Today’s article is gonna be a bit different. Today I’ve got no video, no gameplay, and no double flawless. Today I want to give an update as to where I am in the game, and delve into recent changes in my play style. I’ve had a bit of a shift in my play, and it’s come from the most likely of places; advice from someone better. It’s easy to receive advice, but internalizing it and putting it into practice is another thing entirely. The advice you’re about to see, while modest in scope, opened up a landslide of possibility.

Will do, Sensei.

This small piece of advice, when actually taken and labbed, has forever altered my ability to compete in this game. Jailing requires both Frame Data knowledge and hit confirmation, things I would talk about but not truly understand in practice. It’s very easy to get stuck in the “Plus is Safe, Minus is Unsafe” mindset and not have to trouble yourself with any more thought. But it’s in the interplay of Hit Advantage, Start Up frames, and Active frames required to Jail that it all clicked for me. Having to take all of these into consideration in order to successfully jail helped illuminate to me the way frame data works in ways that simply Plus and Minus did not. It was in the realization of these things that a video I had watched multiple times finally made sense. I’d seen this video, but with knowledge of Jailing it actually finally clicked for me what it actually meant.

Shout out to Monkey Bizness for making this awesome video on Kotal tech, and thank you to Noble Raptor for including on http://www.KombatAkademy.com!

This video shows off Kotal tech in relation to maximizing his offensive potential utilizing his command grab. Tick Throws are another things I admittedly pretended to understand, but after realizing I could Jail someone into blocking, and hit confirming to do so, it was only a small stretch to incorporate a move that punishes blocking. Cancelling into this on block or my launcher on hit makes the consequences of the Jailing D3 either 18% or 30%, with a nice damage buff at the end.

This opens up his offense in another way, too. By enforcing his command grab, it makes the consequences of my reads so much higher. My meaty’s have more meat, my punishes are more punishing, and my strike throw game is elevated by the 18% normal grabs.

Sometimes a key opens a door. Sometimes a key opens up a door to a room full of keys. Thank you to Mr. Aquaman, Monkey Bizness, and Noble Raptor for creating great content to facilitate learning for people like me hungry for knowledge. I strongly recommend everyone follow their social media channels for great content and wonderful material for learning.

If you liked today’s blog, follow my YouTube channel to see the fruits of my labor or checkout my Twitter, @Koogus_FGC for bad FGC related jokes and more!