Turtle Hermit School - Lesson 4 - Defence
Hi everyone!
Welcome to this lesson of the Turtle Hermit School series.
Broad information on the mechanics and notation can be found here.
This lesson focuses on defense.
Defence is the most important part of your play. It's a difficult concept to practice with training mode. Basic defence comes down to being patient and building good habits for blocking high and low attacks. When you start having to defend against pressure strings then you need to also be able to interrupt your opponents attacks and force them to end their pressure. I'll be covering this in another lesson as it is more difficult to do.
In this lesson I'll share some important rules to improve your defence and exercises to help you practice.
Patience is key - When defending, the strongest option is almost always blocking. It's sluggish, frustrating and doesn't feel like it helps you but it's the safest way to defend. If you can keep blocking until your opponent makes a mistake or leaves you an opening then you can escape almost any pressure in the game.
Blocking Low vs Blocking High - Grounded attacks can be blocked any way you like except for low attacks which must be blocked crouching. Overhead attacks need to be blocked standing but are slow and reactable. Attacks from the air need to be blocked high and there are no attacks that hit low from the air. Keeping these facts in mind we can formulate a basic rule. If your opponent is on the ground, block low. If your opponent is in the air, block high. This will protect you from the vast majority of attacks.
Prioritising your defence - Overhead attacks are the exception to the above rule. They are slow but they can also be surprising or masked with assists. The majority of overheads lead to very little damage. If you struggle to block them, focus on blocking low and air attacks as they lead to significantly more damage. When hit by an overhead, always block low. Overheads are at their most dangerous when they cause someone to panic and hit buttons or block standing.
Movement - Proper incorporation of movement (see lesson 2 & 6) can be an excellent way of avoiding damage, be careful when dashing too much as it turns off your block but a well placed backdash makes it easier to escape your opponent and can put you in a great position to poke.
You can't defend everything - When focusing so much on defence, every time you get hit it can feel like a loss, you've got a lot of health to work with and plenty of room to make mistakes.
Training Exercises
As I said above, defence is difficult to deliberately practice but there are 2 important exercises that can build the fundamentals I mentioned above.
Beginner Exercise 1 - Highs and lows
The reflex of blocking a jump attack high and then transitioning to a low block is an important habit to build, there are ways to extend air attacks to stay in the air longer so as you improve try to delay the crouch as long as possible, for now just do it right after a block.
Jump into training mode against a character you know fairly well.
Hit the record button and jump and land a heavy attack before you hit the ground, as soon as you can use your fastest grounded low attack, usually 2L but for some characters it's 2M (If you aren't comfortable doing this yet, I'd recommend taking the time to practice, it's an excellent tool for offense).
Position yourself close enough that the air attack will connect (or move to the corner) and hit playback. Block the high attack and then crouch low to block the low attack.
Repeat this until it starts to feel natural and swap sides regularly.
Intermediate Exercise 1 - Left and right
Another important reflex is blocking crossups, they can be extremely fast in this game so do what you can to build this reflex now and it will improve over time.
Jump into training mode against a character you know fairly well.
Hit the record button and perform an airdash over your character, hit a heavy attack late enough that it hits your opponent from the other side, follow up with a low attack (If you aren't comfortable doing this yet, I'd recommend taking the time to practice, it's an excellent tool for offense).
Position yourself close enough that the airdash will cross up (or move to the corner, leaving a small gap behind yourself) and hit playback. Block the high attack and then crouch low to block the low attack.
Repeat this until it starts to feel natural.
Thanks for reading, defence is a constant learning process and will slowly improve over time. The key is to stay calm even when taking damage and focus on your next defence.
If you have any questions, tips or feedback for me then feel free to PM me or leave it in the comment section below (provided it's relevant to this lesson).