Guilty Gear FAQ Thread - Ask your questions here!

[Pichy]

EX Eddie can:

Summon drills from both the ground and air.

FRC both drills.

Summon mini-eddie (who is #R mini-eddie, complete with buzzsaw building guard) on both the ground and air.

Carry you to the corner with a reversal super.

No, I don't think we'll be seeing tournament-legal EX characters any time soon. Not unless ASW decide to do a complete overhaul of the things, instead of them being a dumping ground for currently unused art assets. Just pick EX HOS if you want to do some dustloops for a giggle in training mode.

[Mitsurugi]

Axel, you do have a point. I had the false impression both were equally beasting but now you mention SBO, that makes sense and indeed I may have been focused mainly on Mikado, thanks for pointing that out.

Haha, indeed, he is the fraud

SynikaL, as far as I know, there is no date announced yet about AC+R on console, not even a time frame such as "Winter 2013" or such.

[Viridian]

Is there a tutorial somewhere on general defense and how to apply instant block/faultless defense and so on? Not the basic mechanics, but how to really use them effectively, when to use faultless for pushback, or general tricks. Thanks

[Digital Watches]

There's probably one somewhere, but it's such a situational/"game instincts" kind of topic that a static tutorial may not do you much good. I could try to give some advice on it here if you want.

Basically, in order to understand how to apply FD and IB, you have to have a strong idea of what they actually do.

FD:

• Blocks chip damage
  
• Causes the defender to take MORE blockstun
  
• Costs a small amount of meter
  
• Increases pushback for the attacker
  
• Cancels whatever you're doing instantly (IF you can FD)
  
• Can block air-unblockable moves
  
  Whereas IB:
  

  • Causes the defender to take LESS blockstun
    
  • Improves your meter gain slightly
    
  • Decreases pushback for the attacker
    

  Core Usage: Escaping/Punishing Pressure

  The most important use of FD/IB is creating holes in the opponent's pressure. To do this well, you have to know about the opponent's character: What are they doing right now? What can they do from it? Is the string they're doing solid, or is it part of a false gap mixup? How much stun is each individual move putting you in? How much pushback is each individual move doing?

  With this in mind, you can start trying to get out of pressure in a few key situations. Most of the time, your opponent needs two things to keep you locked down: They need to be close enough to hit with an attack, and they need to be able to do another attack before or shortly after you're out of blockstun. With this in mind, try to think of situations where your opponent needs to connect in order to continue their pressure. This is true of most normal moves, since they need to connect to cancel to the next thing, but is often not true if the next thing they're going to do is move to close the gap (With a run, jump, or airdash, or with some special move that carries them forward) or throw a projectile. Places where your opponent needs to connect to continue their pressure are places where they can screw up.

  Next, you need to identify which of these critical points are vulnerable to IBing or FDing. If a string of attacks will barely be close enough to connect, you can FD a single hit, or sometimes a few hits, leading up to that critical point, forcing them further away, and if you were smart about it, causing them to whiff (Or, against a smarter opponent, just stop attacking before they'd whiff). On the other hand, sometimes a string of attacks will have a point that barely keeps you in blockstun. If a string or a link almost lets you out of blockstun, but doesn't, or lets you out of blockstun, but not long enough to do something, it's a good time to instant block. This allows you some time to reversal, backdash, or even jump out sometimes. Often, an instant block will allow you to throw your opponent, because not only are you in less blockstun, but you are closer to your opponent than they expected you to be.

  Being able to identify these situations comes with experience, and often differs greatly between individual characters you'll be facing. It never hurts to go into training mode and try out a string you're having trouble getting out of. See where it's vulnerable, and what you can do to break out of it. What move in the string do you want to interrupt, or avoid? What move should you be looking for to FD/IB?

  Alternate Use for FD: Cancelling Movement

  Since FD causes you to block immediately, it can be used to cancel a number of things. The most specifically useful ones are jump startup and run animation.

  One Frame Jump: Jumping takes a few frames (3 for most characters, more for some) to get off the ground, during which you're fully vulnerable. If you FD during your jump, you will get in the air instantly. This is useful not only for jumping more safely, but for getting off the ground quicker, and works with superjumps as well as normal jumps.

  Dash cancel: For every run in the game, there's a short "sliding" animation that plays when you stop running. During this time, you can cancel into any attack, but you're completely unable to block or throw. But, if you FD while running or sliding, it will cancel it instantly, and allow you to do either. Note that airdashes cannot be cancelled by FD (But they can be cancelled by Slashback)

  Animation cancel: Any ground normal, as well as most characters' j.Ds, can be cancelled into FD on the first 2 or so frames. This is usually pretty much entirely useless in most cases. However, you can sometimes psych out an opponent with the sound of an attack you don't end up doing (Audible overheads, for example). Cancelling j.D is also a way to option select airthrows into FD if you don't have burst (By pressing 4H+D and then instantly FDing, you get the throw if in range, and D->FD if you aren't.). This is a lot of effort for fairly limited utility, however.

  Situational Uses for FD and IB when you can't escape

  When you're pretty sure you're going to be unable to escape pressure, there are still uses for FD and IB. You probably already know that FD cancels chip damage, and IB will gain you meter faster (While also allowing you to improve your familiarity with the rhythm of your opponent's strings).

  Another weird use of FD is cancelling the animation of a failed slashback. For reasons I'm not quite sure of myself, holding FD with, for example, K+S, and tapping H will allow you to attempt more slashbacks in the same amount of time than you'd be able to otherwise. This is pretty much only useful in theory, since anyone with the execution to do it reliably in a way that's useful could probably just time the slashback in the first place. But, you know, kinda cool.

[Silmerion]

Snip

You should totally post this as a tutorial in the beginner subforum and/or as an article.

[Viridian]

Thanks for the detailed response Defense does seem to mainly boil down to game/matchup experience, which is a little daunting to approach as a beginner in this game. IB in particular feels pretty difficult to time properly and (reasonably) safely, but I assume there's no real "shortcut" or trick to making it work other than practice.

[ElvenShadow]

Great post, Watches

[Kaizen]

Good Stuff

Amazing guide. However, the idea of 1f jumps allowing you to leave the ground on frame 1 was disproven. They actually only cancel 1st frame of the jump animation, not the actual jump startup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r6_XNELwFE

It obviously still has its uses, but 1f jumping out of perfectly timed Slidehead oki is out of the question.

Thanks for the detailed response Defense does seem to mainly boil down to game/matchup experience, which is a little daunting to approach as a beginner in this game. IB in particular feels pretty difficult to time properly and (reasonably) safely, but I assume there's no real "shortcut" or trick to making it work other than practice.

This is pretty much true. IB has about an 8 frame window, so you have a respectable chunk of time to do it. But early on, unless you have experience with IB/just guarding in other games, you're probably going to end up doing it on accident a lot more than intentionally, and it might be kind of hard to notice (IB's visual effects are pretty subtle compared to FD and SB). One thing I might recommend is not only trying initially to IB the last hit of obvious and repetitive blockstrings, but watch to see when your opponent IBs. This will encourage you to make good and unpredictable pressure, and recognize when to force the opponent to make a mistake.

Interestingly enough, though, there's an odd trick you can do in certain situations. I was told that you can simply alternate between high and low guard in order to instant block, but after testing it, it seems you can only do this when instant blocking between hits where you are actively still in blockstun. I believe this works because you are temporarily going to neutral when switching between high and low block (4 and 1), but because of that, you are vulnerable for a frame or two during that period.

That's why you need to still be in blockstun, because GG has some level of auto-correct when it comes to blocking. Blockstun will generally carry over and allow you to keep blocking moves even if you stop guarding for a moment, which is why you can sometimes block crossups without changing your blocking direction. This doesn't apply to high/lows, though, but switching between the two properly still allows you to block. So switching between high/low block within the 8 frames that the opponent goes for the mix-up will allow you to instant block it without the risk of going to neutral.

I'm talking about playing on stick though; I'm not sure if this applies to playing on pad, since the neutral zone thing might not apply (but theoretically it should).

[ChaseRLewis]

So what exactly is the +/- for FD and IB?

[Mr.Two]

http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=Offense_%28GGAC%29

Under attack lvl. It varies alot.

[omegablackmage1]

When playing potemkin, I want to meaty command grab opponents as they are waking up. I run into this issue pretty frequently where I knock them down, grab them just after they wake up and it whiffs. They usually aren't doing anything (read: blocking), and I am definitely in range. Is there some mechanic I don't understand here? Is there a certain amount of frames that people are unthrowable for after waking up? Should i just 5.p and then tick throw from that? Thanks

[TheRealBobMan]

Yeah, there are some restrictions on throwing. I think you can't throw for 5 frames out of block stun, 6 frames out of hit stun, and I can't remember exactly how much on wakeup. I think it's either 5 frames again, or 10 frames. Walk up throw oki still works when you scare people though.

So tick throw off of 5P, or do a meaty 6K/2K from out of their throw range, or do Slidehead, etc. Early whiffed 5P > 6H is pretty good to bait a backdash, and meaty 6H > Slidehead is seriously hard to get out of if you don't IB the 6H (assuming they don't backdash the 6H or something).

[Circuitous]

Buster's only active for one frame. Using it as a meaty is a terrible, terrible idea. If your timing isn't perfect, it'll whiff before they wake up, or they can just backdash/throw/1-f jump/use a throw invuln move and beat you free. Either use a tick grab setup or do real oki.

There's no throw invuln on wakeup as far as I know, though there is throw invuln coming out of block/hitstun. See here.

[M.Song]

hmm i heard somewhere that there's 7 frames of grab invulnerability after getting up from a knockdown

although i don't remember where i heard/read this

[shtkn]

wouldn't this be pretty easy to test?

[Sophisticat]

I can confirm that invulnerability as I was playing matches last night and doing Bite with Slayer on wakeup was whiffing all the time.

So yes, it seems there is a period of invuln on wakeup.

[Digital Watches]

AFAIK the mechanism for throw invuln after wakeup is the same mechanism as throw invuln after blockstun/hitstun. Essentially from a blockstun/hitstun state, you are invulnerable to throws for 5 frames after you come out of stun. This is true to varying extents in every fighting game I know of, and is pretty damn necessary, since it prevents perfect tickthrows.

Also: I realize I'm hella late doing this, but since people asked, I'm promoting that post on block types to an article. Turns out if you're a mod and *actually logged on* instead of lurking like a lazy person, DL has a button for that.

[Digital Watches]

Interestingly enough, though, there's an odd trick you can do in certain situations. I was told that you can simply alternate between high and low guard in order to instant block, but after testing it, it seems you can only do this when instant blocking between hits where you are actively still in blockstun. I believe this works because you are temporarily going to neutral when switching between high and low block (4 and 1), but because of that, you are vulnerable for a frame or two during that period.

That's why you need to still be in blockstun, because GG has some level of auto-correct when it comes to blocking. Blockstun will generally carry over and allow you to keep blocking moves even if you stop guarding for a moment, which is why you can sometimes block crossups without changing your blocking direction. This doesn't apply to high/lows, though, but switching between the two properly still allows you to block. So switching between high/low block within the 8 frames that the opponent goes for the mix-up will allow you to instant block it without the risk of going to neutral.

I'm talking about playing on stick though; I'm not sure if this applies to playing on pad, since the neutral zone thing might not apply (but theoretically it should).

If this works on stick, it should work on pad, mostly because going from down-back to back on a stick will keep the switch for "back" pushed through the whole motion on any stick I've ever seen or used.

Also: In Guilty Gear (And most but not all fighting games), blockstun is a state where you're stuck in the block animation, meaning that even if you let go of the stick entirely, you will automatically block any attack that the same block animation you're stuck in would block. Note that unblockable attacks (Not throws, because again blockstun has throw invuln) will still hit you, as of course would any low attack against a high block, or vice versa.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Digital Watches

[shtkn]

edited the wiki to include throw protection on wakeup, since the amount is not known, left a small disclaimer there

http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=Offense_(GGAC)#Throw_Invincibility

[BioLogIn]

Oh well. Should have posted here earlier.

No throw:

5 frames after block stun

6 frames after hit stun

7 frames after wake up

[nnecron]

Is this the best forum site to ask for advice? I uploaded some matchup videos so people can help me based on their assessment, but so far only two people have commented and one of them hasn't watched the matchup thoroughly. The other guy has done his best but his English sucks. If you know a better place to go ask for advice, please let me know.

[Tong]

If not even the biggest site dedicated to Guilty Gear and full of experienced players can help you, then no one can.

Unless you learn japanese and hop on JBBS.

[GirugaMarc]

Help, I've never been able to properly IAD to the right and I've been playing this game since about 08. Is there some other way I can do it because my hands are too dumb? When I do it to the left there's barely any wrist movement but when I try to do it to the right nearly my whole forearm moves and I do it too slow and sometimes not at all.

More specifically, I'm trying to do Slayer's 5H into IAD j.K into 5H

[TheRealBobMan]

It's hard even on pad at times. I used to play pad when I played Chipp, and doing 5H > j.P for an alpha blade loop was still difficult, not counting any controller interface issues, because you have to time the jump out of the 5H, the dash as early as possible, and the IAD'd move (in your case j.K) as fast as possible without going so fast that the move doesn't come out because of airdash startup frames. Timing the jump isn't really an issue, but when you factor that you essentially need a double tap, it takes some effort to find the right rhythm there. Then, you need to delay your aerial just enough that it actually comes out, but get it faster and faster until it actually combos.

And now you're adding in the difficulty of using stick. I'm actually working on IAD combos with I-No now, because 6P > 5H > IAD j.K > j.S > FF VCL is effective on Baiken, and it took maybe 30 minutes of practice before I could get it. Now I've got it maybe 50% of the time, but it's still not muscle memory, so I drop it when I'm not thinking about the timing.

I suggest working on one direction for a solid amount of time before switching, and then spending an equal amount of time facing the other way. Priority should be on your actual stick input first, if you can't get IADs to come out quickly enough, like when you're facing right. The trick there is that, while I don't know what grip you use to hold a stick, you can do double tapping facing the left really easily with your thumb. Facing right, you need to use more of your wrist or arm. I think I reposition my hand when I IAD facing right, so that I don't have to move more than my wrist, but I do it unconsciously so I can't really be specific with that. Do your aerials later than you think you have to, and if you drop the input, do them even later. It's probably easier to speed up your timing in slight increments than to try to slow it down.

You're doing the IAD input as 956 right?

[GirugaMarc]

Yes it might be the way I hold it when I'm on the left side. I just hold it with my thumb on one side of the ball and the rest of my fingers on the other. Yeah I do them 956.