over the course of learning s\d, i’ve learned that a big secret to this team is minimizing the execution needed to win. The team is extemely execution heavy as well as execution sensitive. The less strider has to do, the more effective he becomes. I never really understood it till my sentinel could start competing a little but I get it now.
Every time you perform the trap, you create chances for strider to kill himself. Weather its a grab super that should of been orbs or a wall climb that should of been a teleport either of which can cost you the game instantly. As a strider player, you have to take into account mistakes. Its going to happen because you’re not a robot. Its impossible to input his shit right every single time every day. I’ve been playing strider for 7 years on and off and I can only remember a handful of days where I never fucked up @ all execution wise. I’ll play @ least 200 games a day when I’m practicing hard and not to fuck up once execution wise is quite hard to do imo.
now, they’re a few ways to side step the execution problem.
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practice daily and keep practicing daily. Its no big secret that practicing is how you get good. Now, daily practice can extend **WHEN **you will fuck up. Improving your execution can limit when you fuck up and allows strider to do more reps w\o fucking up. The more reps you can do back to back w\o fucking up, it will overall improve your execution. Duh right?
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hcf+pp for orbs all day every day when you can. Especially after animals and bombs. The fwd input from the animals\bomb combined with qcf input from the orbs creates a srk input, which in turn creates the grab super. The hcf ensures that you will be less likely to fuck it up because your using your hcf to delay that last fwd input off of your move.
**Double input super method. **
- hcf +lp, fp for your orb input. This is rather awkward but its been something i’ve been slowly working on. You can input a super with qcf +lp, fp. Yes, it is a 2 input super but the trick is to roll it extremely fast so the game counts it as 1 input. The point of this is that if you do it this way and fuck up, you will just get a jab instead of a FP that can lag you out there for quite some time and to recover from that accidental FP can be quite a challenge. For the most part, if your brain is exepecting that you will do a super and you get a FP, your brain will try to back track. When you expect the super, you start breaking down the options of where your opponent is @? can you take away his escape angle if you fucked up the trap? are you away from their AA? should you bait out his AA? all of these things can go through your mind in less than a second so when the s.fp gets thrown out there accidently, your brain has to forget about what your setup should be and to recover off of the s.fp. In the time it takes for you brain to forget and readjust, its already too late and you’ve already been hit. The 2 input super method is just a safety net because of the complexity of the trap. Its very easy to fuck up, and not recover in time to protect yourself. This strategy has saved me more than once already.
with a few execution tactics under your belt, its time for the actual strategy.
Now, the less strider has to do, the safer his gameplay is. If strider only has to do 5 patterns to kill someone, hell yea, I can do 5 patterns to kill someone but how about 20 patterns? could you do 20 patterns over the course of a round to ensure a win? thats a big test and for strider to judge each scenario and properly use the right pattern can get complicated and can kill you just based on the execution needed. 1 trap rep isn’t hard. The inputs are actually quite simple. Its the fact that it takes different, MULTIPLE trap reps to do any kind of life. Then, those basic inputs become tougher as the fight goes on to do right every time.
To get around how many patterns strider needs to win, the answer is simple. You do life. Not chip. Actual solid life. iirc, for strider to kill one character, it can take up to 20 patterns of chip to kill someone depending on how and where doom is chipping. First off, you’ll never have that much bar to being with so its vital to get hits. 2nd, thats alot of execution to kill 1 guy not to mention you have to still play the game and use strategy. w\ in those 20 patterns, there could be a max of 100+ times you can accidently input something wrong to kill yourself depending on what you know how to do. Thats ALOT of chances for something to go wrong. It only takes 2-3 reps of hit orbs to kill a character. Less times to activate, more damage per trap too. It makes him more solid.
But don’t forget that when you have s\d, that you still have a 3rd. Since I mostly run ssd, my sent\doom can do some life allowing strider to do even less patterns. Instead of seeing sent died fast or he didn’t get enough life, I measure life in trap reps. It helps. Everytime I land a pan, or a doom pin rep, thats all equates to less execution strider has to do.
orbs aren’t the only source of damage. You still have bombs which do mad life and are vital against all of the cast even sentinel. LK bomb against sent will prevent him from stomping on you because he can stomp into the bomb giving strider a free rush down or activation. Of course, you have to time these right. Any move that gets used wrong is useless and this is no exception.
counter hits will also do solid life. Even though striders flying screen setups can be countered, he still has the advantage so throwing a little caution to the wind after FS can only help you out to land that rep.
Lets not forget about the dhcs from sentinel into strider. You can seriously turn around fights with all of his dhc’s. His air super being one of the best to counter AA’s because you can swing the assist into the assist kill position.
and the infamous instant overhead during orbs. Its vital. Someone experienced against s\d will block low ALLLLL day. Why? striders overhead is damn hard to do w\o practice but what it gives to him is 50\50 trap. Thats flat out dumb. You have to block him hi\lo and even then, your still fucked because he can relayer, reorb, and try it again. Once its mastered however, you can envoke fear of the trap and only land more life because they want to avoid the trap entirely. Another plus side to the instant overhead is that it forces your opponent to use up his pushblock because he doesn’t want to get hit by anymore overheads. This makes it harder to guard cancel out of striders trap rep when you do this right. It takes x amount of time to recover after a pushblock to do it again. Someone who’s good @ spotting trap reps can get out consistently and make it hell for you to trap again. However, if you make them dump a pusblock to stop your overhead attempt, you can time a relayer string before they can pushblock in the right place to allow a guard cancel. This is a very deep strategy because you can force late\early pushblocks and that in turn can cause late\early guard cancels which can add to the depth of your trap.
The backbone of any fighting game is reading your opponent. It helps out any team. How is he trying to counter me? can I counter that counter with a move he can’t stop? how is he calling his assist? is he leaving his assist out too long for me to land a dhc and do some life to it to swing the tempo? if he readjusts, can I still throw him off? of course, there are more things to think of but its the point that you’re thinking about what he’s doing. Break your opponent down, and try to force him into a spot where he will want to try something and you simply counter him so he has no options to stop you.
This post is all over the place, its late and i’m sleepy but I wanted to drop a little insight to the team. For the most part strider is all fundamentals. Its the actual concepts of the team that make the team effective.
:wgrin:
although i can see were Capcom can help Strider but then i can also see how he can hurt striders Game