It very much exists with the proof being on you tube. I can only recall seeing it done vs a Blanka bite and a Gief stomach pump. I’m guessing it might have something to do with those two holds taking a bit to start inficting damage.
Even though it exists, I’m not sure if it’s another one of the those semi random things in ST or if it is something that can be perfected with skill.
Technical Monkey was kind enough to share a vague explanation on how to do it :
He said that for one it has to do with timing so that kinda gives hope that it can be skill oriented. And second he said that there has to be a lot of “premash”.
I asked him what he meant by premash but he isn’t to good with descriptions I guess. My guess is shaking in a lot of neutrals without any button inputs and right when the hold is about to inflict damage, start with the button inputs.
It’s just my guess but hopefully he can jump in and explain how to do it or if someone else knows how then be my guest cough NKI cough
Even SRK’s wiki lists that it is only possible to struggle out of the second hit of holds (meaning the first hit of a hold occurs no matter what). What the wiki should say is that it is possible to struggle a hold before the first hit comes out though it is prohibitively difficult (meaning the execution level is so demanding that it is not practical enough to do consistently).
Watch [media=youtube]fmOt2Md-Gxk&#t=44s"[/media], you’ll see Blanka 3-hit Chun then dizzy her with a slide, he walks up to her (while she is still dizzied) and grabs her with the bite. You clearly see the bite animation begin as Blanka jumps into Chun but, before the first actual hit from the hold occurs, Chun manages to cleanly escape without receiving any damage. This time, and one other (a video from a Japanese tournament that is on YouTube but I have no idea what the match is as it’s generically labeled like ‘blanka vs ryu’), is all I have seen a zero damage hold. I’ll scour footage of AFO or Komoda but I honestly can’t remember anything specific about the video off hand.
Both times I have seen it, a zero damage hold, the person being grabbed was coming out of a dizzy though. You can see in the above linked video that the Chun player is already struggling and mashing away on those HAPP parts to recover from the dizzy. So most likely, when the Blanka player initiated the hold, the Chun player input a directional command on the first frame and then continued to rapidly struggle.
This, struggling to reduce hold damage to zero, seems like something that could be reliably tested with an emulator and programmed inputs. Set a character with a hold to walk up to an opponent and grab them, then set the grabbed opponent to struggle at various speeds, and to begin struggling at different numbers of frames past the start of the hold (on the first frame of the hold, or delayed three frames after the start), and see what happens.
I looked at a few dozen matches on YouTube and the best that I could find was players struggling out of a hold after the first hit.
What are people doing to mash out really quickly in general? I know the wiki talks about the optimal joystick patterns being from one diagonal to another, but what about the buttons? I’ve seen the “flat palm” technique and it seems good in theory.
I’ve tried mashing out using various techniques and I appear to suck equally with all.
Was gonna start a new thread but figured this one was a good opportunity…
I’ve done this also as with a friend I play with, think of it as Gief’s bite throw and how you can mash that to do half life at least. You NEED to mash instantly and as fast as you can and with gief you’ll see him bite super fast right away if you got it, or if not he’ll do a quick pause before biting and then you know you have a normal throw. Same applies to getting out of it quick. There is a bit of a randomness factor in it too. I know what he means by premash but hmm how to explain, say ken gets you in a knee throw. You see him walk up and you NEED to mash the instant he gets you, before there’s animation really but after you can’t move. Also I’ve only been able to do it of the other person doesn’t mash at all, and likewise against me.
Holds come out in one frame, just like normal throws, in ST. So if you walk up to an opponent who is not in either hit or block stun, the hold will grab them immediately with no startup.
What that means is that the hold animation will begin on the first frame that you grab them. But it doesn’t mean that damage, or a hit, will occur on that first frame.
These are arbitrary figures created merely for this discussion. Let’s say that Ken’s knee bash grabs on the first frame, then, without struggling on the attacker’s end, hits seven frames after the hold initiates (so on the eighth frame it connects for damage for the first hit).
So you’d have the hold initiate on frame one, then six more frames of animation where no damage is done, and then on that eighth frame the first bash would connect for damage. So for seven frames you have time to mash away on the joystick and buttons before the hold actually does damage. So in that seven frame (made up figure) window if you hit enough corners with the joystick you could escape the hold without taking damage.
And this is the same for all holds. Any hold or grab in the game comes out in one frame. But there is an animation phase where the hits are starting up and haven’t connected for damage yet. It is during that phase where you can potentially struggle out of the first hit of a hold and take zero damage.
So you’ll see the hold animation initiate, but because the opponent has struggled (and struggled mightily), they’ll break free of the hold before the first hit animation can fully execute.
The randomness writeup on Sonic Hurricane has nothing about randomness in holds or grabs in ST. I don’t think there is randomness either, aside from the damage that holds do (but random damage is universal across ST), but if I’m wrong someone scold me. How did I reach that conclusion, that the number of hits in holds is not random? Through a few simple tests.
Take any character with a hold in ST, and walk up to a neutral opponent, hold them, and then release the controller and watch. Repeat as many times as you want, you’ll see that the number of hits done is same for the hold done this way (with neither player struggling after the hold has been initiated).
So for example, I choose N.Hawk, walk up to N.Ken and hold him with the roundhouse hold. It always does three hits, providing that neither player presses anything after the hold has been initiated. I also chose N.Blanka and held N.Cammy with his fierce hold (his only hold) and it connected for seven hits every time.
This leads me to believe that number of hits done in a hold is not affected by any of the randomness in the ST engine. Testing this out of course in depth would be the best way to prove things one way or the other, and of course I nominate NKI.
Correct. With normal throws, you have a thirteen frame window to tech (or soften) a normal throw. It doesn’t matter if you tech the throw on frame one or frame thirteen after the throw has been initiated, the result is always the same (in that you’ll soften the throw, damage is random however though reduced from the soften).
However with holds, the quicker you begin struggling after the hold has initiated, the faster you’ll be able to break out of the hold. And holds, like I outlined above, can (and should) be struggled out of on the first frame. Though it is prohibitively difficult and seemingly unrealistic to be able to expect to consistently struggle out of holds on the first frame.
This is probably the case. I’d be willing to wager that if the person initiating the hold does even minimal movement on the joystick, that the hold would get at least one hit against even a programmable controller struggling at the fastest speeds on the first frame of the hold.
Struggling out of a hold to take zero damage is possible but it’s going to be such an uncommon occurrence that you’ll hardly ever see it (I couldn’t find a single video other than the one linked above).
I agree with this. I think since the dizzied player already built up mashing momentum by attempting to recover from the dizzy state, it gives him the best (humanly possible) chance to escape the hold as well without suffering damage.
Good job to frijoles and yourself (VF5) for correcting the wiki. You are correct VF5 when you stated that it can only be done coming out of dizzy: I actually experienced that today on ggpo playing evoanon, I was fei with ~ 5 pixels of life left, and Evo was Gief: I was dizzied and Evo attempted a face mash hold in which I KNEW he was going to attempt a throw [he later stated he was attempting a super] so I started inputing opposite diagonal directional commands plus counter-piano mashing; causing me to instantly esacape the hold (although we both saw the animation for it) with no damage. After this, I realized there must be a mechanic in the game engine allowing for at least a single frame (caused from the dizzy state?) of advantage for dizzied character. Im correcting the wiki now (if I can find it, links broken); however, if you are not in dizzy the fastest you can escape is one hit (i should know I wrote the wiki section on dizzy/mash escapes) {I did nothing but throws for about 5 hours strait with all characters testing the properties of each hold}.
Whenever the Wiki gets back up I’m going to polish the entire ST/AE articles section by section.
I don’t just mean like doing a cursory evaluation of each section, like adding in combos, or putting in pictures, but a massive update to the ST/AE wikis. The VF wiki/database at VirtuaFighter.com is amazing. There is so much solid info for beginners and experts.
I’m talking about adding articles specifically on stuff like piano inputs, double tapping, meter building, how throw ranges affect match ups, block strings, and covering the basics and the advanced aspects of each one.
Dude that totally happened today when I was playing on GGPO. I mashed out of a dizzy (fastest way possible), got grabbed by geif, (stomach pump) then mashed out of it with zero damage. :amazed:
Hm, interesting topic. VirtuaFighterFour linked to me to this but i don’t know that much about it. Though i think i have actually seen the CPU do this on a few occasions (and against Blanka, no less). My only experience was [media=youtube]Dyl6iUrU6qI#t=6m[/media] with Guile.
I didn’t use “premashing” and i’m not convinced that it really exists. Obviously if you start mashing early, that gives you a better chance to start mashing from the first hold frame instead of missing out by reacting late. But other than that, i dunno, seems fishy.
Anyway the hold you use definitely plays a factor. Some of them are good, some of them suck. Ken’s is pretty good and it’s probably impossible to escape without damage. One thing i noticed was that even without mashing, he does a different number of hits every time. So the “starting value” is randomized. I was trying to minimize the number of hits he did to speed up the clip but it was only possible to get it down to two hits if i started with an unlucky hold.
Escaping Blanka’s headbite without damage probably requires good mashing in addition to an unlucky draw for Blanka.
technical monkey made my day:“I toooold you”…“i told told you i could do it” “i told you!”