Necessity of Combo Skills?

[AmayaGin]

I'm well aware that XRD is a combo heavy game. Thankfully, once you get the basics down, a huge amount of combos open up for easy memorization. This leads to a really cool sort of build-your-own combo system, which Japanese players really exemplify in their situation-unique combos.

But for a beginner, or a fairly new player, these combos are fairly out of reach, both in terms of execution and landing them. Since last year, I've been focusing on my fundamentals, and landing any hits at all instead of worrying about flashy setups and character specific punishes. It's worked pretty well for me, and since Venom's balls do wicked damage, allowed me to call myself somewhat of a competent player.

However, I seem to find execution heavy opponents quickly get tired of fighting me, and I can't help think it's because my combos aren't anywhere near theirs. I'll take a round off of them, and hopefully demonstrate my competence, but they'll quickly abandon the match after the first game.

So my question to Dustloop is, how do you feel about fighting an opponent with weak comboing skills? Is it indicative of a lower level of play, and a weak opponent? Does it make the match more boring if your opponent is focusing on raw hits and spacing? I've hear Guilty Gear is a grind-heavy game. Should I really have my bnbs down solid before I go looking for matches online?

 

[x-posted from /r/guiltygear]

[Poultrygeist]

I think it's probably scarier to fight someone who does baby combos but has godlike neutral and oki compared to someone with top tier execution who can FRC 100% of the time and has great confirms but struggles to gain momentum to land those combos.  It also might defend on your character.

[TittyFOFO]

Just play Millia if you don't feel like learning real combos yet lol.

 

But yeah, definitely at least get the BnB combos down before you hop online. Your chances of winning are just drastically smaller if you're never converting any touches for real damage. How difficult it is to get that damage varies from character to character, but that basic truth remains the same.

[LockedAndClush]

There are a few staple things that you should practice, more or less regardless of the character you're playing.

Practice whatever lets you maximize damage from pokes in neutral (assuming you cannot turn this hit into knockdown), have some kind of conversion to corner carry/knockdown for 50 meter or whatever you character can utilize to turn hits in neutral into it. It's also worth it to practice specific situations and converting rather than combos per se - for example, when you read an opponent's Burst, the situation can have a lot of variables. Sometimes you'll find yourself on the ground and close to the opponent. Sometimes you'll be a little further away and won't have much time to close the distance. Maybe you'll even be in the air above the opponent, who knows? Take time to study and practice all these options. 

Some moves that you'll see yourself using defensively or in neutral open up new combo routes on counter hit. Practice not just comboing from them, but in general noticing these counter hits and converting then. It doesn't necessarily have to be the strongest combo possible, just make sure that your hits are reliable and lead to knockdown, preferably with good okizeme (very important for Venom). 

Definitely have one strong punish for when your opponent takes high risks and you read them properly. A combo that is reliable, does high damage and leads to okizeme. While having strong neutral game and good damage of it is, in the long run, a much more advanced and scary concept, you absolutely must have a way to punish reckless behavior. I sometimes meet players that have a good sense of what the neutral game is about, but enable me to be reckless with moves (seriously punishable stuff like VV or GV) just because I know that they cannot punish me too hard. This skews the risk/reward factor in a way that goes completely against high-level play. 

So, to sum it up, in my opinion you don't need anything extremely fancy that the best players sometimes do (it will come naturally once you learn and practice routes), but there's a certain minimum of competency in combos that you need to get some respect from your opponent. Still, you should focus more on converting everything you can into knockdown/corner carry/okizeme and less on adding 10 more damage to a typical combo. Both are important, but the first one is the step to more respectful, careful play from your opponent. Prepare yourself for all typical situations where your moves may connect in certain ways and always be ready to gain the advantage from them. 

[Blade]

I've had plenty of opportunities to fight difficult opponents and really, if people are walking away from you, you just haven't met the right sparring partner (that's all it really boils down to if you ask me).

I don't really have any extensive combos, I just have combos and tricks that do the job of winning.  If they can't figure me out, then they just have to keep fighting me until they do.  I'm not the type to walk away unless someone is REALLY super tough, like out-zones and reads everything I do... then I have to rework my strategy and think of a way to beat players like that.

I have a predilection for damage over technical combos... so if it hits hard, it works for me.

Doing all kinds of links and position work for a complex combo isn't my style, especially if it doesn't reward you in terms of damage or put you in a favorable situation.

[Zouf]

On 26/11/2015 00:08:01, Poultrygeist said:

I think it's probably scarier to fight someone who does baby combos but has godlike neutral and oki compared to someone with top tier execution who can FRC 100% of the time and has great confirms but struggles to gain momentum to land those combos.  It also might defend on your character.

Those do not exist.

Anyone with a godlike neutral will most likely have a enough execution to do most basics and advanced combos.

 

[Poultrygeist]

10 minutes ago, Zouf said:

Those do not exist.

Anyone with a godlike neutral will most likely have a enough execution to do most basics and advanced combos.

 

That makes no sense at all.  Neutral and execution are two completely different skillsets.  It also doesn't disprove my point because your execution is literally meaningless if your neutral is so bad you can't even get momentum started.

[Rele]

The thing is that learning combos is entirely solo grind in pmode while neutral game/spacing is something you get from versus experience, so naturally most if not all people will be able to press at least bnb combos that do ok if they managed to get good enough to the the point where they actually have a strong neutral game.

[Zouf]

this

[Stellarcircle5]

I think that if you're not at least looking to optimize your corner carry and oki, then you're doing something wrong. The moment I realized my combo skills were serving me well was when my friends would start saying "Wow, every hit you land is leading to full damage and putting me in the corner, its so frustrating". Being able to freestyle and think "I have X amount of meter, I'm X distance from the corner, I've gotten X starter at X height, how can I maximize the reward on this?" Is critical and a huge part in why I think having strong combo skills is important. I know people who are "afraid" of execution, and people with that mindset need to break that barrier.

I'll use Ky in Xrd as an example.

A standard string of c.S > magic series > Stun Dipper does around 15 - 20% damage and gets you meaty 6H for oki. Meanwhile, a c.S confirm into Vapour Thrust loops leads to 40 - 50% damage and a free 50/50 mixup on oki.

The difference in reward is huge, and while having strong neutral is the core strength players should strive to have, strong neutral that kills the opponent in 2-3 hits is even scarier.

 

 

[Moy_X7]

Knowing combos is a necessity if you want to play these types of games competitively. I would say that learning fundamentals and having a strong offense, defense, and neutral game is the difficult thing, since you need to play other people for that kind of experience whereas you can grind combos by yourself at any time. Personally, when learning a new character in these kinds of games, I try to grind combos first. Landing hits is all good and gravy but you need to be able to convert them into damage. 

However, knowing combos is not going to automatically help you win matches. I know a lot of players who can whip me, even though I pull off better and more optimized combos compared to theirs. Their fundamentals and ability to read me are so on-point that it doesn't matter that I can squeeze more damage and can carry them further to the corner with my combos when I can't land the starter most of the time. 

My process when learning a new character in these combo-heavy games goes like this...

1. Learn what every single one of your moves does; their reach, special properties, frame advantage/disadvantage, what they can cancel into, etc.

2. Learn and grind combos, then grind them some more against the highest level AI to practice hit-confirming. Just keep in mind that the AI is mostly only there to help you grind combos and practice hit-confirming and you should never treat them as you would a human being. 

3. Learn blockstrings and set-ups

4. Play games 

tl;dr - combos are necessary if you want to be competitive but they're not this magical thing that is going to automatically win matches for you. 

[AmayaGin]

These replies are amazingly helpful. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to write them out.