Teching
Teching, also known as "down recovery", lets a player recover hitstun after being launched or knocked down by pressing 
+Any Button, including taunt.
The tech window begins on the first frame that the player is launched or knocked down, and they will recover 9F after tech is input. Teching leaves the player airborne with all options restored. If they are hit during tech's 9 frame duration, the player will not suffer hitstun, and instead only take damage.
Although the tech window always begins on the first frame after being launched, the duration of the tech window varies per character. The tech windows are as follows.
| Character | Ukemi Window |
|---|---|
 Axl |
18F |
 Baiken |
12F |
 Baldhead |
38F |
 Chipp |
42F |
 Justice |
60F |
 Kliff |
8F |
 Ky |
40F |
 May |
24F |
 Millia |
56F |
 Potemkin |
16F |
 Sol |
36F |
 Testament |
26F |
 Zato |
22F |
Tech Bug
After being thrown, if you mash tech using P, K, or S, then the game will state your character has teched yet they will fall as though they haven't, and will not have the other visual effects that accompany a successful tech. However, your character becomes air active after a little bit, assuming you didn't hit the ground first. When reaching the ground, techs will immediately be active and not go into OTG. A mysterious mechanic (bug) also occurs after this is done. The next time you're thrown, you will immediately be air active after the throw rather than having to tech. This behavior is still being investigated further.
Let's Talk About Taunting
Because they are so similar in other games, many people will lump Taunt and Respect together when discussing this game. This is actively detrimental to understanding the game. Taunt and Respect are entirely different mechanically in this game, and they are also entirely different buttons on your control scheme. It is best if you completely divorce the two in your mind.
Respect:
- Used as an input in Charge moves
- Used while blocking to FD
- Used for ukemiTo recover from a knockdown or air hitstun state, usually by pressing a button. This is a common action found in games like BlazBlue and Guilty Gear. (teching)
- Used for Respect Sliding
- Plays an animation for however long you hold the button (tapping very shortly transitions from running to walking)
Taunt:
Instant Kill
Every character has access to an Instant Kill move by first inputting P+K. Hitting this attack enters the so-called "Sakkai" state, during which the screen turns red and both characters are frozen. The player who initiated this state needs to input 236+Attack Button in order to dial the actual Instant Kill attack. Successfully landing an Instant Kill decides not only the current round but all subsequent rounds as well.
The other player can avoid this attack by inputting 214+Attack Button at any point while this red Sakkai screen is visible. If done correctly, the defending character will enter a dodging animation and the attacking character will dash through them, not dealing any damage.
The Sakkai state can also be triggered by performing an Instant Block.
IK Dodge Frame Data
When performing the input to avoid getting instant killed during the IK Sakkai state, the defending player performs a sort of "dodge" with specific frame data and invuln.
The durations of these animations and their respective invulnerability period is listed below.
| Character | Total Duration | Invulnerable Period |
|---|---|---|
| Axl |
26F | strike invuln 1~7F, 18~26F |
| Baiken |
27F | only invuln to IKs |
| Baldhead |
20F | strike invuln 1~11F |
| Chipp |
20F | strike invuln 1~20F |
| Justice |
36F | Strike invuln 1~36F |
| Kliff |
20F | only invuln to IKs |
| Ky |
39F | strike invuln 1~11F, 27~39F |
| May |
34F | strike invuln 1~5F, 26~34F |
| Millia |
23F | strike invuln 1~9F |
| Potemkin |
42F | strike invuln 1~42F |
| Sol |
28F | strike invuln 1~11F |
| Testament |
31F | strike invuln 1~31F |
| Zato |
37F | strike invuln 1~11F, 27~37F |
Entries highlighted in green are invulnerable for their entire duration.
Entries highlighted in red are only invulnerable to instant kills.
Guard Cancel
Guard Cancels, known officially as "Dead Angle Attacks", are special moves performed during blockstun. Any special move can be used as a guard cancel for free. This allows you to interrupt your opponent's offense reversal style specials.
The community does not often use the official name in order to avoid confusion with more recent and popular titles where Dead Angle Attacks behave entirely differently.
GCJ Glitch
The Guard Cancel Jump, or GCJ, is a niche technique that allows you to jump during blockstun. To perform a GCJ, input jump immediately after blocking an attack. If performed correctly, your character will levitate into the air while in blockstun without going through their prejump animation. Blockstun sustained before leaving the ground persists as you become airborne.
This phenomenon is still being researched, and is not fully understood at this time.
Charge Attacks
Each character, except for Axl, Testament, and Justice, has a specific special move that can be charged. To charge a move, perform that moves input, but use the Respect button instead of the normal attack button. Your character will play a unique animation and gain a charge level. That move will become powered up for each level that you charge it.
For reference, this is very similar to 
Order-Sol's charge mechanic in +R, but hilariously busted. This mechanic, after all, inspired that character's design.
Charge Canceling
Charge Canceling is the mechanic which allows most characters to perform frequently seen infinite combos. Any grounded normal can be cancelled into the charging animation just like one would into a special. Since the charging animation ends instantly as soon as the player releases the Respect button, this can essentially serve to remove all recovery from any ground normal.
This allows characters with a charge to simply hit their opponent with any normal, gatling into a normal with a decent amount of hitstun, cancel into charge, immediately release the charge again, dash up and repeat the process indefinitely until their opponent is either stunned or runs out of health.
The same principle can technically be applied to blockstrings as well, however the strength of defensive tools such as Missing Link's Deadangle Attacks or Instant Block to trigger Sakkai state make this a pretty risky option.
Charge Times
Different characters gain charge levels at different speeds. These charge times are measured in frames. For example: Chipp gains levels twice as quickly as Potemkin.
| Character | Charge Time |
|---|---|
| Kliff |
85 |
| Potemkin |
80 |
| Zato |
70 |
| Sol |
54 |
| Ky |
52 |
| Baiken |
50 |
| May |
48 |
| Millia |
45 |
| Baldhead |
45 |
| Chipp |
40 |
| Axl |
-1 |
| Justice |
-1 |
| Testament |
-1 |
Note: A charge time of -1 indicates that the character cannot charge.
Guard
Guarding, known commonly as blocking in the FGC, works as expected in GGML. Most moves can be blocked low, high, or both, with a few special moves being unblockable. Blocked normal moves will usually deal no damage to the blocker, and specials will do significantly reduced damage, known as chip damageDamage incurred when blocking an attack. Typically, only Special Attacks and Super Attacks have chip damage, but there are exceptions.. It should be noted that unlike later entries in the series, in GGML all attacks can be blocked in the air without the use of any secondary mechanics with the exception of a few air unblockable moves.
Faultless Defense
Faultless defense is performed by holding the Respect button while blocking an attack. It will only activate against moves that do chip damage, where it will negate all chip received from that attack at the cost of a moderate amount of meter, known in game as the Chaos Gauge. Unlike in later games, it cannot be used against air unblockable moves.
Instant Block
Instant Blocking is performed by inputting block at the same moment that an opponent's attack would hit you. Doing so will cause you to enter Sakkai and potentially perform an Instant Kill on the opponent immediately. This IB Sakkai can only be performed while standing and outside of blockstun.
Dust Attack
Dust Attacks are launcher attacks which are performed by inputting S+H. If you hit the opponent with a dust attack, the opponent will be sent flying in a special launch animation for unique combo opportunities. Pressing shortly after the dust launch happens will make you perform a special super jump.
The following characters have Dusts which are overheads:
The following characters have Dusts which are Lows:
All other dusts are mids.
※Does not hit most crouching opponents.
Velocity Dust
If one character hits the opponent with an attack that deals at least a certain amount of damage (usually 15), and the opponent is traveling above a certain velocity, the attack will apply the hit effects of a Dust attack.
The requirements to trigger a Velocity Dust against each character is as follows:
| Character | DMG | Velocity |
|---|---|---|
| Axl |
15 | 1664 |
| Baiken |
15 | 1536 |
| Baldhead |
15 | 1664 |
| Chipp |
6 | 2816 |
| Justice |
15 | 2048 |
| Kliff |
15 | 1024 |
| Ky |
15 | 1664 |
| May |
15 | 1536 |
| Millia |
15 | 1536 |
| Potemkin |
15 | 2048 |
| Sol |
15 | 1536 |
| Testament |
15 | 1536 |
| Zato |
15 | 1536 |
Overdrives
Overdrives, also known as "Supers", are special moves which require 100% Chaos Gauge to use. These are usually very powerful attacks with unique properties. While in the Desperation State, supers can be used if you have any amount of meter greater than 0. Supers in GGML typically do not provide any invulnerability on start-up and the Superflash does not freeze the opponent's character. Because of this, supers are rarely seen used defensively and are usually used for the range or damage they provide.
Chaos Gauge
The Chaos Gauge, known more commonly as "meter" or "tension" is this game's resource system. Players gain meter by hitting the opponent, and can spend meter on Faultless Defense and Overdrives.
Desperation State
When a character's health drops into the yellow, characters enter the desperation state. During this, Overdrives can be executed regardless of how much the Chaos Gauge is filled. While Overdrives essentially become free through this, they still drop the Chaos Gauge to 0, preventing the use of Faultless Defense for the time the player is performing Overdrives continuously.
This desperation state is not tied to any requirement or timer outside of the character's health so it lasts until the next round begins.
Meter Gain Modifier
Each character has a meter gain modifier value. The greater this value, the more meter that character gains per for each action.
| Character | Meter Gain Modifier | Meter Gain as % of Mean |
|---|---|---|
| Justice |
15 | 150 |
| Baldhead |
15 | 150 |
| Axl |
12 | 120 |
| Sol |
12 | 120 |
| Baiken |
11 | 110 |
| Testament |
10 | 100 |
| May |
10 | 100 |
| Zato |
10 | 100 |
| Millia |
8 | 80 |
| Kliff |
8 | 80 |
| Potemkin |
5 | 50 |
| Ky |
5 | 50 |
| Chipp |
4 | 40 |
Minor Mechanics
These are not necessarily unimportant, but there's not a lot to say about these mechanics.
Air Blocking
As a general rule, most moves are blockable in the air. There are, however, significant rule breakers that are air unblockable, even if they were otherwise blockable both standing and crouching. Moves which can be blocked standing or crouching, but not in the air are denoted as Mid guard. Moves which are blockable in the air as well as standing or crouching are denotes as All guard.
Here is a list of air unblockable moves:
- Universal Dash attack
- Axl
- 2K, 8H after Rensen Geki, Benten Gari (623S)
- Baiken
- Tsurane Sanzu Watari (2363214H)
- Chipp
- Beta Blade (623P)
- Dr Baldhead
- 6P
- Justice
- 2nd Hit of Michael Sword (41236S), Strike Back Tail (421K)
- Kliff
- 6P, Scale Ripper (SxN)
- Ky
- 6P, 1st Hit of Stun Dipper (236K)
- Ride the Lightning (412364H)
- May
- 6P, 2H
- Millia
- 6P, 2H
- Potemkin
- 5K, 2K
- Gigantic Piston (632146H)
- Sol
- Air Volcanic Viper, Level 2 & 3 Ground Volcanic Viper, Dragon Install Volcanic Viper
- Tyrant Rave (632146H)
- Testament
- Grave Digger (236S)
- Zato-1
- All shadow attacks during Climb Darkness (41236H)
Jump Cancels
As a rule, all normals in the game (except for ones that put characters in an aerial state like Axl Low's 4/6H) are jump cancelable, regardless of how long ranged they are or whatever properties they have. Be aware that your character will still need to go through their prejump frames while airborne, meaning that characters with slow prejump frames might not have enough time to jump cancel jump-in attacks before they hit the ground.
Clashes
A clash occurs when 2 attacks connect with each other. When a clash happens, both players can cancel their current move into another attack. Unlike future games, you can only cancel into a move that the clashing normal is capable of canceling into, rather than being able to cancel into any move.
Backdashes
Backdashes universally send the player flying back a good distance while fully invincible with no recovery. This makes backdashes an incredible powerful defensive tool every character has access to. Theoretically, one could backdash an entire round and be untouchable, but this is humanly impossible since you'd need to do a 44 input in one frame.
Respect Sliding
If you tap the Respect button during a dash, you will slide forwards in the standing animation, preserving your dash momentum. This can be used as way to quickly approach and throw the opponent.
Dash Bug
If you input a Dash at the same time as any grounded attack, your character retains full dash momentum without deceleration until the attack finishes. This can be used on specials by inputting them as 2366X, 62366X, 21466X, etc. Notably, doing the dash bug with 623 motions (62366) is near impossible for humans. This has a number of applications on throughout the cast such as Axl's Dototsu (214K) becoming a near fullscreen invincible attack, or Chipp using the dash bug with Tsuyoshi-shikii Ten'i (236S) to gain a near fullscreen teleport. Also, Kliff and Potemkin are incapable of doing the dash bug since neither have a dash.
Jump Startup
Jump startup is fairly unusual in the Missing Link. It varies heavily between charactes, ranging from 2 to 12. When you double jump or jump cancel, a character must go through their whole jump startup again. Most interesting though is that you're considered airborne during jump startup, even from the ground. This means if you're hit out of jump startup, you'll take one hit then immediately hit the ground with all options available, most notably throw. This can be used as an way to escape pressure, although there are many other ways to do this.
Damage Display
There is a minor difference in how damage is registered between the PSX and PC versions of ML. On PSX, the health bar updates 1 frame before the hurt animation plays. On PC, the health bar and hurt animation are sync to the same frame.
Dust Launchers
If a player is moving at or above a certain speed, dependent on each character, and that player gets hit by an attack that deals more than 15 damage, then that attack will gain the launching properties of a Dust. It will also display the "DAST" text on screen, as if a normal Dust attack had hit.
Homing Jump Bug
If you hit the opponent with a dust, do homing jump, and then hit them with one of three specific special moves, then the character will subsequently continue to home towards the opponent in a strange bugged state, although the effect wears off quickly. This can only be done with Chipp's Beta Blade (623P), May's Aqua Rolling (236S), and Baiken's Youzansen (623S). Only Chipp can really take advantage of this.
Dizzy
Dizzy, also known as "Stun" or "Bear Stun" is a punishment for getting hit. Each character has a Dizzy Threshold and a Luck value which are used to determine if and when that character will get stunned.
Every time an attack would put your dizzy value over the dizzy threshold, the game rolls a random number between 1 and (64-LUCK) to determine if you get stunned or not. This means that characters with a lower stun threshold start rolling dice to get stunned more quickly than others, and characters with high luck have a better chance to avoid the stun after passing their threshold than others. However, the luck stat is statistically useless and you can realistically expect to be stunned each time you are put above your character's dizzy value.
| Character | Dizzy Threshold | Luck |
|---|---|---|
| Axl |
25 | 10 |
| Baiken |
30 | 12 |
| Baldhead |
35 | 12 |
| Chipp |
18 | 10 |
| Justice |
35 | 10 |
| Kliff |
16 | 10 |
| Ky |
30 | 10 |
| May |
38 | 10 |
| Millia |
25 | 10 |
| Potemkin |
36 | 10 |
| Testament |
30 | 10 |
| Zato |
30 | 10 |
| Sol |
24 | 10 |
In practice, the importance of this information is limited. If you're playing "honest" Missing Link, then it just means that Dr Baldhead and May are the hardest characters to stun, and Kliff is the easiest. If you're playing Missing Link with no holds barred, then none of this matters because you're probably going to infinite the other person before stun is a factor. The main exception to this is Kliff, since his attacks do high stun and he has no infinite.
Frame Advantage
Missing Link's hitstun is rather eclectic and strange. As a result there are some caviats involved in the frame data presented on this wiki:
- All On-Hit values are tested on Ky
- All On-Hit values assume earliest possible ukemi/tech from the opponent when applicable
- All On-Hit and On-Block values assume worst case scenario frame advantage
Wakeup Throw Invuln
Players are invulnerable to throws for 6 frames after waking up from a knockdown. On frame 7, they can be thrown.
Combo Scaling
In Missing Link, combo scaling is unique to each character. Below is a table representing the damage multiplier based on the number of hits the character has done in a combo.
Hits which have significantly non-standard scaling are highlighted.
- Green multipliers are abnormally high
- Yellow multipliers are abnormally low.
| Hit Number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axl Low | 1.00x | 0.87x | 0.62x | 0.62x | 0.50x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.43x | 0.31x | 0.31x | 0.31x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Baiken | 1.00x | 0.93x | 0.87x | 0.81x | 0.75x | 0.68x | 0.62x | 0.37x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Chipp | 1.00x | 0.87x | 0.75x | 0.68x | 0.62x | 0.56x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 1.00x | 0.12x |
| Dr Baldhead | 1.00x | 0.31x | 1.00x | 0.50x | 1.00x | 0.75x | 0.43x | 0.68x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Justice | 1.00x | 1.00x | 0.93x | 0.93x | 0.87x | 0.81x | 0.81x | 0.25x | 0.25x | 0.25x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x | 0.12x |
| Kliff | 1.00x | 0.62x | 0.56x | 0.56x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.31x | 0.31x | 0.31x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Ky | 1.00x | 0.87x | 0.81x | 0.75x | 0.62x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.25x | 0.18x | 0.18x | 0.15x |
| May | 1.00x | 0.81x | 0.68x | 0.62x | 0.50x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Millia | 1.00x | 0.87x | 0.81x | 0.68x | 0.56x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Potemkin | 1.00x | 0.75x | 0.62x | 0.56x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Sol | 1.00x | 0.81x | 0.68x | 0.62x | 0.50x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Testament | 1.00x | 1.06x | 0.87x | 0.81x | 0.75x | 0.56x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
| Zato | 1.00x | 0.87x | 0.75x | 0.68x | 0.56x | 0.50x | 0.43x | 0.37x | 0.34x | 0.31x | 0.28x | 0.25x | 0.21x | 0.18x | 0.15x | 0.12x |
In practice, the importance of this information is limited. If you're playing "honest" Missing Link, then this can help you optimize your combo routes. If you're playing Missing Link with no holds barred, then none of this matters because you're doing an infinite combo.
