Bob's Hit-confirms/Blockstrings and Why They Matter

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter x Tekken
1

In the past I have attempted to make large bob threads involving lots of things not currently mentioned and gotten “invalid message” each time. Now that I no longer have this issue, I think I should try to incorporate my enthusiasm that I had before, now.

So one thing people don’t mention often is bob’s hit-confirms and block strings, how important it is to do the right thing when your opponent defends your relativily bad mix-ups. The thing is bob doesn’t really mix you up traditionally, he doesn’t hit with fast high/lows and grabs, he mix’s you up with attack timings, block strings that can’t be interrupted, or they can be and allow you to continue pressuring. Its all about feeling out your opponents during a block, and this is important because whether or not they want to press buttons or not can mean the difference between landing a apres sweep or landing a delayed apres sweep, or landing a granchi cannon, etc.

An important aspect of bob’s gameplay when he pressures others that most people don’t know about or just don’t think about is that when they block all of your attacks, you didn’t do something wrong, in fact you did something right, this is why bob doesn’t have good mix-ups, because he doesn’t need good mix-ups. He can make you block a whole string and at the end of it you end up right in his ideal spacing, just closer than mid-screen away, setting you up for all of bob’s metagame, his quick duck sweep, AA, and st.hp/lp/lk pokes.
You see if your pressure leads to ideal spacing than whether or not you hit them is inconsequential, you now have all your best tools available to you and your at the right place on screen to re-start the pressure on your opponent, because bob’s zoning capabilities involve him actually pushing not pulling, using apres sweep when they sit idol, st.lk, and his pokes/good AA to push your opponent repeatedly towards a corner, or to push them into a bad decision, either one is what you want.

My rule of thumb when opponents block:
-cr.lp cr.lp
You can do cr.hp, which is a frame trap in itself. You can delay a third jab, or what I ususally think is bobs best option is cr.lp again chain into st.mk, and ill explain why its one of his best options later.

-cr.lp cr.lp cr.hp
If you land cr.hp with bob you have as many possibilitys as bob can physically have, You have duck into apres sweep which I recommend the most for when your opponent blocks because apres sweep is the tightest possible string with cr.hp and I notice alot of people try to interrupt your duck during almost every other option you have, You can do hook/granchi, or a delayed apres sweep, if you have meter or need to get bob out you can spiral rocket switch cancel, it usually lets you set-up a mix-up because it hits 3 times with alot of blockstun so you can fit a quick high/low in, you can not do anything after duck and reset the pressure with a jab or grab if you think your opponent is just going to hold down back through everything, you can go for a roll into overhead/low but these are risky options and shouldn’t be used often, also if you have meter to blow on pressure you can EX roll, allowing a high frame advantage on grab/jab afterwards, and you can even attempt headbutt into overhead, but thats the last option I would ever recommend… ever.

-cr.lp cr.lp cr.lp st.mk
When they block my cr.lp I think a great option I have yet to incorperate enough is doing three cr.lp’s and then a st.mk into a few options, you can go for his mp hp string which is great for pushing enemy’s away, and getting you to his ideal range, you can do another mk, hk which is also good for creating space, and if you confirm the hit on the first st.mk, you can just boost combo, this is one of bob’s best options because it extends the string a few hits, pushing bob back into his best spot on screen.

One thing I have been trying to incorperate more recently is attempting meaty granchi cannon’s on peoples wake-ups once and a while, hitting people out of the air with swirly rocket if the spacing is right, and doing close st.mp after jump-ins or on peoples wake up because its frame advantage, and frame trap, aswell as adding damage to a hit-confirm if you do land it, increasing bob’s already great damage.
I would like to add more to this, but I tried to keep any interruptable/not really usefull in general strings out of the thread, I attempted to give some insight into what you should be thinking of when your opponent blocks your moves, and not just droning into a cr.lp, cr.hp, duck hook whether they hit or not, and then complaining that its -2 so your opponent gets a free jab on you, in fact I don’t think his duck hook is good at all unless you hit-confirm into it, because it puts you almost right in front of your enemy, and at a -2 frame disadvantage, you basically let rushdown characters in for free… but now im just rambling, if anyone has suggestions or if I missed something I will add them to the main thread, thank you for reading.

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Very Very good. Options off strings is just one of the answers to what I was pondering earlier: what signals out Bob from the rest of the cast (especially with Bryan having the midrange mixups Bob dreams of). The answer I came up with was his jumping game. If you know a bunch of stuff about that I would be delighted to read it.

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His jumping game is pretty ridiculous, and I actually have some specific set-ups, if you time a jump hp on someones wakeup right you can hit them like the frame you land, which is quite unique compared to other characters because other characters just do their attack as late as they can, but bob’s hp not only changes his arc, but it also has a crapload of active frames like a dudley jump hk but even more, and with the arc being spiked more downwards it can make for these really interesting set-ups. One set-up I do all the time is neu.jump hp in the corner, time it early for a near instant overhead u can combo from, or time it late on their wake-up into a jump towards mk for some super annoying to block corner mix-ups.

Against some of the bigger characters like hugo and jack and such you can do instant jump hk, as much as you want lol, i have done it before where I instant overhead with hk against a hugo like 2-3 times, and right when he goes for a back breaker I stop and get a full combo. The only other piece of jumping info I have is if your in the corner you can space a mk to be really ambiguous like a rufus divekick from sf4, you can jump in mk in such a way that it would definantly land on the other side, but since your in the corner it doesn’t, the crazy thing is with experimenting I have found that bob can do some adon stuff where depending on the timing of his mk he can set-up non-cross up/cross-up’s based entirely on when you press the button, thing is with rolls you can’t depend on this like a sf4 character would, I generally use the mk mix-ups in the corner where they get really difficult to block.

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Thanks. Yeah, I feel I do not utilize Bob’s jumps enough in spite of how ambiguous they can be. Have you ever experimented with speed gems on Bob? They allow for combos with multiple jump heavies, more ambiguous moves, and open a plethora of safe jump options.

Speaking of blockstrings I wonder with gems if you can go into an instank j.hk overhead after a blockstring with the abilty to combo afterwards. Will test later.

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Also against dhalsim do jump mk, if he throws out a hp and you space it right, the large amount of active frames from the mk will beat his jump back hp, but if he delays his hp long enough he can avoid it, and I use jump lk, ALL THE TIME. I forgot to mention how ridiculous jump lk from bob is as an air to air, its honestly one of the best in the game if not the best, i use it in match-ups like juri vega bison chun, because their high jump height make it hard to cr.hp them out of their jump-ins, but since their jumps are so high its easy to reaction jump lk.