By design, almost every fighting game combo worth doing involves attacks which are unsafe if blocked. Otherwise everyone would repeat the same motions mindlessly no matter what.
Because fighting games are built to be highly interactive, being able to confirm whether your attacks are connecting is a critical skill. When you’re trying to combo into super moves, proper hit-confirming enables you to revert to a safe block string and avoid disaster.
What’s the best way to hit-confirm? Well, there are several equally good ones, so it boils down to a matter of personal preference. The important thing is to be realistic about your limitations and construct your gameplan to accomodate them.
In general terms, everyone should be able to react to three light attacks connecting – in time to cancel the third one into a special or super move. If you bring that number down to two light attacks, i believe that almost everyone should be able to react to that as well. It’s not exactly easy, but it is a very realistic goal if you practice with dedication and play with focus.
In special cases, it’s also possible to react to a single attack connecting in time to cancel it. However, this requires either someone with truly exceptional reaction time, or an especially lenient combo window such as the extended cancelability period of 3S Chun Li’s c.MK poke. At any rate, it’s generally not practical to worry about hit-confirming single attacks.
The next question is, what should you concentrate on? Well, you have several options. Consider all the different ways by which the game tells you that an attack was successful.
First of all, the opponent’s character either blocks or gets hit. If you play one game long enough, your eyes will learn to detect early differences in the way each character begins to block or enter hit reel. Maybe their front leg stays in place when they block, but jerks back suddenly when they get hit. Or maybe their head ducks forward in block stun, but leans back during hit stun. As you become familiar with the game, you’ll start monitoring these changes almost subconsciously.
Unfortunately every character has radically different basic animations, so it can take a long time to grow accustomed to all of them. A far more universal signal is the difference in sound between connected and blocked attacks. The blocking sound is particularly striking, making it easy to react with an alternate follow-up sequence.
The visual equivalent of listening for connected attacks is watching the lifebar. If you glance up as you perform a normal attack, you can actually see whether or not it caused damage. In many games, the damaged portion will even glow or change color.
However, the main problem with depending on audio and lifebar cues is that your combos may fail if your opponent moves unexpectedly. If they manage to get airborne with a Hurricane Kick for example, your connected attack will send them into invincible air reel, and you may end up whiffing a very dangerous move. If they suddenly retreat with a backdash for instance, the last move of your combo may end up missing completely.
That said, no confirmation system is absolutely perfect. Again, the important thing is finding a method which suits your character, your play style, and your physical abilities. Even the best players neglect combo opportunities and randomly lose to chaos.
You forgot to mention that you can hit-confirm single hits if you see your opponent press a button during a certain window of time after you attack. In other words, they flinch. You know your attack is going to connect, so you can start the motions for the followup. Even if their attack beats you out, you’re already committed, so may as well throw the input in. Just hold your buttons, so if they do something with invincibility and you both whiff, negative edge doesn’t fire off a special or super anyways.
My ground game / footsies with a character always gets better once I get to that point.
i dont think that qualifies as hit confirming. hit confirming is confirming your attack HAS hit, not WILL hit. your example isnt any different to landing that jump in so you can go on auto pilot and do your bnb into super/ultra/CC/whatever huge damage option your game has. hit confirming is when you realize your attack hit or was blocked and following up accordingly based ONLY on whether or not it hit, and having no prior knowledge that your attack would hit.
Buffering.
KarinNoPapa: Good point sir, that’s a useful method too. It’s not perfect either because your opponent can do some messed-up things to you if they figure out that you’re doing that all the time, but you probably don’t have to worry about that too often.
N00b_Saib0t: Well, it’s hit-confirming in the sense that you’re reacting to something. If you just do c.HP xx EX stepkick with Ryu just outside c.HP range, hoping to catch some limb with it, then i wouldn’t call that hit-confirming. That would fall under the category of (ghetto) option selects. But as long as you’re reacting and making a decision, it’s still hit-confirming – even if it’s “predictive hit-confirming.”
AwesomeObliterator: Elaborate please.
I think AwesomeObliterator meant buffering the directional inputs for hit confirming.
Thinking about it some more, there are two different ways for buffering into hit confirms that come to mind. Either being out of range or within range for a poke.
If you’re out of range, then you’re trying to hit someone’s limb after they press a button and their hit box gets bigger/changes. If you’re in range for an attack, then you’re either going into an attack string/blockstring, or you’re buffering in anticipation that you’ll catch them flinching.
Using Sakura as an example, throwing out her cr.MK outside of max range and buffering in the f,d,d/f input, if your opponent flinches you just hit the HP for her Sho’ouken (DP-like attack.)
If you’re RTSD as Sak, “up in dat ass” so to speak, a good way of punishing crouch-techs is to walk back outside of your opponents cr.LK range and throw out a s.LK, buffering in the motion for her DP. Since it’s impossible (for me) to confirm off a single s.LK, I look at my opponent and press the HP if it looks like they pressed something. Sakura’s s.LK is nice for this since it has a long range for a light attack with an attack box that hits crouchers.
Like you said, though, it’s not a perfect method. Can be hard to pull off and punishable by some things. The annoying thing is, a lot of responses that can punish it also work against throws, like Viper’s EX Flame Kick, SRK’s, etc.
I wouldn’t do that at all, except perhaps as a gimmick once in a while. Like you said, it’s practically impossible to confirm by reaction, so your opponent will immediately realize that you’re doing it. Then all they have to do is take a step forward and block. It’s not a huge risk on their part, and it could mean the end of the round for you.
There’s a place for “predictive” hit-confirming, but you’d need to build a complex gameplan involving several different alternating techniques. Otherwise your predictive methods will make you predictable.
As a 3s player, I’m somewhat surprised about you saying it’s easiest to hitconfirm off of two hits.
3s has many, many links into super which have to be confirmed of one hit. There’s few characters that don’t have an UOH > super link, then there’s other moves like makotos cr.mk > SAI link, or st.mp > SAI, dashpunch > SAI, sure they’re tight hitconfirms but not much tighter than say cr.lkx2 > SAII with ken.
And yeah they’re not cancels like you mostly seem to discuss, but it seems odd to leave such links out.
Besides that, in ‘newer school’ fighters like guilty gear, where moves can up to 15 frames of hitstop, and cancel windows are quite wide, it is absolutely possible to hitconfirm a cancel of a single hit, though it really depends on the move.
Well, 3S is very much a special case in that regard. You could probably write a whole article explaining why that game lends itself to single-hit links into super. No other game has supers that fast though. I mean, not even close.
All that stuff you mentioned is a direct result of supers being faster than normals, which doesn’t occur in SFA/CvS/SF4/etc. The whole notion of hit-confirming overheads straight into supers is a 3S-only construct, because your c.LP/c.LK/c.MK are slower than your super. Other games force you to link overheads to normals, which automatically eliminates that issue.
Besides, 3S has some ridiculously lenient cancel windows (like Chun’s c.MK) and a parry system which makes traditional offense too risky, so the whole game is designed to reward single attack hit-confirms. That’s why i didn’t discuss it; because what you’re describing basically only applies to one game.
But you’re right, there are many special cases where single attack hit-confirms are viable or even necessary.
@Maj
An other game where single hit hitconfirms are very very important is garou. For really the exact same reasons as 3s. Supers in that game are even quicker than 3s, as many of them have 0 frame startup. Hitconfirming can be done off of pretty much any attack that ends in positive frames on hit.
In one of the Dr. Sub-Zero (Rockefeller) podcasts (I forget which), one of the Family Fun 3S regulars mentions that some people have claimed to use the points counter; in most (all?) SF games, you get points added for moves that hit, but not when they are blocked. Seems a bit out of the way for me, but the lifebar is also up there as well.
Again, I think I need practice for hitconfirming in general, but I figured I’d throw another method on the pile.
Just a small question to clarify something, with sak I use c.lk, c.lp, c.hp/mk xx whatever if the lights are blocked i stop there and do whatever, so I’m hit confirming two moves there right?
Yeah, that’s the right usage of the phrase. But it’s more of a concept than a specific technical definition, so you don’t have to worry too much about whether you’re using it correctly or grammar or whatever.
I’d probably say “hit-confirming c.LK -> c.LP before pressing c.HP/c.MK” or maybe “hit-confirm c.LK -> c.LP then c.HP/c.MK”.
Delayable natural combo type things tend to be good for one hit hit confirms, I mean it’s more a Tekken thing but I guess something like rekkas would be the SF equivalent.