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Dealing with Assists

How can we deal with assists?

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DARKNESSxEAGLE

DARKNESSxEAGLE

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Filia Cerebella Ms. Fortune
Due to a certain thread making me watch some more Duckator videos cropped up recently, my old hatred of assists has respawned within me. Assists are undoubtedly some of the most annoying things for people who don't know how to deal with them as well for those who do. From my perspective, the only options when dealing with assists are:
  • Block, albeit get stuck in some nasty pressure which you don't want to be under
  • Beat up the assist, although you better prepare for punishment by the continually active opponent
  • Counter with your own assist! See their's coming in? Mash yours, with or without a pause
  • Get hit! No.
  • Grab the opponent! I would if they weren't on the other end of the screen.
So, as I've tried to exhibit above, I'm pretty clueless as to what I can do other than punish their assist with my own, assuming my assist options allow that. I'm also pretty sure I'm not alone on this, so I was hoping to see what other people think can be done to make opponents feel less safe about bringing an assist to the party.
 
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not as easy as just hitting. People that know how to play, also knows how to use their assist properly, making the main char and assist's attacks kinda protect each other, OR use it on combos. When facing these guys, they already calculated a potential assist loss (protecting against an attack, for example).

It all goes with what assist using what attack in what team you're facing. A filia Updo assist, for example, won't be countered that easily because she's a counter herself. if your reflexes are good enough you could try calling a fast projectile assist before she attacks: you'll still take a hit, but so will filia and that will lock her out for some seconds.

The same tactic doesn't apply if you find someone bold enough to use her hairball assist, since it'll be used as a combo extender or blockstring extender/pressure tool. in that case just block until you can react again (it isn't that easy to hit a hairball and not get hurt)


TL;DR: it's complicated
 
It's only as complicated as your opponent makes it.

I just read flip champs interview with gootecks and champ talks about using situations to punish people... So for instance, your opponent calls strider vajra assist... Flip says to go into training mode and practice punishing it on reaction with something easy at first...just dash under it and make it wiff. And once you get good at that he said that eventually you will be so good at doing that that you will eventually be able to launch it on reaction. And you can then parlay that into being able to hit it on reaction while super jumping.


He also uses a non assist example of no meter dorm versus magneto... Dorm blocks magneto beam from fullscreen... At that point dorm can't punish cause he doesn't have super...BUT, he can "punish" by simply calling a charge.... So everytime he blocks disruptor he gets a free charge. That isn't good so the mag stops doing disruptors.



Moral of the story is like vulpes said up top. Just make the assist wiff and then hit it with "something"... a jab is good enough.

A jab will lock out the assist for 90 frames and give you an advantage to call your own assist and get a mixup or an advantage to push the opponent back towards his corner


This IS NOT a huge advantage... But taken over the course of an entire game or series of games this one tactic can the pace of the match if your opponent is one that tends to use their assists recklessly.


To that end, one could practice hitting assists in training mode with things that don't leave them very open and could do it from different positions.
 
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Whenever I decide to play solo my whole game plan (when I decide to actually think) is "Constantly move into and out of my opponent's attack range until they call their assist and move away to have it whiff, then go in." Thankfully, assist lock being added in makes things much easier.

With assists on your side you have that and countercalling. If you have a move with a lot of active frames (like HK hairball) you can call your assist to stuff the startup of the opponent's assist.
 
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Assist lock-out sounds like it wrecks all of the mind-less neutral assist calls that most players rely on so heavily. It can only be a good thing.
 
I personally hate assist lockout. Cause an assist call can be used for all kinds of things. Not just one.

But lockout forces me to use assists for a lot less things. I used to use assists as far away meatshislds that I could dash after peacocks with... But no more, or, I still can, but I get punished for using my assist creatively... Like why is the litmus test being able to hit the assist? And why is spamming assist considered braindead? Is spamming normals braindead? Is spamming jumps braindead? Is spamming parasouls shots braindead?

Or is it my opponent who is the braindead one for not stopping me from doing it....


I can deal with assist lockout, I hate it as a mechanic because to me it forces less buttons and to me buttons r fun... Assist lockout to me just seems to make the game even more turtly. Like when in the nba they moved the 3 point line closer to the basket cause they thought it would make games higher scoring... But it did the opposite... Made games lower scoring. Why? Because defenders could now cover the 3 point line as well as the actual basket easier since they were closer to each other.


I kinda feel like assist lockout does kinda the same thing... It works for what it was supposed to do... But I don't think it was also supposed to make the game slower... And it was also implemented to take some of the bite out of stupid assists like updo... Which it does... But it also takes the bite out of... George's day out...

I just see it as a bad solution, one that I can live with...I guess, but one that makes e game less interesting and fun, for me at least especially with it forcing people to call assists a certain way.


At the very least I'd like it for the point character to have to hit an assist with a normal for the assist to be locked out. Getting my assist beat by another assist and then being locked out just grinds my gears hella, and the same when my assist gets locked out by a projectile. I just feel like sg is an offensive game at its best and that because of that, then commitment to punishes should be forced. I mean if a character punishes an assist with a projectile or an assist, they still get that damage. But why should they also get lockout... It just makes little sense to me and feels like something that was just tacked on and has managed to stay.


But like I said, I can grudgingly live with it.
 
Dime your entire post can be answered in my first post which is coming from a place where there is no lock-out (Super Dusty Edition), in those days just mashing the assist button over and over again had no real downside as no matter what the opponent did in response you'd have the advantage simply because you pressed the assist button.

I believe you were the one that complained about PBGCs back before SH died out because "they can be done at any time for no cost" and you didn't like that they could just break your pressure or blockstring. Assists can be used for the exact same thing, but now that there's lockout there's an actual risk to using one in the middle of blocking a string of attacks in places that aren't just the corners.
 
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The thing about assist calls in SDE is, you can punish an assist once or twice, but as soon as it leaves the screen the opponent can bring it right back in. And with the nature of invincible assists and the conversions you can get off of them, the game is always about playing behind your assist. With the lock-out, it forces people to be smarter about their assist calls, or lose them for a period of time. I prefer that over a neutral game dictated by constant assist calls with no real down-side. At least now I can punish an assist and it limits the point character as well, instead of just being "chicken block until the assist leaves the screen, then mash on it again".
 
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Dime_X, people still use their assists for those things in Marvel 2 and Marvel 3 but assist lockout happens no matter if your assist gets hit or not (and its longer then 90f).

Personally, I think Mike should play with adding a universal assist cooldown, 90f or more that occurs every time you call the assist to the Big Band beta, just as a test. IMO it would make the neutral game more fun.
 
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Yeah, it isn't so much that lockout exists. It's just the way it's implemented that pisses me off. 90 frames is the perfect amount of time to do a bunch of things that are bad imho:

Mess with me calling my assist again immediately.
Doesn't really allow for much pressure from me or my opponent when locked out except in the corner... And personally I've always thought that the corner is a bit to strong in sg... So buffed corner isn't a good thing to me.
To easy to lock out assists via counter assist calls and projectiles.


So... Yeah to me I would rather a longer lockout period, and /or for an assist to have to be hit by a point characters normals to be locked out.

Right now lockout just seems "annoying" for both players. Annoying on the part of the locker outer cause the 90 frame advantage isn't that much and hard to capitilize off of and annoying for the guy who is locked out because he he's probably going to dash and up back for the next 90 frames.

But yeah it's almost totally an implementation thing that I don't like about it.
 
One thing I really have a hard time dealing with is hitting someone's assist who comes out 24/7 like (Napalm Pillar/Updo/Hornet Bomber) and if I try to hit them I go flying up and they get a free combo off of me. Anyone know how to punish people who do that all the time?
 
Dime_x said:
Right now lockout just seems "annoying" for both players. Annoying on the part of the locker outer cause the 90 frame advantage isn't that much and hard to capitilize off of and annoying for the guy who is locked out because he he's probably going to dash and up back for the next 90 frames.
So if someone makes a poor assist call and they decide to retreat then they're only pushing him/herself back into the corner. That's a fair punishment. Also keep in mind that if you lockout an assist then you have the lockout time along with the time that the assist takes to recover, pose, and then jump back out of the screen. That's plenty of time to close the distance and mount and offense.

Sadistic Cyanide said:
One thing I really have a hard time dealing with is hitting someone's assist who comes out 24/7 like (Napalm Pillar/Updo/Hornet Bomber) and if I try to hit them I go flying up and they get a free combo off of me. Anyone know how to punish people who do that all the time?
Either wait out the assist call then go in, lockout the assist, or grab the opponent.
 
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As someone who goes solo ratio I typically bait out the opponent to release the assist, tap it if I can to take full advantage of the lockout (harder to do so if invis assist), and start combo/reset blender once the opportune moment happens during that time gap.

Of course this straightforward strategy is harder if the opponent doesn't throw out the assist every moment they can.
 
I feel that Marvel characters are just better at punishing assists
 
asteriskblue said:
I feel that Marvel characters are just better at punishing assists

Possibly because there's only one character in the game with a screen-filling beam super.

If you look at Marvel 2 or Marvel 3 pretty much all the high-tier characters have some way to happy-birthday you from full screen with a giant beam or bionic-arm type super if you do a bad assist call. On the other hand a lot of SG B&B combos simply don't work against 2 characters.
 
To be honest, while I have trouble with assists I do have some methods that I can use under the right conditions. Playing Filia means I have her LK Airball to get higher than most (all?) characters can hit, so Double's Butt-thrust or someone dropping off an assist as they flee gives me a good shot at dealing damage to their assist while closing some distance. A lot of players don't seem to attack me when I'm falling until I've landed, so timing a j.HK to hit just before I land works like a charm.

Unfortunately a Peacock that isn't in the middle of jumping away while throwing out an assist and j.HK can punish my Filia's s.HP, so against her, options are limited (in SDE anyway). With Fortune, as soon as I'm in the air with the assist I'm safe as any attempted attacks can be countered by her air super.

Dealing with someone using an assist while running at me, however, is where problems start to arise. Even when it's an Updo that literally just has them run at me, call assist and crouching block I can't see any option but to block, but at that point they're close enough they can just start throwing out pressure like a store chucking out a shelf of nachos that expired a week ago. It's worse when it's something like Hornet Bomber, which can just be used mid run and there's more than enough for the opponent to decide their next move based on the outcome of what their assist does, however more often than not they will only have to run forwards. My response to this has been to throw out a Cerecopter assist when I see them approaching, which is where I benefit from the ridiculous nature of assists because if I hit them I get a free combo or free damage, if I miss I just have to wait a moment before throwing her straight back out. This doesn't work if they throw out their assist first, which is where I start feeling like it's pretty crap the way assists seem to have come down to whoever hits their assist button first.

I imagine the lockout lifts a fair bit of this issue as there is less of a desire to just mash out the assist in fear of it getting hit and suffering a lockout in which you will be susceptible to the opponent's assist while not having your own to back you up, but I don't imagine that there is any scarcity of situations where your only real option is to block, but even that will put you in a tremendously disadvantageous position all because your opponent exerted all the effort it takes to perform an assist input.

But by all means, quote out any and all bits of this you disagree with, after all, I didn't make this thread to have a bunch of people accumulate and agree with each other on one person's issue.
 
One thing I've found very useful in that scenario is a throw. Assist call or not, somebody crouch blocking in front of you will get thrown and the post-throw invincibility will save you from the assist.

Just one more reason why air-dashing rushdown characters are top-tier I suppose. Harder to prevent them from calling their assist on top of you.
 
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You DO want me to kill you don't you?
 
When playing PW/FI/DO, assists are the bane of my existence.

When playing solo PW, enemy assists are my absolute favorite thing in the world.
 
IsaVulpes said:
I severely miss the "tap them once with a jab to get the 90f lockout, then go in" option here.
Having finally made the plunge to PC I now know this is horrible advice in almost every situation except when they're running away after throwing out an assist.
KhaosMuffins said:
Whenever I decide to play solo my whole game plan (when I decide to actually think) is "Constantly move into and out of my opponent's attack range until they call their assist and move away to have it whiff, then go in." Thankfully, assist lock being added in makes things much easier.
This is pretty much my solution now, I can't find a scenario where it doesn't work and it has the bonus of baiting them into coming to me, which for Filia and Cerebella is as good as me getting close to them. Fortune can just use her head to activate the assist lock and usually put the opponent in momentary lockdown to keep them at bay when I'm zoning.
 
Tap them then go in =/= Bait them out then go in
Baiting is preemptive, tapping them is at the reaction phase.
 
[21:50] Khaos: IsaVulpes Yeah I was confused when I saw that post as well. We said the same thing. O_o

Mhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Mhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Mhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Khaos writes: Make the assist whiff, then jab it (implied, as else the 'assist lockout' line doesn't make sense), then go in
I write: Make the assist whiff (implied, because hitting the 2f window on startup isn't all too reliable and hitting a Copter after you blocked it is obviously not going to work), then jab it, then go in

If you are unable to think a quarterstep and need to be spoonfed every little dipshit detail, that's not my advice being terrible, but you.
 
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Urrhhh, i won't turn this into any more of an argument so I'll just say I misunderstood and took what said to be advice on focusing on getting that tap in and what Khaos said to be focusing on baiting out a whiffed assist and getting a jab in when it's easy to do so. You both say you meant the same things so ok fine, sorry.
 
What about what Chris G did tonight? It was pretty obvious that he didn't have great knowledge of the game by some of the things he wasn't doing- but it felt like he was really good with Marvel-style assist strategy. Do you think it needs to be more worthwhile to hit assists? (Maybe a longer assist lock if the assist gets hit unarmored?)

It's kinda scary to think what Chris G would be like if he played the game more.
 
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Alstein said:
What about what Chris G did tonight? It was pretty obvious that he didn't have great knowledge of the game by some of the things he wasn't doing- but it felt like he was really good with Marvel-style assist strategy. Do you think it needs to be more worthwhile to hit assists? (Maybe a longer assist lock if the assist gets hit unarmored?)

It's kinda scary to think what Chris G would be like if he played the game more.
Chris G did something in Skullgirls last night? I missed this, what happened?
 
He was at the IEBattlegrounds 3v3 tournament and manhandled most of the Westcoast with ABCSuper and having a semblance of a neutral game
Stream Archive // Too lazy to dig out his matches, he was first on a team with MMDS and Fanatiq, so if you see either he played before that
 
The problem is that everybody was content to run face-first into Napalm Pillar assist and be surprised about it. Meanwhile, the 2 competent teams powered through and were the only non-boring parts of the tournament.

Also, it was SoCal only, and not even all of SoCal.
 
IsaVulpes said:
He was at the IEBattlegrounds 3v3 tournament and manhandled most of the Westcoast with ABCSuper and having a semblance of a neutral game
Stream Archive // Too lazy to dig out his matches, he was first on a team with MMDS and Fanatiq, so if you see either he played before that

Well, that's not too surprising. How many SG players have a semblance of a neutral game?
 
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View619 said:
Well, that's not too surprising. How many SG players have a semblance of a neutral game?
According to the tournament, roughly 35%.
 
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Chris G not just plays many different fighters, but does well in them. Not much of a stretch that elements from other fighters he played carried over into Skullgirls when he showed competent neutral game which is foreign for most Skullgirls players to deal with.
 
It was much less of Chris G being good and much more of everyone else running into Pillar and forgetting that Fortune's head is a thing (and no, it does not hit low, zoom > just catches upbacking). Chris G does do one thing that a lot of people fail to do, however, which is counter-calling with his assist to deal with other assists. I didn't pay much attention to how often he did that at IE, but I remember one tournament where he'd constantly counter-call and it worked out quite well.
 
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Another counter to assists that I don't think has been mentioned is to launch the assist and then jump BACKWARDS...that hits the assist in probably one of the most non committal and hard to punish ways out there.

Obvious... But seems like something easily overlooked. And many characters can turn it into offense by launch then jump backwards and cancel the jump into a forward air dash or something of that nature.
 
KhaosMuffins said:
It was much less of Chris G being good and much more of everyone else running into Pillar and forgetting that Fortune's head is a thing (and no, it does not hit low, zoom > just catches upbacking). Chris G does do one thing that a lot of people fail to do, however, which is counter-calling with his assist to deal with other assists. I didn't pay much attention to how often he did that at IE, but I remember one tournament where he'd constantly counter-call and it worked out quite well.


When you say counter call, i assume you mean wait for the other person to call their assist and then he called his to counter that? Or was he anticipating other peoples assist timings and calling in front of them to counter them as they started up? I ask because to me its kinda a big difference because im trying to learn how to consistently counter call myself, but it seems like when i do it, it doesnt work out that great.
 
Call assist after the opponent throws his out, most likely. Seems likely with the way most players just throw assists out as often as possible.
 
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@IsaVulpes:

There are two problems with that.

1:The matchup is Val V Bella, where Val is supposed to chill out in the air with her huge hitbox normals.

2:This is online, offline, air bypasses get air grabbed, air normaled, or supered.

Fullscreen Shurikens should be Reflected, just because we don't see Deskillsage do it doesn't mean it's not an option.

I do admit that Val going in is protected AMAZINGLY by assists, but that's not the assist, that's Val's dumbass jump forward airdash back idea which always seemed damn dumb.

Filia/Pea/Fortune can also do it, but not to the same degree.

Also, just because we watch Deskillsage not try to really adapt to Duck but try to beat Duck at his own game doesn't mean it doesn't work.

I mean, are people complaining about assists in general, or Double Butt/Updo, because to me, I haven't seen anyone go 'man squigs dp assist too stronk' or "man fuck napalm pillar" or "man diamond drop assist is too dumb".


Also, we can ask Deskillsage why he got tagged by so many assists, was it because of the speed of the assist, or him just not knowing when they were coming?



This thread could use some more content.
 
Jason said:
Dime_X, people still use their assists for those things in Marvel 2 and Marvel 3 but assist lockout happens no matter if your assist gets hit or not (and its longer then 90f).

Personally, I think Mike should play with adding a universal assist cooldown, 90f or more that occurs every time you call the assist to the Big Band beta, just as a test. IMO it would make the neutral game more fun.
I concur with that proposal. I like assists, obviously, but I'd also like the game to be less about holding back until an assist and then going in behind it.
 
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