Tips on upping my KoF game?

[Kokujindayo]

Hello everyone, I was going to put this in the matchup section for each one of my characters, but reflecting on my matches earlier this evening I felt as though I'm approaching this game wrong.

To start off I will break down my training regiment. Everyday when I train with my characters (Mai, Athena, ex iori, and yuri) I first practice some basic bnb's attempting to do them 5-10 times in a row before moving on to something else. After that I practice HD combos, then work on whatever has given me problems in a certain matchup (e.g. Athena vs Leona) trying to figure out what punishes what, what is safe and what is not, etc... Once I finish with that I try to find some matchup vids (mainly arcade version since their aren't that many vids out there) then I go online and fight a few of my friends there. Lastly, me and my friend will usually play a long set of casuals. Usually during this time I'm mainly trying to practice what I have been doing in the training room, and this works fines, but today was a little different. My friend who is about on the same level as me was destroying me. Usually I do win these sets but today I went something along the lines of 9-21 which is absolutely horrendous. During these sets of casuals he was hitting a lot of his drive cancel combos and just beating me with bout everything air to air, and I will admit I was getting a little flustered because I have no problem hitting my DC combos the majority of the time. Today however I just performed really awful and kind of went into auto pilot mode after a while. I really do want to become amazing at this game but I'm starting to fall into the same problem that I do in all fighting games and that is succumbing to playing on auto pilot. It's weird, because when I played online I was doing fine. By this I mean I was hitting everything no problem and felt as though I was playing the matchups correctly but when I started playing offline casuals I felt helpless.

What can I do to really up my game? I'm trying to prepare for a tournament coming up in March and I feel as though if I keep playing this way I will do really bad.

Thank you

[bigvador]

Stay focased and switch up the way u play with every character u use its real easy to adjust 2 how some 1 play in kof at least it is to me, on the other hand just goin by wat u said it it sounds like to dont have a mix up game nor do u use ur anti airs wat it really sounds like u need to work on ur reaction so i would say the next time u play ur friend or somebody u should blow off a few games so u can work on ur reaction wit anti airs and gettin around dp and otha tings

[Kokujindayo]

Thank you for the answer, that does make a lot of sense. I actually recorded some maches today so I will upload them so you can see what I'm talking about.

Next time I play I will take your advice and start working on anti air normals and other stuff.

[Kokujindayo]

Here are the sets that I played today. Comments and critiques are appreciated.

Thank you

King of Fighters 13 casual's set pt. 1

King of Fighters 13 casuals set pt. 2

King of Fighters 13 casuals set pt. 3

[Ryyudo]

I'm gonna just make comments/notes here on what I see from both players.  Outside of King, things can be taken with a grain of salt I'm sure, because I'm new too and only use King between the total 6 characters.

The King player is very set on the fireball followup after slide.  It's safe as long as it's blocked at least, but as shown once in the matches, you can get punished for the predictability.  For two, there is no knockdown oki game.  Sure, you can Super Cancel and knockdown, but that puts them faaaar away, uses a bar of meter, and 50% Drive for alright damage.  Work on the hit confirm, because those cl.D double kicks landing should be a nice big sign of what you wanna do after.  Also, there is a huge window on the slide where you can still cancel into whatever special you want.  Play it slower, see if cl.D hits + slide should give plenty of time on what to do.  Doing a late Trap Shot is great for midscreen damage, and Tornado Kick brings them to corner.
If you really want extra damage and are going into corner with Tornado Kick:
Use C ver. and follow up with Trap Shop
Use D ver. and follow up with EX Fireball, dash-in Trap Shot or (no dash-in) a fireball (I THINK you can do two if you do lk ver. -> hk ver.)  if you really gotta use that 50% drive and bar.  I think it's better spent on a full HD combo though if you're in corner and hit confirming.

Mai is using the exacty same color scheme I used for Litchi in BlazBlue and both got tig ol' bitties.  Best choice right there.

Yuri player seems to be solid in pressure and linking into good combos.  While dive kicks are gooooood, predictability is baaaaad.

Athena seems to be really on point with oki command grabs.  Nice!

1P doesn't seem to use many "get-out-of-stuff" tactics when in corner.  Even if it's a semi-desperate DP or roll, sometimes you need that luck, or just good read to make it happen.  Also, 1P doesn't keep 2P in the corner as well as 2P does.  The difference shows in the matches won of who had good corner control.

1P has Leona as anchor.  I saw nothing from Leona that made me think that it was best to save her for last with all those delicious Super and Drive Meters.  Maybe 1P knows an HD combo with her but just never got to land it, but even then, she'd be better second in that regard, where Drive Cancels would be full.  Lizabeth needs bars as I could see from her BnB combo, and King needs bars too because I seldom, if at all, saw an EX trap shot, her only good DP.  If I had to reorganize the team from what I saw for 1P, it would go Leona, King, Elizabeth.  There was a lot of jump-in attacks from far away, making it unsafe as it'd hit on the earliest frames.  Wait a little bit if you're jumping in because if you hit from far away, opponent will recover and will be able to punish it. 

2P had good hit confirms and landed plenty of combos, kept them in the corner.  The only problem I'd say is combo-spacing and predictability.  Repetitive Yuri dive kicks pressure,  high jumps Mai, etc.  And there'd be times where (s)he'd confirm something awesome but would miss the follow up due to being too far away.  Something that can/will be fix through time and seeing more situations, I'm sure.  There was HD activation with Yuri, so there was most likely something there and good to keep her anchor.

Hopefully some of this note-taking ramble helps y'all out.  Like I said, I'm new too, so some of it could be off-key or what not.  Either way, keep playing, y'all.

Outside of video:  We all have bad days.  I will go a similar or worse number against friends I shouldn't be losing against and I don't take it well as they all know.  Especially after training mode sessions.  I usually just say/yell "F*** that"  or "F*** me", make a Floeface and move on.  Being genuine salty is a good thing IMO and learning to manage it quickly is better cause in a tournament setting you won't have a lot of time to cool off (if you play tournament).  Find whatever works for you to get your stresses out as fast as possible and to get back into the game.  Hopefully something like that works for you too

[Kokujindayo]

I appreciate the detailed response kind sir (i'll be sure my friend sees the info you posted about Leona and king). I got some more sets in with another friend and I feel as though I played a lot better, I would old the, but my laptop keeps crashing before they can be posted on my channel. I do feel as though my tootsies game has gotten a little better with Mai, but overall I still have a long way to go.

I guess this thread could become a gateway to my match vids in the future? Who knows, we will see.

[GreenTea321]

If you should work on anything its learning how to play outside of  the opponents short hop range  with your characters. You tend to rush in to get out of that zone too much.
some smaller tips.
Don't use hp athena psycho ball.
learn to throw slow psycho ball into run and buffer psycho sword anti air but if they block throw another psycho ball.
s.hp into psycho ball is good
when you back dash do f.b in the air

mai use more cd into fan/ burn spin.

yuri use c.hk into something when too far for c.lk s.lk stuff.