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My Desire to Improve My Decision Making and my Upcoming Skullgirls YouTube series

FuLLBLeeD

FuLLBLeeD

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Ms. Fortune Unknown Eliza
Hi everyone! It's me FuLLBLeeD! Some of you may know me, I was at UFGT and EVO for Skullgirls this year (I also entered Skullgirls at EVO last year but I had literally just started playing it and was in the grasp of the devil's game, UMvC3, at that time). I also play this video game on the internet a lot, and have just started streaming (shoutouts to Google Fiber).

I feel like I'm decent at this game and can hold my own against good players, but there's still a lot of work I need to do to get where I want to be. Watching my recorded gameplay, there's a lot of problems I notice. This video will serve as a good example:

In general, the problems I see:

-Never spending meter when it will clearly kill a character, and doing resets instead
-Not using combos as an opportunity to DHC in a new character and let the old character recover life
-Bad assist calls (I've gotten A LOT better about this though)
-Doing combos and resets in the corner that give up corner positioning (this is a big one)
-Doing the same resets over and over, instead of going for different resets, burst baits, or attempting to bait reversals
-Weak incoming character mixups
-No counterhit, corner or character specific combos yet
-Working assist extensions into combos
-Developing resets using assist extensions

The last one is pretty huge. I maybe have one or two resets/burst baits per characters that I ever use, and everyone I play has seen them so many times they are simply not effective anymore. For example, with Fortune (head on) my favorite reset is s.HK LK Fiber Upper, j.LP, j.MP, low, throw, or overhead. I say my favorite because this is literally the only one I do. The opponent just raw tags and beats the low attempt because they know its coming 100% of the time. I also don't really even utilize all the reset options off this combo anyway, and just do the same type of reset over and over again.

I know some burst baits with Fortune, and my resets with head off Fortune are good! However, I don't have enough in the toolbox right now. Good Skullgirls players can put the opponent in a 3 or 4 way guessing game as soon as they land a hit as to how they're going to reset them. I'm not there yet.

My other issue is that, my team is front loaded. I think my Fortune is good. But once she's dead? Woo boy I am in trouble.

I need to work on Fukua and Big Band a lot more. Which means, just playing Fukua, Big Band in matches, so I don't have Fortune to carry the team. This was my problem in UMvC3 too. I simply sunk all my time into one of my characters instead of all three.

YouTube Video Series

My idea to fix these issues and become a better player is by doing a YouTube/Twitch video series. The idea of the video series is I run sets with players while we talk on Skype/Vent/Teamspeak whatever, and while we are playing the set I record it with VLC. When its done, we remain on whatever VOIP program we're using, but I then stream back the OBS recording in VLC,and we talk over it. VLC is useful because it has pause and advance by frame features that make reviewing fighting game footage easier and more useful. The first person I wanted to have on this show was @mcpeanuts . We already played a set that I recorded which was useful and should serve as a demo of what I want to do, but I actually want to play mcpeanuts again and in the context of the show with the VLC recording.

I'm really busy right now with work and school, and I'm going to figure out how to use OBS well enough to stream VLC recordings, but I want to get this started as soon as I find time. Monday nights would probably be good.

Tentative Ideas for this Video Series (Open to Suggestions!)
-One More Once
-First To Burst
-Deadass Book Club

....Yeah, I haven't really though of many. So if you have any ideas please let me know.

So that's my thread, for now. I'll probably update it more with my notes of stuff I need to work on later, but I'm at work now and barely conscious. If you're interested in being on the YouTube series please let me know here!
 
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Just to be a devil's advocate, is using (for example) a few simple straight frame advantaged 33/33/33 frametrap low/throw or overhead/bait reversal resets habitually really costing anyone that many games?

I feel like being capable of "speaking reset" and improvisationally flowing through a bunch of gimmick resets (while also doing a lot of mental undizzy calculations) is a big executional and mental burden in a game where you already have tons of mental-muscle memory connections like character specific combos and is the real cause of a lot of situations where you look like you're "playing stupid" and doing things like flowing into one of a hundred chunks of reset muscle memory instead of a simple kill.
 
watching 20 mins and what i'm seeing is poor fukua vs peacock.....yeahhhhh i still have no answer to that mess. on top of that i'm still seeing the winnie combo being edged in to your fingers no comment on your combo route but Please o please learn your shadow conversions and your assist conversions.

i don't agree with your HK Drill just as an assist calls and when you're in neutral in fukua. just tighten up your calls but you know that.

against big band you kept doing fireball....which is cool? but i was waiting for peanuts to get smart and smack your ass out of the air for spamming fireball like that. eventually he went typical band route and H brass into SSJ and screwed you over

treat that matchup like peacock except you can TRIP band so alternate your patterns.

the problem is that i can't even see your fukua actually play because most times you screw yourself and have to deal with peacock as fukua and that's basically hell. atleast squigly's super jump was more slendy for get through and stuff.

nothing notable to comment on except other than your love for fireballs and winnie combos. Good stuff.
 
obregon said:
Just to be a devil's advocate, is using (for example) a few simple straight frame advantaged 33/33/33 frametrap low/throw or overhead/bait reversal resets habitually really costing anyone that many games?

I feel like being capable of "speaking reset" and improvisationally flowing through a bunch of gimmick resets (while also doing a lot of mental undizzy calculations) is a big executional and mental burden in a game where you already have tons of mental-muscle memory connections like character specific combos and is the real cause of a lot of situations where you look like you're "playing stupid" and doing things like flowing into one of a hundred chunks of reset muscle memory instead of a simple kill.

The problem is I always do the same option off the LK Fiber reset. If I tightened it up it would actually be a 33/33/33 mixup and it would make it way more viable.
 
Honestly speaking I really have no idea how to play Fukua neutral. I'm still clinging on to old Fukua and "j.HK is all you need". I'm more of a visual learner than a "figuring stuff out yourself" type of guy when it comes to learning a character, so I'm anxiously awaiting your guide @Dreamepitaph
 
FuLLBLeeD said:
Honestly speaking I really have no idea how to play Fukua neutral. I'm still clinging on to old Fukua and "j.HK is all you need". I'm more of a visual learner than a "figuring stuff out yourself" type of guy when it comes to learning a character, so I'm anxiously awaiting your guide @Dreamepitaph
I'm still working on it besides my finals at my tech school. It WILL get done. i can promise any fukua player that much. i'm also working with some of the mods here to have it stickied since i also want to record the stuff as well.
 
I respect what your trying to do. We can't have the same 20 good players in the scene, we need to branch out and educate the other players in the Scene to become better. I admit that in your list I am fall in one or two on the list, but its good idea to really analyze your wins and loses.
 
I really need to record sets I play. The idea is too record them the night before so I can look them over at work, but I forget to record them, so it kind of defeats the purpose.
 

Here is my most recent set with Mcpeanuts. I messed up the recording so you don't get to hear the Skype audio and Mcpeanuts talking. Whoops! Anyway I'm going to analyze this later, for now my problems are really apparent (not using meter well like when it will 100% sure kill a character, obvious resets, not using all my neutral options, etc).
 
so here's list of resets.
s hp> j lk > j mk > delay > j hk
j LP.> j LK > j hk.*
s hp > j mp> j mk.*
j lp > j mk > j hk**
all of these crossunders.
**= very easily seen but can work heavies

j lk > j. mp > j mk > s lp > cmd throw

s hp > little pause > j lk > j mp> j mk > s lk > c hk > drill or super or w.e.
C MP > c hk > drill or super.

those are some i've used in the video i'm sure.
 
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So I've been frustrated with Skullgirls lately. I feel like I play very sloppy, drop a lot of stuff, and in general throw away games when I clearly have the advantage. So right now I really haven't been recording and analyzing sets. Instead, I've been learning a new game (KoF13) and making some detailed notes on what I need to work on in Skullgirls with OneNote. I'll share those now.

Fukua

The Winnie bnb drops too often to be my go to combo anymore. I need something else. I've been learning this combo: http://skullgirls.com/forums/index.php?threads/fukuas-original-combos.2411/page-7#post-194605 instead. Its universal (you have to do c.LK, c.MP, c.HP on Squiggly/Cerebella) but as long as you keep that in mind it never drops. However, with this new route I'm going to have to find other hit confirms off things like Throw x BFF, armor command throw and various types of Shadows. My BIGGEST problem with Fukua right now, aside from the neutral, is never hit confirming properly and constantly dropping combos. I get IPS so often still its embarrassing. I simply need to go into training mode and grind this stuff out more. I'm pretty much done trying to hit that stupid c.MP after j.HK link though. Learning these Fukua combos and getting them 100% into muscle memory is the most important thing for me right now.

Looking forward to @Dreamepitaph 's Fukua guide, I'm sure it will help a lot.

Fortune

My pressure strings are kind of janky sometimes. I still too often accidentally zoom the head when I just want headbutt, and I always go for El Gato instead of using slide, tick throws, or IAD j.LK, j.MK triple overhead pressure after I've headbutted. I also should be calling Fukua during blockstun more, especially in the corner. In addition I need to work on the head on air throw -> j.HP combo Taluda does all the time, work on the new prototype Headless combo by Khaosmuffins with Fiber Uppercut and j.HK in it.

I need to be doing the burst baits I know with head on Fortune more often (both of the ones Stuff does, one with j.HK and the other with slide) and I need to be incorporating better resets off of L Fiber Upper j.LP, j.MP or L Fiber Upper j.LP, j.MK (hit) j.HK fast fall. My resets and burst baits with headless Fortune are pretty good for the time being.

Big Band

j.MK, j.LP, j.MP, j.LK air string and the resets off it. Better corner combo because the one I have now isn't really optimal. Confirms off Cymbal Clash in our near the corner.

I have a lot of "stare downs" with Big Band when I have the opponent in the corner with him and apply no pressure or unsafe pressure. I need to be doing more tick throws and j.LK xx Cymbal Clash fuzzy setups.

I need to play this character a lot more. He's arguably my weakest character right now.



Universal
Assist extensions in combos. I have one with Fukua HK Drill in my Fortune bnb but I still drop it all the time. In terms of importance this up there with the Fukua confirms; I REALLY need to get this down. I don't have any assist extensions in my Fukua or Big Band bnbs.

Stuff that will come later:
Experimenting with meaty setups for incoming character mixups for all characters
Mixups and crossunder setups using L Beat Extend
Counterhit combos with all characters
Optimized corner combos for all characters
Optimized counterhit corner combos for all characters
Learning how to play "Sweet Georgia Brown" with Big Band

In general though, I think after KO I'm going to take a little bit of a break from this game. When I was in a similar position in UMvC3 when I played that game seriously (constantly getting frustrated, bad habits, sloppy neutral, etc) taking a break for a bit cleared up most of the those bad habits and cleared my head so I was able to approach neutral in a better way. I'm sure doing it for Skullgirls will do the same.
 

Finally got around to analyzing (some of) my set with @mcpeanuts from forever ago. Here's what I noticed:


Mcpeanuts

Game 1:

-Calling Fukua fullscreen when she won’t do anything, why why why why why

-Snap early in double snap combos, there’s no reason to keep the combo going as long as I did

-1:47 More s.LP, c.LP, s.MP with Fortune to let head recover. Should have tick thrown hear to kill double, OR I should have called Fukua assist this is literally why I have it. By that I mean I should have been holding HP and shouldn’t have dropped the combo

-Call Fukua assist when I start pressuring with fortune, once again that’s what it is for

-Be better about using slide and overhead. The head should be fully recovered when I do these moves so I convert off them on hit or give myself frame advantage on block

- At 2:25, why did I not raw tag in Big Band to hit Peacock here? I never raw tag. Fortune would have live and I could have converted into Big Band level three on hit. I need to raw tag in characters when I get an opportunity. No reason to keep Fortune in even if she is my bae

-At 2:46, should be looking to BFF in neutral with Fukua to beat Peacock zoning rather than looking for chances to do fireball super

-At 2:53, I land a clean counterhit H Brass Knuckle with three meters and do….SSJ. Why. This is why this thread exists. Peacock might not have died but she would have been very close, possibly in chip death range

-3:11, but in general as well, I need better incoming mixups. My incoming mixups suck

-3:15, I hit Double with Cymbal clash when she barely has any life left and go for a combo and drop it. If I had just supered, she would have been dead. Don’t go for a big combo when the opponent has no life left and you are 100% guaranteed to kill them with said super

-3:22, stop hitting buttons after catheads oh my god

Mcpeanuts almost killed me, I should have had the match in three places and just kept making huge mistakes and allowing him to come back

Game 2

-4:27 really need to stop getting hit by this reset



-4:37 really need to stop getting hit by falling j.HP throw

-4:43 need to practice headspike combo more because I still drop it

-4:48 should have been mindful of IPS here

-4:52, I need to be calling Fukua here, and not using s.MK in blockstrings, s.LP, s.LP, s.MP or c.LK. Also I should have delayed slide more so the head could have given me real frame advantage…which brings me too

-I don’t tick throw enough in general, if I had thrown here, I would have gone through beat extend and could have used the head to get a conversion off the throw. With all the meter I had, I could have easily killed double

-5:26, I canceled before Fukua’s animation had completed and lost a lot of damage. If I had waited for it to finish it would have killed, and I might have been able to kill for just one more meter instead of two

-Need to be doing a hell of a lot more s.HK xx fireballs with Fukua

-So much BRASS should really be sweeping here then doing a Shadow off the sweep

Game 3

-Right off the bat, I drop a double snap by going for the KhaosMuffins bnb (which wouldn’t work against two characters of this weight class anyway) when I literally could have done a basic corner carry chain into double snap. I lose a free character kill for this

-I grab Double with Beat Extend, while it’s sometimes hard to tell with the dash under, I should really always try to be on the side with corner carry

-I need to learn the fortune air throw conversion and incorporate air throws into my resets

-I actually used a tick throw, yay! Calling Big Band here was bad though, because I could have just killed with three Rekkas and then would have had the assist available for an incoming character mixup

-Whenever Peacock uses item drop, I should do BFF. It’s pretty free. Peacock (or more specifically Mcpeanut’s team) has no way to cancel that into a super or DHC it to make it safe

-7:55 OK, so I do a good reversal drill and cancel into fireball. That’s good! DHCing into Big Band wasn’t really worth it though. I lost all his read life and it didn’t kill. Should have just ran toward the corner and did an oki setup on Peacock, which WOULD have killed if it hit as I could easily build the bar back and have three meters for a combo into a DHC. This is what I’m talking about when I say I need to improve my decision making. Not only that, but I did OTG MP Brass Knuckle into super. Not only did I waste ANOTHER meter for nothing, I gave up positioning. You should only ever do a second SSJ in a combo if it’s going to kill. Giving up positioning with Big Band isn’t worth it especially in this matchup

-8:01/whatever when Peacock is backdashing near the corner I should really Brass Knuckle her

-When I have Peacock near the corner (or anyone near the corner) I need to press my advantage more instead of just starting at them. I wonder if parrying MP Bang would give me a punish. Probably?

-8:19 if I know MP Bang is coming I should be looking to parry and punish it



OK so with Fortune I need stop chaining into s.MK on block since it has crappy frame advantage. More s.LP, c.LK and s.MP



I’m gonna stop analyzing here because the things I need to work on are super apparent and throughout the set I’m going to end up repeating myself.



In general, though:

-Better headless Fortune pressure/blockstrings (why am I doing s.MK on block that move sucks hard)

-Better neutral decisions

-Finishing combos and spending meter when it will kill

-Be more aggressive with Big Band

-Look for obvious slow reversals and parry or punish them

-Work on execution stuff (especially with Fukua) so I drop stuff less

-Stop giving up corner positioning for free/no reason

-Stop doing baby easy Big Band baby combos when a normal bnb will kill them

-Better defense and neutral with Big Band in general
 
FuLLBLeeD said:
-So much BRASS should really be sweeping here then doing a Shadow off the sweep
I was doing L Brass here for what it's worth, so it's not like there's any armor to break. Fukua's sweep might low profile it though, I'm not sure.

FuLLBLeeD said:
-Whenever Peacock uses item drop, I should do BFF. It’s pretty free. Peacock (or more specifically Mcpeanut’s team) has no way to cancel that into a super or DHC it to make it safe
Hm, couldn't I super then DHC to Super Sonic Jazz? In my experience SSJ beats BFF clean.

FuLLBLeeD said:
-7:55 OK, so I do a good reversal drill and cancel into fireball. That’s good! DHCing into Big Band wasn’t really worth it though. I lost all his read life and it didn’t kill. Should have just ran toward the corner and did an oki setup on Peacock, which WOULD have killed if it hit as I could easily build the bar back and have three meters for a combo into a DHC. This is what I’m talking about when I say I need to improve my decision making. Not only that, but I did OTG MP Brass Knuckle into super. Not only did I waste ANOTHER meter for nothing, I gave up positioning. You should only ever do a second SSJ in a combo if it’s going to kill. Giving up positioning with Big Band isn’t worth it especially in this matchup
I think the DHC was worth it actually, it's a lot of damage on what is clearly my best character. The SSJ to put me out of the corner was a mistake, though.

FuLLBLeeD said:
-8:01/whatever when Peacock is backdashing near the corner I should really Brass Knuckle her
I think you should Brass way more often in this matchup in general. Once you realize Peacock can't punish an H Brass that's blocked at the knuckles with anything but Argus, you realize oh shit I can just do this move as much as I want as long as I space it and I'm not really gonna get punished too bad if it's blocked. If it's blocked deep though Peacock can full punish (Lethalmind fucked me up at Next Level by dashing in with Peacock so he would be in range to punish Brass... I should try that). Also always be ready to cancel into SSJ if you see Peacock teleport.

FuLLBLeeD said:
-When I have Peacock near the corner (or anyone near the corner) I need to press my advantage more instead of just starting at them. I wonder if parrying MP Bang would give me a punish. Probably?

-8:19 if I know MP Bang is coming I should be looking to parry and punish it
Sounds like a lot of work. I would just grab it. LP Bang is a move that exists for sure but I think you can space your grab so that LP Bang would whiff; it has no range and Big Band's throw is gigantic. LP Bang is also not worth being scared of against anyone but Skarmand, and he doesn't even play Peacock anymore.
 
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Ayy lmao whats good its your boy FuLLBLeeD

I decided to bump this thread because I'm doing match analysis again. I'm not going through and individually timestamping shit anymore like sempai @mcpeanuts does because that shit takes FOREVER. Instead I'm watching, looking for patterns and problems, I need to fix, and jotting down notes in OneNote (I'm a huge fucking nerd) of things I notice.

My most recent match was with Dhoppler, which is here:

Annnnd here's what I noticed:

General
STOP UPBACKING SO MUCH

Watch assist calls. Still being pretty sloppy

Practice incoming character mixups

Put opponent in some sort of blockstun after they block beat extend for a mixup



Fortune

-Practice converting into corner combo

-Practice doing headbutt, j.HK xx L fiber instead of zoom for corner combo conversion to avoid IPS

-Use lows and throws more. Stop using HK Fiber Upper to move around all the time

-Practice corner combos and corner confirms

-Use s.MK less in blockstrings, use s.MP and s.LP more

-ALWAYS DHC when Fortune is low on life

-Watch for upbacking in the corner and do air throws, fiber upper, or beat extend calls to stop it

-Do more throws after blocked j.HP

-Do more frametraps/blockstrings with assist calls and mixup the opponent after they leave blockstun w/ head on Fortune

-Practice airthrow combo and corner throw fiber upper combo



Fukua

-Play more reactionary with Fukua. Look for opportunities to bff
-MORE RESETS WITH FUKUA! Resets off MK Shadow, resets off c.LK, c.MP. Crossunder and crossover resets.

-Learn and do burst baits with Fukua

-need to be reseting WAY earlier in Fukua combos are going for a burst bait earlier

-Vary offense more. Still hardly using fast or even armored command grab

-Do LK shadow xxx BFF in situations where you can't convert normally (after beta change you need to do j.HK to convert off LK shadow)


Big Band

-Play more grounded footsies.

-Don't throw out cymbal clash as much

-If you're going to cymbal clash, do j.LK xx Cymbal clash

-Use more fuzzy j.LK

-JUMP LESS

-Work on keeping the opponent out with zoning rather than being in their face

-Practice level 5 and taunt inputs

-Practice confirms off of Timpani Dive in the corner: falling j.MK into whatever

-Practice corner combos

-Be more patient in general. Look for parry and punish opportunities

-Different/varied pressure strings with Big Band

I played a set with @Fizzxwizz recently and I'm going to look over that one too as well, but I imagine the notes I take are going to be similar in terms of what I need to work on. If anyone wants to run sets with me just hit me up on here or Steam.

edit: Oh yeah, and I have a question for everyone. If your biggest problem is limited offense/not using all your characters tools and always using the same patterns, what's the best way to go about fixing that? I realize this is kind of a big question.
 
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FuLLBLeeD said:
edit: Oh yeah, and I have a question for everyone. If your biggest problem is limited offense/not using all your characters tools and always using the same patterns, what's the best way to go about fixing that? I realize this is kind of a big question.

Force yourself to experiment with other tools, even if it's out of your comfort zone or nets you some losses at first. For an example from me, most parasouls don't use jHK in neutral except when backed by assist or with a tear, so I thought that button was useless for the longest time. And while the button is still pretty gimmicky and isn't like the best thing ever, I at least now know a bunch of situations where it comes in handy and how to use it a little better than before. And you can bet I took a bunch of losses of games because I played with the button too much.

To get out of bad habits, same thing kind of. Again, a parasoul can get farther than they should by just doing cLK-bHK since not a lot of people deal with it well, but using it more and more just makes the player simple minded when it won't work on actual good players. Force yourself to try and go for different mixups, even if they aren't as reliable, since making yourself doing different things can also lead to happy accidents where you find a mixup you never thought you had before.

tl;dr - Force yourself to experiment and do different things in casual/practice stuff, no matter win or lose, cause the learning part is the most important part in this kind of situation. Exploring a bit outside of your comfort zone will help you realize new things you never learned before and be good self-reflection for how you currently play.
 
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FuLLBLeeD said:
edit: Oh yeah, and I have a question for everyone. If your biggest problem is limited offense/not using all your characters tools and always using the same patterns, what's the best way to go about fixing that? I realize this is kind of a big question.
My approach to this is just like, say there's a certain move I feel like I should use more, like L Brass. I play some matches over a long period of time, and I do L Brass all the time, regardless of what's going on on screen or what's happening around me. Based on when the move is effective and when it isn't, I eventually learn when it's a good idea to use the move. In this case I found that when they're falling from a jump at a certain spacing, L Brass is a really good move. I feel like you kind of can only learn things in this way through quick match because if you play a long set with someone they eventually notice you're just doing one move over and over and adjust their playstyle to beat it (which is rude imo).
 
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Fizzxwizz said:
Something I've heard people do to develop/break habits is to focus entirely on doing those things in arcade mode.

I've never tried this but it sounds like a no-pressure place to do that.

Yeah, practicing against the CPU is actually a good idea for learning and practicing new ways of opening the opponent up. Especially with the way the AI works in this game.
 
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I just ran some longer sets against people. And here they are!


VS @Bit_Strife


VS @Elda Taluda


VS @Swiftfox-Dash


Will go over these when I get a minute.

Off the bat, my Fukua neutral needs a TON of work. If anyone has any ideas how I can improve in that area (I have some of my own but ill post those later), let me know.
 
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@FuLLBLeeD i'll do an analysis a day. this one will be about bitstrife

so skipping to the fukua parts. in your first match against bit strife. you messed up by using the wrong super. that's fine. you then proceed to charge ahead instead of chipping him out possibly. there are certain risk like counter super into SBO tho.

Nice counter super.
you got killed by bella because you expected the mash but you were at the incorrect distance.

match 2
Nice j.hk challenge, next time just do s.lp or c.lp instead of s.lk. that way you can just do s.lp, c.mp, c.hp into super and just happy b-day for your win.
Thank god bitstrife didn't double snap you.

most of the whole set the problem with why you're not progessing as much as you would hope is because you're playing like the typical SG player and figure the buttons would do the work.

while you're at neutral you can take your time. stop trying to immediately catch them with j.hk. you got all the time in the world. you don't even need to go to the air to get in.

my main advice when i looked at you vs bit strife is that you need to think a bit more when you're playing fukua(lol what?) cause the ability to chuck a fireball and move your way in through using L fireball is a lot more useful than just run up j.hk.

the times you died was the times you tried to immediately get out the situation or immediately tried to gain the advantageous situation
 
ayy lmao what's good its yo boy FuLLBLeeD.

It's been a while hasn't it? I've got a lot to talk about, so hopefully the people that watch my thread can give some feedback! If you could, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm going to put my giant nerd post wall of text into sections to make it easier for people to read.

I guess we'll get the biggest thing out of the way first.

I. Team Crisis: To Fukua or not To Fukua?

I've been having a bit of a character crisis and really thinking a lot about what kind of team I want to play in Skullgirls. I've also been thinking a lot about what I actually need to do to tier up as a player. I understand how the game works mechanically, my neutral is decent...but I'm still getting crushed by people that are truly good at this game. What gives? Well, the easy answer is that there are a lot of small things I need to fix in order to get better that the truly great Skullgirls player are doing that I'm not. The long answer is, I need to finally start practicing things I haven't really paid attention too. These include: incoming character mixups, anti-mash setups and counterhit combos. These also include more reset points in my combos and more burst baits. I know a few good ones with all my characters, but I never DO them. I always reset the same way and anyone that plays with me with any sort of frequency just blocks all/doesn't get hit by them.

The other issue is my team. After last year's UFGT, it was apparent that I would have to way more than "CALL BRASS ASSIST" and "IAD J.HP" to get good at this game. So I switched to beat extend and decided to add Fukua. Fukua has been a weird character choice for me for awhile now. The reason I picked her was because of her assist. HK Drill is absolutely AMAZING for Fortune. It's great for head on and head off in multiple ways. It lets you apply pressure, convert off throws, extend your combos, do resets, and with headless it locks the opponent down in blockstun why you have time to move your head around and reposition it. I really like this assist. So why the second thoughts?

I never bothered properly learning Fukua. I knew the Winnie bnb and I would basically do nothing but that. And it worked! For awhile. Now, with the impending nerfs, its more apparent than ever that I am actually going to have to learn this character. She's a zoning character that's very setup heavy once you land a hit. That never meshed well with me as a playstyle, really, but I really LOVE Drill so. There's a bunch of setups @Dreamepitaph has given me that I've never really practiced that much. Which brings me to my next point...

I enjoy practicing Fortune and Big Band. Not so much Fukua. However I also think that the reason I am not having that much fun with Fukua is because I haven't really bothered to learn any of her good shit. That brings me to these questions for myself. I want other people's feedback on this, but ultimately its up to me to decide?

-Should I actually put the time into Fukua to make her a competent character?
-Should I play duo, and try to make Fortune/Big Band (LP Beat Extend) work?
-Should I continue to play trio and practice other characters of interest to me? (Cerebella and Squiggly are characters I like and have assists good for Fortune head on and off which is what I'm looking for)?
-My Fortune is my one character everyone, including myself, actually thinks is good. Should I just play Fukua/Big Band exclusively for awhile to better learn those characters?

Ultimately, my team is going to be Fortune/Robo Fortune/Big Band, but there's a lot of time before her release so I'd like to have an A squad in the meantime.

My gut tells me to not give up on Fukua, and actually LEARN to play her, because that would be easier than learning a new character from the ground up.

Anyway, dear readers, what do you think I should do?

So I guess that brings me to my next point: ACTUALLY PRIORITIZING WHAT I PRACTICE.

II. Practicing Combos in the fighting game "Skullgirls" while watching "Friends" on Netflix

When I see a reset or a combo or a burst bait or a setup or whatever in a stream or on a video, I write it down in OneNote so I can practice it later. This serves as a "stuff I need to work on". Great! Awesome! So what's the problem?

I am really bad at prioritizing WHAT I should practice over other stuff and in what order. For example, this is some of the stuff I have written down in my practice guide in OneNote:

http://pastebin.com/1hf2FXxk

It's basically a massive data dump and I don't expect anyone to read all of it. What I do need help is how to prioritize what I am practicing in what order.

So let's say I need to practice: incoming character mixups, optimal corner combos, burst baits, resets, anti-mash setups/safe jumps, counterhit combos.

What would be the best order to practice those in, and why? If you were me and wanted to "get gud", which one of those things is the most important to practice and which the least? Again, I'm going to practice all of them, I'd just like guidance on what order to do so.

III. New Players in Local Community Want to Learn Skullgirls, and Google Doc that compiles information

This is a section I might make into its own thread. Basically, a bunch of new players in our community (who come from a predominately Street Fighter 4 background) want to learn Skullgirls. Dhoppler and I have been teaching them the engine basics. I've also started this guide which is designed to have all beginner combo information in one place since Skullheart is still kind of disorganized mess:
It still needs a TON of work, and I still need to find basic beginner combos and basic resets/burst baits for the rest of the cast. Eventually, I'd like this document to eventually have EVERYTHING Skullgirls related in one comprehensive Google doc so I don't have to constantly search forums for stuff. That's a bit too ambitious for now though. However going forward that's what this will be eventually.

I just wanted to mention that I was doing a Google doc for that sort of stuff here, and hopefully by teaching new players I can get better at the game myself.

If anyone wants to put basic combo or reset information for beginners in there for characters I have or haven't done yet go nuts!

IV. Video Thing/Streaming

I want to start streaming/recording matches with other players and then play the match back over stream and have us both talk about it. This is the "matchup" analysis thing I mentioned in the OP of my thread. For my local hookups, I'd also like to start streaming again. I have Google Fiber, so I can knock streaming out of the park, the problem is I use a Blue Snowball mic for recording, which is basically the equivalent of a stick with a tin can on it in terms of audio quality and clarity. When I have people over, I haven't found a way to position my speakers and the mic in a way that doesn't give TONS of feedback. When I'm using headphones, it isn't an issue. So it won't be an issue for the matchup analysis thing but it will when I stream my local meetups.

Anyway, Monday nights should be free for me from now on. Hopefully I can get something worked out. I really want to do matchup analysis again, but going over the videos THE NEXT DAY and typing about them doesn't work for me anymore. When I played UMvC3, I used to record my matches at our local Saturday meetups and then talk back over them with my opponent right after we were done. It helped me level up a lot, and now I want to do the same thing with Skullgirls.

The technical idea here is: I run a FT5 or FT7 set with a player while recording it with OBS. Then, I play the OBS file back with VLC player. VLC player has frame by frame advance and other features that make it useful for this type of thing. I then stream my desktop playing VLC to the other player so they can see it too, and we talk about the match using Skype. I'm not sure what the exact technical requirements of this are, but I'm sure I will figure it out.

It goes without saying that I will need to do a test stream. Anyone who has ever watched any of my streams before knows that something always goes terribly wrong. Either my cat knocks over my microphone or there is an audio issue or something else. So hopefully I'll be able to do a test run and get the kinks worked out and not make myself look like a huge idiot when I do this.

OK, that's it, thanks for bearing with me for so long!

NOW IS THE TIME I TAG PEOPLE I WANT TO READ THIS SO THEY READ THE ENTIRE THING GET REKT: @mcpeanuts @KhaosMuffins @Dhoppler @Dreamepitaph @Night Phyre @EldaTaluda @Fizzwizz @fenster @drewski (that's enough for now holy shit)

If you are seeing this congrats! You are one of the people I tricked into reading all this garbage! No but actually I would like your advice on the questions I'm asking and are also people I want to run sets with for my video thing. You're my friends/I play you a lot/value your opinions/ayy lmao so I tagged you. Let me know what you think, and if you'd be down to play in the thing (I really need to come up with a name for it)!

That's it for now. I apologize for the length but I've had a lot on my mind about this game and haven't posted for ages so here is this giant wall of text. Further updates will be shorter, I promise!
 
I don't have a lot to add, especially re: Fukua and whether she's worth sticking with, but I do have a way for you to prioritize what you practice: go back through a recent long set of yours that was decently close and literally count the number of times something happens in that set. Set up a way that you can just type what you see quickly and then tabulate it afterwards. In the end it might look like:
  • dropped combo because I miscalculated weight - 3 times
  • didn't snap when I should have - 3 times
  • finished optimal corner combo - 14 times
  • missed reset due to inaccurate inputs - 2 times
  • did lower damage combo when I could have maximized - 19 times
  • successfully snapped and killed - 6 times
  • baited super - 11 times
  • carelessly ran into an assist - 15 times
Using that list, you can see what you did and didn't do, and focus your efforts on things that you can clearly see need work. tl;dr, just watch the tapes and practice accordingly. It's the opposite of commentary, as you're simply compiling data for examination, but it can help fill in your match self-analysis more fully.
 
you didn't tag me for shit friend but everything's good.

I'm not actually a very good person to ask for advice on becoming good but I can definitely look at whatever you get recorded and make words about it I think.

Good luck at getting good, ya jerk.
 
Fukua is garb? I mean maybe compared to her original version but like she is still a scary character to deal with in this and in the beta version
 
Arcana said:
Fukua is garb? I mean maybe compared to her original version but like she is still a scary character to deal with in this and in the beta version
She is. i would make a extended post but this is fullbleed's thread. so for now i'll say she's garb.
 
If you don't have fun with Fukua, don't play her. If you feel like you /HAVE/ to play her, then you're going to hit a wall and playing her is just going to feel like a drag. If you do have fun with her, stick with her. Fukua's been made more tame but she is not bad.

As for order of practicing things, I like what Night Phyre said. There's no set order of what you should practice and how often you should practice said things. Work on what you have the most issues with.

With audio, mess with the microphone gate thing in OBS and see how that treats you. My mic ain't all that special so I use the noise gate to make sure my mic doesn't pick up too much BG noise or my computer fans.
 
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as long as we keep having friday hook ups, I'm in there.

conditions:

You have to actually listen to me.
You have to help me analyse where I'm fucking up.
You quit bugging Ryden Onkars about resets and leave him to me.
You quit bugging me about that damn cooking show.
 
Dhoppler said:
as long as we keep having friday hook ups, I'm in there.

conditions:

You have to actually listen to me.
You have to help me analyse where I'm fucking up.
You quit bugging Ryden Onkars about resets and leave him to me.
You quit bugging me about that damn cooking show.

Sure
Sure
Sure
Fuck no, that's a brilliant idea
 
No dice.
 
In those games, i think its a huge mistake against swiftfox dash to go beat extend assist. Any team with a good peacock on it gets h brass.

It basically renders peacock near useless, or if not useless, she has to completely play a different game that allows frontal assaults in. She cant defend against h brass and keep the point character away at the same time.

Also, h brass is a great assist counter call punish. 2-3 of these and they wont be calling assists willy nilly anymore.

Imho save beat extend for shitcocks and teams without her on them.
 
If you don't like playing Fukua then I'd recommend not playing Fukua. I was in the same boat as you, I really wanted a horizontal assist to compliment Peacock's zoning but I couldn't find a character who did that who I liked playing. Ultimately I decided to just not have one and go with the duo. Not only am I enjoying the game more because I'm playing just the characters I like the most, but I also found I don't need an assist for zoning as much as I thought I did.

That said it might be worthwhile to see if Fukua can be made to work with your playstyle. From the sound of things you haven't really played her on point that much or prioritized practicing her. She's probably the most versatile character in this game in terms of how she can be played so if you don't enjoy the zoning stuff try just rushing down with her. If you give her a fair shake then who knows maybe it'll turn out you like Fukua after all.

As far as what to practice I kind of agree with Night Phyre. I'd add though that I think your set play is good and you don't have to stress this part of your game as much as you are.

I have had no real success helping new players learn the game so I don't know if I can help you there. But in an ideal world the forums would be the best place to point people for info. We do have some stuff: Caio did a good job putting together a list of beginner BnBs for each character, and some of the character subforums have pretty comprehensive info on that character. Stuff like Worldjem's defense guide is good too. I think as a community we should keep building on that. I think it would be a shame if you had all this good info in your Google doc that most people wouldn't be able to see.

The streaming thing sounds pretty cool, if you wanna play me and analyze the set after I would be down for that (make sure that you're set up so that people can hear my half of the conversation, though)
 
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I. - I don't think there's anything wrong with playing any combination that works best for you. If you honestly aren't enjoying playing Fukua, you'd probably gain more mileage from just practicing those characters than forcing yourself to use something you don't like. It's not MVC2 or 3 where you'll die if you stray from the top tier, at least not yet. Though in that case I would recommend working more with Fortune + Brass like you used to since it really would be handy to switch between the assists for MUs.

2. - tbh, I think that as long as you go into training mode regularly, you can practice what you feel like. Not always do I feel like practicing some reset or some combos, but other times I do. I don't think the order matters, just so long as you tell yourself to practice something on the list and never avoid something for too long.

3. - I can help with some character stuff though it'll have to be a while to put stuff down.

4. - Whatever format you want to do, do it. As long as you actually go over matches and try to look over them, doesn't matter how imo, is already a step up than never looking back at anything you do. Would of course be okay with being a part of that if needed.

I'd like to go over the other videos sometime but got on time atm so it'll have to wait, but I'll definitely check out your stream/videos as they happen.
 
I watched some of your set with bit strife and all of the swiftfox set, and one thing I noticed is that you don't seem to give much weight to Big Band's hard knockdowns. His oki is really good, even solo. There were too many times when you had your opponent in the corner and could have done a short combo into H brass/a-train but you instead go for SSJ, which totally resets neutral and pushes the opponent away from the corner.

Going off of that, there were too many times when that situation would come up, I'd say to myself "I don't agree with that SSJ" and then you would do giant step into another SSJ and I'd be like "I REALLY DON'T AGREE WITH THAT." IMO, there is no point in following up SSJ with giant step > SSJ unless it's gonna kill, or MAYBE if it's the last member of the team and it leaves them with low health. The positioning kinda sucks. I especially think it's a bad idea to do that if:

  • they have a teammate left
  • it won't kill
  • it leaves you with less than a bar (this is the most important one imo. often you would be left with less than half a bar)

^This happened a whole lot during both of the sets I watched and I think it's really something you should look out for. If you want, we can do a training lobby sometime where I can show you some oki concepts because I really consider corner oki to be a crucial part of his character.
 
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drewski said:
If you want, we can do a training lobby sometime where I can show you some oki concepts because I really consider corner oki to be a crucial part of his character.
I think it would be better to make a post and/or a video on Big Band oki stuff cause I want to know what you do for oki and Im sure other people are too.
 
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drewski said:
I watched some of your set with bit strife and all of the swiftfox set, and one thing I noticed is that you don't seem to give much weight to Big Band's hard knockdowns. His oki is really good, even solo. There were too many times when you had your opponent in the corner and could have done a short combo into H brass/a-train but you instead go for SSJ, which totally resets neutral and pushes the opponent away from the corner.

Going off of that, there were too many times when that situation would come up, I'd say to myself "I don't agree with that SSJ" and then you would do giant step into another SSJ and I'd be like "I REALLY DON'T AGREE WITH THAT." IMO, there is no point in following up SSJ with giant step > SSJ unless it's gonna kill, or MAYBE if it's the last member of the team and it leaves them with low health. The positioning kinda sucks. I especially think it's a bad idea to do that if:

  • they have a teammate left
  • it won't kill
  • it leaves you with less than a bar (this is the most important one imo. often you would be left with less than half a bar)

^This happened a whole lot during both of the sets I watched and I think it's really something you should look out for. If you want, we can do a training lobby sometime where I can show you some oki concepts because I really consider corner oki to be a crucial part of his character.

U rite about the SSJ stuff.

As far as oki, I'd 100% down for you showing me, but I also think you should do what McPeanuts said and post it in the Big Band forums.

ALSO, do either your or @mcpeanuts have a combo you do after you carry the opponent to the corner with Timpani Drive and do falling j.MK? I have NOTHING.
 
FuLLBLeeD said:
U rite about the SSJ stuff.

As far as oki, I'd 100% down for you showing me, but I also think you should do what McPeanuts said and post it in the Big Band forums.

ALSO, do either your or @mcpeanuts have a combo you do after you carry the opponent to the corner with Timpani Drive and do falling j.MK? I have NOTHING.
ground string
air string xx timpani,
j.MK,
c.MK s.HK xx H beat extend
j.LK j.MK,
c.LPx2 s.LK c.MPx2 s.HK xx H a train xx SSJ
 
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Okay, so I watched the BitStrife and TJ sets, and I noticed a bunch of very consistent things you did in all of them. They ended up not mattering much against BitStrife, but it was a bit clear that these held you down when against TJ. They weren't like, 100% true but they were like a 23/25 cases this happened thing.

- With Head-on fortune, everytime after you got a confirm into some combo, your first reset is *almost always* overhead. Like, with Headless fortune this wasn't the case, nor with BB really. And after the first reset you'd usually mix things up decently. But the first reset or attempt to confirm was almost always overhead, and this became a problem in the TJ set when he started blocking it all the time. Talking about it doesn't seem like a big deal, but when you watch the sets it becomes a "Oh, huh, wow, he really just does this all the time, huh" thing, and something I subconciously thought before hand before even watching the sets just from how often you do them in our sets.

- Your resets in general, aside from Headless fortune, were almost always High/Grab and could be upbacked. This is what TJ was doing all the time and you only occasionally (one time by accident from what it looked like) did a low or something to catch upback. Pretty much every reset you tried with Fukua was something that could be upbacked (you only did cLP cMP, delay cLK like once). Having a tendency to start off with a certain reset or something I don't think really is *that* bad, but it became a problem when you weren't noticing the opponent always getting out of your attempted resets when not mashing. It's not a bad thing to keep track of the things your opponent got hit by or blocked and use that info later when it arrives again, so you'll not to start doing more lows and catch the upbacks that TJ was doing.

- Your defense...was very much the same in both sets in that I could describe it exactly. Keep in mind there are 2 states I'm going to describe: first is you when combo'd and what you plan against resets, and the second is what I'll just call "pressure" which is what you do after you get the first block right. And keep in mind this doesn't include reversaling out or pbgcs or mashing, cause its not about that; it's purely about what blocks you try because at some point you will have to block during a match.

Combo'd - You down-back during combos 99%. Like not an exaggeration, 99%. I'm certain I didn't see you ever avoid any throw reset attempts from either Bit Strife or TJ. I think there's a match where Bit strife did 3 throw resets within a single 10 second span. After getting hit by a reset, don't be afraid to just commit towards upbacking or whatever, *especially* if its the same thing hitting you over and over.

Pressure - You know this already, but you upback consistently. The second you happen to get a block, it goes into upback, and it caught you a bunch esp against TJ who was ready for it. Normally not a problem I think, since Upback is a great option to go to most of the time in this game, but its the consistency which hurts you when you don't adjust.

-Your pressure in most games with fortune starts from the air most of the time. It became super clear against TJ who countered your air approach in almost every game after a while. You switched it up in one game at round start with a sHP which is okay, but when it didn't work you immediately went back to the air approach...which TJ countered again promptly.

-Seriously, when bella is comboing you in the air....mash throw tech or a super or something at least sometimes. TJ had a game where he did like 3 bella air throw resets in a row and it hit you every time. You got hit by a *lot* of air grab resets when he never even tried to go for any kind of other counter-reset or something in the same situation to make you guess; you just always got thrown. If you have to mash air super, or just mash air throw everytime bella does an air series, whatever works, but it certainly is a very avoidable hole you can fix up since there's only so many times someone can Grab Bag you.

I'd say your resets were okay with Headless fortune, and in general your pressure is okay when it came to adjusting to the opponents defense, but the things above were just kind of obvious things that are hard to ignore before even trying to think about spacing/neutral/assist calls and stuff. I didn't include stuff like "learn 2 bait more" or "stop dropping combos" because you already put them in your stuff to remember soooo yeah.
 
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