Wow, this thread was dead the first few days so I ignored it. Now its blown up. I first want to start by saying I read every post. Some of the criticisms I received are correct and incorrect at the same time. I didn’t go in great detail in my original post which is why much of it was open to your own interpretation of what you thought I meant.
Many of you seem focused on my “2-3 hour in training mode a day” comment. Also, many of you don’t see where your skill level is to fit in my comment. My post was intended for new SG players who casually play FGs and want to strive to be A TOP PLAYER. If you want to get “average” at the game, my post very well most likely doesn’t concern you. I guess if I ever write a mini book or a strategy guide, I have to have different chapters focusing on how good on a 1-10 scale you actually want to get.
Many of you are also saying that I am saying ONLY TRAINING MODE matters and playing against real people doesn’t matter which is COMPLETELY FALSE. You need a balance of both to become good. But if you are NEW, you SHOULD start in training mode. I come from a long line of FGs and the day I got SG, I went into training mode, picked 3 characters and messed around for good amount of time until I got a feel for them, then recycled until I played all 8 characters and made an informed decision on what characters fit my playstyle. For example, if you know MvC2, I will reference that game a lot.
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Painwheel is an airbased flying characters with pretty fast offensive high-low attacks. She has good offensive moves and can put a player into a vortex. She can also fly away and run and play a good defensive game. She doesn’t have quick projectiles or very quick/range attacks so her trouble comes when someone is zoning her out well. I compared her to sentinal which fits my playstyle.
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Peacock is obviously a zone character. She doesn’t have fast overheads like some others so she lacks the offensive high-low game. She is great for someone who has A LOT of patience and execution/timing. I am a very impatient players (my flaw) so this character was a no for me.
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Parasoul has a little bit of everything to me. She can zone well if she needs to, she can control floor pretty well and has great footsies. She also has great potential for resets once she gets the ball rolling. She feels like a storm/magneto to me. Her flaw is her grounding dashing is short/slow/non-normal cancelable (like Dr. Doom). So each time you move the floor, you have to be thinking ahead at all times and protect yourself.
I can go on, but I’ll stop there. Because of training mode, I learned the advantages/disadvantages of each character.
You can ask ANY TOP/PROFESSIONAL player what they think of training mode and how much time they spend and you will see how they answer. Heck, Fanatiq is streaming training mode on a daily basis to upkeep his muscle memory and combos as well as figure out new resets and more damaging combos.
Now, if you want to become just good or an average player, you can spend minimal time in the lab and just learn the basic BnBs of your characters. So you spend about say 10-15 minutes, learn a nice 15 hit combo into super and DHC. Now your ready to go play other people. But you haven’t learned multiple combos, you haven’t learned resets, you haven’t learned how to combo off throws (different combos due to IPS change), you haven’t learned what combos you can do off of a jumping attack, you haven’t learned combos if you used your OTG to start the combo etc…
So when those situations come up in the match, your opponent will burst or you will drop your combo because you forgot you used your OTG.
Now the benefits of playing a person over training mode… There are some BIG things that you can only learn from playing real people. This is more where the mental game comes in rather than the muscle memory. When you hear the commentator say “Oh Daigo just downloaded Justin”, you will understand why. When you play people, you need to adapt your game to your opponents. You need to feel them out and see what they are doing, their patterns, how good their combos are, when they reset, when they jump etc… You will also learn how to block, when to pushblock, when to burst and when to tech throw. This is all specific to the opponent you are playing. You must be aware of the surroundings of the match at all times. You will learn the distance you should keep in order to be safe or when to throw out your pokes or to call your assist. When you actually can start hit confirming, you can now implement the combos you learned from TRAINING MODE.
General stuff you will learn from playing people is blocking and situational combos your characters can do off of specific hits (though I think training mode can help here as well). Playing people better than you will show you where your flaws are. You will say “dam, i should’ve blocked high. I should look out for that reset.” You will also learn “I see my super isn’t safe against that character when he does that”. You will learn all your situational encounters playing a live person. You will also learn accidental new tech that occurs by coincidence.
All in all, what I meant was for fresh players to start in training mode because some of the players I run into don’t even know how to pushblock or launch or even a simple 3 hit chain. They are clearly just holding forward trying to hit me with anything. I don’t care if you don’t agree with me, but I am not only speaking from my 10+ year personal experience, but also from other top players’ experience.
Now can we turn this thread into more of a Q&A for getting better for new players that are actually determined to improve and not blame lag for their loss?