I’ve played casually most of my life, and I find myself to be decent at mindgames, and simple combos on a very basic level. My issue here is that I was told to switch to a stick… but I can’t seem to adjust mentally to the new controls. My brain translates everything to pad logic, so I end up whiffing, or mistiming… I even end up just not executing basic specials 30% of the time which is pretty awful…
I was also told I should practice footsies… but I’m entirely unsure of what I should be doing… I’ve never played the footsies game, and I usually play against mashers… (I don’t have any real skilled competition where I’m from, it’s mostly just random folks who know only very basic SF technique, like how to a hadouken basic… )
Depends on your setup for buttons. While I use a stick I also play games like DMC on a pad. Nero in DMC4 requires me to keep a button held down for long periods of time while also performing other button presses. If you are playing on a pad with trigger inputs it’s quite easy as long as you only tend to rely on HP Zonk and EX Zonk. Simply set a shoulder or trigger to HP and the other one to 3P. Hold down the one you need and you can still perform actions fairly easily.
If anything, both stick and pad have an advantage in this situation. With a stick setup it’s harder to access certain buttons while charging a zonk. For instance if you are holding down LP it becomes more difficult to hit the MK Button and a little harder to hit HK unless you use your pinky and kind of twist your wrist. With MP held down it’s extremely hard to hit the MK Button comfortably. With HP it’s hard to hit the HK Button. If you are charging a MP+HP Zonk you have to hold your elbow out a certain way to use your thumb to hit the HK button. If you use the 3P button for EX Zonk you need to stretch your fingers to use the kick buttons.
With a pad the disadvantage is that you have a harder time charging LP/MP Zonk (or whatever button you don’t have bound to a shoulder input.) in addition when using 3P to charge EX Zonk you lose out on one of your punch buttons and trying to charge a 2 button input zonk while also maintaining use of the other buttons is difficult unless you have both buttons bound to a shoulder (Like LP bound to Left Shoulder and HP bound to left trigger)
No option is perfect. It’s kind of sucky for Cody especially because charging Zonk and using the kick inputs on a stick is harder than charging QBomb or maintaining Fuhajin fireballs and continuing to use the punch inputs for Elf/Juri since the kicks are on the bottom row of buttons for a stick it’s easier to reach up while using thumb/pinky to hold kick buttons rather than using index/middle/ring fingers to hold punch buttons and reach down and use thumb/pinky to do combos with the kick inputs.
I’m only speaking from experience. I used the regular 360 pad and then a fightpad for a long time. The move to stick made it far easier to use zonk. I never use LP to charge, so reaching the kick inputs isn’t an issue. Using 3P for ex isn’t a good option at all - surely if you hold it down you can’t use ANY punch buttons? If you could that would be broken!
Well my execution on a pad is really decent. I’m still not entirely sure of why my friend said I should switch to stick for plinking… Does it help a lot or something? I don’t seem to completely understand what the technique does for you. I don’t have to hard a time charging Zonk on a pad, I had medium switched with hard on the triggers. So I tend to be alright. My issue is that I played my friend out of town online recently and he smoked me with charge characters… like he completely destroyed me! I beat him maybe 3 times out of over a dozen matches… I heard that Cody’s zone game, and footsies are practically non-existent. My friends don’t seem to understand that there is a deeper game here, aside from doing fireballs, and turtling. they don’t know what a FADC is! They aren’t even aware what a tech throw is… My best friend isn’t half bad and he likes to learn the deeper mechanics of the game.
I literally just need some tips on how to use frame-traps which is apparently what Cody is good at… I’m not entirely sure what they are to be honest.
as far as the neutral/footsie game goes, for someone in your position looking to get better in that department, i highly suggest you watch this video. Its long, but he explains everything thoroughly.
even if you understand the concept of footsies, its still a good watch.
as far as execution, if you have a stick and a pad, I’d say practice on both.
Frame traps are basically there to keep your opponent from pressing buttons while you’re pressuring them.
When you land a move, it will put the opponent in hit/blockstun for a period of time. After the active frames of the move (the part where the move actually is supposed to hit) are done, then the recovery of the move happens while the enemy is still in block/hitstun (gonna call it block for now, since that’s what they will usually do). The time of the recovery of the move that got blocked compared to how long the enemy is in blockstun is the advantage that you have (how many frames ahead of the opponent where you can move but they can’t).
For example, let’s take a common frame trap, crouching LP to crouching MP. Since crouching LP is +2 on block you can move 2 frames before your opponent. You then do crouching MP which starts up (the time before the move is supposed to be registered as hitting) in 5 frames. So 5 frames minus 2 frames equals 3 frames, which is the gap between the two moves. So, if your opponent does just about anything between the moves, the startup of their move (unless its a DP or so) will be too slow, and they will be hit by the crouching MP (also getting a counter hit for a bit more damage/stun).
So why is Cody so good at these? A lot of his normal moves give good frame advantages, so you can keep the opponents from pressing buttons while you’re pressuring them for free.
