You're Doing It Wrong (Addressing common mistakes/misperceptions with solutions)

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter x Tekken
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It feels necessary to make a thread dedicated to common mistakes and misconceptions. The game is really fun and good but I fear that people will brush it to the side for the wrong reasons. Anyways…

Gameplay Mechanics

Problem: Stop cross rushing and erasing your teammates recoverable life UNLESS it is a killing combo or that much favorable of a match up situation. You’re essentially doing damage to your teams net health which will affect the life lead. It’s often not worth the extra 100 or so damage considering the “damage” you do to yourself.

Solution: Ideally you want the opposite effect. Cross Rush into your teammate so that you can RECOVER life back.

Problem: Stop wasting meter. Meter is one of the most important tools in the game and should be used as effectively as possible. An example of wasting meter would be cross tagging more than 2 times in a combo just for the damage. Using ex moves when the round is no longer in your grasp, also.

Solution: You want meter available to open your options up so you can keep your team healthy and in good position. You can’t do that effectively if you’ve wasted it on low damaging combos.

Problem: AWARENESS. AWARENESS. AWARENESS. ALWAYS know what the time is. Aaaallllwwwwaaaaaaayssssasdfjkl;. ALWAYS know how much meter you have. ALWAYS know how much recoverable health you have.

Solution: This game reminds of SC2 at times in that mid-combo I will be looking at the time, meter and health in order to evaluate my options. I keep track of all of the information on the screen as often as possible so I can make the most informed decisions at any given moment.

Problem: Blocked cross rush combos unpunished.

Solution: Find your characters button with reach and preferably earns a knockdown. There are also creative solutions such as Sagat’s Kara Tiger Uppercut, which can punish most chains ending in fierce/roundhouse. Supers are also considerable but make it worth the 2 bars.

Problem: Ineffective Team Supers

Solution: 3 bars. It takes THREEEE bars to team super so it better be worth it. Team super at the beginning of the round is hard to justify because it takes away all of your options with meter, won’t take away any recoverable health (because they won’t have much) and it won’t tag your character in so you can recover health, because that character has full health. An example of a super effective team super would be against a mid-health character while your character has a lot of recoverable health, since it switches them out. This makes your opponents character useless with no recoverable health. It’s dangerous to keep a low health character in play especially against a full health character.

Problem: I’m stuck getting hit by standing jabs. There are too many block strings. I hate my life.

Solution: Block and examine your opponent as well as the frame data. Observing is key to all fighting games. Cross Canceling can be really really damaging in the right places. Back dashes are still invincible. Also… suck it up and block. It’s not that bad. Have you ever played a good sagat in CvS2? His standing jab was yuck and you couldn’t mash an invincible back dash out of it.

Good cross rush information by PsychoBlue: Seven Minute Saikyo Lesson: Maximizing Damage with Less Buttons

Match-up Specifics

Rolento

  • Has no real high low mixup or three frame jab. His strengths are his powerful footsies and zoning. He’s a lame and solid character. However if you have meter and the life lead he becomes extremely free to blocking and cross cancels.

Hugo

  • Yes, splash is really good but only if he’s already on top of you. Find your character’s anti-air against it and he really has no solid way to advance. Lariat isn’t good unless you give it to him and his footsies are almost non-existent aside from low forward and stand strong. WATCH him charge lariat and punish him if he back dashes or forward dashes. Just watch and react. Also, to my knowledge, Hugo doesn’t have a good anti-air if he doesn’t have meter (Ex-back breaker, which is amazing but again costs meter). You can put him in a really tough position where he has to use lots of meter to have options, which really damages the team anyway.

Ken

  • Air Hurricane kicks can be blocked crouching. You have to play the ground footsie game with his air tatsu in mind at all times so you can space his jump arch in your favor.

I wrote this quickly so please excuse the sloppy formatting/grammar.

More to come.

Please discuss.

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Happy to see someone who knows what he is talking about, share some thoughts!

3

Yes yes, wipe out the troll posts.

I saw a lot of retagging this weekend from Shadaloo Showdown and Season’s Beatings. Tons of people dropping recoverable health for an extra measy 50 damage. Totally not worth it. I suspect people are just doing it out of training mode habit.

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Problem: Can’t think for myself
Solution: Troll forums

:smiley: DONT HATE ME BRO IM JUST KIDDING…

Seriously though, what’s wrong with gems? Assist Gems, I can mostly agree with shouldn’t be in competitive play but I would argue that boost gems give the game more depth. We do realize that increased stats have been in all kinds of fighting games, right? K-Groove in CVS2 is the first example that comes to mind.

Absolutely. I suspect people do it because it’s an easy hit confirm and it seems better to complete a combo rather than do something they’re unfamiliar with.

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Thank you JiBbo. Adding this to the list of useful threads.

@mowr
1 more point and you’ve earned your 1 week break from SRK.

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Problem: The damage is scaling too hard, so it doesn’t pay off to tag cancel/launcher into your other character and do longer comboes.
Solution: Train yourself to hitconfirm with links (As few as possible if your second character does a lot of damage | zoner->powerhouse) into launcher and avoid cross rush to avoid lots of scaling. Common knowledge, but a lot of people take the easy way out and punish with lp mp hp launcher.

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Well for one bar it’s worth it, some combos innately build up a good chunk of meter off normals and specials. So you end up spending half or so from the start of the combo after factoring in the meter you build up. Even more so when you can trigger or do it during a boost gem duration. I think for this fact, it is a little deceptive that burning meter for tag combos is a “waste” when most streams for locals and tournaments run it without gems. With the 20-40% meter acquisition gems, there’s plenty of room to style.

8

rolento also has no safe/reliable approaches with his ass walk speed.

As you said, get a lead, down back (his overhead is trash vs anyone who isnt drunk) and he’s done.

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Another tip against Hugo. Chain Buffer your pokes. Hugo’s normals are very slow, so for most characters he can’t punish. This makes lariat useless, and it’s not like he can out footsie you with his slow normals.

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Hm, I can agree with that. I have never used the launcher by itself in this game. Also, I have yet to use the LP > MP > HP > Launcher for some odd reason. It’s why I’ve tried to lower my hits with my team to balance out the damage. Especially with my Xiaoyu/Juri team. The best damage I’ve done with one bar is 19 hits with tag cancels for about 400~500 damage, and the most hits I’ve done is about 33, but it did about 500 damage and used all of my bars. So I agree with less hits is more.

11

He’s so weak to cross cancels. I’ve gotten in the habit of cross canceling every patriot circle if I have meter and the life lead because it wastes time and gives me a knockdown and follow up – not to mention a bit of guaranteed damage. So I just lame him out and keep my meter up. The key to beating Rolento is maintaining your stats.

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Problem: Losing the match with one high health character in the back.

Solution: Switch more often! Kind of an addendum to the “only tag when necessary,” thing, but frequent tags recovering small amounts of recoverable life is safer than keeping someone in too long, switch, then having to rely on that character while your point recovers 30% of their bar at one time. It also does more consistent damage to the opponent, and the switching often of styles can help catch your opponent off guard.
Of course you should not be tagging spastically. As the first rule states, you do not want to burn large amounts of recoverable life (though if you tag frequently it should not build up). Also important to consider is multi-character combos gives the opponent more recoverable life than single character combos.
All in all, it depends on your style, characters, and the situation. I’m not saying tag every combo so much as be smarter about when you decide to do it or not. It’s a huge part of this game.

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It’s dangerous as all get out, but it has its uses. You have invulnerability to lows when doing it, so if you know the opponent is throwing out low strings you can smash them with a Raw Launcher, and the follow-up will be big on account of literally no scaling.

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One of the biggest things that happens, it even happened multiple times during season’s beatings, was not tagging out to recover life.
If you lose and you have a 75% health, or heaven forfend, a Full health character, sitting out, you are doing it wrong.
This is one of the points that Inflitration is so strong on. He is always watching his characters total health and switching constantly.

Another thing it to be aware of how to use meter. 9 times out of 10, a tag combo does similar, if not more, damage than a super which costs 2 bars. The super route is easier, but people posting on this site shouldn’t be worrying about that tbh. That said, if a super can seal the deal, i.e. cr.mk into super, then by all means, do it.

15

On the topic of dying with full-life characters, there is a mindset of “being the hero”, or at least not wanting to lose 50% by raw tagging so you keep going hoping you find that opening before the opponent connects with you. That’s what you see here in most commonly in these situations. Personally, starting from the beginning of the round, I try to tag out after one character loses 25%-ish life. Obviously if I eat a mis-timed jump-in AA it usually costs my character about 40-50% and I’m immediately looking to tag-out. It’s at this point where the cross-road is: do I try and look for a boost combo, look for a safe tag cancel or raw tag?

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I just want to say Jibbo, thank you for creating this thread. I too like this game a lot. I can understand that the time overs can frustrate a lot of players, but time over only screws you if you are behind. This makes every moment crucial. The games trains you to be on point with your defense, and ability to convert on the opportunities you may receive during a match.

One other hint I should add: Remember that you have 2 characters. The second character isn’t just for show, or just to have someone to do cross rush combos with. Take advantage!

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Problem: Most of the cast is terrible/useless.

Solution: I’m not arguing that all the characters are balanced. I am arguing that many people disregard much of the roster because they try to see them as fulfilling an entire character, rather than being part of a team. Every character in SFxT has a distinctive role in teams that they can play effectively and be very rewarding. King, for instance, has poor footsies and overheads, giving him glaring flaws, but if you play them on anchor you can have the first character do all the footsies you need and use him for how he was intended: cause big damage, play a very rewarding mixup game on wakeup, and leave. On the other side of the coin, Yoshimitsu was (is?) considered to be easily the worst character in the game, but some of his moves are among the best in the game at tag canceling for huge combos, a valuable asset for many other characters to have.

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I’m not gonna lie, I have sat back with a full health character in the back and next thing I know KO!, im like “FUCK!”

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I don’t agree with the ‘tag out if you’re low’ philosophy, unless your other character has 100% health. Anything less than that and you’re just setting yourself up for a turtle fest.

I see a lot of commentators saying during matches “you should tag out there” and I’m like “no.” Having very little health can have its psychological advantages, plus a comeback is a comeback. You need to maul the opponent, not poke them a little bit until you have a slight life advantage - for one, the latter’s pathetic, secondly it’s not actually a good idea - so it doesn’t matter if you’re doing it with 50% health or 5% (well there is a difference, but if your comeback is successful it doesn’t, and you should be confident enough to believe in your plan). If your point’s dangerously low and you’ve got the life lead, and will definitely still have the life lead after eating a 50% (25%) DMG combo, fine - do it, but that’s almost never the case for me.

I also disagree with saving meter for no real reason, or just incase you’ll need it for a cross counter, safe tag, or EX reversal. I mean, I don’t think it’s an inarguably good idea to horde meter. It’s up to you how much extra DMG 1 block is worth, in the OP’s example I would say 1 block is definitely worth 100 extra DMG no matter what, but it’s also situational. If a heavily scaled extra couple hits might kill, absolutely do it. If it will give you significant wall carry, go for it. But as I said it’s up to you. There’s no right answer for that.

BTW OP when you do a team super the point character goes back on point at the end.

TL;DR: Doing it right is subjective and situational, and your examples aren’t convincing me you’re not doing it wrong yourself.

20

Well yeah, even the super high risk things can be effective sometimes. It’s hard to pick a post apart that speaks so generally. I think what T.C is trying to say is that, as a whole, people are going about it wrong. They are leaving characters in too long and losing a great amount of recoverable life to do the flashy tag combos they worked so hard in training modes.

Granted I totally agree with your post to. It may not seem so at first, but this game is just so incredibly footsy based. When people say that, they usually mean how one touch can lead to huge damage. On the other side, if you have great footsies, you can have 1% life, manuever perfectly, and get an incredibly clutch tag out. I’ve rarely seen a more exciting play then something with low life waiting for the opponent to be careless, get their hit, make their tag, and win. If the opponent is full on jumping away, a raw tag will work.