I’m not sure if it’s just me but ever since the 3.0 update counter breakers feel like they never work especially on juggles. There have many times now that I have gotten a perfect read but I don’t get the counter and they just get timing locked out.
Anyone else experiencing this?
I can’t say I’ve missed any yet, but I have certainly seen Shadow Counters pop out mid-combo while the person being hit is actually going for a breaker instead…
There’s been funkyness in general with breakers and counters and lockouts. I’ve seen people get locked out during enders, people get locked during blow outs, and definitely people getting locked out during counter breakers instead of activating the counter. And I’m not talking about situations where they both look like they happen at the same time, I’m talking a good half second after the counter was attempted. I’ll check if I recorded it since I’ve been saying “xbox record that” like crazy these last few days for bugs.
Here it is, go to the last ten seconds of the video. I clearly get a timing lockout while my opponent is in the counter breaker pose. Since the counter breaker window is based on the amount of hitstun you’re placed in this shouldn’t be possible.
I find when trying to break it doesn’t register alot of the time . Not even a lock out since the update.
Something is up, I’m slamming the right stick like a madman during ranked matches and getting nothing
This looks like all kinds of screwed up. While I’ve not experienced this as bad as you guys, I did have some trouble counter-breaking on Tusk’s Skewer (sometimes, I was late, but sometimes it just wouldn’t come out). I would normally think it’s about latency, but this was a very long set that was absolutely flawless otherwise.
Until I buy another hard drive to dual boot from, I’m on Xbox. I like Win 7 a lot, so I’m not interested in replacing it as my main OS.
I had thesame issue for Tusk. Sometimes it would come out and other times it just wouldn’t work.
Sup LCD! Are you talking about the PC version? Cuz I’m experiencing a wierd input lag (only in netplay), feel free to check my thread out 
PC version Input Lag during netplay
I’ve had this happen to me on both xbox and PC. I’ll do a double dp on wakeup with jago then go for a medium or heavy normal where I use counter breaker and instead of getting it I drop the combo with them getting a grey lockout. My friends and I have dubbed this the ninjselect because he’ll either get a breaker or he’ll get locked out as I drop the combo. And @aNinj seems to get this scenario more often than not. It’s the point where I don’t feel it’s worth attempting a counterbreaker which kind of sucks. I hope they can find a way to fix it.
It’s true, I’ve mastered this technique. I can’t explain how I do it, lest the masses catch on and ruin me.
Either that or I have no idea and it’s pure luck.
Sadly I agree. I was practicing a breaker attempt with rash and I wanted the counter breaker during a combo in the air. I either hit the counter but the cpu didn’t react or the cpu broke the combo. I can only throw out a counter breaker successfully on ground combos now.
From the 3.0 changelist, found here: http://www.ultra-combo.com/updated-final-season-3-rebalance-patch-notes/
[*] It is now possible to break a combo during Hitstop, instead of being forced to wait until the Hitstop has ended.
Before 3.0:
Combo Breakers:
Hit Occurs ->
Breaker Is Input During Hitstop ->
Hitstop Finishes And Ends Normally ->
Breaker Occurs
Counter Breakers
Hit Occurs ->
Breaker Is Input During Hitstop ->
Counter Breaker is input during Histop, but after the Combo Breaker was input ->
Hitstop Finishes and Ends Normally ->
CounterBreaker and Breaker occur, resulting in successful counterbreaker.
After 3.0:
Combo Breakers
Hit Occurs ->
Breaker Is Input During Hitstop ->
Breaker Ends Hitstop Early and Breaker Occurs Right Now
Counter Breakers
Hit Occurs ->
Breaker Is Input During Hitstop ->
Breaker Ends Hitstop Early and Breaker Occurs Right Now, its is already too late to Counterbreaker.
What this means is that a counter breaker input MUST come on the same frame or before the breaker attempt. Otherwise, you have failed to intercept the breaker.
This requires much cleaner timing for Counter Breaker attempts on manuals, which we recognize is a bit difficult. As such, we are investigating adding a buffer that lets the player attepting a Counter Breaker to input it a bit early and still get it on the 1st possible frame.
I reported this in the bug thread, though I see from the above its more “unintended feature” area. I do hope that buffer window is added for Counter Breakers.
This is very frustrating for cases where you only have one follow-up choice, such as Thunder’s Skyfall or Tusk’s Skewer or Maya’s recapture.
It basically turns it into a “who presses da button first” kind of deal.
Thanks for the clarification. While I appreciate the effort, even last season it was very common to see a counter breaker show up immediately after a lockout or to see a breaker occur while you were frantically jamming the counter breaker input.
I’m having trouble understanding this. The person attempting the counter breaker should have time to actually hit the input and then hit the counter breaker before the break occurs. Otherwise this is just encouraging guess/pattern breaking on the first frame and discouraging breaking on reaction. Was there a huge problem with people getting counter breakers after breakers that I just didn’t notice?
To be totally clear, if you see a timing lockout indicator (grey) appear before you counterbreaker, nothing has gone wrong with the system.
They attempted a mistimed break first, locked out 2nd, and you attempted a counter breaker 3rd. As explained, a counterbreaker attempt must come BEFORE a breaker attempt for it actually catch the breaker and succeed.
If their timing was correct, a few frames later, you could have had a successful counter breaker.
This is a UI thing. The lockout indicators take a few frames to appear and disappear. So the sequence of events is like this:
Failed break attempt →
Failed counter break attempt →
Lockout appears →
Lockout disappears
Yes, because of the hitstop issue I just explained above, players were extremely frequently inputting their counter breakers AFTER their opponent’s combo breaker, and catching them with a successful CB anyway. This was extremely obvious on moves with very long Hitstop, like TJ’s Powerline. You could hear your opponent press their breaker buttons next to you and react with a counterbreaker after and be successful. This is not at all desired game behavior.
This is understand ably something that wouldn’t have reared its head in internal testing.
I don’t think anyone at IG plays the insane way so many of these online players online play- that is, bashing the breaker buttons like a humming bird having a seizure. So this issue wouldn’t come up.
But in public online this is extremely common. Not a problem if you can just let them guess wrong anyway, but to reiterate, theres like no way I can stop some of these players from breaking Skewer.
This is more of an issue on the stuff that people don’t typically react to like Manuals and air juggles. Those are more read based breaks and counter-breaks. But the problem as Tony has alluded to is that there are situations where the followup is very limited and as such those typically are your best counter breaker baits but because of the re-work it’s becoming less of a mind game and more of timing game of who’s input is hit first.
It’s similar to when you bait a counter breaker but do it too early and they instantly hit instinct. You know they hit instinct because they wanted to break you but you were just a little too early. The main difference though is that in this scenario the timing is a bit more justified and it feels right. Where as in the juggle/ manual situation the timing to counter break is super strict, you make a great read that your opponent is going to break so you go to counter break but still miss because he was a millisecond faster on his break.
Additionally you can usually react to miss timed breaks by extending your combo but since counter breaking a juggle or manual is so short you have no time to react to the grey lock out before hitting your counter breaker.
I’d also argue (and this might just because I’m a scrub) that the counter breaker is at advantage timing wise in the current scenario, if I’m following up a juggle my input is the normal, then the counter breaker there is a small fraction of time where I’m going from the normal to the counter breaker that my opponent doesn’t have to deal with as he/she can simply hit combo-breaker right when they see the normal.