheads. There is ONE 2D that is not a low, which is Robo Ky's. It's not even an attack, but the electricity mat is central to his game. To compensate, his 2S hits low and knocks down, and his 5D is among the fastest in the game (not counting special circumstances like Dragon Install and Zappa w/Raoh). But yeah, GG has some nice conventions that make it easy to learn. All 6Ps have some upper body invincibility, all 5D's are overheads, and all but Robo Ky's 2D hit low. That way everyone gets some basic ground mixup, and has at least one option that can be used to anti-air, even if it's a bad option for the job compared to their other tools (Sol's 6P vs VV) or will lose to good jump-ins done deep enough. It's a little frustrating because all Dusts are launchers, and most of them fit the look of a launcher rather than an overhead. It's one thing to have an ambiguous animation for a mixup tool (Kliff's 5D), but it takes longer to learn to deal with overheads that look like they would hit low because the attacking part is low to the ground like Order Sol's, or comes out of the ground like I-No's or Testament's. That said, I would appreciate it if ANYONE made a dust centered combo video to the Queen song "Another one Bites the Dust". Anything from ID combos to combos that just spam j.D as much as possible and still end in knockdown.

Impossible dust combos aren't always the most efficient options, and they're somewhat situational since Dusts aren't the greatest mixup tools for most characters anyway (I-No's +R Dust is a better zoning tool than a mixup tool considering how ****ing slow of an overhead it is). Defense is hard to cover in a single video per character, since it's a really matchup-specific kind of thing. A poke that might work really well in one matchup might get you ****ed in another. For intermediate level character specific guides... I suppose you could explain some of the offensive tactics that higher level players use with some detail. Like, there's saying "Sol can use Gunflame FRC to keep pressure going", and there's going into higher yomi layers with tricks like Gunflame > FRC > Wild Throw, and general stuff that would be used to beat stuff that avoids or tries to counter that tactic. You wont have to say "This is something that this character should do", but you can say "These are tricks that some players use, and it works out, so maybe learn how to use them". We run the risk of players not learning to experiment, but if you supplement this stuff with footage of players doing unorthodox stuff (like Kusoru 2D > RC > 2D > RC > WT for example), they'd probably get the message that the tools you get in GG encourage doing your own thing. You can also just blatantly tell them to experiment at the end of every video. And if they refuse to experiment and figure things out, they probably wouldn't get above an intermediate or advanced level anyway. But yeah, if you go into yomi layers around specific moves/tactics, that might teach people to think about WHY they're doing certain moves, which is probably more useful than listing combos they can look up on a forum or see in any competitive play match vid anyway.

Well, if you want to talk about difficulty, you can probably break it down into "execution" and "strategic" sections. Someone like Zappa isn't that hard to control or execute, but you're basically learning to play 5 characters, so he's rather difficult on the strategic end (he's probably the upper bound on that actually, since you have to learn every matchup X5). Dizzy has lots of different fish patterns to figure out, Venom has his ball formations, etc. Someone like Eddie is hard on execution, but his strategic requirements probably aren't as high as other characters. I don't play Eddie so I don't know if his execution requirements are as high as I-No, but he has unblockable set-ups, so at the very least he might not have to work quite as hard as some characters to land a hit once he gets you blocking, not that I-No has to either with her mixup. Not sure how much character specific combo stuff he has to learn either, but I-No is pretty steep there. So, for reference, 5K > HCL > 6FRC6 > j.S > FFVCL is a general thing that an I-No player really needs to link stuff together and go for high damage. It's hard to combo off some openers like Sdive or STBT-S without it, it gives her good corner push which is important since she does most of her damage in the corner, and HCL/VCL are some of her highest damage moves so that string is actually one of her high-damage options anyway. Now I'll break it down a bit. 5K > HCL is the easiest part, but you can still **** it up. 5K is a lvl 2 move and HCL has 11 frames start up, so if you delay even a little you're not going to cancel on time and it'll drop. HCL is a 632146 input, and you also need to jump install HCL since it doesn't auto-JI, so you need to buffer an up input in there somewhere (doing a 360 works really well for this). Messing up the 5K > HCL cancel usually means super jumping a j.K because of how fast you do the input, which means you get ****ed. Then, HCL's FRC point is frames 16-17. Hitting any FRC takes work to get consistent at. The problem is that you need to dash out of this move... you have 4 frames from the time you cancel until you lose the ability to dash because of the height requirement, so you need to split the input as 6FRC6. Then, the window for the double tap to count as an airdash is 10 frames, so you need to make sure that the second forward input is within the 4 frame window, and that the first input is no more than 10 frames before it. So at this point, you could do the first 6 too early and not dash, miss the FRC, or do the second 6 too early/late and not dash. After that you usually want to link into j.S, and you have time for it since HCL is lvl 5, but sometimes you'll do the j.S too early and drop the combo. In order to get the fast-fall version of VCL, you have to do it during airdash frames, so you have to do the 632146S out of j.S pretty quick. I-No's airdash lasts longer in +R... long enough that you can actually do an airdash j.K > j.S > FFVCL where that's necessary, but in AC you pretty much just had to do j.K or j.S since it would take too long to do both. Otherwise you wouldn't get the fast-fall and the combo would end there. Now, as if that doesn't seem complicated enough, I-No needs to follow up the HCL > 6FRC6 with different things depending on the character, their vertical position on the screen, and where you both are relative to the corner. Sometimes you want to do 6FRC6 > j.S > j.H > land > c.S, sometimes you go into 6FRC6 > j.S > FFVCL > whatever, sometimes it's 6FRC6 > j.H > j.D > VCL > 5P, sometimes it's even HCL > 6FRC6 > FFVCL with no linker between! So... it's difficult because there's a lot of margin for error since there are so many things you can fuck up for a "basic" string she uses all the time, and sometimes you have to adjust your combo on the fly depending on one starter being used rather than another, and you have to adjust a lot based on character weight/hitbox. 5K > HCL doesn't even work on Faust unless he's already airborne! I-No really gets a lot from being able to 5K > HCL > 6FRC6, so that really difficult thing is a pretty big barrier to playing her. I'm sure playing Eddie is difficult since you have to control Little Eddie and all that, but I-No definitely competes with that (and I've heard some people say she's harder) since there are so many ways to mess up stuff that's like her BnB. And on strategy... she's really freestyle, but since her hitboxes suck you really want to know what the other character's moves do. That applies to everyone so I hate saying it, but you really want to know that you can beat move X with Q, and Y with R, if you know what I mean. It's really easy for someone with good hitboxes to disrespect her in the neutral game, so while she can roll someone off of one knockdown, sometimes it's hard just to get the chance for a knockdown since her moves lose a lot of the time. She has solid tools, but they're all pretty deliberate.

Two moves got their base damage buffed (FB Dive and Hdive), but we got 2 new forced prorates (FB dive and 6P) and 3 new prorates (STBT-S, STBT-H, and Sdive). Average damage is down off of most starters. Maximum damage is probably the same considering we have new combo options with the extra airdash, and with VCL recovering in the air. Just gotta experiment more. There are new combo routes. You can still do great meterless damage off of some starters... try comboing STBT-H off of CH 5H/2H, then going into Pdive > airdash for corner push > freestyle. Fish for more Kdive counter hits. Use the faster recovery on f.S to frametrap! Just uh... if you land a 2K or f.S, do a meter gain combo instead of a damage combo, then use FBnote oki to crank guard bar and go for an unprorated set-up. Experiment with Pdive knockdown. If you do FBnote from the distance you push yourself away from with Pdive, the notes will hit 10 times and crank the GB to flashing. Great way to force them to FD/DA/Burst or eat a 45-80% combo.

Yeah, I think Purple is during recovery and Yellow is during startup. Purple isn't necessarily bad... what if you whiff a totally punishable move? You couldn't RC it before, but now you have PRC to become safe. I-No should be substantially easier. There are reports of auto-JI with Chemical Love, and Chemical Love's input was changed to a 214. Combine that with time slow on YRCs, which seem to have bigger windows than FRCs... yeah. And dash cancels on some normals, so getting something off of f.S should be a little easier, and we actually get stuff off of non-corner non-CH 6H for no meter. And then the tumble on Sdive looks like it'll make confirms a little easier.

Check out the discussion on Xrd I-No. She can reportedly Yellow RC Chemical Love, so it only costs 25%.

My bad on the video observation. You're still likely to build enough meter before she gets enough for the super if you just IB 2-3 moves before the auto-IB thing triggers, depending on how much she had before initiating the block string. That auto-IB thing was put in the game probably to prevent any potentially missed things like this from being too powerful, and it looks like it would do a decent enough job if she didn't have an unblockable super that's apparently really invincible (sweet merciful crap why did they think that was a good idea?). Being forced to wait around until she does a mixup and you can escape (unless she has airtight strings into high/low attacks that are safe and lead back into the block string) or gives you enough meter to CA out isn't fun game play when she can win off of 1-2 combos. Maybe if she had Millia's/Chipp's damage output it'd be a little different. It sounds like a large combination of factors are making her really strong... and going by TAI-X's post, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't care since she's a console-only character (something I didn't know). Most of their competitive scene is based around arcades anyway, and there's a precedent of banning anything that's not in the arcade version of games. Oh well. *Fart sound*

Couldn't you still IB all of those hits to get meter, then Dead Angle / whatever BB calls an Alpha Counter? It looks like she's getting in the neighborhood of 1 meter per hit on block (times a bunch of hits with some multi-hit moves), but doesn't BB give you 2 meter for IBing? Shit, you even see it in the video. She keeps him in block pressure for so long that the automatic IB takes effect, and he reaches 50% BEFORE SHE DOES. And that's only after the automatic IB triggers. If a player IBs every hit in her string he'll have the meter to escape way faster. Also, if that trick works in BB where you switch between high/low blocking and it counts the input as an instant block, it might not even be hard to do, depending on if this string has high/low in it. Bad for gameplay? I don't play BB, and while I was somewhat interested in CP, this makes me not want to play it, so I'd say yes, this is bad for game play. Is it broken? Probably not. Someone please post that IB > get meter > Dead Angle info on SRK if it's not already on there to help people out who enter tournaments where she's not banned. My lunch break just ended.

It's Wild Throw. There's also Riot Stomp. I'm not sure what RT means.

While it's unrelated to Guilty Bits BlazBits and all of those projects, do you think it'd be a good idea to do a video about analyzing match videos? I remember ehuangsan wrote a good post about that in the Ky forum some time ago.

Hey, so I'm wondering why the news about Xrd launching in February isn't on the Dustloop main news page yet. What's up with that?

Same here. The game will come out in arcades and we wont have access to it until probably the end of this year at the earliest. By the time we get the console release, Baiken+Jam+Dizzy+ other characters will probably be in the game. Can't wait to see what Koichi does with I-No dash cancelable normals.

Meaty with something that recovers right after their wakeup invul ends, so you can both stop random mashing and bait a DP. A properly timed jump-in is really easy to see coming, but it's mostly safe against that kind of play. Some DPs start really fast and make this difficult, but you probably have an option. Because it's easy to see coming they're going to commit to blocking and you'll have to work to get something off of it, which means you'll probably open yourself up again when you try to mix up. The thing is, if you condition your opponent with moves that their best option is to block, it becomes a little easier to get away with the stuff that's less safe. Also, it's not that bad of a situation if you bait a DP and wind up baiting a jab reversal. Yeah, you gave up your oki opportunity, but you're on defense assuming you didn't hit a button and get counter-hit. They have to put pressure on or go for a mixup to get anything, which means you can still get back in or reset to neutral by taking advantage of that. If you're just poking late as they're getting up such that you're getting hit by reversal jab, you're doing it wrong, in most cases anyway. Meaty attacks beat this clean. Meaty into a frame trap to score a CH against them yourself.

I hate you with every fiber of my being right now. Oh well, I'll still show up for casuals then.

I'll show up for GG tomorrow when I get off of work, which is probably going to be around 5:00PM, so expect me to sit in traffic until about 7:30PM to get there. If you guys start on time for once I'm going to be pissed.

I'm pretty sure the list is based off of percentage of wins of character X vs character Y. There could be a good Justice player that shows up when all the newbs show up. Justice could have a relatively small sample size of matchups against characters that are potentially good against her. Justice is still relatively new to the arcade scene so players are still learning to deal with her. Even if it's already been more than a year for players in Japan, I think zoners have a tendency of looking really strong early on in a game since they often require precision to deal with. Part of Justice being bad before was that nukes did not go through other projectiles. Justice X Venom is now considered to be pretty strong in Justice's favor since her nukes go through his balls, but it used to be the other way around and it was practically a 9:1 matchup in Venom's favor because of that. I also don't remember what her other changes may have been since back then, but she's definitely not weak. Most of the early footage showed her doing sub optimal combos for a really long time anyway. When Justice hits you, expect to lose 35% of your health. If she throws you, expect to lose 30%, and she has Pot's throw range without needing to FRC to confirm to damage. Her guts is lvl5 too. The macro bug is sort of blown out of proportion for Justice. Nuke spam has a place as a tactic, but it doesn't break the game. Anyone that still thinks otherwise needs to play against Pignuts. I've played against nuke spam, and it's no where near as scary as a competent player like him launching ONE nuke and walking forward. Of course if you get cornered and she's full screen with 3 nukes on you, continuing to spam might be the better idea... and if you're ABA, good luck with that. Baiken being low doesn't surprise me even though she's good. Her main strength, the meterless guard reversals, have mostly been changed up, and they're abilities that require knowledge of OTHER CHARACTERS to use well. I can learn to execute new I-No tech relatively easy by comparison: Baiken has to learn the new properties of her moves, and how they apply against everyone's tools (including any new ones). Her main BnB also got nerfed, so it's that much harder to use her (that might have even discouraged older players from using her). Eventually someone with really good timing is going to start using Sakura correctly and she'll move up. Her damage is better if she dumps meter too. Jam... not sure what's up. Maybe she's just that bad and Justice is just that good. *Shrug* These things are great reference material, but it's never a good idea to take them too much to heart. It's not like Justice having a lot of even or favorable matchups means she's unbeatable. She has potentially six matchups that are 7:3 in her favor. She also has five matchups that are in the other character's favor.

One of the unlockable artworks in I think AC+ is Venom wearing a suit.