Neutral game help

[illness690]

Ok so I'm a umvc3/sfae/Tekken player who's a complete noob at bb. I don't understand how the neutral game works. Since it's got air dashes I automatically play like it's marvel and try to dash in recklessly and get a hit to start my combo, but it almost never works, and I get blown up for it. I guess it's cuz in marvel you've got assists to cover your rushdown, but there's no assists in bb, so how do you get in? Is the neutral game footsie based or something? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I play Bullet btw if that's any help.

[Stellarcircle5]

A good thing to take note of is in anime fighters, learning how to space yourself is incredibly important. Since we don't have any "Derp, I want a mixup for free" mechanic like assists in marvel, you have learn which of you normals are good for covering your approach. Ragna's j.C for example is a strong aerial spacing tool that forces your opponent to respect the airspace in front of you. Bullet's 5B is a solid spacing tool and her 6B is a decent anti air, so using those should help you assert dominance in neutral.

Sometimes, trying to go on the all out offensive in neutral isn't the best idea. Sometimes you will want to use what movement you have to bait your opponent. I don't know a huge amount about Bullet, but I do know that her j.C is a really strong air to ground tool that you can use to fish for whiff punishes. On the other hand, Bullet is pretty weak in the air during neutral (not counting her j.D and C, both of which are still pretty unsafe) so you should focus on forcing your opponent to respect you with your strong ground normals and pressure. There's a guy in my scene who described her in a hilarious way: "Bullet tickles you twice and then fucking kills you".

Try practicing whiff punishes, footsies, and anti airs. These will improve your gameplay immensely.

[Ichipoo]

This is somewhat of a broad answer but you would advance while taking in your opponent's character's capabilities and what can they do at certain ranges into account.

 

A classic situation would be airdashing towards a character that has a DP at an attempt to hit him/her with a jump attack. It can go a handful amount of ways; 1) You get in successfully 2) You commit to the airdash but get DP'd 3) You airdash but hold barrier THINKING he/she's going to DP etc.

 

With situations like these, it becomes imperative that you mix up your movement and advances. Not the best answer I know, but neutral in airdashers in general are a bit daunting when it comes to understanding them. All I can say is that you'd do well to learn the game's mechanics and your character's movement, normals, specials,e tc.

[illness690]

Thanks a lot, I'll definitely work on my spacing. I've been starting to use Bullet's 6B as an anti air more,I just need to work on her combos from that to properly punish.

[NecroTheReaper]

Talking specifically about bullet, as said before, her j.C is rediculous, as long as you aren't being predictable. For ground coverage, she also has her 236A which covers a lot of ground space (even more with heat up levels) and forces them to either block and give you a free run in pass or go to the air and possibly get hit by 6B. Also, air dashes are one of the most unsafe approach options in BB. You have to wait to cancel into barrier until a certain point unless you do the j.A wiff barrier, and if you don't, depending on the matchup, you could get anti-aired easily. Note that a lot of stuff really depends on the matchup since there's a large amount of zoner and hybrid-zoner characters that can shut bullet down fairly easily.

[Solless]

j.A whiff barrier?

[Fatalis]

During an airdash, if you whiff a j.A, you can recover faster to barrier block than if you had just waited for the airdash to finish.

[kenja0]

You asked how to get in with Bullet: that doesn't happen with that character without extreme care. You need to learn her limits of mobility and options.

 

Her ground normals have decent range for what they do and give her a decent neutral game. One of the things you can do is do dashing normals for good pokes. Her best pokes are 2B (down B) and 5B (stand B) with 5C good for punishing. You can also do Dashing Barrier block 66 (forward forward) into 4+AB (back+AB) to defend yourself. If you have your opponent blocking, you must learn which normals cancel into others based on the Revolver Action tables posted in the character's framedata archive. You want to get to her 6A as that is her overhead. You also want to get to her jump cancels for pressure.

 

Staggering pressure is also important since unlike most characters, Bullet has a lot of moves that are -1/+1. You can harass people with 2B>5B>5C>stagger>A/B moves/delayed cancel C moves. The only thing that sucks about pressure with Bullet is that everyone can just low block and watch out for the overhead. She can, although, easily push people to corners with the right gatling chains. I heavily heavily heavily recommend practicing different gatlings and staggering pressure for blockstring resets and frametraps. This applies to every character in general. With staggering, you want to learn to do throws in pressure. 2A>delay>Green throw is a great way to open people up. You can also do 2A>2A>Purple throw (for people who attempt to break throws too early and get locked into Throw Reject Miss for being too early); 2A>5C also works to bait people and hit them for pressing buttons. If your opponent blocks low, 2A>5A whiff>Green throw is one of the best throw tools in fighting games. Everyone is programmed to recognize a whiff: when that happens, people react, and then they get thrown and are surprised, then the amount of time they are surprised for forces them to miss their tech window. Good stuff.

 

Aerial mobility is very important in this game: it's strong and important to get in with but the game has powerful ground options against air combat. Most ground normals are anti-airs that require you to Barrier in order to block them. Also, each character has a dedicated anti-air attack that has FULL invulnerability to ANYTHING in the air, otherwise known as upperbody invincibility (air normals count as upperbody attacks and dedicated anti-airs are invincible to that).

You have several options to use for air mobility. There is the standard jump attack, the jump airdash, the double jump, and the instant air dash (IAD). Jumping is pretty standard, but don't underestimate it since people never expect others to just empty jump or do just a single jump. Airdashing is the way to cover a lot of ground. You cannot block during airdashing so if you telegraph it, you get anti-aired. Unlike Marvel, Blazblue allows us to put our utter faith in anti-airs on reaction simply because of the upperbody invincibility. That's where double jump comes in: it baits the anti-airs since they have limited range. Jump barrier will accomplish similar things but you don't want to be blocking your opponent and get stuck in pressure. Instant air dash is your Marvel box dash: great to get in with, but punishable if telegraphed too. Delayed airdashes can create additional mixups since you can mixup a low with an aerial move.

Her air normals are also decent but are in no way optimal to get in with.  Jump C is her best air-to-ground as that has a good hitbox with great hitstun. Jump B is your air-to-air poke. Jump A is good to get out of certain grab setups and add blockstun while you land safely.

 

Bullet's D accomplishes a couple of different things. It gets you close and gets your opponent blocking. After a blocked D, you both are neutral. Once you have Heat Level 1, the game changes. Your tracking is MUCH better and can be used for approach. If you have trouble getting in, your D will get you in (with considerable + on block) at the sacrifice of the Heat level on block: a fair trade. Heat Level 1 (HL1) jump D is AWESOME. You can do jump cancellable blockstrings, Instant Air Dash over your opponent's head, press D and cross up attack them. If your opponent plays ground footsies, you can jump back/up/forward/super jump) D and hit them out of whiffs for Heat Level 2. You can also hold D for threats, if you press down back (3) while holding D, you CANCEL it.  This is very important to help air stalling (to bait AA) and stop your aerial mobility. Air stalling is one of the best things you can do to throw your opponent off in a fast paced match. HL2 is even better since you get red lock on faster (for invincibility to projectiles) and your 6D/2D mixup becomes scary fast. Your dashing becomes amazing. If your opponent is in the air, don't be afraid of meeting them or passing with a dash. Your projectile also becomes decent.

 

All in all, Bullet is the easiest entry into combos, but one of the hardest to get in with. The damage potential she has makes up for the difficulty getting in, but doing damage at the cost of neutral game is bad for these types of games. This is why she is bottom 3. Medium-short range, step dash, straightforward tools. Even after the patch, her improved tools only make her better at getting in on zoners (and 3C's better low profile may help against some neutral game pressure now). The 720 buff gives her another scary tool, but that is only useful if you have the tools to get in and stay in. Be mindful and don't expect the patch helping you learn the game. She's fun, but be ready to put in work.

Also, watch out for Ragnas. Everything he has beats you out of everything you can ever do, always. Better pokes, best escape out of your pressure, dat fist pump anti-air, jump derp C, Gauntlet Hades. Against him, the struggle is real.

[felirx]

Some characters have almost godlike antiairs. A good example is Platinum and Kokonoe 6A. This move beats almost every airdash approach for most of the cast when timed properly. Your job as a rushdown character is to find a way past this. For example, as Taokaka you have multiple jumps to try and bait anti airs. Mindlessly jumping or airdashing in on characters like these is simply not an option.

 

You can always try to safely approach from ground. You can barrier cancel dash to stop the skidding animation. Of course, if the opponent catches this with a well timed poke, you either get punished or put in to block stun and under pressure.

Normally jumping or superjumping allows you to safely use barrier at any point of the jump. This is very useful against characters like Nu-13 or Rachel to get past zoning relatively safely.