So let's begin with one of the most fundamental techniques in 3rd strike - the hit-confirm.
What is hit-confirming? How can you do it?
In a nutshell, hit-confirming is exactly what it sounds like - confirming that a move has actually hit the opponent before continuing with a combo. There are quite a few ways to do this:
- Visually confirm that the move has connected (i.e. "my opponent Ken has a funny, 'ouch that hurts' look on his face'")
- Aurally hear that the move has connected, whether it's listening to the actually sound the move makes when it hits (which should be different from a block), or hearing the opponent's character make the "you've hit me" grunt
- See their lifebar go down after hitting the move, which occurs more or less instantaneously
Although it may seem like overkill to list all 3 of these - why listen for it when you can just see it? - I find myself using all 3 frequently enough to merit mentioning them all. For example, when the arcade is packed and it's very loud, listening for hit confirms is very difficult, so I naturally focus more on visual and lifebar confirmation. After resets where my character lands well before the opponent, I may end up throwing out a move before I can actually see my off-screen character (most common example is 2x air fierce after SAII), so I almost exclusively confirm using the lifebar in these situations, since the window for visual confirmation is fairly small in these scenarios. Ultimately, I find being able to use all 3 as the situation dictates is helpful in hit-confirming more consistently across the board.
Buffering joystick inputs, and how it helps with hit-confirming
One of the things that may initially seem hard to deal with is the combination of a fairly difficult input for supers (double-QCF + a button) with a short window in which to confirm. Even with easy confirms like Chun-li cr. MK xx SAII, you'd need lightning quick hands to get out the entire SAII input in time after seeing low-forward connect.
Thankfully, there is a way to make this process much easier to do, which involves buffering the double QCF during the low-foward animation. In other words, instead of trying to confirm like this:
Cr. MK --> (Did it hit?) --> QCF, QCF, K
You do this instead:
Cr. MK, QCF, QCF --> (Did it hit?) --> K
You do the cr. mk xx double QCF either before or while seeing if the move hits. That way, the only thing left for you to do after confirming that the move connected is to press a button. It may feel like a lot of wasted motion to input the QCFs every time when there's a high likelihood the move will be blocked, but you also have much less to do after confirming the hit, which means your effective window for the hit-confirm increases drastically.
Why is hit-confirming important?
So why is hit-confirming so important? Well, it should be fairly obvious that hit-confirming removes any random element from landing combos - if you're going for, say, cr. MK xx SAII with Chun-li, and you always wait to see that the low forward has connected, then you'll never, ever end up getting punished because they blocked the combo. Once you get good at hit-confirming, you'll find your play becomes considerably more consistent, and your opponents will no longer be able to play with the mindset "This person doesn't hit-confirm, so I can always just sit back and wait for an opportunity to punish a silly mistake." At the same time, they can't play overly aggressively because you will actually have the skills to follow up connected normals with specials/supers for big damage.
The issue of discipline with respect to hit-confirming
A big barrier when it comes to hit-confirming is discipline. It's easy to get frustrated when you miss the opportunity to combo a normal into a super, or the opponent blocks a whole bunch of normals in a row, denying you to opportunity to get off your big damage combos. However, it's important not to fall into the trap of getting impatient, and pulling the trigger just because you're tired of waiting or because you missed 2 or 3 hit-confirms in a row.
Every player, no matter how strong will miss hit-confirms from time to time. Watch enough videos of godlike players like Nuki and MOV, and you will see them miss an "easy" confirm like cr. MK xx SAII, and more frequently than you might think. The discipline aspect comes with internalizing the mindset: Failing to finish a hit-confirmed combo is just a missed opportunity; you still come out on top every time. Continuing a blocked combo is a death sentence; you will end up coming out well behind 100% of the time. (Of course, the major exception would be trying to chip out your opponent.)
Although MOV and Nuki may fail to convert a connected low forward into super from time to time (say, maybe 1 out of every 10 times), they will virtually never follow up a blocked normal with a blocked super. Not 1 in 100 times, probably not even 1 in a 1000 times. That is the sort of discipline that one needs to develop with respect to hit confirms.
What is hit-confirming? How can you do it?
In a nutshell, hit-confirming is exactly what it sounds like - confirming that a move has actually hit the opponent before continuing with a combo. There are quite a few ways to do this:
- Visually confirm that the move has connected (i.e. "my opponent Ken has a funny, 'ouch that hurts' look on his face'")
- Aurally hear that the move has connected, whether it's listening to the actually sound the move makes when it hits (which should be different from a block), or hearing the opponent's character make the "you've hit me" grunt
- See their lifebar go down after hitting the move, which occurs more or less instantaneously
Although it may seem like overkill to list all 3 of these - why listen for it when you can just see it? - I find myself using all 3 frequently enough to merit mentioning them all. For example, when the arcade is packed and it's very loud, listening for hit confirms is very difficult, so I naturally focus more on visual and lifebar confirmation. After resets where my character lands well before the opponent, I may end up throwing out a move before I can actually see my off-screen character (most common example is 2x air fierce after SAII), so I almost exclusively confirm using the lifebar in these situations, since the window for visual confirmation is fairly small in these scenarios. Ultimately, I find being able to use all 3 as the situation dictates is helpful in hit-confirming more consistently across the board.
Buffering joystick inputs, and how it helps with hit-confirming
One of the things that may initially seem hard to deal with is the combination of a fairly difficult input for supers (double-QCF + a button) with a short window in which to confirm. Even with easy confirms like Chun-li cr. MK xx SAII, you'd need lightning quick hands to get out the entire SAII input in time after seeing low-forward connect.
Thankfully, there is a way to make this process much easier to do, which involves buffering the double QCF during the low-foward animation. In other words, instead of trying to confirm like this:
Cr. MK --> (Did it hit?) --> QCF, QCF, K
You do this instead:
Cr. MK, QCF, QCF --> (Did it hit?) --> K
You do the cr. mk xx double QCF either before or while seeing if the move hits. That way, the only thing left for you to do after confirming that the move connected is to press a button. It may feel like a lot of wasted motion to input the QCFs every time when there's a high likelihood the move will be blocked, but you also have much less to do after confirming the hit, which means your effective window for the hit-confirm increases drastically.
Why is hit-confirming important?
So why is hit-confirming so important? Well, it should be fairly obvious that hit-confirming removes any random element from landing combos - if you're going for, say, cr. MK xx SAII with Chun-li, and you always wait to see that the low forward has connected, then you'll never, ever end up getting punished because they blocked the combo. Once you get good at hit-confirming, you'll find your play becomes considerably more consistent, and your opponents will no longer be able to play with the mindset "This person doesn't hit-confirm, so I can always just sit back and wait for an opportunity to punish a silly mistake." At the same time, they can't play overly aggressively because you will actually have the skills to follow up connected normals with specials/supers for big damage.
The issue of discipline with respect to hit-confirming
A big barrier when it comes to hit-confirming is discipline. It's easy to get frustrated when you miss the opportunity to combo a normal into a super, or the opponent blocks a whole bunch of normals in a row, denying you to opportunity to get off your big damage combos. However, it's important not to fall into the trap of getting impatient, and pulling the trigger just because you're tired of waiting or because you missed 2 or 3 hit-confirms in a row.
Every player, no matter how strong will miss hit-confirms from time to time. Watch enough videos of godlike players like Nuki and MOV, and you will see them miss an "easy" confirm like cr. MK xx SAII, and more frequently than you might think. The discipline aspect comes with internalizing the mindset: Failing to finish a hit-confirmed combo is just a missed opportunity; you still come out on top every time. Continuing a blocked combo is a death sentence; you will end up coming out well behind 100% of the time. (Of course, the major exception would be trying to chip out your opponent.)
Although MOV and Nuki may fail to convert a connected low forward into super from time to time (say, maybe 1 out of every 10 times), they will virtually never follow up a blocked normal with a blocked super. Not 1 in 100 times, probably not even 1 in a 1000 times. That is the sort of discipline that one needs to develop with respect to hit confirms.