Yeah but even top pros don’t always get the confirms. My point was that even if you don’t/can’t confirm it, random poke damage adds up quickly, and if people aren’t respecting it then I see no reason to consider it bad. basically it’s about conditioning, right? Either you eat the low every time and I stack that damage up (more with occasional hit confirms), or you eventually, begrudgingly learn to respect it and hold d/b, and then I get to do the stuff I actually wanted to be doing anyway.
It’s way harder to get the c.mk spacing right if you record the dummy, plus you might mess up the reversals. For the purpose of my test I found setting the dummy to reversal to be more useful. You could do it either way, but it’s a lot harder to get the correct spacing if you’re trying to walk into it at just the tip.
IDK man there’s some disconnect going on between us here. I’m not saying you should “meaty” with c.mk because that’s a pretty bogus meaty. I’m saying if you’ve done two hits of a blockstring and you’re worried about them walking back (that is where this conversation started, right?), then c.mk is the button to stop them.
c.mk is the furthest thing from a “poor option”. It’s one of the better hit-confirmable lows to stop enemy movement in the game. This move is really, really good.
To address this, I think people think about “hit confirms” in the wrong way. I agree that it’s hard to hit confirm c.mk 100% of the time, especially on a dummy just doing random guard. Even if you hit confirm it some of the time, though, you’re still getting a decent payoff. So long as you don’t screw it up and SA on block you’re in good shape. Err on the side of caution.
To what I was saying about hit confirms, though, I don’t think the “dummy on random guard test” should be the true benchmark. The thing is, if you’re doing that, the only information you have to respond to is whether c.mk hits or not, so you have a relatively small window to confirm. However, in the case we’re discussion, it’s my opinion that you shouldn’t be waiting to see if c.mk is a hit/block and confirm from there. You should be looking to see if they were walking backwards when you pressed c.mk -> this is a significantly longer window to confirm into your SA. It’s like what I was saying earlier about the b+mp target combo. I’m not trying to confirm if b+mp hit and then do the hk; I’m trying to c.lp, b+mp… confirm if c.lp hit, and then go.
Also, to inb4 you come back and say “yeah but maybe they short walk back then d/b block your c.mk xx SA confirm lol what now smart guy!?”, well, then you got outplayed buddy. If that’s what they start doing, just walk back in and press another button. Walk up and throw. The thing about SF (and FGs in general) is that, so long as the game is well designed, your opponent is supposed to have defensive options to beat you. IDK if it’s just me, but your complain kinda sounds like “boohoo I can’t just walk up and auto-pilot blockstring because smart people will walk back”. Like, ok? You have the tools to beat walking back. If that’s what they’re doing, call them on it. If you call them on it and they stop doing it, good! Keep doing what you wanted to do. You have options, they have options. Sometimes yours are better, sometimes theirs are better. Not everything is supposed to have an equal risk/reward ratio. Some things are high risk, high reward, some are low risk, low reward, some are high risk, low reward, some are low risk, high reward. The thing is, sometimes you have to do the risky shit if you want them to behave in a way that lets you start applying your lower risk or higher reward tools.
There is no “I win” button. Tactics have counter tactics, counter tactics have counter-counter tactics. That’s the beauty of the game. Discern their habits, exploit them, and profit.
You came to the thread, complained about an issue, people were like “here’s how you beat that”, and then you’re like “that sucks because they can just block it and punish”. Well, ok? But we weren’t talking about cases where it would be blocked, y’know?
You pretty much lost me at describing c.mk as a “poor option”.
