Improving at Eliza and Skullgirls in General

• By far, the biggest problem I am having is with offense. I’ve participated in three of the Tuesday Night Slapfights and am hearing remarks that I am too passive. Specifically, whenever I attack, my opponent straight up beats whatever Eliza is doing. I am mainly relying on j.mk to poke the opponent and then attempting to quickly follow up with a c.lk when I hit the ground. On the ground, I simply try to start with c.lk or occasionally c.mp – regardless, everything I do is constantly stuffed by my opponents. If my attacks aren’t stuffed outright, I almost always lose ground or air contests due to a priority issue – I’m very much aware of Eliza’s gigantic hurtboxes that extend into her attacks. Said hurtboxes are one of the reasons why I am extremely reluctant to anti-air, as the hurtboxes for s.mp seem far too risky to try and swat down a flying opponent.
  
  
• Pressure is real sticking point at the moment – it seems as though when an opponent gets “on” me, there’s no way to get them off. I’ve tried numerous combinations of pushblocking, chickenblocking, and am almost always immediately put back into pressure. This is particularly problematic when I am in the corner – I’ve had a lot fights just straight up end when I’m placed in the corner and simply can’t figure out how to block my opponents non-stop attack chains.
  
  
• Valentine. I realize that my understanding with anyone but Eliza is non-existent, but yikes, Valentine is just taking me to the cleaners. Part of what prompted this post was after losing to the same Valentine player multiple times in a row, I simply became so frustrated that I had to leave the lobby and take a break. Valentine seems to be all of the above problems I’m having but on steroids - her pressure is diabolical, she has full-screen punishes that I simply cannot realistically avoid one-hundred percent of the time, and all of her moves seem beat anything Eliza does. I can’t even figure out how to safely poke a Valentine without running a near-constant risk of getting put into a reset chain. If I poke her, she just bounces right back up and slams me before I can start a chain – if I block, she simply applies pressure until I make a mistake with my blocking. I really need some help at swatting away Valentine and keeping her off my back.
  
  
• In relation to the matter of offense, I’m having trouble hit confirming. Specifically, I’m using j.mk a lot and when the kick actually connects, my opponent usually bounces away before I can convert it into a combo. Most of my j.mk pokes are done off of an IAD – I can’t figure out how to “close the gap” before my opponent flops away and returns to neutral. I’ll be the first to admit that my reaction time is lacking.
  
  
• At the risk of asking a very meat head question, I’m having issues with throw techs. When I do manage to consistently block attack chains, I almost always get thrown before I can predict the throw and chicken block or throw tech. I guess I just need to practice more? Seems worth asking, I guess. I know the throws are there but I just don’t know where.
  
  
• How much redundancy should I add to my inputs? Whenever I practice anything in the training room, I always try to learn the inputs with as few button presses as possible, trying to execute everything with a single button press. Is this a realistic goal? Most of the inputs I mash are the ones that have very strict timing and imply cannot have an input error – Sekhmet has some of the stickiest inputs I’ve seen and simply recalling Sekhmet under pressure or in a combo is probably one of the hardest inputs I’ve had to do thus far.
  
  
• How do I contend with someone who uses an assist to cover his point character? I recently fought one opponent who would use Fukua’s (?) s.hp – forever a clone? Looked like Filia’s s.hp but slid across the ground – to preemptively attack me, force me to block, and would then clobber me with the point character.

The Dave said:

Eliza Combo Thread and Compendium might help. Here's my own training thread in case my vids or the Eliza advice given to me might help you, too. I haven't been there in a while, though.

The Dave said:

Tricks I find useful: jMK -> airdash -> jMK for a poke. Even if they block the first one, I find a lot of people get tripped up and caught by the overhead of the second one. Eliza's airgrab is amazing, especially since you can combo off of it (I tend to use cMK to follow up). If they're blocking, sHPx3 -> Bird tends to be a good blockstring, the double overhead trips some people up.

alexpi said:

As for more general questions: easy hit confirm off j.mk is just air dash into another j.mk. It gives you plenty of time to land and hit a c.lk. For grounded poking, stick with c.lk as a starter. best range, is safe, and comes out fast enough.

alexpi said:

Also, learn to pushblock guard cancel. It gets you out of everything.

Golbat said:

Lady of Slaughter can hit both the point and assist character while it's going. It's not much, but if the opponent's assist has low HP and they make a bad call you can do that super to punish since Lady of Slaughter has a pretty far range.

Fizzxwizz said:

When we played, you would always seem really content to just back off, and it never felt like you were trying to play skullgirls, it felt more like you were trying to play defensive street fighting in sg. Its fine to stay back and play defensively, but even players that have a defensive playstyle are constantly doing things. It is really important with characters like Eliza to get in and oppress the opponent, if your goal is to make them come to you, you will have a difficult time winning.

Skullgirls is a very very fast game, and if you try to do anything defensive on reaction you are going to run into some issues. Avoiding throws is as easy as just holding upback during a blockstring or combo that you think they are going to throw you in. In the air this won't work so well, especially since eliza doesn't have a doublejump to avoid airthrow resets, but you have other options like Nekhbet Breaker, one of your fast air normals like jlk/jlp, or if you're crazy you could try and airdash out of the reset.

(I have bad memory so this part might not apply to you)
When we played, I remember that 80% of the time on wakeup, you would do something like clk or some other crouching normal and then you would go into your bnb. Waking up with buttons is almost always a bad plan, doing the same thing in repeated situations is additionally very bad. On one hand, something like doing the same mixup 3 times in a row can be effective because your opponent will expect you to do otherwise, but most often that will come from conditioning or mindgames.

The Dave said:

For instance, I spend a lot of my time in neutral using airgrab to sort of "fish" for jumping rushdown characters. If I miss I can probably block or dash out of the way, and if it hits I can follow up with cMK.

Watch out for grabs. You seem a little scared of your cMK and jMK options. I did a little experimenting tonight, and jLK is also a good poke. Jumping forward with it seems a good thing to mash to try to get out of a corner if I can't actually see the reset. (This is probably bad advice, but it was effective a couple times, at least. May be worth further experiments.)

akindhobo said:

I think Eliza is good around the mid range. At like round start distance is a good spot to play around in.

akindhobo said:

Try it with different jumps (forward, neutral, back, super jump) and you can threaten and keep your space with it with out committing too hard.

akindhobo said:

s.mp is an amazing anti air to protect yourself coupled with bird dive move (qcf+mk i think it is) s.mp is more reactionary and bird special is more pre-emptive i feel.