New to P-groove. Little help?

Classic Fighting Games Capcom VS SNK 2
1

Hi all. Ive been playing for about 6 or 7 months now, so im not really a newbie anymore. As a matter of fact im pretty good in my opinion. Ive always used either A groove or C . I want to use P exclusively now but i dont know where to begin. I never played 3s so i dont have any experience with parry. Ive read through the p groove thread and still have some questions.

First of all , how should i START learning to parry ? I play real people on the weekends but during the week its just me and the ole xbox. Is there anything i can do to make myself more profecient at parrying?

Second, Are there any tips or tricks i should know about ? For instance i just learned that when someone crosses you up, you cant really lose. You either block it or parry it, option select i believe it was called…

Anyway, My p-team is Kyo/Sagat/Cammyr2 OR Vega/sagat/Blanka r2. So any p groove experts share some knowlege. Tell me the things you wish you knew when you were just starting with P. Thanks for taking the time to read this, cya

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I released a pretty crappy FAQ of P groove not too long ago. I’ll just copy paste the main stuff.

First off, parrying. This is the main attraction to P groove. When you first pick it up, it is no easy task. I’d recommend starting off with parrying fireballs. It’ll give you a glimpse of how to time a parry, and you can have the training dummy switch up the speeds on you so you can visualize the parry. Its very common to parry way too early, if you see your character move forward before the fireball connects you are timing it early. Please note, that ground fireballs like Iori’s can be parried both directions (down and up). Another option is trying to parry Hao’s far standing fierce and other moves with noticable start up.

Now that you’ve got that out of the way, try to parry a jump in. Corner your character and have Mai abuse jumping RH. If you move right before you are hit, then you are parrying too early. Its important to know what moves a character can do when they jump. Like Mai can do her air special at point blank to mistime your parry.

Next is parrying two in ones. For example … Ryu’s crouching forward into fireball. This involves low parry (something you won’t see very often from a casual P groover). This can be hard if you don’t have a fast reaction. Make note of the range, certain characters can’t hit you with a low attack from a distance, so you are limiting the mix up at the same time. Parrying the crouching forward is hard at first, so you can try blocking the crouching forward and parrying just the fireball if you aren’t having any success. Then move on to tapping down for the crouching forward. If you still have trouble, try low parrying a move with huge start up, like King’s slide or Cammy’s spiral arrow (from mid screen).

Almost done with this section! Next is guard crush strings. Have the training dummy set as Guile, have him do a jab sonic boom from full screen, then jump in with fierce, crouching strong into another sonic boom, into his roundhouse. This will take a very long time, but just be patient and look for his strings. Everything here can be parried with just forward. Guile himself is based on good normals which can be broken down with parries.

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P groove just isn’t about parries. Its about what you need in every other groove - Footsies, zoning and etc.

What you need to do is know the range you are at with your opponent. Would you throw a fireball from point blank range? Of course not! So don’t. When you throw out a move, make sure it hits, or is at least blocked. Don’t whiff an attack unless you want to set up a baited move (such as a dragon punch). If you look at some of my matches, I whiff a lot of standing jabs to bait out an opponent.

Next is BnB’s off of a parry. When you parry, don’t do anything. Punish your opponent with a combo! Cammy can punish nearly every parry with her standing roundhouse xx super. Or crouching forward xx super.

Aforementioned was parrying jump ins. While this is good, the opponent may wise up and do an empty jump and throw you. Oh no! But, don’t fret. The whole point of parrying a jump in is just that, to parry something your opponent does. I normally wouldn’t suggest to parry a jump in unless you know that you have a big combo waiting for your opponent off of a parry, OR if the character you are using has a crappy anti air. Almost forgot, some anti airs just get plain stuffed. Like Chun Li’s crouching roundhouse gets stuffed by Terry’s jumping roundhouse and Hao’s jumping fierce. For those situations, it would be safer to parry then anti air, or parry into the combo of your choice.

When you play P groove, you force the opponent to mix up his/her gameplay. However, you must do the same! Mix up what you do. P groove has small jumps, a very offensive manuever. With small jumps you can mix up a high attack, or do an empty small jump into crouching lk’s xx super with a lot of characters.

Low parry set ups. If you look at Makoto’s Kyo, he does crouching short a lot. Why? Its because he’s using Option Select. He hits down right before he attacks so he can low parry, if the opponent doesn’t attack low, no worries. The crouching short covers it into a pressure string. Find set ups!

Most importantly … break down the opponent’s gameplay. You have to analyze every little bit of it if you want to have a successful parry session. Watch if they throw out a crouching forward from max range, and look for it the second time around. This is what makes P groove so deadly, the ability to read an opponent’s attack and punish. Practice this.

I leave you with a list of characters that are good in P groove, in no particular order … these characters are good in beginner levels, but deadly in the hands of a good P groover.

Cammy
Kyo
Sakura
Hibiki

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Any reason why hibiki is included on that list? Just never thought of her as much of a p groove character

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She’s a good character defensively, and parry increases her defense. She doesn’t really have good level ones, but her level 3’s are very good. And being able to sit on the meter makes her that much better.

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i think the most important thing when learning to parry is to know when to parry, and when not to. some people just want to parry everything and all the combos, for whatever reason. i think at least half of the time ur not gonna parry more than one hit, since that’s all the frame advantage u’ll need to do a combo. of course, there are some exceptions:

  • when ur in the air. ur gonna have to parry it all if ur parrying a multi hitter.
  • parry or die. (i.e. chip damage will kill you)
  • a normal buffered into a special or super.
    (there may be some other situations which i didn’t mention…)

unless ur in those situations, don’t forget that u can always block while ur parrying, if ur not sure of the situation. especially for the third example. sometimes i walk up to p-groovers when they’re down, and when they get up i combo a short into (insert ur special or super here). if they manage to parry the short, they almost always end up eating the special or super. so watch out for those…

something else that might help. sometimes after u parry (or expecting to parry), hold forward and press hp or hk. that way if u do parry, u’ll either throw or hit em with the normal. sometimes they might try to empty jump and throw u, but u’ll already tech the throw since ur pressing f+hp or hk. of course, u should watch out for the third exception part, heh.

know what u parry when u jump. if u jump at the opponent, and they do a normal anti air, after u parry don’t immediately press a button. wait a split second so ur character will be closer to the ground, then ur air attack will combo into ur ground attack. if u parried a special anti air, for example a shoryuken, wait until u hit the ground, and hit them while they’re recovering.

one thing to watch out for are people with instant command grabs like gief or raiden. well, gotta go for now, hope any of this helped…

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Anyone else have suggested chars or strats for P groove?

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Because she can do random running slash, super. Duh. :smiley:

P-Hibiki has a really good dash. Plus parry covers up all the holes in her defense that makes her not so good in the first place. Going against Blanka or Bison becomes a lot easier as in a lot of instances where you can’t block in time, you can parry instead. Hibiki stinks against low jumping characters too. Parry gives her something better to work with than just d.HP alone.

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There’s a whole thread on P-Groove somewhere around here. :wink:

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Lifetimeboy is GREAT at parrying…I asked him how he parries…and he says that he just sees them. Watch your enemy’s movement…if they go down…parry low…but as a beginner i would suggest not parrying so much. Learn the basics of parrying hadokens…and other projectiles…after that go into something like Yamazaki’s special…Like i said before…watch your enemy’s movements…All moveshave a start up time…some more than others…thats key to parrying…experience.