thanks guys.
ill work on my game in ranked matches right now!
here i come baconology 101 you bastard!
Nice stuff. I pretty much have always used a Sumo Smash to escape Blanka crossups until I started playing BlueTallCans/Papichao. He will always do meaty MK crossups and if you biff the reversal you get comboed and usually dizzied (i.e. dead). Of course, if you get the reversal Sumo Smash you get hit out of that and then probably get to face another crossup/mixup situation :sad:
Just thinking about it hurts my head :lol:
Thelo’s quick guide to reaction-based defense
Just my two cents on defense.
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
- Isaac Newton
*** There are two kinds of moves: Anticipation and Reaction.
All moves you can do are done either in anticipation to what you think your opponent will do, or in reaction to what you’ve actually seen him do. If, with Honda, you jump forward against Ryu, that’s because you think he’ll throw a fireball and you want to punish him with a jumping attack - but at the moment you jump forward, you haven’t actually seen Ryu throw anything yet. That’s an anticipation jump. Or maybe against Zangief, you do a fierce Hundred Hand Slaps because you think Zangief will either block or lariat - that’s an anticipation HHS, because at the moment you start mashing the fierce button, you don’t know if Zangief will really lariat or block when the HHS will come out.
On the other hand, if you see Ryu jump towards you, and you jab headbutt him out of the air at the last moment, you’ve done a reaction jab headbutt. That’s because at the moment you hit the headbutt input, you already knew Ryu was flying through the air towards you, so you simply punish him for it. Or maybe you saw Guile start to throw a Sonic boom, so you decided to reaction buttslam through it.
Even simple things like blocking and walking can fall under these two categories. Against Chun Li, a reasonable strategy is to walk forward and reaction block her slow fireballs. But against Sagat, whose fireballs are incredibly fast, you can’t do that - you need to walk forward and anticipation block his Tiger shots, because you don’t have enough time to react to them.
?The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge.?
- Erich Fromm, philosopher
*** Reaction is better than anticipation.
When you act on reaction, you actually know the state of the game, so your move becomes very safe. However, when you act on anticipation, you need to guess correctly - and a wrong guess can be punished.
The easiest example to understand is Honda vs Guile, at the start of the round. Both players are charged down-back, ready to do either of their two charge moves, and Guile will likely throw a Sonic boom at some point.
Honda can anticipate that Guile will throw a Sonic boom in the next half-second, and do an anticipation buttslam to beat it. If Guile did throw a Sonic boom, then all is good for Honda and he wins the exchange. But if Guile did nothing, then Guile can easily react to Honda’s buttslam with a Flash kick and win the exchange. Guile’s reaction beat Honda’s anticipation.
However, if Honda focuses strongly on Guile, he can instead try to wait, then react to Guile’s Sonic boom. At some point, Guile will likely try to anticipate that Honda will walk forward or do a HHS in the next half-second, and throw a Sonic boom to beat it. If Honda did try to act, then all is good for Guile and he wins the exchange. But if Honda did nothing, then Honda can easily react to Guile’s Sonic boom with a buttslam and win the exchange. Honda’s reaction beat Guile’s anticipation.
When you act on reaction, you know what’s going to happen. When you act in anticipation, you don’t. That’s why, when you can do it, it’s better to act on reaction than in anticipation.
Of course, you can’t always act on reaction, because you need to have enough time to react to do it. That’s why you need to put yourself in a position where you have plenty of time to react, you need to try to minimize the reaction time you need to react properly, and you need to try to minimize your opponent’s own ability to react. We’ll go over these a bit later.
?The main factor behind success is - self control.?
- The Rigveda
*** Reaction is better than anticipation, no really!
Even if you consciously agree that you should react more than anticipate, even in a very particular situation like Honda vs Guile where you actively want to react rather than anticipate, even when you explicitly say to yourself “I must not do a random buttslam, I must not do a random buttslam, I must not do a random buttslam…”, sometimes your instincts will take over and you will do a kneejerk random anticipation buttslam when you didn’t actually want to do one.
The truth is that it’s really hard to just sit there, while your nerves are on fire and adrenaline is pumping through your veins, and not do anything but wait for your opponent to do a specific move. Sometimes, no matter how patient and resolved you think you are, you will lose your cool and randomly do an irrational attack. It will happen, and early on, it will happen often.
The only thing you can do is consciously realize that it was a mistake, and resolve yourself to avoid it next time. Visualize that same situation happening again, and visualize the right thing to do in that situation. Instincts are often very useful, but sometimes you need to fight them, and doing moves on reaction is very un-instinctive. You need the unwavering willpower necessary to overcome your instincts in order to properly act on reaction.
“I party but I know my limits.”
- Dante Hall, football player
*** You only have a finite amount of focus.
Reacting in time to an opponent’s move needs a huge amount of focus. When you ready yourself to quickly react to an opponent’s specific move, you get tunnel vision and it gets harder to react to something else. The simpler the situation is, the better your chances are of reacting correctly. Here are some reaction scenarios in increasing order of difficulty:
-
React when the opponent jumps, wait otherwise, like life advantaged Honda’s jab headbutt vs Zangief. It’s easy to recognize a jump.
-
React when the opponent loses his down charge, wait otherwise, like Honda’s buttslam vs Guile. It’s harder to recognize standing vs crouching, especially on Guile’s crouching fierce move that looks like it’s standing.
-
React with move A if the opponent does move X, react with move B if the opponent does move Y, wait otherwise, like Honda vs T. Hawk’s jump / dive (must jab headbutt) or walk forward (must far sweep). Now you have three possibilities, which is much harder to manage than just two.
-
React with move A if the opponent does move X, react with move B if the opponent does move Y, and react with move C if the opponent does move Z, like Honda vs Ken at round start. Honda wants to buttslam through Ken’s fireball, jab headbutt if Ken jumps forward, and move forward with strong headbutt or normal walking if Ken jumps backwards. This is among the most difficult reaction scenarios.
“Work smarter, not harder.”
-Scrooge McDuck, DuckTales
*** Manage your focus
What can we do when we’re faced with a tough scenario like Honda vs Ken at round start? Ideally, we want to take some shortcuts to lower the difficulty, and here we actually can, because the reaction times of the three possibilities are different. Here’s how.
*Vs Ken, round opening decision tree:
- IF Ken fireballs THEN buttslam
- IF Ken jumped forward THEN jab headbutt
- IF Ken jumped backwards THEN strong headbutt*
First, we can notice that reacting to the Ken fireball is the most difficult of the three possibilities, since it’s the fastest one. If Ken jumps forward, we have about half a second to prepare a jab headbutt, but if he fireballs, we need to buttslam right away. Furthermore, Ken will rarely wait half a second, then fireball - he’ll usually fireball right at the start or not at all for a few seconds.
So what we can do is, for the first half-second, pretend that the only thing we need to react to is the fireball, and devote our full focus to recognizing the fireball and reaction buttslamming through it. Then, after the initial half-second, switch to reacting to either of the two remaining possibilities. This lets us allocate our focus where we need it most.
But that’s not all! Ken jumping forward at match start is actually really rare, and Ken jumping backwards is very common, so we can actually focus almost exclusively on what to do if he jumps backwards. This lets us save another bit of focus!
Finally, if we need even more focus, we have a last trick up our sleeve: overlapping our reactions. In our Ken scenario, we have three possible reactions: buttslam to beat fireball, strong headbutt to beat backwards jump, or jab headbutt to beat forward jump. Jab headbutt is the best counter to forward jump, but it consumes focus for a pretty rare case, so what we can do is to use either of the other two reactions, i.e. strong headbutt or buttslam, to beat Ken’s jump forward. They won’t be quite as effective, but they happen to do an okay job, and we won’t have to worry about hitting the jab button at all. Which to choose?
If we choose to buttslam against Ken’s forward jump, we have the following reduced decision tree:
*0.0s to 0.5s:
- IF Ken fireballs THEN buttslam
0.5s to 1.0s:
- IF Ken jumped forward THEN buttslam
- IF Ken jumped backwards THEN strong headbutt*
If we choose to use strong headbutt instead, we have this even simpler reduced decision tree:
*0.0s to 0.5s:
- IF Ken fireballs THEN buttslam
0.5s to 1.0s:
- IF Ken jumped (forward or backwards) THEN strong headbutt*
Bingo! This decision tree is much simpler to handle than the initial three-way one, and we can fully focus on each part, rather than split our focus between three options. By managing our focus this way, we can use a much more reliable reaction defense.
?The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.?
- James Yorke, mathematician
*** Compensating for reaction time
Some moves can be reacted to, but you need lightning quick reactions to do so. If your current plan is reaction-based, they are your worst enemies: Zangief’s Running bear grab, Cammy’s Hooligan throw, Blanka’s forward hop or whiffed horizontal roll into bite, Bison’s Headstomp. If you’re in top shape, you can try to fight them head-on by just reacting really fast to them, but it’s dangerous. What to do?
One possibility is to realize that each of these moves happens to have a counter that’s mostly safe and doesn’t consume much focus. We can use these counters that look like attacks (but actually are merely a defense), while continuing to actually focus on reacting to our opponent’s other possible moves.
*Against Zangief’s Running bear grab, Cammy’s Hooligan throw, Blanka’s forward hop or whiffed horizontal roll into bite:
- Repeated low jab (while holding down-back)
Against Bison’s headstomp:
- Either repeated backjump jab or just walking backwards (high block)*
Again, we must be careful, though, of not focusing too much on executing these counters - the whole idea is to pay little attention to their execution, while paying a lot of attention to the opponent and staying ready to do the real reaction. They’re also slightly more vulnerable to other actions, since you do commit some time to executing them and they can be anticipation beaten by some risky moves. But against an opponent who likes to use the hard-to-react-to moves, it’s an effective tool.
?Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo.?
- Robert Byrne, champion billiards player
*** When to use reaction
As a general rule, the player with life advantage should try to use reaction (because it’s safe and often preserves the status quo), while the player with life disadvantage will try to use anticipation (because he needs to take calculated risks that may pay off big to swing the favor to himself). However, even if you’re in life disadvantage, there are still many occasions where you can use reaction anyway, since it’s rare to face an opponent who will really stay in a perfect reaction-based defense for a whole round, even when they have life advantage.
So even when in a situation of life disadvantage, don’t rush in needlessly - let at least some time pass to see if your opponent will hit the lose button and mindlessly give you an opportunity with a careless anticipation attack.
?You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.?
- Albert Einstein, physicist
*** How to beat reaction
Reaction is a powerful tool, but you can’t always rely on it. In particular, there will be times where your opponent tries to use reaction and you must crack his shell. To do that, remember the two things that reaction needs: time and focus. By robbing your reactive opponent of either, you can prevent him from reacting properly and force him to switch to riskier tactics.
The easiest way to defeat reaction is simply with attacks that are so fast that you cannot properly react to them.
-
In Honda vs Guile, Guile’s reaction plan is to hold down-back, ready to Flash kick. To defeat this plan, Honda can get to midrange and do strong or fierce Hundred Hand Slaps, which come out too fast for Guile to react to and chip the blocking Guile of some life.
-
In Honda vs Honda, it’s possible to be at fullscreen, waiting for the enemy Honda’s fierce headbutt, and react to it with your own jab headbutt. However, it’s extremely difficult to react to a fierce headbutt when the enemy Honda starts at midrange instead, since there is much less time to react. In Honda mirrors, the best place for reaction Honda to be is therefore at fullscreen, and the best place for anticipation Honda to be is at midrange.
-
In Fei Long vs Honda, Fei Long can be at midrange and do anticipation Rekka punches, which are too fast for Honda to react to and can be safe on block - Honda needs to anticipation jump or buttslam to counter them.
The alternate way to defeat reaction is by exploiting its narrow, “tunnel vision” focus. As we saw earlier, reaction works best against a very limited set of obvious moves. If we do some unexpected move on an opponent who is fully focusing on his reaction decision tree, it just might work. The best example of that is to simply walk up to the opponent and throw him. Whether you fail or succeed, you’ve just shaken up his reaction plan and he must now add the threat of walk-up throw (or whatever your unexpected move was) to his reaction decision tree, which will make it harder for him to react to whatever you will do next.
Be VERY careful not to overuse this! The strength of this tactic is precisely its surprise factor, so don’t dilute its power through repetition. Even doing it once is enough to shake your opponent. The threat is often stronger than the execution.
?It’s natural for a sumo wrestler to be the world’s strongest.?
- Edmond Honda, ?zeki
*** What is the best way to use reaction?
Play as Honda.
Amazing post and applies to all characters.
I suggest making a new thread for it as to not confine it to merely Honda players.
Thanks, and good point, I made a thread for it.
:wgrin:
There are many videos of Antonio and I playing online (search BlueTallCans or PAPICHAO), [media=youtube]TnI-BZ2UTkc"[/media] illustrates a lot of the points I made here.
megamanpb, can you give me a breakdown of your setup to get matches recorded? I love the quality of your vids and I found some new stuff with Blanka that deserves to be seen in HD. :wgrin:
BTW, I like this advice you give “If you get hit with electricity immediately start charging down. When he attempts to cross you up attempt to escape with Butt Slam. It’s not safe, but it’s your best bet to get away.” Makes me smile. :bgrin:
good read thelo.
next time your on plz own me with your knowledge.
Ya, well if I hadn’t played you recently I would have said it was completely safe! Your tricks are GLDK for sure. 
Is it just me or does the new Ochio set Honda up perfectly against shotos when he has them in a corner? It seems MK Sumo Smash can counter pretty much anything they do from the range you land after ochio. The smartest play there seems for the shoto player to just do nothing and hope for a good block.
Doing nothing is a good strategy but you have to be ready for the walk up grab with Honda. 
Of course, Kuroppi thinks MEGA FOX is ugly, so, factor that into his “analysis.”
That tat is ugly, but the rest is fiiiine.
Kuroppi sez he would show her the hand cuz of the tat.
How come this thread died?
Yo, I’ve been saying since the game came out that the change to ochio’s recovery is not a nerf overall. Yes, it makes it harder to ruin some characters in the corner, but against most characters it also puts Honda at basically the perfect range to start his grounded meaty shenanigans as his opponent wakes up. Basically it’s trading an occasional but very very good mixup for almost always getting your preferred grounded position, which is a good trade in my opinion.
For example, against Ryu you had to guess whether to do a meaty and whether he would do a dragon punch, and you could put him right back into the same position if you guessed right, so it was really solid. But now you don’t have to bother with that, because ochio puts you right at your far standing jab range, where if you do far standing jab as Ryu gets up it’s a 100% safe meaty.
The nerf with the Oicho is really all about the dizzy damage. That’s where the fear comes from after being hit with it. And this is why I think it really hurts him in his more “even” matchups from ST (Dictator/Claw/Boxer/Blanka).
The bounce back really isn’t that much different than ST, distance wise, outside the corner. And I agree that it puts you at a great range to set up many things.
Ahh. It’s been so long since I played ST Honda that I forgot about the insane dizzy. That was kinda insult to injury though so I understand Sirlin doing that nerf. Plus if I remember right, if you dizzy with ochio you can’t ochio again during the dizzy.
There haven’t been that many new developments with the fat man I guess.
Because you posted a big picture of Megan Fox in the thread… :wgrin:
Seriously, stuff comes up here and there, but most shit has been figured out and posted. Even the questions that have been asked recently have been answered pages ago in this thread. At this point we’re only really fielding questions from people that haven’t read the whole thread.