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Upback 2: The Downbackening or A Training Diary!? Is This the Work of Fizzxwizz!?

Dhoppler's team will always be a hurdle to me, cause since he has peacock mid that means I can't switch out to big band once I get a kill on the point character cause that matchup is dookie.
Peacock doesn't beat Big Band. It's 5-5. You need to learn the matchup. Some things I noticed:

Don't always super cancel Brass on hit. You did this a lot but I think most of the time it's better to just let it rock and take your hard knockdown. Hitting Peacock with SSJ flings her full screen which is where she wants to be anyways. Sometimes that's worse than if the Brass had been blocked.

Related to the above point, after you knock Peacock down, do a mixup. Every time you knock her down you are so scared to try anything, what are you afraid of? She's either gonna punch move or she isn't. M Bang loses to throws so you can beat it by throwing her (make sure when you do this to call your Fiber assist so that Peacock can't wake up with jump forward j.LP). You can also safely go for instant overhead j.MK, if Peacock goes for punch move it will whiff (this also beats L Bang, if for some reason you were worried about that too (you shouldn't be)). Once you establish that she can't wake up pushing buttons she's gonna try to upback to beat your throws and overheads at which point you can start working in the lows (do not go for air grab if you read upback, I get so mad when I see people doing this).

You need to DP Peacock more. Any time you're at slight negative frames like after a blocked Brass, Dhoppler always tries to jump at you and push a ton of buttons. You gotta recognize that and DP him. If Peacock blocks L Beat Extend high in the air, because of the pushback all her normals either don't reach or are too slow. She can only really punish with Argus so the risk reward on Beat Extend is in your favor.

Also stop trying to whiff j.HK and ground tech forward to get in. It doesn't work. That's a free Argus on reaction.

e:

Do you mean, switch out big band to get back to Fortune v Peacock? Or switch in big band for BB v Peacock? You worded this like you want BB in, but the rest of the post looks like you don't want BB v Peacock. I'm assuming you meant the latter.
Oh, it didn't even cross my mind he meant switch out Big Band to get Fortune back in. I hope that's not what he meant cause otherwise this giant post I made looks kind of silly. He did make a lot of mistakes as Big Band vs Peacock though so I think this post is worth making either way.
 
Yeah Peanuts got caught up in the mixup too, though his points about BB vs Peacock still should be read since it's good stuff.


Don't always super cancel Brass on hit. You did this a lot but I think most of the time it's better to just let it rock and take your hard knockdown. Hitting Peacock with SSJ flings her full screen which is where she wants to be anyways. Sometimes that's worse than if the Brass had been blocked.

I only went through the matches where dhoppler played the normal team so far, but Fizz actually didn't do it that often, or at least the times he did it was actually not a bad decision. Twice he did H brass to punish mid-argus and didn't super (dunno if it was cause he traded and the cancel didn't come out, though usually I don't have trouble with the cancel when I try that there so I figured that he purposely let the H brass rock), and the times in neutral when it landed, he actually pushed peacock right back into the corner, which is always something I personally look for as well. There was also a time when he had the happy birthday plus a loaded taunted SSJ at the ready, so it made sense to go for it, just kind of sucks Peacock fell out right there.

That said, the general point is still true if people didn't already abide by it.

(do not go for air grab if you read upback, I get so mad when I see people doing this).

Going for airgrab isn't a bad option, since it covers things differently than just a normal low. If you neutral jump + block and react to an upback with airgrab, that works for a reversal bait and you get the bonus of reacting to another common defensive option, and it doesn't leave you too bad if they downback either. If you went for a low, all it does is cover 1 option which is if they soley upback and now you have to deal with the opponent possible mashing assist if they blocked or PBGCing you (which not a lot of people react to, ie to not go all in on pressure when the opponent PB's since it lets an opportunity for PBGC).

It does have an obvious tell and it's own share of weaknesses, but I just wanted to point out that it does have it's own uses that make it an okay option other than just a simple cLK.
 
Going for airgrab isn't a bad option, since it covers things differently than just a normal low. If you neutral jump + block and react to an upback with airgrab, that works for a reversal bait and you get the bonus of reacting to another common defensive option, and it doesn't leave you too bad if they downback either. If you went for a low, all it does is cover 1 option which is if they soley upback and now you have to deal with the opponent possible mashing assist if they blocked or PBGCing you (which not a lot of people react to, ie to not go all in on pressure when the opponent PB's since it lets an opportunity for PBGC).

It does have an obvious tell and it's own share of weaknesses, but I just wanted to point out that it does have it's own uses that make it an okay option other than just a simple cLK.
That's actually pretty interesting! Hadn't thought about it like that.
 
@mcpeanuts @fenster

What I meant to say was that I could switch team order to play Big Band on point versus fortune/peacock/bb, so that if/when I kill fortune, I can tag to my own fortune against peacock. BB vs peacock is not a matchup I want to play, especially not in the event that he goes head off and dhc's in peacock that now has cat slide assist. I don't think bb vs peacock is 5-5, but I could probably just think the matchup is worse than it is because I play fortune/brass which is pretty much a very good answer to peacock.

If I'm doing nothing on peacock's wakeup, its probably me trying to parry m-bang because I feel like I've been conditioned to believe that every peacock will throw out bang if you're close enough.

One of the things that I realized after the set but forgot to put in the first post was that as fortune I did not go low as much as I should have considering the amount of times I had just let him get out with upback. I try not to go for airthrows as fortune because the range on it sucks and makes me cry.

I've been going for jmk off airthrow as big band because I normally went for jlk but then someone was like "use jmk ya goof it doesn't scale as much" so now I'm using jmk.

I do have a problem about not using beat extend as an actual anti-air on point, mostly because most of the times I try to use it as one it loses to jumpins. Its a problem for me but I have a hard time believing in beat extend unless its a read or a mash.
 
If I'm doing nothing on peacock's wakeup, its probably me trying to parry m-bang because I feel like I've been conditioned to believe that every peacock will throw out bang if you're close enough.
I think if you read M Bang it's a lot better to do something that beats M Bang but is still a mixup if they're blocking, like throw or instant j.MK.

I do have a problem about not using beat extend as an actual anti-air on point, mostly because most of the times I try to use it as one it loses to jumpins. Its a problem for me but I have a hard time believing in beat extend unless its a read or a mash.
It depends on the matchup. Anti air L Beat Extend is not worth attempting against characters like Painwheel or Double because they have super active jump ins that will basically always hit Big Band during the 2 vulnerable startup frames of L Beat Extend. Peacock doesn't really have anything like that though so your DP isn't as likely to lose to her air normals.
 
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It might lose to the odd j.lk but that's it. Chances are pretty low. You also shouldn't worry about it because I always try to instant overhead big band with j.lp.
 
If I'm doing nothing on peacock's wakeup, its probably me trying to parry m-bang because I feel like I've been conditioned to believe that every peacock will throw out bang if you're close enough.

I'm sure you already know this but if you're expecting m bang there are things that get you more reward in the event that they don't m bang (and still beat m bang), trying to go for a read parry is good for style but that's about it.

I've been going for jmk off airthrow as big band because I normally went for jlk but then someone was like "use jmk ya goof it doesn't scale as much" so now I'm using jmk.

j.mk is fine and good and doesn't scale but j.mk c.mp sounds like a weird pickup, try j.mk c.lk or j.mk c.mk instead.

In my personal experience in a 1v1 I would rather play bb against peacock than against fortune, but I understand that peacock with an assist is a very different animal and it makes it much harder to get a read brass (which is basically what you have to do in that matchup; peacock wins until you hit her with brass and then you win)

I do have a problem about not using beat extend as an actual anti-air on point, mostly because most of the times I try to use it as one it loses to jumpins. Its a problem for me but I have a hard time believing in beat extend unless its a read or a mash.

there are a decent amount of moves in this game that can beat all forms of beat extend as a jump in but peacock doesn't have them. Beat extend as an antiair is matchup dependent but like peanuts said against peacock its pretty safe unless she's holding an item in which case you trade and she goes fullscreen and you get to do all that work all over again.
 
but j.mk c.mp sounds like a weird pickup

wait is that what we were talking about because I don't remember ever trying that. That sounds like some terrible accident. Off airthrow I usually go like jmk>clk or something.

I go for parries instead of things that explicitly beat the option I think will happen because it cuts out reacting to the thing I thought would work not working. To give a better example, if I think peacock is gonna do punch move on wakeup, a throw would beat that. However if I go for throw and it whiffs because peacock did upback instead, I have to react to throw whiffing in addition I have to tell what the hell peacock is doing in the air behind bb's huge ass throw whiff animation that I can't cancel into ssj if I see peacock is pressing buttons. On the other hand, its much easier for me to see and interpret what peacock is doing if I just stand there. In addition, since the parry window is so huge, if peacock wakes up with something weird like a ton of buttons, I can parry the first hit and then block and try to understand why the hell they would do that.

tl;dr I guess: I go for parries a lot more in casuals because I'm not very stressed about getting hit and I so desperately want to be correct because there is something wrong with me.

I'll keep that beat extend thing in mind, its pretty helpful.

In my personal experience in a 1v1 I would rather play bb against peacock than against fortune

I would really consider bb vs fortune to be a very very bad 5-5 in my experience. Headless makes it pretty difficult to do a lot of things as big band, but getting hit by big band with the head and body is such a painful experience that it discourages me from ever wanting to get the head off in the first place. And as you can see dhoppler do in the set, head-on's bb specific combo kinda helps her get even in terms of damage. I feel like both characters have tools to kill each other very quickly (or slowly) given certain circumstances.
 
Did I do a proper big band combo that entire set? My whole time with my team I was just trying to make sure I didn't push buttons I would with the other team.
 
I would really consider bb vs fortune to be a very very bad 5-5 in my experience. Headless makes it pretty difficult to do a lot of things as big band, but getting hit by big band with the head and body is such a painful experience that it discourages me from ever wanting to get the head off in the first place.

wtf you take off the head every time we play vs my band and it bodies me lmao. But you probably know I really hate fighting fortune as BB even if I wouldn't necessarily contest it's a particularly bad matchup on paper just because it's very easy between headless shenanigans and headon TODs to get hit once and lose your character.

Regarding parries, stuff like what peanuts said where you call assist to cover upback when you go for throw can be really useful, most of the time I also assume peacock will go for mbang but I go for jumping overheads if I'm solo that will beat mbang and make them block on upback so I can keep pressure up. Reactions aside, if you whiff a throw vs upback you're gonna have to be blocking anyway since a whiffed throw is pretty minus.
 
Season Finale: Episode: 8​

casuals w/ @Pickles

There were quite a few occasions in this that made me go "why." Pretty much every time I try to parry the reset high/mid its a low, which I shouldn't even be doing anyway but I have problems. I know part of it has to do with how pickles does some of the resets but I really need to work on getting actual mashed reversal supers going on more than I do because my execution to success rate with those is really poor. I'm not sure how exactly I should go about practicing that because repeatedly mashing ssj in a match or set is just gonna make the opponent want to bait it. There were a lot of times where I somehow got things that I shouldnt have gotten at all, like the few times I got fiber after trying to doublesnap when my fortune doublesnap is pretty much all punches. Pickles does this thing semi-regularly where he does wakeup 9lp > land > throw when he's in the corner as double and it gets me every single time and makes me slightly upset. In addition what makes me upset is when he gets a hit and then immediately goes into another high/low which I imagine probably has to do with not believing in the first hit but it gets me steamed. I feel like he has the same problem as me when it comes to reacting to throws, but its pretty useful because its encouraging me to throw more which is what I need to do. I also need to work on head-on airthrow conversions cause I'm not really sure what I'm doing with those.

On the topic of my wyl set with deer, I ended up spending a lot of the set throwing out fortune jhk and getting donked repeatedly for it. Jhk is an okay normal but its really not something I should be throwing out like I am. Playing him and some other people has really helped me with staying calm and staying back in a match, and just kinda not going in unless I have to. I also got a lot of pretty free damage on his assists by just pretending to run in so he'd call his assist so I could countercall with brass. I feel like that set really could have gone either way, and it might have been much more in his favor had he played duo instead of trio, though I don't know what his level of confidence with two characters is. He might have been experiencing something I've done to myself in a set, where I just refuse to make adjustments to my team mostly because either my opponent isn't changing their team either, or you get kinda sucked into it and want to start the rematch right away so you pick the same team. I may be way off base but it might be something to consider. Also from dolfinh and fosh's commentary it is 100% right that I am the kind of player to just do things, and I feel like learning an actual damaging bnb with fortune may be in some weird way hurting that, because now when I get a hit I kind of immediately start going into the bnb. Part of me doesn't like it because I don't like seeing myself do the same dumb combo over and over, and another part of me has a problem with it because now I stop going for a lot of other options that I have as a result of muscle memory and I just kinda paint myself into the corner I guess. I need to start working on pushing the new muscle memory aside so I can incorporate other things back into my play.

edit: also I need to stop literally always going for air h gato when an assist is called, I really need to relax with that. Also I just realized that my controller controller settings were wrong so only like half of the directions I press were recorded.
 
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I've been thinking a lot about skullgirls here are some tierlists I've had in my head for a while. All of my tier lists and placements are up for discussion but if you disagree you're wrong.

Shibamyon tier list, names in order from love best to love. Myoisia is not included I don't count that.

S: MyonMyonMyonI (emotional feedback), MyonMyonMyonMyonMyonMyon! (Musou Materialise)
A: MyonMyonMyonMyonMyon! (Kokoro Vibration), MyonMyonMyonMyon! (Otome Cute)
B: MyonMyonMyonMyonMyonMyonMyon! (Retro Future Girls)
C: MyonMyonMyonMyonMyonMyonMyonMyon! (Adrastea)

Sonic R soundtrack tier list in order of good to back in time. Placements are a lot closer or more fluid 1-4 compared to any after it.

1. Can You Feel The Sunshine
2. Super Sonic Racing
3. Work It Out
4. Living In The City
5. You're My Number 1
6. Diamond In The Sky
7. Back In Time
 
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Season Finalo: Episode 9​
casuals w/ @WingZero

It's been over a month since I've recorded a set and its been bothering me. All the sets I've been playing until now had either been too short for me to record or I didn't expect them and didn't end up recording.

A week or two ago I fought pickles in a tournament and I got dismantled by filia, and afterwards I think I said something along the lines of "my biggest mistake was trying to block." Which was not to discredit pickles but pointed out how little I actually reversal, so l just kind of guess wrong every reset and die (something that happens a lot vs wing). So as a result I've been trying to practice mashing more reversals and actually anti-airing with beat extend. I think going kinda nuts with reversals helped a bit with fighting duck tonight, as he does a lot of resets that I could be mashing out of, though I need to kinda use more moderation when doing that cause he started baiting me hardcore. My goal when fighting duck was to go crazy but not too crazy. Can't let the crazy control me. I have big band and I'm not making people respect the big mash.

Against wing he nailed me a ton with dp's in places where my muscle memory told me not to expect them, like after a blocked assist call or on wakeup when I expect people to either block or get snagged on upback. The whole reversal after a blocked assist is something that midiman did a lot to me as well. I tried to use mextend assist to fuck up filia but it did not work in the slightest. I'd like something thats a little more versatile than brass but I guess I need to get better at calling extend. I havent watched the set cause I've been having youtube problems lately but I'll see if I can watch it and make some more comments.

This is probably a weird tangent but I've been thinking about this and I feel like its better to keep a dead/dying character (around 10% or less hp maybe up to 20% recoverable) in the game and let the opponent work and kill them compared to getting them out. I feel like people will almost always act in more predictable patterns if they want to chip you or if you're close to death, so keeping the character in can have a bigger benefit than having an assist that you can call maybe once before dying. On the other hand though, if/when your dead character dies the next dudes gotta block the incoming. Like, most bella's will ALWAYS go for battle butt if you're within chip range, and a lot of people will start harassing fortune's head fullscreen when she doesn't have any life, which leaves them open to getting sniped by something like level 3.
 
Feason Sinale: Episode 10​
casuals with @elda talduda after he's been on a bit of a break

To start off, playing against taluda and maybe some other similar players/teams is a special kind of suffering, because as long as pw is in the game I can't go headless, even against bella it's not great but it feels much more manageable. Being two-touched by a character a ratio higher than you feels baaaad. It feels almost as bad as forcing myself to not go headless in the first place. What really sucked to me during the set, is when taluda would be fullscreen and use copter to back him up as he throws nails, and unless I had three meter as fortune it felt like my only choice was to block the nails. Brass almost worked for dealing with that, but it wasn't always a definite win. The other problem I had with running brass was that he had the ability to countercall the countercalls by letting himself get hit by brass during hatred guard, and then refund a bunch of damage back towards big band. It took me a while to realize I should have been using extend assist instead of brass. I have this negligence of thinking about thinking which assist I should be using, and I feel like it hurts me a lot.

Against his painwheel pressure it really felt like I couldn't do anything, even when I tried to be patient and wait until the end of normals so I could actually pushblock him out, it felt like I couldn't get him away, and any time he was away from me I couldn't really make it cost anything to him. My inability to punish most of the things that he was doing, combined with not being able to play how I want really made the set disheartening to me, but I kept playing because I really felt like I needed to be learning from it. I feel like this kind of impact my play and I messed up in places where I really shouldn't have. The score ended really heavily in his favor but I feel like a lot of the matches were pretty close at the end, I just kinda fell apart and died at the end of a lot of them.

There were a couple games that I won somewhat convincingly and I think I need to look at some of those critically and tell whether it came down to him just messing up and guessing wrong or there was something I did particularly well. It's always nice to see @Elda Taluda play and hopefully we can see more of him soon.

maybe more later
edit: I need to sweep more as fortune, its good vs pw armor and is also a really good sweep. I also need to hold 8 whenever someone tries to stick me in preblock to hit me with something or grab me.
 
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Yo I'd like to suggest a few things if you don't mind and ask a question.
I can see what you mean you felt like you couldn't do anything. When Painwheel hangs above your head a lot of people are helpless. But when shes not, why not oppose her j.hp with H fiber more? And when she zones with cerecopter and nails, try s.hp the assist. With the BB vs Mf matchup, I'm surprised you didn't try to play footsies with cr.hp against her s.hp. Soundstun wins the trade for you. I liked when you tried to oppose PW more with A train although its risky, you didn't throw it out that often. Also really liked when you jumped forward instead of blocking the charged cr.hp.
And thanks for the vid. Been looking for more PW footage.
 
the problem with using h fiber is that most of the time unless pw is really deep into something like jmp I'm either going to only push him away and then have to get in, or I'll get hit. a-train is kinda the same way where even with armor I still need to get through the wall of hitstun before the grab goes active so I can actually hit him. Granted I should probably be trying these things while I'm backed by an assist but I'm really worried about getting happy birthday'd.

Maybe I should have considered running big band on point so I could at least have access to fiber assist as an anti-air, I feel like that would help the matchup a little.

I tried to deal with fortune's shp by doing extend but I don't think I got once, I really should have tried for that first instead of parrying it.

There was one more thing but I forgot it while I was typing and I think this is going to bother me.
 
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