Auto-block - bug or intended?

General Discussion
1

Okay this annoys me for a while now, and I am not sure whether it is a bug or intended. I don’'t know where to put this topic, so feel free to move it somewhere else, mods. In case this is known and this has already been discussed please direct me into the right direction.

The game auto-blocks overheads and lows under certain circumstances.

I always was impressed by my opponents god-like reactions whenever I went for a Kan-Ra setup I came up with until I saw in training mode, that the game is doing all the work for my opponent.

I will add a video later but until then, here is the setup that you can try out for yourself to see this happen.

record your dummy Kan-Ra doing the following setup:

clutch, dash forward, light swarm, instant jumping forward MK

Now take control of your character and hold down back.

What always should happen:
Clutch causes a hard knock down giving Kan-Ra time to dash in and do a light swarm. Your character will get up and get hit by the j.MK and the swarm at the same time.

What sometimes happens:
While you are holding down back your character will eat the clutch and you will be on the ground. When you get up (still holding down back) your character will ignore your inputs and stand up for a very short moment to block the overhead j.MK.

Switch Kan-Ra’s j.MK with cr.MK and just hold back with your character and it will crouch block that cr.MK.

Why is that happening? I know that you can’t get hit by fast multi hitting moves when you block the first hit (see Kan.Ra’s back + MP). But I also know that this not true whenever you get hit by lows or overheads. Whenever you block Cinder’s low flame thrower move and you stand up while crouch blocking you will get hit.

This is not exclusive to Ra and this does not happen every time

The point of this thread is to get answers on why this is happening, whether this is a bug or intended and under what circumstances it happens.

When you try out that setup in training mode you might get the j.MK to hit overhead. It is absolutely possible. My theory on how this works is this:
Whenever your opponent getting up, the swarm hitting and the j.MK hitting happens at the exact same frame, the game will register the j.MK as an overhead. j.MK has 3 active frames. So for all this to happen you have a 3 frame window.
Whenever you are hitting the j.MK a little bit too late, your opponent will already be in block stun because of the swarm and the j.MK will get auto blocked.

I tried different setups to recreate this with other characters. I wanted to know whether this is just another one of Ra’s oddities. But I found something similar with Fulgore:

Nearly Full screen, Record the dummy doing this:
double light fireball, teleport behind opponent, overhead when the projectiles hit.

In case you block the fireballs, the game will block the overhead for you.

@developers @TheKeits, @Infilament please help me out here!

EDIT:
here it is
https://youtu.be/XwHiHRNC10Y

As you can see. I am holding down back all the time. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it gets blocked

2

Are you sure they aren’t blocking just the swarm first before the overhead? If they are in blockstun for the swarm it doesn’t matter if you do an overhead, every other move just stacks on the blockstun.

With Wulf, for example, if I do a quick FC into dash behind after an opponent blocks b+s.HP, I can hit them from behind while they’re still blocking the same way they were and it will still be blocked. I have to delay it enough that there is actually a gap so previous blockstun emds.

And that is expected behavior.

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3

This is also my theory.
But why isn’t the game auto blocking the extended duration version of Cinders Low Inferno? When you crouch block the first hits you still get hit, when you stand up. The game does not keep crouching for you.

4

Updated the OP with a video.

EDIT:

Okay, my theory is right. I landed both versions in a match and was able to do a replay analysis.
When you hit the j.MK at the exact same frame the swarm hits, than it’s counted as an overhead.
When the swarm hits first, it gets auto-blocked.

5

The scenario with Ra, as with the scenario w/ Wulf, sound like absolute guard. You are creating a true blockstring w/ the Swarm by connecting your j.MK during a frame of blockstun, and so the game keeps you in blockstun, regardless of standing or crouching, left or right. I’m pretty sure it is meant to help prevent certain types of zero-answer situations.

In the case of Cinder, there is a gap of at least one frame in between instances of blockstun, so absolute guard doesn’t come into effect if you stand up. It should also mean that you can mash INSX and backdash while blocking Inferno, and depending on spacing, you should be free of it. I haven’t tested this and I’m away from home, but I don’t see why this wouldn’t work unless your character has a backdash that either lacks fr.1 invuln (Shago) or significantly lacks distance (maybe Hisako?).

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6

I had the exact same idea. But you can’t activate instinct during inferno.

This seems to be KI exclusive. While the absolute guard still applies for left and right scenarios in MvC3 and BlazBlue I think it doesn’t apply for low or overhead hits. Can’t remember having that in Street Fighter either.

7

Yeah this is news to me. I know the absolute guard works for left/right (I tried some Mira setups involving shadow bats, instinct cancel, some tricky left/right, high/low stuff and the left/right stuff was auto-blocked), but I didn’t know it was also for high-low in some situations.

I was pretty sure you could do Mira shadow bats, instinct cancel, and get a free high/low mixup using reaping though. Test that case and see if I’m right or wrong there. So maybe it’s only for some moves?

Shago’s backdash is invuln on frame 1 like all others.

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8

Oh, forgot about shadow bats. That should be a good move to test this.

Thx for helping guys!

9

It looks like this is partly absolute guard, partly Swarm being weird. Slow the Youtube player to 0.25 and look at each meaty frame.

At 0:06 - For frame 1, Swarm is active, but j.MK isn’t, so when it does become active on the next frame it’s subject to absolute guard.

At 0:21 - For frame 1, both attacks are clearly active. It seems to prioritize the stronger attack (which is j.MK), so the overhead hits. Even though Swarm didn’t hit, it still switches over to its projectile hitbox a few frames later.

I don’t know what the hell happens at 0:28. Maybe I’m missing a frame.

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10

If I recall correctly, fullscreen light payload assault and heavy ND can lead to this too.

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11

It’s not swarm. It happens to Fulgore too.

12

Here is a better way to watch youtube videos frame by frame (you could also download the video to your hard drive and use an external program but that is more effort).

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13

wow, thank you for that link. It seems to be as I said. j.MK has to hit at the same frame as the swarm to hit OH

14

I tested it.

Shadow bats, Cr.MK gets auto blocked.

I recorded the dummy doing that and just held back. My character crouch blocked the low and stood up again blocking the rest.

15

Does high reaping get auto-blocked by a crouching opponent?

16

High lows do get auto blocked. It also happens with arias overhead if they’re blocking a drone.

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17

Well that’s a bummer.

I guess that means Spinal’s overhead skull mixup is actually less scary than I thought? Because if the overhead skull hits before the low, you will just auto-block the low for free?

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18

Why doesn’t cinder’s low inferno get auto blocked?

19

No clue, a dev will probably have to answer that.

20

Pretty sure the autoblock is on blockSTOP, not blockstun. You can’t hit the opponent with a high skull during the blockstop of a low, for instance. Low inferno probably works the way it does because it has little or no blockstop.

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