The effect when the armored period of a move repels an incoming strike. Some white damage is received (and thus some V-Gauge), but this quickly recovers over time if no clean damage is taken. Low-stamina characters cannot be knocked out by white damage, so you can use hit-absorbing moves with essentially no stamina left and still survive. See armor.
Active Frames
The actual striking/grabbing portion of a given move. Usually shortened to “active.” In the frame data tables throughout this guide, the first active frame is included in the figure for startup frames. This makes it easy to find possible links and true blockstrings by comparing a move’s startup frames (which include the first active hitting frame) with another move’s advantage on hit/on block. But this does mean that if you add up startup, active, and recovery frames for a move, the sum is one frame longer than the actual move. See frame data in the Primer.
Advantage
The opportunity to act first. Can be expressed numerically through frame data. When you knock someone down or dodge/block a laggy attack, you have advantage. See frame data in the Primer.
Aerial/Airborne
Refers to aerial states but not limited to jumping. Usually achieved by jumping, through special moves that leave the ground like Ken and Ryu’s Tatsumaki Senpukyaku, or from abilities like Dhalsim’s Yoga Float V-Skill. Airborne characters are immune to ground throws, but cannot block. An airborne character who is hit will either enter air recovery (falling invincibly before landing on their feet) or a juggle state (falling helplessly, vulnerable to juggle combos, before landing on their back).
Air Recovery
The hitstate triggered against an airborne fighter when they’re hit with an attack that doesn’t cause a knockdown. They’ll flip backward slightly, unable to act, and land on their feet. While falling during air recovery, the victim is invincible; upon landing, they’re vulnerable as normal, like after waking up.
Hitting someone out of the air can lead directly to offensive opportunity if you move in and attack their air recovery landing with a throw, low hit, or frame trap. Depending on your character choice and their aerial position, you might even get a chance for a grounded meaty or cross-up tricks (for example, anti-airing with Karin’s standing HP x> Sappo command dash or Dhalsim’s crouching MP x> Yoga Fire).
But air recovery can also be beneficial to the victim. If the opponent hits you out of some grounded move with airborne frames, you’ll be put into air recovery instead of standing hitstun. Their potential combo will be busted, and they might not be ready to adjust quickly to your new position in time to keep their tempo advantage. Grounded moves that are briefly airborne actually have good defensive properties for this reason, and actual airborne frames are called out in data tables throughout this guide.
Air Throw
A throw that grabs jumping foes. Vega, Nash, and Chun-Li have normal air throws accomplished with LP + LK . Unlike grounded normal throws, air throws cannot be throw-escaped/teched. Zangief, Cammy, and Vega have special moves that act as throws against jumping opponents. Zangief, Birdie, R. Mika, and Laura have hit-throws aimed at airborne targets; they’re not technically throws since they have strike hitboxes, but they basically act the same, while also working in juggle combos.
A move used to deflect jump-ins and cross-ups. Having solid anti-air is one of the foundations of high-level Street Fighter. Airborne characters cannot block and don’t have much freedom of movement (outside exceptions like Dhalsim’s Yoga Float), so jumping characters are vulnerable. But jumping is also one of the fastest ways to close in, can lead to very ambiguous point-blank situations, and avoids most ground-based attacks, so it’s appealing nevertheless.
The simplest way to anti-air is with an appropriate normal move. Standout examples include crouching MP from Birdie, R. Mika, and Dhalsim, and crouching HP from Ryu, Ken, and Karin. These normals take ~7 frames to hit, though, making them ineffective against cross-ups and deep jump-ins. In those cases, you’ll need invincible or evasive special moves to win (like Ken or Ryu’s MP Shoryuken, Karin’s EX Ressenha, or F.A.N.G.’s EX Nikankyaku).
Depending on your character, opponent, and the situation, you shouldn’t always go for anti-airs. If your character’s anti-air is weak at the moment (like the enemy is jumping/crossing-up deep and you lack an invincible reversal), just block (perhaps consider V-Reversal if you really want tempo advantage back) and be ready to defend against their grounded follow-up.
Your anti-air rate will increase if you get a sense of the jumping habits of your foes. Reacting isn’t simply about reflexes: it’s also about choosing to focus on one thing or another, depending on what you expect. You can react to a jump-in (or an overhead, a dash, a throw attempt, and so on) much better if you feel like it might be coming soon. No one can react to all threats all the time. What experienced players do is shifting focus in time with their reads against the enemy.
Your foe may use tactics intended to take your attention away from anti-airing, or to put you into situations where your anti-airs are ineffective. It’s your job to learn when to zero in on certain aspects of the game (like investing all your effort in punishing whiffed moves or shooting down an anticipated jump-in) and when to shift your attention thanks to a read you have on your opponent’s intent.
Armor
A property that allows an action to absorb an incoming attack, bypassing hitstun and taking white damage. Attacks with armor are generally intended to plow through mid-range fireballs and pokes, as well as up-close frame traps. Armored specials are distributed mostly between the grappler characters; as balance against their close-range strength, they lack true invincible reversals and must rely on these moves for defense. Some moves, like the V-Skills of M. Bison, Nash, and Ryu, work much like armored moves in certain situations but are not quite the same thing.
Armored Moves
Birdie
Bull Charge
Birdie
EX Bull Horn
Birdie
V Bull Head and V Bull Horn
Laura
EX Bolt Charge
R. Mika
EX Shooting Peach
R. Mika
Heated Mic Performance
Zangief
Charged standing h
Zangief
EX Siberian Express
Zangief
Iron Muscle
Back Quick-Recovery
Upon being knocked down, input 4 or KK to back recover, backflipping up from the floor. Back recovery takes five frames longer than standard quick-recovery but is still way better than forgoing quick-recovery and staying floored longer than necessary. It is virtually always better to either quick-recover or back recover whenever you’re able to; there’s no reason to hand your opponent time to space out their perfect ambiguous wakeup attack.
Back quick-recovery is not possible after throws, where only quick-recovery in place is available. Very few specific attacks disallow any kind of quick-recovery, including counter-hit sweeps and certain Critical Arts and specials. See wakeup and okizeme.
Backdash
An evasive dash backward away from the opponent, which begins with a period of throw invulnerability and transitions into a brief airborne period. See movement.
Back Throw
A backward normal throw, executed with 4 + LP + LK . Escaped with LP + LK . Swaps sides with the opponent, making it universally useful for escaping corners. See normal throw.
Bait
A tactic intended to “fish” for a punishable response from the opponent, like acting extremely aggressive but then doing nothing, hoping to induce a badly whiffed counterattack.
Balance
The degree of parity between different characters. Notions of balance are open to debate and are not static across skill levels. A high-level player’s perceptions of “balance” aren’t necessarily relevant to intermediate or casual players, and vice versa. They are typically expressed through debate about tiers. Ideas about a game’s balance are fluid over time, depending on the research and results of the game’s community. Seldom does the thinking about “top tier” remain the same for long periods of time. Players get more comfortable against the early cheap stuff, coming up with counter tactics and new cheap stuff to make the old cheap tricks seem tame. See metagame and matchups.
Blocking (synonymous with guarding) is a defensive stance activated with a backward input while the opponent is extending a strike. Use 4 for standing block and 1 to guard crouching. Holding back will guard against incoming high-striking overheads, while holding down-back will guard against incoming low-hitting moves. Mid-hitting gut-level strikes can be guarded either standing or crouching. Throws cannot be guarded. Blocking is always relative the direction of your opponent. (This is important to remember during cross-ups and when Dhalsim is using Yoga Teleport, R. Mika is calling Nadeshiko, F.A.N.G. is passing through with Nikankyaku, etc.)
Being able to guard correctly is crucial to Street Fighter success. Good opponents will vary their attacks, trying to confuse you with lows, overheads, ambiguous jump-ins and cross-ups, and frame trap baits. Considering how dangerous counter-hits are in Street Fighter V, and that most throws (which will grab you if you’re guarding) return you to a neutral-ish situation if you quick-rise, the safest play you can make when in doubt is usually to just block. This is even more true now than in Street Fighter IV because several mechanics are gone that used to give defensive players layers upon layers of escape options.
Likewise, whenever you realize that your current foe lacks blocking fundamentals (like maybe they fail to block cross-ups, or they always fall for empty jump into crouching LK , etc.), you have a crucial weakness to exploit.
Block and White Damage
Guarding stops most incoming damage, but it isn’t an unassailable wall. Blocked specials and CriticalArts will deal block damage (also called “chip” and rarely “cheese”), which for specials is about 25 percent of their damage on hit and varies for Critical Arts. Blocked medium and heavy normals (so strong, forward, fierce, and roundhouse buttons) deal recoverable white damage to the tune of one-sixth their regular damage on hit. And throws are simply unblockable. Block/white damage and the threat of throws together give turtles (extremely defensive players) something to think about. (However, note that stamina-critical characters cannot be knocked out by chip damage, unless it comes from a Critical Art.)
Block Advantage
In addition to reducing/eliminating incoming damage, guarding attacks also puts you at a better frame advantage than getting hit by them, preventing link combos for your enemy and possibly leaving you ready to take back tempo control.
“Mids”
Overheads must be blocked standing and lows must be blocked crouching, but many attacks can be blocked either way. For example, everyone’s crouching LK must be blocked crouching, but everyone’s crouching LP can be blocked high and low. Attacks like this are sometimes called “mids.” Note that “mid-hitting” may also refer to attacks that hit at about torso/gut level, rather than more toward the head or legs. Context should make this distinction clear, and this isn’t a critical concept anyway. In 3-D fighters like Tekken and Virtua Fighter, “mids” are entirely different, working as anti-crouch moves that must be blocked standing.
For attacks that can be blocked either way, there’s still a tiny difference between blocking high or low. Blocking characters have a slightly narrower horizontal hurtbox while standing than while crouching. As a consequence, crouching block actually puts you slightly closer to the opponent than standing block. This can have the indirect effect of making you more vulnerable during footsies (a poke that would whiff against standing block may connect against crouching block). By holding back for standing guard, you may also simply walk out of range of the opponent’s offense if they don’t account for the possibility that you’ll defensively default to 4 instead of 1 .
So, while crouching block seems like the safer default position (you hold down-back and watch out for jump-ins, overheads, and throws, basically), standing block/walking backward has certain advantages. There is no totally safe position, of course. If you’re blocking while standing (or simply walking backward), the opponent may realize this and use low attacks; if you’re blocking while crouching, the opponent may try to sneak in an overhead. And, in either case, they can just throw you.
Unblockables
Throws cannot be blocked. Everything is unblockable to a dizzied fighter, or to a fighter stuck in hitstun. Cross-ups done in particular situations can come very close to seeming unblockable because of their sheer ambiguity. In previous Street Fighter games, some cross-up setups were actually unblockable. Although these kinds of unintended tactics are usually bugs, the fighting game community tends to be fairly open about allowing them; if it’s in the game, it’s in the game.
Blockstring
A sequence of normal moves that keeps the defender guarding. Blockstrings usually start out as combo hit-checks; after the first two hits are blocked, you have time to realize your fishing has failed and to alter your actions accordingly. You can use blockstrings to push the foe away, to fish for counter-hits, and to condition the opponent into expecting certain sequences. This allows you to surprise them when (for example) you stop your blockstring early and attempt a throw or an overhead. New to Street Fighter V, blockstrings with medium and heavy moves will slowly build up white damage when guarded.
Frame Trap
Blockstrings/hit-checks crafted with intentional gaps are called frame traps. A defender who tries to poke back or use a non-invulnerable move during the gaps will eat a counter-hit if your frame trap is tight enough. Since good players are almost always competent at blocking but eager to take back tempo control once they start blocking, frame traps are a crucial tool for opening them up. Frame traps aren’t safe against reversals, but that’s part of the decision-making when using them. If you think the opponent is eager to blow up your frame trap with an invincible or fast reversal, you can just block and punish.
Absolute Block
Blocking mechanic that forces a character in blockstun to remain in blockstun if incoming attacks don’t let up. For example, you can block the first hit of Ryu’s Shinku Hadoken Critical Art, then completely let go of the joystick or d-pad; your character will still guard the rest. A “true” blockstring works because of absolute block. This contrasts with Street Fighter III: Third Strike, where absolute block didn’t exist; manually blocking only the first hit of Shinku Hadoken before letting go of the controller would merely result in eating the rest of the attack. (One of Third Strike’s mechanics, red parry, was possible because there was no absolute blocking.)
Blockstun
Synonymous with guardstun. The guarding version of hitstun, blockstun is the period of time when a blocking character is prohibited from performing other actions (with the exception of V-Reversal, at the cost of one stock of V-Gauge). When blockstun ends before the attacker’s move has recovered, the defender has advantage. When the attacker’s move recovers before blockstun ends, the attacker can attack immediately for a blockstring or frame trap, or walk up and throw if passivity is expected from the defender.
Characters who are in blockstun cannot be thrown, nor can they be thrown for an additional two frames after leaving blockstun. (Characters in hitstun can’t be thrown, either, which also continues for two frames after hitstun ends.) Attackers who want to follow up blocked attacks with a throw attempt must time the throw to land after blockstun ends, plus an extra tiny slice of time.
Boxer
Frequent nickname for Balrog. Shadaloo bosses in Japan have different names: the dictator is Vega, the claw-wielding Spaniard is Balrog, and the ferocious boxer is M. Bison. Capcom avoided calling the boxer M. Bison in American territories in the early ‘90s for obvious reasons, and the difference in naming conventions is now simply an accepted quirk in the SF canon.
Bread and Butter
A reliable, tried-and-true tactic.
Buffer
Inputting the command for one move during the action of another. This can be to activate cancels, to mask animations, or to perform certain option selects. New to Street Fighter V, your inputs will be carried forward a certain number of frames. Therefore, if a previous action ends, your input will be carried out at the earliest moment, with reversal timing:
Dash inputs will buffer forward nine frames.
Special inputs and throw commands will buffer forward six frames.
Normal move inputs will buffer forward three frames.
That last bullet is the reason why link combos are easier in Street Fighter V than in any previous entry in the series. It’s also easier to perform wakeup attacks with reversal timing and to perfectly shoot through small gaps in the opponent’s frame traps. The input buffer also means it’s easier to erroneously trigger actions if you mash inputs or tap something in error; this can actually play directly into your foe’s meaty/frame trap plans, so be mindful of your own defensive habits.
Cancel x>
Interrupting one move’s recovery period with another action. The prototypical example is Ryu and Ken’s crouching MK x> Hadoken sequence. Canceling enables myriad maneuvering, pressuring, and comboing tactics. See combos.
Cancelable
A property that indicates which types of moves a given attack can be canceled into. “Chainable” normal moves can be canceled into certain other normals. Many grounded normal moves are special-cancelable (which includes Critical Arts). Almost all grounded normal moves are cancelable into V-Trigger, but only for certain characters are grounded normal moves cancelable into V-Skills (Ken, Laura, Birdie, and Rashid can cancel many normals into their V-Skills; Necalli and Vega can cancel certain target combos into their V-Skills). Some moves can only be canceled into Critical Arts but not other specials, while a few moves can only be canceled into certain moves in particular (sometimes only during very particular windows, too).
Data tables in this guide have a shorthand for cancelable properties:
CH
Chain combo-cancelable
Tc
Target combo-cancelable
Sp
Special-cancelable and EX Special-cancelable (includes Critical Arts)
Ca
Critical Art-cancelable (but not special-cancelable)
V
V-System-cancelable; depending on the character, this may apply to both V-Skill and V-Trigger, or just one or the other
Chain Combo
A normal canceled into another normal. Some characters’ light attacks are chainable into other light attacks, like the chainable crouching jabs and shorts of Ken and Ryu. And some characters have normals that chain into specific other normals, like standing MP x> HP x> HK for Ryu, 4 + MP x> HP for Ken, or standing LP x> MP (among many others) for Nash. These character-specific chains are called target combos.
Character Archetypes
A character’s general design strongly suggests how they should be played successfully. Characters broadly fit into different classes of behavior, at least in how they were envisioned. There are offensive, defensive, balanced, and grappling characters. See metagame.
Charge
Refers to the charge special commands required for charge characters, where a certain joystick/joypad direction needs to be held a minimum amount of time before you can perform the desired move. This includes classic charge moves like M. Bison’s Double Knee Press and Head Press, as well as specials for newcomers Necalli and F.A.N.G.
Also refers to certain normal attacks performed by holding down a button to “charge” the move until a powered-up version starts up, like HK R. Mika’s charged standing and Zangief’s charged standing HP . This also applies to Birdie’s Bull Horn special, activated by holding down any normal button and then releasing it after a minimum number of frames.
Certain moves will also continue after activation for as long as the buttons are held down, like Zangief’s V-Skill and V-Trigger.
Charge Character
Charge characters have special move arsenals that mostly require inputs involving charging a particular direction first. A different mindset is required when playing charge characters because any special move use requires premeditation. In SFV, since Nash and Vega are both “motion” characters now, the only “pure” charge characters are M. Bison and his new second-in-command, F.A.N.G. Most characters have motion-based arsenals now, requiring the usual semi-circular special move inputs.
Cheap
“Cheap” can refer to winning with block/chip damage (although in SFV, this can only be accomplished with the use of a Critical Art, which isn’t cheap in terms of EX Gauge cost). Cheap can also refer to tactics that are difficult to overcome, especially relative to their ease of execution. This can be complimentary or derogatory, depending on use.
Cheese
Can be synonymous with both block/chip damage, and with “cheap.”
Chip Damage
Synonymous with block damage.
Claw
Frequent nickname for Vega, intended to clear up confusion with Japanese players, where Vega is called Balrog. See dictator and boxer.
The characters are right next to each other, in range of normalthrows and all normal moves. This is the money spot for grapplers and offensive-minded characters/players. See position.
Close Standing
In previous SF titles, most characters had a different set of normals at close range. In SFV, characters use the same normal moveset at all ranges.
Combo
A combo is an attack sequence that’s guaranteed if the first attack hits. The opening attack puts the target in hitstun, and continued hits catch them before they recover. Multi-hit moves naturally create combos, but there are also several combo-creating execution techniques, including chains, cancels, links, and juggles.
Hit-Confirm
Often also called combo starters or hit-checks. A sequence of attacks, usually the first two or three hits of a combo, performed on auto-pilot from muscle memory while watching and listening for the result. If the opponent gets hit, you finish the combo. If the opponent blocks or evades somehow, you cut the combo attempt short and react as necessary. The point of hit-confirmation is to avoid leaving yourself vulnerable. While many initial combo-starting pokes and chains are relatively safe when blocked or avoided, most combo finishers are extremely unsafe if they don’t actually hit.
Combo Finisher
A reliable way to finish combos after a successful hit-check, hopefully maintaining tempo and position advantages. The “right” or “best” combo for a given situation depends on many things, including the relative positions of the characters and their position to any nearby corner, how much EX Gauge and V-Gauge is available, and how much of it you’re willing to spend, given the current overall match situation.
Cancel x>
Skipping one attack’s recovery to proceed directly into the next attack. Common cancel examples include normal attack chains (where normals are canceled into each other), normal moves canceled into specials, normals canceled into V-Trigger, and specials canceled into Critical Arts.
Chain Cancels
Some normal moves, like Ryu’s crouching LK , can simply be repeated by pressing the button over and over, canceling the poke into itself. Other specific sequences of normal moves can be chained, like Ryu’s standing MP x> HP x> HK target combo. To chain cancel, just push the next button in the sequence while the current normal is striking.
It’s possible to chain normals together and then cancel the last normal into a special or V-Trigger (assuming the last normal in the sequence is indeed cancelable). This means that Ryu and Ken can simply chain crouching LK x> LP and cancel immediately into Shoryuken, and it means that R. Mika can land her standing LK x> MK target combo and instantly cancel into Shooting Peach. This is more like the cancel situation in Street Fighter III and a departure from SFIV: in SFIV, you can’t cancel out of chain combos, so bread and butters generally involve linking into special cancels. No such limitation here.
Special Cancels
Special cancels (originally referred to as “two-in-ones” in the long-ago era of SFII) involve interrupting a normal move with a special, skipping the normal move’s recovery. In many situations, this will create or extend a combo, as the hitstun from the normal persists long enough for the special move to hit in time.
Not all normal moves can be special-canceled. The data tables for each character in this guide detail which moves can be canceled, and by what. Moves that can be special-canceled can also be Critical Art-canceled.
When poking with good special-cancelable normals, a buffering trick can be used to get “psychic” special cancels when you’re just outside the opponent’s range. Stick out your cancelablepoke just in front of the enemy so that it will actually whiff, while quickly buffering the desired special or Critical Art motion. You must complete the entire motion at least seven frames before the poke recovers, or you’ll just do the poke, followed by the special move, buffered forward and performed uncanceled. Just buffer the motion fast enough to avoid this. If your adversary does nothing and your poke simply whiffs in front of them, nothing happens. But if the foe dashes/walks forward, or if they stick out an attack that loses to your poke, your buffered motion will register and produce the special move. This leads to scenarios like Cammy being able to poke with crouching MK buffered into Spiral Arrow; what seems like a somewhat risky guess to many observers actually isn’t a guess at all, properly spaced.
Critical Art Cancels
Street Fighter V’s equivalent of “Super cancels.” This involves interrupting a normal, unique attack, or special move by canceling it into your current character’s Critical Art. (Some V-Skills can also be Critical Art-canceled, like Zangief’s Iron Body and Dhalsim’s Yoga Float.) This burns a full EX Gauge. Special-cancelable moves can also be Critical Art-canceled, but some moves are only Critical Art-cancelable, increasing the usefulness of those moves when you’re loaded with meter. One side effect of combos is damage scaling, a reduction of damage output as the number of uninterrupted hits accumulates. Critical Art cancels are nice because the base damage will never dip below 50 percent; Critical Arts will deal solid damage even at the end of very long combos.
V-Cancels
Almost every groundednormalmove is V-Trigger-cancelable with a full V-Gauge; in addition to whatever else a character’s V-Trigger accomplishes, this also means that the activation serves as an additional hit-confirm or block pressure tool per round. In most cases, canceling a normal on hit into V-Trigger gives a linkable advantage after the screen freeze.
Ken, Laura, Birdie, and Rashid also have V-Skills that can be canceled into from other actions. (The former three can simply cancel most normals into their V-Skills, while Rashid can cancel his HK/EX Whirlwind Shot projectiles into his movement V-Skills.) Necalli and Vega have target combos that are cancelable into their V-Skills. In combos, V-Trigger cancels increase the level of damage scaling being applied to the combo as though an extra attack was used. V-Skill cancels do not have this same effect on
damage scaling. For example, in a Ken combo of standing HP x> Head Rush l> crouching HP , the crouching fierce does 80 percent damage. In a combo of standing HP x> Quick Step l> LP Shoryuken, the Shoryuken does 90 percent damage.
Link l>
While canceling involves continuing a combo by interrupting moves, linking involves continuing a combo by allowing a move to fully recover before performing the next one. Linking has an advantage over canceling in that it involves less commitment; most normal to special-cancel situations leave you punishable when they’re blocked, but if you use linked normals to hit-check, you’ll be less vulnerable when guarded.
One of the useful things about frame data is that it’s easy to quickly determine what links might work by looking at the figures under the columns for Startup and (advantage) On Hit. If advantage on hit for your starter move is equal to/greater than the startup for your follow-up move, a link is probably possible (unless pushback is too great or some other positioning quirk interferes).
Links require precise timing, but the input buffer of SFV makes their exacting nature much more manageable than in previous fighting games.
“Plink”
A technique used to extend the input window of a given attack by an extra frame. This was extremely important in SFIV to help ensure consistent linkexecution. The input technique still works in SFV, but the three-frame buffer for normal inputs makes it much less relevant.
Plinking is accomplished by pressing a lower-priority button the very next frame after a higher-priority button. Let’s say you’re plinking HP ~ MP , a very common plink for crucial links into fierce. The previous move is recovering, and the window’s coming up for your link. As soon as your character can act again, you press HP and MP then drum immediately afterward. The timing should be as though you actually meant to press them simultaneously and only slightly messed up. In fact, that’s why plinking works—it’s a function of leniency intended to make actions requiring multiple button presses easier to execute. For a throw, for example, you can press LP on one frame and LK on the next frame. What actually happens is that the game animates one frame of standing LP , then reads the immediate follow-up LK and interprets your intent to throw. LP gets kara-canceled into LK by the game, and if you watch this happen during Training Mode with Input Display on, you’ll see what this looks like: on Frame 1, just LP , but on Frame 2, both LP and LK , even though it’s impossible to input the same button on consecutive frames simply by double-pressing it. The same is true of EX specials, V-Skills, V-Reversals, and V-Triggers. But the same ends up being true of any two buttons, which means you can register any button press on consecutive frames. This isn’t a huge deal anymore in SFV, but it was crucial in SFIV: turning a one-frame link into a two-frame link makes it twice as easy, after all. No one on the planet hits one-frame links with bulletproof consistency, but hitting almost all your two-frame links is humanly possible. In SFV, where (with rare exceptions for walking mid-combo) links require three-frame timing at worst, this just doesn’t have the same importance. It can still be a decent trick to know to help tighten up your footsie pokes, giving yourself a larger window to ensure that your attack comes out. Often, in tight spaces, you may go for a poke just slightly too early or late, and this can help give you more leeway.
Input priority matters for plinking because on any given frame, the game produces the move of highest priority. You plink HP ~ MP to have two chances at a fierce input. (Interestingly, you can build further failsafes into a plink in case you mess up plink execution and simply register HP , a dead frame, then MP , if the window for the combo is generous enough for MP to also work.) Kick inputs beat punch inputs, and heavier attacks beat weaker ones. Plink crouching HK ~ MP , and you’ll get roundhouse; plink HP ~ LP , and you’ll get fierce. There is no standard button with a lower priority than jab, so you can’t register LP on consecutive frames.
Finally, you can’t plink with same-strength buttons since you’ll just kara-cancel into (for LP and LK ) normal throw, (for MP and MK ) V-Skill, or (for HP and HK , if V-Gauge is full) V-Trigger.
Juggles and Juggle Potential
In Street Fighter V, juggle combos are not as free-form as they are in other modern fighting games. Not only do attacks need a particular property to launch an enemy into a state where a juggle is possible, but individual attacks must have “juggle potential” in order to hit an adversary while they’re jugglable.
There are two types of juggle states, free and limited. When knocked into a free juggle state, anything goes; a strike of any sort will connect against the falling foe for a single hit. Limited juggle states are a different matter. There are two factors that determine what works to juggle during a limited state:
Juggle potential, a numerical value assigned to an attack to determine its hierarchy during juggles (this value can be anywhere from 1 to 99, though it generally doesn’t go far past 5)
Juggle count tally, a hidden value that tracks the total number of attacks that have been done in a juggle
Once the target is knocked into the sky, hitting them with an attack that has juggle potential causes the juggle count tally to increase for every juggle hit. The amount it’s raised is usually by +1, but some single-hit attacks raise it higher. To keep juggling after the first hit, the next attack must have a juggle potential number that is greater than the total juggle count.
For example, Karin’s Tenko knocks the opponent into a limited juggle state. Immediately attacking the falling enemy with Meioken, her V-Skill, results in a juggle because of its potential of 1. On hit, Meioken bumps juggle count up by +2, so to keep juggling, you’ll need something with a potential of 3. Karin’s EX Ressenha has a juggle potential of 3 (then 4 and 5 for its second and third hits), allowing it to juggle after Meioken in corners.
Laura’s EX Thunder Clap sets up a free juggle state on hit, which is useful to her since she doesn’t have many attacks with juggle potential. A basic combo utilizing this is standing HP x> EX Thunder Clap; afterward, juggle with whatever you want. HP Bolt Charge is your most damaging follow-up, but if you want, you can knock your foe down from the air with crouching HK .
Note that there are a few hit states that mimic the exact same properties as a free juggle state without knocking the opponent into the air. The first is Karin’s EX Orochi, which causes the adversary to crumple over while grounded. The second is R. Mika’s Passion Rope Throw, which puts them into a stumbling run. In both instances, you can hit the enemy with whatever strikes you want, with no limitations.
Note that hits done against an enemy in a free juggle state do not increase the juggle count. If you knock the opponent into a free juggle state and then hit them with an attack that causes a limited juggle state, the total juggle count is still 0, so juggling afterward with an attack that has juggle potential of 1 is still possible. A great example of how to use this to your advantage is to throw the enemy into a corner with R. Mika’s Passion Rope Throw, then follow up with her Lady Mika uppercut. Once the victim is knocked into the air, juggle count is still 0, allowing you to juggle with crouching MP or Wingless Airplane, which both have a juggle potential of 1.
An extremely rare selection of attacks do not cause juggle count to go up as they hit. This used to be more prevalent in SFIV, but it’s now currently restricted to making a select few multi-hit attacks less destructive to juggle count. Karin’s LK Mujinkyaku has this property, with a first hit of potential 1 and a second with potential 2 that doesn’t raise juggle count. This allows for extended juggles after it connects, like Tenko launcher, LK Mujinkyaku juggle, EX Tenko juggle, then (in corners) EX Ressenha juggle. When combined with a free juggle state, like the one granted after Crush Counter crouching HP , you can even juggle with two LK Mujinkyakus back-to-back, then EX Tenko into a final EX Ressenha.
Command Throws
Special move throws performed using a motion instead of the normal command of LP + LK . The classic example is Zangief’s Screw Pile Driver, but many other characters now have command throws. The grapplers Zangief, R. Mika, Birdie, and Laura all have special grabs, but so do Necalli, Vega, Karin, and Cammy. Command throws have the advantage over normal throws of being untechable/inescapable. They usually also have better range and deal more damage and stun.
There are also hit-throws, which are also inescapable but are technically different, since they hit as strikes instead of as grabs. See hit-throws.
Corner
The far edges of the stage. A bad place to get stuck defensively, since movement is limited and combo payoff is usually better. See position.
Counter Character
A character on the winning side of a lopsided matchup (for example, Rashid against Zangief). See matchups and metagame.
Counter-Hit
A counter-hit is a clean hit made against an opponent’s attack’s startup. This is opposed to a normal hit (usually just “hit”), which is a strike that the adversary simply fails to block. Counter-hits almost always produce extra frame advantage on hit (usually +2) while dealing 25 percent extra damage and stun. Their hitstun effect is a little more distinct, and a system message of “COUNTER” appears on screen, which is extremely helpful when you’re actually intentionally fishing for counter-hit confirm combos.
You may score counter-hits using quick, long-reaching pokes in the neutral game, striking the opponent’s slower pokes or their attempts to dash. For the first time in Street Fighter, striking a dashing foe registers as a counter-hit.
You may also score counter-hits through the use of frame traps and by baiting the opponent into trying to counter-throw or throw-tech, then striking their throw animation’s startup.
These aren’t tactics that you confirm hit-by-hit along the way, but more sequences you decide to use ahead of time based on how you think your foe will react. Assess whether they turtle up or use risky reversals, as well as whether they buffer inputs or wait to hit buttons reactively. Most counter-hit fishing involves doing a couple hits and then looking for a particular result. On block or a normal hit, you may just be left at a neutral-ish close-range situation, but on counter-hit, you might hit the combo jackpot.
Crush Counters are a big reason why counter-hits have increased importance. Each character has specific attacks that cause a special Crush Counter, resulting in a special “CRUSH COUNTER” system message, a special hitstun state that almost always affords the chance for special combos, and a generous amount of V-Gauge gained—for most Crush Counters, half a V-Gauge stock, but for a few extra-strong Crush Counters, a full V-Gauge stock on counter-hit.
Critical Arts
Each character’s most powerful special move is an explosive attack activated with a double motion, expending all three stocks of the EXGauge. Every Critical Art has some degree of startup invincibility, so they can be used as expensive, risky reversals, and all of them can be used in combos… even for the grapplers. Many of them are also fast enough to be used as footsie tools in certain situations, like to punish whiffed mid-range pokes. And you’ll never have comeback or K.O. potential like when you’re loaded with full V-Gauge and EX Gauge at once, so you can V-Triggerhit-check into a Critical Art finisher.
Your EX Gauge management will center mostly around whether to plan to use EX specials or to try landing Critical Arts. Each character’s chapter contains data, details, and combos for their Critical Art.
Critical Art-Cancelable
A property that determines whether moves can be canceled into a Critical Art. Indicated in the Cancel columns of data tables with CA. All special-cancelable attacks are also Critical Art-cancelable, but the opposite isn’t true: a few attacks are cancelable into Critical Arts but not specials.
An attack directed ambiguously over the opponent’s midpoint so that it’s difficult for them to block correctly on reaction. The angle of cross-ups also makes most anti-airs ineffective, or at least difficult to perform. Defenders have to block standing, holding away from their attacker, but if they aren’t sure which side the attacker is actually on at the moment of contact, then this is obviously difficult. Cross-ups are usually jump-ins aimed at
the necks of standing characters or characters waking up from a knockdown (especially after a Crush Countersweep, which disallows quick-recovery). But grounded cross-ups are also possible, most notably against characters recovering from an aerial hit with automatic air recovery, and with specials like F.A.N.G.’s Nikankyaku.
Cross-Cut
A portmanteau of the words “cross-up” and “uppercut.”
A cross-cut is a reversal Shoryuken (or any other invincible 623 input) performed to counter a jumping cross-up attempt. When executed correctly, your character performs the desired move in the opposite direction, hitting the enemy out of the air. You can set up a cross-cut in a couple of ways. If an opponent knocks you down and then goes for an ill-spaced or ill-timed jumping cross-up attempt, you can simply use the “wiggle” technique: repeatedly motioning between 1 2 3 rapidly and then pressing P / K while recovering from your wakeup. This works in both SFIV and SFV because these games accept 3 2 3 + P / K as a proper dragon punch motion. In conjunction with the six-frame special move reversal leniency, you can easily execute a Shoryuken-type move on your wakeup every time using this technique.
However, this motion is only useful for countering mistimed jumping attacks on your wakeup. If the opponent does a proper cross-up, not actually crossing up before your recovery but crossing up and hitting with a rear hitbox just after you actually rise, you’ll whiff your standard reversal because you’ll fly up into the air in the wrong direction. Being able to identify when you can use a wakeup reversal in this way takes experience and timing.
Another more elegant and accurate technique you can use to perform a cross-cut is executing a 6 2 1 motion as the opponent crosses you up. In this sequence, you’re relying on the timing of your adversary’s positioning for the game to register a proper 6 2 3 motion. This has a few advantages over the wiggle technique. Using this technique, you can easily and accurately time your final attack input in cases where you don’t want to perform an immediate recovery reversal. For example, if your challenger knocks you down and does a late cross-up jump (as in the previous paragraph’s scenario), you won’t always want to reversal immediately. You might want to perform a cross-cut Shoryuken at the exact moment after the opponent flies over you. So, you motion 6 when the foe is on top of your head and in front of you. Then, when the enemy is well over you, finally input 2 to 1 (which is now down-forward because you’ve turned around) plus P . This ensures that you will shoot them down in the correct direction. Seeing you do this will be a strong deterrent against your attacker continuing to attempt bullying you with cross-ups.
More importantly, this motion allows you to perform advanced techniques in the neutralfootsie game against cross-up attacks while you’re walking forward. For instance, if you’re playing a mid-range game and your opponent goes for a well-spaced jump-in that you can’t reversal normally, you can actually walk under them (purposely crossing yourself up) and then execute your cross-cut motion. You do this by holding 6 to walk forward enough to get under the airborne adversary, and then you finish the motion quickly with 2 1 + P / K .
One of the most basic stances available, along with standing and jumping. Perform by holding any downward direction. Holding 1 for crouching guard blocks low against incoming attacks but will lose against incoming high (or overhead) attacks. Buttons pressed while crouching will execute crouching normals, which tend to be lower-profile than standing moves. Crouching characters may be shorter than standing ones, but they’re also slightly wider.
Crush
Moves designed to avoid/beat particular kinds of attacks are sometimes said to “crush” them. So, an attack that hops over low-profile crouching attacks while cleanly beating them (like R. Mika or Rashid’s standing HK ) is sometimes called a “low crush.”
A special counter-hit caused by using certain attacks from each character’s arsenal. Gains V-Gauge and causes a special hitstun state. Good moves to use as pokes, in large-gap frame traps, and for punishing whiffed counter-hit-vulnerable specials (e.g., Shoryuken). See counter-hits. Every character’s chapter contains details on their Crush Counters, including huge combos.
This almost always refers to stamina damage, though someone may occasionally be referring to stun damage. Stamina damage (henceforth just “damage”) is inflicted cleanly through strikes that aren’t blocked and throws that aren’t escaped, and through chip damage when specials and Critical Arts are guarded. White damage is inflicted conditionally when medium/heavy normals are blocked or when armorabsorbs attacks; clean damage makes white damage permanent.
Damage Scaling
As combos increase in length, and as stamina bars dwindle past their midpoints, a couple forms of damage scaling kick in to keep things interesting.
The first form of scaling is sometimes informally called “guts” and, at very low stamina, “the magic pixel.” Fighters with less than half stamina remaining take slightly less damage. This is a flat reduction against any incoming damage, including chip/white damage.
Low Stamina Scaling
VICTIM’S STAMINA REMAINING
SCALING PERCENTAGE
Under 50% stamina
95%
Under 25% stamina
90%
Under 15% stamina
75%
The former applies in all circumstances. During combos, additional scaling kicks in. After the opening hit deals 100 percent of its potential damage (taking into account any stamina penalty as described before), each successive attack in a combo has its damage reduced by 10 percent. This scaling also applies to stun damage and EX Gauge gain. The eventual floor is 10 percent per attack after the ninth attack; every additional attack will deal 10 percent. The number of hits in the combo isn’t important; it’s the number of attacks. Multi-hit moves count as one
attack for the sake of scaling. This also means that although most V-Trigger activations themselves don’t hit the victim, using them to continue a hit-confirm combo still reduces the scaling by an extra 10 percent after the V-Trigger link. There’s one exception to combo scaling: Critical Arts will always do at least 50 percent of their max damage, no matter how many attacks precede them in combos. This is a nice change from SFIV, where using a Super/Ultra at the end of a long combo was usually a big waste of resources unless it would K.O. (or thoroughly embarrass) the victim.
Combo Scaling (Stamina, Stun, and EX Gauge)
ATTACK NUMBER
SCALING PERCENTAGE
1
100%
2
90%
3
80%
4
70%
5
60%
6
50%
7
40%
8
30%
9
20%
10
10%
Dash
A quick forward movement accomplished with 6 6 . See movement.
Deep
An attack performed very far into the opponent’s body, like late during a jump-in/cross-up or directly against them on wakeup. Waiting longer to attack may put you more at risk for a reversal, but it usually improves combo potential and blockstring tightness. Some combos and follow-ups only work if initial strikes connected very deeply.
Delay
Performing an attack later than expected. May coerce premature reactions, potentially leading to counter-hits.
Dictator
Frequent nickname for M. Bison used to avoid cross-Pacific name confusion. In English territories, M. Bison is M. Bison, but in Japan, he’s Vega. See also claw and boxer.
Disadvantage
Being at disadvantage means that your opponent gets to act first if you both act as soon as possible. This happens frequently after blocked offensive openings and after mistakes like whiffedpokes. Fall far enough behind on disadvantage up close, and your foe will have a “guaranteed” punish opportunity (depending on distance and your adversary, this begins once you’re in -3 to -4 territory up close).
A smaller disadvantage where punishment isn’t guaranteed (-1 or -2) usually just means you should use caution. Attacking from mild disadvantage (“abare” play) is a recipe for getting counter-hit if the opponent scouts out this behavior. See frame data in the Primer.
Dive Kick
A steeply angled air attack that brings the aggressor back to the ground at an altered trajectory. With a lot of variance in how their attacks operate, Cammy, Necalli, Rashid, Ken, Chun-Li, Nash, R. Mika, and Dhalsim all have jumping uniqueattacks or special moves that act like dive kicks. Dive kick-style attacks are very good for altering jump-in timing, hitting slightly earlier or later than the opponent expects.
Dizzy
A helpless, dazed state achieved when a character’s stungauge is filled (see stun). The dizzied fighter stands in place and wobbles while their head is surrounded by visions of stars, chicks, or little reapers. (There’s no difference in the duration of dizzy between the different effects around the dizzied character’s head.) The player piloting the victim can mash all P , K , and directional inputs to reduce the duration of dizziness, but it will still be enough time for a prepared foe to jump in for a full combo (or whatever they want).
A dizzied target basically never left hitstun, so if a combo is in progress, it’ll keep going. If you dizzy an enemy with a long combo, the damagescaling will pick up where you left off when you knocked them down. If you have a CriticalArt ready to go, it’s still great to cap off a huge dizzy combo since Critical Art scaling hits a floor at 50 percent. But otherwise, you might just try finishing long dizzy combos with either a reset attempt or whatever finisher puts you in the most advantageous follow-up position.
DP
Shorthand notation for “Dragon Punch,” the Shoryuken special move that helps define Ryu and Ken.
Empty Jump
A jump during which no action is taken. This reduces vulnerability on landing and creates mix-up potential. Using attacks or other actions during a jump means you lose tripguard, the ability to cancel the first couple of landing frames into immediate blocking or attacks. Empty jumps also often coax opponents into trying to block standing because they expect a jump-inoverhead. This makes them vulnerable to an immediate lowstrike upon landing.
Execution
Execution is the measure of skill that a player possesses in terms of performing combos and other dexterity-intensive SF tasks. It’s an extremely important skill to actively improve. You’ll want to be able to execute optimal combos, especially converting them from awkward situations, as consistently as possible at all times. The more you can defer your gameplay to muscle memory, the more you can focus on outplaying your opponent in the mind-game aspect of Street Fighter. Execution is typically improved on in Training Mode (see Training Mode for tips).
A meter located at the bottom of the screen that indicates how much energy is available to pour into EX specials and Critical Arts. EX Gauge is built by striking the opponent (hit or block), throwing them, getting hit, and whiffing most special moves. (Whiffing normals doesn’t build EX Gauge.) Blocking medium and heavy normal attacks builds a small amount of EX Gauge that’s proportional to the amount of whitedamage taken. Getting hit by a Critical Art also builds lots of EX Gauge, a third of a stock.
MOVE
EX GAUGE EXPENDITURE
EX Special Move
1 stock
Critical Art
3 stocks (full EX Gauge)
EX Special Moves
Enhanced versions of specialmoves executed by hitting two normal buttons to complete the special move’s command. A distinctive flash is visible, making it obvious that an EX move was used. This consumes one stock of the EX Gauge. Compared with special moves, EX special moves have enhanced properties, increased damage, or both; in some cases, the EX version of a special is like a different move entirely. Depending on your playstyle and the situation, your use of EX Gauge will be a tug-of-war between EX specials and CriticalArts.
FGC
Initials that stand for “fighting game community.” The wide network of tournament players, stream viewers, and fighting game enthusiasts who congregate on sites like shoryuken.com, eventhubs.com, and Capcom-unity.com, while filling YouTube and Twitch streams up with matches, tutorials, and combo videos.
Informal term for projectiles, attacks that exist on screen independent of the fighters who created them. Vital for long-range zoning, mid-range footsies, and close-range combos. Each character’s chapter thoroughly details any projectiles they may have, along with any attacks they have that are designed to destroy/evade projectiles.
Fishing
Searching for a clean hit or a counterhit, or trying to bait the opponent into making a punishable mistake.
Refers to characters who are knockeddown. Floored characters have reduced options as they wake up before a waiting attacker. The anti-wakeup game against floored foes is called okizeme. Immediately upon being floored, input 2 / PP for quick-recovery in place, or 4 / KK for backquick-recovery. Otherwise, waking up will happen at the normal (slow) speed, giving all initiative to the aggressor.
Focus
Not to be confused with SFIV’s Focus Attack mechanic, focus is a game concept referring to prioritizing which scenarios to look out for. Anything can happen in a fighting game, so choosing what to focus on is crucial. For instance, if you’re in a footsies battle, you need to think about your opponent’s best and most likely options (instead of their complete set of moves) so you can react quickly enough to punish them. No one can look out for everything at all times. This is a difficult skill to master, and your focus can vary drastically against different players and characters depending on their habits, your experience and muscle memory with your character, and so on. You must be able to consciously focus on a few specific things at a time (like worrying about good ground pokes instead of any possible poke), but you must also keep your focus flexible. You might be fighting a Zangief player where you’re heavily focusing on keeping him out and whiff-punishing his mid-range moves. However, you’ll also have to be prepared to switch focus sometimes so you’re ready to anti-air his jump-ins, as well. If you’re too focused on the ground game, you’ll sacrifice valuable tempo when you’re forced to block his jumping HP . Even worse, you might get punished with a full jump-in combo for whiffing your own ground attack because you were so committed on out-poking him.
It’s easier to focus and react to situations when you’re comfortable with your character’s moveset. Knowledge of when to use a particular button or move will greatly help you focus and react to specific situations.
Footsies
The mid-range to close-range game of controlling space in front of your character. This is a fine positional game that involves walking back and forth, jockeying for preferred position. Footsies can involve filling the space with projectiles and high-priority, low-risk pokes, or it can involve going for counter-hits and whiff-punishers against the opponent’s pokes. It’s important to recognize what has your attention wrapped up at a given moment. If you’re trying to control space with pokes, you’re leaving yourself open to whiff-punishing moves, and maybe to jump-ins, as well. If you’re dancing at the edge of your foe’s range, waiting intently for them to whiff something directly in front of you that you can sweep, you might not react immediately if they simply walk/dash forward well into your comfort zone, where their attacks will no longer whiff. But then, they wouldn’t have been able to simply move forward if you were filling the space with preemptive pokes instead of trying to punish whiffs. It’s easy to see how this neutral game can go in a circle. Just as was mentioned in the anti-air section, knowing when to switch your focus is equally as important as knowing what to do in a given situation because no one can keep every contingency in mind at all times.
For Free
Refers to a guaranteed situation, usually a punish chance. For example, if Ryu’s MP Shoryuken whiffs harmlessly in front of you, you can punish him “for free.”
Force Standing
A property of certain moves, like Ryu and M. Bison’s crouching HP and Dhalsim’s 4 + MP . When these moves strike a crouching victim, the target will be forced into standinghitstun. Moves that force standing are most useful to ensure that certain combos work, like Ryu combos into Tatsumaki Senpukyaku. Tatsu whiffs over crouching opponents, but leading into it with crouching HP to force them up means that won’t happen.
Forward
Original name for medium kick ( HK ). Can also refer to 6 direction (when facing right), toward the foe.
Frame
The game’s smallest unit of measurement. One frame is 1/60th of a second.
Frame Advantage/Disadvantage
The current degree of initiative (or lack of it) over the opponent, represented numerically. See framedata in the Primer.
Frame Data
Numeric representation of just about everything in SF. Find a thorough breakdown on reading frame data at the beginning of this Primer and Glossary.
Frame Trap
A poke/hit-confirm sequence timed to leave the opponent a gap to act. Most hit-check sequences become natural frame traps when the first attack is guarded. A well-planned and properly timed frame trap gives the enemy enough time to squeeze out attacks or throw-tech attempts, but not enough time for these attacks to actually become active threats. Frame traps are especially good against opponents who are in the habit of hitting buttons too often, whether because of an abare playstyle or because they are mashing. The input buffer carrying forward errant presses means that some players can be expected to habitually play right into the hands of frame traps. Frame trap success creates counter-hits.
Frame-trapping counter-hit setups are defeated by either using something fast/invincible enough to squeeze through the gap and hit first, or by just blocking, riding out the offensive fusillade. Against a defender who sits in crouch guard stance, switching to standing block on reaction to overheads, an attacker will get pushed by frame trap openers. To keep up the attack, they’ll have to either walk/dash back in or jump in from the edge of close range. If blocked attackers choose to cancel their close-range openers into specials on block, then they’ll surely do something punishable eventually. Walking/dashing back in to restart pressure or go for a throw is something that can be reacted to (much slower than an actual frame trap; reacting with a three-frame or four-frame crouching jab is often a decent and obvious option). And close-range jump-ins lead to obvious cross-ups that can be blocked (restarting the close-range defensive situation on the other side) or anti-aired with particular characters and tactics.
It’s easy to create your own frame traps and to check whether a sequence leaves a small or wide gap for the opponent to act. Look for the moves in your proposed frame trap in the data tables contained in this book. Find the “On Guard” value for the first move, and the “Startup” value for the second move. (On Guard must be a positive value.) If Startup is higher, the different between Startup and On Block tells you what your adversary’s gap will be, assuming the second move is performed immediately when the first move recovers (using the input buffer for normals works, of course). If Startup is equal to or less than On Block, then performing the second move immediately results in a “true” blockstring, locking the enemy in absolute guard instead of a frame trap.
Whether it’s better to leave a wide or small gap depends on your opponent and on what you expect them to do:
If you expect a mashed reversal, any gap is bad unless you’re ready to just block and wait to punish a mistake.
If you expect buffered/mashed three-frame and four-frame light attacks, the smallest gap you can leave is ideal, even just one or two frames. If you can do that while using a medium button for the trade priority, even better. Against a three-frame light attack character, a gap bigger than two frames (for your own light attacks, or three frames or greater for your mediums) will just get you hit yourself. The slower your foe’s reactions (and the slower the capabilities of their character), the more leniency you have to leave wide gaps.
Against incredibly passive defenders, the kind who block three or four pokes in a row willingly, any kind of frame trap will likely be ineffective. By the time you’re leaving a space big enough to bait these players, the moves have long since stopped constituting a frame trap and instead simply become a poke into a really delayed poke.
See blocking, combos, and counter-hits.
Free Juggle
A combo-ready airbornehitstun state in which any striking attack will keep a victim lofted. See combos.
Front Throw
Normal throw accomplished with LP + LK . Also escaped with the same command. Hurls the victim in the direction the attacker currently faces. See normalthrow.
Full Screen
When combatants are all the way across the screen from one another. See position.
Gimmick
A generally unsound/punishable/unsafe tactic, which still might work if the opponent doesn’t know how to counter it or if it’s used sparingly.
Grab
Synonymous with throws, grabs are of the two main attack types, a counterpoint to strikes. Grab attacks cannot be blocked, and transition into a throw animation on contact with the enemy. When unsuccessful, grab attacks produce a throw whiff animation, which is vulnerable to punishment. A grab’s hitbox targets the central collision pushboxes of opposing characters, rather than their larger strike-vulnerable hurtbox area.
Grappler
A fighter whose motive is to get into close range and scare the enemy with untechablecommandthrows.
Guard
Synonymous with block. See blocking.
Guardstun
Synonymous with blockstun, a character’s blocking animation. No actions are possible except V-Reversals. See blocking.
Hardened State
This unofficial fighting game term simply refers to situations where a character cannot execute commands. If you’re in the middle of dashing, stuck in blockstun or hitstun, lying prone after getting floored, or already performing some uncancelable attack, then you’re committed until the character finishes their animation.
Hard Knockdown
Unofficial term for a knockdown that prevents quick-recovery. In Street Fighter V, the only attacks that are really “hard knockdowns” in the SFIV sense of the term are counter-hit sweeps; counter-hit sweeps cause a special Crush Counter effect that prevents quick-recovery (or backquick-recovery). This allows for stronger okizeme against the rising target since the defending fighter can’t vary their wakeup timing. There are certain attacks that prevent victims from using quick-recovery but also don’t allow the attacking player to move freely, usually because of some cinematic animation (like after Critical Arts for Nash, Karin, and M. Bison). These aren’t really hard/unrecoverable knockdowns since they don’t confer a big advantage to the aggressor; they just kind of return the situation to neutral.
Note: In any instance where "D" is given for a character's on hit data, this refers to a knockdown (a hitstun state where the victim is floored, lying prone on the ground). There is no frame data value due to the opponent's position on the ground.
HCB/HCF
Shorthand notations for “half circle back” specials (like Dhalsim’s Yoga Flame/Yoga Gale) and “half circle forward” moves (like Cammy’s Hooligan Combination).
Attacks that must be blockedstanding. Also called “highs” and overheads; all jump-ins are included, as well as many uniqueattacks. See blocking.
Hit
The result when a strike connects with the target. If they just fail to block, it’s a normal hit; if they’re sticking out an attack that’s still in its startup period, it’s a counter-hit. Hits deal staminadamage and stun and create a very brief screen-freeze effect called hitstop before placing the victim into hitstun.
Hit-Check/Hit-Confirm
An attack opening designed to give you a chance to verify if it’s hitting cleanly before proceeding into follow-up options. See combos.
Hit-Throw
A striking attack that transitions into an inescapable throw after a successful hit. It’s important to note that hit-throws are strikes because they connect with the opponent’s hurtboxes, not their smaller, throwable “pushboxes.” Examples include Zangief’s EX Borscht Dynamite, R. Mika’s Wingless Airplane, and Birdie’s Hanging Chain. Since these attacks are strikes, they’ll work in combos. (True throws typically won’t work in combos unless used after a character is dizzied, or while they’re in particular Crush Counter hitstun states.)
Hitbox
A hitbox is an attack’s actual activestriking area, which doesn’t always conform to what the move looks like on screen. Hitboxes are targeted against hurtboxes, which are an opponent’s vulnerable portions. Moves that are said to be “high priority” are usually so-called because their hitboxes extend well outside the user’s vulnerable hurtboxes; a hitbox without a hurtbox is essentially an invincible striking area. (“High priority” can also refer to higher-strength normals cleanly beating lower-strength normals when clashing on the same frame.)
Hitstop
The very brief, almost imperceptible screen freeze that occurs to accentuate contact between combatants. Hitstop mostly figures into play when it gives the attacker longer to react to a successful hit, while also giving characters like M. Bison and F.A.N.G. a precious few extra frames to build up charge for their special moves (characters may be briefly motionless, but move charges continue to accrue). Hitstop can also be important for the option selects it enables, like hitting HP + HK late during Crush Counter-capable moves. On block or normal hit, the attempted cancel is too late and nothing happens, but with the distinct hit effect and extended hitstop of a successful Crush Counter, a properly timed press becomes an automatic “psychic” V-Trigger cancellation. The absence of hitstop can also enable some option selects, like for jump-in attacks into immediate moves on the ground in case the jump-ins whiff. You bury an input during where hitstop would normally occur, so when hitstop isn’t there (like if the opponent somehow dodges, such as with Dhalsim’s Yoga Teleport), the quick input produces your desired secondary assault.
Hitstun
The helpless stance a character enters when they’re struck by an attack. Sometimes also called “hitreel,” hitstun is as hardened a state as there is; victims can’t do anything at all, not even block. Canceling or linking moves together to continue hitting a reeling character is the very definition of a combo. There is no way for victims to exit hitstun except to recover naturally over time. Hitstun tends to last longer the heavier the attack, and it will last longer for counter-hits than for normal hits. Throws won’t connect against hitstun and will just result in a whiffed attempt, but hit-throws will work (as well as the throw-based Critical Arts of Zangief, Laura, and R. Mika).
Armored attacks absorb an incoming strike without entering hitstun; some armored attacks (like Zangief’s V-Skill) can absorb multiple hits. The V-Skills of M. Bison and Ryu also function somewhat like armored moves, deflecting the incoming attack and skipping hitstun/blockstun.
Hurtbox
Hurtboxes are the actual areas on screen where a character can sustain damage. These areas usually don’t conform exactly to a character’s appearance; in fact, they’re typically much larger. The ratio of a character’s hurtboxes to their extended hitboxes is most of what determines the priority of their moves.
Input
A command or sequence given to the game. You can scrutinize your inputs by turning on Input Display in Training Mode, or by watching saved match replays. This is a good way to troubleshoot any problems with execution in tight situations, since there will be no question what the game thought you did (regardless of what you hope/claim to have done).
When you input commands during “hardened” states where your character is busy and cannot immediately act, the game will carry forward your inputs a certain number of frames, producing your desired action on the first possible frame, if soon enough. This is a first for the Street Fighter series and goes a long way toward making player execution more consistent, especially online.
Input Buffer
The input buffer can be used by both attacking and defending players in many very helpful ways. Different classes of action will carry forward different periods of time during hardened states:
Dash inputs will buffer forward nine frames.
Special inputs and throw commands will buffer forward six frames.
Normal move inputs will buffer forward three frames.
Most obviously, the input buffer for normal moves makes link combos much easier in SFV than in other SF games (generally speaking). In SFIV, necessary two-frame links abounded, and many characters had one-frame tactics that were more or less required at a high enough level (shotos linking sweeps, Sakura Shunpu loops, Rufus linking standing short to standing fierce, Evil Ryu’s extended combos, Gen and C. Viper and Dudley in general, etc.). The “plinking” technique did mean that any one-frame link could actually become a two-frame link, but that’s using a dexterous motion that itself required understanding and practice to implement fully. In contrast, there are very few important SFV combos that require anything tighter than a three-frame link, thanks to the three-frame input buffer. And, in SFIV and other fighters, three-frame links are generally considered easy with a little practice.
The input buffer will also smooth over certain instances in online play. When latency affects wakeup or air recovery situations, for example, the three-frame buffer may still produce your desired meaty aggressive attack or defensive jab. Also, lag spikes are less likely to break your combos.
But the input buffer may also get you into trouble on defense when you’d really be better off not hitting anything for a moment. Buffering a poke just before air recovery or waking up or leaving blockstun will guarantee that that poke starts with reversal timing. This might be playing directly into your enemy’s hands, as your “perfect” buffered reversal poke runs into their “perfect” buffered frame trap setup, getting you counter-hit.
Input Priority
The game has a system of prioritizing what to do when it receives multiple inputs at once.
Heavier attacks have priority over lighter attacks, and kicks have priority over punches. Light attacks together produce a throw, mediums produce a V-Skill, heavies produce (given enough V-Gauge) a V-Trigger, and all buttons together produce a taunt. The old “crouch tech” of SFIV is gone; pressing LP + LK while crouching produces a standing throw attempt and will no longer give you a crouching short while doubling as a throw-tech command.
Invincibility
There are many ways a move can have absolute priority over certain types of incoming opposing moves. Actions can be categorically immune to certain things, like having throw, projectile, or strike immunity. A move might lack a hurtbox at all, making the character invincible to all damage types for these frames. Or, immunity can be limited to certain portions of the body. For example, most jumping attacks have a few frames of lower-body projectile immunity, making it easier for legs to skirt just over the tops of fireballs during jump-ins. Many dashing-type moves have some degree of upper-body projectile invulnerability, so conventional fireballs can be dodged (but unconventional ones, like Rashid’s, cannot). Moves with legit full-body invincibility are rare in SFV, and they usually come with counter-hittable recovery.
Invulnerable periods tend to be very brief, giving a particular move the upper hand when used in the right situation. For example, Ryu and Ken’s MP Shoryuken is invulnerable at the very beginning, so they’re virtually guaranteed to out-prioritize whatever they come into contact with if used with good timing.
Invulnerability
Synonymous with invincibility.
Jab
Original name for light punch ( LP ).
Juggle and Juggle Potential
The ability for attacks to carry foes reeling in midair. See combos.
Jump
A leaping action that either holds ground while avoiding grounded threats or quickly advances or retreats. See movement.
Jump-in
An attack executed from a jumping or airborne period, intended to hit a grounded target. Allows an aggressor to begin combos, blockstrings, and tick-throw tactics from midair. But seasoned players will be looking to anti-air obvious jump-ins. Successfully using jump-ins against good competition requires that you either divert their focus to something else first or that you jump in when you have extreme advantage, like after a counter-hit sweep knockdown. Depending on the matchup, you may also have relative freedom to jump at your foe aggressively if your character has jumping options that are difficult for your foe to deal with.
Typically, the term jump-in refers to attacks that hit the opponent’s front side, which they block by holding away from your side of the screen. A jump-in attack that hits ambiguously behind the foe, requiring that they block toward your side of the screen, is called a cross-up. An attack that seems like it’s going to cross-up but then doesn’t is called a fake cross-up; it’s helpful to nail people with one of these every once in a while to make them doubt where your jump-ins will end up. Position on the body also matters. Early jump-ins hit high on the body, increasing recovery; deep jump-ins hit late, resulting in less recovery and a better frame situation upon landing. You’ll have to weigh concerns about post-landing link positioning and timing, especially if your jump-ins and cross-ups involve light attacks or dive kicks.
Just Frame
A mechanic or move that requires an input within a specific period, usually as part of an exacting special move input. Just frames are not necessarily like one-frame-links. Examples of (fairly generous) just frame inputs in SFV are Karin’s “just frame” Tenko uppercut, and F.A.N.G. canceling Nishikyu poison balls into Nikankyaku dash moves within a tiny window. Similar to the “just defense” mechanic that showed up in SNK fighters like Garou: Mark of the Wolves and made it into Capcom’s Capcom vs. SNK 2, where blocking “just” before an attack connected (like with parry timing on the 4 press) resulted in shorter blockstun.
This is a type of cancel where one move is interrupted extremely early on, typically before it even perceptibly animates. Kara-cancels usually have to happen on the very first frame. This sometimes carries forward properties of the first move to the second move. In some games, this gives tremendous benefits to the user. Kara-canceling forward-moving normals into throws in SFIII/IV adds meaningful grab range. Kara-canceling forward-moving pokes into fireballs/uppercuts allows Sagat and Ken to eke out extra range on their specials in SFIV. And perhaps the most meaningful of all time, kara-canceling Capcom vs. SNK 2 rolls into special moves carried forward the rolls’ considerable invulnerable periods while the specials animated! If you never had to deal with Blanka flickering his electricity directly in front of you while covered every time by the lengthy invincible period of a roll, rest assured that it was tedious.
SFV has seen most kara-canceling benefits intentionally toned down, but kara-canceling still happens all the time. At heart, it’s a system mechanic designed to make move execution more consistent (pressing LP just one frame before LK doesn’t result in a failed throw input; it results in one frame of a jab canceled into a throw, among many possible examples). It would actually be pretty miserable if kara-canceling were truly removed. It’s just that you’re much less likely to generate unintentional extra forward range or an extended invulnerable period or whatever, from kara-canceling in SFV. But it’s still an important historical fighting game concept, and there’s no telling when some newly released DLC SFV character or updated mechanic might make intentional kara-cancels relevant again.
Knockdown
A hitstun state where the victim is floored, lying prone on the ground. Normally, characters are invincible during a knockdown, though there are very rare exceptions (R. Mika’s tag partner Nadeshiko (Above) can hit floored targets on the ground if they fail to quick-recover). SF fans who participated in the SFV beta will remember that M. Bison’s Head Press used to be able to hit floored targets, too, but not anymore.
After being floored, knockdown victims then “wake up,” rising to their feet. This occurs at different speeds depending on whether quick-recovery or back quick-recovery are employed. Tactics related to mixing up characters rising from a knockdown are called okizeme. See wakeup and quick-recovery.
Note: In any instance where "D" is given for a character's on hit data, this refers to a knockdown (a hitstun state where the victim is floored, lying prone on the ground). There is no frame data value due to the opponent's position on the ground.
Landing
After taking to the air, whether through a jump or an attack with airborneframes, a character will have to endure landing recovery. Normal jump recovery takes four frames, with the last two being cancelable into any action: blocking, walking, striking, throwing, another jump, whatever. Whether the first two landing frames are cancelable depends on whether you performed an action in midair. If you jump and attack, the first two landing frames are essentially helpless. If you empty jump, though, you can cancel those landing frames, most importantly into either a low poke (thus faking high with the jump, then striking low) or into guarding stances in case the enemy sticks out a poke for you to land on. This is called tripguard, and you’ll sometimes hear people say that someone “lost tripguard” when they jumped, attacked, and then promptly landed on a meaty attack.
Launcher
A launcher is a combo-starting or combo-extending move that pops the opponent into the air, either in a free juggle or limited juggle state. Examples include R. Mika’s Lady Mika, Karin’s Tenko, counter-hit crouching HP from Ken and Karin, and Zangief’s counter-hit standing HK .
See the combos entry, particularly juggles and juggle potential.
Limited Juggle
An aerial hitstun state where a victim is lofted airborne but can only be juggled more by attacks with sufficient juggle potential. See juggle potential details under combos.
Link l>
A combo achieved by allowing a move that creates sizable hitstun to fully recover instead of canceling it. Links are vital to many hit-check combos since they allow you to confirm a combo is working with a couple of normal pokes. This is a much lower-commitment (not to mention more variable) comboopener than just fishing for a normal canceled to a special. See combos in the Glossary and frame data immediately at the beginning of the Primer section.
A position involving being backed out of mid range, almost to full screen. This is outside the range of immediate engagements or jump-ins; only the longest-reaching jump-in attacks will hit (if any at all), and only Dhalsim’s limbs can hope to hit here. A prime fireballzoning spot. See position.
Attacks that must be blocked while crouching. Attempts to block low moves with standing guard lead to standing hitstun. Many crouching moves are low-striking attacks, or simply “lows.” Certain specials also hit low. See blocking.
Mash
Repeating an input or input series quickly. Can be command-related, like mashing on P for Rashid’s Spinning Mixer extensions, or tactical, like mashing on the input for an invinciblereversal during the opponent’s blockstrings or mashing out a three-frame poke during the adversary’s frame traps. See input, input buffer, and shortcuts.
Meaty
Ancient FGC terms like neck kick, top-down, and two-in-one are pretty much gone, but meaty is forever. It’s also a really important concept. Hitting meaty means intentionally timing a strike so you actually connect with later frames in the attack’s active period.
In practice, you have to time an attack a little early while the opponent is in some invincible state (so your initial active frames whiff) but right about to be predictably vulnerable (just before active frames end, if you timed it correctly). Obvious meaty timings include just before the adversary rises and just before they land from air recovery or a badly aimed jump. The more active frames a move has, the easier it will be to strike meaty with it. Moves that are only active for two frames or fewer don’t tend to be great meaty tools; at most, you’re gaining +1 advantage, but you’re requiring abnormal precision to do it.
In effect, meaties reduce your recovery period. Usually, recovery is really whatever is left of your active frames, plus your recovery frames. Hitting only with later frames leads to safer situations when guarded (perhaps even room for true blockstring pressure) and new links on hit.
With moves that travel forward during their active periods, like Dhalsim’s crouching MK and R. Mika’s HP Shooting Peach, you can achieve the same effect by spacing the move so that only the very last active portion hits. (This is really hitting “late” instead of “meaty,” but same difference.)
Mechanics
Mechanics can mean different things when it comes to fighting games. System mechanics are the rules and machinery involved in the actual fighting game engine itself (things like V-System, EX Gauge, normal/counter-hits, damage scaling, blocking, etc.).
However, mechanics also refers to a player’s overall technical and physical skill in a particular fighting game. Not to be confused with execution (a subset of mechanics), it is the overall ability to perform moves and feats on demand, quickly and precisely. For example, someone who can deflect a 22-frame overhead with a flawlessly executed Crush Counter combo on reaction is someone with incredible command of mechanics. Simply having great reactions or superb combo execution doesn’t necessarily equate to having exceptional mechanics, though, since these are just simple muscle memory skills in sealed-off environments. Another example of possessing excellent mechanics is being able to perform an optimal punish combo from an unusual position (like punishing Dhalsim’s standing MP with Ryu’s crouching HP x> Shinku Hadoken from full screen).
The more you actively work on your overall mechanics, the more you can use your mental processing power, or focus, to outplay your opponent in a real match. Not only should you practice your execution in combos, but you should test your reactions constantly in a variety of situations—either in real matches, or by using the handy Training Mode recording functions.
Metagame
A term that means “the game above the game,” referring to the body of knowledge required to play the game well that goes beyond knowing its mere rules and controls. See the Matchups and Versus chapter.
Mid Attacks
“Mids” are not quite an official class of move, but it’s a useful catch-all to describe moves that can be blocked either crouching or standing, and which also happen to usually hit at about mid-height. Just about all useful hit-check starters are mid pokes that start up in four to six frames. See blocking.
The distance where characters are in range of each other’s longest pokes and jump-ins, but not quite in range of throws and short-range moves. It can also become difficult to react to projectiles at this range. See position.
Midscreen
The center of the playing field, away from corners. Also sometimes referred to as mid-stage. See position.
Mirror Match
Self-explanatory: a character fighting against themselves. This wasn’t even available in the very first version of SFII (The World Warrior), and it was a big new feature in SFII: Champion Edition. Reduces the issue of matchups to seeing which player triumphs with the same set of tools.
Mix-up
A confusing tactic or setup designed to thwart the defender’s reactions. Usually works by making them worry about opposing options. Elemental examples include making them choose between blocking a strike or teching a throw, blocking high against overheads versus crouching against lows, and blocking normally against frontal jump-ins or reversed against cross-ups. There are many permutations of these, but most mix-ups are riffs on these core 50/50s.
Motion
A command that requires a fluid input of several directions, one after another. Most specialmoves have motion commands driving them. This contrasts with charge moves, where a particular direction or button must be held for a certain amount of time. Motion moves are available on command, with no premeditation required. See shortcuts for many quicker ways to execute motion moves.
Movement
Walk Forward
The most basic form of movement. Walk toward the opponent to gain ground, or walk away from them to retreat. Fast characters like Vega and Chun-Li have a big advantage here, while characters with poor walk speed like Nash and M. Bison must frequently rely on methods other than walking to reposition themselves.
One crucial difference between walking and other forms of movement is that it isn’t a “hardened” state, so you can still perform other actions while walking. If you think you need to block, like if you sense a sweep coming, simply swap from 6 to 1 . Likewise, if someone jumps unexpectedly at you as you walk forward, press your best single-input normal anti-air button to smack them down on short notice. Walking doesn’t stop you from doing other things. You don’t have the same freedom while dashing, jumping, or using specials to move around. So, although walking isn’t as fast as dashing, and although it obviously doesn’t lead to big damage like jump-ins and cross-ups, it’s the safest way to advance on your foe.
Advancing on your opponent by walking forward puts you in range of your own pokes, jump-ins, and cross-ups. If your opponent reacts by backing up themselves, good for you—they’ll back themselves into the corner eventually, and cornering an opponent provides a huge positional advantage.
Although walking forward is the simplest way to gain ground, it’s also the hardest to master. Walking forward means temporarily leaving behind standing/crouching guard, so it requires you to have a sense of when the opponent won’t stick out attacks. An important aspect of footsies is walking forward when you’re inside your opponent’s attack range but sense that they won’t actually attack. When your opponent is conditioned to be scared of other things you might do, you can sometimes just walk directly up to them.
Forward Walk Speed (Measured in Pixels Traveled per Frame)
NAME
FORWARD WALK SPEED
RANK
Vega
5.5
S
Chun-Li
5.4
S
V-Trigger Necalli
5.2
S
Cammy
5
A
Karin
4.9
A
Necalli
4.7
A
Ryu
4.7
A
V-Trigger Birdie
4.3
B
R. Mika
4.2
B
Ken
4.2
B
Rashid
4
B
Laura
3.8
B
F.A.N.G
3.2
C
Birdie
3.1
C
Zangief
3
C
Nash
2.7
C
Dhalsim
2.2
C
M. Bison
2
D
Walk Backward
Holding 4 to walk backward will also trigger a standing guard stance (halting your backward walk) if the enemy has an attack active nearby. This is called proximity block—without an active threat nearby, you’ll just keep walking. With charge characters, walking backward also loads a special move charge. A fast backward walk speed can be terrific both for retreating and for stepping back just out of your enemy’s poke/throw range, causing their attacks to whiff. For the quickest characters, like Vega and Cammy, you can greatly frustrate aggressors by walking backward away from their tick/frame trap offense about as fast as they can advance. (However, slower backpedalers—Nash, Birdie, M. Bison, Dhalsim, and Zangief—can’t really successfully play defensive footsies this way.)
Backward Walk Speed (Measured in Pixels per Frame)
NAME
BACKWARD WALK SPEED
RANK
Vega
4.5
S
Cammy
3.8
A
Chun-Li
3.6
A
Karin
3.6
A
Rashid
3.6
A
V-Trigger Necalli
3.6
A
Ken
3.5
A
Ryu
3.4
B
V-Trigger Birdie
3.3
B
Laura
3.2
B
Necalli
3.2
B
R. Mika
3
B
F.A.N.G
2.8
C
Nash
2.7
C
Birdie
2.4
C
M. Bison
2.3
D
Zangief
2.3
D
Dhalsim
2
D
Dash
Tap 6 6 for a fast forward movement. 6 taps must be within nine frames of each other and will buffer forward up to nine frames during a hardened state (like toward the end of blockstun or while waking up). Dashing is faster across a set distance than walking, but most dashes (except M. Bison’s) lack exceptional properties, aside from quick forward movement. (This contrasts with backdashes, which feature a short period of throw invulnerability and a brief airborne period.)
A very important new feature in SFV is that hits against dashing characters are considered counter-hits. Especially considering the strength of Crush Counters, you’ll want to be very careful going too nuts with dashes.
Characters cannot block while dashing, nor can they perform any other actions until the dash ends—dashing is a “hardened” state. Dashing forward is an aggressive action, especially within attack range. Its audacity means that when you sense a passive opponent, it can pay off to dash in suddenly and then go for an immediate point-blank throw or hit-confirm combo. In general, dashes travel farther than in previous Street Fighter titles; the characters with the longest dashes (Rashid, M. Bison, Nash, and V-Trigger Necalli) can now traverse the full screen’s distance by dashing only twice.
If you make no immediate inputs nor buffer anything at the end of a dash, when forward momentum ends, your character settles back onto their heels slightly, losing a tiny bit of ground. This mild backpedaling actually occurs your character has recovered from the dash, so you can interrupt it with actions; it’s basically a return to normal idling stand with a quarter-step backward at the beginning. (This is sort of like how landingrecovery’s last two frames are a landing crouch cancelable by anything, and aren’t really a standalone state.) This means that if you dash forward then attack or throw immediately, the range will be slightly longer than if you dashed, paused briefly, and then tried something. This is a tiny boost to distance, but there are situations where every little bit counts. When you aggressively dash inside, if you’re not going to lay some bait by just blocking, you always want to start a mix-up right away, so you’ll benefit from the bonus here without putting in extra work.
Several characters have V-Skills or special moves that function like command dashes (like the V-Skills of Ken and Laura and the movement-oriented specials of F.A.N.G. and Karin), but these are different actions with their own nuances, although their function is similar.
Dash Duration in Frames
NAME
DASH DURATION
RANK
Rashid
15 (41 if held)
A
Chun-Li
15
A
Ken
15
A
Ryu
16
B
Cammy
16
B
Karin
16
B
Laura
17
B
Nash
17
B
Necalli
17
B
Vega
17
B
R. Mika
18
B
F.A.N.G
20
C
Dhalsim
21
C
M. Bison*
22
C
Birdie
23
D
Zangief
25
D
Dash Distance in Pixels Traveled
NAME
DASH DISTANCE
RANK
V-Trigger M. Bison
227
S
M. Bison
198
A
Rashid
193.6 (435.5 if held)
A
V-Trigger Necalli
193.2
A
Nash
175
B
V-Trigger Birdie
170.3
B
Vega
153.7
C
Dhalsim
147.7
C
Necalli
145.9
C
Karin
144.5
C
Cammy
142.1
C
R. Mika
141.1
C
Ken
136.2
C
Ryu
135
C
Birdie
132.6
D
Chun-Li
129.2
D
F.A.N.G
128.6
D
Laura
128.4
D
Zangief
104.6
F
Backdash
Tap 4 4 to hop backward quickly. Like with dashes, the taps must be within nine frames. New to SFV, they can be buffered nine frames ahead while your character is preoccupied. Backdashing moves a fighter backward quickly, faster than walking back across a set distance. The first 10 frames of every backdash are throw-invincible, making backdashes a viable defensive option if you’re certain that a throw is coming up close (as will often be the case against grapplers). Backdashes are also airborne for a period of time that varies per character; getting hit during these frames results in an air hit instead of grounded hitstun.
Backdashes are no longer fully invulnerable at startup like they were in SFIV, and hits against dashes/backdashes now register as counter-hits. This means that foes don’t have to worry about executing some dexterous or elaborate anti-backdash option select (like in SFIV); if they predict your backdash, they can just use their most appropriate Crush Counter normal for a potentially devastating punishcombo.
Backdash Duration in Frames
NAME
BACKDASH DURATION
RANK
Cammy
21 (frames 3-16 airborne)
A
Chun-Li
21 (frames 3-10 airborne)
A
Karin
21 (frames 3-11 airborne)
A
Laura
21 (frames 3-11 airborne)
A
Ryu
21 (frames 3-10 airborne)
A
Vega
21 (frames 3-10 airborne)
A
M. Bison
22 (frames 3-10 airborne)
B
Necalli
22 (frames 3-11 airborne)
B
F.A.N.G
24 (frames 3-10 airborne)
C
Ken
24 (frames 3-12 airborne)
C
Nash
24 (frames 3-10 airborne)
C
Rashid
24 (frames 3-18 airborne)
C
R. Mika
24 (frames 3-10 airborne)
C
Dhalsim
25 (frames 3-10 airborne)
D
Zangief
25 (frames 3-16 airborne)
D
Birdie
26 (frames 3-20 airborne)
F
Backdash Distance in Pixels Traveled
NAME
BACKDASH DISTANCE
RANK
F.A.N.G
149.7
S
Cammy
143.6
S
Vega
137.7
A
Chun-Li
136.8
A
Birdie
134.6
A
V-Trigger Necalli
130
A
Ken
127.7
B
Nash
125
B
M. Bison
121.5
B
R. Mika
119.7
B
Karin
116.3
B
Laura
113.5
C
Rashid
110.6
C
Necalli
110.5
C
Zangief
106.5
C
Ryu
88.3
D
Dhalsim
82.5
F
Jump
A vertical or diagonal leap, depending on direction used. Jumping backward can be used to retreat, neutral jumping is an invaluable footsies/anti-projectile/stalemate tool, and forward jumps can lead to offensive jump-ins and cross-ups. After your upward jump input, your character first goes through pre-jump animation frames before they actually leave the ground, becoming airborne. Pre-jump frames are invincible to grabs, but strikes against pre-jump frames will still register as grounded hitstun. These grounded pre-jump frames can still be canceled into grounded actions, preventing the jump from ever happening (this is why doing Zangief’s Screw Pile Driver motion very quickly results in a grab before he jumps, as one example).
While jumping, characters are naturally immune to ground throws and will fly over most grounded attacks, but they cannot block or tech/escape air-to-air normal throws. After starting a jump, characters are pretty committed along their path, with exceptions for characters with dive kick-style moves, or Dhalsim with his Yoga Float and Yoga Teleport.
Upon landing, there are four frames of landing recovery that may be canceled early depending on whether you refrained from attacking while jumping, retaining tripguard. Basically, if you don’t perform an action while jumping, you’ll still have landing recovery, but you can cancel it into attacking or blocking. If you did perform an action during the jump, you can’t cancel the landing recovery frames into anything, so there’s nothing you can do if you land on extended, meaty attacks. A jump performed without an attack is called an empty jump.
NAME
PRE-JUMP FRAMES
Most characters
3
Birdie
4
Zangief
5
Jump Duration in Frames
NAME
JUMP DURATION
RANK
Rashid
38
A
Laura
38
A
Ryu
38
A
R. Mika
38
A
Karin
38
A
Ken
38
A
Nash
38
A
V-Trigger Necalli
38
A
Cammy
39
B
M. Bison
39
B
Zangief
39
B
Vega
39
B
Necalli
39
B
Birdie
41
C
Chun-Li
41
C
F.A.N.G
43 vertical, 44 diagonal
C
Dhalsim
64
D
Forward Jump Distance in Pixels Traveled
NAME
FORWARD JUMP DISTANCE
RANK
F.A.N.G
250.4
S
M. Bison
234
A
Dhalsim
224
A
V-Trigger Necalli
216.6
B
Necalli
214.5
B
Rashid
212.8
B
Laura
212.8
B
Ryu
212.8
B
R. Mika
212.8
B
Karin
212.8
B
Ken
212.8
B
Nash
205.2
C
Chun-Li
205
C
Cammy
195
D
Vega
195
D
Zangief
156
F
Birdie
143.5
F
Backward Jump Distance in Pixels Traveled
NAME
BACKWARD JUMP DISTANCE
RANK
M. Bison
234
S
F.A.N.G
233.2
S
Rashid
205.2
A
Nash
198.6
A
Cammy
195
A
Dhalsim
192
A
Necalli
187.2
B
Vega
187.2
B
V-Trigger Necalli
186.2
B
Chun-Li
184.5
B
Laura
182.4
C
Ryu
182.4
C
R. Mika
182.4
C
Karin
182.4
C
Ken
182.4
C
Zangief
156
D
Birdie
131.2
F
Neck Kick
An old-school, out-of-use term for cross-up.
Negative Edge
Refers to using the release of buttons to activate special moves. Using Ryu or Ken, holding HP , performing 236 , and then releasing HP will result in HP Hadoken, for example. This can sometimes be helpful or hindering for move execution, so be conscious of errant button releases. In general, you’ll want to tap individual button presses as briefly as possible, avoiding accidental negative edge on actions immediately after. When pressing multiple buttons at once, like for EX moves, you actually will want to press and hold all the buttons briefly instead of tapping and releasing as soon as possible. Going for multiple presses but accidentally releasing one of the buttons just a couple frames early is a common reason why players go for EX moves and get normal ones.
Neutral
Can refer to a character’s idle state, standing, where they’re ready to accept commands. Also refers generally to situations where neither character has a big advantage over the other, like in mid-range footsies.
Neutral Jump
A vertical jump generally used to either avoid a command throw or jump over an incoming projectile without much risk at mid to long range.
Normal Moves
Basic attacks executed with one of the six normal buttons. There are different normal moves depending on whether you’re standing, crouching, or jumping. (A few characters also have a different jumping roundhouse during a neutral jump than during a diagonal jump.) There are light, medium, and heavy normals—three punches and three kicks. Normals are the foundation of your arsenal. They’re the easiest, fastest, and most reliable way to begin poking, hit-checking, and anti-airing the opposition. Attacks are generally just called light punch, medium kick, heavy punch, etc. now, but you’ll still hear the old Street Fighter strength names here and there:
LP
Jab
MP
Strong
HP
Fierce
LK
Short
MK
Forward
HK
Roundhouse
Normal Throw
Normal throws can be performed either forward or backward for front throw or back throw, grabbing in five frames. One direction or the other will be better depending on a few factors. Most important is position relative to the corner, but stamina damage/stun/EX Gauge gain can differ between throws, as can post-throw advantage. Some characters have one throw that leaves the opponent close, while the other throw deposits the victim all the way across the screen. Most normal throws lead to a match reset.
Normal throws are escaped with LP + LK , the same command used to initiate them. Throw escape attempts will result in a whiffed throw if an enemy isn’t actually nearby. The window to escape normal throws is 11 frames long, starting five frames before your opponent’s throw actually grabs and extending six frames after their throw makes contact. This makes it possible to tech preemptively or to tech throw late, reacting like a spring only when the walk-up throw actually happens.
Ground throws will whiff against airborne characters, characters in pre-jump takeoff frames, and characters stuck in hitstun or blockstun. Air throws are, naturally, targeted at airborne characters, but won’t hit grounded foes.
Throws are generally active for two frames, so you may hit with a meaty throw in certain situations where the first active grabbing frame whiffs. Opposing characters continue to be unthrowable for two frames after leaving certain unthrowable states (air recovery, wakeup, and the end of hitstun/blockstun). These are exactly the kinds of places when a meaty throw might be good, so intentionally trying to use throws as meaty attacks doesn’t work. The extra grab frame is really just to help the throw hit, but not to allow for abnormal grab timing.
Okizeme
A Japanese term referring to mix-ups used against an opponent rising from a knockdown. Okizeme is stronger after throws and counter-hit sweeps, where the defending character’s quick-recovery options are restricted. See wakeup.
On Guard/On Hit
Quantifies the advantage/disadvantage created on contact. See frame data in the Primer. On counter-hit, most moves do +2 over normal On Hit figures. Crush Counter moves do even more.
Note: In any instance where "D" is given for a character's on hit data, this refers to a knockdown (a hitstun state where the victim is floored, lying prone on the ground). There is no frame data value due to the opponent's position on the ground.
Option Select
An option select involves combining inputs or performing sequences in such a way that, depending on the situation, you receive the best outcome from several. Using option selects may seem hard at first, mostly because this involves executing lots of extra, often useless inputs. But once upon a time, a mere Shoryuken motion seemed exacting to basically the entire gaming audience. Once you’ve thrown enough Hadokens, you don’t need to think about the command anymore, and these tactics are the same. You just have to get over the hump of committing them to muscle memory.
Buffered Pokes
This involves intentionally whiffingcancelablenormal moves just outside of the enemy’s poke/dash range, while performing the commands for certain specials. You have to perform the follow-up command very quickly, so you don’t risk simply producing the special after the initial normal move recovers. The intent is to preemptively snuff the opponent’s pokes or dashes. If they don’t do anything, you simply whiff a normal, but if they stick something out or dash in, your normal connects and cancels into your next input. Using this well can sometimes make you look clairvoyant (or very brave/foolish), but it really just involves good spacing. (It would be ill-advised to use this tactic when you’re still close enough to make them block, for example.) There’s no decision-making involved.
Naturally, you’ll want to use good pokes that have good priority and don’t put your character at too much risk when buffering.
Some characters have normals that are only Critical Art-cancelable, like R. Mika’s crouching HP and Ryu’s standing HP . The principle works exactly the same here: you simply can’t buffer special commands, as only a Critical Art motion will work.
Anti-Escape Option Select
Characters like Dhalsim and V-Gauge-loaded Nash have a sort of “get out of jail free card” during wakeup situations because of their teleports. Other characters have special moves that aren’t expressly teleports but accomplish the same objective of getting out of trouble in a hurry (like F.A.N.G.’s EX Nikankyaku). Depending on your character, you can install option selects in your offense that may catch these escape attempts. For example, with a shoto character, you can jump in with jumping HP , immediately input 214 + HK before landing, then land and begin whatever grounded attack you’d planned for anyway. If jumping HP hits or is blocked, your ground sequence will simply occur as normal because hitstop eats up your option-select Tatsumaki input. If jumping HP misses, you’ll land and immediately perform HK Tatsumaki Senpukyaku. Depending on your foe’s escape method, the Tatsumaki may catch them. The success of such a tactic depends a lot on the character matchup at hand (as Cammy, you’d use Spiral Arrow instead; as Zangief, you won’t be getting much use from this kind of tactic) and your read of the opponent’s eagerness to get away.
Defensive players may anticipate this kind of anti-escape tactic and opt to teleport/escape toward your side of the screen rather than away from it. This may cause your option-selected special to whiff in the wrong direction. The catch here is that if you read their intent to thwart option selects by teleporting/escaping toward your side, you can just forego using any trick during your jump-in, readying yourself instead to punish them hard if they do teleport to your side. This situation requires hard reads on both your parts.
A round won without taking any damage. The stamina gauge remains full.
Personal Action
A taunting move executed with all six normal buttons together. Personal actions are just for show.
Plink
An execution technique that stretches a normal single-frame input to two frames. This was extremely helpful for making tight linkcombos consistent in SFIV and Street Fighter X Tekken but has greatly diminished importance (although the technique still works) in SFV thanks to the input buffer. (Adding one frame to input windows isn’t that hot when the game itself now adds three automatically.) See plink under combos.
Poke
A quick, useful move stuck out during close-range and mid-rangefootsies. Pokes control space, provoke reactions, punish whiffs, and begin hit-checks. Single pokes can serve as ticks up close, setting up throws and frame traps. You can bufferknockdownspecials during intentionally whiffed pokes as an anti-dash option select. Every character uses pokes, but the most poke-centered characters are those with fast movement speed and great normals, like Vega and Chun-Li. Their pokes can check the opponent’s guard from afar, whiff-punish the opposition’s missed pokes, and set up offense from mid range into close range, which is not a game that every character can play.
Position
Street Fighter has always been defined by its special moves, and the most fundamental specials (and the least realistic, for being in a game called “Street Fighter”) are projectiles (or as most players affectionately call them, fireballs). Projectiles allow users to attack from great distances and often without much risk, setting the tone for the way combat in Street Fighter evolved. Characters like Zangief, whose only wish is to throw, need to bypass a flurry of shots before even considering it. Vega wants to get in range to slash with his claw, but to do that, he must jump around countless fiery bolts. Even today, a quarter-century into SF, this aspect of its design hasn’t changed.
Close, Mid, and Long Range
Characters strike from a variety of distances at varying angles, which complicates trying to describe their tactics. To establish a visual notion of where certain strategies are effective, this guide references three general positions: close, mid, and long range.
Close range is directly next to the enemy, within range for both characters’ throws and short-range attacks. There’s some leeway with this definition because some characters’ best close-range pokes aren’t in range for certain opponents’ throws.
Mid range is defined as being about three character lengths away from the opponent, just on the edge of the range of their longest-reaching normal move. Throws aren’t an immediate threat, but jump-ins and walk-up pokes are. This isn’t an accurate description in Dhalsim’s case, so for the sake of finding a precise example, think of it as being just outside of range of Karin’s standing MK .
Long range is typically defined as being well outside of range of an enemy’s normal moves, being reachable only by unique means (like special moves that travel forward or projectiles). This is usually just outside the reach of even long-reaching jump-ins. Again, Dhalsim is the exception to the rule here.
Corner, Midscreen, and Full Screen
Another important position is based on your character’s distance from the stage edge. A character with their back hugging the edge of a stage is considered cornered, which is generally the worst place to be. If your character is directly at the center of a stage (a position noted in Training Mode’s Grid stage with a thick red line), you’re midscreen. If you’re at the opposite edge of the screen in relation to your opponent, you’re at full screen distance.
Altitude
Altitude matters because of jumps, and thus jump altitude is frequently described (roughly). The apex or peak of a jump is self-explanatory; this simply describes the maximum height of a character’s jump. “While rising” refers to a jump’s ascent into the air before it meets its apex. “While falling” means the opposite, the period where a character passes the peak of their jump and descends. In reference to attack timing during jumps, “early” attacks are just after beginning to fall from a jump, while “late” attacks are near the end of a jump’s descent.
A common strategy when jumping in cautiously is to aim so only the tip of a far-reaching jump-in attack contacts the foe. If you decide to forgo the jump attack from this range, an attempted anti-air from the enemy may whiff because you’ve extended no limb for them to clip.
Corner
The left and right edges of the playing field. It’s usually bad to be backed into a corner because you have no space to back away, which makes it harder to avoid pokes and sweeps. Foes can create extremely ambiguous cross-ups by seeming to jump over you into the corner, but not quite making it. And combo potential increases near the corner for many characters. Conversely, cornering your foe and keeping them there is almost always a great goal.
Pre-Jump Frames
A character about to jump doesn’t leave the ground immediately. Depending on the character, there are a certain number of pre-jump frames that must elapse before they actually take to the air. These pre-jump frames are throw-invincible, but can still be hit with grounded strikes. Most characters have three pre-jump frames to go through, but Birdie has four, and Zangief has five. See jumps under the entry for movement.
Priority
The likelihood that one attack will beat another. Influenced by a move’s actual striking area (its hitbox), as well as the attacker’s vulnerable areas (their hurtboxes). Also influenced by various properties like being airborne, button strength and trade priority, invulnerability to certain types of moves, having a low profile, etc.
A striking object separate from a fighter thrown into the playing field. Projectiles are essentially horizontal pokes with long or infinite range. (Some character’s projectiles dwindle and disappear eventually, like Chun-Li’s, while characters like Dhalsim, Rashid, and F.A.N.G. hurl projectiles at unconventional angles.) Projectiles are crucial for zoning, for baitingjumps and bad reactions, as lengthy pokes at close range and mid range, and as useful combo components. Foes facing a projectile user must deal with it by blocking, by canceling out projectiles with their own, or by jumping over them. Armored moves can absorb single-hit projectiles, and many other moves can dodge or destroy incoming fireballs. Both creating projectile threats and circumventing them is as much a fundamental part of Street Fighter as jump-ins and blocking.
Proximity Block
A game mechanic where holding 4 or 1 when only slightly out of range of the opponent’s active attack frames still causes your character to enter a blocking animation. This can prevent walking backward out of mid range if the opponent whiffs attacks. In general, proximity block range and duration has been reduced in SFV. You’ll still block as a fail-safe if something is truly close to hitting you (which is the point of proximity block at all), but you’ll also have more freedom to actively walk around while opponents are whiffing moves near you. See blocking.
Punish
Capitalizing on an opponent’s error, ideally with a damaging combo or at least with something that gives you a leg-up on position and tempo, like a sweep. The most obvious examples of things to punish are whiffedthrow attempts and reversal-type special moves. Throws (which can’t be blocked) and moves like Shoryukens (which are extremely high-priority) are so good that everyone naturally wants to use them often. When you read your opponent’s intention to throw or use a big “get off me” reversal, you can simply step out of throw range or block, then reap a big opening when they whiff. Even beginners can quickly learn to at least throw in these situations, but eventually, it’s important to have good punish combos ready to go, even in awkward or tight situations.
Pushback
The degree to which a character is pushed away from another character when attacks connect. Pushback is the reason why you can’t just get next to someone and mad-dog them all day with offensive mix-ups. After they block no more than two or three opening salvos, you’re already pushed back too far to be an immediate threat anymore without repositioning.
Pushbox
The throwable central hurtbox for a character. It’s easy to find the boundaries of characters’ pushboxes: that’s where walking/dashing/jumping characters literally “push” each other. Just from cursory explorations of this, you’ll see that strikable hurtboxes surround characters on all sides much more than the throwable pushbox. Generally speaking, you have to be much closer to someone to throw them than to strike them.
QCB and QCF
Shorthand for the classic quarter-circle forward/backward motions. These actions drive most special moves, like Hadoken and Tatsumaki Senpukyaku.
Quick-Recovery
In addition to quick-recovery, this is often called quick-rise or tech rise. Just as your character is floored from a knockdown, tap 2 or PP to get right back up in place, returning to the flow of combat quicker. For back quick-recovery (rising five frames slower but about a dash’s distance farther back), tap 4 or KK as your character hits the turf.
You almost always want to use quick-recovery or back quick-recovery if possible. Staying floored for the full duration gives your opponent time to set up whatever mix-up they’d like for when you finally wake up. In normal gameplay situations, the only time you can’t quick-recover at all is after eating a counter-hit sweep. And after being thrown, you can only quick-recover in place and cannot use back quick-recovery. See wakeup and okizeme.
Read
An educated guess about what the opponent is going to do. Your ability to make solid reads depends on your knowledge (of your character, your opponent’s character, and your opponent’s tendencies), your reactions, and your intuition. Feeling like you know what your opponent will do can be helpful to focus your attention. Every character has dozens of options available at any given time, but you should worry only about what the opposing player is likely to do.
There’s sometimes a thin line between a read and a guess—it’s a read if it works, it’s a guess if it doesn’t. Try to determine in your own gameplay when you’re sometimes doing a move just because “it’s invincible” (or whatever reason) instead of because you specifically think that move will win at that moment. Everyone looks silly whiffing a reversal attempt here and there, and you can’t clam up or swear off risky plays entirely. But stay in the moment and don’t go on autopilot, and you’ll find yourself making more good reads and fewer bad guesses.
Recovery
Primarily refers to the period of a move after active frames, while it’s winding down. Canceling a move skips over this period. Whiff-punishing tactics are primarily aimed at recovery frames after something has barely missed. See frame data.
Recovery may also refer to quick-recovery and back quick-recovery, methods for wakingup from knockdowns quicker than usual, and air recovery, where fighters hit out of airborne actions land on their feet.
Reset
There are combo resets and tempo resets. A combo reset involves intentionally breaking a guaranteed combo or sequence with an unexpected alternate mix-up. Breaking a combo resets damage scaling, so if your mix-up is successful, you can end up doing more damage than you would’ve done with whatever guaranteed finisher you passed up. A reset can also be great right before the opponent gets dizzied. Stop a combo just short of dizzying them, then cause the dizzy with a quick overhead or low attack, keeping the combo hit total down (and damage scaling low) going into the dizzy combo itself.
Tempo resets, also called match resets or neutral situations, refer to exchanges that end with both sides fairly even, with neither character holding significant position or frame advantage.
Reversal
Refers to two things that are sometimes the same but not always. A reversal can be a counterattack (preferably something with high priority) used on the very first frame after certain inactive “hardened” periods (leaving blockstun or hitstun, waking up from a knockdown, and landing after air recovery are most prominent). SFV’s input buffer helps you time reversal attacks perfectly like never before. Reversal also often means a high-priority or invulnerable move that blasts through the opponent’s offense, overpowering their mix-up attempt. In comparison, the meaning of reversal is obvious in context; it often means both, and everyone uses the term both ways anyway.
Risky
A tactic that hands the opponent a golden opportunity if it fails. Invulnerable specials that make good reversals are also pretty risky to use for this purpose since they’re open to counter-hits on recovery. Sure, they might knock an aggressive foe off you and turn the tables. But if the adversary reads your urge to take back initiative and consequently just blocks, your whiffed special can become their harshest Crush Counter combo.
Roundhouse
Original name for heavy kick ( HK ).
Rushdown
Aggressive, forward-moving strategy. Generally, working to get inside to go for knockdowns, cross-ups, throws, combos, and close-rangemix-ups.
Safe
A move or tactic that doesn’t hand the opponent meaningful advantage. With rare exceptions, hurling projectiles from full screen is generally safe. Having crouching LP blocked is generally safe. Having a sweep blocked is never safe… though sometimes moves like this become safe if used from max range, despite having lots of frame disadvantage.
Safe Jump
A jump attack timed to strike as late as possible against a foe rising from a knockdown. Ideally, the jump-in is blocked on the last possible frame of the jump-in and the first frame they rise. If the opponent tries a wakeup reversal, and if the safe jump is properly timed, the character who jumped in will already have landed and be resting in crouching block, and the reversal will probably just whiff. Proper safe jumps require immaculate timing and spacing. This is difficult to accomplish in SFV, where most set play is undone since almost all knockdowns allow for quick-recovery. Players generally use specific actions that always occupy the same length of time to try to set up safe jump attempts, like throws.
Shenanigan
See gimmick. If you’re unfamiliar with your opponent’s character, everything can feel like this. A tactic that doesn’t quite pass the sniff test for actually being good but works because you don’t expect it or don’t know how to respond to it.
Short
Original name for light kick ( LK ).
Shortcut
A method for performing a move or sequence that manages to omit portions of the command. This can make execution easier and more consistent, or simply different. Of particular importance to note in SFV is the addition of a new potential shortcut motion for Critical Arts, listed among these entries.
623 and 421 Shortcuts
323 and 121
The advertised motion of 623 is not exactly accurate. The motion is actually any forward direction, any downward direction, then any forward direction again. The most useful shortcut application is the “wiggle” of 323 . When you’re safely outside of poke/footsie range and you expect your opponent to jump or do something else that’s easily reversible, hold 3 and wait a moment. If they jump (or whatever), the only thing you need to do to produce your Shoryuken-like move is to input 23 and then the correct button. You don’t have to start from 3 ; you can use this trick out of a crouch from 1 also. Using only downward directions prevents your character from standing, even for imperceptible amounts of time. This keeps them lower-profile so your foe’s jump-in can’t hit before you activate your desired special. Performing it while ducking makes your character’s hurtbox shorter and increases the distance your foe has to descend before they can hit you.
This trick is also useful in combos where the official motion is awkward. For example, Ken and Ryu can cancel crouching HP into Shoryuken. By performing crouching HP as 3 + HP , all you have to do to finish the cancel is 2 3 + HP .
41236 and 63214 Shortcuts
1236 and 3214
Moves like Dhalsim’s Yoga Flame have official commands that are half-circle motions. The trick here is that you don’t actually have to start these motions from 6 or 4 . You can start them from a defensive or offensive crouch. This mainly makes combos easier, like allowing Dhalsim players to hold 3 + HP for his crouching fierce, then simply perform 214 + MP to combo Yoga Flame.
Critical Art Shortcuts
2626 and 2424
The old “Super” shortcut of 23236 is gone. This worked in many previous games, and allowed your Super to execute without you technically finishing the motion. (This was useful in footsies because it meant you could perform Supers straight out of a crouching position, from a wiggling input.)
The listed Critical Art motion for almost all characters is 236 236, then punch or kick, character depending. R. Mika’s Critical Art also uses a double motion, but it’s with 214 214 instead. (The only non-double-fireball-motion Critical Art is Zangief’s, which is not relevant for this shortcut, but is relevant to the 63214789 shortcut listed after this one). For any of these double-motion Critical Arts, the actual command isn’t 236 x2 (or 214 x2 for R. Mika).
It’s actually just 2626 (or for R. Mika, 2424 ). Four directional inputs minimum is fewer than five for the old shortcut or six for the official motion, so this new motion can be faster to execute, if you quickly tap it out on a joystick or use a keyboard or custom button controller.
Otherwise, it’s important to be aware of just so you don’t trigger Critical Arts on accident in the normal course of footsie battles. While feinting and jockeying for position against an adversary, you might incidentally crouch, step forward, crouch, then step forward again all relatively quickly; if you happen to hit a button for a poke at the end, and all the inputs are close enough together, and your EX Gauge is filled, you’ll activate a Critical Art.
63214789 Shortcuts
4268
The circular 63214789 command has always been a little inexact. You can start it from any position, whether walking forward or backward. Given enough inputs around the circle, it can finish at any position, too. It requires upward motions by definition, but this is okay because pre-jump frames allow built-in leeway for upward motions in specials. The actual input the game is looking for isn’t a circle at all, though. It’s four different inputs from each of the cardinal or inter-cardinal directions. It doesn’t matter which order they’re in. To illustrate this, here are some legitimate commands to execute Screw Pile Driver: 4628 , 1397 , 7391 , 4619 , and 2438 . These aren’t necessarily even feasible unless you’re using certain custom controllers or a keyboard on PC, but this is simply meant to illustrate what the game is looking for. It isn’t really a circle, and it isn’t really even however many consecutive inputs along a circular path as is sometimes claimed. It’s just one input each from backward, downward, forward, and upward. Repeated inputs don’t count, and you can’t make an input count for more than one direction ( 1 can only count as your backward or your downward input in a given SPD motion, but not both).
For most players who are using a regular controller or joystick, this primarily just helps explain why you can somewhat seem to flub SPD motions and still get them. It also explains the OG trick of performing a half-circle motion, then heading to up. For players on keyboards and custom controllers, this can actually be used to a fairly large advantage. If you know that SPD only really requires four inputs, and it’s possible for you to hit only those inputs without having to travel along the edge of a d-pad’s or joystick’s inputs going from one to another, then you have a faster motion altogether.
Shoto
Gouken’s disciples, the Shoryuken and Hadoken-wielding Shotokan fighters. Ryu and Ken are the originals, going all the way back to the first SF game, and they’re naturally back in SFV.
Size
The gap between character sizes isn’t as big as it is in many fighting games, but characters still differ in size in various ways. This can have implications when poking, zoning, jumping in, crossing up, and performing combos.
A character’s actual strikable size is determined by hurtboxes, which don’t conform perfectly to on screen character images. A character’s throwable area, as well as the area where they’ll literally push against other characters, is their pushbox. The pushbox is smaller than the hurtbox area, more central in a character’s visual, and shorter, too. It’s the height of the pushbox, not the height of the hurtbox, that determines when and at which angle an airborne character might cross-up through a character.
With the exception of Vega, who’s unusually tall for his speed, the fastest characters also tend to be small (Chun-Li, Cammy, V-Trigger Necalli). The bigger the character, the slower their pace (Zangief, Birdie). Being huge has other consequences: tall crouchers are much more susceptible to “instant” jumping overhead tactics than smaller characters, especially Birdie.
The measurements here are not official units and are intended to show character sizes generally, relative to one another.
Standing Height
NAME
HURTBOX HEIGHT
V-Trigger Necalli
75
Most characters
100
M. Bison and Vega
110
Birdie, F.A.N.G and Zangief
125
Standing Pushbox Height
NAME
PUSHBOX HEIGHT
Cammy
85
R. Mika
95
Most characters
100
Nash
103
F.A.N.G
105
M. Bison and Vega
110
Birdie and Zangief
125
Crouching Height
NAME
CROUCHING HURTBOX HEIGHT
Most characters
100
Zangief
120
Birdie
140
Crouching Pushbox Height
NAME
CROUCHING PUSHBOX HEIGHT
Vega
83
Cammy
85
Chun-Li
85
R. Mika
85
M. Bison
90
Most characters
100
Birdie and Zangief
110
Width
NAME
HURTBOX WIDTH STANDING
HURTBOX WIDTH CROUCHING
Most characters
7
8
Birdie and Zangief
9
10
Soft Knockdown
Refers to knockdowns that allow the victim to “tech” back to their feet immediately somehow. In Street Fighter V, almost all knockdowns are “soft,” allowing quick-recovery or back quick-recovery. Only knockdowns from counter-hit sweeps and a few certain moves are unrecoverable “hard” knockdowns. See wakeup and quick-recovery.
SPD
Initials for Zangief’s Screw Pile Driver, the game’s dominant command grab.
Special Moves
Special moves (usually just “specials”) are executed by correctly inputting a short motion sequence followed by a normal button. Most special moves are executed with one of the classic motions that dates all the way back to the first Street Fighter: quarter-circle and dragon punch motions. Other specials use half-circle motions or charge techniques. Most special moves have an EX version that can be performed (at the cost of a stock of EX Gauge) by pressing two normal buttons to complete the command. With a full EX Gauge, you can spend the whole thing to execute a character’s strongest special move, their Critical Art.
This represents how much punishment a character can take before being knocked out, and it is displayed by two gauges at the top of the screen. A character loses a round when all their stamina is wiped out. Slower, sturdier, heavier characters tend to have more stamina, requiring a bit more punishment to knock them out than diminutive, quick, lower-stamina characters. Stamina damage is usually just called damage.
Your playstyle means more to your survivability than these figures, and there’s less of a delta between the sturdiest and flimsiest characters than in previous titles anyway. Still, it’s worth being aware of. Higher-stamina characters will sometimes end up trading some of their stamina advantage taking risks to achieve their objectives, while lower-stamina characters pay a relatively higher price for their mistakes. Damage taken from combos begins to scale as the hits mount; some damage scaling also goes into effect after the stamina bar is less than half full.
Characters also have a stun gauge: a smaller bar just under the stamina gauge that displays how much stun damage they can sustain before becoming dizzied.
NAME
STAMINA
RANK
Birdie
1050
A
Zangief
1050
A
Laura
1000
B
Ryu
1000
B
Ken
1000
B
M. Bison
1000
B
Necalli
1000
B
Vega
1000
B
Rashid
950
C
Chun-Li
950
C
R. Mika
950
C
F.A.N.G
950
C
Nash
950
C
Cammy
900
D
Dhalsim
900
D
Karin
900
D
Stance
A stance is a character’s current posture and determines what kind of actions are available to them. Basic voluntary postures like standing, crouching, and jumping give access to different sets of normal and special moves. Involuntary stances like hitstun and knockdowns hurt your character, while giving various advantages to your opponent.
A character’s most basic, neutral posture, upright on their feet and ready to act. Normals will be the standing versions, as opposed to crouching or jumping variants. Standing characters can walk and dash for movement, and also guard standing against incoming high/mid strikes.
Startup
The initial wind-up frames of an attack prior to active frames. Counter-hits are attacks that strike the startup of the opponent’s attacks, interrupting them and dealing extra damage and hitstun. See frame data.
Strike
One of the two main classes of attack types, with the other being grabs. Strikes target opposing characters’ hurtboxes, and must be blocked to avoid staminadamage, stun, and hitstun. (Striking medium and heavy normals still cause whitedamage; striking specials and CriticalArts still cause chipdamage.)
Strong
Original name for medium punch ( MP ).
Stun
Stun is a parameter that builds up over time as characters sustain repeated damage. The heavier the attack, the more stun it deals, generally speaking. A gauge located just under the stamina bar represents accrued stun. Like stamina damage, stun damage scales in multi-hit combos. If the barrage of hits doesn’t continue, accumulated stun damage begins to wear off quickly. If the stun gauge is filled up, a character is dizzied. They’ll fall down immediately, then rise at normal speed while unable to act for a considerable period of time.
Activating a V-Reversal immediately removes 200 stun.
Crouching HK , or low roundhouse. Every character’s crouching HK is a damaging knockdown move that must be blocked crouching. If a sweep counter-hits, it causes an unrecoverable (or “hard”) knockdown, giving the sweeper the perfect chance to set up an ideal cross-up or meaty. This is especially relevant since hits against dashes are counter-hits. Sweeps usually also have decent range, making them good footsie and whiff-punish tools. Remember that every character’s sweep is very punishable when guarded.
A chaincombo specific to a particular character. Involves cancelingnormal moves into one another. Ken’s 4 + MP x> HP and Nash’s standing LK x> MK are just two examples. Target combos are listed under each character’s uniqueattacks section.
Taunt
Each character’s “personal action,” a harmless move intended to rile up their opponent. Accomplished by pressing all six normal buttons at once. (Obviously, it’s easiest to just have buttons assigned to PPP and KKK and simply hit those together.) Taunting has input priority over all other actions, including V-Trigger, so you can’t get any option-select juice out of trying to press everything at once.
Tech
A term that has spanned so many games that it gets used even where it doesn’t show up, a “tech” is a general defensive escape appropriate to the current situation. So, a “tech throw” is a throwescape, a “tech rise” or “tech get-up” is a quick-recovery, and so on. Can be used by itself, as in “Wow, he teched that?”
Tempo
Tempo is essentially the rhythm of the game. Having tempo advantage means you’re the one asking the questions, whether it’s having a projectile in play or putting your enemy in repeated blockstun sequences in your close-range offense. You’re challenging the opponent to come up with an answer. It doesn’t necessarily equate to frame advantage since it’s an abstract (but noticeably real) concept. For instance, if you knock down an opponent with enough advantage to apply pressure, you’re at a massive tempo advantage. You’re the first to act, and you set the pacing for the next scenario. Another example is if you’re applying constant blockstun with sequences that are difficult to deal with, such as performing Ryu’s standing MP up close and then following up with walk-up jab pressure. Your opponent has to deal with being in guardstun, and the onus is on them to be able to react and time their defensive maneuvers appropriately. On paper, it’s easy to think that you can just use frame data to counter these kinds of strategies and simply press the right buttons at the right time. However, this isn’t a turn-based game like chess; you have to take human error and habits into account and exploit them. Being aware of tempo is an excellent way to do just that.
One of the most important ways to use tempo is being unpredictable with it. The best tournament players have excellent tempo management in that they can put you in awkward spots at awkward times, causing you to mistime or misjudge attacks because of an earlier pattern they performed. For example, Ken’s standing HP x> Quick Step is -6 on block, but it can be made “safe” by using an unpredictable bullying tactic. If the Ken player has been mixing up his attacks with lights, mediums, and heavies (which all have varying blockstun timings), he can potentially get away with using standing HP x> Quick Step to get in safely and strike/throw you.
While you’re improving your fighting game skills, keep this concept in the back of your mind. You’ll be able to identify how certain players react to certain rhythms, and you can start taking advantage of their weaknesses by adjusting your own tempo patterns.
Throw
Throws are unblockable attacks that grab instead of strike. Execute normal throws with LP + LK , or 4 + LP + LK . Also, escape normal throws with LP + LK immediately before or after your opponent initiates a throw. Normal throws are active on the fifth frame, slower than in previous Street Fighter titles. Only some Critical Art throws grab sooner than the fifth frame (Laura’s, Zangief’s, and R. Mika’s). Many characters have inescapable command throws in addition to normal throws.
Behind the scenes, throw hitboxes target opposing pushboxes instead of hurtboxes. You can tell where pushboxes end by just walking into opposing characters. That’s the same boundary targeted by throws, so keep that in mind when gauging throw ranges.
Throw Invulnerability
Some moves have periods of throw invulnerability during which grabs will whiff through them. Some moves aren’t explicitly throw-invulnerable, but they have an airborne period that will cause ground throws to miss. Backdashes are all inherently throw-invulnerable upon startup.
Tick
A tick is a quick poke (probably with advantage on block) intended to set up the expectation that more normalmoves are coming. This instinctively gets defenders to block, creating a perfect opening to throw them. Many ticks can also double as the initial hits during a hit-check combo or frame trap.
Top-down
An old early fighting game term for overhead attacks that must be blocked standing.
Trade
An attack exchange where both attacks succeed, sending both combatants into hitstun. This is a bit rarer in SFV compared with other Street Fighter games because of the trade priority system. A trade requires same-priority attacks to connect with their targets on the same frame. While all specials have the same trade priority, grounded normals and unique attacks won’t often trade for the sheer variety of buttons available to both players and the way that up-close combat generally shakes out. Players with tempo advantage will tend to use slower, heavier attacks, basically “spending” their frame advantage for a chance to more safely use a higher-strength attack. Defending players, on the other hand, will tend toward quicker, lighter-strength attacks, hoping that quick pokes will thwart their aggressors. These tendencies are only encouraged by the trade priority system. Players acting from disadvantage must beat their attackers to the punch and act as quickly as possible since they’ll lose any head-on trade anyway. Conversely, aggressors are incentivized to add a little extra oomph to their assaults, thanks to trade priority and counter-hit potential.
Trade Priority
When different-strength attacks each strike their targets on the same frame, the higher-strength attack wins cleanly, scoring a counter-hit. This priority applies to ground-based normals and unique attacks. If Ryu’s standing LK overlaps with Ken’s crouching MP , Ken wins cleanly. If Dhalsim’s crouching MK overlaps with Karin’s crouching HP , Karin wins cleanly (and scores a Crush Counter launcher, to boot). This priority system for trades was also in Street Fighter III, and it generally reduces the number of trades you’ll see in a given match. It helps strongly incentivize the use of heavy attacks, especially those that lead to Crush Counters.
Training Mode
Training Mode is an invaluable resource for competitive fighting game players and one you should spend much of your time in if you’re serious about improving. You can strengthen almost all aspects of your play in Training Mode, ranging from execution to reaction time and even matchups. Many of the world’s best fighting game players commit substantial amounts of time testing and practicing drills in Training Mode. It’s highly recommended that you learn the ins and outs of SFV’s extensive Training Mode to further your game.
The basic Training Mode settings let you adjust various parameters to fit whatever scenario you encounter in combat. Instead of just thrashing the training dummy when practicing your combos, you can set up the dummy to emulate a realistic and unpredictable opponent under Dummy Settings. The primary options you’ll want to adjust are Guard, Recovery, State, and Counter.
Training Hit-Confirm Reactions
Set Guard to Random to test your hit-confirm reactions and Counter to Random to practice counter-hit hit-confirms. Set both on Random for the most realistic simulation against a human being, where you might want to be ready to react differently to block, normal hit, and counter-hit. It’s also a good idea to set the dummy’s State to Crouch if you’re practicing a frame trap scenario, since most players naturally guard crouching while on the defensive. Some may find this type of practice tedious, but just like in real sports, you’ll find your drills paying off dividends in matches. The more you can store into your muscle memory and natural reactions, the more you can focus on other aspects of the game in the middle of a match.
Training Against Different Knockdown Recovery Timings
With knockdowns and knockdown follow-ups being a significant portion of how SFV is played, you can set the Recovery options to Quick Recover, Back Recover, or Random to help you create setups and follow-ups to your combos and knockdowns. Normal Recovery causes the training dummy to use quick-recovery ( PP or 2 version), waking up quickly in place, while Back Recovery causes the dummy to use back quick-recovery ( KK or 4 ). Note that if you knock down the dummy with a throw-type move while it’s set to Back Recovery, it will default to quick-recovery.
Training Against Different Wakeup Reversals
In conjunction with the Recovery settings, you can set the dummy to perform certain attacks or sequences upon wakeup (from any recovery). Under Record Wake-Up Actions, you can store up to five sequences. Select a Recording Slot, and hit the PS4 X button. You’ll see a timer indicating when to execute your recording; buffer your command as soon as the timer hits 0 to set that wakeup recording. Then, turn on the recording by going into the Set Wake-Up Actions menu and setting that slot to ON. If you record multiple sequences and turn more than one on, the dummy will randomly pick a sequence to wake up with on its recovery.
This is an incredibly handy tool to use in practicing your knockdown setups because it emulates a realistic situation so well. For instance, you can create three recordings of Ken performing a wakeup MP Shoryuken, a wakeup crouching LP , and a wakeup throw (tech attempt), each in its own recording slot. Then, regardless of the settings you have for Recovery, the dummy will randomly perform one of those sequences whenever it recovers from a knockdown. This lets you practice just about any kind of setup so you can test out various follow-ups to your knockdowns.
Training Recording and Playback
The other advanced recording features of Training Mode let you practice more than just your combos and knockdown setups. You can use the Record feature to practice punishing moves and teching throws, and even to set up your own offensive patterns against yourself to test the difficulty of deflecting them. You can configure these settings by changing the Dummy Settings Status to Playback Recording, where you’ll find two more sets of options under Action Recording Settings and Action Playback Settings.
These settings store up to five separate sequences that can be turned on or off individually. If multiple recordings are activated, they’ll be played back at random, allowing you to practice reacting against varying sequences.
To practice punishing attacks (with Start Recording Settings set to Button Input), highlight the Recording Slot you want to use and press the PS4 X button. Then, just perform the attack you want to punish, followed by 1 (which simulates blocking afterward). To play it back, under Action Playback Settings, change your Recording Slot to ON. For instance, if you want to practice punishing Rashid’s Eagle Spike, select Rashid as the training dummy and start the recording for one of the slots as mentioned. Then, execute 214 + K , followed by holding 1 long enough to block after his recovery. Go back into the menu and turn the recording on. Now when you unpause, Rashid will repeatedly execute your recording exactly as you performed it, including the blocking portion. All you have to do now is block his attack with your primary character and practice punishing his recovery.
Making use of the random playback of multiple recordings lets you practice defending against a variety of situations. If, for example, you wanted to train your up-close defense against throws and frame traps, you could set multiple recordings that branch off to separate follow-ups. Let’s say you want to
practice defending against Laura’s ticks into command throws with a frame trap mixed in. Set the training dummy as Laura, and then for the first recording, record a sequence of 6 6 (to dash in next to you), standing LK x> 63214 + LK (her hard-to-escape standing short into LK Sunset Wheel). Then, make another recording where she does 6 6 , standing LK l> standing MP . Now, go into the Action Playback Settings and turn both of these recordings on. Unpause the game, and she’ll constantly vary between the two sequences, letting you practice escaping these mix-ups.
The allowed recording time is extremely long (especially compared to SFIV’s 10-second limit), so you can record elaborate sequences to test almost anything you want. Creative use of these features can go a long way toward making you a better player, even if you don’t have access to other players to train with.
Tripguard
An unofficial term referring to the ability to act immediately when landing from a jump. Jumps have landing recovery: four frames, in the absence of further input. Whether you act or not during a jump, you can cancel the last two frames of landing recovery into other actions. The important frames are the first two, though.
If you don’t act in midair, you still can’t cancel into ground movement for two frames on landing, but you CAN attack or (much more importantly) block. If you DO act in midair, then you cannot do anything for the first two frames (with the exception of teching a throw, which is still possible).
In other words, you make yourself unavoidably vulnerable upon landing if you attack in midair. When you attack in midair, you are giving up tripguard—the ability to block immediately on landing. When you want to empty jump on purpose but retain tripguard (like when you want to empty jump into a low-hitting poke), avoid inputting your ground attack slightly early on the last frames of the jump before landing. There won’t even be time for the jumping move to animate to let you know you did that, but you will still lose tripguard.
Tripguard is most important for empty jump-in tactics like the one just mentioned, or for jump-ins from the inside edge of long range, where far-reaching jump-in attacks will just hit with their tips. If you have a low-profile, long-reaching poke from this range, like Chun-Li’s crouching MP , you can simply perform that as an unconventional anti-air at the last moment. Depending on the range and the matchup, the enemy’s jump-in may whiff, and then they’ll land on her low poke, unable to block. And if you’re the aggressor jumping in from long range, it’s often better to refrain from attacking during far jumps; your follow-ups from max range aren’t great anyway, and you’ll probably just get anti-aired or low-profiled as mentioned here. And, since you’re not sticking out an extra hurtbox of your own, you are more likely to bait a big whiffedanti-air.
Turtle
An overly defensive character or player. Some players are just turtles dispositionally, while some characters lend themselves to turtle play (obvious examples are Dhalsim and F.A.N.G). See metagame, and also the Matchups and Versus section at the end of the guide.
Two-in-One
SFII-era term for specialcancels that’s no longer used much (like “cheese” and “top-down” that way). Originated because you were getting two moves for one combined motion.
Unblockable
An attack that cannot be blocked. Throws cannot be blocked, and neither can F.A.N.G.’s Nishodoku V-Skill. Cross-up tactics are not strictly unblockable but are useful for their ambiguity; no one blocks truly ambiguous cross-ups every time. They can be sort of quasi-unblockable (or maybe just quasi-blockable) sometimes.
Unique Attack
The official term for what are usually called “command moves.” These are normals that are executed with a directional press in addition to the normal button. These attacks may be available grounded or in the air, and they usually have some property that distinguishes them from other normals. Several are dive kick-like attacks, like R. Mika’s Dive Bomb and Dhalsim’s Drill Kicks. Some are simply variant ground pokes, like Chun-Li’s 4 / 6 + MP and Ryu’s 6 + HP . Many are command overheads, like Ryu’s 6 + MP , Karin and Ken’s 6 + MK , and Birdie’s 6 + HK , among others. They can also be pokes that move forward quickly or that go briefly airborne, avoiding lows and throws. Numerous unique attacks are also parts of target combos.
Unrecoverable Knockdown
Synonymous with hard knockdown. In SFV, this generally only happens after counter-hit sweeps, which cause an unrecoverable (sometimes also called “untechable”) knockdown as part of their Crush Counter bonus. This creates a huge advantage in both frames and position since the attacker can move freely while the victim is forced to lie floored for the full knockdown duration. Other moves that cause an unrecoverable knockdown don’t usually give the attacker an advantage and are typically hard knockdowns for cinematic reasons (e.g., Karin’s Critical Art, which prevents quick-recovery so that Karin can laugh). See quick-recovery, wakeup, and okizeme.
Unsafe
Refers to tactics that guarantee some punishment to the enemy if they fail. For example, Shoryuken, EX Ressenha, EX Spinning Mixer, etc. are unsafe reversals because if they’re whiffed or blocked, the defender gets a clean opening. (These moves are particularly unsafe in SFV because they’re susceptible to Crush Counter punishment during recovery.) Depending on whether the opposing character’s fastest moves are three or four frames, that’ll represent the beginning of your punishable disadvantage. Unless you’re against Zangief loaded with EX Gauge, situations of -2 or better are generally safe (though you may give up tempo advantage).
Verification
Confirming a desired result before performing a potentially risky follow-up. See the hit-confirm entry in combos.
Vortex
This is a concept that isn’t significantly applicable in SFV. It’s a strategy that involves putting the opponent into coin-flip situations repeatedly until they’re out of stamina. It was a prevalent win condition in the earlier versions of SFIV before delayed wakeup was introduced in USFIV. Characters with combos that led into hard knockdowns made the most out of this strategy (Akuma and Sakura were notorious for this). The idea is to knock down the opponent and then follow up with a hard-to-block attack that combos into another knockdown, putting the enemy back into the same coin-flip scenario. Characters and playstyles centered around a vortex can make matchups feel like they mean a little less. No matter the situation, it can seem like all that’s needed is that one opening, which is not a feeling most characters experience.
In SFV, this has been almost completely removed from the game thanks to the amount of recovery options the defender has access to. Not only do quick-recovery, back quick-recovery, and standard recovery have varying wakeup timings, but back quick-recovery also rises in a different spot, thwarting distance-dependent okizeme tactics. The only meaningful unrecoverable knockdown you can get is off of a Crush Counter sweep (counter-hit crouching HK for every character). It’s impossible to combo into it for a guaranteed hard knockdown state since you have to counter-hit with the actual sweep attack.
V-System
Completely new to Street Fighter V, the V-System is somewhat like the Ultra/Revenge Gauge mechanic in SFIV but differs in interesting ways. Instead of just one gauge building up to a kind of desperation Super/hit-confirm tool, you have a gauge building up to an “Alpha Counter” defensive move and an Ultra-like action that is a special striking move for some characters and a lengthy power-up state for others. Each character also has a V-Skill, which is like a special move oriented around building V-Gauge and helping cover their weaknesses.
NAME
V-SKILL
V-TRIGGER
Birdie
Chow down to build V-Gauge with Break Time, set up a banana peel obstacle with Banana Time, or set a can rolling on the ground with Drink Time.
Enjoy Time has an initial flaming hit that can be used in juggles and greatly powers up Birdie’s speed and damage.
Cammy
Axel Spin Knuckle can close in, pass through projectiles, and cross-up on the ground.
Delta Drive is a power-up state that gives Cammy access to amplified versions of her special moves.
Chun-Li
Rankyaku is a command jump with an attack on the ascent that gives Chun-Li different jump-in trajectories and situational juggle potential.
Renkiko powers up all of Chun-Li’s attacks, making them all multi-hit moves and altering their parameters in many ways.
Dhalsim
Yoga Float enables hovering for unpredictable air movement.
Yoga Burner gives Dhalsim a knockdown hit that bathes much of the screen in white damage-inflicting flames.
F.A.N.G
Nishodoku is an unblockable projectile that poisons targets.
Dokunomu poisons anyone who nears F.A.N.G.
Karin
Karin has a quick version of her Meioken palm strike, as well as a slower, harder-hitting one.
Kanzuki-Ryu Guren No Kata gives Karin access to her Guren Ken special move, a double-punch that branches off to amped-up versions of all her other specials.
Ken
Quick Step can move forward quickly after normal moves, and Step Kick is an optional knockdown hit on the end.
Heat Rush begins with a built-in Quick Step, then powers up all of Ken’s special moves.
Laura
Volty Line is an overhead wheel kick, Linear Movement – Avante is a forward command dash, and Linear Movement – Esquiva is a backward command dash.
Spark Show electrifies Laura, improving her Thunder Clap projectile characteristics, her V-Skill movement range, and her stun damage.
M. Bison
Psycho Reflect allows absorption of single-hit projectiles and strikes and lets M. Bison hurl back a unique projectile.
Psycho Power unleashes the power of Shadaloo, giving M. Bison new versions of all his special moves and forward dash, and allowing his EX specials to be canceled into one another.
Nash
Bullet Clear works as a V-Gauge-building poke and a move that swats away incoming projectiles.
Sonic Move – Hide, Blitz Air, and Steel Air are single-use teleports that allow Nash to either escape from dire situations or set up sudden mix-ups and huge combos from anywhere on screen.
Necalli
Culminated Power geysers can be directed at close, mid, or long range and are a bit like C. Viper’s Seismic Hammers from SFIV.
When activated, Torrent of Power permanently transforms Necalli into his darkest self for the remainder of the current round, powering him up in basically every way.
R. Mika
Heated Mic Performance is an armored taunt that powers up R. Mika’s next throw attempt.
Nadeshiko is an “assist”-like helper who can be summoned to dropkick in from either side or splash down from the top of the screen.
Rashid
Front Flip and Rolling Assault special movements help give Rashid unparalleled hit-and-run ability.
Ysaar is a huge spinning tornado that helps Rashid take up screen space and will power up his movement options and specials as he passes through it.
Ryu
Mind’s Eye is SFV’s version of SFIII’s parry mechanic.
During Denjin Renki, Ryu’s punches are all amplified, including his Shoryuken and Hadoken.
Vega
The Matador Turn dodge maneuver can lead into the Matador Turn Attack, a slicing knockdown hit.
Vega’s Bloody Kiss rose projectile can be tossed at three different angles, leading into a multi-hit slashing attack on a successful hit.
Zangief
Iron Muscle allows Zangief to flex so intensely that he’ll absorb two incoming hits with armor and can lead into a flexing follow-up strike.
Cyclone Lariat allows Zangief to pull opponents to him from almost half the screen away and gives him a combo/mix-up tool once they’re up close.
V-Gauge
The V-Gauge’s stocks are 300 points wide, so two-stock characters require 600 points of V-Gauge for V-Trigger, while three-stock characters require 900 points. Single stocks of V-Gauge are burned when using V-Reversals; the full V-Gauge is required to use a V-Trigger. In between rounds, the V-Gauge resets to zero.
NAME
V-GAUGE SIZE
Most characters
600
Birdie, Ken, M. Bison, Necalli, Zangief
900
V-Gauge is built up most reliably by taking stamina damage. Damage received translates directly into V-Gauge at a rate proportional to your character’s max stamina. Cammy receives about 1.5 times stamina damage taken as V-Gauge, while Zangief receives about 1.25 times damage taken as V-Gauge. (So, a 100-damage attack gives Cammy 150 V-Gauge and gives Zangief 125 V-Gauge.)
Ultimately, this works out to receiving slightly more than a stock of V-Gauge for every 25 percent stamina damage you receive.
It’s important to note that V-Gauge gain from damage includes white damage. This means that it is possible to slowly gain V-Gauge just by blocking and armor-absorbing attacks, without giving up clean damage.
Crush Counters also build V-Gauge. Most of them build 150, but a handful actually build 300 (a full stock) all at once. Depending on how frequently you land your Crush Counter-capable heavy normals as counter-hits, this can be a huge boon to your V-Gauge gain. It can load you up with early V-Reversal potential when you haven’t taken much damage, letting you keep tempo with an extra defensive move to widen an early lead. You can help an early lead landslide without giving up your shot at V-Trigger later if your opponent staunches the bleeding and whittles you down. It can also lead to getting V-Triggers much earlier than normal, especially two-stock ones.
The nature of V-Gauge (gained mostly through damage attrition and gone in between rounds) basically means smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. There is no point to conserving V-Gauge. Don’t be shy about burning V-Reversals to release pressure, to take back tempo, and to avoid getting stunned. Likewise, don’t hesitate to use V-Triggers for their hit-check potential and game-changing bonuses.
V-Skill
V-Skills don’t cost V-Gauge to use, and all have the potential for building V-Gauge themselves. Depending on the current character matchup, your V-Skill may be great for building V-Gauge and helping control the pace, but in other matchups, it won’t be helpful at all. For example, Nash’s Bullet Clear can be great against Ryu but is not very relevant against Zangief.
V-Skills are activated with MP + MK . Most characters also have variant V-Skills, activated either by holding the medium inputs or by holding a direction with them.
V-Skills are sort of like a character-unique special move, but they don’t have quite the same properties as specials. Most characters cannot cancelnormals into V-Skills, for example, and most V-Skills can’t cancel into anything else. This isn’t universal, though: Ken and Laura can cancel normals into their movement-oriented V-Skills. Rashid can fire HK/EX Whirlwind Shot and cancel into his movement-related V-Skills, too. Birdie can cancel normals into his food-related V-Skills. And Necalli and Vega have target combos that lead into their V-Skills. But for most characters, a V-Skill is a standalone activity.
V-Reversal
This hearkens back to “Alpha Counters” from the Street Fighter Alpha series. While blocking, tap 6 + PPP / KKK (character depending) to instantly cancel blockstun with a counterattack. This is the only possible way to leave guardstun early. V-Reversal attacks are fully strike- and projectile-invincible but are vulnerable to throws and are typically somewhat slow. Upon activation, 200 stun damage is immediately removed from the V-Reversal character’s stun gauge.
Opponents who expect a V-Reversal can use a quick, light tick and then do nothing, baiting out a V-Reversal they have time to block. Or, they can tick and simply go for a throw, which may grab the V-Reversal before it’s even active. Against blocked medium or heavy attacks, though, V-Reversals will usually strike before the attacker recovers. V-Reversals deal light damage, and in non-permanent white damage form, too, but their point is regaining momentum, not dealing damage.
Not every V-Reversal is a strike: Nash, F.A.N.G, and Vega have strictly evasive V-Reversals.
V-Trigger
V-Trigger, SFV’s new capstone system, usually gives each character one extra-special hit-check and a powered-up state per round. Even if a character doesn’t land any Crush Counters or V-Skills, they will usually have access to V-Trigger at around half of max stamina for two-stock characters and at around a quarter stamina left for three-stock fighters. (You’ll generally get a stock for every 25 percent stamina damage you take.) This means that two-stock characters can safely blow a V-Reversal early in rounds if it’ll help maintain tempo advantage, while almost certainly still getting V-Trigger before the end (unless the opponent does something stellar like finish them off at half stamina with a 500-damage combo or something).
Vega and R. Mika have V-Triggers that are like abnormal single attacks, useful in hit-confirms and as neutral game deterrents. Rashid’s V-Trigger doesn’t last much longer, nor does Dhalsim’s. But for most characters, V-Trigger is a power-up state that lasts quite a while, as long as over a minute (or, in Necalli’s case, for the rest of the current round). V-Trigger power-up state duration is usually a combination of a ticking timer, plus an extra drain on the timer when you use certain actions. These are radically different between characters. For example, Cammy’s V-Trigger timer lasts more than 30 seconds, but each V-special you use will eat up more than 16 seconds of duration. M. Bison’s V-Trigger lasts 25 seconds, and each V-special used burns up 2.5 seconds of duration.
Wakeup
When a character is knocked down, they enter a floored period, laid out on the ground. They’re normally invincible during this time until they rise, or “wake up.” Since a floored character can’t move or act, and since they’ll rise predictably with limited options, waking up is a weak position to be in. Mix-ups directed at a character on wakeup are called okizeme. Every character rises from a knockdown at the same speed and with the same options available.
From a recoverable knockdown (or techable/soft knockdown), PP / 2 quick-recovery allows characters to spring immediately back to their feet. KK / 4 back quick-recovery allows a rising position farther back, at the expense of five extra frames of rising time. After getting knocked down, it’s generally always best to quick-rise (whether in place or backward), unless you’re getting mixed up repeatedly and need a breather to think things over and slow down your foe’s progress toward dizzying you.
Unrecoverable knockdowns (or untechable/hard knockdowns) can’t be cut short with quick-recovery but only really occur after counter-hit sweeps. The only other restriction on quick-recovery in SFV is that after being thrown, you’ll only have the option to use quick-recovery in place, not back quick-recovery.
Walk
The most basic form of movement. See movement.
Whiff
An attack that misses, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Special moves may be whiffed at long range or when retreating to build EX Gauge. Normal moves might be whiffed at mid range to long range as fakes for more committed actions (like throwing a projectile). At mid range and close range, moves will often be whiffed at the edge of their ranges in footsie battles. Whiffed normal moves cannot be canceled into other actions like specials, Critical Arts, or V-Trigger activations (an exception being Ken’s standing MK x> HK target combo, possible on whiff).
Whiff-Punish
Punishing a whiffed attack by striking either late activeframes or the recovery period of the move. Often employed in footsies, as opponents may stick out pokes that just barely miss, leaving them vulnerable. Whiff-punishing can also occur after your opponent guesses that you’ll continue being aggressive and then goes for a big reversal move. If you read their desire and do nothing, they’ll leave themselves wide open for whatever punishment you want to dole out.
Effective whiff-punishing in footsies requires a combination of effective spacing, matchup knowledge, and educated guesses about what the opponent will do. This allows you to narrow down your focus to the most likely options your opponent will use, greatly raising the odds that you’ll react properly to beat them out. You don’t have to worry about the dozens and dozens of potential moves your opponent can access—just the things they’ll probably actually do.
A new type of damage similar to SFIV’s “gray damage.” This provisional damage is built up by certain circumstances and then “unlocked” with “real” damage from a successful strike or throw. White damage builds up through blocking anything stronger than a normal LK or LP attack. In other words, blocking jabs and shorts won’t build up white damage, but medium and heavy normals will, as will blocked specials.
White damage build-up from blocked attacks is one-sixth of a clean hit. For example, a 90-damage normal move will accrue 15 white damage when blocked. White damage will recover quickly, but only if no contact is made with the opponent for 90 frames, or a second and a half. You can see how several blockstrings or heavy pokes blocked back-to-back can ultimately lead to a poke that deals lots of extra damage on hit.
White damage also builds up from absorptions during armored periods. The full damage is registered—an absorbed 90-damage poke is still a 90-damage poke—but the damage can be recovered over time.
Like taking normal damage on hit, taking white damage on block builds up the V-Gauge, though at one-sixth of the normal rate. (V-Gauge gain for armor-absorb hits is normal.)
Zoning
Zoning is using spaced, typically long-range tactics to hold your opponent at bay from afar. Zoning is usually based on effective projectile use, although Dhalsim can also use his extendable limbs and Birdie has long-reaching chain strikes.
发表于 2016-4-29 03:27:37
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