LawAbidingCitizen
Bomb Setups & Ball Rolls(Mileena/Cyrax)
I consider myself a high level player but I wouldn't say I'm as good as top players at all. I have plenty of room for improvement like most. The biggest lesson I needed to learn before I was able to turn bad MU's into easy matchups was accepting other players are better than me. I had this disillusioned view of online players. They make plenty of mistakes and sometimes jump quite often. I mistook this for scrubby gameplay instead of respecting my opponent and went in thinking I could beat most. This hindered my progress as a competitive player and made me make excuses for why I lost (Lag, timing etc) in reality lag does have a factor in some of your loses but 100ms and below that shouldn't be the case.
I noticed after accepting I was the one making the mistakes and stopped making excuses as to why I didn't win. I was able to analyze what I did wrong and work on improving my strategy and worked on being more adaptable in the FT2 environment.
Labbing matchups and knowing the range of my opponents moves and what overrides them with little movement was a huge cornerstone to my overall progress. Finding unsafe habits they do and ways to punish them including gaps in moves that are frequently used was more than useful.
Practice Mode & Working on Reaction Timing:
I do this daily, I set Scorpion or other Top Tiers I know I will face in ranked in practice mode with AI to record & Random Hidden Playback with several moves that facilitate mixup where I have to react in different ways and work on blocking each one until I can block 3/4 consistently but in some situations I can find a universal response that beats 3/4 moves and leaves me safe in the 4th. For Example:
Liu Kang usually uses F43 mix between F43U3,F43xxLowFireball or F43xxParry and F4 Throw. This requires you to respond in different ways to beat it out but does it?
Parry beats D1 & Highs/Mids/Overheads but is beat by lows and D3.
Low Fire Ball beats all normals and pokes.
F43U3 can be interrupted with a 9f move Like s1 into full combo or Pokes.
What I do instead is let them do the F43U3 and only punish it once then let them spam it and only punish the Parry, Throw & Low Fireball. On reaction you can punish every other option besides his plus on block one. See the delay into throw Duck and Uppercut or Combo. See the Fireball hold Block and duck the high for full combo punish. See the Parry and just wait till the end of it and full combo punish with any starter.
I've found this is very effective vs Liu Kang's F4 mix. Other characters can be beat by a single move which counters every option.
Hope this helps any out there struggling with characters, matchups or themselves. My loses are now positive events instead of being salt inducers because it allies me to improve after seeing the replay if what went wrong.
I noticed after accepting I was the one making the mistakes and stopped making excuses as to why I didn't win. I was able to analyze what I did wrong and work on improving my strategy and worked on being more adaptable in the FT2 environment.
Labbing matchups and knowing the range of my opponents moves and what overrides them with little movement was a huge cornerstone to my overall progress. Finding unsafe habits they do and ways to punish them including gaps in moves that are frequently used was more than useful.
Practice Mode & Working on Reaction Timing:
I do this daily, I set Scorpion or other Top Tiers I know I will face in ranked in practice mode with AI to record & Random Hidden Playback with several moves that facilitate mixup where I have to react in different ways and work on blocking each one until I can block 3/4 consistently but in some situations I can find a universal response that beats 3/4 moves and leaves me safe in the 4th. For Example:
Liu Kang usually uses F43 mix between F43U3,F43xxLowFireball or F43xxParry and F4 Throw. This requires you to respond in different ways to beat it out but does it?
Parry beats D1 & Highs/Mids/Overheads but is beat by lows and D3.
Low Fire Ball beats all normals and pokes.
F43U3 can be interrupted with a 9f move Like s1 into full combo or Pokes.
What I do instead is let them do the F43U3 and only punish it once then let them spam it and only punish the Parry, Throw & Low Fireball. On reaction you can punish every other option besides his plus on block one. See the delay into throw Duck and Uppercut or Combo. See the Fireball hold Block and duck the high for full combo punish. See the Parry and just wait till the end of it and full combo punish with any starter.
I've found this is very effective vs Liu Kang's F4 mix. Other characters can be beat by a single move which counters every option.
Hope this helps any out there struggling with characters, matchups or themselves. My loses are now positive events instead of being salt inducers because it allies me to improve after seeing the replay if what went wrong.
