masher mentality (blocking and america)

Because hitting buttons wins games, hitting more buttons should automatically equate winning more games. The idea is to spend less time defending and more time killing your opponent. There is no flaw in the logic, it's just our personality to be fidgety, to have the need to be in someone's grill, and to avoid blocking at all costs. The sad, sad truth is that Americans love to hit buttons all the time.

The result is utter. Catastrophe.

The Concept of Blocking

Is as absurd as telling an American to make a sandwich without mayonnaise. What many Americans don't understand is the value of holding down back. Instead, they prefer to be mashing quick pokes, throws, reversal uppercuts, or even supers. Somebody somewhere has to set things straight, so I'll go ahead and explain it right now. When an opponent crosses your comfort zone with a move that causes blockstun, the correct answer is to block the following blockstring. Due to the nature of frame traps, you will be unable to escape unless the opportunity is given to you. Hitting buttons while your opponent is in your face is the worst option because your moves will come out late due to blockstun, then the startup of your moves will get beat out by the already active frames of your opponent's moves, and a free combo ensues. While there are technically ways around this (e.g. invulnerability from dragon punches), recognizing that defense is part of the game is the first step to success. 

Knowing When to Escape

This is the tricky part. Blocking will cause natural pushback for your opponent's moves. When the gap between the two of you is great enough, the situation is reset by itself. Simple as that. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Guilty Gear allows you to faultless defend and forcibly push your opponent back, Third Strike grants the ability to parry incoming attacks to negate a move entirely, and instant blocking in Blazblue allows you to reduce blockstun by significant enough amounts that you can retaliate right away. In the end, the key is patience and learning to recognize opportunities. If you're not sure what to do, just sit there and hold down back till the time is right.

Watching for Throws

So you've got blocking down, and you're vigilant enough to block overheads (not likely, but let's just pretend). As soon as your opponent recognizes that they've got you in a defensive mindset, they'll take advantage of that by breaking their blockstrings and throwing you. This, I'm sorry, will only come with experience. As you play more, you will begin to see more and more situations where tick throws will pop up. Teching or jumping are the two best ways to deal with throws, but only yomi will allow you to avoid them in the first place.

Sorry for all the readers that are like: uhhh...thanks for the obvious. But I hope by writing this, some poor masher out there will see the light and not spam 33HP in the middle of my blockstrings. I hope.

Tags so this will show up in google search:

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I'm so gay for Zaido.