Learning to play defensively

I've been very fortunate lately to get help from some excellent players. Both Chief Flash and KaminariOyaji have been giving me advice that has been very valuable. I've come to the conclusion that while my offense is reasonably strong (though far from fantastic), my defense is very weak.

The first problem that I've identified is that I rely on evading far too often. Ridiculously so. Playing Kaminari last night, he noticed that I was evading barely a quarter of his moves, and spending most of the time doing failed evades. I've been able to get away with this against weaker players, as they will typically do fast linear moves that execute before they have time to track my failed evade, but as I climb up the ranking ladder, the better players are identifying this and capitalizing on my weakness.

Delayed attacks, throws, and circular strikes are all excellent ways to punish this kind of playing. Typically, by overwhelming my opponents with offense, I'm able to get away with a weak defense, and by evading in this manner, I've been able to reset the advantage back to my side and start my offense again. It makes for a nice long continuous string of attacks that weaker players have a lot of trouble breaking through. However, now that I'm having this weakness exposed by better players, it's making it all the more obvious how poor my defensive skills are.

Chief Flash has been very generous in answering my slew of questions related to timing, fuzzy guarding, evading, throw escapes, and every other aspect of defense that you can think about. This has all been very helpful, but the real challenge now begins, as I have to start putting the theory into practice. This is damn hard. On the squash court, it's always understood that you have to take time to drill in a new technique before you can actually put it to use in your games. Virtua Fighter is no different, as I find myself shouting at the top of my lungs at my TV "STOP EVADING YOU MORON", but without any change in gameplay (I typically evade immediately after I shout this, creating an infinite loop and tearing the fabric of space-time). As you can imagine, this process if extremely frustrating.

Being able to play defensively as well as offensively is obviously extremely important. As I'm humbly discovering, pure offense will only take you so far. It was while playing Kaminari last night that he gave me the best theoretical advice I've ever received (Flash has been pumping me with the best technical advice). This advice was as follows: When you play defensively, and are able to prevent your opponent from breaking through, you start to break down their mental toughness. The less damage they are able to do, the more they will start to revert to their basic line of play, and their basic game. This is where you start to see a lot of 2P, evades (me), and other basics of the game coming into play. This is the point where you can start to learn how they will react in a given situation, and adjust your gameplay as is warranted.

Maybe this doesn't sound like much, but this was the piece of information that pulled everything together for me. It was all so clear now. Of course that is what will happen, but why had I never thought about it that way? In this manner, your defense can become your best offense, much like I'd been relying on my strong offense as my best defense. It's cliche, but it's all about that yin-yang.

So, how am I putting this idea into practice? Poorly. Haw haw haw. But seriously, the first step is to pick one move that I use a lot, and really really REALLY focus hard on doing the correct defensive technique after that. For me, this is Brad's PPK string.

I like PPK with Brad because it's generally free damage, and it has a small amount of frame disadvantage on hit. This string is two quick highs, followed up with a low kick. The two highs start with Brad's jab, which is 12 frames, and the low kick is almost never blocked. Additionally, you can go into Brad's movement from PP, which means that most people prefer to block high after the first two punches, fearing the mid-game mix-up that Brad can go into from his stances.

After the kick in this string hits, Brad is at -5 disadvantage. This means that I have enough time to fuzzy guard, without the added complexity of needing a crouch dash (which becomes necessary at -6).

So, how has all of this been going? Well, I'm still getting frustrated, but I'm slowly getting there. Playing UKDiddy today (great Akira!), I managed to start training myself to shout less, and actually fuzzy after this string connects. This opened the door for me to block his response, and then respond with one of my own. I can still reset the situation and begin my offense again, but this time I'm doing it with effective blocking, rather than evading haphazardly.

I've got one other secret weapon for improvement, and I will impart that now. The secret is... I ask for advice after every match. Different players will always see different aspects of your game that they notice and learn to take advantage of.

Sometimes you get responses from people that sucks: "Win more games".

Sometimes you get advice that is accurate, but not very helpful: "Use better yomi". This is fair, better yomi will always help, but it's not a very easy item to put into practice.

More often than not, you'll get very helpful advice: "Don't evade so much", "Fuzzy guard more often", and "Learn to play defensively, MORON" (that last one if my own advice to myself).

Don't be afraid to swallow your pride, regardless of how well your opponent played, and send them a "GGs, thanks. Any advice?". Sometimes it can be hard hearing about your own flaws, but it's the only way to continue improving. Listen to the advice, use Dojo, then Quest mode, then Player games, and lastly Ranked games, to put the advice into practice.