@Dayv0’s example didn’t help. I understand those moves are unsafe and safe, in their respective examples (unsafe for attacker with blocked ruin, but safe for defender but safe for attacker with blocked payload and unsafe for defender). My understanding doesn’t go beyond that.
Which 1 was decimation - is that the grab or stab? Raam’s moves are so simple I refer to them as grab, stab, kryll, and stomp. I only recently differentiated kryll shield from kryll charge, and emergence. Never been good with remembering move names unless it’s a character I truly understand and have practiced with extensively.
Safe is not applied to the defender. It’s applied to the offense.
-If his move was +x, he is safe.
-If the move was -X but unpunishable(up to -4), it’s negative.
-If he is -6, he can be punished by 5 frames lights(which anyone has), so he is unsafe
If you want to get into the nitty gritty of how fighting games work, then yes… you can calculate frame advantage on block/hit by taking the difference between the block stun and the recovery frames, then taking the integral of that number with respect to the amount of time Keits does his hair in the morning.
But if you just wnat to know “hey, am I gonna get punched in the face if this move is blocked?”, then you just look at the result of all that math, which is the block advantage number.
If it is between 0 and -4, you are genreally safe. This means if your opponent presses a button, you will be able to block it. Maybe you won’t block it because you take your hand off the stick to eat a banana, but you could have blocked it if you were playing well. (Note: some characters have moves fast enough to punish stuff in this range but it is not the norm).
If it is -5 or worse, and you are close enough to your opponent, your opponent is guaranteed to have an opportunity to hit you, and you will not be able to block or avoid it. 5 is the “magic cutoff number” because every character has a move that starts up in 5 frames. The bigger this number gets, the harder you get punished because the defender can push a slower (but more damaging) move.
If the number is greater than 0 (ie, positive), that means not only are you safe, but YOU get the advantage. You can “keep your turn” by pressing more buttons and your opponent probably has to keep blocking or else risk getting duffed in the facearoonie.
I already “kind of” know this, it’s just not solidified in my head, and I’m constantly being reminded of it. I know that the fastest attacks are 4/5 frames (your method vs. everyone else further confuses me at times). It’s when numbers get very big that it confuses me, because I almost feel like we’re talking about something entirely different. Also, when moves have similar frames (throw vs. jab, for example), and the priority system takes over - I’m definitely not familiar with that yet (haven’t committed it to memory). By that same token, and slightly off-topic (more so anyways), I also don’t remember the typical ender/linker damage priority for ender/linker type.
I try to use it a lot as a prediction since it absorbs a hit while moving forward. Problem is that many moves like air shotgun knee just let them hold jump back after landing which makes the grab whiff. Its like if i completely predict the jump and they fall into raam with a normal they get got but if theyre falling a slight bit ahead but still grab range he still whiffs, especially against specials. Also there’s no way to bear grab continuous empty jumps.
Regardless, when you do land bear grabs, be it off staggered strings into it or when the prediction works or when you shadow bewr grab through a projectile, what do you do? do you keep up the + frame bear grab train? or do you go for a grab? All these are oltions but theres not really much setplay, just try to act before your opponent realizes whats going on. Which is quite the strength in itself, especially if you can do something random like heavy emergence predicting a dp(always feels good off flip outs too)
Range does come into play as well. If you look at, like… Eyedol mage L bolt strike (the low lightning), I believe it is -12 on block or something like that. But because he often does it from full screen, usually out of range of your moves, he can use it without getting punished. If he does it from half screen away, then some characters can catch him (Jago’s shadow wind kick, for instance, is 8 frames of startup and can punish if Eyedol does it too close).
But the vast majority of moves in KI leave the opponent close enough to risk getting punished if they are worse than -5.
Basically, the point we want you to get out of this is that being negative on block is never good, and that if a move is TOO far negative (-5 or worse, usually), you actually can’t stop your opponent from getting a guaranteed hit. Being plus on block is actually quite rare, though… not very many characters can be plus on block for a prolonged period of time. Most of the time, you will have to eventually commit to a move that is in the 0, -1, or -2 on block range so that the defender has a fighting chance to do anything.
As a player, I’m not in the habit of holding a direction after a move - it’s the same reason I can’t move Kan-Ra effectively backwards or forward during his CG. I let go of the directional inputs and then do something else.
The very idea that you could hold back upon landing to cause a move to whiff is entirely foreign to me. Upon landing, I’m either attacking, blocking, or throwing - never walking backwards or even back-dashing, although I recognize the utility of the latter in regards to throws (another aspect of the mechanics I’m still adjusting too, especially since I main the golem, who can’t really utilize it) from witnessing it in-game as well as from various discussions on here. The very idea that you want to back up after getting in seems counter-intuitive to me, even though I understand why it might not be.
I think you misunderstood. I predict aria will jump back and air shotgun knee, so i preemptively bear grab. My prediction is right, and aria flies back from air shotgun knee which gets absorbed by kryll armor. However when she lands, rather than being grabbed, she holds up back as she lands to keep jumping, making the bear grab whiff.
At this point even though raam is “in” since he’s very close to aria, he is extremely easy to punish due to the long recovery of bewr grab
I see. You weren’t clear enough in your example before. The thing I don’t like about her shotgun knee, whether it’s the j.MK or the special, it ALWAYS pushes her back away from danger, which makes it safer than a lot of other moves.
