P4Arena/Damage

From Dustloop Wiki

Health

The big yellow bar at the top of the HUD shows each character's health. There are two types of health in this game: Yellow Health (regular health), and Blue Health (recoverable health).

Once yellow health is reduced to 0, that player loses the round. If yellow health is reduced to approximately 35% the character enters Awakening.

Blue Health

The Blue portion will recover over time if you don't get hit.

Blue health is health that is temporarily lost and will regenerate over time. However if an opponent hits a character with blue health then the remaining Blue Health is lost. This is similar to damage absorbed by Focus Attacks in Street Fighter 4.
There are a variety of ways to transform regular health into blue health:

  • Block special and super attacks
  • Perform a Furious Action
  • Perform a Super Cancel

Super Cancels and Furious Actions are still usable at low life, essentially making them free since regardless you will likely lose the round if the opponent is able to hit you. Players should take note of this fact and prepare to see Furious Actions when the opponent is near death.
Note that a character can not die from having only blue health. This means that unlike most other games, a character can not die from blocking special and super attacks. Blue Health is not counted when determining winner by time out: only the yellow section counts.

There is approximately 5 second startup before Blue Health starts to recover. The startup is reset if you receive more blue damage, or if you block anything. However, this delay is not affected by jumping or any offensive actions.

Getting hit by attacks that do zero damage (such as Bursts, and throw breaks) will not remove your Blue Health.

Awakening

Yu Narukami enters Awakening

Once Health is reduced to approximately 35% or lower and the character returns to a neutral or blocking state, then the character will enter Awakening. Awakening has a visual effect when it occurs: the character will flash orange, his/her portrait will appear briefly in the background, and the character's life bar will turn a darker shade of yellow.

While in Awakening, the character will receive the following bonuses:

  • A defensive boost: all damage is reduced to 62.5%. Meaning hitting the opponent with a 1000 damage attack would only inflict 625 damage when the opponent is in Awakening.
  • SP gauge max becomes 150 instead of 100.
  • Free 50 SP.
  • Unlock new super attack(s), which varies from character to character.


Because a character will not go into Awakening until they are low on life AND return to neutral state, a common tactic is to do a high damage combo when the opponent is near Awakening so the opponent will have as little life as possible with Awakening's defense boost. You can even stop the opponent from going into Awakening by doing a combo that outright kills the opponent before the health condition is met!

You can also force yourself into Awakening by performing a Super Cancel or Furious Action if it puts your regular life below the Awakening threshold, then recover the Blue Life while receiving Awakening's defense boost! Elizabeth is a prime candidate to do this with Mind Charge and Diarahan.

Damage System

Damage Scaling

As you combo an opponent you will notice that each attack's damage tends to go down over the course of a combo. This property is known as damage scaling and is used to make it so that combos are not too damaging, and to balance out certain attacks by reducing the amount of damage possible off said attack.

Same Move Proration

Similar to BlazBlue, doing certain attacks twice in a combo adds additional damage scaling to the combo.
For example:

Same Move Proration Glitch

If you can perform a combo with 10 different attacks with SMP then perform an 11th attack with SMP, the 11th attack will not incur SMP! This allows Naoto to perform a very deadly loop in the corner! [1]

Minimum Damage

Similar to BlazBlue, some attacks (and most supers) deal a minimum amount of damage in a combo. This means that past a certain point, some attacks attacks will ignore damage scaling and deal at least a certain percentage of their base damage.

For most supers this is 30% of their base damage, but there are exceptions. This means that super attacks are great as combo finishers since they will ignore some of the damage scaling and deal damage that otherwise would not be available.

Power up supers like Yosuke's Sukukaja, Chie's Power Charge do not get the benefits of Minimum Damage.

Minimum Damage is still affected by Awakening. Meaning if an attack would normally do 1000 minimum damage, it would only do 625 minimum damage when the opponent is in Awakening.

Valid vs. Invalid Combo

Because characters can choose to delay their ukemi, this leads to the possibility of combos that work only because the opponent decided not to ukemi. This means that some combos are not "true" combos; the game's HUD differentiates between the two classes of combos by showing the hit counter as red for a valid combo and yellow for an invalid combo. The invalid combo HUD also show which hit was invalid.

There are some situations on defense where you intentionally force an invalid combo to avoid a mixup. For example, Narukami and Chie often create mixups assuming you will ukemi right away. Delaying your ukemi will mess up their timing and allow you the chance to escape.


A valid combo versus an invalid combo. The small yellow number at the bottom shows which hit was invalid.

Combo System

Hitstun Scaling

Similar to damage scaling, the amount of hitstun each attack deals will scale down with damage scaling. This is meant to act as a means to prevent infinite combos, but also requires that players understand a deeper level of their character's combo theory due to the fact that combos that worked earlier may not any longer due to hitstun decay.

Crouching Hits Have Additional Hitstun

Hitting the opponent crouching will give an additional 2 frames of hitstun. This means that there are combos that only work on crouching characters, for example, Narukami can combo 5C > 2C on crouching characters but not on standing characters.


Persona 4: Arena
Click [*] for character's frame data
System Explanations

HUDControlsFrame DataSystem Data


Movement/CancelingOffenseDefenseDamage/Combo SystemAttack AttributesSP/Persona/Burst Gauge UsageStatus AilmentsMisc