LEARNING A CHARACTER

STEP 1 PRACTICE MODE: Go to practice mode and look for following settings:

 Action Settings

• CPU Opponent Action 2: Guard all

That way you can see if what youre doing is a natural combo (more to that later). He will block it (or parts of it), if possible.

•  Ground Technique : Side Quick Roll (Left/Right)

The CPU opponent will perform Tech Rolls whenever possible. Also helps with knowing what guaranteed follow ups you can perform.

 Display Settings

• Command History: Display

Now you will see your inputs at the lower part of the screen. Helps with detecting mistakes.

• Recovery Animation: Display

You will notice a blue overlay on top of the characters whenever they wont react to any command you take. Needed to learn recovery times and hints windows to react.

Other Settings

• Input Delay: 4 bars (green)

You will pretty much never find someone online who has a 5 bars connection. If you keep practicing with no input delay at all you may have a rough awakening when playing online and every single learned timing is just off. I recommend reducing it to a more realistic 4 bars.

• Also have a look at the other options you can use. You can set up a whole lot of scenarios to train

STEP 2 MOVE LIST

Learn your moves including the sample combos. It's obiosly essential that you know about your characters moves and its uses. Many moves have some capabilities, that do not pop out at first glance. Often a crappy looking short ranged low damaging move (e.g. miguel's b+1) begins to shine when it's a counter hit.

Set your practice mode to 'player counter hit' and rewatch your movelist.

Sample combos may not be the best ones to use, but they can help you build your own combos out of it (see 'combos' below)

STEP 3 COMBOS

Combos usually follow the same reciepe: [Launcher] -> [somethingsomething] -> [move with a tailspin] -> [ender].

Now that you have learned your characters movelist you can rewatch the sample combos while remembering the reciepe. you will quickly find the several parts and replace them with other moves or strings from your movelist (if you want to). Playing around with combos is a fantastic way to get more comfortable with your character's moveset. Remember to learn your moves and combos on both sides.

All over the internet you can find piles of combos for every character. just be careful: in the end only consistency matters. Dont overthrow yourself with combos that are hard to execute when you cant successfully do them in a real match. Its often better to do a slighly simplier version of it if that makes it consistant. You can't afford to drop combos halfway through. If you feel comfortable enough you can still go for harder versions.

STEP 4 FRAME DATA

Good, you now know what you character can do, you are able to perform combos and may even have collected the first experiences in battle with other players. How do you know when to use what move? Thats where frame data comes into play. Every move takes its own time to be executed (see 'frames' in the 'general' tab). The frame data list is a crucial instrument when it comes to deciding what buttons to press in certain situations (especially if you have problems with particular moves from other players). It also tells you what moves you can dish out safely and where to be careful (e.g. Feng's b+1+2, feels good on hit, gets punished on block)

STEP 5 PUNISHERS

Now that we have the frame data in mind wen can concentrate on punishing. Once you are able to defend against opponent attacs, its time to hit back. Most leg sweep attacks for example have very poor frame properties on block. If you manage to block one of that moves you are now granted by a free window of maybe 17 frames. If your charactre has a hopkick its now a good moment to use it. its will launch your opponent with a free follow up combo just for the price of blocking a single move.

There are different kinds of punishers:

• Block Punishers

As decribed above, simply using the frame data.

• Whiff Punishers

this opportunity opens up once your opponent performs an action, but hits nothing but air. you did not need to block, so your frames are always at 0 while your opponents frames are somewhere below that. this ones can hurt a lot.

• Sidestep Punishers

Similar to whiffs you completely avoid the enemy attack, this time by sidestepping.

STEP 6 MATCHUPS

While getting more and more comfortable with your character you need to watch your opponents aswell. Some characters tend to play defensivly (like Asuka), some others usually try to be very offensive (like Hwoarang). Try to adapt to that playstiles. Also some characters are difficult to approach sometimes. Ling's Art of Phoenix Stance for example negates all high attacks and a lot of mid attacks. You need to learn what other characters can do and what to look out for.

STEP 7 GET CREATIVE

Now its all about execution and creativity. If you drop your combos, you will get punished. if you get predictable, you will get punished. Keep playing, keep practicing and most importantly:

Have fun playing Tekken.

Via Tyneelicious