I am watching videos of Daigo playing money matches, tournament matches, ect. Thinking specifically of a match against Killey, a Juri player, after activation of Feng Shui, Daigo appears to block Juri’s overhead in a blockstring on reaction. Is this the case, or is it pure prediction? Also, from what is most likely he drawing the indicator of the attack from? Reaction to the actual animation seems far-fetched, although not impossible, though I was wondering if it was more likely he reacted to the lack of continuing blows.
Your reaction is naturally faster if you are semi-expecting something to happen.
During a FSE blockstring, Juri will typically use either c.MK or f+MK after her c.MP. If you know this, you can block low and watch for the overhead animation that you are already semi-expecting. It’s half reaction, half anticipation.
juri’s overhead is slow enough to react to. The main thing is experience. If you play enough, and see the overhead enough times, your subconsious will be able to react to it. Its all about training your subconsious to react by repitition instead of trying to think it out.
What about hit confirms?
When I throw, say, a c.mk with Ryu, I naturally follow with a hadoken. Do top players really have time and reflexes to see if it connects to combo after it? I swear I can’t, it just happens too fast lol
Daigo do the c.mk–>Hado even if you block for chip damage and build meter, if you stop blocking you’ll eat the hadouken unless you use something specific
for example i rember this Makoto(The player who use claw in japan) landing his U2 after the mk predicting the hadouken coming and punishing Daigo… So no they memorize some pattern of combos and use them, they use very specific hit confirms and OS to land that big damage combo… nothing supernatural, even top player develop habits, the only difference is that they hide their habits and know how to make a lot of combo safe depending on your reaction
hit confirming is normally done with something like jab-jab or light kick-jab or light kick-jab-jab. One jab is not enough time. 2 jabs is. Hit confirms are generally 2 or 3 attacks before deciding what to do next.
I’ve heard people talk about hit confirming with one attack like the example you mention, but thats impossible for me, and from my experiences with the game, its impossible for damn near everyone else. Maybe, just maybe someone out there can hit confirm with only one attack, but if they can, its damn rare.
Sometimes you just have to know you’re fishing for those hit confirms. Sometimes people just twitch and react to it on a hit confirm. But most of the time I think it’s the former rather than the latter. Some moves can be prebuffered so you really just need to slam down the end of the inputs when you see the right opportunities. Great example is Ricky Ortiz vs Daigo at EVO2k10 when he caught him with some Big Bang Typhoons. *Too good. *
Go and play 3S. You’ll quickly learn that confirming off of one attack used to be standard fare.
It’s true, Kens MK to Ultra lol
spacing…
this.
the only way you can react to something is to see it. the only way to see it is to know what leads up to that situation in advance. whenever you see someone make some smooth ass reaction, you should think to yourself that the player trained themself to see that particular moment or they’re just lucky fuckers. that includes the psychic DP. whenever you see someone fail to make a reaction, they either didn’t see the signs or their response was flawed.
btw, when I think reaction, I think about what you have to do in response to your opponent. if you’re performing something that doesn’t care much about your opponent’s varying movements (ex. hit confirms, you’re safe either way; “low frame” combos), then that’s just muscle memory.
In 3s you buffered like crazy off everything and then all you needed was a buttonpress. Its not as impressive as you make it out to be. Its just that everything is so much more complicated and unsafe in 4 (read: easier to punish) that you have to hitconfirm better. There are still plenty single normal hitconfirms in this game like abels f+mk into dash(combo) and codys CH f+mp into U2.
I believe what you want to read is a blog written not to long ago(maybe it will help). In the article the person mentions the ever famous Daigo parry win and the writer tells you to notice how Daigo is expecting Justin to use Chun’s super to chip so you can see Ken move awkwardly back and forth waiting for the moment to parry. Like another poster said though a good amount of it is prediction and being able to read your opponent but being able to execute at the right moment after the read is probably what makes it seem like others reaction skills are godlike.
I believe the article was called Thinking while playing.
You know those flash games where you have to press a button to test your reaction times. Usually you’ll get around .200 to .300 seconds, which encompasses like 90% of humanity. That is more than enough time to react to overheads in this game, you just have to be waiting for them, like a button waiting to be pressed.
that’s pure reaction though. say your reaction speed was .21 for example. reaction as in you see something coming and you’re not particularly looking for it but you’re experienced in dealing with it. if you’ve had experience reacting to a certain thing AND you’re actually looking for it, reaction time can be shortened to about .17 easily. that’s if you do the movements you need to beforehand though. assuming they’re still valid, I mean. for instance too early a shoryuken might get you hit as well
edit: oops, incomplete post
Almost all overheads in SF can be blocked on reaction by every player. You just have to look for it.