u/MFBTMS

Many people are saying they don’t feel like they’ve achieved something, even after moving 3 ranks higher than their s2 rank. And the main solution is the following: don’t tie feeling of accomplishment to a png.

Can you say your match up knowledge is on a different level now? Can you say you feel your character better and can move more intuitively with them now, compared to s2? Has your execution consistency improved? Do you have better decision making? If yes, you’ve done everything correctly. If not, don’t even look at your rank. It can show Garyu or GoD5, but what difference does it make if you’re not dedicating time to getting better?

As a rule of thumb, if you’re a competitive player and put time into the game consistently, you should do a small recap by the end of each month. You should be able to say “this month my electrics got better/my staple combo finally stopped dropping/I started sidestepping better/my whiff punishment has improved/I labbed this specific character(s)”.

If by the end of each month you can identify at least one thing you clearly improved on, you’re gonna be okay. Upgrading your png becomes inevitable if you don’t forget to enjoy the game and work on your weaknesses

Picking up Reina as a first Mishima and trying to get my wavu and electrics to a decent consistency. At the same time, I find myself hanging out in practice for way too long instead of playing because it feels like electrics and wavu are fundamental parts of the character and messing them up in matches is gonna feel bad. I understand that even people like IKARI mess them up every now and then, but I'm struggling with understanding what's good enough, and that stops me from focusing on other aspects of the game.

So, do you have any rule of thumb before matches like "when I hit 10 electrics and 10 wavus in a row, I know I'm warm enough". And generally speaking, how much time did it take you to get confortable with your wavu and ewgf on both sides? At what point did you understand they were good enough for ranked?

Picking up Reina, first Mishima, learnt the ws3,4, df4, f2,3f, df1f, sen1+2, wra3,4 combo, but I saw someone say instead of wra3,4 you can do wra cancel into wr4, ws3,4, wall ender. I’ve managed to hit wr4 a few times without ws3,4, but the whole thing with wr4 feels so difficult that it’s not even fun. And that’s me who’s ready to spend several hours at a time in practice. I genuinely don’t see myself pulling that off consistently, given that you also have p2. Is it actually worth it?

UPD: it seems like my issue was largely due to the fact that I thought that the difference between the 2 combos is just the ender (wra3,4 changed to wr4), but it turned out that you need to exclude df1 before sen1+2 in order for ws3,4 to connect after wr4. I couldnt realize why I was going through hell, but now wr4 is so much easier to connect. Thanks for all your suggestions

No Mishima experience, only played AK for a few weeks. Been learning Reina for a few days now. My biggest issue is that I will often have 1f of difference between df and 2, and no matter how simultaneously I try to press them, this 1f is often there, which drops my ewgf consistency to about 40%.

I was thinking maybe there’s a cue that exists or is it just raw dogging it in practice till it becomes 100% consistent?

How long did it take you to do electrics consistently on leverless and are there any leverless tips you could share for Reina?

And do you use f df2, f d, df2 or f qcf2?

I’ve recently hit TG and currently working on getting my secondary to TG, which is not a crazy rank or anything, but it puts me at top 10% of my character, and I’ve realised a few things that are either gonna keep you from gold ranks or skyrocket you there.

1. The ability to turn off your ego. I have ego like most people here, and this is something I had to work on the most. Despite all the talk about rank inflation and the state of the game, Tekken is still one of the hardest fighters out there. So it’s natural that your experience in this game makes you feel a certain type of confidence. Also, the violent nature of a fighting game heats up the emotions. But when this confidence becomes toxic and blinds you - it’s all over for you. Literally, the second you start complaining about the game, you shouldn’t queue next. If you’re serious about climbing higher, you need to forget about blaming characters, playstyles, Murray or anything else. That’s how you steal wins from yourself.

2. You’re not aggressive enough. This one may sound insane in the current state of the game, but I really like hidetone’s take on this. He was once talking about how he played in a tournament against a Heihachi player. Hidetone was winning, everything was going fine, but all of a sudden Heihachi just started spamming hellsweeps. Hidetone ended up losing the tournament and was sitting there feeling completely robbed an empty. The feeling that all of us know do well. The problem wasn’t that Hei’s hellsweep is an unreactable and unreadable move. The problem was that hidetone got mental stacked so hard that he allowed more and more pressure to happen.

And this is something that I was struggling with too. Whenever I got into an infinite mix up, especially with character like Hwo, Eddy or Lars, I thought the problem was my knowledge and decision making. And while that was true to an extent, I realised something else: in order for you to get mixed up, you must first let the mix up happen. And so it leads us to another question: how do mix ups occur in the first place? Both characters start in neutral and whoever you’re playing, your character has mix ups too. So how does it happen that you’re the one getting mixed up all the time? The answer is you’re not creating enough mix up situations for your opponent. And it doesn’t mean mindlessly run towards them on every occasion. But you gotta ask yourself, are you getting the most out of your character’s offence or are you frozen in neutral being afraid to press anything because you’re afraid of getting mixed up? If you find that a lot of the time in neutral you just let someone run up to you and enforce their mix up, then it’s not a mix up problem. You need to remember that whoever isn’t afraid to initiate is more likely going to win. You don’t win Tekken by being passive, much like if you were in a street fight. Often times just hitting them first is all it takes.

3. Pattern recognition. At some point, when you’re comfortable enough at your character, you need to stop looking at your character model for good. You should already know what your buttons do, and 100% of your attention must be on the opponent. Literally don’t take your eyes off their model. Don’t look at your ewgf sparks, don’t look at your cool wavu. 100% of the time you must look at what they’re doing. And then amazing things start happening. They like to step after jab/df1? Homing into follow-up. They like to dash block into dash pressure? Launch them on the second dash. They like to throw out moves in neutral that are out of range? Whiff punish. They like to wake up aggressively? Ss/backdash into launch. They like to stay down? Hit them grounded. They like to dickjab out of pressure? Parry. They like to grab when up close? Duck and launch. They like a string that has a low/high? You get the idea. But all of this is not possible and your mind isn’t focused on the opponent. Downloading your opponent works at any level, end especially so at lower. I guarantee that mindfully looking at any of your loss replay will give you info about at least 2-3 habits your opponent has.

4. Don’t sidestep if you’re not sure. The whole “sidestep doesn’t work” agenda is blown out of proportion. Phidx has a brilliant video on this, but in short, 95% of ss fails because you punish too early or ss to the wrong direction. SS is an advanced mechanic and it’s not supposed to work as “I sidestepped one hit to a random direction, must launch immediately”. Good SS is a skill that takes months and years to learn. Do it on your own time, but if you see that your SS gets you clipped constantly, stop creating disadvantageous situations for yourself.

5. Learn the defensive tools of your character. If you’re finding yourself mixed up a lot, don’t be afraid to press a button. Ideally, you wanna know the match up and know what part of a mixup can be launched/stepped. But if you haven’t labbed, your defensive options include: parry, dickjab, backsway, hopkick and even grabs. I guarantee that your character has at least 3 of these options. And if you feel like you’re stuck in the mix up anyway, try to read a timing to use one of those. And if it worked out, great. If not, go into replay afterwards and test your options.

6. Treat your losses as an opportunity to learn. You are a human being, you’re worthy of something and your rank doesn’t define you as a person. This is a video game, and if losing doesn’t feel inspirational to learn, you’re in the wrong state of mind at this moment. Peace.

I’ve recently hit TG and currently working on getting my secondary to TG, which is not a crazy rank or anything, but it puts me at top 10% of my character, and I’ve realised a few things that are either gonna keep you from gold ranks or skyrocket you there.

1. The ability to turn off your ego. I have ego like most people here, and this is something I had to work on the most. Despite all the talk about rank inflation and the state of the game, Tekken is still one of the hardest fighters out there. So it’s natural that your experience in this game makes you feel a certain type of confidence. Also, the violent nature of a fighting game heats up the emotions. But when this confidence becomes toxic and blinds you - it’s all over for you. Literally, the second you start complaining about the game, you shouldn’t queue next. If you’re serious about climbing higher, you need to forget about blaming characters, playstyles, Murray or anything else. That’s how you steal wins from yourself.

2. You’re not aggressive enough. This one may sound insane in the current state of the game, but I really like hidetone’s take on this. He was once talking about how he played in a tournament against a Heihachi player. Hidetone was winning, everything was going fine, but all of a sudden Heihachi just started spamming hellsweeps. Hidetone ended up losing the tournament and was sitting there feeling completely robbed an empty. The feeling that all of us know do well. The problem wasn’t that Hei’s hellsweep is an unreactable and unreadable move. The problem was that hidetone got mental stacked so hard that he allowed more and more pressure to happen.

And this is something that I was struggling with too. Whenever I got into an infinite mix up, especially with character like Hwo, Eddy or Lars, I thought the problem was my knowledge and decision making. And while that was true to an extent, I realised something else: in order for you to get mixed up, you must first let the mix up happen. And so it leads us to another question: how do mix ups occur in the first place? Both characters start in neutral and whoever you’re playing, your character has mix ups too. So how does it happen that you’re the one getting mixed up all the time? The answer is you’re not creating enough mix up situations for your opponent. And it doesn’t mean mindlessly run towards them on every occasion. But you gotta ask yourself, are you getting the most out of your character’s offence or are you frozen in neutral being afraid to press anything because you’re afraid of getting mixed up? If you find that a lot of the time in neutral you just let someone run up to you and enforce their mix up, then it’s not a mix up problem. You need to remember that whoever isn’t afraid to initiate is more likely going to win. You don’t win Tekken by being passive, much like if you were in a street fight. Often times just hitting them first is all it takes.

3. Pattern recognition. At some point, when you’re comfortable enough at your character, you need to stop looking at your character model for good. You should already know what your buttons do, and 100% of your attention must be on the opponent. Literally don’t take your eyes off their model. Don’t look at your ewgf sparks, don’t look at your cool wavu. 100% of the time you must look at what they’re doing. And then amazing things start happening. They like to step after jab/df1? Homing into follow-up. They like to dash block into dash pressure? Launch them on the second dash. They like to throw out moves in neutral that are out of range? Whiff punish. They like to wake up aggressively? Ss/backdash into launch. They like to stay down? Hit them grounded. They like to dickjab out of pressure? Parry. They like to grab when up close? Duck and launch. They like a string that has a low/high? You get the idea. But all of this is not possible and your mind isn’t focused on the opponent. Downloading your opponent works at any level, end especially so at lower. I guarantee that mindfully looking at any of your loss replay will give you info about at least 2-3 habits your opponent has.

4. Don’t sidestep if you’re not sure. The whole “sidestep doesn’t work” agenda is blown out of proportion. Phidx has a brilliant video on this, but in short, 95% of ss fails because you punish too early or ss to the wrong direction. SS is an advanced mechanic and it’s not supposed to work as “I sidestepped one hit to a random direction, must launch immediately”. Good SS is a skill that takes months and years to learn. Do it on your own time, but if you see that your SS gets you clipped constantly, stop creating disadvantageous situations for yourself.

5. Learn the defensive tools of your character. If you’re finding yourself mixed up a lot, don’t be afraid to press a button. Ideally, you wanna know the match up and know what part of a mixup can be launched/stepped. But if you haven’t labbed, your defensive options include: parry, dickjab, backsway, hopkick and even grabs. I guarantee that your character has at least 3 of these options. And if you feel like you’re stuck in the mix up anyway, try to read a timing to use one of those. And if it worked out, great. If not, go into replay afterwards and test your options.

6. Treat your losses as an opportunity to learn. You are a human being, you’re worthy of something and your rank doesn’t define you as a person. This is a video game, and if losing doesn’t feel inspirational to learn, you’re in the wrong state of mind at this moment. Peace.