Got the chance to play against Raven is Raw and his monster Spinal in a FT10.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Dudeās Spinal is really, really ridiculous, so I learned a ton from this set. Definitely need to work on how I handle medium skull pressure and run cancel throws in particular, and need to get better about checking some of those mid-pressure jump-ins. Thanks again for the great games Raven! As always, all feedback is appreciated.
@UABass, didnāt know if you maybe wanted to watch the set too, so tagged you just in case.
I was considering just figuring out things myself until the RCT#7 and maybe surprise everyone when I come out swinging, but I thought it might be better to get some tweaking suggestions instead.
[quote=āSTORM179, post:521, topic:16350ā]
counter breakers are essential if youāre playing me though, as Iāll break until you make me stop breaking.
[/quote]This is me in a nutshell.
Ehā¦Not sure that I actually agree with that statement Geek. You lock out on your own quite a bit, so it isnāt necessary in my experience to counter break you all that often.
Never wake up shadow anything with Mira. None of her shadows have strike invincibility.
Donāt do light trephine raw without meter to back it up. Itās horribly negative (-9), so if it gets blocked youāre getting dunked for it. Early in the match or in meterless situations, Iād recommend using the medium and heavy versions to āpokeā with. They cost blood (particularly the heavy), but you donāt automatically eat a full combo punish if you get blocked, and you can often make that blood life back with a quick embrace tick.
For punish options with Mira, I personally like heavy button (I believe st.HP is her most damaging, but I often use HK) -> light opener. The damage differential between using a medium or heavy opener versus a light one here isnāt super high, and you get to avoid tacking on blood damage to yourself every time you punish. This also lets you more comfortably spend your blood health on your linkers, which is where Miraās damage really comes from anyway.
Iād recommend using Miraās jump+HK a bit more. The jump+MP is a good button, but HK has a bit more range, hits harder, and guarantees that youāll get the cross-up on her more ambiguous approaches.
If you have meter, light trephine is one of the best moves in the game. Whenever you have a bar (which is pretty common with Mira), āpokeā with light trephine, and then cancel it into shadow bats if it gets blocked. You have a lot of time to see if it hits or not, so itās a really good way to turn a half screen poke into another mixup. Mira has a lot of strong options against an opponent whoās stuck in place for a few seconds.
Iād like to see more reaping linkers from you, particularly in lockout situations. When youāre using heavy reaping you gain levels so fast that you can often come out pretty decently on life even if you choose to end with embrace instead of damage.
Get used to doing certain strings to regain health. Heavy trephine->light embrace and st.MP->heavy embrace are some good go-to ones. As a bonus, once you train people to expect the tick, you can then start punishing their attempts to jump out.
Donāt use shadow reaping as an ender unless you 100% need it for the kill. Reaping is such a ridiculous cashout that the shadow version doesnāt really give you all that much more, so use that meter instead to get additional pressure after a reaping mixup or to make light trephine safe.
1.Ok, good to know.
2.Yeah, right now the light trephine is a bad habit Iām working onā¦just coming off of Omen when i was getting her basics down I was like trephine=slide, at least from a forward-moving attack standpoint. After I finally noticed how bad it was on block Iāve been working on getting it out of my habits.
3, 4, 5, & 6. Iāll have to look into that when I get home.
7.I usually do make sure to do plenty of health regain, just for some reason I didnāt think to in those matches, but thanks!
I ding you for saying āthe only reason I lost is because Iā¦ā Your (generic your) losses come from a combination of your own mistakes and the opponentās capitalization on those mistakes, as well as the general ebb and flow of your interactions. Together, that combination amounts to āyou got outplayed.ā You can lock out all day if your opponent only ever does one chances - guess breaking is in fact optimal against such a foe. Itās the combination of mistake and capitalization that matters.
Your particular unwillingness to give your opponent credit I think flows from your general tendency to ignore a lot of what your opponents are doing anyway. That gap is dangerous if you want to get better. Recognize that it isnāt all about you - seek to understand the ways your opponent is trying to control the flow of the match, and how they evaluate the risk/reward of a given interaction. If you know what your opponent values and when, then you own them.
I donāt counter break against you because I donāt need to. You generally break as a reflex, a kind of automatic āIāve been hit, must get out of pressure!ā response. Best case is you lock out and I take 40% of your life. Worst case you break me and weāre back at neutral, but I donāt necessarily care about that because my neutral is better and eventually your reflex breaking will earn me a lockout and I get 40% of your life anyway.
But the interaction Iāve just described tells you something about me. If Storm179 is always trying to get 40% of your life and thinks he has better neutral than you, then what are the underlying assumptions behind his play? Here are a few:
My combos are unlikely to be short
I am fishing for lockouts (particularly on guesses), so Iām probably going to be using a wide variety of strengths and combo timings
Reset->one chance is a live threat
I am unlikely to counter break you, since I think Iāll win the next neutral encounter anyway
These are all data points that have nothing to do with you, @GalacticGeek, except insomuch as you can challenge my preferred playstyle. Knowledge of (and attention to) what your opponentās core beliefs about the game are is super important, and always something you can use to help you beat them. Bass doesnāt counter break, Thompxson is exceedingly buttonsy, Sleep guesses on manuals, etc. Stop focusing on your own mistakes exclusively, and take special note of the habits, both good and bad, that your opponent has.
There are a few interactions that tells you a lot from who are you fighting in few time:
-Make a unsafe jump in
-Use a meaty on your opponentās wake up
-Take note of when and how he breaks once you open him
I could go on, but letās stay with these 3:
-The first one will tell you if your opponent knows how to antiair you, a critical skill that can be abused if he lacks it
-The second one will tell you if your opponent blocks on wake up or not. A unwilling to block opponent on wake up will be abused
-The third one will tell you how fast your opponent tries to break. If he tries to break without visual clues, you know that he is a guess breaker. You could take advantage of this using linkers instead of autodoubles to mess his timing, or using CBs to punish him with big damage
A good player will see all this in the first round against any unknown opponent.
A bad player will not only fail to see this, he will be commting the mistakes listed here
Meh, @WrathOfFulgore beat you both to it, drove the point home, AND made me laugh in the process so I didnāt feel bad about it. You 2 could learn from him.
Just wondering but do you have a key or something? Is there an official book somewhere that says equals funny? I canāt find one. Just one thing for you Geek with the times I played against you. You take less damage by not breaking at all than reflex breaking most of the time. Try to play a few games without breaking at all. It also highlights the value of your neutral as well. If you donāt break, chances are that the combos the opponent will do is manual/low damage to make it difficult to break. Now if you reflex break the opponent on this, then you might get locked out and the opponent can capitalize on it for huge damage. What do I know though? Iām just a random forum scrubā¦ Here is another tendency I like to test players on. Do they do something because it works or do they do it because they know why it works. For example, I pick Jago against a Cinder. I knock him down and do a meaty crouching medium kick. He dps it. I do it 2 more times so I can train him. Now, I slightly delay the crouching medium kick a bit so Jago can duck under the dp and punish his dp. The opponent will probably be confused because they donāt know the full properties of Cinderās dp. Do it a few more times. If the opponent doesnāt know why there Dp isnāt working, I capitalize on it. They probably think it is a meaty that beats dps so they just block now. In reality, it is just that Cinderās dp is too high so a delayed crouching medium kick with Jago beats it. If the Cinder understands this, he can just wake up normal into opener me for a full combo punish. Do this with other moves as well if possible. Make sure you know why it works and not just that it works.
Iām already working on not breaking as much, and am improving as a result, but the problem is still there - it takes a while to break a bad habit. Although I no longer believe it, I used to think it was better to stop damage ASAP if I had a good read (until I got countered - I figured 2 stopped combos out of 3 was worth the attempt). However, this has led me to being ātoo breakyā as many of you already know. Iāve won over my mind, but my body (my fingers in particular) is still somewhat working against me. Once I can completely overwrite this bad habit with new and better ones, which as I said is already happening (albeit slowly), I will be a force to be reckoned with. You can count on that.
Good example with Cinder, BTW (although I doubt itād help as much with Aganos). I didnāt know that about him either (that you could low profile it), and will test that in the lab for myself. Itās that kind of thing I probably wouldnāt pickup on during an actual match because everythingās happening so fast, itād probably look the same to me, but with differerent results.
With that in mind, I worry about my reaction time suffering due to my age (Iām 33), because there are things others can seemingly react to that I struggle with. For example, getting hit by a full-screen attack even though I know itās coming simply because I canāt block fast enough once I see it coming.
Another thing I noticed earlier today is the positioning of my hands when I think I know a certain break was coming. My opponent was in the habit of using heavy manuals, so I put my fore- and middle fingers on the right bumper and trigger respectively to ready for that eventuality. However in doing so, due to my many years of playing FPS games, my thumb instinctively leaves the 4 face buttons used for breaking lights and mediums and is placed on the right joystick, which is disabled. This means that Iām restricting what I can break automatically and unintentionally (and the reverse is true too - if I place my thumb over the face buttons, I only have 1 finger on the trigger, not 1 on the trigger and anothe on the bumper). The solutions are clear - I need to train my thumb to stay in the middle of the face buttons (where I can simply roll my thumb over X and A to break lights and to the over Y and B to break mediums), so I can be ready to break any strength at any time, OR I can convert to breaking with the right joystick (but risk hitting it when I donāt want), OR I can have my fingers ready to break heavies, but my thumb on the right stick ready to break lights or mediums (obviously the stick will be on in this case). Which works better for you guys with controllers? Which method would you recommend?
I use an elite controller so it might not apply but I just removed the right stick out of the controller when I play KI. I find the buttons easier but I can see why the rightstick might help.
= funny.
= serious.
over X and A to break lights and to the 
over Y and B to break mediums), so I can be ready to break any strength at any time, OR I can convert to breaking with the right joystick (but risk hitting it when I donāt want), OR I can have my fingers ready to break heavies, but my thumb on the right stick ready to break lights or mediums (obviously the stick will be on in this case). Which works better for you guys with controllers? Which method would you recommend?