Beating the Odds

[BlueFeena]

After playing SkullGirls for a while, it seemed like it was time for me to create a dedicated training thread and seek out further advice. I'll confess that this ultimately culminated from a ft 10 with Tossle during the east coast snow storm, where I lost by an utterly humiliating 10 - 0. I'm ultimately hoping to play a great solo Eliza at some point -- I've been wanting to learn other characters and pick up teamplay to learn how to counter it all, but I'm not still not confident in my Eliza's abilities and taking time away from her seems like a poor idea. Squiggly and Fukua are currently at the top of my list for characters that need to learn how to counter.

Offense has been my biggest issue since I began playing SkullGirls back in October, and only just now am I finally starting to grasp Eliza's offense. It seems that instead of instinctively blocking when Eliza is knocked down or hit, an Eliza player needs to adopt a "get back up and keep going" style of play, all within a realm of safety, obviously. During this weeks SlapFights, not only did I try to be far more aggressive, I attempted to apply some wisdom that McPeanuts purportedly gave out and was passed on to me by another player a few weeks back; Don't respect the other guy until he gives you a reason to. It worked to a certain extent, and while there were definitely players I had to be respectful of right out of the gate -- ShadowStew and Tossle to name a couple -- almost blindly being disrespectful to the other players right from the start of the match seemed to improve my odds by a significant margin. I was going to post some footage of the other fights, but I decided it was far more important to post what this week's SlapFights ultimately came to -- a set of mirror matches between myself and Bonanze:

* I don't understand why Bonanze's j.lp resets kept working. Whenever I try something like that it always fails.
* Similarly, and this was a point of discussion at SlapFights, I don't understand why the j.lk -> j.hp infinity kept working. I tried doing something very similar to that a month or so back and simply got reversed whenever I tried it. Bonanze suggested it was my timing, but ultimately I really don't understand why it works.
* I'm having real trouble with tick throws. I fought a Filia player early in the night who pretty much tick threw me to death. It almost seemed as if they were coming out in a pattern, but I still found them impossible to predict let alone react to.
* Something that shows up repeatedly in the Bonanze fight, there are some serious issues with my spacing with the j.mk and the j.lk. I always seem to be doing the input too early or two late. In one of the fights, Bonanze and I seemingly did j.mk at the same exact time but his won. I've been practicing spacing since Day 1, doing Gootecks like Ryu drills and measuring the distance of the attacks with the boxes on the training floor, but trying to practice this against a moving training dummy is very difficult. Having to convert at any range is probably the biggest challenge -- Living Mey-Mey suggested doing j.mk x2 and if it hits immediately convert into Sekhmet's Signature attack, something Mey-Mey does to considerable effect.
* Similar to the above, I mentioned I was having issues with my inputs after a dash jump attack. Someone asked what I used to dash; mp and hp. There were times where I did a dash jump but my attacks simply did not come out.

Ultimately, I feel that I was fighting a superior opponent and never stood a chance.

I wish I had time to upload the other SlapFights footage, but after recording all of the replays I had almost a full hour of mostly me just getting run over. While I arguably did the best I've ever done at this week's SlapFights, I ultimately felt my wins weren't earned -- most of it was me winning because of silly things, mostly my opponents refusing to get up and attack or failing to block during very obvious block strings. Case in point: I fought a Painwheel player who cleanly demonstrated that I had no business beating him; after he countered my offense there was no chance I was going to beat him for the rest of the night, and I didn't.

While I feel that my offense is better, I still don't feel confident with Eliza's offense and it sometimes feels as if I'm flailing around, trying to snag the opponent. Nearly all of the Eliza players I've seen are incredibly precise with their offense and I have no clue how they do it -- Living Mey-Mey is one of the Eliza players I've tried to emulate the most and his offense is borderline laser-guided. Unfortunately, it's taken me nearly 300 hours to finally grasp Eliza's offense; I've fought players who have less than half of my play time and are utterly superior. At this rate I'm really not sure what to do.

 

[BlueFeena]

It's been about a month, so it's time to update this thing. Here's a considerable amount of footage from last week's Tuesday Night SlapFest. I realize this is a lot of video to go through, but if anyone can watch some of it and provide any help, I'd greatly appreciate it. It came out to over an hour long and that's with fights chopped out and cut down to only the fights that really mattered. The fights are time coded for optimal viewing.

Fight listings:
0:00 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
1:46 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
3:48 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
5:46 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
8:10 Mine, Fukua / Cerebella
9:48 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
11:25 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
13:19 Mine, Fukua / Cerebella
15:32 Painwheel / Eliza
18:10 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
19:44 Living Mey-Mey, Eliza
21:50 Mine, Fukua / Cerebella
23:09 Squigly
25:32 Squigly
27:41 Mine, Fukua / Cerebella
29:34 Filia
30:56 Mine, Fukua / Cerebella
31:50 Robo Fortune
33:28 Mine, Fukua / Cerebella
35:20 Mine, Fukua / Cerebella
36:30 Painwheel
38:20 DethKlok, Painwheel
41:34 DethKlok, Painwheel
43:54 DethKlok, Painwheel
46:23 DethKlok, Painwheel
48:19 Squigly
50:13 DethKlok, Painwheel
52:18 DethKlok, Painwheel
54:09 DethKlok, Painwheel
55:29 DethKlok, Painwheel
57:02 DethKlok, Painwheel
59:04 DethKlok, Painwheel
1:00:56 DethKlok, Painwheel
1:02:47 DethKlok, Painwheel
1:04:56 Tossle, Valentine / Double / Big Band
1:06:33 Cloud King, Big Band / Double
1:07:48 Cloud King, Big Band / Double
1:09:34 Cloud King, Big Band / Double
1:11:35 Tossle, Valentine / Double / Big Band
1:14:05 Cloud King, Big Band, Double
1:15:30 Tossle, Valentine / Double / Big Band
1:17:04 Filia / Squigly
1:18:00 Filia / Squigly
1:19:11 Tossle, Valentine / Double / Big Band
1:21:02 Squigly / Filia / Ms. Fortune
1:22:23 Tossle, Valentine / Double / Big Band
1:23:51 Tossle, Valentine / Double / Big Band
1:26:07 Adwins, Squigly / Eliza

Some basic character related questions:
[*] I don't understand how to deal with Squigly. It seems like she has universally good answers to Eliza and most of everything I do is based on guesses and luck.
[*] How do you deal with Painwheel's armor / range shenanigans? Painwheel has a considerable amount of range and a large chunk of her moves are armored. Are you just supposed to react to the armored moves or is there more to it? More importantly, why does the Eliza overhead infinity work? Watch some of the Painwheel fights to see what I'm talking about; the Eliza overhead infinity was my best, consistent option against Painwheel and I don't understand why.
[*] This is not shown anywhere in the video, somebody please help me with fighting BeoWulf. If I were to show footage of me fighting a BeoWulf it would likely trigger collective suicides from the entire SkullGirls community. I have no clue how to fight this character and I usually just resort to doing nothing but s.mp -> Horus all day long. Similarly, I can't figure out how to reset this character since he reverses me nearly 100% of the time.
[*] Why are my pushblock guard cancels failing against Double? Watch some of the Tossle fights; my pushblock guard cancels fail 100% of the time!

 

[Triblue]

It's been a while since I played, so my advice might not be the best. I hope someone else can help too.
So anyways, some things that I remember when I played Painwheel.
For Painwheel, be aggressive and get inside to dish out the pressure. Painwheel loves her range more than you in this matchup. You did this so that was good of you, even if it was painful getting in.

Throws beat armor, so try throwing it out if Painwheel is trying air hp too close or if you want to beat out ground moves. Heck, throw it out if you are close to Painwheel, her air mp takes time to throw out. Don't get too cocky with it though, as an air throw is also one of Painwheel's main air tools. You already seem to be doing this, but be more open to ground throws as well if grounded armor moves are getting to you. Her flying armored move only has one hit to it, so hit immediately when you hit her. Eliza does not have a decent multi hit attack to really break armor in the air, so do be careful with big moves that have long recoveries. Eliza's sweep also has armor. It's a bit risky to use, especially since there isn't much reward besides a setup, but it break armor if it goes first and armors through the hit if second. Lastly with armor, getting stuffed by it constantly means you probably need to change your approach. Most ground armor attacks work best against you if you're in front and on the ground(be careful of s.mp).

Unfortunately, even though Eliza has great reach too, her moves are not disjointed like Painwheel's. As far as resets go, you should be aware that Painwheel has a really good air super reversal, but a mediocre ground reversal super.

SOME THINGS I WOULD RECOMMEND THE PAINWHEEL TO DO (Some problems that you may have not faced due to the opponent not being attentive enough)
Be aware of the stingers that weren't used. This is basically a tool to be used at range and you were focused enough on getting in so it might have not been a problem, but be aware that when it is out, it can cover Painwheel's approach pretty decently.
Ground Buers are unsafe(but still a tool to to be wary of, especially if sekhmet is out) to throw out randomly and really dumb to do if your opponent is blocking(punish it if you can, she can't fly cancel it unless she hit you(And I mean a clean hit, not blocking) with it).
I saw that Painwheel constantly get tortured with your overhead "infinite". Painwheel was able to get out when she pushblocked(like really, why didn't she use it more?), which she should have done more of. As far as defensive tools go, this is the one to be most wary of that wasn't used as often as it should have been since it allows Painwheel to put more range between you and get out of the pressure you're supposed to be putting her through.
One thing I remember the most clearly is to really be wary of her air mp. Assume that a decent Painwheel can convert off of that any time she hits you with it.

You should probably get a second opinion since I am not the best of players and it has been a while for me.
(Anti Beowulf Resource)

 

[BlueFeena]

SkullBats 04/24/2016

I'm going to drop this here real quick as I'm getting ready to leave the house for a few hours. I haven't had time to dress it up or put tags on the individual fights yet. There are some personal thoughts and questions I'd like to posit to everyone, but in the mean time if anyone has anything to say I'd love to hear it.

 

[BlueFeena]

Fight time stamps for easy viewing:

Spoiler

All five rounds from SkullBats, April 24th.

Round 1 -- Adwins
==============
0:00 -------- Fight 1
1:31 -------- Fight 2
3:17 -------- Fight 3

Round 2 -- noaa
==============
5:22 -------- Fight 1
6:56 -------- Fight 2
7:58 -------- Fight 3

Round 3 -- MemeFresh
=================
9:37 -------- Fight 1
11:02 ------- Fight 2
12:12 ------- Fight 3

Round 4 -- JasonS
===============
13:30 ------- Fight 1
15:14 ------- Fight 2
16:35 ------- Fight 3

Round 5 -- Verkir
=============
19:06 ------- Fight 1
20:30 ------- Fight 2
22:28 ------- Fight 3

General thoughts:

I'm having issues hit confirming with j.mk. The distance and relexes involved seem difficult to overcome, along with the fact that dash jumping is a very agressive move and leaves Eliza very vulnerable. I've practiced dash jumping considerably in the training room but I'm still having trouble applying it.

A suggestion Skarmand made in an unrelated thread was to block low and react to the opponent jumping in order to block overheads. I'm not sure if this is to be learned through rote repetition in the training room or by some other means, my relfexes are not the best and I'm not sure what should be done. Previously, most of my blocking was based on reads and guesswork.

Many of my oppeners involve s.mp -> Horus. This is greatly affecting my combos since many of them require Horus at some point. I know j.mk is considered the ideal poke but I am having considerable difficulty applying this in a fight, mainly because there are several different ways of hit confirming off of it. I use s.mp -> Horus since a typical match invovles a lot of jumping and air approaches.


Relexes are a serious issue at the moment. Watch the fights with MemeFresh starting at 9:41 and you'll notice that he is reacting to nearly all of my everything. I'm not sure how people are reacting to this kind of stuff and I don't know how to improve my reflexes. This is one of the reasons why I've since written Tossle off as unbeatable since he can kill me using reactions alone. It seems as though I keep getting caught in resets that I should be reacting to but I simply can't. Related to the above issue of blocking, attempting to react to Filia's overheads seems suicidal and I think I would be better just trying to block based on reads.

At 18:20 you can see JasonS escape my reversal bait on what appears to be solely reflexes.

At about 11:25 you can see me start to mash DP in order to get Filia off of me. It was suggested that I do DP reversals but I'm not sure if this is a wise idea with Eliza: her DP is extremely slow, is not throw invincible, and has limited vertical range. The simple act of mashing DP is a challenge and you'll notice that nearly all of my DP reversals were punctuated with light jabs.

Watching Rounds 2 and 4, I'm having trouble dealing with people who play neutral with their assists. This is supposed to be a bad idea from my understanding but I have not found a reliable way of countering it.



Character specific and matchup related:

Squigly
--------
Squigly is one of my worst matchups, it seems as though the bulk of Squigly's moves defeat whatever Eliza is doing. I've spent some time studying Squigly and it seems the bulk of her moveset actually has slower startup time than Eliza's, yet trying to push buttons against Squigly is almost always a bad idea. I've tried to block low and react high to Squigly's standing overhead but I have found this to be unrealistic. The only thing I can think of is to practice a short Squigly reset and try to block low / high accordingly.

Squigly's j.hp is an immense point of frustration and it seems to be her best weapon against Eliza.

Double
------
Double is nearly impossible to PBGC for some reason. All of her moves generate considerable ammounts of blockstun and it makes PBGC'ing her difficult to say the least.

I don't see an obvious way around Double's j.hp. Datagram told me that I do not have to respect it but I don't see this working in practice. For a while I tried land canceling against it but found this unrealistic when you consider the speed and insanity of a typical fight; ultimately I'm not sure how to go about beating this poke.

Double's luger -> car hit confirm turns nearly any long range scenario into a one-touch-kill scenario. Boatsliding through it is an option but it quickly becomes predictable.

Fukua
-----
Last week at SlapFights I was utterly massacered by a player using lame Fukua tactics -- simply upbacking and throwing fireballs. After some experimentation it seems the best way to fight Fukua is to super jump a lot. Once Fukua's shadow and fireball spam is shutdown she becomes considerably easier to fight, with Inevitable Snuggle being the biggest threat at this point. Part of me thinks that Inevitable Snuggle can be defeated by reacting with a throw. Unfortunately, the last player I fought at SkullBats only kept Fukua on his team for a single fight.

 

[BlueFeena]

As per Liam’s advice, I’ve been trying to get back into sets with the people I play with. It’s been a while since I’ve done a set; the last person I did a set with was Tossle about six months back in January. Ending a horrendous 10 – 0, Tossle was up for a set today and we played again. Unfortunately, my performance was almost as lousy, ending in a 10 – 1.

This time, I left the input display on to provide more information on how I was playing and what I was trying to do.

I’m still in the process of digesting the set and trying to come to grips with my lack of performance. In SlapFights, it seemed as though I was starting to work out how to deal with Tossle’s team and playstyle; eventually reaching the point where Tossle was switching to a duo to fight me off, with some success too. Tossle had a tendency to level 5 me to death, and I realized that the best way to deal with a TOD factory is to just snap the TOD character in and deal with it before it builds enough meter. Unfortunately, this straight up did not work at all in the set we had today, and I don’t understand why.

I still need to go over the footage a lot, but a few takeaways that I noticed very quickly:

* I don’t have an answer for Tossle’s safe SSJ - > Cats DHC. I’m not sure if solo Eliza even has one; push-block guard-cancel into DP seems like an optimal solution but it simply did not work. I’m not sure if it’s better to just block like a demon and wait it out or DP Double out of it as quickly as possible.
* I’m having immense difficulty reacting to things; I don’t know what to do with an opponent who has superior reflexes. Tossle’s reflexes seem to be off the charts.
* There’s still a lot of mis-inputs in my play; I thought I had worked most of these out but they seem to be constantly resurfacing. My dexterity is not the best, and by about the 6th or 7th fight I was so far on tilt I could hardly remember combos that I had spent hundreds of hours practicing.
* I’m constantly getting stuffed, I’m always hitting buttons late or at remarkably inopportune moments. I can’t react to crossovers fast enough and block them. Sometimes I even cross myself up.

 

[Receita Federal]

oh, tossle also plays this team

 

[Beta Ray Bill]

You know Blue, I have pretty much all of the same problems as you do. That makes me feel a lot better to know I'm not alone in my struggles =)

We should do some casuals sometime. My Eliza could probably learn a thing or two from yours.

 

[BlueFeena]

I normally don't make non-gameplay posts but this one feels fairly important and relevant.

A couple of months back, @Liam advised switching to a Hitbox when he discovered I was a keyboard user. Due to a combination of stubbornness and the price tag, I held off and it was probably the only piece of advice that I did not immediately listen to. Yesterday, Living Mey-Mey was nice enough to give me 20 minutes in the training room. It's painfully apparent now that I have gone as far as I can expect to go on a keyboard. I would also like to play in Tournaments; keyboard to console adapters are universally banned by my understanding, so that's that.

I developed a bad habit of using Space Bar as a dash macro -- while the button placement is ideal, the Space Bar is too heavy and I have discovered the return time on the key resulted in my dash inputs being sluggish. After spending an hour changing my dash macro to a different key and practicing pressing PP, I found my ability to perform instant overheads went up dramatically. It'll take a while to get the muscle memory out of my system but it's a change I plan to make and I have already disabled the Space Bar key.

Probably the biggest thing to announce though is that I have just ordered a PS4 Hitbox. Hopefully it'll arrive by the time my vacation starts so I'll have time to practice with it. I am tempted to buy Seimitsu buttons as I hear they're slightly stiffer than the Sanwa defaults, but that remains to be seen.


On a different subject, players ranging from MemeFresh to DataGram have suggested that I pick up another character. I'm curious as to what Liam's opinion on this is, but one of the core reasons as to why I have stuck with a solo for so long is that I do not feel I have mastered the character. I am starting to be of the opinion that solo is very viable, but is reserved for far more advanced players than I. It may be wise to pick up a second character, learn teams, and revisit solo play when I have a stronger understanding of the game, Eliza, and the other characters. The fact that @fenster pulled top 8 at NEC one year with just solo Parasoul is promising, or so I've heard.

One of the things that I love about solo play is solo damage, an element of the game that I feel is criminally underrated. Watching the other guy's character die because he literally got hit a single time never gets old. Also, I am becoming of the impression that Eliza's best team is solo Eliza herself! At my current level, though, I do not feel as though I can utilize it fully and it would be wise to revisit it later. I would really like to hear the opinions of advanced players on this subject.

Potential candidates for the second character are Filia, Parasoul, and Valentine. I briefly tried Ms. Fortune but her inputs were unusual and she seems to have a very high skill ceiling in order to use her correctly. On the other hand, my worst matchups are BeoWulf, Double, and Squigly -- all of which are defensive characters by my understanding. I have considered adding my bad matchups to my team in an effort to learn them, but I really do not want to play as any of my bad matchups; I just don't like those three as characters. The advantage that Parasoul or Val bring to the table are super safe DHC options for Eliza, along with balancing out her rushdown playstyle. Being able to DHC out of Sekhmet into either scalpels or gunshot would be absolutely terrifying and render nearly all Sekhmet encounters safe. It would also be a (bad) way of making Heavy Upper Kaht safe; [Upper Kaht], xx[Lady of Slaughter], xx[Scalpels / Gunfire] -> gg /nextmap.

There's a lot to digest here and hopefully I can get some high level players to advise me on the best course of action.

 

[Lex]

FYI, scalpels is not safe (neither is sniper I think and bikes can be punished unless done with your back to the corner depending on the DHC I think?). Even if done from full screen certain characters can punish them as well (Bella reflector beats all of those, Gregor beats scalpels and bikes, Double Car, etc). Just something to be aware of.

 

[fenster]

For me playing Solo, I have more results than that, and there are other solo players as well with results, so it's certainly very possible to get results with Solo as a team choice. I picked up a team due to other personal reasons, but Solo is still a fine choice. The biggest question you have to ask yourself is if you want to deal with your characters' worst MUs by themselves, which is an issue for Eliza too since she doesn't have good reversal options. But adding the right assist can make all that moot if played right.

I'd just say, if you aren't too bored or frustrated with Solo, just stick with it.

For the characters you'd want to pick up, Parasoul and Eliza are decent for each other but other than Squigly I don't think those characters will help in those MUs that much, but an assist will always help with the additional pressure you can get if you play things out right.

Those DHC's aren't really safe though. Parasoul level 3 is mostly safe but the other DHCs are mostly gimmicks that good players will punish you for.

 

[TheLivingMeyMey]

Oh goodness you posted our training session. I'll say it again, I am honoured to be of help to you, but I still find that because of how I play the game it would be best if you were to ask someone else for some training help and techs. Maybe when I eliminate bad habits, improve, and learn how to explain things better, I can be a better source of info. Until then, come to me when you need the ramblings of a mad man. (In terms of play style)

However, if I were to recommend a team, I would have to agree with Fenster about picking Parasoul/Eliza. Parasoul and Eliza both benefit from each others assists and as a result are a decent pairing. If you're looking for a third character, I would recommend Fukua, Bella, or Double. These three characters, to my knowledge, work very well with Eliza and Parasoul. They are also flexible in team placement, allowing you to swap them around and find a comfortable placement that gets your job done. Godspeed BlueFeena.

 

[BlueFeena]

I've spent my first couple of days on the HitBox. As I said earlier, switching devices is going to be essential if I ultimately would like to compete in tournaments and clean my inputs up. I feel as though I've see other keyboard players with clearner inputs, but then again, I used to play on the mother of a all keyboards -- a Model M -- which has notoriously heavy and clicky buttons. Going from a device that requires 75+ grams of pressure to buttons that only requires 20 is quite a leap, to say the least.

Already I've seen several issues vanish -- my inability to do PP inputs was directly linked to my keyboard; the buttons were simply too heavy and were ultimately imprecise. Sorry Model M, I love ya, but you're for Doom, not SkullGirls! : ^) It has served well nonetheless.

The scariest issue at the moment is relearning my neutral game, something that I had down quite a bit on my Model M. Eliza's movement is clunky, to say the least, and being able to move around the screen in neutral is essential for her survival. Dash blocking, IADs, super jumping, backwards fast hops -- all of it is gone and having to relearn all of my muscle memory is unsettling to say the least. Combos are currently the easiest thing to relearn, but virtually all combos and resets that involve jumping will require quite a bit of re-training.

To any Hitbox players; I am curious as to what combinations of left thumb / right thumb you use. I seem to be using my right thumb in neutral and left thumb in combos.

I am curious if anyone has any advice on making the transition from Keyboard to HitBox smoother; I am very concerned about how long the transition will be and am worried I may be set back several months.

 

[Beta Ray Bill]

In that video, for the combo you were doing around 15 mins, in the very last chain you were doing 2 s.Hp before Heavy Osiris Spiral, can't you land the third hit of s.Hp? It should restand them for H. O. S. without screwing up your combo, or do you leave it out because of damage scaling?

 

[BlueFeena]

S.hp x3 only restands after the first time it is used. So, if you a do combo such as c.lk, c.mk, s.hp x3, xx[Heavy Osiris Spiral], the opponent will launch on the s.hp x3 and the combo will drop. On the other hand, if you do [stuff], s.hp x3, [more stuff], s.hp x3, the opponent will restand because you have already used s.hp x3 once. It only launches the first time it is used.

Here's a really good example of what I'm talking about: Notice how the first time s.hp x3 is used, Fukua launches, yet every other time it is used, Fukua remains grounded.

 

[Beta Ray Bill]

Nice, thanks for the video. I knew s.Hp launched always on the first usage but I thought it was the victims "state" that governed whether it restood them after subsequent usages rather than if you had launched them with it before. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[BlueFeena]

I haven't been ready for SlapFights for a while; MemeFresh was kind of enough to run some casual matches with me and give me a chance to practice. The change to the HitBox has set me back with the team issue; I need to work out my inputs before moving on and this may take a little while. I seem to have my combos down to some extent, but I'm having trouble remembering my resets and how to link into them gracefully. This isn't unique to the HitBox and is something I've struggled with since Day 1. Unfortunately, I really don't understand how setups are constructed.

The biggest issue at the moment is my ability to move around the screen, and seeing myself literally being reduced to a bathtub is about as humiliating as it gets. I sunk a lot of hours in Eliza's movement, and while I still had a long way to go, it's frustrating to see myself lose all of that work. I don't see any easy way to relearn her movement.

A minor accomplishment is that I managed to reverse Double's Car, seen at 18:53. It took a while to train myself to instinctively hit DP instead of blocking and I need to get into the habit of doing this with as many raw supers as possible. There were other opportunities to reverse Car, but I was in block stun in all of them and I couldn't remember how this would affect my reversal.

Some specific notes:

* A couple of weeks back, Liam pointed out that consistent issues in bad matchups are likely a spacing problem. When I reviewed the fights with MemeFresh, I noticed there were multiple times where he would do [Super Jump Forward] -> [Double Jump Back] effectively baiting my anti-air. As much as I hate to admit this, I have no idea how I could perform neutral / spacing mechanics with Eliza, but it's clearly something I need to investigate.

* I don't understand why my pushblocks keep turning into backdashes. No-one else seems to have this problem. Before someone says, "You're doing it late", how come no one else ever hits it late? I have literally seen ZERO PEOPLE have this problem.

* I don't know what to do against an opponent with superior reflexes. I think I may have discussed this with MemeFresh at some point, but it's hard to play mind games with someone who can just react to everything you're doing -- either that or MemeFresh simply read me like a newspaper, which is very likely.

* I need to have an answer for "on the way down" resets, there were multiple times where MemeFresh would let me fall to the ground for a setup.

* It would seem that s.mp is not a valid anti-air against Double's j.hp. Light Upper Kaht would likely be more effective and provide some strike invulnerability.

* Input related, I need to adjust to using PP to do my dashes and specifically my overhead assaults. I'm having major problems remember how to do instant overheads, as the back-and-forth motion between my thumbs, PP, and the attack buttons is confusing me a lot. I'm still reaching for a phantom "W" key.

* Double is a chronic problem for multiple reasons; one of them is that normal strings will cause her to fall out of Eliza's combos. At one point I was researching a special Tiger Knee punish that would make comboing Double much easier, although I'm reluctant to attempt this in my current state:

That was done back when I was still on a keyboard, I am not sure if I could attempt that or pull anything of the sort off right now until I fully adjust to the HitBox.

I've still got a long way to go.

 

[Beta Ray Bill]

* I don't understand why my pushblocks keep turning into backdashes. No-one else seems to have this problem. Before someone says, "You're doing it late", how come no one else ever hits it late? I have literally seen ZERO PEOPLE have this problem.

I have this problem, I pushblock late all the time and sometimes it turns into a backdash that leaves me wide open. I managed to tone it down a lot by focusing on when I need to pushblock rather than just pushblocking randomly at the first opportunity.

 

[fenster]

* I don't understand why my pushblocks keep turning into backdashes. No-one else seems to have this problem. Before someone says, "You're doing it late", how come no one else ever hits it late? I have literally seen ZERO PEOPLE have this problem.

You are doing it late. And it's a problem that a lot of people have or have run into at least once. It can be more prominent for other characters/situations, but it absolutely is a thing a bunch of players do. I know I do it all the time, and I know that I can get the opponent to mistime pushblocks as well when I go for Parasoul bHKs and I catch the opponent backdashing. Just gotta focus in on proper PB timing, which is huge but workable.

As for comboing on double, if you're talking about air dash strings after cHP, I always advocate for jLP jHP adc jLK jMP jHP. Literally the normal string except you trade the first jMP for a jLP. Also a good combo for robo since she is finicky as well.

edit: I took a quick look at the video, and you dropped your throw combo on double when you did throw H DP jMK H Sekh cMK sHP M DP H DP, I would advise not using the sHP M DP H DP part on her since I think that's whats messing you up. That combo CAN work, but it's also more timing/spacing dependent since it will mess up if you are too far on the pick up with cMK. I would opt to use cMK cHP into the jLP string I put above which works at all distances for me.

 

[BlueFeena]

You are doing it late. And it's a problem that a lot of people have or have run into at least once. It can be more prominent for other characters/situations, but it absolutely is a thing a bunch of players do. I know I do it all the time, and I know that I can get the opponent to mistime pushblocks as well when I go for Parasoul bHKs and I catch the opponent backdashing. Just gotta focus in on proper PB timing, which is huge but workable.

I see. I'm not really sure how to go about fixing this other practicing some very fast jabs and pushblock timings with the training dummy.

As for comboing on double, if you're talking about air dash strings after cHP, I always advocate for jLP jHP adc jLK jMP jHP. Literally the normal string except you trade the first jMP for a jLP. Also a good combo for robo since she is finicky as well.

I'll give this a try and see how it works, most of the standard ADC combos don't work on Double. Thanks!

edit: I took a quick look at the video, and you dropped your throw combo on double when you did throw H DP jMK H Sekh cMK sHP M DP H DP, I would advise not using the sHP M DP H DP part on her since I think that's whats messing you up. ... I would opt to use cMK cHP into the jLP string I put above which works at all distances for me.

Actually, that doesn't work. Double is usually too far and will fall out of the c.hp. The solution I came up with was the Tiger Knee combo which causes Double to fall much closer to Eliza; the issue is how far Double flies because of the wall bounce triggered by Sekhmet. The only other solution is to use a Sekhmet-less conversion -- something I've wanted to do but the timing on those is a nightmare.


This next bit is about as un-glamorous as it gets, but I decided to record the bulk of a training session earlier today. I usually spend most of my time practicing neutral as opposed to combos -- a philosophy which I'm not sure most people would agree with. My concern has always been that I would become a combo monster with ass neutral. I spend most of my time practicing movement exercises, a particularly notable instance can be seen at 24:00 (auto-linked for your convenience.)

The thing to remember about Eliza is that her rate of acceleration is very low, and she cannot down back until she is about 1 block into her dash. Her dash travels about 3 1/2 blocks, so for almost a third of the dash you cannot block low without canceling out of it. Taking her low acceleration into account, having to do -> -> makes her low acceleration even lower because of the delay introduced by double tapping; this is one of the reasons why I would prefer to use PP to eliminate this issue entirely. Instead of double tapping, I practiced SOCD dashes which speeds up the process considerably. Yet, if you view the exercise linked at 24:00, you can see that it's still not fast enough for me to go [SOCD Dash] -> [Back / DownBack] as it simply takes too long. When using PP in the above exercise, I had no issues blocking Fukua's fireballs.

I'll confess that my obsession with dashing stems from the impression that, "Bad players don't dash." I'm not sure how much dashing is sufficient with Eliza and I'm starting to consider the possibility that simple walking might solve the issue.

 

[fenster]

Actually, that doesn't work.

Uhhh, yeah, it does. You're doing both hits of cMK, right? I literally get it every time, no matter where I do the throw from. Made a quick vid to demonstrate

 

[BlueFeena]

What's Eliza best option against high-priority, airborne spam? Assume there's an assist involved because this contributes to the spam and lock down effect.

I initially tried to PBGC into Air Throw but Eliza was constantly spaced out and could never reach Painwheel. After a fight or two, I attempted to land cancel into s.mp but simply could not get it to work. I want to practice this more and I think I had the right idea, but I was hindered by my poor execution. It didn't occur to me during the fight, but land canceling into Light Upper Kaht might work as well.

Some other buttons I can think of:

Parasoul's jhp (?)
Beo's j.hp
Double's j.hp
Squigly's crossover Gravedigger?

 

[Lex]

For Beo's and Para's j.HPs, if you chicken block them then you can punish with jab. For Double and Painwheel a pre-emptive Horace and air throw would work and MP could work at some ranges (but if the PW or Double spaces it right, you'll get stuffed). If they do their j.MP/j.HPs at max range you can use H Upper Khat.

Test it all out in training mode and see what works.

 

[BlueFeena]

Normally I don't play with Japanese players since the connection usually isn't too solid, but this time the connection was decent, so here we are. This guy turned out to have a really good Peacock team.

I lost pretty hard in our set, but still left feeling good about myself. His setups were very well done and his ability to react with counter-setups was pretty scary. I have no idea how people beat that stuff reliably; he'd cross me over with teleport, figure out that I've blocked him, then cross me over again on reaction.

Right now, my reads feel extremely weak. I'm not too sure what can be done to improve them, it still feels like I'm doing a lot of guessing and "playing around the player" instead of fighting each individual character.

It's also worth noting that several of my buttons are failing; notably my MP and HK buttons. You can see this several times in the fight were I drop my j.mp -> j.hp link. Some replacements are on the way.

I do take some comfort in knowing that I made him go get his Real Team™ after a failed counter pick. : ^ )

 

[BlueFeena]

I’ve been playing SkullGirls a little over year now; I started some time back in October of last year and remember it taking some odd 70 hours of training room time before I finally felt comfortable to go align. Culminating at almost a year of game time exactly, I went to my first tournament (GUTS) and two locals all in the past month. There’s some extraneous fluff to this post so I’ll keep all the important stuff at the top.

The big takeaways from GUTS were that matchups are important, and as of right now, solving my bad matchups is top priority. Fighting PME and CloudKing was also the first time I seriously doubted playing solo, as in nearly all of those fights I spent the entire time blocking. In fact, when I asked PME why he stopped playing solo, the answer I got was, “I got tired of fighting off the assists all by myself” something that I can seriously relate to.

My time at Xanadu has almost exclusively been against Outlaw Spike; a good amount of our gameplay has consisted of me trying to deal with defensive keepaway gameplay and chase down tactics. While I still feel that I need a lot work with dealing with either, I will say that fighting Outlaw Spike in person some 100+ plus times has made me feel considerably more comfortable in chase down situations, with Squigly still being outlier unfortunately. I also do not know how to chase down a Fukua, (the problem is the shadows, not the fire balls – the shadows put you in a high / low mixup if you stay on the ground, which is crucial in a chase down situation. The fireballs simply push you away if you jump.)

When discussing SG gameplay, I generally do not bring up solo vs team scenarios since the automatic answer from everyone is, “Don’t play solo.” Another issue of solo play is the simple act of getting in, probably the number one contributor to the characters I cite as bad matchups. I was able to get some rare footage of high level play in a trio vs solo scenario, featuring CloudKing and ShadeMoneh respectively:

I’m not sure what ShadeMoneh’s reasoning was to try and play solo, but I ultimately recorded it for learning purposes.

Moving right along, I actually had a chance to go to SkullBats last night:

Squigly came back with a vengeance in this set of fights, and even though I managed to beat PlatinumPad, I still walked away pretty frustrated with my performance against her. Other critical takeaways from this were to reverse less and block more, and focus on not getting put in the corner so easily. When fighting Datagram at SlapFest a week ago, I learned that Eliza can low profile over Valentine missiles with liberal usage of IAD j.lp, something that sort of worked on Outlaw Spike at Xanadu. The same technique works on Parasouls tears.


And now for some bonus content:

I started attending Tuesday Night Slapfest for almost a year exactly now. I decided to celebrate by tracking down some very old replays of mine. Sadly, my very first fight was against none other than Datagram in quick match – which was never recorded. Datagram might still have the replay file though.

My very first two wins, about a week or two before I went to SlapFest:

Spoiler

Alternate title: FizzXWizz Wins by Spamming Beat Extend

Spoiler

Another challenger appears! I wonder who that other Eliza could be...

Spoiler

I told @Datagram this at GUTS, but I want to say this again: When I started playing SkullGirls, I had no clue what I was doing, didn’t know anyone who played fighting games, was on a freaking keyboard, and was absolutely terrible. In a fit of desperation one night, I typed in “SkullGirls” into the steam groups and discovered SlapFest, and have been attending Tuesday Night Slapfest ever since. Thank you Datagram for being such a great teacher and running what is by far the best online event in the entire SGC.

 

[Datagram]

Yeah, there's no way that recording is me lmao

1. I never use that palette, except with America Bella (granted this could be explained by the palette order switching since the replay was saved)
2. That entire match had no Val j.HK. There's no way I could go for 3 minutes without pressing that button.
   
3. I don't use Mortuary Drop.
4. If I did use Mortuary Drop, I wouldn't follow it up with EKG in the corner.

 

[BlueFeena]

Yeah, there's no way that recording is me lmao

1. I never use that palette, except with America Bella (granted this could be explained by the palette order switching since the replay was saved)
2. That entire match had no Val j.HK. There's no way I could go for 3 minutes without pressing that button.
   
3. I don't use Mortuary Drop.
4. If I did use Mortuary Drop, I wouldn't follow it up with EKG in the corner.

Haha, yeah you're right. I had to go digging through some very old videos to find the player name in that fight; someone I haven't played with since my very first days. I'll remove it.

 

[BlueFeena]

This is about a week old, but something I still wanted to post nonetheless. Around Sunday last week, I got into an impromptu ft10 with @Psychopath. Apologies if the mixing is a little off; Adlibs and live action music tend to be hard to balance correctly so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm going to do something I normally don't do and page @mcpeanuts to the front office in hopes of any guidance. Peacock is still one of "those" characters where the simple act of her moving around the screen is confusing, apparently.

As for the set: I went in not expecting to do well, and spent the first chunk of the set trying to break down Peacock's zoning patterns. Eliza never performs well in low-profile scenarios, meaning everything she does has to be done "ahead of schedule." In the first fight, you can see me trying to jump over the bombs in short fast hops, but this quickly became both exhausting and nerve racking.

The final score was 10 - 6, probably in the most bizarre way possible: I spent the first ten fights getting my ass utterly handed to me, all to turn around and tighten the score up considerably towards the end with a five game win streak. Score tightening begins at 19:00

The biggest takeaways I see are:

* Develop a reliable way to bait out and maintain pressure against all Bangs! . (Forward jump -> throw -> xx j.lp ? Should cover upbacking and poorly thought out M Bangs?
* Develop a safe way to move between the airplane and bomb walking across the floor. I usually was able to defeat one or the other, but not both. I found that Upback -> j.lp -> xx forward dash -> j.lp gives Eliza a very low profile, and you can see me begin to abuse this around the aforementioned 19:00 mark.
* In general, stop using c.lk. This is an utterly horrendous button with no pre-block, so anything including old ladies can upback right out of it. I found that all of Eliza's jabs have almost 1 box of pre-block distance; try combining c.lp with c.mp for a "tick low" ?

 

[Psychopath]

A few things to keep in mind:
Peacock has subpar anti-air attacks if a projectile is not already covering that space. Her best options are to us cLK since it's disjointed, use M Bang and hope you land on the hitbox, or preemptively teleport away. If you keep air-pressure onto Peacock she typically will struggle to get you away as M Bang's hitbox can't do much if you're still above it.
Albus and Horace can annoy Peacock at the range where she thrives. Either of them being called can force Peacock to jump to avoid being tagged by the grab. Throne will go through projectiles so you can directly challenge Peacock's zoning if she gets too comfortable, only thing she can do if she's already committed to throwing projectiles out is to correctly time an sHP so the hitbox smacks the throne directly, cancel into M Bang to break the throne which will give you a chance to close a bit of distance,cancel into L teleport which will similarly give you some time where she's not tossing things out, or spend a meter to have Lenny act as a bodyguard to take the hit.
Don't be afraid to sweep cancel into DP or Horace Dive. Eliza's sweep has projectile armor, letting you get into position at mid-screen to be in range to start a counterhit combo on Peacock if she's not anticipating it. Just be careful if a shadow is out, because Road Roller can and will break that armor even though it's a projectile.
M Bang has a huge vulnerable zone directly above it and is slow enough to lose to Eliza's DP on-reaction. Keep vigilant.
Know your own vulnerable boxes in the air. There were a number of times where you got yourself hit by a stray projectile that was not actually close to you, but your attempted attack extended your hitbox out to catch Avery or George.

 

[mcpeanuts]

I started watching from 19:00. You're too aggressive when Peacock has a level 2 item charged. There are probably other problems too but I am willing to bet this is like 90% of the reason you're having trouble with this matchup, so there's no sense in me listing a bunch of other things that aren't nearly as important and risk having you focus on the wrong things.

When Peacock has an item charged and the item has reached level 2, you need to appreciate that if she lets go of medium punch, that item is going to beat anything you do that's not armored or invincible. It also has so much hitstun that she usually gets a combo off trade. However, once the item is released Peacock can't charge another one for some amount of time, and the higher level item she drops, the longer that cooldown is. Most of the time if Peacock is charging an item it is best to block until she drops it. Keep in mind, Peacock only has two projectiles that cover the air, and one of them is the item. If the item is on a long cooldown you can pretty much jump at her for free as long as you account for the other anti air projectile, the plane.

 

[BlueFeena]

This is me coming in off a 2 - 3 week hiatus, having been working non-stop, getting sick, and dealing with personal issues that have (thankfully) been all sorted now. I was hoping I could fight Amabane's Peacock to try and apply some of Peanuts' and Psychopath's advice, but he switched teams immediately after the first fight. This inadvertently turned into a ft11 since I wasn't pleased with my performance and wanted to keep going, and I lost track of the score. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I normally post some conclusions or observations I've made, but I'm going to stop doing that as I fear that I'm falling into trap of making intermediate level conclusions. Some of my observations and conclusions have just been flat out wrong and it's time for me to stop. Instead, I'll focus on things that I was practicing during the set:

* I've been attempting to hit confirm with c.lk, c.mp x2 as crocodile kick is horribly unsafe. Mp x2 actually isn't all that safe either, it's -5, but it seems much harder to react to and the delayed projectile seems as if it was catching Amabane off guard. I need to practice this more.

* I wasn't able to practice this as much as I wanted, but I've been trying to render Eliza's air block strings safer from land cancel punishes, something Matlock Holmes uses to great affect. Once again, I need to practice this more.

* I tried to take heed of @Cadenza's advice in the Salty Eliza thread, something I mentioned a couple of weeks ago but Catheads still seems like absolute death for a solo. I'm not sure what else to do here? 6:10 is an easy example I can think of; later on I attempted to PBGC Diamond Dynamo into jab but my timing was off and wound up right back where I started.

 

[Mr Peck]

Catheads still seems like absolute death for a solo. I'm not sure what else to do here? 6:10 is an easy example I can think of

You were doing fine until you got hit with a very slow crossup. The catheads hit you after Double recovered from crossup flesh step and that's a 34 frame move. Just keep blocking and you'll be okay. I'm not really sure why you think this problem is specific to solos either; what would you have done in that situation if you had a team?

 

[BlueFeena]

You were doing fine until you got hit with a very slow crossup. The catheads hit you after Double recovered from crossup flesh step and that's a 34 frame move. Just keep blocking and you'll be okay. I'm not really sure why you think this problem is specific to solos either; what would you have done in that situation if you had a team?

Sorry for the late response; I meant back to get back to you sooner but work side tracked me.

I figure a team would have more options to force Double away; PBGC into a DHC or Alpha Counter into a potential reversal? I was also thinking that a team player could simply call assist if a gap appeared but I'm not sure if that's feasible. At the very least, it seems like Double could be threatened more easily and may simply back off.


Unrelated, I managed to get a long casual set with Customer Service Heropon the other night. Most of it was against his Peacock team and I attempted to apply some of the advice Psychopath and Peanuts gave me. I spent most of the fights trying to be more mindful of item drops, overhead item drops, and work my away across the screen more patiently. There's still a lot of work to be done in this matchup, but I at least wasn't getting hit by level 2 (3? ) item drops this time. Fast, reactionary item drops are still hard to beat though.

At 46:52 he switched to his Beowulf team. I remember PleasureThatCutsWind saying that the best way to ward off Beowulf is to use Upper Kaht a lot and then proceed as normal once you get the hit, which is what I spent most of the Beowulf fights trying to do.

In general, there was more practicing with clk, c.mp x2 hit confirms. I'm still not doing it all the time and sometimes go straight into a blocked combo, but the times where I did do it helped and re-watching the set shows that the c.mp x2 would have saved me in multiple situations.

 

[BlueFeena]

I bumped into Cadenza tonight and we wound up playing a brief casual set.

I went into this attempting to practice hit confirms off of c.lk, c.mp x1, since I found out that c.mp x2 is very punishable with a PBGC. Unfortunately, my reflexes aren't quite there yet and I'm still doing the second hit of c.mp. Practicing defense and patience was another goal, since I'm still pushblocking more than I should. My defensive reads were pretty poor tonight and this is still going to take some work.

This wasn't part of my goals tonight, but I found myself practicing jab reversals with Eliza, something I've seen Satan -- another solo Eliza -- use to great effect. My timing is still very rough, though.

One upside of the set, though, was that this probably has the highest throw-teching ratio that I've ever done. I've had major problems sniffing out throws for the longest time, and this was probably the first set where I feel like I actually did at least an average job at teching throws. I'm still guessing more than I'd like, but looking for conspicuous delays helps out immeasurably.