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Author Topic: What's the definition of a mixup, wakeup and what good are whiffed attacks?  (Read 3152 times)

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Offline Alfonse

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Sorry for asking for more terminology, I don't exactly get what those are.
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Offline c-nero 5[c]

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The definition of "mixup" varies from person to person but the most common one is "anything that makes it unclear to your opponent whether he should block high or low". Some people consider throws to be included in the definition of mixup.

"wakeup" is when you're getting up off the ground after being knocked down. Its counterpart is "okizeme", what you do to an opponent who is waking up.

whiffing attacks depends on the situation. Characters like nanaya and hisui cancel their slower attacks into a 5A which whiffs, as it is faster than letting moves like nanaya 5C or hisui 2C recover on their own. whiffing attacks can also be used as ghetto mindgames, for example arcueid using whiff 5B > throw on an opponent who is waking up. The opponent is so used to arc's 5B game that they'll either be getting ready to try and block it high or low, or shield it. By the time they've realised it's whiffed totally many oponents will already have been thrown.

There are some other very character-specific uses for whiffing certain attacks but I think I've covered the main ones.
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Offline S-Blade

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To be a little more clear:

Mixup is when the opponent has options at a certain point that cannot be reacted to, so you must "guess" which they will do in order to successfully not get hit/thrown/etc. As Sabator said, high/low/throw is very common and usually what it refers to but there are other situations other than those that occur (much more, in fact). This is what people refer to when they talk about the rock/paper/scissors of fighting games, or when smash players talk about mindgames.

Wakeup is exactly as Sabator said, but the purpose and importance of it is that whoever is doing okizeme usually has a setup that gives them a unique mixup that usually means guess wrong = eat full combo. They're also hard to get out of because often times a lot of your regular options won't be viable, because the opponent has that time to create the setup that makes them punishable.

Sabator got whiffing down completely except that its main purpose in making something recover faster is for pressure and reset. Nanaya throws out a blockstring, whiff cancels to 5a since he's far away now, then uses his far pokes for more pressure until whiff cancelling again...etc. Small gaps in offense to pressure the opponent into sticking their hand out and getting comboed. Other characters just sort of need to reset to make some attacks unpunishable (satsuki's string gets blocked and she already jump cancelled 214a? whiff cancel out of 2c if you don't want to eat a combo)
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Offline Zaelar

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Whiffing a move in the air cuts your landing recovery.  You can do them as a fake, with the easiest example being do a jump c on the way down from a jump, but make it whiff.  This makes your opponent think that a jump attack is coming, then you land and can either grab or go low, to beat the high block.  In this example you can instead do a jump c that hits and you get yourself a mixup.  The idea here is that it is just a distraction, and a lot of things can be done with that idea.  Some moves have mobility on them, and you can use them purely for that instead of the attack part.  In some games you can get meter by whiffing moves.  It can be a timing mechanism, such as if after so and so, if you whiff 5b then do 5c right away it hits meaty, which may be easier to time.  You can use moves just to fill space and stop your opponent from getting into that space. 

The canceling of Cs into As isn't to whiff an A, it's to cut recovery and get more frame advantage.  The A whiffing isn't the goal, much like in the first example I gave.  The whiff jump attack isn't done to whiff an attack, it's done to remove recovery.  You can do the same thing with dashes.  The same can be said for some of the examples I gave, it's just these types of things are character/game specific and take advantage of specific system mechanics where it isn't the whiffed attack that you want, it's, in most cases, faster recovery.