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Oh, the VODs are up? I should rewatch it myself, then.
i mean I just watched the twitch archives, its not on YT but http://www.twitch.tv/ceogaming/v/21159622 if you want to slog through it, SG starts around 1:19:00, something to note though is that the streamer didn't realize SG didn't play nice with 1080p so there's weird audio delays in a bunch of matches
forgot i uploaded this yesterday
ft30 w/ @LazyBakemono
the josh one was hard to tell what was going on watching the video cause of framerate issues but this one is better quality and I also remember better the adaptations I made.
Notes on LazyDiablos:
-I used to think "snap in Eliza" was the way to beat Diablos but his eliza is way more than just butcher's blade assist, he's good enough with the character that spending a bar just to put him in a slightly less optimal team order isn't really worth it. Also since he doesn't get safe dhcs with Eliza so its not like I have to remove that or anything.
-He's really good about being aware of when pushblock ends, even if I absolute guard I'm probably still getting opened up and it's very hard to reversal against him. "Block butcher's blade and you die" is reasonably accurate.
-I noticed he was blocking/teching all my throw/s.hp stuff on incoming, I asked him after if he was doing some kind of late tech OS but he said he reaction techs so basically I learned lazydiablos is a god
-He actually land cancels and punishes j.hk, getting out of the habit of using this now that people are punishing it is going to e a hard habit to break
-His team is very offensive and he's one of the more hesitant to reversal fiber fortune players I've seen, so agression is definitely the way to go vs him. Butchers blade has a very long startup before the armor so if I keep him pressured he can't really ever call it without it getting hit. EDIT: i wrote this because I remembered that I started playing much more agressively in the later games which led to me winning but now rewatching this I got fibered a bunch in the early games so i dunno lol
Notes on my play:
First, the good things:
-It took me quite a few games but I eventually made the adaptation to play more agressively, and in the last half/third or so of the set our games were MUCH more even, winrate was still in his favor but there were a lot of close games that I lost in the scramble
-I'm getting better at reactions, specifically blocking, which is something I had kind of thought for a while I would never improve on so on a personal level I'm very happy about that.
Now the things I could improve on:
-Felt like I got happy birthdayed a lot, be careful with assist calls.
-I got hit while jumping forward a LOT I notice rewatching this, dunno if I ever adapted but I really should. Unless I'm trying to land cancel jumping forward and blocking when he's coming at me with an attack doesn't really get me much now that I think about it. Really ought to get into the habit of s.hp antiair (w/ Filia) more, but I've had that move stuffed by Eliza j.lk enough times that I do get scared to press it, I think it just needs to be more of a read because by the time she's pressing the button it's too late. Air to air-ing eliza isn't something I should expect to be able to do with Filia though, especially with Horus. Double's equivalent antiair is probably H gun but there is still a lot about Double I don't know.
-I do need to respect reversals more, even though lazydiablos didn't reversal much when he did it worked every time, which I guess is kind of the point of reversals is to use them sparingly enough that your opponent doesn't expect them when you do use them but still I know it's an issue I want to work on so I'll put it in here.
-BIG PROBLEM: I get hit trying to pushblock a LOT, really need to work on 1-hit pushblocking cause it seems like everyone but me can do it.
Overall it was a good set, I was really happy about how I came back in the later games, and at the time of this set I was feeling pretty down about my recent performances so being able to adapt and play well against someone as good as lazydiablos was really motivating for me.
-Fuzzy uses Drag n Bite to great effect with his point double. The more I see people playing point double the more I think that the assist crossup stuff is really only particularly strong if you have an assist with enough blockstun to make things safe, and her neutral becomes much stronger with a horizontal assist. Drag n Bite is both of those, Fukua drill (like kenin uses) is both of those, Updo is neither and I don't think double/hairball would be particularly strong. Peanuts uses Double point with no real horizontal lockdown/neutral assist but he has a million and one ways to bring in Peacock safely or even at an advantage, and IIRC the main reason he runs double point is so he doesn't lose round start to bad matchups. Coupled with the fact that Filia might have the worst safe tag after monster in the game and I'm starting to think the double/filia order isn't as good as I had initially hoped. I'll still be practicing with double point to get better at double but the "final team" will definitely be filia/double order.
-Definitely need to antiair and/or DP more, trying to contest squigly/eliza in air-to-air is kind of a lost cause
-While I do think I'm making smarter jumps than I used to I still jump a lot, gotta trust my ground game sometimes. Similarly, recognize that airdash is a committed action while grounddash is not.
-Noticed this vs fuzzy too but especially here, it seems like j.mp is the missing link so to speak with regards to making double's crossunders better. Between that and j.hp fastfalling I'm feeling a bit more confident about Double's reset game.
-Asked fosh about why he always did l. gun to stop me and not h and he said basically use l.gun unless they're superjumping/coming from high enough you need H gun, I tried it some and it seemed to work well. Fosh was on point with conversions off of the gun too so I'll try to steal that, gllt already found me great H gun stuff in his research into OTGless throw conversions
-got my ass shot every time I tried to go in with j.hp, peanuts said it in nate's kumite too but I really don't have another approach yet (though tbh this point is one of the hardest for me to work on because it seems like most doubles do a ton of j.hp so maybe I just need to be more aware of WHEN to use it?)
-l bomber monster is proven to be unsafe, good players are learning to blow that up now so L bomber isn't nearly as good anymore, but slide monster/instant item drop monster ARE safe, so having bar does let me go for some trickier mixup stuff safely which is something I haven't really incorporated yet
-more of a mechanical thing but I went for instant j.lp airdash j.hk on his double a few times and it always whiffed, gotta figure out the trick to it cause I know it works on double wing used it vs cloud/duck at CB a bunch
other than that been trying a few things in training mode, slide monster tag obviously isn't really as useful when I have filia point but doing flesh step after the c.hp instead of slide in gllt's conversions gets me full combo that saves OTG so that's definitely still useful. Also want to work on optimizing my Filia combos off of throw cause while I have them they're pretty sad, I would hope I could get more than 4.5k midscreen/4.8k corner off throw for a bar filia isn't THAT bad cmon (I can get about 5.2k off throw in the corner now but still working on midscreen, and even 5.2k seems like it could be higher)
was in dolfin's online tournament, got tied for 5th which is pretty ok, in winners I lost to lawnba which doesn't really surprise me, he is super good. I lost to Josh in losers though when I really feel like I shouldnt have especially after taking game 1 relatively cleanly. I got airgrabbed a bunch but whatever, if I try to tech and he does low I get hit so I'd rather take the grab than risk getting counterhit with c.lk most of the time. That said though that's only with regard to air grab in resets, I did get thrown upbacking a lot so probably should be more careful about that. I tried to run up low instead but his run up low beats mine so rip. The main thing Im taking away though is to bait DP assist better, people don't use DP assists as much nowadays it seems like so I'm not as used to playing vs it. I switched to BB after game 3 of the set but honestly the more I think about it the more I don't agree with my decision, if I'm going in blocking the dp assist then bomber keeps him in lockdown longer than brass would. Game 3 is the game i'm maddest about cause I actually had him dead twice at the start, i choked twice and then got car'd so rip me, didn't confirm the m airball etc. Basically I should have won that game and probably the set and i fucked up and i'm mad at myself so I'm ranting here.
Before yesterday my team decisions were basically "pick filia/double if I'm against not-peacock, and filia/band to deal with peacocks". Last night however in ron's tournament I played big band for most games in the tournament which is something I haven't done in a while so it gave me an opportunity to really notice what the main strengths and weaknesses of brass vs bomber are.
Bomber (L bomber; I dont know if I really think M bomber is as good for filia as other people do but there might be something I'm missing) is really good for close range countercalling, and the 2 hits keep the opponent in blockstun for longer giving me time to do things. While it's not impossible to get a combo off of brass, it's MUCH easier to get one off of bomber. I actually do not consider this as much of a strength as it might seem at first; the combo you get off L bomber, because it starts with an assist hit AND requires me to use j.mp to convert, is scaled to hell and requires an early reset. Brass even if I don't get a combo does a decent chunk of damage, but more importantly has FAR more knockback. The knockdown is soft but I can chase a tech forward and a tech backwards means they're in the corner where I want them. Corner is something I feel is valuable enough to Filia that positioning can (sometimes) be worth taking a 1.3k damage hit to corner over a 2.5k damage combo into reset.
Brass is obviously very strong against zoners, the armor runs through projectiles but also brass has a much further reach than L bomber. Like I said I was previously only using this vs peacock, the logic being that as much as I would really like to use it vs parasoul if I lose the neutral to parasoul and end up with bb vs para, that is a worse situation than double vs para. Now though I don't think the matchup of double vs para is amazing, it's not BAD like big band but it's not really advantageous to double so having an assist that gives me a better chance of winning the neutral on the point characters is probably worth it. The armor on Brass also lasts a lot longer than the invulnerability on Bomber so its better a punching through certain moves (beowulf's blitzers are one I used it on last night). Additionally the range can be useful in many situations, however up close Brass offers very little since BB being huge and staying out forever is more vulnerable to countercalls/punishes and once I'm in I don't want Brass pushing them away.
I'll also base my pick on what character I want to have playing as an anchor as well obviously; I consider myself able to play both characters at an alright level (I'm probably better at double now though) so they aren't just assist characters. (side note: I also forgot how much I missed having an anchor with a reversal that I can pbgc into without being completely blown up :^) ) Basically, I think right now my team is Filia/<tech pick> which I'm more or less OK with until I decide to play a trio and I'd really need to choose one of the two as my anchor to make the team work.
quick update
-feeling a lot better about double, trying to use BB for less matchups
-talked with sage last night a bit, he recommended I not wait until after NEC to learn fortune like I had planned so here we go, gonna try to get fortune/filia/double (h. fiber/c.mk probably/l. bomber) up to par. I intend to talk to/play dolfin a bunch since this team is literally his but filia instead of squigly (in fact his usage of cremation is one of the main influences on me using filia c.mk for my version of the team)
-a few double notes from sage and also labbing:
-double w/ hairball isn't as garbage as it might appear at first glance I am considering using it if I play the fil/dub duo, I would need to get the confirm 100% down but it gives me nice grounded stuff. That said kenin said keep updo and sage said have a 3rd if i do hairball, and hairball doesn't really work with the trio i would be running with double so I'll probably stick with updo for the duo
-I always thought ground chain into m gunshot was minus on block but as it turns out it's spacing dependent, up close it's like -3 but further away it can be +0 reliably or even +1 sometimes, explains why I would get CH trying to push buttons after blocking it a lot
-double neutral: c.lk j.hp are obviously good, j.mp if you're on top of them, j.hk is a good wall against characters who need to approach from the air, c.hp is decent antiair, learn luger angles
-been trying to wean myself off playing BB at all, starting to think brass is a crutch and at this point my double is so much better than my BB and BB won't be on my trio so I think dropping him for now is the best choice
-On the note of the trio, I'd been playing it a bit on QM but today were my first real matches with it: a ft20 with natezer and one of my games in ron's tournament today. The set vs nate was good because it let me play vs someone who knew how to play fortune, but since nate hasn't played in a few weeks I didn't just get completely blown up for playing a new character. Still have a lot to work on of course and I haven't even touched headless yet, but I'm really liking headon fortune a lot so far and she gets a lot from l bomber, I think this team is pretty solid. In my tournament set that I used my trio in it was basically "fortune dies because I can't fight beowulf and then I go on to win with the characters I can actually play" so I dunno if I learned much.
-Speaking of the tournament, I got basically a free ride to top 8 and then lost 3-0 to Customer Service Heropon, but while it was 3-0 I came much closer in each of those games to beating him than I have in the past so I'm making progress I guess. I figured peacock would be the problem (especially since this was my first time playing against a good peacock without BB in forever) but I did a good job of playing around item drops, something I've historically had trouble with in the past. His double (which I was reminded later is usually an eliza in that spot so maybe if he was playing his real shit I would have gotten destroyed who knows) wasn't usually too bad, but I got wrecked by his BB in all 3 games. Definitely plan to watch the vods of that match, I noticed a few things myself (like holding standblock instead of upback after his BB blockstrings so I got thrown for literally no reason at all a bunch of times) but I want to see if I can figure something out.
tl:dr fortune is fun I want to get good at her so I can beat parasouls and heropon's BB is really good
also I can say this here cause he doesn't have a SH acct but aeroshire u a bitch nigga, last time we played in tournament you lagswitched me after i won game1 and today you take a technicality win in an online tournament because heropon accidentally hit his team macro and apologize for having the "wrong persona" smh
did a bunch of games today + yesterday that I recorded probably wont upload them all but will analyze them later (in particular a set against winnie who I've been wanting to get games with for a while), but the reason for this post now is I did a set w/ @Dolfinh and of all the people I've played in any sort of recent memory he is by far the best with regards to skullgirls defensive mechanics; specifically, playing around pushblocks. Getting my pbgcs baited is something I've had a fair number of people do but he would punish nearly every pbgc-unsafe string I did and I had to think a lot more carefully about my offense. We talked a lot after and he gave me some good advice, one of them being to not run fortune at NEC quite yet. While normally I wouldn't main a character at a major a month after learning them (in fact if sage hadn't recommended I pick up fortune now I would still be waiting) I think that a lot of filia stuff carries over to headon fortune; similarly, playing fortune has helped me develop more of a ground game for my filia. Given that my fortune team is literally my main team with fortune thrown on the front regardless, I don't think that continuing to work on my fortune team would mean getting out of practice with my other characters; that said, its harder to work on improving my fundamentals and understanding of the game while simultaneously learning a new character. I don't think I want to definitely say "I won't be getting fortune ready for NEC" but we'll see how things go.
dolfin also gave me good fortune stuff earlier in the set but i accidentally closed the chat window and the log on steam mobile doesn't go back as far as I'd like so the only thing i remember is c.lk s.hp l rekka is really good
putting fortune on hold ATM cause I can't really find myself being motivated to get better with fortune at least right now, despite obvious similarities to filia I'm still having a harder time getting a handle on her and I don't to have to worry about getting a new character up to speed in 3 weeks. That said I have decided to give into peer pressure and run a trio with filia double and BB. As much as I hate to admit it, filia/double is starting to feel underwhelming and I think a lot of my success in the past has come from brass' ridiculously strong countercall ability so I kind of want that back. Talking with kenin he was saying that double anchor isn't great now and the best thing for filia/double players to do right now is throw a good anchor in the back so here we are. Not sure yet what the order will be yet but I talked with zeknife about double/band stuff, as it turns out everything I thought was better about M brass doesn't really seem to apply how I thought it did so I'll be using H brass with the band anchor. Not sure yet who point will be but zeknife was also telling me about some savage stuff with BB and cilia slide so I'll probably try either double (cilia slide)/ H updo/ H brass or filia (H updo)/ cilia slide/ H brass, I know wing was doing some stuff with filia and cilia slide last week or so so i'll hit him up.
so today I had a doctors appt in the morning and my parents wanted to go shopping in the afternoon so I had a lot of free time today with no internet which translated to finally getting around to watching some long sets I had recorded with people. I noticed that i'm actually not as bad at neutral as I thought I was which is heartening tbh cause I had thought that was my biggest issue. My main problem I noticed is(and twerk noticed this too in our games) I don't really confirm stray hits at all, I get hits a decent amount of the time but I either drop the combo (so i need to work on execution too) or don't confirm my hits. Been practicing some confirm stuff but getting a hit with a falling normal (usually jab with filia/double, bb it's j.lk but that's ez to confirm) into a combo is something I need to figure out how to do. Need to get some better resets with double too because I think even though they're safer against jabs they're getting too predictable. One of the sets I had done was ft30 with wing and we talked during the set on discord, and one thing I learned is that a lot of how wing plays is by instinct, which works well for him because he's good at fighting games and can make good educated guessed on what an opponent is going to do, but unfortunately means it's kind of hard to learn from him. Gonna try to play some games with really good people and figure out more stuff I need to work on before NEC especially with double; now that I'm playing her point my neutral with her needs to be a lot better than it is.
I pretty much say that every time you play on skullbats. "Oh pickles got te hit.....but didn't confirm and dropped it." Just commit to the strings you do, so that when you do a dash in cLK, just keep pressing buttons into cMK -> sHP, instead of what is almost always cLK Hey you got the hi-oh look you just went right back into IAD jLK. It's scarier but it will help you build those instincts so you'll know if X is the opportunity to go fro a dash grab or a dash cLK or etc.
Basically, don't autopilot cLK/cLP -> IAD jLK JHK as your main pressure.
I pretty much say that every time you play on skullbats. "Oh pickles got te hit.....but didn't confirm and dropped it." Just commit to the strings you do, so that when you do a dash in cLK, just keep pressing buttons into cMK -> sHP, instead of what is almost always cLK Hey you got the hi-oh look you just went right back into IAD jLK. It's scarier but it will help you build those instincts so you'll know if X is the opportunity to go fro a dash grab or a dash cLK or etc.
Basically, don't autopilot cLK/cLP -> IAD jLK JHK as your main pressure.
I get scared of doing blockstrings because of getting pbgc punished, but doing pbgc-safe confirm strings are something I'm trying to lab. Double c.lk c.mk or at longer ranges c.lk c.hp I can usually confirm off of but filia c.lk s.mk is harder, I still need to use s.hp right now but I'm working on it
ok so did a couple sets with kenin, the first one he used his pw team the whole time and despite me doing some things right I lost 0-20, today did another set with him and went 3-20 but he switched teams to para when it was 3-7 and I had a lot of close games so I definitely think I'm improving. Starting to really see what duck meant about noticing opportunites to get out of pressure without having to press buttons if i'm patient, vs para it was hard but vs painwheel/double I was able to reverse momentum by looking for the right moment. I feel like I'm getting better at confirms too maybe? but kenin was downbacking a lot so most of my openings were grabs anyway.
-Need to do fastfall j.hp more with double, I let the whole thing rock a lot of times to keep him pressured but it didn't get me any damage so I should be looking more opportunities to drop it. Wonder if there's a way to time it to make j.hp fastfall c.lk/s.lp combo on a grounded opponent?
-Conversions with double too, particularly off j.hp I tried to go for rejump j.lp and missed a lot, need to find other stuff to use to pick up
-With filia I got a decent number of hits with winnies j.lk fastcall c.lk I like that a lot. When the opponent starts to pushblock the j.lk it stops working though, so I do need to remember to do IAD throw whiff into a low as well, it's a tool I don't use hardly at all.
-Kenin was also saying to maybe reversal at neutral more, I think I'm pretty good at seeing good opportunities to pbgc reversal now but I don't reversal without pbgc basically ever, if I make the read on a button I usually try to contest it and end up failing or just block so I could stand to reversal a bit more, obviously that's not the thing to abuse but when used sparingly reversals are obviously really good (with one exception every time i did PBGC reversal vs kenin it worked because I tried to only do it when he wouldn't expect it).
Still want to get some more sets with top players in to try to improve but I'm happy with how I'm doing. I was going to learn fortune after NEC but I REALLY like this double/filia/bb team (which is surprising given how against it I was before) and I might just stick with this team for a while.
i think ive mentioned this before but a lot of the time I'll try to pbgc reversal something and end up just getting hit because i did the reversal part too late so at the end of the pushblock animation i was just holding forward. After beating dag 3-1 yesterday and losing to him 3-0 today I can see that this is a huge problem I am having. My blocks have actually gotten a lot better but then I get hit either because I fucked up the absolute guard or the pbgc and its really frustrating. I can get the reversal to come out 95% of the time easily in training so I think it's a matter of nerves during a match. Losing the big band mirror in really close games vs mock last night as well indicates to me that I really need to work on relaxing and not messing stuff up due to nerves, I think that might actually be one of my biggest problems right now.
i was gonna put something here after NEC but then i decided not to but now drunk shade has got me motivated
it should come as no surprise to anyone to hear that I was not happy with how I did at NEC. I wish SO BADLY that I had a replay of my match with biz casual but I don't unfortunately, but it was very frustrating to come so close and then not make top 16. A lot of really good players didn't make top 16 though and biz casual played super well so I shouldn't be too upset. Regardless, I wouldn't say I was unprepared for NEC but I do intend to spend my time in SG more productively before the next tournament I go to, I played a lot of QM and didn't really take things seriously until a couple weeks before the event. I also didn't play offline at all between SJ and NEC between some health issues and dates for monthlies not quite working for me, so hopefully I'll be able to get out to a few "locals".
the other change I'm making is dropping big band (again). Brass assist is fantastic for Filia but doesn't seem to do much for double. My logic before was "well double/filia is good and filia/brass is good so I can settle for double/brass not being very good", and while I still think the team is alright, whenever I am playing double it feels like I'm basically playing her solo anyway (with the exception of the cool raw tag combo into filia). Combined with the fact that I enjoy BB less and less (he's so big everything hits him wtf), it makes me want to move away from that character for my main team at least, I think bb anchor has merit as a counterpick though.
the new team I would like to run is pw/filia/double (??/updo/m bomber). PW is actually the character that interested me most when I started playing SG (both aesthetically and gameplay-wise) but I ended up playing filia instead because I had more fun with filia, and I didn't bother with PW for a long time because I thought her execution was too hard for me. Now that I'm better at the game though I want to give her another shot. So far her execution doesn't really seem that bad, but she is a very tricky character to play, I have to remember to do things that I don't have to do with any other characters. She seems fun so far, I'll have to see how much I like her once I actually know how to play her though. Regarding team composition, I talked with kenin back when I was still playing filia/double duo and he was talking about how double anchor isn't that great and only works if you have a point/2nd that build meter and don't need to use a lot which is why he thought team duck worked, because val has good meter build. PW I think has good meter build as well so on paper the team should work. Playing filia with m bomber is good too, not having an armored assist is teaching me to make smarter assist calls and I like what m bomber gives filia a lot. Having a safe DHC for filia is nice too.
so I've done some thinking on this team, wondering what the people who follow my thread here think.
Been having fun with the team so far, pw/bomber is about what you'd expect, filia/bomber is also fun. I still sometimes call m bomber like it's brass or L bomber, forgetting that it has neither armor nor invulnerability so I get happy birthdayed more often than I really should, and I still have a ways to go with more complex painwheel stuff but I think I'm good enough at the team to know I want to run it at the very least. Anyway, on to my theorycrafting:
The main thing I've noticed about this team is it feels very vanilla. For lack of a better phrasing, the team is solid but it doesn't feel like it has anything stupid. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's gotten me thinking about possible other orders to run the team in. So here's the idea I came up with today (COMPLETELY untested, this might end up going terribly but hey it'll be a learning experience):
Double (M bomber) / PW (?? Pinion) / Filia (L/H updo, probably H but i've entertained L for faster alpha counters even though I haven't tried it yet either). Double (M bomber) / PW (L pinion) / Filia (Updo/c.mk, warped suggested c.mk for obvious mixups for PW but also oki setups with double, seems strong but I'm not sure how willing I am to give up a DP assist on a character with weak reversals. Will play around with both. Either way, even in the pw/fil/dub order I'll be switching to L pinion instead of c.mp, seems good).
I saw this team order first a week or so ago from a video someone linked on maximillian's channel of a set between MMDS and Negus WAY back when SG first dropped on PC; Negus was running it. Initially I chalked it up to a team for older days when Filia was a better anchor and forgot about it, but after playing negus again and seeing him run Double/PW/Fukua I gave it a bit more thought.
Advantages:
-Double point is really good right now, and having double with assists behind her is something I missed from playing dub/fil/bb. Gllt i think has some double w/ L (i think?) pinion stuff, might play with other strengths of pinion depending on what's best for filia, I'll ask around.
-Notably, this team has Filia in the anchor position, which I have said in the past (and still believe) is her worst position by far. However, a significant benefit of this team is order flexibility. With double on point, and one bar of meter, I can raw tag combo into Filia (or at worst, fugazi tag), turning the order into Filia/PW/Double, which is a good order. Even without an initial hit, if I can get 2 bars I can safe DHC into install for PW/Filia/Double which of course is also a solid order. The fact that I can turn the team order from having a suboptimal anchor to having a good anchor regardless of whether I am in a winning or losing position (assuming I have the bar) is a great strength in my opinion.
Disadvantages:
-The big one: If something should happen to Double and I can't get the bar (or I just die), PW/Filia is a very weak shell IMO. I don't know if there are ANY strengths of pinion that can help filia's approach like bomber can, and even if there are pw/filia doesn't have safe ways to change my team order.
-Following a bit on that, Double is the only character on my team that I feel is a significant threat in the anchor ROLE (not position; i.e. as the last character on my team with a bunch of meter). If I lose double at the start of the game then my comeback potential is diminished. Not that I don't feel comfortable playing Filia; I'm more than happy to play a 1v1 between filia and almost any character in the game, and hopefully my PW will get to that point as well. Double can just do a whole lot more with bar than Filia/PW can.
Overall the team looks to me on paper a bit like what I've heard Skarmand talk about his team with para/robo/double(?); losing para and having to deal with robo incoming is sort of like this team losing double and having to deal with pw/filia shell, but the team has enough failsafes to change the order if things go south that hopefully it shouldn't be a problem. Thoughts?
disregard most of that last post, I don't like the double point order at all, if double dies the match is basically over, gonna stick with the original order for now
more importantly, had my WYL set against FuLLBLee D: today
notes:
-SSJ-ing my first Filia reset was the most impactful decision Fullbleed made the whole set. Cloud and dolfin noticed and a few people messaged it to me but that one mash made me play way more respectful for the ENTIRE set which let fullbleed get out of a lot of pressure.
-i choked super hard. a lot. At least once with every character I played besides filia I autoplioted into a combo then realized too late I didn't know how I was planning to reset or even finish my combo. Dropped a bunch of conversions, didn't get my BB level 5 DHC which almost cost me that game, overall I panicked and dropped a lot of shit I wasn't happy about.
-adapting better to my opponent, fullbleed went overhead a ton and I didn't upback at all cause I'm used to fortunes liking to go low when headless I guess I dunno. Either way I disagree strongly with people saying fullbleed's BB is his best character, his fortune is a lot scarier.
-Cloud's comment that I was playing too reactively was spot on, especially vs people playing beat extend I will usually go out of my way to wait for them to call BE so I can countercall it before doing anything, but this let fullbleed pressure me before calling BE and then punished my countercalling after his BE came out. I need to play more proactively but I don't really know how to safely with anyone besides Filia.
-peanuts said a lot of fullbleed's pressure was not safe and cloud also said I could be punishing some of what he was doing but I didn't really recognize points where I could do something (and even on my first watching of the vod I didn't really see what they were talking about, I'll probably rewatch it again when I'm not as tired).
overall fullbleed played really well, if I hadn't been choking I don't know if I would have won but I certainly would have made it closer. I also probably should have changed team order to be filia point because pw/double on point both basically just died, the games I won I did it with Filia anyway, and regardless of the team having PW/double second would give me a safe DHC as a backup anyway. still don't like bb but brass assist is good w/e I need to get better at PW still but thats nothing new
I would add punishing Giant Step in there. I don't think you punished that move once. At the very least I'm sure that lots of blocked Giant Steps went unpunished. After blocking it you usually went with IAD j.LP j.LK which I'm not sure is fast enough. I realize some of these times Big Band was kind of far away after the Giant Step and maybe a punish wasn't possible, but I would lab it. Maybe just a short dash into s.LP would do it.
-Cloud's comment that I was playing too reactively was spot on, especially vs people playing beat extend I will usually go out of my way to wait for them to call BE so I can countercall it before doing anything, but this let fullbleed pressure me before calling BE and then punished my countercalling after his BE came out. I need to play more proactively but I don't really know how to safely with anyone besides Filia.
Painwheel j.MP is hella disjointed, you can space it in a way that forces them to block but keeps you out of the range of a Beat Extend assist. Well, also, because that move is so active, it has a tendency to stuff L Beat Extend assist completely. Double j.HP works the same way fwiw. It's easier for Painwheel to get to the optimal range for her air normals though, since she can fly. Like I feel upback, fly, 6j.MP/5j.MP is really good.
I realize some of these times Big Band was kind of far away after the Giant Step and maybe a punish wasn't possible, but I would lab it. Maybe just a short dash into s.LP would do it.
that's pretty much why I wasn't punishing it, I was pretty filia's normals that were fast enough wouldn't work so I did the overhead stuff to keep pressure (though even with that mindset I should have done dash up low a few times too so he actually had to think instead of knowing he could just block overhead every time). Though dash s.lp is a good idea, I don't remember how fast the move is but maybe s.mp into ringlet could work too, I'll lab it.
Regarding beating extend (heh), I'll have to lab it i guess, every time I've used j.hp (w/ double) / j.mp (w/ pw) it's lost and in fact beat extend makes me much more hesitant to use that move in that matchup. I'll look for a spacing though.
E: quality came out bad but you can see the shit i'm talking about, fly 5mp at that distance gets scooped like why
ive said this a few times other places but i'll say it here because i have some other stuff i want to note down: i'm dropping PW for the forseeable future. I've played double/filia/bb a few times in the last week (WYL and the friday tournament) in matches where I decided I'd rather win than get PW experience, and I dont know if its from having not played the team in a while, playing a team i'm more comfortable with, or what, but I enjoyed myself a lot more. I also dont really feel motivated to improve with PW, I'd rather just get better with my main team so I'm sticking with it.
Found some cool stuff with cilia slide assist w/ BB, I can get full combos off of H step by doing H step -> call clide, M brass, as well as getting a full combo off of L brass (less practical because if L brass hits the opponent in the air cilia slide whiffs, but its neat anyhow). Need to get into the habit of getting taunt more with BB, since cloud pointed out to me that all the problems BB has dhcing into double are solved by having a taunted SSJ. BB can also do taunted SSJ on an opponents assist call and make it safe with monster DHC which is interesting.
One big problem I notice I have is that I have a lot of difficulty against characters who have really fast and strong air-to-air normals (Squigly with j.lk and Fukua with j.lp/j.hk are the main offenders). I feel like those normals always stuff my anti-airs and of course I can't contest them in the air. I labbed some ways to beat them but the spacing/situation never seems to arise in a real match.
Bomber call + M Atrain works well close range against chars/players that disrespect bb. You dont convert, but bb has really good oki so its worth keeping in mind. (Use h train if m has no armor but keep in mind its slower)
Bomber call + M Atrain works well close range against chars/players that disrespect bb. You dont convert, but bb has really good oki so its worth keeping in mind. (Use h train if m has no armor but keep in mind its slower)
pretty sure they're both the same speed and armor, just M has a shorter max distance and will go for the grab immediately if someone is in range. H always goes a set distance.
I imagine doing blocked taunted ssj against an assist will leave you kinda open to pbgc countersuper if they know you'll want to dhc out to monster. Though, its kind of frightening to want to try and pbgc super against a very active multihit super with 14 hits of armor.
pretty sure they're both the same speed and armor, just M has a shorter max distance and will go for the grab immediately if someone is in range. H always goes a set distance.
I imagine doing blocked taunted ssj against an assist will leave you kinda open to pbgc countersuper if they know you'll want to dhc out to monster. Though, its kind of frightening to want to try and pbgc super against a very active multihit super with 14 hits of armor.
you can DHC on any hit though and i'm pretty sure it's still safe so they can't really pbgc safely
you can DHC on any hit though and i'm pretty sure it's still safe so they can't really pbgc safely
puddle is incredibly vulnerable but all that really means is that if you're worried they'll pbgc your ssj, then you'll have to make sure not to dhc at the end of their pushblock or don't let it rock if they have a pbgc that beats ssj. And if you can see they're committing to a pbgc I guess you can choose to react with car instead of puddle. I guess all I'm saying is that it falls into the realm of sg stuff that works the majority of the time but can be beaten provided your opponent does specific things.
Though if safety is the goal wouldn't it be better to go for catheads instead? It'd cost the same as monster for a dhc and it lets you continue pressure and chip, unless your goal was to back off anyway I guess.
About taunting though, this is mostly just my personal problem I would definitely be careful about not letting it turn into a habit, cause there are a times where I forget I actually have the boost because I don't really think about the taunt unless I mess up the input or I know it can be punished. Unless you have hard knockdown from a-train (making you lose a chance at wakeup pressure) or at least one meter to cancel the taunt if you're unsafe and they try to punish, I'd suggest avoiding taunting. Or I guess you could have a combo setup for it but I don't think double or filia have anything for getting bb's taunt.
You can always get a taunt after a kill, which I'm trying to get into the habit of since big band's incoming mixups are either safe or not good. Cloud told me you could get a taunt with H bomber but I enjoy cilia slide waaaaaaaay too much to not use it. I'd never taunt at neutral though, and after a knockdown I'd rather go for oki than a taunt yeah.
Regarding the DHC stuff, catheads is good yeah. I should ask why cloud said monster and not catheads there might be a reason. Maybe you're more minus after catheads than monster so its easier to pbgc I dunno. To be honest I don't think pbgc super is really a reliable way out of it anyway since (in theory) I could react to the pushblock and dhc early or something. If they had a super they could PBGC into that would beat SSJ (USS is the only one that comes to mind but there might be more) I probably would just not do the super to kill assist thing against that character.
yeah that would work too I forgot about that, I was only thinking about supers. I'm sure theres other stuff I'm not thinking of though, but vs characters without a pbgc option that can beat taunted SSJ armor I dont think there's really a way to pbgc punish since I can vary my dhc timing, is what I'm saying
did some games with worldjem + @Cadenza that I didn't record (I have the replays but its way too much work to go through and put them into a video, in the future i should just record stuff live if i want it saved) and a set with @Fizzxwizz that he kindly recorded
vs worldjem:
8:58 PM - Sydoh: i think you like to go high a bit too much, still
8:58 PM - Sydoh: and i think you're underusing double
8:59 PM - Pickles: those are both true
8:59 PM - Sydoh: most of your gameplan seems to just wait around for an assist call to hit
8:59 PM - Sydoh: but if you go point double you have tons of neutral tools to use to pressure the opponent
8:59 PM - Pickles: re: going high, im used to people downbacking by default still and even if they dont my filia mixup can beat both high and low
8:59 PM - Pickles: but im not used to being antiaired yet
8:59 PM - Sydoh: like, if I were to play you in tourney right now
9:00 PM - Sydoh: I'd just go solo fukua
9:00 PM - Sydoh: and AA you all day.
9:00 PM - Sydoh: lol
9:00 PM - Pickles: ye
9:00 PM - Pickles: i tried to play around it but not sure how to approach t on the ground since you can make yourself plus with shadow anyway if i dashblock it
9:01 PM - Pickles: and the disjointedness of c.mp + the short range of filia's ground lights makes it hard to dash up with a button
9:02 PM - Pickles: your points on my double are also good, particularly vs fortune I don't really know how to approach in that MU so thats why i switched to filia
9:02 PM - Pickles: filia point*
9:02 PM - Sydoh: you should use 5HP and gun more for neutral
9:03 PM - Sydoh: but like
9:04 PM - Sydoh: Filia has worse neutral than Double
9:04 PM - Sydoh: with double you could at least challenge with j.HP
9:04 PM - Pickles: ye thats why i have double point because that order is better onpaper
9:04 PM - Sydoh: with Filia it was a lot more of jump block > call assist
-Need to improve my double a lot, I have a hard time contesting stuff on the ground, gotta shoot that gun more and use dash up low/throw more (the dash up low part I did do a better job at when I played vs fizz so thats something)
-Fukua c.mp is really annoying, not really sure how to contest it as filia. Maybe I can dash up L ringlet but that involves me not accidentally getting l updo which is hard. (will get to another point on this later)
vs Fizz:
Will preface this by saying our set was preceded by us fighting in ron's tournament, in which I thought I had fizz's number and went up 2-0 but then got reverse swept so our set after was my attempt at a salty runback. The set ended 30-20 in his favor, but after losing a ton at the beginning I managed to keep the wins gap ~10 for the rest of the set so I do think I made ok adaptations. Started out with filia/bb since that's what I used the last time I beat fizz in tournament, then switched to trio cause I wanted double's utility, then switched to filia/double because big band vs headless is suffering. This last duo I think I had the most success with. With that out of the way, notes on the set:
-Following my note about fukua's c.mp, I had a similar problem vs fizz in that he would high parry my resets. I won't deny that I VERY frequently go for IAD j.lk fastfall c.lk reset, since that reset will result in me getting a hit vs both downback and upback; however, like all tools there is such a thing as too much of a good thing and both fizz and worldjem caught on and started countering my reset with moves that wouldn't be punishable if I baited a mash (fukua c.mp and parry attempt respectively). Vs fizz I started to go low because he didn't low parry so that worked well but I also should throw more too, peanuts told me that overhead and throw were basically the same reset but i'm beginning to see that's not exactly true.
-One nice thing in my set with fizz is that I had a brief moment of clarity in Filia's movement; I started to use hairball more and using m bomber to pressure my opponent. It was really satisfying and I want to try to make more use of hairball/ground movement.
-With all 3 of my characters, I have to work on how to keep pressure after being pushblocked out. With filia I know sonic was talking about doing IAD j.mk fastfall, with double I probably should do fugazi and luger more, BB probably ebrake stuff idk -_-?
edit: vs twerkteam it mostly consisted of me getting touched by parasoul and then dying, his tear pressure is SUPER scary and even if I guessed the right way to block on his reset I couldn't do much other than block again until I eventually got hit, but one thing I noticed is that in a decent number of games I did get the first hit with double but I either dropped my L luger conversion or he guessed my reset and then I died after getting hit. I generally try to prioritize my neutral game and defense as far as what to improve on but I think I am at the point where I need some scarier resets, if my opponent isn't dead after I touched them once then I've made a mistake.
I'm really liking M bomber WAY more than brass at this point for filia, but unfortunately with my current team order I rarely get to take advantage of that (since when filia comes in double is usually either dead or bleeding so I dont want to call her anyway). Considered filia/double/BB order (and I do run that order if I feel more comfortable as filia over double in a MU) but the problem is after a DHC i end up with double/bb/filia which imo is the worst order of characters for my team. Still iffy about big band as usual; still love his oki and pressure, still have no fucking idea how to play his neutral and move around with him, and still hate how everything hits him. Maybe I'll give beo another try, he is also an oki character but I didn't like him much when i first tried him either
Vs fizz I started to go low because he didn't low parry so that worked well but I also should throw more too, peanuts told me that overhead and throw were basically the same reset but i'm beginning to see that's not exactly true.
I guess I should say that they lose to the same kind of block. If your opponent is defending in a way that's not blocking, the difference between throw and overhead can matter. For example if I see a Big Band is looking for something to parry (and it's usually pretty obvious) I'll just grab the shit out of him
I'm really liking M bomber WAY more than brass at this point for filia, but unfortunately with my current team order I rarely get to take advantage of that (since when filia comes in double is usually either dead or bleeding so I dont want to call her anyway). Considered filia/double/BB order (and I do run that order if I feel more comfortable as filia over double in a MU) but the problem is after a DHC i end up with double/bb/filia which imo is the worst order of characters for my team.
When I watch you play the feeling I get about your team is that it's hard to change your order if something goes wrong. You have your team in like, the only order where you have no safe DHCs, so you need to land a hit in order to change characters. I sort of have the same issue with Double/Big Band/Peacock now that I'm playing that order (at least as far as getting Double out), but it sort of works out since I'll tag out Double the first chance I get if she's missing literally any health. It might help to try playing Double like that, just s.HP and tag to another character if Double has been hit at all (or s.HP xx Monster > tag which if they're in the corner is very cheap).
All that said I haven't watched either of the above sets so maybe you're already doing that idk.
Still iffy about big band as usual; still love his oki and pressure, still have no fucking idea how to play his neutral and move around with him, and still hate how everything hits him. Maybe I'll give beo another try, he is also an oki character but I didn't like him much when i first tried him either
What if you played Big Band on point? His neutral is easier with assists. tbh I think your current team is fine but if you want to try something new that might be an idea.
I guess I should say that they lose to the same kind of block. If your opponent is defending in a way that's not blocking, the difference between throw and overhead can matter. For example if I see a Big Band is looking for something to parry (and it's usually pretty obvious) I'll just grab the shit out of him
i mean I of course didn't take your words to mean "throw and overhead are literally the same thing" but more like I had sort of gotten used to using overhead as my anti-downback option and now people are taking advantage of that vs me.
When I watch you play the feeling I get about your team is that it's hard to change your order if something goes wrong. You have your team in like, the only order where you have no safe DHCs, so you need to land a hit in order to change characters. I sort of have the same issue with Double/Big Band/Peacock now that I'm playing that order (at least as far as getting Double out), but it sort of works out since I'll tag out Double the first chance I get if she's missing literally any health. It might help to try playing Double like that, just s.HP and tag to another character if Double has been hit at all (or s.HP xx Monster > tag which if they're in the corner is very cheap).
This is pretty true, but the thing about the order I have it in now is that I am comfortable with the order even if things go the absolute worst (i.e. I get hit and have no way out and lose my point character). If double dies I am left with filia/bb which is obviously the duo I used to play and I am ok with playing filia behind brass. If double gets a hit in any way and I need to get her out I almost always have a bar so I can do my raw tag combo and already be hitting them with filia so that's why I never really did the s.hp tag thing. The other thing with the current order is that after DHC i end up with an order that gives me both assists (on paper anyway, in practice its usually just brass for starters but again that's often enough) but more importantly if filia dies then my last 2 characters are in the best order I would want them in. The filia point order also gives me a safe DHC but again, if I dhc out I'm left with a order I don't like and if filia dies I am also left with an order I don't like.
What if you played Big Band on point? His neutral is easier with assists. tbh I think your current team is fine but if you want to try something new that might be an idea.
I have tried that some over the past 2 or so weeks (tried it against you in QM today before I saw you posted this) and while it's alright I still just kinda feel weird about BB's movement. Being able to a-train and call bomber and make them hold that shit is pretty fun though I will admit.
quick update: thought I'd play around with some new chars; I feel like my improvement in SG has sort of stagnated. I thought at first that I'd try taking a break from SG and try other games, but since I have little interest in SFV and that's all the rage with the kids these days I figure the next best thing is play with some different characters to try to vary my approach to the game. Deciding that parasoul/fukua are currently 2 of the chars I hate fightiing the most, I decided to play around with twerk/shade's team. After about a day I decided parasoul is NOT the character for me at all, but surprisingly (to myself) I'm enjoying fukua quite a bit. Played around with pw/filia/fukua for a while but after a few days I remembered why I dropped pw before so I'm probably gonna end up playing sonic's team. Not quite sure on the order yet; filia point seems to be a really good order but in my experience from playing filia point when I was running filia/double/band order it leads to filia dying more frequently, which might be ok for sonic since he's so good on double/fukua but I don't think I'm quite as comfortable with my best (by far) character dying so fast.
ok so this update is probably going to be a breakpoint; most of my updates for the past months have been minor mostly useless shit that either had to do with tech or character crisising, but now its time to BUCKLE DOWN and really work on my problem points. Last few weeks I didn't entirely abstain from SG but i took a "mostly-break" to try other games, and coming back to SG for the ron tournament friday + peanuts' tournament saturday felt really good. Been playing sonic's team since last update and i'm pretty much sticking with it, i'm ok with fukua and drill is good so we'll roll with it. So with that resolved:
BIG PROBLEMS:
-LEARN TO PUSHBLOCK: a lot of times I pushblock at the very end of things or PB assists just to try to keep absolute guard for longer but it seems like I still get opened up at the end of the pushblock anyway, all pushblocking late does is keep me locked down for longer which doesn't help. Also working on pushblocking at the right times to get me out of pressure and not just using it to absolute guard whenever I get touched.
-DON'T JUMP: i feel like i've gotten better about upbacking by default all the time but I still chicken block/jump to approach way too much which leads to two problems: it opens me up to being forced to block things or get airgrabbed so I can't approach, and it also denies me ground-based options to deal with characters. Following this,
-ANTI-AIR: Lots of shit (eliza normals, squigly divekick pressure, beowulf normals, etc) beats me for free because I don't really know how to anti-air stuff (i try to lab it but in-match the spacing is always different or the situation is different etc. so my labbed scenarios don't apply), so I need to practice anti-airing opponents who use obvious or repetitive air approaches.
Other problems:
-Be able to reliably PBGC/reversal, the timing is weird sometimes and I can't really do it all the time so just need to grind it out.
-Vary mixups/setplay as to not be too repetive and/or obvious
You may notice that these problems are the same as i mentioned having a ton of other times, and you'd be completely right! I have a bad habit of trying to improve on small problems because I don't feel like really getting down to solving my main problems because its hard, but I really believe I have the potential to be a top player if I can fix these problems and it really makes me angry how I keep losing because of the same problems I've been having for years.
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