Whiff Punishing and Neutral Game (First Attack by James Chen)

[Protagonist_1]

I've been reading as well as watching a lot of segments about footsies, and understanding the neutral game, which can be applied to the majority of most fighting games. Recently, I stumbled upon James Chen's guide about whiff punishing on his own series "First Attack", which helps break down the footsie game in SF4, but I feel can be applied to a variety of games, not only SF4.

Whiff punishing plays a huge part in footsies, including spacing, and counter whiff punishing. This video just describes the basics of the neutral game, which to me, provided some good insight when it comes to breaking down fighting games in general:

NOTE: I know some may look at James Chen as someone who shouldn't be teaching this concept, because he wouldn't be considered a top tournament player. However, he has been commentating SF4 for years now, and feel he has the credibility and knowledge to break this topic down.

Starts around the 2:40 mark (Part 1)

(Part 2)

(Part 3)

Important Note: Not all character's in a fighting game have a strong footsie game. Character's can control the neutral game more so than others.

 

[Gh0sty]

This whole series is really interesting. Good post.

 

[Protagonist_1]

This whole series is really interesting. Good post.

Thanks! I felt this was a pretty important (and mostly universal) concept when it comes to fighting games, and just wanted to share this if anyone wanted to see it.

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Does not really apply in Injustice or SFxT.

Since the walkspeed and/or throw range in both of those games don't allow you to "dance" back and forth and frametrap in the same way that you can in AE. Injustice footsies is centered around dashes, jump ins and walking backwards. SFxT is centered around dashes, CADCs and switch cancel/chain buffering.

In AE, the main goal of footsies is scoring a hard knockdown which is achieved via sweep, combo or throw. In Injustice and SFxT, it's much more valuable to have position advantage over the KD. Since Injustice has interactables and SFxT has wake up roll.

Something else to note: In Injustice, a blockstring that leaves you + on block and grants you a 50/50 is much more valuable than the traditional 5-10% whiff punish in SF.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Something else to note: In Injustice, a blockstring that leaves you + on block and grants you a 50/50 is much more valuable than the traditional 5-10% whiff punish in SF.

How many of these are in the game?

 

[Vulcan Hades]

How many of these are in the game?

Batman has those. As well as Batgirl, Flash, Wonder Woman, Deathstroke, Black Adam, Doomsday and Bane off the top of my head. But it doesn't matter. Point is in AE normals don't inflict chip and AE doesn't have chains that launch and are + on block. Otherwise top players would go for those instead of a silly standing strong 5% whiff punish that simply resets to neutral.

 

[Protagonist_1]

Does not really apply in Injustice or SFxT.

Since the walkspeed and/or throw range in both of those games don't allow you to "dance" back and forth and frametrap in the same way that you can in AE. Injustice footsies is centered around dashes, jump ins and walking backwards. SFxT is centered around dashes, CADCs and switch cancel/chain buffering.

In AE, the main goal of footsies is scoring a hard knockdown which is achieved via sweep, combo or throw. In Injustice and SFxT, it's much more valuable to have position advantage over the KD. Since Injustice has interactables and SFxT has wake up roll.

Something else to note: In Injustice, a blockstring that leaves you + on block and grants you a 50/50 is much more valuable than the traditional 5-10% whiff punish in SF.

James Chen actually mentions this in the third vid that certain games don't support whiff punishing (as you mentioned). However, surprisingly, he mentioned injustice as a game you could whiff punish due to how you have to commit to certain strings. (Go to 4:12 of the vid)

I do take that with a grain of salt however, because he's not as informed with injustice as compared to SF4, and trying to outspace your opponent in this game, let alone trying to whiff punish is at most times impossible or to strict of timing. Mainly due to the slow walkspeed, lack of advancing normals, and long dashes that put you out of the range to whiff punish.

However, despite this I still practice trying to whiff punish in injustice, even using some of the recording drills that James Chen was doing to at least help my reactions. (I use Bane so that's probably the only reason why that's possible lol). I also play mk9, KOF, and Tekken which some of the concepts mentioned above can be applied to...but not to certain games.

 

[TheBoyBlunder]

This is dope.