gootecks

Adjustments to Gameplan and Tracking Progress

NOTE: Feel free to re-publish this article anywhere as long as you don’t change it and keep the links back please.

For no good reason other than the fact that I think going to Japan inspired me, I’ve been playing more.  A lot of people might not realize, but I do know how to play this game.  ^_^  Playing for a few days in Japan made me understand why I had not been playing as well as I used to when I was playing way more.  Not practicing regularly of course is a big one (I don’t have as much time as I used to due to Cross Counter duties, etc), but the biggest factor was that I had the wrong mindset and was doing the wrong things at the wrong time.  I’m going to attempt to outline a few of them here. 

Going In Too Hard vs. Not Going In Hard Enough
I don’t remember exactly when I realized it, but I now understand that I was being too aggressive with Balrog relative to my skill level and not hard enough with Rose.  With Balrog, I’m not a frame trap/mixup/setup expert, I’m more turtly and footsie-based.  I found that by attacking after knocking them down, I was frequently eating wakeup uppercuts.  At first I was mad because I was like “why is this scrub uppercutting me every time??”  Then I was like “oh wait I’m the scrub for not respecting him enough to get up sometimes”.  I realized that especially with Balrog, I have to let them get up at least once or twice.  This serves two purposes:

1. If they uppercut I block
2. I don’t put myself at risk and continue pressuring with low Jab/cr. MK

With Balrog, it’s critical to keep the life lead if you get it because he’s not one of the characters that can make a comeback easily (i.e. the twins, Ibuki, Seth, Viper, Akuma).  Therefore, attacking on their wakeup when I don’t have a larger than 25-35% lead can lead to giving up more damage than necessary. 

Meter Management Adjustments
This is more about what I do with Rose than Balrog, but I think it can be applied to most characters in most situations.  Up until relatively recently, I would basically try to save my meter until I had full Super in order to land it in a combo after Soul Spiral . This is great when you hit it, but it sucks when you don’t. 

Another problem with saving your Super too long is that sometimes you end up with far more meter than them with nothing to use it on.  Maybe you try hard to save your meter and start the second round with full meter.  Obviously this is better than starting with no meter, but let’s say you get an opening to land the Super after Soul Spiral early in the round.  Now what? 

You have no meter and chances are if you had a full meter at the start, your opponent probably had at least 2 or 3.  Now you’ve done a decent amount of damage, but your options are now severely limited with no meter.  Now you can’t EX Soul Spiral FADC Back Dash to get out of a bad wakeup situation if you get knocked down.  Nor can you fight EX Fireballs with EX Fireballs, nor can you EX Soul Throw to dissuade them from jumping. 

So what’s the solution?  Keep saving it until you have them down to half life?  No, that’s not the solution either.  The solution is actually to not necessarily be in that situation to begin with.  The only reason you should be starting a round with full meter is if your opponent has 3-4 meters. 

This is what I realized recently somewhere along the line as I’ve been playing more.  I used to hoard my meter instead of using it to buy me things in the game such as:

• space
• chip damage
• getting out of bad situations with EX or FADC back dash

Now my goal is constantly be at par or ahead of my opponent in the meter race, because ultimately that’s what the game is about: resource management.  If I can stay ahead and yet not too far ahead, I know that I’m not missing opportunities to use my meter.  The last thing you want to do is lose any round with significantly more meter than your opponent because you were saving it for next round.  PyroZeroX from Shadowloo said it best once when we were doing commentary on the Shadowloo Showdown stream:

“There is no last round, there is no next round, there is only THIS round.”

This means that if you died in the first round with three meters and your opponent has zero or one, you missed a few opportunities during the round where you probably could have used a meter or two to your advantage.  Maybe it was an EX Fireball, or an EX Headbutt or an Uppercut FADC, who knows?  The point is that you will accumulate more meter throughout the round whether you are attacking or blocking, so you might as well use it at a similar rate as your opponent rather than trying to save it for that perfect situation which may never come. 

Waiting For The Right Time to Use Super/Ultra
This is something that is probably pretty obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn’t to me for a long time.  There’s a reason that you get a big flash when you win with Super or Ultra and that’s because the game is trying to reward you for doing so.  Without saying so directly, the game is suggesting that you should be using your Super or Ultra to win the round. 

This is useful to keep in mind because it can help keep you from spending your meter too early on a Super and from using your Ultra too early if it won’t kill them.  You see this all the time with inexperienced players; as soon as they get an opportunity to land their Ultra, they do it, even if they just have a Level 1 Ultra.  Oftentimes it can pay off to wait until you know your Ultra will kill them or bring them within chip damage in order to use it.  This especially ties into your meter management strategy because chances are if you’ve played it properly, when it’s late in the round, you should have enough meter to land your Ultra or Super or both. 

A scenario to think about is this: who is more dangerous?  Player A with 15% life with Full Meter and Ultra or Player B with 40% life that just used an Uppercut FADC Ultra to bring Player A down to 15% and now is left with no meter and no Ultra?  To me, Player A is more dangerous because if he lands both Super and Ultra, it’s game over for Player B. 

For a Rose-specific example, since seeing this awesome Ultra 2 Setup video, I’ve tried to integrate a lot of these into my game and this has forced me to wait until I get the right time to activate.  This is a sharp contrast to before, where I would usually use Ultra 2 to stop momentum and get out of trouble.  Now I almost always force myself to wait until I get an opening I know that I can set up an Orbs mixup after and not only that, I wait until I know I will be able to kill them with it if it hits, or have a high probability of being able to chip them with EX Fireball or EX Soul Spiral afterwards (assuming that I have the meter which I usually do). 

If I never get one of those openings, then chances are I will just save it until they have less than 5% left and I have a few meters because then it’s almost certain death for them.

Tracking Progress
I started tracking some of my progress in early December when I got back from Japan. Here are my Rose player stats on December 4th:

Keep in mind that I have a secret account that I used to play on a lot more in the past, but the win rate difference is less than 1% so I didn’t feel the need to include it. 

Here are my stats as of December 27th:

You can see that my win rate has increased to 73.31% up from 67.48%, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.  If you calculate the wins that I’ve had since December 4th, you get a better idea of the improvement. 

Dec. 27th Fights: 472
Dec. 4th Fights: 123
Difference: 349

Dec. 27th Wins: 346
Dec. 4th Wins: 83
Difference: 263

Win rate since December 4th: 75.36%

So since December 4th based on the fights since then, my win rate has gone from 67.48% to 75.36% for an increase in 7.88%.  Not bad for making a few adjustments to my overall gameplan. 

Hopefully this helps some of you guys out and maybe inspires you to keep track of your win rates.  Maybe taking monthly screenshots of where you’re at will keep you motivated to continuously improve.  I’m interested in hearing your thoughts so please leave a comment.   Good luck!

You catch gootecks on Cross Counter LIVE every Tuesday at 9PM PST on http://thestream.tv as well as on the Excellent Adventures which you can find at the Cross Counter YouTube Channel.