@axcelerate
Watched the video. A quick things I noticed.
1) you got opened up quickly. You were too impatient under pressure and kept hitting buttons at the wrong time, respect the pressure and just block it out. Block more in general.
2) assists aren't just to cover you getting in, they're there to keep you in and keep your offense going. I saw you burn them trying to get in, and even then the timing wasnt great so they didn't do hardly anything for you.. if you watch a lot of high level matches they tend to earn their way in first, then use assists to either cover them when negative or to facilitate mix. blacks beam is especially nasty at covering mix.
For example, I saw a couple times in the match where you snapped out a H or 2H that was blocked, then immediately SD'd. You ate your opponent's 2H for your troubles there, had you had an assist on deck though you could have used it to cover the blocked H/2H so if they read and tried to punish the SD, you'd have opened them up, or at least covered that approach. Repeat until they respect the
Threat of the assist after a 2H and just keep blocking, then that situation opens up and you can use them blocking to reset into standard blockstring pressure, a DR, another SD, use the assist to run mix.. etc.
We didn't get to see any real offense out of you I feel like, due to how quickly your first two characters went down and due to your opponent basically blocking with his face most of the match when you had momentum as Black.. so it's hard to comment on much else right now. I did notice you had some kinda weird SD's. A lot actually ended up landing towards the end and netting you some damage, but that was more because your opponent just didn't know how to block. For instance, you used the SDs at semi close range from grounded neutral to catch him on approach, and it worked, don't get me wrong, but a simple 2m probably would have as well without the risk of a 2H punish and the benefit of some blockstring pressure off it if blocked and significantly more damage if landed.
Don't take anything I'm saying as douchey please, im a shit player, just going off observation and it looked like you really needed to work on your defensive patience and some of your neutral decision making.
However, it really did seem like you read some of your opponent's tendencies towards the end and you def stayed cool and collected to bring the match back like you did.
This is something I do myself when I can and it's always gotten me really good results. When you play, don't play to win. Play to work on some aspect of your game. Decide before a session and say "ok I'm going to work on my defense" and for all your matches that session hang back , play passively and let them come in the run pressure. Concentrate on just beating pressure, blocking correctly and keeping characters healthy. Or spend a session working on your mobility. Spend matched trying to avoid the opponent or to run them down with your movement. For me, this has always been a good way to fold concepts into my game play.. because when I go in to a match and im trying to concentrate on asissts and neutral and reads and coverage and metsr and available tools and my movement and my opponents movement and combos and extensions and she to dhc or whatever.. it's just overwhelming and I usually end up learning far less than had I just sat there and worked on a single thing. You have to play to win a little bit here and there just to know where you stand and how your improving.. but with me what generally happens is after a couple extended sessions playing and concentrating on, say, defense, I realize I'm making defensive decisions more intuitively and naturally and I don't have to concentrate quite so much anymore on it, that's when I move on to something else. Find friends and play casual matches if you're worried about rank loss and such.
