Stepping into BB

It’s cool to heart lot of SF players are getting into BB. did you all try it on vanilla but drop it cause of the hype dying?

i’d like to play against you guys cause it’d be cool to see how we transition to BB together. I just hope i’m not getting into BB too late ha. BBCP seems like it’s most polished version of the game yet.

Throwing and teching in SF4 for is really big part of the game cause of how safe defense it is. How bigs the tech window ansd “footsie” game? With no 3-frame normals it seems a bit different to comprehend. Oh and is there guard break/penalties for constant blocking?

I picked it up because of Persona 4 as weird as that may sound. I was mad hype about persona, but it got delayed in Europe. And since SF4 and it’s guessing game started to piss me off I just looked into Blazblue and decided to give it a shot.
Never really paid attention to previous BB’s since I was still enjoying SF4 back then.

Teching is pretty much the same in BB as it is in SF4. You have a barrier OS that works exactly the same as crouch teching.
There are no penalties for blocking, but if you deplete your barrier you will go into a danger state in which all attacks do more damage. If you are too passive you will get a negative warning that causes the danger state aswell.
Footsies is going to take some time getting used to and I’m not sure how to really explain it. Think of it as SF4’s footsies, but with microdashes and air movement.

And better late than never. I’ve found this game to be alot more brutal to learn than SF/Marvel, but everyone online is really friendly and helpful.
Feel free to add me. I’m from Europe though so there’s a high chance it’ll be laggy.

“too passive”

yeah that’s the dumbest shit ever. stopping the whole playstyle of turtling is stupid. i don’t care what the design philosophy is. =/

my only anime experience is touhou hitensoku indie fighting game.

as for the dashes n stuff i played hakumen in vanilla right away because he felt kina like SF4 ish. i like how each character is really unique, kina their own game in BB. keeps things kina fresh. also like the lack of 1-frame links (is there a lot?) How’s jin’s combos btw.

My bad. It’s not too passive, it’s if you walk/backdash back too much and when you start attacking it dissappears.
And turtling is pretty much a non existant playstyle in BB (in my experience). The only character that comes close to that playstyle is Lambda. And I rarely see anyone get a negative penalty.
Turtling in general seems like a terrible idea in this game. Rushdown is REALLY overwhelming, you do not want to block anything in this game.

Yeah I forgot about Haku. I still remember me trying him online and I won a match by playing SF4 lol. But any competent opponent would have destroyed me.
He’s also the only character that uses links. Everyone else has chains similar to SFxT/Marvel. But execution wise it can be tough when you have to microdash during combo’s.

Jin’s combo’s are alright. The more advanced combo’s can be difficult to learn but his basics are really easy.
His corner combo’s are really swag. Especially the DP loop

I don’t really know what “playstyle” Juri and Chun-li have in SF - all of my best guesses for what playstyle one or the other has don’t really apply to the other, so I’m not going to hazard a guess in that direction.

Throwing and teching is at LEAST as big a part of BB as it is in SF4, because the system is more complex and throws are more rewarding. Getting thrown in SF4 means maybe 10% of your life and your opponent gets oki - which is usually not that strong in SF4 anyway. Getting throw in BB can lead into 40% of your health bar and/or very painful oki situations or a large amount of corner carry. The throw tech window is a whopping 13 frames, which falls into the category of “reactable if you’re really ready for it” (Anyone who tells you they can just tech throws on reaction in BB is confused) but there’s a system called “Throw Reject Miss” where, essentially, if you try to tech a throw when you don’t get thrown - such as when your opponent steps forwards, but does a tick throw instead of just a straight up throw - you are then unable to tech throws for roughly a second afterwards. So if you mash tech when your opponent ‘ticks’ you, you will be completely unable to tech the subsequent throw, even if its purple. (Purple throws are what happens when your opponent tries to throw you while you’re in hitstun or blockstun. Instead of the throw just missing entirely like it does in SF, you instead get a much longer window to tech it. Nearly 30 frames.)

The footsies game is absolutely present - the lack of 3 frame normals doesn’t influence it at all. Since attacks in general are slower than in SF4, both in terms of startup AND recovery, whiff punishing is very much still a part of the game. In SF4, for example, if Ryu whiffs a crouch medium kick, you have about 17 frames to punish him in (that’s the active plus recovery frames of the move), but in BB, if Ragna whiffs a 5B, you have more like 24 frames to punish in, so the fact that your punish tool is a little slower doesn’t make that much difference. Footsies is a LOT more complicated in BB though, due to air movement being a more viable tool than it is in SF4. Additionally, most characters have an actual run rather than a crappy SF4-esque “dash”, and many characters have unique movement options that completely change how they work - even though the basic idea of footsies remains the same (“get the opponent to do the wrong thing in the wrong place so you can punish them for it.”) the implementation is much more complex.

As for guard breaks, yes. There are guard breaks and also what OSD mentioned - the “negative penalty”. Guard breaks in EX work on the “guard primer” system. Your character starts the round with between 4 and 6 (Unless you’re Tager, in which case you have a whopping 13.) guard primers. These disappear when you block certain moves, and if your last primer is broken, you are guard crushed (which is super bad in this game and lasts like two whole seconds, so your opponent can do whatever the heck he wants.). You can prevent yourself from being guard crushed when you are down to your last primer by blocking using barrier, but this will consume a lot of barrier meter, and if you run out of barrier, you’ll not only be guard crushed, but you’ll also be in Danger State, which means you’ll take extra damage. Not good. Primers regenerate over time, however. Also, using a counter assault (“Alpha counter”) will reduce your max primers by one for the rest of the round, and using a defensive (Green) burst will cut them in half, round down, until the end of the round, so bursting makes you significantly more susceptible to being guard crushed.

“Negative penalty” is in the game in an attempt to reduce the amount of running away that happens - if you backdash/jumpback/run away too much, you will be placed in a Negative Penalty state, which increases the damage you take, until you start attacking again.

As OSD points out though, attacking is generally strong in BB - the game is highly momentum based, which is why you see some amazing comebacks - so turtling is not generally an effective option, just because it’s so difficult to block everything coming at you.

I’ll lay out Jin in EX for you.

Pros:

  • Has Multiple DP’s
  • Very Good corner carry
  • 3 Good Distortions
  • EX Moves
  • Safe Pressure
  • Builds meter fairly well
  • Frame Traps
  • Some of the best Hitconfirms in the entire game.

Cons:

  • Bad Mixup without 50 Heat.
  • Fairly poor damage midscreen
  • You need to learn to Microdash
  • A lot of his move can be whiff punished pretty hard (2D Especially)
  • His projectiles don’t add much to his game.
  • Doesn’t have anything “Scary” If you get me?

He is looking very strong in CP. But so is pretty much everyone else, I expect him to rise in the Tier Lists but I don’t think he’ll be overly strong etc. (Not that Tier Lists even matter in BB)

So, like, I haven’t played BB seriously in a while, should I buy EX again and practice up, or just wait for CP?

Get Continuum Shift Extend again, so that you can get accustomed to how things work in BlazBlue once more. Chrono Phantasma won’t be release no time soon, so it’s better to practice and bettering your knowledge early. : )

Well, I guess I’m turning in Hitman:Absolution in for SEX since I’ve already seen a friend play it to the end.

Who wants to help my “just as rusty as my May” Plat?

Always willing to help out if you’re XBL and have a decent connection to me. Not much point otherwise. (Actually, the connection is the important part. I do have this for PS3 as well.)

Same here. Although I just recently discovered that I generally dislike playing online (BlazBlue-wise), I still play with those who are in need for training.

So my PSN is “Eirokaj” (a Hakumen/Rachel user), if you’re interested. And good luck with your Platinum. ; )