I’ve been watching tournament videos of players i.e. Daigo, Sanford Kelly, etc… and I’ve seen instances of them throwing out jabs/shorts at random times around distances where I would find no reason to throw it out. Most of the time, it’s before/after a Hadouken when I see Daigo playing. I assumed before that maybe they’re missing an input towards a special i.e. a Hadouken, but I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.
Can someone elaborate a high level player’s reasoning for throwing out a jab/short at random, or what I think is random?
i use it with charge characters sometimes so that I can be standing in one spot but still retain my back charge. Can bait people into doing moves that can be punished by ultra or super.
They are trying to get their opponent to react more then likely. See what they will do when they preform an action. Especially fireballs. If someone is zoning for a majority of the match at full screen they might do this to get their opponent to jump. Thus they have conditioned them to think that every action preformed from a certain distance on screen will be a fireball. They will more often then not do it with said jab or an attack with good recovery so they can bait & punish.
Or it can be used to retain a charge as L2P stated.
Another thing is some games let you build meter by whiffing attacks. You will see this a lot in 3rd Strike matches. Particularly at the start of the first round of a match.
I do this with Bison. It’s good to have a limb out on the field to prevent surprises down the road. It also helps keep my charge.
Also people are very sensitive to the forward charge moves of charge characters, if they think my standing short is an upcoming scissor kick, let them be fooled. In fact, I’ve baited a lot of shoryus and lariats this way.
It’s the other half of fighting games. Mind games. Throwing a random jab or short while at a safe distance can make your opponent think a lot of things. They might think your fireball execution is off and try to take advantage of that, in some games it will build meter, and it’s also used for charging like others have said. Without a mind game you’re pretty much fucked lol.
You’ll also see certain specials stuffed by a jab sometimes. IIRC, I watched NKI play a Honda in a Grand Finals in May, and stuffed several headbutts with st.Jab from Bison.
But normally, to control space, keep charge, keep doing something, keep the opponent guessing.
I thought it was dumb at first because I haven’t really seen it being used in other fighting games (at last not enough to notice). But just recently I’m finding that sometimes when you throw out a random jab when your opponent has super or ultra, they will initiate the super/ultra and your frames are so short you have enough time to block. A good example is when someone is on the ground you crouch down and throw out 2 jabs so your opponent thinks you’re going to attack them when they’re getting up, they do the ultra and you block it safely.
But as far as the people who are on the opposite side of the screen just randomly throwing them out… yeah thats just dumb. Theres no purpose. In 3rd strike you could at least build meter by doing it but in sf4 it’s pointless. It’s only really useful in footsie range.
It’s not smart. I think it’s dumb. That’s cool if “sirlinfan69” has a hypothesis of a purpose for it, but as far as I can tell it’s dumb and useless. I would love for you to show me a video where someone is randomly throwing out jabs from the other side of the screen where it significantly effected the outcome of a match. For you to even prove that throwing out jabs when the character is on the other side of the is what helped the person win would be incredible.
Lol, that’s fine my dude, you don’t have to do it. People have been masking their intentions by throwing out irrelevant moves like this since the SF2 era.
edit ok, absolute full screen there is little purpose. I didn’t realize you were just talking about full screen. It’s usefulness extends to whatever distance the opponent has to fear your options.