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darkknightkryta on 17 March 2016
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Hiku said:
darkknightkryta said:

Except you figure that all out while you play :P.  Your open as long as you're in an animation.  I've personally always timed myself against animations to know when something is left open.  

Regarding punishes, when it comes to how unsafe your own move is on block, it can be hard to see if they're unsafe at all if it's only -3 or something, unless your opponent properly punishes it. But what's also important to know is how punishable it is. If your move is only -3 on block, you can't get punished very hard because all your opponent can do to punish you is hit you with a light punch or kick, which in this game for most characters can't combo into mediums. However, depending on how negative you are on block after your attack, the punish your opponent can make if they block your move can be much more severe. And the difference between being heavy punch/kick into Critical Art punished can be as little as one frame. Knowing the difference will help you better gauge your risk vs reward decision making.

For example, if Move A can only be punished with 150 damage, and Move B can be punished with 450 damage, I may chose to go with Move A to be safe. Or I can chose to take the risk of going with Move B, because if I land it, I know it will lead into a combo that will kill my opponent, whereas Move A will not.
Or, if I'm already at such a low health that either option will get me killed on block, I might as well go for the bigger rewarding attack. Unless that's what my opponent expects and is ready fort it..

Anyway my point is this. 1 single frame can make a huge difference, and that's 1/60th of a second, whcih is impossible to discern with your eyes.
Even if your opponent tries to punish one of your moves and fails, you can't be 100% certain that it's safe because they may have pressed the button too late, whether they are the CPU or a human opponent. Ther only way to be sure is to test against the training dummy in training mode, or have a friend help you control it for this specific purpose. Or read the framedata. Which saves you a lot of time not having to test a lot of things manually.

Then we have frame traps. Just knowing whether a move is safe on block or not isn't enough to know if you can use it as a frametrap.
For example, if your attack is -1 on block (meaning you will recover from your animation 1 frame later than your opponent recovers from their block stun animation), if you block after your attack, you will be safe. However, if you both press a light button immediately after this, you will get hit with a counter hit. But if you are +1 after your attack is blocked, the situation is reversed. You will hit your opponent with a counterhit instead, if you both press a button.
And if you are +2, as with the example of Chun Li above, you can even use a medium punch instead of a light one, and still beat out your opponents move for even more damage and higher combo potential. And that's the difference 1 single frame can do.

I can assure you, you will be punished.  I remember in Marvel vs Street Fighter, I learned the timing so well back in the day, I could punish you right as your feet would hit the ground.  Plus its common knowledge the start up and end time of normals (Like, your lights are safe unless some programmer hates you, etc).  They're mostly within range of each other.  Hell I was playing Alpha 3 last night and Zangief kept on doing bullshit.  Throwing me out of mid animation soul spires.  Which is utter bull.  But, you adapt.  Hell his spinning pile driver was hitting me while I would be in the middle of a ranged hard normal (Rose has a pretty high range with her normals) which should have hit Zangief, and would have hit anyone else (I find Zangief's priority insane in most games).