The KOF Battle Journal

[desmond_kof]

This thread is will be sort of like a journal for players to document their thoughts and feelings from various battles you have experienced. These experiences can be from casuals, playing online or at tournaments, money matches, etc.

You can also post up things you need to work on in training mode (combos, setups etc), or certain habits you will like to eliminate to improve your gameplay.

You can also share what characters you are currently playing with, your progress with them as well as characters you are having trouble fighting and your progresses towards that.

You can even rant and post your frustrations or brag and boast of your success.

The point to this thread is for you can journal down your experiences, and feelings, then look back at them at a later date to see how much you have improved and what you may still need to work on.

Here are a few rules:

1.) This is not a Q & A thread, or advice thread. It is simply for you to express yourself and note down things you need to work on regarding your gameplay.

2.) This is not a thread to disrespect or gossip about certain players you have come across. Leave names of players out.

3.) This is not a "Good Games"/"Bad Games" thread. Post your feelings about the match instead, with positive and negative things you have found in your gameplay.

4.) This is not a video critique thread. But you can journal down things you have observed in a match video you have saved or that is uploaded online.

This is an example of one journal entry:

"I need to practice and work on my hit confirms into combos. I have missed out on too many high damage opportunities because I cannot consistently hit confirm low attacks into bnb's or HD combos. I also need to pay attention to my opponents habits while on the defense for I can find gaps in their offense and blockstrings instead of just trying to mash out of the corner hoping for a lucky hit."

[FreeRunner]

I had a little session on KOFXIII today on rank matches. This game is getting pretty frustrating and annoying. Too many times people mash when I rush down. They also love to mash DPs. I just said screw it and not rush down anymore. Nobody respects anything I do. It got better towards the last few matches, but I still dialed the rushing back. I was punishing a little bit more.

As of now, still working on my playstyle but it might be fruitless or it'll work fine. Just have to wait and see.

[solidshark]

After a long set of matches last night, I'm more aware of not ever using HD combos. I'm starting to practice the key elements needed to make them happen, by training with them first, but it's not easy. Also seeing how I need to be more decisive and faster with button presses; I've got wrecked nearly everytime I've second-guessed my own strategy.

[DjWizdom]

Man...I feel like I'm sitting in a confession box or something. lol.
Here's some things I notice that I need to work on.

EX Iori: I need to get my mixup game down with him. My game with him is very solid, but without the mixups I cannot dominate like feel he can.

Takuma: The sandbag on my team. I need to get those stock/drive combos down to muscle memory. Without it, it feels like he is a dead character to me. Throwing out random DM's, sometimes NM, to be able to keep up.

Kyo: As much as I don't want to say it; I need to not use EX Orochinagi as much as I do. It's getting to the point as if I'm reliant on it. I don't want my Kyo to pull the weight of my team all the time, which happens all too often.

K': I really want to learn this guy. But he seems SO difficult. I don't know why. Maybe I haven't quite "grasped" his playstyle yet. I'm not too sure, but I will keep working on it.

As far as gameplay goes. I need to capitalize more. Too many times do I see things that need to get punished, but I'm always late on the reaction. HD mode...going into HD mode is still a little difficult, but that will come with practice; as with all things. Once I get that down. My characters will be even more deadly, and many more options will open up. I look forward to my future skill and the road to it. I recognize that I am a lot better in various aspects, than when I first started playing.

[Great_Dark_Hero]

I have several exciting experiences to speak about...

Two months ago... well according to this replay August 2, 2012, I had a really tough match against an opponent from England. It was my Kula, Mai, and EX Kyo vs his Mature, K', and Joe. We were both seemingly even in skill and we even knew each others character match ups. We were just going at it... with BnB combos and all! The connection was very good. Little to no lag what so ever! His Mature defeats my Kula. Kula only took about 40% of Mature's health. Mai pretty much gave Mature and K' pure hell during the fight. I did manage to get a 500+ damage HD combo with Mai when I blocked a Super from K'. Joe defeats Mai his j.CD. Towards the end it was my EX Kyo vs his Joe. I was quickly put at a disadvantage... but I managed to get a quick HD combo with EX Kyo and he had only a few pixals of health left. I tried to finish him off with a hit confirm but I failed to do so... I roll backwards, he hops towards me and trips me. I was at my limit... He then uses a Super to chip me out completely. This could have been avoided if I just rolled. I also could have won that match if I used EX Kyo's rekka after blocked my hit confirms because I would have chipped him out with the last rekka input anyhow. This means I need to work on using tighter block strings with EX Kyo because he IS actually good at this kind of this.

Mai... Apparently input lag and Mai are not on good terms either. I utilize HD combo on a whim if I corner my opponent offline or on a good connection. I notice that I am not making consistent use of Mai pokes. I also notice that I am not utilizing Mai's ground Musasabi no Mai (d charge u A/C) as much despite how useful it really is... hell, I am the one displayed its usefulness in the first place! I discovered that Mai can avoid the majority of frame traps/hit confirms if she performs ground Musasabi on wake up. I also found out something interesting while fighting a fellow DC member well known as Chintrick!!
We fought each for the first time - ME: Kula, Mai, and EX Iori vs Chintrick's EX Iori, Mature, and Chin. The connection between both of was naturally good, sense he is in Romania and I am in Germany. Chintrick process to play a very impressive rush down game with EX Iori but eventually loses - Then it came down to Mai vs Mature... Mature had a butt load of meter at her disposal while Mai had one. So I proceed to bait an unsafe from Chintrick but he does fall for it. I'm dancing around the screen. I knew Chintrick was going to use a raw Neo Max... unfortunately, he uses it at the most appropriate. I was jumping away from him. ... Then something weird happened - I decided to use Mai's EX air qcb+P... only to find out, that Mai can go RIGHT THROUGH Mature's Neo Max on the start-up frames of that move! The fight was still on. Mai still lost, but Mature still lost a lot of health for EX Iori to defeat. It was a close match overall... Chin defeats my EX Iori.

What I have learned and what I need to work on:
- I need to work on EX Kyo
- I found out about Mai's invincibility properties on her EX+air Musasabi
- I'm beginning to understand the Chin match up
- I need to exercise the use of Mai's pokes and ground Musasabi more.
- I need to know when to get back on the defensive and provide better hit confirms on the opponent wake up.

[choysauce]

nice thread idea desmond!

i want to share a moment i had at one of the runbacks.
i was playing someone that is pretty close to my level in the game and i had lost the first game to a small error on my part when i had the win in the bag. it totally affected my gameplay in the second round and lost my first character free.

i have saiki coming in and cleans up my opponent's first character, but takes me down to half life. their next character comes in and i hop at him twice, but the second time i totally see he whiffed something and i confirm the j.D into an HD combo. i do the 100% combo for 3 meters, and this is the first time i've ever landed this particular HD in tournament. so it gave me such a huge boost of confidence (was totally feelin myself at that point). and the rest of the set i am just mauling and eventually win.

lesson learned, your mood totally affects your play. somehow you always gotta stay positive when playing, especially in this game. still gotta figure out how the top players do this, but at least now i know what the foundation to have a strong tournament presence is

[Reiki.Kito]

I was playing yesterday at the Dragon Lounge, a hang out for players on Monday Nights. I was going up against Hotpockets and BBZ a lot of the time.

Throughout that night, they both played Joe. I really had no idea how to fight them. With BBZ, it was just basic frame trap tactics and responding to me jumping with Golden Heel. Everytime he'd throw a fireball, I'd try to jump to get the drop on him and he'd respond by hitting me out of the air. Once I got pushed into a corner, it was either block low to avoid a combo or get hit, getting out even by jumping was covered by DPs, jump CDs, grabbing me if I rolled through the fireball. It was especially hard with Maxima. With Hotpockets, totally different story. Mixing in st.A, f+B into Bakurestsuken made the pressure safe. If I tried to roll, he'd grab me out of it. He was very prepared for anything I tried to get out. Mounting pressure was a bit difficult because getting close to him just wouldn't work. I think I managed to get a hard knockdown on him twice?  At some points, I really just gave up trying to fight the character. It never felt like there was something consistent to hold on to, like a hole I could abuse.

This was especially true cause I couldn't tell when to punish Trust Kick or to just block because a DP was coming. It's different when you're stuck by a gimmick you don't understand very well. Personally, I felt really angry with them, but more so with myself. Once Joe as gone in some matches, I had a much easier time fighting other characters. Usually, I won because I managed to get a combo in or cornered him with a character like Terry to get a mix up in, but if I lost control, it was really hard to get it back. It's encouraged me to put more time to learn Joe so I'm not so surprised by everything he does.

[AirLancer]

I play, practice, and try to improve even though I really have no competition in my area. (There's barely anyone around who's even played a fighting game before, much less KOF.) I beat the only other competent player, my former roommate by a 10:1 margin. When I went to LV for EVO, I played a lot against Fernando and Zero, and actually got a few compliments on my play, much to my surprise, since I was still adjusting to the TV's latency (or lack thereof). I still remember one casual match where it was my Kim (who I had only recently picked up to replace K', and was still very much a W.I.P.) vs his Yuri. We both had little life left, though I'm sure he had the life advantage. Yuri did a Raiohken, probably to catch a hop, instead I had neutral jumped and immediately EX Supered to win the match. Zero and anyone else watching had a good cheer from that. Fernando's Athena was a real surprise, I'd never played against one (which applies to a lot of characters, with my small playing pool) and got caught in all kinds of setups.

The sets I've played are usually so one-sided that I can't get a handle on myself as a player, since my flaws aren't being exploited as hard as they should be.

I practice so that when I get back to the States, and hopefully find some competition, I won't be as far behind everyone else that's been playing in their scenes. Trying to find other players, and getting new players into KOF, or even fighting games is a battle in itself. Despite the general lack of players, I still play because I just love the game so much.

My Main Team:

Kula: My first character that I picked up, as well as my favorite. It was Kula that really helped me get down comboing out of c.B hit-confirms. Of all my characters, she was generally the one my former roommate hated fighting the most until I picked Kim.

Robert: Robert is strange. Sometimes I'll have runs where everything goes right, I make all the right moves, and Robert is just unstoppable. Other times he just gets beaten out by everything. I don't think either Kim or Kula ever get as hot or as cold as my Robert does. But still, perhaps much like David Kong, I've put so much work and time into Robert that I don't think I'll let him go. I actually picked up Robert because my roommate tried picking him when we first started playing the game, and he was just really annoying. So, fight fire with fire, and I've stuck with him from then on. I feel that when Robert is well played, he can shut down anything his opponent tries. I also feel that players haven't taken Robert to his full potential, unless there's some sick Robert match videos someone can point me to.

Kim: The last addition. In general, I tend to be a fairly defensive player. In SF I mained Guile. On the other hand, I just throw away all my fucks with Kim. It's gotten to the point where I can tell that my one real opponent is extremely hesitant to press buttons whenever Kim is in c.B range.  The main problem is perhaps I get too button happy with Kim.

My former roommate generally plays Kyo, Saiki, King, and Mr. Karate. He clearly understands and applies footsies and spacing. Though, he tends to play very recklessly. Occasionally, he can just zone me out extremely well with King with the combination of her great j.CD and the use of smartly placed fireballs. It's very rare for him to throw a bad fireball for a full punish. A flaw I need to correct is that I don't tech throws as much as I should, especially the ones where I literally see him coming up and think "he's about to throw me." My main advantage over him is the fact that I can do HD combos with pretty much all my my characters, whereas he can only really try to do one with King, and he often forgets what combo he's even going for as he does it. If he improved his combos, we'd probably be much more evenly matched, since right now the times I'm most fearful is when his Mr. Karate anchor is loaded with 5 meters. I know that he'll EX Ranbu me for just about anything, so doing everything is potentially a risk. Still, the last time we played it was 45:6, so it's hard for me to think about how I can improve.

[DJMirror949]

 Oh how fun this will be. Recently I been playing Saiki/EX Iori on my team. I used to play Kula/K/Kyo but I always felt like I never play Kula correctly so I just dropped her. Right now I'm in this characters crisis phase that I don't know who to replace Kula with. I decided to play Iori (Claw) for a few weeks but I felt like he has to be on the right moment/situation which I'm not really good at yet. So I switched to his counterpart and so far I'm kinda having some success but feeling that I'm not able play him to his fullest potential with all his tools since I'm not able to do stuff like Empty Cancel Rekkas, safe jump setups, doing DP into command grab, dp in hcb hd combo loop etc. I only been playing with arcade stick for a year and I think my execution is below average, so I think I'm just gonna keep sticking with to improve executions for now.

Saiki on the other hand, I'm playing him because I'm have a deal with CMD Duc and improving my abilities to be patient, learning more about spacing, picking right positioning, improve defense, learning how to fight against zoners with & without, but the most important overall is picking better decisions. So far it is a big struggle since I'm just the rushdown player with my characters and it's a huge change to my gameplay. I don't know how much I have progressed with him since I have hate/love moments with Saiki. Characters like Duo Lon/Chin/Benimaru drives me nuts while characters like Daimon/Clark I can relax. My big weaknesses right now is learning how to time things better, switching up the 3 styles on the fly (Attack/Passive/Defense), fighting against zoners (which I still have a hard time getting in), learning to be patients, learning how to respond back against certain things, able to apply the zoning/defensive style of play with K/Kyo (Which I'm just used to going in all the time) and much much much more. There's still alot more but I'm going to take my time getting better. Also people has been giving me shit about taking my time learning on how to get better which I'm just ignoring most of the time because I don't think it's a good idea on stressing yourself out and wearing yourself out in the process. The games are meant to be fun not stressful.

Also I change my third character (my other two is Saiki/EX Iori) every 2 weeks: I first started with Terry now I'm going to Mr. Karate now. After Mr. Karate, I'm thinking of between Clark/Mature/Vice/Benimaru/Athena. Well I'm doing this so that way I have a better way of understanding how the characters works and see how other people punish the blockstrings/moves/setup that I seen other people do (Copying blockstring is not that hard but combos & setups are a different story for me) And there you go. That's all I can say for now I guess.

[solidshark]

That period where you've been away from playing for almost a week or longer and come back is weird. Sometimes it makes me feel really rusty, but the last time, I felt refreshed, like a small vacation before coming back to the job I love.

When I didn't have time to play during the week, but still had 20 mintues here or 15 minutes there, I just picked up my stick and practiced combos based on memory without even turning the game on. It kept my muscle memory really sharp. I'd performed better than the last game before my absence, even team-sweeped (OCV) a guy who usually team-sweeps me.

[desmond_kof]

I need to make my EX Iori much more stronger, just incase I may need to switch King against certain match ups.

[Great_Dark_Hero]

A simple dive kick from Yuri can really save a players life. I fought a very tough Kensou, Billy, Ash team - this player was SUPER conservative with his meter. I don't think I saw so much as one EX move. He surely made use of his EX DM's however and he did attempt a Neo Max.
I barely finished the match with Mai - I had to play a little more aggressively this time around because his Billy had no meter to work with after fighting Yuri.
Billy nearly caught me off guard with a  his EX DM but I used Yuri's dive kick JUST in time to touch the ground and block the attack - I was in no position to punish anything due to push back. I tried to rush Billy back down with Yuri, but Billy hit confirms into a combo and defeats Yuri. This player was smart but he seemed to have problems with proper punishes and a 547 combo from Mai's HD combo kind of discouraged him a bit... Billy kind of... just stood there in the end after the air throw... The fight between my Mai and Ash was not that difficult but by the time Billy was defeated, Ash would already have two meters so I had to resort to some low functional turtling to smack him around for a bit. This player made use of mostly GC Roll's and EX DM's. That's it. Very smart, used very good combos... the connection was two bar but there was very little lag. This is one of those cases where playing online is forgiving.

[DjWizdom]

So, I've been out of the game for about a month-ish, due to work and only one of those days I had about 20mins free for practice time. I loaded up the game about a day or two ago and maaaaaan am I rusty, but I feel refreshed as well. Noticed that I am able to do EX Iori, Takuma, and Kyo's HD loop combos. So, I am closer to feeling confident to pull it off in a real match. I look forward to getting back into the swing of things and leveling up more.

I suppose one thing to take from this is if you feel like you've reached a plateau of sorts, maybe a break is in your best interest. Not too long though, because you don't want to forget everything (memory, muscle memory, timing, etc.)

[Inspectah Ed]

I need to work more on my mid-screen game for my all characters and come up with more safer options.

[azunadrop]

Raiden is sooo much fun ^_________^

Though, I'll need something a bit more substantial other than cr.B, cr.A into command grab, CH j.CD to EX Tackles, getting lucky C tackles into EX Tackles and simple HD activations straight to super then NM.