A complete exposé on counter breakers: why they work, why they don't, and what you can do

General Discussion
67

Seriously…is the game not crystal clear on that? I understood it perfectly. I mean, I think recognizing timing lockouts for manuals is easier then AD’s or linkers since you’re both stuck for a brief time and nothing can be done excpet a timing lockout. I feel that gives the offense a much easier time to cue in on “o he locked out” and still carry on with your manual as normal.

But people are still butthurt over it? I call rubbish. That’s like complaining you can’t counter-break open>enders anymore.

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I hate when I counter break & announcer says “LOCKOUT” out the exactly same time. The UI pops up and everything while I’m in counter break stance. . Is this a bug? Or was I a frame to late? It’s annoying as hell.

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You were too late.

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@CHANCHULA This lockout symbol issue was directly addressed in the top post.

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Sorry for reviving this old thread, just wanted to update it with new information:

As of the Eyedol patch (two patches ago), all lockouts animate from the 1st frame. So now there is no more 8 frames of delay where the X doesn’t show up. You have likely noticed this in matches now, where it probably feels the feedback wasn’t cheating you. Here is video proof:

All counter breakers now enforce a minimum of 24 frames of hit stun (maximum of 30 frames of hit stun), so there will be no more cases of people trying to counter break very early and then randomly snapping out of hit stun and doing something in neutral. If you remember, it used to look like this sometimes:

Now it looks like this:

I updated the top post to reflect these things, so now when people link to this post it has accurate information. Thanks!

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72

^Excellent work as usual, dude.

At the risk of stealing your soapbox (or alternatively, I’m keeping this thread bumped in lieu of a pin!), I’m wondering if there are any changes coming to the counter breaker system in 3.4. Clearly a lot of work went into extensively overhauling the breaker system in general for season 3 (e.g. air lockouts, the opener-ender check identifies whether a breaker occurred in the entire combo, grounded combos seem to always have proper linkers so that weird “grounded juggle” state you could get off of three-hit rule combos or meaty fireballs is impossible), but there’s been so much insane howling over some of the quirks (and blatant misconceptions) of the new system that I could see them wanting to revisit it again just so they can make a positive note of it in the change list.

Hard changes that wouldn’t surprise me too much (but don’t get your hopes up):

  1. A universal counter break window of, say, ~25 frames, that can be activated whenever the opponent is in hitstun (so it’s not tied to a given move) that is also capable of catching timing lockouts, wouldn’t require you to perform a manual to catch an attempt to guess-break one, etc. This seems like a lot of work and, more concerningly, laden with weird edge cases that might take months to weed out, but I think it’s probably what the basic idea should’ve been in the first place.
  2. A few frames of “leniency” after a combo breaker where a counter break input will still work. This might be implemented by adding a few startup frames to combo breaker animations (which might make them less satisfying) or via some awkward rollback approach. I tend to agree that the read is more important here than the timing, but I think requiring the counter breaker to occur strictly before the breaker does good ideological work in pre-empting people who think sub-5-frame reactions are possible and think of counter breaking as a “scrubby casual QTE” or whatever. (Though I’ve heard there are people who still spread that misinformation anyway?) I think the devs value the execution aspect of mechanics like counter breakers, though, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up for this change.
  3. Counter breakers no longer possible during lockout. (Or the first two seconds of lockout, so you can counter break coming out of a lockout.) Instead you might drop your combo or get a medium auto double you didn’t want, or if the devs are generous you might even get a medium linker. This is a compromise that I like (and that makes my attempts to model the combo system easier…god, I need to get back on that), and I don’t think it substantially buffs the offense at all really. Again if you value the execution/timing aspect of the mechanic then this change isn’t one you’ll like. I wouldn’t bet on this one because people haven’t been demanding it and I’m not aware of this idea being on the devs’ radar (though it probably is), but I’d like it.

Thoughts?

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73

Actually, I have always sort of wanted #2, but it’s clear for many reasons that’s not going to happy (although for the record, I agree that in-combo execution is different than execution in neutral and I don’t think a 2 frame late counter breaker should be thought of the same as a late DP. It’s just different. That’s my opinion).

What I have never thought of before is #3, which I think is brilliant. Make a counter breaker do something else on lockout so you aren’t constantly seeing lockout and then getting killed because you tried to counter break.

At the heart of this is the idea that “late is late” and therefore a successful counter breaker needs to be entered before the guy breaks and if you get a lockout then “don’t counter.” And as a philosophy, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not saying it’s broken, but it is hugely frustrating when the opponent not only guesses wrong, but breaks when you expected it and are trying to counter breaker and as a result gets to hit you with a full combo. He has made two mistakes, and you have (arguably) made one by being too slow. I fully expect a chorus of “Pfft, stop crying and do your inputs earlier” but when you are trying to bait a breaker with a heavy AD you can’t just hit the counter immediately. You have to let it come out and be seen by the opponent and then Counter. Combo breakers are instant, so you have to make a hard read on the timing. It’s not like someone jumping and you fail to get the DP off before the jump kick lands. It seems like the only situation the devs think about is manuals, where both players are essentially guessing and you basically do the counter as fast as possible after you enter the manual input.

The beauty, to me, of what you are proposing in #3 is that it solves the issue of frustrating lockout-immediate counter breaker scenario while not penalizing anyone who successfully breaks. The break will be instant (as it is now) and the late Counter will be nothing (as it is now). But if you say “no counter breakers during lockout” then you just don’t get that “Lockout” “ping” sound that lets you know you tried and failed to catch him and now your counter breaker is going to get you killed. I’d even be happy with some sort of blowout that resets you to neutral.

I really like the breaker/counter breaker mechanic. I want to see more counter breaking in the game. I understand that it needs to be a high risk maneuver, but I think it is still high risk even if it gets some protection from mash break lockout. I hope that they will at least thing about this and not just reject it because there has been so much BS politicized complaining around counter breaking this season.

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Well, #1 feels unnecessary but could maybe appease the people that are unreasonably upset that their opponents are getting timing lockouts in juggles. #2 I’m totally ambivalent toward, I would not feel any differently if it were in the game. #3 I’m not really a fan of. The reward, especially for high damage characters like jago/thunder/raam/mira/tusk, is so damn high, and I feel like reducing the risk by that much could get out of hand. I could be wrong though, but…it seems like a lot.

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  1. I feel like this one would introduce a litany of bugs for some reason. And it seems strange that one should be able to counterbreak their combo when they aren’t in combo. You get staggered off a single hit and try to tech the throw, get counter broken. I don’t think that all stagger hits should de facto behave like wall splats, which is what I think this change would do.

  2. I’ve heard this idea before, by I’ve never liked it. From the defensive standpoint, it feels like getting punished twice. You’ve already gotten yourself locked out like a damn fool, and now you get tagged by an impossible to miss confirm into huge damage. The “catch-up” window on the counter breaker would have to be crazy small for me to not feel unduly punished in a situation like this, and with some of the higher damage characters I think this might tilt the board a bit too much in their favor.

  3. This one is really interesting, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it suggested before. I think it could actually be a really compelling alteration to the combo philosophy in the game, and wouldn’t throw the damage swings too out of whack. You were already getting hit and presumably locked out on a manual, so there’s some stock built on the KV so that you won’t get completely murdered, but the person on offense isn’t quite as terrified of tossing out counters either, because having the right read but the wrong timing would no longer automatically get you punished. It incentivizes the offense to go for counter breakers more, without necessarily murdering the opponent for getting timing locked out the way #2 does. I’d actually be game to see this one in action I think. :slight_smile:

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If #3 were to be in I would definitely want the combo to end there. No punish, but maybe an animation similar to throw tech that puts you back to neutral and leaves PD in place. I’m really not a fan of the possibility of being way off with your timing and still getting to capitalize.

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I’m not the only one who gets “ambivalent” and “apathetic” mixed up? :stuck_out_tongue:

But you’re taking the optimal scenario, which is pretty much where the counter breaker lands every time the offense gets the read right, and you’re turning it into a practical scenario which is somewhere between that optimal world (trading down counter breaker damage for lockout damage) and the current situation (trade lockout damage for eating a punish). Like, there are basically always pretty sensible places in a combo in which to counter break, so the idea that the executional aspect of players not timing their counter breakers optimally is what’s keeping characters like Jago and Thunder balanced seems pretty sketchy to me.

[quote=“STORM179, post:75, topic:11208”]You get staggered off a single hit and try to tech the throw, get counter broken. I don’t think that all stagger hits should de facto behave like wall splats, which is what I think this change would do.
[/quote]

But isn’t this what happens already? (Granted the offense needs to press a button before counter breaking.)

I thought I said or implied ~5 frames somewhere. I sure as hell don’t want people “confirming” lockouts into counter breakers on reactions. Not even close.

But I’m not wedded to 2, either. I like that not only is it unreactable, but even silly debates about whether it’s within reactability a la “I have friends who tech throws on reaction” are impossible unless you’re misrepresenting hard facts about the game. (On second thoughts, ~5 frames is the input delay, so lol.) Also it’s just cleaner the way it is, even if the occasional missed counter breaker leaves people feeling pretty raw.

I have thought it might not be a bad idea to reward late lockouts by setting KV to min{current KV, 50} or something, though. The argument for it would be that there’s little reason not to guess break late at the moment (well, counter breakers to some extent, but not very strongly), and taking advantage of the lockout requires a confirm anyway (i.e. not going to ender, which is something you obviously are looking to do). I don’t think damage goes up by too much if you do this, but it may take a little bit of play out of the duration aspect of the combo game (if I represent short combos, then they might guess early and lock out, so then I go late and capitalize…), so I don’t know where I stand on this at the moment.

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Haha, you are not. It’s been a problem for a while lol.

I think the general problem here is viewing a mistimed counterbreaker as just a failure of execution, because I don’t think it is. The timing is as much a part of the mindgame as the counterbreaker itself, as when to break is equally as important to the opponent as what to break.

Though, again, I feel very differently about it depending on whether you’re saying you should just go unpunished, or if you should actually get to continue a combo. I don’t think the latter should ever happen if you flub a counterbreaker but I can see the merit in the former.

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How so? The combo system discretizes really well: you generally know (with time to react) what the next possible event in the combo could be be by the time the current event wraps up, e.g. by the time a medium linker is over you should know that a heavy manual isn’t possible, if you get hit by a manual you know that the next linker will be earlier in time to choose to guess break it, etc. Auto doubles split pretty cleanly into “the unreactable part” and “the reactable part”, e.g. even a heavy auto double lasts ~40 frames so if you time your counter breaker somewhere around frame 20 then you’re going to cover the entire reaction break window and catch any and all god-honest reaction break attempts – or at least, I’ve never seen any evidence that a third “late reaction break” stage exists in the heavy double breaker game.

I suppose there’s some game in hedging your bets, i.e. trying to catch both late guesses and early reactions? But the obvious response is to guess break on frame 1 and reaction break on frame 40 and hence never get caught, so that doesn’t quite work. Maybe the defender can use the observation (or lack thereof) of a counter break attempt at frame 20 to decide whether to break super late? I just don’t think this is real enough of a thing for it to matter, and I think that the defender’s not locking out here anyway, so the proposed change doesn’t impact this anyway.

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A heavy manual isn’t possible after a medium linker, but that doesn’t mean there is no heavy option available, as you can always late cancel into a heavy double.

Anyways, there is, fundamentally, two types of breaker game: predictive, and reactive. If you expect them to play the predictive when they’re really playing the reactive, you get blown up–you throw out a counterbreaker expecting them to guess, when they’ve been waiting to smack you for something like a heavy linker or a double.

Likewise, if you expect them to play the reactive when they’re playing the predictive you get blown up–you counterbreak after a sufficient reactable period of something like a heavy double, but they guessed before that, and your counterbreaker doesn’t catch anything.

The timing is not a matter of pure execution, it also matters with regard to what type of breaker you’re trying to deal with. The idea of misreading your opponent’s intentions and still getting a combo doesn’t sit right with me.

81

Well, sure, trying to catch someone on a reaction break only to whiff a counter breaker because they locked out trying to guess break and you didn’t have time to react is a thing, definitely.

What I’ve generally said against this, is that the preceding guess break is very infrequent (and correspondingly counter-breaking here is basically irrational if you do the math, but I digress), and you should be letting most of your auto doubles (~3 in every 4) play out as well, so actual legitimate “you opted to counter-break at the wrong decision point” situations are pretty rare, and to my mind don’t qualitatively change the risk-reward decision involved in opting for a counter breaker. I see what you’re getting at with the misalignment of intentions, but I guess I’m inclined to take the pragmatic line and cast that objection into the same wastebucket wherein reside such FGC sacred cows as “if I read a DP I should get a guaranteed punish.”

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I understand what you are saying here, and we may just have to agree to disagree. But how many frames occur between the breaker input and breaker execution? Zero (0). And you have absolutely no visual indication at all that the move is coming. So, it’s not like being late with a counter breaker is like being late with a DP to hit an air attack at all. I don’t see this as the same. In the DP case you can see the opponent coming and you know how much time you have. For a CB you don’t get a lead in. You just have to guess. And I don’t think it’s reasonable to say you didn’t guess correctly that your opponent would break and got in one frame late so here, you deserve a full punish.

No one is asking for reactable breakers. Just reducing the risk (and aggravation) of getting killed for being 1 frame late on an impossible to predict instant action that the opponent can make - sometimes anywhere in a 20-40 frame window.

This happens in my favor as much or more than it hurts me. And every time it happens I feel “sorry dude, I know that sucks” while I hammer the guy.

I think this is just one of those things where it sets up a situation where it’s driving everyone crazy.

I’ve accepted that we won’t see any additional buffer for the Counter to come 1-5 frames late (except the one we have for manuals - which to my mind torpedoes completely the suggestion that it’s like a late DP - why is this one buffer okay?). But I still like @Fnrslvr’s suggestion to have disallow counters during timing lockouts. Just have them either do a medium auto, or return to neutral like throw tech.

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https://cdn-e2.streamable.com/video/mp4/g8pp.mp4

1… 2… 3… Counter Breaker? #KeitsPlease

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I’m actually practicing it myself. gona be real handy.

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that’s rollback, not a counterbreaker error

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This has been in the game since Season 1, and it’s a quirk of the system, fully reproducible offline if you have a few minutes in training mode. Let me explain.

Combo breakers actually have 5 frames of startup. It’s almost always a non-issue, because combo breakers are unblockable and it’s just there for, like… aesthetic purposes I think. Anyway, it’s a quirk that Double Helix put in the game, for better or for worse. You guys have probably seen this when you instinct cancel something and the guy tries to break on the same frame. The freeze frame of instinct happens and you see the guy is already in the combo breaker pose during the super freeze, then when you come out of the freeze frame, you still get hit even though you could block.

This is exactly the same scenario happening with counter breakers. It happens if you break the 3rd hit on the exact same frame as your counter breaker. Basically, all it means is that the game prioritizes counter breakers over combo breakers, should they happen on the same frame, but because the game audio plays the “3!” audio clip also on the same frame as the break attempt (for obvious reasons), you still hear it. I mean, I suppose they could maybe fix this weird behavior by killing any “1, 2, 3” audio files if a counter breaker lands, but the interaction is still the same.

Here’s some video to illustrate my point.

I recorded a clip of Raam doing a short combo into shadow stab, then trying to counter break “right on” the 3rd hit. Then I took control of P1 and broke the first three hits, trying to sliiiightly vary the timing on the 3rd breaker hit so line up either slightly before, slightly after, or right on the same frame as the counter breaker.

If you are slightly AFTER the counter breaker, I probably don’t have to show you video of that. The guy just counter breaks as you would expect.

If you break one frame BEFORE the counter breaker input, take a look at what happens:

http://gfycat.com/HeartfeltEnragedAmericanwarmblood

It looks like the combo breaker actually locks the opponents inputs out, so the game will simply not apply the counter breaker attempt if it happens after a combo breaker. This also makes sense, right? Your break beat the counter breaker attempt (even by just 1 frame), so it comes first and therefore succeeds. The game plays its aesthetic 5 frame animation but it has decided the break wins.

What happens if you break ON THE SAME FRAME as the counter breaker?

http://gfycat.com/AmusingPlasticHyrax

The counter breaker beats the “input lock”, but the breaker is also accepted because the 3 audio clip is played. The game decides that the counter breaker wins 4 frames later when the breaker tries to make contact (maybe this is why there is startup on breakers?). So you end up with this weird “tie” that is awarded to the counter breaker.

This will only ever happen if you input it on the exact same frame, though, which sometimes might happen because of rollback but also sometimes might happen offline. I think it’s very rare, because as the person doing the counter breaking, you tend to want to be early to catch all break timings (ie, if you are going to counter break the 3rd hit here, you will probably do it right before the 3rd hit connects, not after).

But yeah, there you go. They could fix the interaction if they cared by counter breakers killing all existing breaker audio, but maybe that’s hard (I dunno) and it happens so rarely that I don’t think it matters at all. Just know that if it happens, the two actions happened on the same frame and the counter breaker wins.

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