@IsaVulpes and
@alexpi
That's what I was afraid of. I was more just hoping, I guess. I would love a lk.buer + assist. That said, lp.nails is effectively about the same minus some damage, so no biggie.
Thanks for checking.
@indieanimator
Ranked is meaningless. Think of it as a way to find matches fairly easily. As far as I know, you aren't placed with players of equal skill (which would be super difficult given the size of our community).
As far as combos, if you get confirmed you are still going to take a hefty amount of damage. IPS is really only there to prevent infinites and most decent players will rarely hit IPS except on purpose to take advantage of a burst bait. That said, we all fuck up and forget where we are on occasion and active IPS.
The other mechanic is dizzy. It is that green bar that builds up as your combos get longer. The tl;dr version is that if a combo runs too long, it will green spark and allow you to burst just like IPS. It is a tad more complicated than that, but I'd just google it if you need to know more.
What you really want to look for is resets. This is an attempt to start the combo over (at the risk of you blocking/countering) to reset damage scaling (hits do less damage the longer a combo runs on), IPS, and to a lesser extent dizzy (dizzy depreciates slow enough that it can and will still activate after a reset).
If you are new, don't get discouraged and just accept that you are going to get pushed around your first umpteenth matches. You'll get better before you know it. Feel free to add me on steam (qspec) if you'd like some help.
That said, as you found out, looking for beginner lobbies is probably the fairest way to get matches. The only problem is that lobbies are less reliable than QM. My advice? Make friends with people who are roughly equal skill and play vs them.