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Personally I’d say that it’s important to mainly focus on one character at a time for sustained periods early on. I stunted my progress by trying to learn little bits of all the cast right from the start. It meant that when Super came out it was easier for me to get C to Shining C cause of character familiarity, but I think in the short run it definitely hurt my play for a good while. Having a main allows you to focus on learning their matchups, and as someone mentioned before allows you to hone muscle memory for anti airs as well as punishes, ideal hit confirm combos with tricky links etc
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Picking a main can come down to a few things. In my opinion you may have to consider a number of things. Some examples are;
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[]What playstyle would you like to end up with? I’d say you can get a good idea of this from the players that impress you most when you watch them. Do you find it satisfying watching someone control space with Dhalsims normals? Rushdown with Rufus? Do wakeup mixups with Fuerte? Zone with Ryu?
[]Are you playing for fun or playing to win? If you’re playing for fun you can freely choose any character, but if you’re looking to get to a level where you get tournament wins you might want to keep tierlists in mind.
[]Do you already have a good feel for your footsies game, and find yourself using normals a lot? Charge characters tend to have better normals than their command using counterparts.
[]Do you care about having a good wakeup game? If you’re already comfortable with handling wakeup pressure this might not be so much of an issue, but as an Akuma player I know that some characters struggle with decent wakeup options against the vortex, for instance.
[]Do you want an Ultra you can combo into, or would you prefer a reaction based ultra to punish with, or a quick grapple ultra? Maybe a utility ultra that you can use to get people off you, like Rose, or for setups, like Sims.
[]Does aesthetic appeal come into it for you? For a lot of people their characters physical appearance or personality comes into play when choosing a main.
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- The amount of training the pros go through doesn’t really matter. Ideally you want offline games but if you have a decent net connection and a fair number of people playing relatively nearby you can still learn a lot from online. That will help you learn the matchup side of things.
Training mode itself is good for improving execution, learning combos with a dummy on auto block, hit confirm combos on a dummy with random block, and good move counters/setups/punishes/learning your best anti airs with a prerecorded dummy, learning techniques like plinking and your character’s ultra setups. The amount of time you decide to put into training mode is up to you. Some people have a mindset that allows them to become engrossed in training mode and level up quickly with it and others tire of it quickly.
Playing against other people is where everything comes together. You’ll learn a bit about footsies, reversals, zoning, tick throws, ambiguous crossups, frame traps, wakeup pressure and mind games. It’s where things all come together and some of the dirty tricks come out.
The most important tip I can probably give you (and I’m not very good myself) is to pay attention to what both you and your opponent are doing. Don’t let yourself get into auto pilot when you’re learning a character, dont press a button without a reason. Pay attention to your opponent too. Watch how they play, what their style is and their preferred setups for special moves, crossups or tick throws. There’s a good chance that you can probably do with jumping a lot less too.
The replay feature is really good because early on while you’re developing muscle memory it can all be a bit much to take in, but you can watch back fights and look at it from each players perspective and ask yourself why they’re doing x, y and z.
My way-too-long 2 cents. Hope that helped. I’m off to bed.
