How do you practice?

[EndofGameBoss]

I'm just wondering how those of you who don't or rarely play online practice. Someone isn't always around to play against, so what do you do to get better during those times? It would be nice to share tips and insight with people that have the above problem. Here is my 3 tips to polishing your game when you lack a human opponent.

1. Training mode; This is a good place to learn new combos, strings, or to come up with your own and test things out to see what moves can be linked together. It is also good for warming up your hands and getting your timing down before a match.

2. Ladder on expert; While this may seem silly since you can't jump a lot and such, I find this is a great way to practice your defense, reaction, and punish certain moves with juggles. It's a good place to practice the combos you were working on in training with a moving/defensive opponent. I don't care what anyone says, playing expert can make you a little better.

3. Tournament streams; I find myself often watching tournaments hoping someone picks Sindel, but it rarely happens and when it does they never impress me. Visiting those streams however, brings opportunity to see high level players use your character. You can definitely learn strategy against characters you are struggling with.

Anyway, that's how I practice and work on my game on my own.....when I have time. How do you guys do it?

 

[seoulspirit]

Find the father of perfect, cause practice makes perfect

 

[Zyns]

I don't have any friends who play the game, so it's just online for me. Seems more useful than practice mode. Sure, theres delay, but it's still a human opponent. You just gotta prevent yourself from using lag-tactics

 

[CJKRattlehead]

i agree with all however, expert ladder is only good for defensive practice because the AI cannot be mixed up and they randomly unblock during strings and react to every single jump.

 

[EndofGameBoss]

I play online too, but I keep it to a minimum now. If I'm really bored I'll play a few online matches. I have a few friends that play and we were doing weekly money matches, but they quickly stopped since they don't know as much as me about the game. So I'm in a rough spot to. My only option is to drive to Nashville and I can't due that every week.

 

[EndofGameBoss]

i agree with all however, expert ladder is only good for defensive practice because the AI cannot be mixed up and they randomly unblock during strings and react to every single jump.

I agree. I play the cpu a certain way however. For instance the only time I go for juggles is when they do something punishable. Such as teleporting or sliding, which every player does, even the good ones. It does improve your defense though. It's a great way of learning mixups and strings characters have without learning how to play the character yourself. Eventually you'll learn to react with blocking.

 

[Ssj4Crisis_x]

2. Ladder on expert; While this may seem silly since you can't jump a lot and such, I find this is a great way to practice your defense, reaction, and punish certain moves with juggles. It's a good place to practice the combos you were working on in training with a moving/defensive opponent. I don't care what anyone says, playing expert can make you a little better.

I have to agree with everything but the Ladder mode. I see where your going with it but at the same time it can't be taken as a serious training method because the computer can easily teach you bad habits in your effort to beat it. On top of that it can easily read what your going to do and out match you in a situations you should win. Honestly if you can't get out to offline sessions then online is probably your next best thing. Just stay away from noobs, befriend alot of good players with good connections and try to keep them in a KOTH room. This way you get to watch them play and develop new strategies. Just don't stick with the same 2-3 people all the time or you'll get stuck in a pattern.

When I train I try to put everything into time slots. I don't find alot of time to just sit around and train so its constantly doing like 3 good bnb kombos over and over for the muscle memory, block dashing back and forth across the stage, xray kombos and then kombos that that consist of enhanced moves. I also to to go to the offline scene here as much as possible. They have one every week but its 3 hours from me which forces me to spend 40 bucks on the trip there and back. However when i can't make it I always look for a KOTH room with some good players and try to absorb everything I can. Even if its not your character(s) being played...you get to see some of the weaknesses and openings of the others.