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Nowhere Man

Nowhere Man

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Hello everyone and welcome to my thread where I'll post about my struggle and progress in improving at Skullgirls. Feedback is very appreciated!

To give some background, I'm not brand new to the game, but still far from being competent at it. I'd rate myself as "Lower Intermediate" on a scale of Beginner/Intermediate/Expert.

When I started playing Skullgirls (January 2014), my most used characters were Ms. Fortune (mashing and throwing head around was fun), Peacock (loved her visuals and voice), Double and Cerebella (used those two mostly to cover Peacock's weak zones in neutral via Lock'n Load and Hornet Bomber).

Later on, however, I've grown disinterested in playing those for various reasons, main one being my constant strive for variety and effeciency with characters that'd actually feel more fitting to my playstyle. I started using Fukua/Filia, but dropped them too because while efficient, they're not quite what I want.

I like many characters and have hard time deciding on my main team, but for the sake of training with defined purpose I'll cut it down to two teams:

1) Team "Showtime!" Eliza/Beowulf/Cerebella (higher priority)

2) Team "Symhony of Battle" Eliza/Big Band/Squigly (lower priority)

I'd love to get better at Painwheel and Robo Fortune as well, but 5 characters already feel like stretching out a lot, so these two will have to wait.

The main workhorse of 2 listed above teams, as you've already figured out, is Eliza. I've picked her because she feels closer to my style than any other character, and I like her visuals. Beowulf feels pretty easy and intuitive when playing around in training room, and Cerebella provides lots of utility to the team while not asking much in return.

General gameplan is to make my opponent nervous and bait him out into unsafe position via spacing (j.mk, j.lp, c.lk, s.mp, h.Chair Toss), then go full pressure (Eliza has great stuff here, and Cerebella helps a lot with Cerecopter/Lock'n Load). If situation goes dire for Eliza, I can DHC to Diamond Drop (need lvl4 meter for that) or try tags (both Beowulf and Cerebella have great tag-ins).

Second team - I mostly gathered it together because of "music band" theme, but it works very well regardless. l.Beat Extend is godlike in neutral and super easy to convert from, and Cremation is one of the best lockdowns, being a disjointed attack. Good DHC options as well.

I plan to focus on team "Showtime!" mostly, because it feels the easiest to me. 2nd team is for variety and to learn more about some of the stronger (in my opinion) fighters in the game.

Thoughts of the day:

Need to stop using same blockstring for Eliza
Call Butcher Blade assists at more appropriate times
Make more use of air grabs, rely less on j.lk
Find better ways of resetting opponent in the corner
Stop using Wolf Cannon in such ways where I end setting myself up for being beat for free on the ground
Find/make combo in which I could use full hype Wulfamania to its full potential
Work on my chair positioning/retrieval
Improve my runstop stuff with Cerebella
Work on doing 360 grabs consistently
Realize I'm not playing duo anymore and use all my assists instead of relying on Chair Toss only
Work on pushblocking multihits correct (fighting Squigly is suffering)
Be more patient and don't feel shy about eating some chip damage instead of full combo
Stop whiffing hits so much
Learn other combo for Big Band, one that doesn't work midscreen only
Do stancels consistently as Squigly
 
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A few more things to consider:

Don't poke in the air at a team who has armored reversal ready
lp is the button to use up close
Grab/tech grab more
Rely less on unsafe moves
Ground dash more
Learn to do absolute guard consistently
Experiment with alpha counters
 
Something I've noticed today: when I get my opponent into the corner, I often drop my combo/resets because of whiffing hits, which in turn gets them a free punish on me. Got to mind hitboxes, that s.lk isn't magic touch that reaches to infinity.
 
I really need to use Cerecopter more, or else Bella is a useless anchor (related to my lackluster corner pressure). Also, Horace seems to deal nicely with j.hp-happy Squigly.
 
Since people get used to my not so original attempts at resetting them in the corner, I've decided to learn a burst bait for each character on my main team. Eliza's one is very easy, c.hp > buffer superjump after first hit of wings (so Sekhmet won't come out instead of j.lp) > j.lp. Now it's time to give some love to Bewulf and Cerebella before I move on to Sekhmet shenanigans.
 
Dear diary, today I've learned that after doing a successfull Diamond BB you can tag Eliza in and enjoy your combo. Of course you need Eliza to be alive for that, which is a bit too demanding sometimes, but I'm working on that!
 
Apparently, can't have Anubis/Horace called together soon enough, which is understandable but a bit sad. Need to ease on Diamonds, that stuff isn't hard to dodge/block and is pretty painful to whiff.
 
My pushblocking is still bad and I'm not sure when it's going to improve. Either I push to early or too late, the timing is hard to get right even after playing this much. Also, getting cornered is still a death sentence, because even if I have team member(s) left, nothing's stopping my opponent from grabbing/mixing up as I land from top.
 
I have trouble keeping my reflexes/muscle memory up with my knowledge and challenges that skilled opponents propose to me. I've learned many resets since I've started Eliza/Beowulf/Cerebella team, but most of time I don't use them, no matter how often I practice them in sandbox. My defense is still weak: I recognize many patterns in blockstrings/mixups, but fail to respond to them timely. Have yet to find golden path between turtling and taking risks without eating assists. On the bright side, I don't drop my combos as much as I used to!
 
Getting tired of playing same teams, so I'll switch to Painwheel/Fortune/Eliza and see how it goes.
 
It doesn't go well much. Then again, I don't find Fortune's DP easy to convert from.
 
Since I feel like my progress with Beowulf and Cerebella is going nowhere, I decided to put them off and concentrate on Eliza and Big Band. Once I'll get better with these two, I'll possibly add a 3rd team member (if I feel like it).
 
Alright, now that I've played Eliza/Big Band for a while I can say that I mostly like Big Band, but still hesitating. He has very good assists, easy confirms into combo and that parry gimmick, but oh boy does it hurt to play against people who faced him before. Neutral consists of doing hards reads and hoping that your telepathy skill's good, or trying to j.lk (which is good, admittedly) and/or grab. Because of size almost anything in air is instant overhead against him, and fighting Peacock/Fukua/Robo consists of jumping a lot and hoping for miracle, because parry isn't that good. If you think Big Band's unfair, try to play him sometime against anyone who's not new. Still don't know what to do against Beowulf, and sometimes I feel like putting controller down while getting reset over and over again in corner because despite having so many hours in game I've failed to find any decent amount of people with similar skill level (just joking, I don't actually give up).

All of above aside, I need to learn more combos for Eliza, and actually do the resets I've practiced because I start becoming predictable. Oh, and upload some videos once I figure out how to use OBS without toasting my processor.
 
(x)Learn other combo for Big Band, one that doesn't work midscreen only - today I've learned a combo that works when close to corner, so hey, it's progress!
 
Aaand now I've finally learned a corner only combo! This means I can now whiff 3 combos simultaneously, but I'm not going to stop there, no. Got to learn bagpipe charged combo as well so I'll become the ultimate Whiffmaster! Only Marie knows the moment when this priceless knowledge sorts itself out...
 
Scalpels into Slaughter is a neat trick against crossups on wakeup, need to remember this.

Edit: probably not, flatline is faster
 
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I like how Valentine's j.lk crosses under so easily, those handmade gadgets ARE crosses after all :PUN:
 
On one hand, Beat Extend allows easy combo for both Valentine and Eliza. On the other, Brass Knuckle is far superior pressure and gives time/space for vial but Eliza doesn't benefit as much from it (can't overcharge a taunt). Maybe I should change Spiral to Butcher's Blade as assist, meter is never a problem anyway.
 
An important reminder to myself that empty jumps exist and it's good to use them.
 
Stuff to do: learn how to play against Parasoul as Eliza. Everything I'm doing so far gets punished by pretty much everything she has, and she's merciless once she gets onto you. Maybe I should play her sometime, she reminds me of Guile a bit (if Guile was a Skullgirls character) and is pretty stylish overall.
 
Okay, I gave Valentine a honest try and I've got to say she's...very nice. Almost a perfect point character for me, but if match doesn't go well and I have to tag her out, she has subpar assists (not that you'd want to call any character with lots of red bar anyway, but sometimes it's now or never). I think I'll run two teams for now, and by the results will (hopefully) chose my main. What I plan is Peacock/Eliza/Big Band and Valentine/Eliza/Big Band. I haven't quite got used to playing Peacock efficiently on my gamepad, but she feel like a fun point character overall (always did), and her assists are nice. Her fast meter gain allows to call Butcher's Blade on cooldown + her friend Big Band can help up close with l.Beat Extend. I haven't decided on what assist I'll take for Peacock yet, will try both low and high bombs. Time to paint the town red!
 
Feels good having other character that can do stuff with 5 meters at once. I mean, why wouldn't you? Mostly because you'll likely spend them early (un)efficiently.
 
Ok, this ~9000 dmg combo only works 50% time on Filia, I'm going to learn a simpler one which I can do 100% on her.
 
My gamepad has finally died today, so now I can't play Skullgirls anymore. I've made up my mind and I'm going to buy a keyboard instead of getting a new scrappy device which will break 1 year later. Wish my laptops keyboard didn't ghost, if only I knew about the issue before getting into fighting scene...
 
Okay, now that I've finally gotten a keyboard and played for a while, I need to make an update. I haven't picked my main team yet (most played is Eliza/Squigly/Big Band), but I've noticed that in general I spend too much time in air and not enough on ground, thus don't use dashes and ground attacks to their full advantage. After I get used to comboing on kb I really need to do resets, my current level of play is too basic. Thankfuly, I can finally do stancels most of time now (but still under-utilize j.lk/lp as Squigly). Need to work on my noise cancels against those pesky zoners.
 
Edited: I'll try replacing Squigly with Beowulf (for a while) instead of learning completely new team and see if it'll click. If not, I'll try adding Filia or Parasoul instead. After a day of evaluating what was written before, I don't want to give up on Eliza/Squigly/Band yet, so I'll try the above and/or switching order to Squigly/Big Band/Eliza. Just want to see whether having 2 invulnerable assists will change gameplay much. In jazz we trust~
 
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Wish this game had more players. I want to practice my skills in field, but nobody's available to play this afternoon. On the bright side, I'm starting to land my mp and hp more often as Eliza.
 
Solo/duo/trio - size matters not, just focus on blocking/guessing right and be more patient with going in.
 
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And, to follow up on that, today I learned a double snap combo for Big Band.
 
I prefer not to throw my chair away with no foreseable access to it ASAP, but sometimes I have to, or Eliza gets knocked out and Beowulf steps in without chair. For those cases I made a combo: c.lk c.mp. s.hk xx Wulf Blitzer x3 c.lk c.mp s.hk xx Wulf Blitzer x3 c.lp s.mp s.hk xx Wulf Blitzer x3 otg. c.mk NKL Da Grendel Killa.
 
New Fukua clones are interesting, but I've yet to make an efficient damage combo with them.
 
Love the new Peacock teleport which can move her backwards.
 
I feel like Squigly/Big Band/Eliza aren't really my kind of characters, will try and see if more mobile team will suit me. This time I will start with Valentine on point and go from there.
 
I don't know why, but all replays I try to record and put online end up being all choppy, no matter what settings I try (using OBS). I remember using recording software years ago and not having any problems.
 
Still can't do meterless throw conversion when playing Filia.
 
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