I Need Backup! Tips for Practicing Hit Confirms
I Need Backup! Tips for Practicing Hit Confirms
Turning hits into combos is easier said than done. When first give it a shot, it might feel like you need superhuman reactions to have any chance of hit confirming consistently. After all, in a fighting game match moving a mile a minute, how the hell are you supposed to notice you landed a hit and turn it into a combo in the fraction of a second you have to make that conversion? This post is intended for people who are still struggling with hit confirming who have already watched episode 6.3 of Think, Don’t Mash! and/or are familiar with the concept. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, watch that video first. If you already know what hit confirming is but struggle to do it, continue on. As I talked about in the video, you’ll have a move or sequence of moves which are safe to do whether you hit your opponent or they block. While these moves happen, your job is to recognize whether you’re in the hit or block situation. If they’re getting hit, you continue on and do your combo. If they’re blocking, you either stop pressing buttons or switch to a different sequence of buttons which will keep you safe. What’s the best way to practice this? Let’s start with my Goku Black example from the video. The combo I used was:
cr.M > st.M > cr.H > super dash > j.L x3
As shown in the video, if you go on autopilot and mindlessly do the whole thing while your opponent is blocking, you’re vulnerable.
The solution to this was if I noticed my opponent was blocking, I would instead do:
cr.M > st.M > st.H > st.S
A good way to practice hit confirms is in three steps. Go into training mode and:
Set the dummy to not block. Practice doing the combo until you are comfortable with it and can do it consistently.
Set the dummy to block. Practice doing the safe sequence and get used to what it looks and feels like on block.
Set the dummy to randomly block. Using the muscle memory you’ve built in steps one and two, work on recognizing whether the dummy is blocking during the initial cr.M > st.M portion, and transition to the combo or the safe sequence appropriately.
If this is difficult, you can start out with a an easier sequence. For example, you could do instead do:
Combo: st.L > st.L > cr.M > st.M > 2H > super dash > j.L x3
Safe sequence: st.L > st.L > cr.M > st.M > st.H > st.S
This would give you four moves that were the same on hit and on block, giving you even more time to recognize what was happening.
Random tips
#1: Buffering
In some games, it’s important to be able to confirm single hits into combos. This was common in Street Fighter III. An example there is Chun-li’s notorious cr.M > Super Art II (SAII) combo. You can use cr.M, an excellent poke, to fish for hits, and it can combo straight into her damaging SAII. In my earlier examples with Goku Black, I had a while to recognize what was happening because I had several moves to think about it. With Chun-li’s cr.M, I don’t have that luxury. How can you see what’s happening, react to your opponent being hit, and then do the entire input for the super (QCF QCF+K) in time? The solution is buffering.
How can people do this consistently?
Instead of doing this:
Do cr.M.
Wait and see what’s happening.
“OMG it hit!!”
Furiously try to do QCF QCF+K in time.
You should be doing this:
Do cr.M.
Immediately input QCF QCF while looking at what’s happening.
Press K if they got hit.
You can do majority of the input for the combo version and just wait to press kick until you can see they got hit. It’s a thousand times easier to react and press a single button than to do a lengthy/complex input.
#2: Is it a hit confirm?
It’s important to differentiate whether something is a ‘real’ hit confirm. What I mean by this is that some combos you see players do may not be hit confirms at all. Sometimes you might just be seeing punishes. In a punish situation, where your opponent has committed to something and can’t block, you know your hit is going to land. Another possibility is the player is doing the input for a normal cancelled into a special no matter what, i.e. the player may not be reacting to the hit at all. One version of this is using a special that's safe on block. An example of this was Rose’s cr.MP > soul spiral sequence in Street Fighter IV. When spaced properly, soul spiral is safe on block, so as long as you’re doing it at the correct distance, you can do cr.M > soul spiral every single time with minimal risk. If these exist for your character, they're often very strong tools. If you watch Louffy's run through EVO 2014, you saw him use this constantly:
The other version of this is using the normal at a distance where the only way you’d hit somebody is if they’re not blocking. You can do a normal buffered into a special where you know you're out of range for the normal to hit. If they stay out of range, the normal happens, but you don't get the special and stay relatively safe. If your opponent sticks out a button or walks forward to put themselves in range, that means they aren't blocking, so you get the combo. An example of this is K-Brad buffering Cammy's cr.MK into spiral arrow:
#3: Display lag
Lastly, hit confirming can be tough and doing it well requires reacting quickly to audiovisual queues. This becomes a lot harder if the TV or monitor you’re playing on is laggy. What this means is when your console or PC sends a video signal to your display, there is some amount of delay before it’s shown on your screen. Some amount of lag is inevitable, but for some displays, the lag can be bad enough that you have noticeably less time to react to things. Luckily, these days there are places like displaylag.com where you can do research and make sure your display is suitable for fighting games. If you’re on a budget, monitors (as opposed to TVs) are less likely to have tons of lag, since they don’t have the same image processing/enhancing “features” as TVs.
Closing thoughts
Like learning anything, getting hit confirms down can take time. If you’re having difficulty, don’t give up! Be mindful of how you practice. Spaced repetition helps a lot. It’s much better to practice 15 minutes per day, four days in a row, than it is to do that same hour of practice straight through in a single day. Also, even pros mess this up, so don't feel bad if you do too. Good luck.