Timid Training Transcript

[DanTheMeek]

So I wasn't really planning to take this game very seriously, was just enjoying playing it casually here and there, but after posting on the forum to find out why people kept seemingly griefing me by not finishing me in quick matches where I was clearly out matched, Dime_X offered to coach me, and hey, I'm not going to turn down an offer like that. I Advised him my team was Cerebella and Squigly and provided the combos I normally tried to use for each. He advised me to drop squiggly and replace her with either Filia or Double, so with a heavy heart I picked Filia and waved good bye to Squiggly. He then advised me to remove the jump attack from my Cerebella combo I was try to do and just focus in training on pulling off that combo.

Training - Day 1

I spent the rest of the night in the training room doing nothing but repeating the abbreviated version of the so called simple Cerebella combo. I quit and went to bed around 2 in the morning, so not sure how many hours that was but at that point my skills were starting to be compromised more then they usually are by my overwhelming drowsiness.

Training - Day 2

After getting woken up at 7 by my work phone (-_-) and getting everything that entailed taken care of, I went right back to the training room and back to repeating the abbreviated combo. After about another hour of this I was getting through at least the first 8 hits of the combo (c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp -> j.mp -> j.hk -> c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp) about 75% of the time with out screwing something up, pretty unusually high success rate for me for a combo longer then 3 button presses but likely aided by the fact that it doesn't require any quarter circle, DP, or charge moves so it was more about memorization and timing and allowed me to for the moment ignore my usual stick movement execution struggles). I decided to try some quick matches to see if I could actually pull the combo off in a real match. About 14 matches later, 8 quick match and 6 in a beginner - casual lobby) I still didn't manage to pull of the combo even once, but I did manage to get a couple wins in the lobby matches do to an opponent who was obviously messing around with different characters themselves, so that was a refreshing change from my something like 16-100 quick match record I've got going now (can you actually see you're total losses some where? I know I've got 16 wins and win on average of about once or twice for every 10 games played so I'm just guessing at my loss total.)

Dime_X had asked me to get him some videos of my game play for him to review yesterday so at some point I've gotta figure out how to use this free screen capture software I downloaded last night, but we'll see as I'm not really sure there's much to see beyond the fact that despite dedicating something like the last 4-5 hours of my life to doing the same simple combo, I still can't seem to pull it off in a real fight.

 

[RurouniLoneWolf]

I'm not going to make too much of a fuss about it right now but if you want to play Squigly, just play Squigly. Overall, it's much better for your motivation to play a character you enjoy. But Filia is a pretty beginner friendly character so taking time to learn basics with her isn't that bad either.

So your current goal is to land that combo in a match, huh? Hmmm, okay, 2 pieces of advice. First, consider how you're going to actually hit someone with c.lk. It's something easy to overlook when you are first starting out. You get so focused on learning the combo that it usually never occurs that you need to learn how to land the first to begin with. This is an important step because you'll find that your success in starting and calmly executing the combo to completion will go up if you anticipate when it's going to start. Second, until you get in the habit of the above, try just doing c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp. Once you get used to this, you'll find it's much easier to do the whole thing later.

Well, good luck.

 

[Stuff]

If you're worried about having to use qc's or dps or whatever (which squigly and cerebella do a lot of) try Valentine she can do lots without her specials a decently long combo for valentine doesn't need specials (unless you want to do some fancy stuff).

Another thing is you have to is read your opponent. Do they jump a lot? Try whatever messes up their air approach (I dunno how squigly or cerebella work) For Squigly I think dive kick can work? or j.hp or j.mk(I think it's j.mk). Are they always backing up? try to lure them in with center stage or silver chord. Does the person guard high a lot? then go for a low attack (whatever it is either Squigly or Cerebella has I'm sure Dime could tell you since he's doing the teaching.) You know stuff like that even if you have to write it down to remember just don't forget how that one player plays so you can counter that enemy's efforts. (or at least that's how I learn I like to write down what the enemy did a lot of and figure out what to counter with from there.)

Remembering the combo isn't always the priority, strategy is most of the battle. (But you should still practice a combo despite what I said. It's just more important to able to read an opponent but that's just my opinion)

You also can't see your losses (Otherwise you could see I have 600 wins and 3000 losses)

 

[DanTheMeek]

First off, thank you both RuouniLoneWolf and Stuff, some good advice all the way around. While I'm giving Dime_X the final say in all of my training, that doesn't mean I can't some day go back to Squigly or continue to use her casually and I suspect a better grasp on the fundamentals with any character will help me to some degree with all characters. And I'll definitely have to give Valentine another look if you really feel she's more beginner friendly Stuff. I will say that I'd rather deal QCF/QCB then links, my time with SF4 made me come to despise links. I don't know who these machines are that can consistently repeat a motion within 1/60th of a second (1/30th with plinking) but I'm definitely not one of them.

Per Dime_X, with many fighting games stratedgy is more important then combos, but with a game like skulls girls, learning strategy before combos is like putting the cart before the horse as they are about as fundamental to success as knowing how to move, thus why I'm putting all of my attention right now on getting at least one mediocre combo down before moving into the stratedgy side of things. That said, nothing but training room for hours on end every day makes DanTheMeek something something. Go Crazy? Don't mind if I do. So yeah, I am occasionally playing games and trying to implement the combos there just for a change of pace. At Dime_X's also suggestion, I'm not longer playing against real people but instead focusing on Hard Mode arcade against the computer. As he advises, once I can roll over nightmare comp AI like they're nothing, then I'll be ready to start playing real people, till then the gap in skill will be too significant to even really learn from my beat downs.

It didn't come out well, there's no sound, its grainy, and its a little bit frame skippy, but I did finally get the video capture software to take some short captures of my training process. I've already passed them along to Dime_X whose going to give me his thoughts on them when he gets a chance but for anyone interested, here they are. No need to tell me how awful I am, these aren't meant to be glamor shots, just shots of my training process to hopefully help Dime_X see areas I can improve on to better stream line the training and focus on the points of weakness. As you can see in the training room one, despite now having about 6 hours of time spent in the training room on this combo, I'm still a long way off from getting it consistently to land or even reach the end (its supposed to end in a J.mk -> j.hk but the j.hk always seems to miss after the j.mk).

Training - Day 3

So after grinding in training mode for a while again I was actually hitting the full combo (c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp -> j.mp -> j.hk -> c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp -> j.mk ->j.hk) over and over again, much to my shock. I quickly went and turned on my capture device to record this... and suddenly everything went to heck. I wonder if my capture device is putting in some input lag? I felt like I was doing the same thing but I kept looking at my inputs at the bottom and they didn't match what I thought I was doing anymore. Maybe I was just in some special zone this morning and lost it in the time it took me to set up the recorder? If it is putting in lag that's probably a good thing, since I don't know anyone locally in the bakersfield, CA area who plays I'll probably never play this game anywhere but online where lag is to be expected. Either way, it was pretty nice to actually run of a few sets of the combo with out dropping it anywhere.

It might be a bad thing, but out of bordem with the combo I've been trying to change the combo every now and then to c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp -> j.mp -> j.hk -> c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp -> qcf+pp -> dp+pp. It seems to combo, and filia's follow up adds on pretty good damage, though obviously it relies on her still being alive and my having two bars so maybe its to situational for me to even be touching at this point.

Anyway, I did manage to get a few successful sets on camera so here. Obviously still doing a ton of unnecessary directions and button presses that are probably leading to the inconsistency but getting it at all is better then where I was a couple hours ago in my training.

 

[DanTheMeek]

Training - Day 4

So after looking over the videos Dime_X said he saw a bad habit of mine that at the end of my initial 3 hits of the combo, when I try to preemptively move the stick to jump, I instead would roll it in a quarter circle motion, causing the third hit to turn into her arm cannon and drop the combo after only 2 measly hits. To combat this, Dime_X requested I sit in training for as long as I could, corner a dummy in the corner, then hold down + back and repeat the first 3 hits of the combo over and over. At first I just kept doing this mindlessly, then I decided to start counting every set, but around the 30-40th set I got bored with counting so just went back to shutting off my brain while doing it. After probably a good hour or so I tried to re-add the jump and it seemed like I was getting mostly down to up inputs now instead of rolls. On the downside, I seem to be struggling to hit people when they're not in the corner now cause I'm literally jumping straight up some times instead of jumping toward them like I was before.

It blows my mind that when I actually want to do a QCF move it constantly fails cause only the down and forward register and I miss the D+F in the middle, yet apparently when I'm trying to jump from a crouch I'm getting that D+F in there, how does that even happen, I guess maybe cause I was moving into them when I went into my crouch to start the combo?

In any case after ward I just practiced with the jump again for a while, trying to see what I could combo off the second set of 3 low hits since j.mk -> j.hk only seems to combo on that second set off a couple characters. Ultimately never really found anything I was happy with, can go into mashing j.lp but that adds on almost meaninglessly small damage, the QCF+PP -> DP+PP combo is still pretty nice but is obviously very super reliant, and most reset into air throw are difficult to land (though pretty fun I admit when I did land them). After that put difficulty on ridiculous and went into arcade mode, after a rough start, barely winning the first round and losing the second, I found my grove and rolled my way to marie where I admittedly finished her too even though Dime_X told me to immediately restart when I got to her but I never beat her on ridiculous before so just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any achievements or something.

Depending on Dime_X's advisement, tomorrow I'd like to move on to nightmare and see how I do there. Interested to hear where he wants me to go from here with Cerebella in my training, and or if we'll shift to learning at least a basic combo for Filia.

 

[Dime]

If you think you are ready for nightmare then go for nightmare :)

Also, whoa, that training drill I gave you messed up your forward jump muscle memory.. Jeez, I thought I was bad with the conflicting muscle memory :(

Here's how you SHOULD be doing things... Let's say that you want to jump toward the opponent and hit them with a jumpin combo:

Tap upforward, then immediately hold back to start charging, then press j.mp or j.hk or j.hp. The reason for holding back here instead of downback is because if you hold downback, Bella will do an air elbow if you press medium punch. So it's better to always back instead of downback, even if you aren't planning on using j.mp for that jump... Is just good Bella fundamentals and good for blocking stuff in the air as well.

Ok so now that you've got the jumpin spaced right, you have to transition from back to downback as you land, so that you can get out crouched moves as you charge.

That is the reason why I wanted you to practice the 3 chain from down back... It just builds better muscle memory for the future Bella combos that you will want to learn eventually.

 

[DanTheMeek]

Training - Day 5

So my training has taken a back burner to the holiday as I've had (and continue to have) family in town visiting. That said, I've managed to get in a little training tonight. My new record for damage from a single combo I just achieved tonight is 7852. Thats from 2 vs 2, doing J.hk -> c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp -> j.mp -> j.hk -> c.lk -> c.mp -> c.hp -> QCF + PP -> DP + PP . As a whole I feel like I'm messing up the jump after the crouch combo considerably less now from my holding down back training, though it does still happen on occasion. After my training I went into arcade mode on nightmare and after getting completely rolled on the very first fight and wondering if maybe I wasn't in over my head, I then proceeded to roll off 8 consecutive victories, with the 8th one right before Marie being a near perfect on my part. Thats not to say I played perfectly, far from it, I dropped the combo a few times, and I was constantly messing up QCF and QCB motions when trying to do grabs when the comp was getting overly defensive, not to mention in my combo enders, but I did manage to pull off the full combo including the Filia super extension on the end and despite the fact that I was pretty much just down C.lk -> c.mk -> c.hk and occasionally j.mk or j.hk with filia since I have no idea how to use her and apparently can't combo out of that ground combo into QCB + k or QCB + KK (or if I can for some reason I can't input the motion correctly or with the right timing).

Other then that other thing of note is that I'm still not using assists at all (other then that super assist combo finisher) and that in the heat of combat (especially when I'm playing Filia since I'm largely button mashing with out any direction as to where to go) I'm seeing that I'm prone to accidentally calling in assists, in one case in nightmare it almost ended my streak of wins when I unintentionally called in an assist right into my opponents level 3 super, leaving said team mate with only like a tick of health and no way to tag to them even though I really needed to at that particular moment.

All in all it was nice to see some improvement so I'm glad that despite the holidays I found some time to get in some light training.

 

[DanTheMeek]

Training - Day 6

So after practicing more the combo with cerebella I began to grow bored with doing the same combo over and over and after beating up on nightmare decided to try my luck at quick match again. Alas, after being near perfected, I got perfected quite a few times in a row before rematched with the first guy who only near perfected me again. Shortly after this though The Real Chris Maxwell (or something to that effect, my appologies sir if I got your name wrong) came on who'd offered to do training matches with me before on the forum so after watching him destroy everyone in a beginner lobby I was in, he took me to online training where, since he wasn't familar with cerebella but was with filia and I know nothing a bout filia, he went over some extremely low level basics with filia with him. After we went over a ton of stuff so my head was swimming (seriously, crazy how much time the guy spent with me, between him and Dime_X now I'm blown away by how many people will lend their free time to help out a random stranger) so I asked if there was anything I could help him with and he said he struggled with the cerebella match up so we did a set of 25 matches, his filia/parasoul vs my cerebella/filia. I amazingly took 5 of those matches, but the real key was I learned a ton about what did and didn't work in the match ups against those two characters (in the case of parasoul more what doesn't work, never really did figure out how to get in on her, but I'm thinking her projectile reflector may be involved as I did manage to stagger parasoul with it once). All in all it was a nice change of pace and I learned a ton, but tomorrow plan to go back to the training room and just practice combos again as my foundation is still shaky. Thanks again Chris Maxwell if you ever read this.

 

[Fedora_Ninja]

As someone who started as solobella, I'm happy to give some insight leveling up your cerebella play.

You should note that Bella's c.hp and s.hp are not safe on block and are easily punishable. You can make it safe by cancelling into diamond drop. However, you need to learn the timing for when your opponent just gets out of blockstun. You can practice this by turning on the hitstun bar, setting the dummy to always block, and doing the ground combo, and inputting diamond drop when the bar disappears.

As a Bella player you don't need to jump into long combos immediately. Combos and consistency are important, but fundamentally Bellas should be patient, read the enemy, and make the enemy fear the command grab that gets snuck in after a combo.

 

[Dime]

Good to see you progressing at such a great rate! Having other teachers is a great thing because no one person knows everything nor is any one person necessarily going to be the best teacher for YOU. So yeah, get as many different viewpoints as possible before you make up your mind as far as what you want to do/how you want to learn And if you ever go against something I say or don't want to do it... Don't worry I won't be fussed over it, because this is about you after all.

If you have any further questions don't hesitate to ask :)

 

[DanTheMeek]

You should note that Bella's c.hp and s.hp are not safe on block and are easily punishable. You can make it safe by cancelling into diamond drop. However, you need to learn the timing for when your opponent just gets out of blockstun. You can practice this by turning on the hitstun bar, setting the dummy to always block, and doing the ground combo, and inputting diamond drop when the bar disappears.

This was something Chris Maxwell brought up to me as well, though he didn't mention the block stun thing, so that explains why the diamond drop kept whiffing on me some times and some times landed. Thats a fantastic idea about using the hitstun bar in training to try to get the timing down, I'm going to have to give that a try today. The only thing Chris might have disagreed with you on is that he said I was playing to passively with cerebella, that she was meant to be an aggressive character, but that may because my play was coming off less as patient and more as afraid. That or he was referring more to my filia play, which, after are 25 sets yesterday, I agree is at her best when she's the aggressive, a classic rush down character.

Regardless, thank you very much for the insight Fedora_Ninja!

Good to see you progressing at such a great rate! Having other teachers is a great thing because no one person knows everything nor is any one person necessarily going to be the best teacher for YOU. So yeah, get as many different viewpoints as possible before you make up your mind as far as what you want to do/how you want to learn And if you ever go against something I say or don't want to do it... Don't worry I won't be fussed over it, because this is about you after all.

If you have any further questions don't hesitate to ask :)

Well I wouldn't mind hearing where you think I should proceed to next. Should I be moving on to training with a simple Filia combo, or should I continue to just keep trying to repeat that cerebella combo? Or maybe I should focus all attention on cerebella but move on from the combo into other things like learning how or when to go for a throw over a combo? Or maybe go over her proper openers, should I start the round by throwing out a qcf + P, holding down + back, or something else entirely? Also what do you feel is her best tools for closing space? I was originally using her j.hp flight or her charge back -> hk dash, but after talking with Chris and trying some stuff out in the training room it actually seemed like QCF + P was her safest way to close distance as despite what the frame data on it said, he found he couln't punish it even with a fenrir super on block.

Incidentally, does anyone know what Cerebella's best anti-air is? I apparently posted about this 2 years ago (I say apparently cause I remembered posting but didn't realize it was so long ago, has skull girls really been out so long now?) and got a mixed bag of answers, but that was 2 years ago so the game has had a lot of time to get figured out, not to mention various patches may have changed things. Here's the post by the way: http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/159190/best-anti-air Seeing as I'm no longer using squigly, but still using cerebella, perhaps I should go back to that icon.

Also Dime_X, I get the impression you're a console only player, is that correct? My wife currently has my ps3 and is currently in another state, and I never got the game for x-box, so my only access to playing the game is on PC right now, but I'd really love to do an online training session like I did with Chris yesterday some time if you do have PC access. If not thats fine, just thought I'd throw that out there.

Again, thank you everyone for all the tremendous help you've been, I still have a long LONG way to go before I can even be competitive in quick match, but I've already come a long way from where I was just a week and a half ago and that couldn't have happened with out all the support I've received.

 

[Eric Chen Erect]

Wow! I didn't know that you were actually logging your progress here. As for the training session that I had with you, I humbly accept your thanks for paying attention to a mediocre player that just started playing this game not too long ago. It's always good to see someone making progress especially in a difficult genre like fighting games. As for my Cerebella advice, I apologize if it's a bit unrefined due to my inexperience with the character. I think you're better off asking others on how to play her. Well if you ever need anybody to go to for practice sets, extra advice, etc. then you know where to find me! Maybe I can even start messing around with Squigly so I can teach you some more basics so maybe sometime in the near future, you can be reunited with your original character.

UPDATE: I went into training mode and recorded punishes for the lock n' load on the dummy on reversal. It turns out that it is at -5 (correct me if I'm wrong). I guess I wasn't mashing hard enough on fenrir when we were in training mode ha ha! Also, I was using Filia's c.lp which is a 6 frame move so that wouldn't work. When I tested this, I used s.lp as my punisher instead and it did so perfectly! Mind you that it's a pretty tight punish so you might not always get it online.

 

[Dime]

@DanTheMeek

I have PC,ps3 and 4, the bone and the 360 as well as as new ipad and a gazillion iOS games...

I can't play to much though because much of my time is split between work and all my other games, as well as family and the fact that Australia's internet doesn't allow me to comfortably play outside of Australia, except to New Zealand and maybe japan or Korea though they will never play anything over 100 ping so... Yeah.

We can play though but my time is limited for now, I won't have any time off till the 8th AU time, and after that I won't have any time till the 18th AU time.

AU is generally about a day ahead of the states if that's where you live. Though if you are in Europe...we basically can't play cause those pings are like 400 plus.

 

[Baiko]

not sure what you using to record right now,but OBS and razer will work with sound and decent image quality, it even works on my shit laptop with the worst graphics card you can possibly obtain,the intelhd2000.

 

[DanTheMeek]

Just a short update... I have a working computer again! Well... for the moment anyway. So I recently tried to upgrade a number of the parts of my computer (the mother board, processor, hard drive, and ram) and in the process managed to make my computer not work at all. After days of fighting with the thing, getting literally ZERO help from MSI's tech support (they have not contacted me once despite the auto-reply telling me I'd hear back within 1 hour to 24 hours at the latest... and what I really needed was some one I could talk to on the phone anyway, but I at least thought at some point I'd get an email from some body...), it seems like the mother board (made by the aforementioned MSI) may have some bad dimm slots, thus it was failing to read my new ram, and thus it was failing to POST and thus it was failing to display anything on my monitor, making me incorrectly believe the issue was with the onboard video card. At the moment I got my ram working in the last two dimm slots, slot 1 has never worked once, 2 almost worked once, and 3 and 4 are hit and miss, which is where the ram is now. Almost feels like I'm back in the NES era where I have to blow on my ram sticks and push them just enough with out being too much to get the contacts to actually be read.

Regardless the point of this story is that during this no working computer time I had to use my 13 year old notebook computer (thank goodness I never threw that out) from college which could barely manage to run a modern web browser, let a lone hope to run skull girls, thus the lack of updates on the training front. I am literally setting up steam on this new hard drive (Solid State Hybrid if you're curious) as I type this, and so far the USB ports have been pretty iffy which is bad cause I need at least one of those for my TE stick, but in theory I should have the ability to play skull girls again, if not tonight, then by tomorrow night. I make no promises though, only that if I can't get it to run on this new hard ware, the hardware is probably getting returned.

 

[DanTheMeek]

So after much fighting with this thing, I did some searching online and it seems the reason my TE stick doesn't want to work with the computer anymore is likely do to my new mother board as some mother boards are not compatible with them -_- Fan-freaking-tastic. While I could try to learn how to play with a keyboard, I'm going to be honest here, I really REALLY don't want to. Perhaps the biggest insult of all in this is that part of why I upgraded my computer in the first place was so I could play skull girls and record my game play with out lagging to heck like I was on my old out of date pc, so while I finally got the pc working with all the upgrades, its apparently incapable of doing one of the primary things I got it for. Oh, and the place I got it from has a no return policy, only replacements for defective ones (which I may still take advantage of).

Sigh... well I'm going to continue to look into this matter as not being able to use my fight stick with this computer, not just for skull girls but for any fighting games, is unacceptable, but no ETA on when I'll be able to actually play the game again...

 

[Dime]

Profound sadness

 

[DanTheMeek]

Profound sadness

First off, when you posted that, that literally made me laugh out loud.

Second off... I believe I have a working computer again! So shortly after my last post I sent back the parts for replacement only to find my old parts had stopped working, thus forcing me through several weeks effectively with out a computer... a very dark time for me indeed, however my replacement parts FINALLY arrived last night and for much of the day I was getting everything set up and not only does the new board not have defective dimm slots, but it seems the defect was responsible for my TE stick not working too cause now the TE stick is responding as well! The only downside to this is that I have family in town for the holidays, so much like at thanksgiving my ability to train will be limited, but regardless I'm really excited to actually even be able to play at all again. Probably will want to start from scratch again with Cerebella to refresh myself after the prolonged absence, but if all goes well this should be a good thing in the long run as I'm hoping the new system will be better able to handle recording my matches for more in-depth analysis.

 

[DanTheMeek]

Just a little bit of training today but I'm afraid the results were not good, for whatever reason I can't seem to combo QCF+PP into Filia's uppercut super anymore, I don't think it ever missed once before but now it misses completely like 90% of the time and I've got no idea what I"m doing differently. Focusing just on cerebella I'm very rusty on her basic combo and some of my old habits have returned as I'm once again throwing out a lot of shot gun punches do to starting my jump to soon which is pretty disappointing and just in general my muscles seem to have completely forgot the combo as I can no longer do the combo at will but have to really think about it every step of the way again or my fingers flub up. After maybe a half hour of working on cerebella combo fundamentals in frustration I decided to try something different, to focus on doing her 360 super.

I've never been good at 360s, but my results of about a half hour of training today were surprising. From a down back position on the 2 player side, after some struggles at the beginning, I reached a point where I was able to pull off her super almost instantly 90% of the time. Conversely, on the 1 player side, trying to replicate the same motion from a down back position, I was lucky if I got it to come out 5% of the time, probably closer to 1%. On the plus side, most of the time what came out instead was her diamond drop, so assuming I was in diamond drop range and had my opponent set up for a throw its the next best thing and saves the super meter for something else, but it was pretty hair pulling that this just wouldn't work. I tried to use the move input screen to see what I was doing different but nothing was readily apparent. I may try to get one of those programs baiko suggested and do some recordings, but regardless if you're reading this Dime_X (or anyone for that matter), do you have any suggestions for consistently pulling off 360 moves or trainings to improve 360 accuracy?

 

[Fedora_Ninja]

So the funny thing about 360 command grabs is that they are more like 270 motions. You start from the side (not a down/angle position), roll a half circle and keep the rotation going until you point straight up. Then you hit the buttons immediately.

Unlike other fighters, Skullgirls detects if you did a 360 type motion and prevents you from jumping if you did it correctly. I would suggest turning on the input display to stick and simply just practice the rotation motion. If you get the motion right, you won't jump. If otherwise, you will jump and the stick display will help you see what your rotation looked like and where you should try to smooth out the inputs.

 

[DanTheMeek]

Interesting, well that's good to know that I should be aiming for 270% degrees, so in your opinion, if I want to throw out of a block (which usually means I'm holding down + back) I should first roll up (to back), then reverse directions and roll back down then to forward, then to up? I admit from my down + back stance what I've been trying to do is roll to up back so I was kind of doing a 270 motion, just with an extra click of it being an upward motion but maybe I'm making things more difficult on myself by doing that?

 

[Fedora_Ninja]

If you're trying to do a 360 out of block stun, getting one out as a reversal means you're churning dat butter and mashing it out or you're trying to punish an unsafe move/something that you know is not a true block string. In either case, it would be a lot more consistent if you roll from holding just back/forward.

I wouldn't think rolling from down-back to up-back registers as a 360 motion since traditionally every fighting game with that motion it starts from holding straight forward or straight back and you roll to straight up. So from a down back position, just tilt your stick to back and then do the 360 motion.


(I wanted to make sure what I said was accurate, so I tried a counter clockwise down-back to up-back rotation in training mode. I kept getting super jump instant grab bag as opposed to starting from the sides where I would consistently get the grab super.)

 

[DanTheMeek]

Training - Day ???

So was just practicing my basic cerebella combos (and also admittedly fooling around with squiggly as I haven't used her in months) in the training room when TheChrisMaxwell signed on and offered to do some training matches with me so we spent, I don't know, maybe an hour, training together. He used voice chat to talk about what he was doing and what he was seeing me do as we played, first just doing some matches, then doing more dedicated trainings like his purely trying to block and it was my job to figure out how to open him up for damage, or him doing nothing but zoning me and it was my job to figure out how to get in. Definitely learned a lot in both regards, got at least a little better about mixing up my throws and attack based pressure when I get close with cera, and learned from Chris that my best Get Off Me move is actually my super throw as, while I'm normally working to get them near me with Cerabella, when he'd get me in long combos with resets and the like it was not uncommon for me to never actually get out and eventually get killed with out ever getting out of the pressure. I'm still terrible at actually pulling off the 360s, but it was a move I wasn't even using at all to be honest, so its nice to have a use for it, and I did manage to use it successfully when he dropped a combo to get him off me.

All in all it felt nice to do more then just struggle at my combos in the training room for the first time in a while, so kudo's to Chris not only for the great advice but the genuine pick me up.

 

[RurouniLoneWolf]

What Chris did was very good. The best way for a beginner to learn in my opinion. Moving forward, be sure to keep in mind the overall outlook on a match he had you take on during this training session and keep up the good work.

 

[Eric Chen Erect]

Ha ha glad you enjoyed that. It's a good break from the training mode combo grind. It's always good to play real people to get that experience which is something that training mode cannot give you.

 

[CaioLugon]

For that cerebella combo you're doing, try this instead.

Also this.

Actually, just look around here, if you haven't already.

 

[DanTheMeek]

For that cerebella combo you're doing, try this instead.

Also this.

Actually, just look around here, if you haven't already.

For whatever reason I've never been able to pull off even the beginner version of that combo, but its worth noting that a long time ago I actually printed that flowchart out and had it sitting next to me while I'd grind away at trying to pull it off in training room for hours at a time. Its the s.hk near the end that always gets me, I can do c.lk -> c.mp -> s.hk just fine on its own, but when I try to put it at the spot in the combo where its at, the s.hk always wiffs as the opponent is like a little bit off the ground from the previous j.hk. I also suck at the s.hk -> dp + hp -> qcf+PP, but I can at least pull that part off some of the time, the s.hk never hits. I've learned to just do another c.hp and then go for qcf+PP (and then that into fenrir or squiglys song super if I've got the meter). If I don't have the meter... then I have no real good follow up to this so I'm usually just trying to get in any extra jump air damage I can before they burst or maybe try to sneak in an grab bag air throw if I'm feeling extra courageous.

Anyway...

Training Day ??? + 3

Nothing but training room today, and lots of it. My cerebella combo remains about where its always been, not really seeing any improvement in the consistency anymore, get it about 80% of the time, but still important to practice or I'll lose everything I worked for to get my percentage that high. Back to Filia training today. Dime_X has never really given me any training for her that I can recall so I've been partially practicing the up -> PP -> j.hp -> h.hk combo starter chris had shown me previously. Today I tried to link it into c.lk -> s.mk -> s.hp -> ??? and was getting the combo up to the ??? close to 50% of the time which was way above my normal average so I was pretty happy, but as usual none of my jump follow ups seem to work outside the corner, as I either miss with the j.hk and they both get out of the combo and get distance from me, or I get the j.hk but then I don't land in time to combo another c.lk. Looking on the forums it seems like the trick is that I have to have an air dash cancel in the middle of the jump combo, I tried it for a while, got it to work like 1 time out of 30 attempts, and decided to just experiment with other options. Eventually I settled on j.lp -> j.lk -> j.mp -> j.mk -> qcb + h.k -> qcb + KK -> dp + PP. I miss the dp + PP alot do to bad timing on my part, and I pull the whole combo prior to the super successful probably 1 out of every 8 tries, but its still better then I was doing with the air dash cancel business. I think my problem is still that my fingers are just too slow since when I miss usually the qcb + h.k either gets blocked or goes over their head, so I'm thinking I'm not getting it out quick enough.

All in all though it was nice to actually do a little damage with filia even if it still pales in comparison to what my cerebella can do as when I've gone online since I started this training with Dime_X filia has been largely useless , other then the fenrir super at the end of cere's combo, and once cere's died its pretty much just playing defensive and poking with 1-2 hit combos X_X

In non fighting game related news, we had our company party last night and I won a nearly all expenses paid trip to hawaii. They have a big vacation prize every year they give away to one random employee via a big drawing at the end of the party, and this year I was the winner... so... again not related to skull girls in anyway, but how often am I gonna win a trip to hawaii, so I just had to mention it, right?

 

[Dime]

If you have any questions dan just ask me :)

As far as filia goes, me personally I don't really like using her, but I think a good combo for you to start off with is:


Cr.lk,cr.mk,st.hp j.hp xx mk airball xx Gregor. And try to find a link after that Gregor that you can do... That ought to get you some easy damage from her and since she's at anchor you should usually have the meter to support it.


If that combo I posted is to hard for you, just omit the mk airball and go straight to Gregor :)

 

[DanTheMeek]

As far as filia goes, me personally I don't really like using her...

X-D

You were the one who had me drop Squigly for Filia...

...

I always just assumed that was cause she was one of your mains so you knew her better then Squigly...

...

lol

...

I guess you did say you recommended filia or double, were you hoping I'd pick double and just through out filia cause she's considered a generically good beginner character? Would it help things if I switched to Double? Are there any evo videos up where you were playing, now I'm genuinely curious who you're main(s) are, but the only video I've ever found was of the grand finals lol.

...

Seriously though, I only picked up Filia cause you recommended her, she's always been kind of too fast for my taste (or fingers to keep up), where as Cerebella and Squigly were slower characters which is probably what attracted me to them (and I just thought they were cool characters in their story modes which I know is an awful reason to choose characters to play competitively...). My point being that I'm not too attached to Filia, so if it would make you're coaching me easier, please let me know and I'll drop her and start new with some one else. I could also just go solobella if you think that would be preferable. If you think at this point sticking with Filia is best for me though that's fine too, I've definitely put some decent hours into her. Until I hear other wise though I'll stick to practicing the combo you suggested.

 

[Icky]

He probably told you to play Filia because she's a really solid character. My personal opinion is that you should just play whoever you're most interested in, everyone in this game is viable and you're more likely to invest time into your characters and learn them if you're interested in them. Also, characters in this game don't have much of a difference in skill requirements

 

[Tomo009]

He probably told you to play Filia because she's a really solid character. My personal opinion is that you should just play whoever you're most interested in, everyone in this game is viable and you're more likely to invest time into your characters and learn them if you're interested in them. Also, characters in this game don't have much of a difference in skill requirements

In effort, I would kind of agree with you, with the big exception of current Big Band.

You certainly need different skills to play different characters though, getting in a Peacock mindset for example, is very different to a Valentine or Fillia mindset.

But I think I get your point, there is no character in this game that is prohibitively difficult to pick up and play (with a possible exception for Big Band, but he's subject to change still), so you really can play any character you want. Yeah if you get used to Fillia, she becomes a bit of a crutch and does make things a bit easier, but as long as your team works together any character can be played without much hassle.

 

[DanTheMeek]

He probably told you to play Filia because she's a really solid character. My personal opinion is that you should just play whoever you're most interested in, everyone in this game is viable and you're more likely to invest time into your characters and learn them if you're interested in them. Also, characters in this game don't have much of a difference in skill requirements

Well as memory serves the original reason Dime suggested I drop squigly for filia or double was because he goal was to get me to some day actually be good, and he said those were the two characters he knew were good when combined with cerebella. As he's the former evo top 32 (I even found some evo top 32 videos but can't find dime in them either, did he go under a different name at evo?) I bow to his knowledge of what is and isn't viable over my own. And while I could make up excuses as to why I thought squigly and cerebella might be viable, I really did just pick them cause I liked them, nothing to do with viability. Also, I've never had anyone offer to coach me before, so I'm willing to give up a fave character to get free coaching from high level player any day. Maybe if really hated filia I would have argued, but I don't mind her, I have played rush down characters in other games (I'm a cammy in SF4 and SF2HDR and I think tsubaki probably counted as rush down in blazblue), squigly just felt slower and thus more comfortable but I was (and remain) frankly awful with her, and probably have already surpassed my squigly skill with my filia skill so she probably is more accessible if not more viable.

I do believe though there is great truth to what you say, if you're not having fun it doesn't matter have strong you're characters are, you'll never get good with them cause you'll lose interest, so it really is better to play characters who might be less then top tier if you enjoy them, so I do appreciate the advise.

 

[Icky]

Squigly and cerebella are viable if you play well. Trust me dude just play whoever you want to play. If you want to play Filia or Double, so be it and go for it, but if you really want to play Squigly and Bella, there's nothing wrong with it.

 

[Dime]

Meh, listen to who you want to... However know that I told you to play filia cause she's MUCH more of a fundamental based character and has a solid assist that you can put on any team.

As far as squigly and Bella go, naw they ain't great in the Bella/squigly order though if one is good enough one can make ANYTHING work (like inuchiyo using painwheel with fly assist) but making something work doesn't mean that it is necessarily good. And I wanted you to get used to actually calling your assist and I thought (for good reason) that a beginner would be better served with a gtfo assist to help mitigate defense rather than an offensive assist... Cause offense isn't going to come all that often to a beginner... But defense will always be available....


So yeah. I wouldn't listen to these arguments. They seriously aren't thinking of the problem from all points and are only thinking of it in a very small vacuum. You have troubles calling assists and doing 5 hit combos with super... That doesn't bode well for using a stance canceling character with assists that are at least harder to apply than updo. Also, there are ALOT more high level and lower level filia play videos for you to watch and get pointers from... Another point for playing filia. And many many others.

If you want to play squigly and hate filia, then go right ahead. I didn't say you HAD to, just that it really is in YOUR best interest, at this stage of the game with your skill level. If you were to up your skill quickly and learn filia fast then I would have said it would be fine to now switch to squigly. But first it's important to be able to realize certain aspects of fundamental play... Aspects that filia will teach much quicker and with less heartache than squigly.


As far as me not using filia, I don't like her and went back to double. But in the months that I did use her, it did help out my game tremendously to learn how to defeat her and other certain things like character balancing that make playing the game easier.


Anyways yeah, do what you want :) there is absolutely no animosity if you want to use squigly instead of filia. I think its a much much harder road... But you might be different. If you do you can ask tomo for tips, his squigly is good.

 

[DanTheMeek]

Makes sense, so you're mains then are cerebella and double? And are there videos of your play anywhere I could check out?

Anyway, I'll stick with Filia then, like I mentioned I feel like I've been progressing with her much faster then I have been with squiggly, just caught me off guard when you said you didn't like Filia. I'm going to listen to all advice I get regardless of who its from, its foolish to ignore the advice of others, but as my coach I'm still giving you final say, or veto right if you will, on any suggestions I receive.

Honestly I was originally just looking for some direction on filia (which you gave me) since one can only do that same cerebella combo over and over and over and over again before you start to see it in your sleep and yearn for anything else to do to break up the repetition lol. Chris has given me some thoughts but as you were the one who suggested Filia I've been eager to hear more of what you're actual plan for me with her was. As far as the cere combo you've had me focusing on goes, it probably wouldn't be so bad if I could actually do the combo on command now... its actually kind of annoying that I've put this many hours into it and still drop the combo as frequently as I do even in training room, let a lone vs AI. I guess the advantage to just focusing on the one cerebella combo though is that it keeps things simple, while when I try to do a squigly or filia combo and then go back to the cere combo my fingers start tripping all over themselves and my execution become total garbage.

Regardless I still very thankful for all the advice you've given me and time you've spent coaching me, you didn't know me from Adam when you offered to coach me, and I seem to have developed a pretty negative reputation on these forums, so that you've stuck with me at all has meant quite a lot to me.

 

[Icky]

Why shouldn't he listen to our arguments? And you are aware that 5 hit combo into super is practically the same with every character, right? Just because Squigly may have "harder" (which I'd argue she doesn't) combos than Filia, that means nothing when you're at a beginner level when that's a non-issue.

If we want to get real specific it's not even beginner friendly to be using assists at all and if you want him to learn fundamentals best, tell him to get SSFIV and play Ryu for a while.

 

[Dime]

@DanTheMeek

My mains are painwheel and double. Over time I've I've mixed and matched this team with various assists and characters including everyone except BB, squigly, Bella, and Val... And some fortune though I do use her sometimes.
My best characters in order of best to worst are probably:

Double (cause she's easy) peacock (cause she fights from far and doesn't have to interact with other characters that much with her own sprite if she plays well) painwheel (my TRUE main, but double is just better as a character at this point in the game) and parasoul (easy high/low mixups with lockdown assists so she opens well, great air priority, good at round start against most characters except for peacock)

My current team is parasoul/painwheel/double

My team at evo was painwheel/peacock/double.

If you want to see me play, just google "evo 2013 skullgirls pool play" then go to 3:34:00 the match that I'm playing is losers finals. It's the match that I had to win to get into top 32. I lost my next match to "that one other dude" and it wasn't streamed. Afaik this was the only match from evo with me on it recorded. After that I did play some more streamed matches at the next salty cupcakes, some against strider0 and some against shin at proof. (I wasn't aware that my matches against strider were being streamed, at the time)
I played like shit all evo and had a problem with the monitors lag being different from my home setup so I basically couldn't combo...I only got to my actual bnb reset point with painwheel once during that entire losers bracket set. Every other painwheel combo I dropped before the reset point or I ended premature cause I was scared of dropping it. All in all my double was what won me the match. Also, this team that I used all evo wasn't my main trio team, I didn't have a main trio team... Every team that I used had defincies in my mind so I just went with the peacock team as the least weak. Painwheel/double duo was my best team. But I felt that it didn't have good enough all aroundness in my play at least, to take into tournament... Example:


With that team I would get more blowouts, but I would also lose more.

And in a tournament, blowouts mean jack. Winning is all that counts. And it showed with my tournament team... I had to have double rescue me in that last game, and almost rescued me in the 2nd game. All in all across many of my games at evo, double was what pulled me through, her combo was so easy that I had a hard time dropping it even on weirdo monitors that I wasn't used to.

If I had been hitting my combos like I do at home on my own setup, I felt that I could have gone further. I managed to hit both of the guys I lost to with combo starters multiple times and, my reset vortex was really good at the time. So one hit could easily cascade into an entire team lost. But... That is neither here nor there. I lost because my opponents were better that day on those monitors. There might have been people that I played and beat that were having the same problem and my win against them might have been a fluke... It doesn't matter.



I'd link stuff myself... But I'm on an ipad and I'm generally loathe to go on the internet (which means that I never do) with my laptop since I don't run any antivirus on it.


I also have some vids of me playing on my youtube account "Albert Wallace"


New team casuals. Age_of_fools has vids of me losing over and over again to him n his youtube... But those are mostly from vanilla sg and age is the best player in AU currently so, those vids aren't the greatest indicator of my strength as a player, though they are great indicators of ages strength.

All in all I'm a higher level intermediate player. Not an expert.

 

[DanTheMeek]

That was an incredible first game near perfect in the losers final match, and an exciting comeback in that final game after losing painwheel almost immediately and having peacock at near dead, can definitely see what you mean about your double play pulling you through, making me consider switching filia for double. Just kidding, I'll stick with filia, but the double play really was sick.

 

[Dime]

That was an incredible first game near perfect in the losers final match, and an exciting comeback in that final game after losing painwheel almost immediately and having peacock at near dead, can definitely see what you mean about your double play pulling you through, making me consider switching filia for double. Just kidding, I'll stick with filia, but the double play really was sick.

Thanks man. My painwheel has gotten a lot better, not so stiff. And I switched her from first to second cause she's way waaaaay better there and parasoul is perfect in the first spot. All in all my only problem right now is peacock. When I lose I feel like I got outplayed instead of simply playing a bad matchup... Which feels really nice to me. And this ggpo fix is the bomb. Actually I wouldn't mind trying a few matches out against you with this new ggpo fix that mike put in.

 

[Hilary]

As I understand it, Dime's argument boils down to "Everyone learns to drive in a Honda before they sit down in a more specialized race car."

Icky's argument boils down to "Wreck a shitload of race cars in a shitload of races and you'll be used to race cars' limits and more familiar with their strengths."

Neither are really wrong, and I've seen a lot of people apply both approaches in different games over the years. Dime's right in that a specific character can be a great set of training wheels to help you wrap your head around key concepts and mechanics, Icky's right in that learning the hard lessons up front can be motivation all the same with the benefit of always thinking with your characters' tools or lack thereof.

My suggestion would be to really analyze your own play and decide what you feel are the most pertinent/outstanding problems, and work on those skills regardless of which character you pick.

Just like anything else you could take up, it's important to stay cognizant of your abilities and progress or else you have nothing but a subjective appraisal of your own game. Record your matches, make daily notes on your play, and create goals for yourself based on those observations. Get big sample data; play people better than you, play people at your level, play people weaker than you. If you need to make adjustments or try new things, you'll know what to change if you know what you've got or where you're lacking.