Life of a Low-Tier Hero - Lab Work Makes The Winning Formula

Remember the first steps you took to getting your driver’s license? Well, first you studied a book or a packet of some kind and watched those campy 80s-style videos about driving. While I don’t think anyone’s come up with a written test for fighting games quite yet, you can still benefit greatly from studying written and video content for fighting games.

Physical fighting game guides are now becoming infrequent, but most developers are putting out e-guides that give a brief overview of how to play the character and some sample combos. There are tons of YouTube combo videos out there for every character in fighting games, so a good idea would be to watch a few and take a little info from each and integrate that into your game. Be sure to take easy, moderate, and difficult combos into account, for both as you grow as a player or put yourself in different situations. For instance, sometimes using a challenging combo to end a match can come back and bite you in the rear. If you’d just settled for an easier combo to close your opponent out, you would have taken the round.

But, you can’t just sit there for 8 hours a day and practice combos. Yes, building up your execution is very important, but there are plenty of other aspects of a match to consider. That’s why one of the most important tools to utilize in a fighting game is the dummy record option:

Like Sajam shows you above, using dummy record in training mode is a great way to learn more about your character or a character or move that gives you problems. It’s also a great way to test if a setup is airtight or to see if there’s a different way to get out of a challenging situation your opponent put you in last game.

Something equally as important as training alone is training with a friend. Whether you’re online or offline, most games have the option to bring a second player into training mode. The difference between online training and your regular lobby is that training mode allows you to easily replicate situations that may be challenging to you or your partner and it removes the boundaries that a live-action match might present, like time and meter restrictions.

One way to maximize your training sessions is to establish a training “regimen,” like an actual martial artist. For example, here was Justin Wong’s training regimen during Street Fighter IV:

“Everyone has different regime in training mode. When I go in training mode, this is the stuff I basically fiddle around with.

• Work on practical bread and butter combos for 30 minutes. For example: If I was playing Rufus, I would work on his dive kick, standing light kick 2x, into standing hard punch, into hard punch Galactic Tornado and all his other necessary combos.

• Practice unique situations against many characters for 20 minutes. For example: If I was playing Rufus, I would practice on how to auto correct with Rufus Ultra 1 against Akuma’s cross-up Hurricane Kick.

• Work on zoning, counter pokes and footsies for 20 minutes. For example: If I was playing Rufus, I would practice how to use Rufus' crouching hard kick (sweep). If you look at my match with Mago at EVO2K11. Every time I stood out of Sagat’s standing hard kick range I would sweep it with Rufus.

• Work on frame traps with your character for 10 minutes. For example: If you’re playing Rufus, many characters can option select tech throw against Rufus' dive kick. Ryu can crouching medium punch and hit the tech throw option to stop Rufus from throwing or dive kicking. In order for Rufus to counter, you must frame trap that option with standing medium punch, this will cause a counter hit for Rufus and you can do crouching light punch into EX Tornado. (There are other frame trap options available).

• Working on option selects for 20 minutes. For example: Rufus may not have many option selects, but the one I find useful is against C. Viper. After you do any hard knockdown, let’s say off a back throw, if C. Viper does a wake up EX Seismo, you can buffer the light kick version of regular Messiah Kick and you will beat her out.

• Free styling for 10 minutes. For example: After I did the core functions in my training regime, I just mess around and just start doing random combos. The reason why I do this: it might trigger a light bulb moment.”

One thing you’ve probably noticed by now is that these things take time. Lots and lots of time. But how much you improve depends on how much time you put into it, just like everything else. You’re a pretty good driver (hopefully) by now, so why can’t you be a better fighting game player? The only thing stopping you from getting better is yourself.

FIghting games got you down? Check out our previous iterations of the Life of a Low-Tier Hero series, which should help you get over the hump, thanks to some advice from AMKidd. Or, if Dragon Ball FighterZ is your game, check out our guide on getting over canon (and "spamming!").