In all seriousness, you are definitely better than I am and I initially was unsure of what to comment on. I’ve watched your set thoroughly and, instead of trying to pick apart every single individual issue, I’ll focus on large scale issues that pop up from one fight to the next and generally affect you in the long term. I feel that these are far more important.
It’s very late and I think I’m ill, so I apologize for any typos up front.
Fight 1:
0:11 The very first thing you did in this fight was round-start DP. Remember this, because this is going to show up a ton throughout the set. Here it worked out for you; Milton made a bad read and you clobbered him for it. Later, not so much.
0:34 This is very minor, but Fenster taught me to not do j.mp → j.hp against Double, as it tends to drop. Omit the j.hp.
0:44 Here’s our second important issue: Your pushblocking. This generally doesn’t get you killed too much in
this set, but you are being incredibly impatient with your pushblocks and giving yourself little time to think on defense. I’m guilty of this too, but have recently been making strides in trying to block more, push less. Don’t pushblock too early on unless you’re convinced you need to absolute guard or are trying to escape a setup that requires a pushblock on the first hit. On top of this, you clearly tried to pushblock guard cancel into something (DP ?); your timing was off and you got blown up for it. There’s a lot of good reasons to do this, but if you aren’t convinced you can time or mash the input correctly, don’t do it and just play the defensive game.
You were counter 6 times in this fight’s neutral; only once were you poked without a counter hit and the lack of a hit spark suggest you
trying to push a button or do something. The number of counter hits suggests you are being impatient.
Fight 2:
2:05 This ties into the big issues mentioned above – round start reads and generally being impatient. Milton has given you no reason to go chase him down at the start of the fight, and yet you dove headfirst into an assist call. You are not thinking through the round start game and seriously need to do so. If you aren’t sure of what your opponent is going to do, be defensive. Super jump or up back backwards. Against Eliza, simple upbacking is better as this will protect you from a surprise DP from the opponent.
3:09 You were doing very well in this fight until you got yourself knocked into the corner and tried to jump out. I won’t kid you into thinking I’m good at predicting assist calls, but being cautious could have saved you from getting hit by bomber. If you really want to be aggressive and chew through the assist + point, your best bet is to hit Butcher’s Blade; it’s only 17 frames until the hyper armor kicks in. Be confident that the point won’t block it though, or else Sekhmet dies.
Immediately after this, you were counter hit again. Stop pushing buttons and play the defensive game. Yet after this, jump headfirst into Excellabella. If you’re getting hit by crap like this then that should be a red flag that you are both (a) jumping way too much, and (b) generally being impatient. Liam pointed out to me once that, as a solo, you can afford to take more damage and do not need to be in such a rush. Be willing to block. After
three successive counter hits, you eventually manage to land a PBGC → DP and escape, all to get counter hit three
more times.
Fight 3:
Three fights in and you’re still getting counter hit a lot. You aren’t learning your lesson and Milton is exploiting this. :( Once Milton got a hold of you, he was basically able to go batty on you because you never gave him a reason to stop.
Fight 4:
6:00 Here we have another round start DP. It’s still working at this point, but like I said, remember this because it’s going to haunt you later.
6:43 Good job blocking the cross up and the land cancel punish on Horus; I certainly can’t do the latter.
7:40 I’m not sure why you hit DP here. If it was to poke Bella, heavy would have been a better choice. Again, your aggression and inability to slow down kind of gets you killed here; you’re low on life, Milton’s on his last character and is sitting on
FIVE METER.
Fight 5:
You did round-start Throne call here. It’s not DP, but hang on, we’re almost at the punchline.
I’m afraid I don’t have much to comment on in this fight; I couldn’t find anything particularly obvious apart from both you being a bit nervous (?)
Fight 6:
9:53 Remember what I said about round-start DP? This is where it starts to get you killed – and here’s why: For nearly five fights in a row, you have been very aggressive. Round-start DPs, dash ins, Throne calls; you have done nothing but “do stuff” at the start of the fight and now Milton is starting to notice. To be fair, in a few fights it
did work, but now that Milton is picking up on it, he’s pretty much blowing you up for free now simply by chicken blocking and calling assist.
10:52 Oh hey look, Milton must be that guy whose
tech I completely ripped off a while back. If you hadn’t teched that throw I would have been very upset. : ^)
10:54 For about six fights now you’ve attempted to jump at Milton and push buttons and he has countered you with an assist numerous times. I strongly suggest empty forward jumping and blocking if you are desperate to move. Not ten seconds later you do the same exact thing
again. You aren’t learning your lesson and Milton is punishing you for it.
Fight 7:
11:31 You tried to do round start DP again but goofed it up, and instead did forward jump into the death. :( Also, Milton is straight up calling you on your behavior at this point; he did the exact same thing at round start as Fight 6 (Upback + Assist) and you got hit by it again. Even if you had hit DP correctly, the assist would have still snagged you for a counter hit.
11:35 Now you’re getting hit by raw Birdkicks because you jump-ins have become predictable. Immediately after this, you’re put into the corner and Milton is so convinced that you’ll do something, he does block + assist. Even though you catch the point, the assist still does its jobs and catches you pushing a button.
12:05 You could have killed Eliza had you simply finished your combo into Lady of Slaughter. You did a good job blocking the raw tag, but then you let Bella get away. :( Milton calls your forward jump –
for the umpteenth time – and hits you with another assist call.
12:43
@Cadenza will have a different opinion about this, but here goes: When caught in Catheads, I strongly suggest pushblocking to keep Double away – at full screen – and when close, pushblocking into a high – low block to absolute guard and protect yourself from mixup shenanigans. Cadenza says otherwise; I think it has to do with pushblocking shortening the blockstun (?) but I’m not sure. He is very knowledgeable about this sort of thing and would know more. Consider it my two cents. At the very least, had you been pushblocking you could have kept Double out of range and easily protect yourself from the Scilia Slide.
Fight 8:
14:18 This is the third time in a row Milton has blown you up for doing round-start DP and you still aren’t catching on. Stop it. If you absolutely insist on being aggressive at the start, I discovered that TK – j.Signature Attack
backwards will work, as it pushes Eliza’s center of mass backwards, is staggered, and has hyper armor. It can still be punished if the opponent is reasonably on top of things, but it allows you to bully assist calls that you normally can’t, such as L Beat Extend.
15:29 You did some decent blocking here, and as I’ve been trying to get it, it allowed you to think more clearly and punish accordingly.
16:01 A minor issue, but worth mentioning: Watch your undizzy bar. If you get caught off guard and realize you’re out of undizzy, but are in the middle of a juggle combo, quickly do Nekhbet Breaker for a free hard knock-down. It’s definitely better than potentially letting your opponent get away if you can’t think of a reset on the fly.
Fight 9:
17:23 I have no words.
A better air poke against Bella is j.mk. I’m not going to say stop using j.hk, since it was clearly working for you, but I do feel that j.mk is better. Notably, j.mk beats Bella’s “Clap” which some Bella’s are very dependent on. Also, Milton has jumped at you multiple times in the fight and you aren’t attempt to anti-air him.
It looks like you panicked somewhat towards the end when fighting Bella, but otherwise you did very well.
Fight 10:
19:43 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
20:00 Remember that everything Sekhmet does is unsafe, so baring a very clever frame trap, there’s little she can do to you on block. Milton had no assist out so there was no reason to push block him for this. I strongly urge you to practice snapping Sekhmet out so you can do it more impulsively; it is harder to do than it looks since if your timing is off you’ll get Birdkick instead.
I saw several dropped combos from you in this fight. I’m not too sure what to say about this, other than to continue practicing.
Multiple times I’ve seen mash DP in this fight as well. Don’t do this against Double; some quirk of how her normals work renders PBGC → DP nearly impossible to do. Once again, just play the blocking game since I’ve found that this almost always works better on her; empty pushblock on her final hits as this will at least get her off of you.
Fight 11:
21:50 Normally I’d make a joke here or say how it worked or something like that, but you really need to understand something.
At the character select screen, are you actually looking at the opponent’s team? This is very important and you need to do this. Whenever I fight someone, I try to wait at character select and see what their assist’s are; this will dictate how the fight will go and also dictate what you can do at round start. For example: Milton has M Bomber and Cerecopter;
both of these blow up round start DP. Both beat jump ins. M Bomber beats Sewer calls. Neither beat forward super jumps or up-backing.
Might point is that you need to observe the opponent’s team and at least run the rock-paper-scissors game through your head. For example, if the other guy has L Beat Extend, your best bet is to block since L Beat Extend beats practically everything. On the other hand, if your opponent has a lot of mixup assists, then these really won’t aid him much in the neutral and will generally allow you to be more aggressive.
22:27 I do not recommend mashing Level 3 for this exact reason. If gets read, you lose
big time, both in terms of meter and damage. I generally only try to reverse with Level
on reaction as this guarantees the opponent has committed to something, or if I have nothing to lose by doing so, (ie, facing elimination in a tournament setting.)
The final score 8 – 3. You still have room for improvement. You dropped several combos throughout the set and I think this cost you a lot of free damage. You are a solo, cash in on your extra damage.
I think you have really good mixups and this is by far your strongest point.
Finally, I actually watch Filias and Valentines to study up on SG’s neutral game. I strongly recommend that you watch
this footage from the most recent Salty!, as it shows WingZero absolutely dominating with solo Filia.
