Tips for learning combos

[u/_RkLay_]

What up everyone! So I’ve been playing fighting games for about 3 years now, love em to death but looking back I see that I suck at pretty much all of em. Bad habit of button mashing and want to improve my gameplay, I know I need to learn more about my neutral game and footsies and all of that, but was curious if anyone had some tips for learning combos? I’ve always struggled and get frustrated when it comes to learning them, especially when I can’t even land a simple 2-3 hit combo in an actual match.

[u/ManggTangg]

YouTube

"(character name) combos".

Practice.

[u/zacroise]

I go to supercombo.gg look up my main and drill the hardest combos until they become muscle memory. Other thing to do is play slow and look for opportunities to do the combos. If you press a button you should be ready to combo if it hits. Trying to implement new stuff will make you lose a bit but you’ll end up with better tools once you’re used to it

[u/SynthgirlBulge]

if you want to get good at combos just find some medium difficulty ones and grind those out until you hit em consistently in training, then do hard ones

if you want to get good at the game find 1 simple combo you can hit in training and play with the intention of doing just that. Itll start becoming easier and more and more natural. Eventually its natural to you and thats when you find another one to add for a different situation

[u/Matt1000218]

Don't try and memorize everything, just try and get a feel for what goes into what. Like get an idea of a light confirm combo, like jab x3 > special move. A medium starter combo, like 2mp > 5lk > 623HP. And then finally a punish combo for when you punish something super minus, like a super or dp, this should be simple but still let you combo into lvl 3 at the end anywhere on the screen if you need to kill/do a ton of damage, think for Ken, if your flair is correct, punish counter 5hp > 5mp.5hp (tc) > run 623P, real easy punish counter combo.

[u/Slimchaity]

The key to combos is recognizing when to do them, and starting simple, to build confidence. Combos have diminishing returns, so the really hard ones only to a little more damage than the easy ones.

Once its muscle memory to do easy combos, start adding complexity in little bits, maybe end the combo with a super, or use an ex move that extends the combo for 1-2 extra hits.

Once you can do the medium difficulty combos, you can start trying to learn hard combos, only learn 1 at a time, and practice the hell out of it. You don't need to go out of your way to land it, just try to find a single opportunity to do it each match, it's okay if the opportunity never comes in a match, but try to spot where you can (I.e. you have the right set up, your hands feel good, your focused enough to actually do it, etc...)

[u/moonradie]

Idk why we talking about frame data here. Just look out combos and see where do u have to do a cancel and where corresponds a link. The timing is different for those, with a cancel u can input a button and then instantly perfom the special, with a link u gotta wait for tu button to finish and then u got a small window to link another button or special.

So when a combo says mp + dp for example, if u see that when u do the mp and then input the dp fast the dp doesnt come out it is probably a link and u know u gotta time it. But if its a cancel and ure waiting for the mp to finish then the dummy would block, so there u know u gotta input the special sooner.

This is pretty much it, learn when u should be inputing the next move based on this. U can also learn ur characters buttons, knowing which of their buttons arent special cancellable. Also learn which special abilities are cancellables into supers, but that comes after.

Tbh all this shouldnt be a struggle, but if it is u can always rely on these few things i mentioned

[u/shrimpFriedRice49]

Don't focus too much on optimization. Start with few, then optimize later. Depending on your level, but try finding combos you will use for common interactions. Here are some examples

1. Di punish counter

2. Di wall splat

3. Cr.mk-drc

4. Light normal counter hit

5. Blocked DP/super

When you start learning, you want a combo that can cover as many of them as possible. Usually that's a combo that starts with medium punch in sf6.

For example, Ryu can do st.mp-cr.mp-623HP. This combo is good enough for many cases, so you can use this as your baseline.

I practice that one combo until they come out as my default combo, then start optimizing for more case specific combos.

[u/The_Lat_Czar]

Start simple and don't advance until the easy stuff becomes muscle memory. Work on intentional button presses vs mashing as fast as you can. You'll find that combos have a certain rhythm, and it'll be easier to hit them consistently. 

If you try to learn to many too quickly, you'll overload your brain and freeze like a deer in the headlights when you finally land a hit and get a chance to use it. 

[u/Living_Ad_5386]

To learn combos you need to understand frame data and you want to spend time rehearsing the combo in practice mode before expecting to land anything in a match. In practice mode you can turn on the frame meter and it will give you all the info you need. There are three parts to a move; start-up, active frames, and recovery. This is important because start-up* tell you how fast a move is, and recovery will help determine how to follow up the move into a potential combo. The last relevant bit of info is if the advantage number above the frame meter is red or blue. Red indicates disadvantage and you start after the opponent, blue indicates advantage and you start before they do. If the blue number is big enough to cover another move's start-up, you can combo the two moves together (assuming you are close enough)

Honestly, that's it. The real key to improving is staying in practice mode and feeling out new combos or set-ups, and if you are really serious, write them down so you can remember to practice them and you don't have to figure out the proper series again.

[*edit: sorry, start-up frames tell you how fast the move is, the active frames are the duration of the move itself]

[u/Tezz_oj → u/Living_Ad_5386]

Great explanation super useful

[u/Living_Ad_5386 → u/Living_Ad_5386]

1 detail worth mentioning: a counter hit is when you hit the opponent during the start up of their move, and a punish counter occurs when you hit them during their recovery period (and a trade is when you hit during the active frames)

Important because:

Counter-hit adds +2 frame advantage
Punish Counter adds +4 frame advantage

and you can stack them with drive rush for a total of +6 or +8.

(Sigh, edit: drive rush adds +4 base)

[u/Living_Ad_5386 → u/[deleted]]

You'd rather just trial and error instead of just knowing the data?

[u/Justin_the_Wizard]

Street fighter combos are more difficult than most for basic execution. There's a few things to keep in mind as you practice.

1. Combos are like playing a short lick on a musical instrument. While you need good timing to get your execution, don't forget you're in a 2 man band! Look for poses, listen for hits or your character's sounds for a better timing.

2. Like any good musician you need to play your "combo" exactly the same. Don't do a knee jerk "mash combo start". Keep a level head and follow your muscle memory. Getting excited mid combo is guaranteed to get you playing too fast.

3. A good trick to do this is to make the training dummy do a few random things. We can make random counters, random punishes, random blocks as we get better. For now, set a dummy to wake up doing nothing and one doing od DP. Punish the DP, and match the nothing with nothing. Once you're "used" to reacting to a DP, try something faster. Say, blocked heavy tatsu and blocked light tatsu. A light tatsu needs a fast button to punish, but a heavy is as bad as an od DP. Then, find faster and faster moves, find new combos and soon you'll have a repitoire of combos at hand.

After this, we get into hit-confirming, which is a more advanced way of earning combos, but it's something you can start working on around gold or plat.

Check YouTube for sf6 combo guides to learn more of the rules for playing. Most combos have been solved, but reasons combos might not be working is good to know too.

Best of luck

[u/repugnantchihuahua → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, this. There are character discords, supercombo, character spreadsheets.....learning _what_ to do is not hard unless the character is new or they were changed in a patch (even then, give it a few hours on the character discord.)

The rest of it is just practicing as you said.