. . .
One of my online friends reminded me recently of one of my personal pet peeves: 1-hit bursting, also called chicken-bursting.
Now, I get it, skilled players are scary, you don’t want to get combo-ed in to the ground... but 90% of the time that limits a ton of your options.
If your strategy consists of constantly running away like Hazama players and such, okay, I get it, it’s a valid strategy... especially if you’re a glass cannon type.
But don’t think for a minute that strategy will constantly work.
I say this for many reasons.
1. Bursts in GG can be blocked/grabbed.
2. Bursts in BB can be blocked and in BBTag players can bait you in to using it on reflex and that means one less tag option you had than before. You won’t be able to use assists mid-combo or outside of neutral situations and your damage potential will become extremely limited. In BBCF that also means no Exceeds either when you want the extra damage.
There are players who respond to even the slightest jab with a Burst or some move with Invincible frames... again this does NOT always work. There are guard point moves, there’s moves that are Air Safe and there’s even moves that just plain allow the opponent to back away and escape just as you’re trying to DP out of whatever they were conditioning you at least have the guts to block!
A large chunk of this is psychological. You literally have to overcome the idea of taking damage and not being scared to lose half your life bar for mistakes.
Overcome your fear of getting hit. If you can stay calm, you won’t burst as often, you will then be able to use your tools for WHEN you need them the most.
In addition, by taking damage, you’re respecting your opponent’s ability to do combos. This is, believe it or not, a form of “communication” to the other player... it’s saying “I’m waiting for you to do something more important that will slip you up!” It makes them focus more on hit confirmed combos and less on random jabbing and resets in neutral.
In GG, usually the best time to burst is after a Roman Cancel, because that means you’re breaking a combo that costs valuable resources. Burst is also a tool for getting you out of the corner in key bad positions.
For BBTag you might want to consider using your Burst/Assist resources to take advantage of your opponent’s Assists, like punishing them with a Happy Birthday situation where both player and assist get punished. Or escaping whenever they use their Assist gauge as that takes longer to recover than a simple short combo.
But if you’re still the type who absolutely HAS to Burst to get out of trouble, at least make sure your opponent isn’t anticipating it, otherwise they’ll just throw out random pokes and zoning to spook you.
Lastly, more than anything else, letting the opponent combo is an opportunity for you to LEARN how they do THEIR OWN COMBOS. So, forget for a moment that you’re the one getting hit and imagine you’re the one doing the combo! It’s a learning experience!
Fighting games are all about exposition, but if you’re too scared of that exposition, you’re going to miss out on what makes these games fun in the first place!