@LockM
I don’t play Johnny, but I did do all of his trials. The sample inputs, while consistent if you have the ability, I found it immensely easier to omit doing the 646 type of dash, in favor of just doing a 66 at the end.
Anyway, in regards to timing it out, this is essentially how it went for me to get it down to a relative consistency…
- Input 5k, immediately 2D, as the input buffer will cause the 2D to come out after the 5K is done.
- Return to neutral, and use the duration until the first hit of Johnny’s 2D to do the half circle back. (How quickly you do the half circle doesn’t really matter, you can do it as slow as you want, so long as you’re done by the time 2D hits. Personally, I found going at the perfect pace where 2D hits just I’m done with the half circle to be the most consistent, as it prolongs the length of the input buffer for the dashes.)
- Once it connects hit P (or whatever stance button is easiest for you), I would say I do the world’s most minor of pauses here before inputting 66S. The important thing is you need to make sure he actually gets into stance, otherwise the dash won’t come out. The S button needs to be pressed the second the dash starts, which should be, provided you let him get into stance, the moment you input the second forward input.
You’ll know you’re doing it right because you’ll hear Johnny’s little grunt from his dash when in stance. Something which may end up happening is miss-timing the “S” input, you might end up pressing it while in neutral when doing the second forward or something akin to that. To decipher that, use the actual stick input display and watch that while doing the combo. You want to be as precise as possible. For practice, I suggest doing 2D into stance into dash just keep doing that for a bit until you get the timing down.
I found going slower with this combo to be the more consistent method. While I am not versed on the how-tos of GG’s specific version of an input buffer, but from my experimentations, any new input towards a motion will refresh the time the “super” input is stored into the buffer by a small degree. Specifically I noticed when doing this lightning fast, that you have to do it just like that – insanely fast and precise. I also found that doing it too fast meant the super input might end up being lost due to time lost waiting for the 2D to finish and the game starts registering your absence of motion as you trying to do something else and discards the buffer.
Hope this is somewhat helpful.
The above actually reminded me. I’ve been meaning to gush a bit over how good Rev’s trials are. I’m one of those guys who loves doing trials, whether they are stupid non-combos like SFIV’s or nut-bustingly difficult like a lot of KoF 13’s. I absolutely adore doing challenges.
I finally got around to doing all of Rev’s – boy, they are just fantastically made. They do an amazing job of teaching you basic rhythms of a character. Even if at times their specific nature does kind of go against the improv-like combos of GG, where you add or subtract normals on a whim to make sure the opponent lines up correctly. Regardless of that, the specific nature of it forces you to really learn how to do each combo and learn just why it works, and how you can make it work consistently, even within the confines of it’s linear combo path.
The amount of trials I went into, tried them a few times and was like “Alright, I see what it wants me to do, but… doesn’t seem very consistent or tournament-viable” only to come out of the trial nailing the combo with 95% consistency is incredible. There is a trick and hidden bit of a knowledge in nearly every single trial, where once you learn what it is, the rest of the combo becomes child’s play. A good example would be Zato’s trials as a whole, but one in particular stumped me for the longest time, partly because Zato is the only character where you have to actually learn how to play the damn character to do his combo trials, but mostly because I was just too caught up in how drastically asking the combo seemed to be at a glance, that I thought it impossible to do consistently. It was the trial where at one point you had to do a near frame perfect cancel of little eddy’s anti-air attack into the shark super, and I was like “Dude, this super only connects if it’s canceled on frame 1, who is going to go for this shit!?” Then after much deliberation, I thought “Wait, if I HOLD the slash button down after I do 2S, DO the super motion, then release it and press it again, it’ll ALWAYS cancel it frame perfectly with little eddy’s anti-air attack.” BOOM 100% consistency, easy combo. The sample even shows you it, I just overlooked it.
Potemkin, Chipp, Jack-O, Zato, Johnny – nearly everyone – god, the moment you figure it out, it’s so satisfying. I love challenge modes man, they’re like little puzzles, and Guilty Gear’s are some of the best. 10/10, can’t wait to do them all over again in Rev2.
I think the only trial I completed and had no idea why I struggled on it, nor understood why it would work or not work was one of Dizzy’s. It was a really short sequence, like trial 4 or 6 or something, but it would just NOT work, I only completed it through brute force. Shrugs
That said, actually, if anyone is like me and blitzing through trials and has any particular struggle with one, I’d gladly share any of the weird little insights I gathered while going through all of them. I don’t really consider myself a god at execution, in-fact it’s very flawed, so if I can do most of the combos with near consistency or better, I expect most can.
