Phoeniks

I didn't read everyone's response so forgive me if I repeat anything. I just enjoy helping beginners. If you want to hear any specific character stuff from me I main Ragna, Bang, Tager, Hazama, and Jin. Personally, I think they are all beginner friendly characters (besides Hazama). Anyway, here's my take. To play Blazblue successfully, especially at your level, you have to learn what moves your character can safely and effectively use to initiate combos. For Ragna, great examples would be his 5B, 5C, and j.5C. Bang uses 5B, j. 5C, and j. 5B, not to mention his nails. If you can consistently connect and apply pressure with these moves, you are sure to be at least a decent player, assuming you don't drop combos. In your case, start with the easier to do combos and work up to the harder ones. If you can score 2k - 3.5k damage off of a hit then you are doing well. If you can cut your combos short and instead combo into your Supers when you have the heat you are doing even better. Practice combos in Training with your favorite character, figure out the ones you are comfortable using, and then figure out ways to apply them in a match. Check out the character match-ups section here to figure out how to effectively play against the characters your frends use and enjoy consistant victories. Good luck.

As much as I hate SC4, the lag was overall a lot more tolerable, simply because the game was slow. The only problem was if people knew this was the case and just bulldogged with fast horizontals.

Astral Heats as a whole aren't very useful outside of finishing an opponent in the last round before they can burst. The problem is, if they have a burst left and less than 35% of their health when you start the combo they will burst before you get the chance to AH. However, Hakumen's is great if you are confident you can counter and Makoto's is easily comboed into and can act like Daifunka (invincibility frames across screen) except faster. To answer the question, pulling off an AH isn't jerky. It is a little suspicious that you didn't use the 100 heat prior to that moment, but you deserve credit for doing something awesome and rarely seen in a legitimate match.

Jin's 623C, 66, 5B link is hard as hell, at least for me. You just need to get used to the timing. Once I got it down once I ended up being able to do it like 50% of the time. Ragna's CS, 66, 6A, etc. is a hell of a lot easier than that so just practice that for like 10 minutes. You can't buffer whatsoever, so just learn the timing until the move returns you to neutral.

Don't let wakeup DP become a habit. DPs as a whole tend to be extremely useful, but honestly are high risk-low reward. Ragna's can net him like 2800ish, I think Litchi's can get more. Makoto's gets barely anything, Jin's are horrid compared to what they used to be, and Bang's DP super is godly, and should be used whenever possible. In comparison, a counter or FC BnB from just about every character can pretty much lose you the round, so if you really need to spam a DP, make sure you have 50 heat to RC it. As for Haida loop, I'm pretty sure that any air tech should escape it if it's dropped, unless you're in the corner. Haida loop also uses 6C which is an anti-air, so be ready to barrier block. Your friend should very possibly eat a combo for dropping it (depends on who you play), so you should teach him to never drop it. Random Houtenjin is a little more risky than normal on Noel because a lot of her moves will clash with it or have invincibility frames during it. If your friend spams either of the Zero Guns when you spam Houtenjin, you will eat the whole thing, so you may want to reserve it for combos like: 5B, 3C, 214D~C, Houtenjin, etc. 5D~D, (air throw cancel), Houtenjin, etc. Also, if he air dashes a lot you can use 214D~B, 632146C or 214D~B, dash, 3C, Houtenjin, etc. A silly one I discovered was 5D~A, 632146C at appropriate range. If you are Ragna, play footsies with Noel and use 5C, j.5C, ad 5B and combo appropriately. If he spams Chain Revolver as a "blockstring" you can DP through it with low risk-medium reward odds.

The thing about Arakune is that I imagine it would be hard to avoid getting cursed and bug raped with heavy lag. I wouldn't expect any long combos, but American resetting your lagging opponents could happen. I haven't played Mu much, but I imagine lag would make her a miserable experience for both players. Overall, my least favorite thing about lag is that even light lag makes blocking succesfully a bitch, whether from getting hit by random pokes that you would normally react to, not being able to IB at all, or eating an overhead or crossup you would normally react to. All in all, Blazblue is unplayable with anything more than extremely light lag.

I don't think he's bad, regardless of his tier listing. The problem is, you need to be a lot more technical to do well with him. His three greatest tools are Jayoku Houtenjin, absurd heat gain from his combos, and snake zoning. I've gotten good at zoning, but I'm having trouble IBing like Zakiyama and I don't sqeeze in IB Jayoku enough. My biggest problem is how he's forced to be so defensive. His pressure is god awful, he doesn't have a continuous dash, and his normals are short range. I'm used to rushing down and playing footsies with characters like Ragna and Bang, so Hazama is a very new experience. I've been doing pretty well though. Training my opponents to air dash and using 214D~B works well. Psychic Jayoku's work wonders. On a related note, it's taking me longer than expected to use Makoto correctly. I pull of parry loop all the time, but her lack of range is something I'm not used to.

I don't know how relevant of a thread this is, but in my experience Ragna and Tager (and to an extent Jin) do the best under heavy lag. Ragna's combos aren't significantly harder to time and under a bad connection a dry Hell's Fang can be literally impossible to react to (same deal applies to dry Ice Car). Reacting to Tager's nonsense and teching correctly becomes several times harder, and the worst part is that you will eat heavy damage from his 360s and 720. I suppose Haukem and 4C could work pretty well. I'm sure Taokaka and Carl suffer pretty horribly though.

Hakumen has always been a pretty defensive character, and this is even truer in CS with 4C. His pressure is mediocre at best, and any reliable offense requires Magatama. Low mobility plus counters and average speed normals add to all of this. Tager is also very defensive. He has 5D as an alright defensive poke without magnetism, and a good poke with magnetism. He has his 360's and 720 to get out of pressure and punish risk-takers. He has terrible pressure and terrible mobility. Tager's entire purpose is to bring people to him and punish their mistakes, what with magnetism, command grabs, and what used to be high damage. I mean, he even charges arguably the best projectile in the game by just standing there. Hazama is arguably nearly as defensive as Hakumen and Tager. He has higher mobility if you factor in snakes, but those are mainly a get away tool when not being used in combos or to heckle opponents. He is all about forcing the approach while throwing out snakes because he doesn't have a continuous dash, his normals have terrible range, and his pressure is terrible because he has two meh overheads that can either to 2k damage (214D~A) or that can only be canceled with heat (6A). The terrible thing is that his defensive options are relatively limited (IB Jayoku) up close. Fortunately, a normal BnB can net him 43 heat and he can gain the extra by IBing like he needs to the entire match. As a side note, he also has a useful "anti-air" in 214D~B.

It is possible you are blue beating on the training dummies because you have some of their techs set to "random."

I wonder if dustloop can ever respond politely to someone asking a question, even if it is out of place. Oh wait, I forgot. FORUM ORGANIZATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HELPING PEOPLE WITH SIMILAR INTERESTS.

My friend literally worked on this exact combo for 3 hours and never got it. I thought that was pretty silly, because it isn't actually a hard combo. This is the one that starts with a grab right (B+C, 214B, (delay)214D, 5B, 623D, 236C, 214D)? All you have to know is that you do Gauntlet Hades immediately after the grab, but delay the second hit. You should land before your opponent, and then you can hit them with 5B and hit confirm into Inferno Divider. No need to dash, the combo is almost solely dependent on delaying the follow up to GH. If you want to master combos, head over to any character's thread and check out their combos. Learn the ones you like best, and if you need more you can usually find combos in video form somewhere. If you can't pull off a combo, ask a question in the character's combo thread. Other than that, practice them until they're muscle memory.

I tend to pay attention to what my opponent is doing and tech in the safest way possible. If their combo gives them forward momentum and leaves me in the air I tend to air tech forwards and thus behind them. If their combo leaves me in the air and they are a short range character I tend to tech backwards if it won't leave me in the corner (this is risky against Bang and sometimes Tager, so don't tech the same way always). For everything else I neutral air tech. As for the ground I usually neutral tech, but against characters without a lot of range or with good pressure options I tech backwards unless it leads me into the corner. I rarely forward tech, because good players will knock you out of it consistently. I did a bad job describing things but just practice and tech in the most intelligent way possible. Be ready to use DPs on overly aggressive opponents when you tech, and make sure to barrier block on your air techs so you don't eat an anti-air.

You may be playing better players as Tager. I used to love Tager and I still do, but since getting better at the game his failings have become far too apparent to me. Don't abandon him completely, he's not a hard character to learn, but get a main that you use when you want to win. I've been learning Hazama, and it has been making me a better player overall.