GGML/Mechanics

Teching

Teching, also known as "down recovery", lets you avoid being hit OTG by pressing +Any Button as you are knocked down. Your character will recover in the air as opposed to staying on the ground. This is incredibly powerful, as effectively any move that launches, including moves like  May's Overhead Kiss, can immediately be teched, effectively nullifying any potential for launch combos and OTGs outside of Dust combos. When you tech, with the exception of specific circumstances, then you are almost immediately air active, allowing you to jump, air dash, attack, or any combination of those. This makes continuing pressure after anything that knocks down very difficult, and the typical plan of running setplay after knockdowns is near impossible. Notably, with moves that launch opponents at a low angle when they knock down, it can be difficult to time a tech and get an air option out, causing them to land with nothing. This causes the opponent to have to go through landing recovery before they can do anything, giving the attacker some advantage when they may otherwise have none. Examples of this are  Testament's Grave Digger (236S) and  Ky Kiske's throw. Still, it's possible for opponents to jump or throw out a fast aerial in even these situations.

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. Unlike if they hadn't teched though, your character becomes air active after a little bit. However, if it is done off a throw that sends you low to the ground, then your character will reach the ground before they become air active. Upon reaching the ground, they will immediately be active and not go into OTG. More mysteriously, after this is done, then on occasion 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 in non-standard tech situations
• Used for Respect Sliding
• Plays an animation for however long you hold the button (tapping very shortly transitions from running to walking)

Taunt:

• Used in the air to turn around manually
• Plays a canned animation start to finish, when used on the ground
• Used to perform  Kliff's BAKAMON!! attack

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 +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 +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.

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 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. For example:  Millia gains levels noticeably faster than  Potemkin.

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 damage Damage 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.

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 in the air 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:

•  Chipp Zanuff
•  Dr Baldhead
•  May
•  Testament
•  Zato-1

The following characters have Dusts which are Lows:

•  Justice

All other dusts are mids.

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 do typically 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.

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.

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.

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 (44+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.

Character	Luck	Dizzy Threshold
Axl	10	25
Baiken	12	30
Baldhead	12	35
Chipp	10	18
Justice	10	35
Kliff	10	16
Ky	10	30
May	10	38
Millia	10	25
Potemkin	10	36
Sol	10	24
Testament	10	30
Zato	10	30

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 this matters.

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.

Navigation

Guilty Gear: The Missing Link

Axl

Baldhead

Chipp

Kliff

Ky

May

Millia

Potemkin

Sol

Zato

Baiken

Justice

Testament

Systems Pages

Mechanics

Data

UI

Official Site