I’ve got a buddy who’s a generally good fighting game player (places well in local tournaments in every game he plays, strong fundamentals and footsies) but when he plays 3s with us he struggles against buffered low parry, especially on short characters who can duck under high normals. He asked me for advice, but I realized as I was explaining it that I made it sound awfully convoluted. without getting too bogged down in the little details, is there a simple big picture way to explain how it all works? For reference we are mostly talking Chun-Ken with him as the Ken player. so as a general idea… we are talking buffering low parry with her most used normals, or walking into low forward range, and fishing for a low parry before going into something else, stuff like that.
he’s not sticking out low buttons and getting supered for his trouble. he just doesn’t have an idea of what to do to punish her for fishing. and once I was done explaining, I had practically written a novel. I figure there must be a more elegant way to explain how it works without getting bogged down in every possible option at various spacings.
and while I’ve got this friend in mind, I figure this is a question that exists for a lot of players who try out 3s after getting pretty solid in other games. so maybe this will help them as well.
I can see this being difficult to counter if your friend was playing someone like Necro but sounds like hes just not making st.RH a serious threat with his Ken. nobody can duck under that move and it does hefty damage when the opponent is crouching (ie fishing for a down parry)
it sounds like he just isn’t a threat with anything else enough for you to not want to constantly try and down parry.
so his spacing is probably off. if his spacing is tight and he has you unsure whether he intends to close the distance or poke then you can’t just look for lows anymore.
this is one of those cases where defeating the thing has nothing to do with the thing itself.
you create other problems for the opponent to deal with so they are unable to play so safely.
basically what jizz said. also what pherai said, roundhouse is one of those options.
variation in approach. also tighter spacing (which allows more varied offense and reactive options)
I think this little nuance is really where a 3S player changes. That low buffer gets to a lot of people and it sticks. It really forces you to play off rhythm.
I just say, switch up your rhythm and at that point focus on what the other player is doing. Likelihood is, they’re going to push a button after that buffer. Be patient and bait the buffered move and punish appropriately. Oh, and just max-range sweep the fuck outta chun when she has no meter.
It also helps to know the timing of things. Like, that’s one thing you have to get adjusted to at a higher level. If you can guess, or see your opponents timing of said low parry, then beating that with other moves isn’t too difficult. That said, to a certain point, many players do not change up the timing of their parries and the moves that come after them… It’s at that point in a 3S players life that he either flies or remains in purgatory.
thanks everyone. yeah my initial advice was that he should use stand roundhouse and sweep liberally when I don’t have meter, I feel that usually keeps me honest when I try to get cute in that range. you all had some good advice and I’ll pass it on. I also suspect just playing that match a lot will make most of clear as well. when someone says “use stand roundhouse to beat low parry guessing” it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, just a solution to one specific situation. the more you play the more it becomes intuitive I think.
I suggested the Rikimaru vs Deshiken set on TheShend’s channel. seems pretty useful to see how Deshiken handles various spacings in the footsie game. Deshiken plays pretty risky at times too - IMO something you can do and can be very effective against Chun especially without meter.
sweeping is always a gamble. if she can’t directly punish because she doesn’t have super you’re still giving her huge space and time to poke and build meter again due to pushback on block.
i don’t know if that outweighs just poking with better moves which lead to a knockdown anyway (from a special or super).
regardless @yuuki should weigh in on this topic because he’s pretty smart and shit.
good suggestion on rikimaru vs deshiken. one of the best gachis ever imo. one of the cool things about teaching people is you end up learning new things yourself, or reinforcing things you have let fall by the wayside
@Tebbo @Lance3rd I can’t really add anything that hasn’t been mentioned already.
vary timing/patterns to be less predictable. whiffing a normal before cr mk is not necessarily the best, but an effective way to do this.
stand at a range where high moves become a threat. ex hado, st rh.
often when someone is looking to whiff punish or fishing, this is a window
of opportunity to dash in/walk in/throw them.
covering your move with a special/super. This is difficult and situational but viable at times. I don’t recommend covering a parry with jinrai but shoryu (maybe ex hado too?) can be effective. this is used usually closer up.
Aside from these things, keep in mind how parry attempts work. you get the maximum parry window if you tap the direction and return to neutral (which means longer gap to hit them with a high move in this scenario). also if they just tap down and roll back to crouch guard, that window where the parry will register is gone the moment they move their stick to down back. lastly, ken having gauge doesn’t have to make sure the low mk makes contact always. placing the normal at a range where it’ll hit them if they start up a normal, walk into it can be effective sometimes.
Interesting. So then how does the “dirty” blue parry work? It’s mentioned I think in Jinrai’s early post about parry windows. Maybe only when you low parry into a walk or parry then jump?
…wired, I’m getting déjà vu. Maybe I’ve asked this before.
dirty is just from holding a direction rather than going back to neutral. air to air parries can never be clean, and clean AA parries only get one extra frame of leniency iirc (very, very tired, misinfomation is likely, sorry). hitting any other direction will cancel your parry, unless it’s during a super freeze, for some reason it will still keep that window open, even if it’s for a few frames, IE, attempt to parry SA2 from Chun, if you return to blocking at the start of the freeze an hold it, you can still get the parry, even though you should have been technically been blocking for the two frames inbetween the freeze and it connecting. idk why that works, but it helps since you can react to the parry sound and continue it if you’re unsure if you timed it correctly, win-win.
every parry must occur in neutral, if you’re holding a direction there is no parry. if it’s sloppy you don’t remain in neutral the full amount of time. this normally occurs when someone does parry then cancels to block.
Vs Chun you don’t want to be the danger zone where she can kara/fish/low mk/ back fierce. Once you’re in this zone there is little one can do. Especially in the corner you’re pretty fucked.
i always thought parry window was like 6-8 frames and the only way to take advantage of it was to go to neutral because anything else cancels out your parry. if not, that would mean parries would be like rollcancels in cvs2 where their properties are on startup of specials no? correct me if i’m wrong but the only way to not cancel your entire parry window would be to stay neutral because any other direction/button cancels it immediately. whatever the true mechanics, it works out right without having to think too hard.
OT: using normals like ken’s hk and anything with long enough startup should punish buffered parries. normals that hit mid can be parried low but i’m not sure if that applies to moves that hit high enough but are still considered “mid” since they’re not overhead.