Fighting Game Mechanics the Pros Still Get Wrong 

Another "correct" usage of priority is in the move input system. If you complete two overlapping move motions on the same frame, which move your character actually does is determined by a priority list.

There is also another type of priority in SF6 which is projectile priority. Unlike previous SF games where the projectile with the most hits will win, in SF6 there is a hierarchy of which types of projectiles are prioritized. It goes like: regular projectiles < powered up projectiles (like Ryu's denjin) < Ex projectiles < Super projectiles. The projectiles higher up the list will always beat the lower ones regardless of how many hits each have.

I only found out about the QCF thing recently and it blew my god damn mind.

3rd Strike has the same priority system as SF5. In 3S supers have the highest priority so even if a super isn’t invincible it won’t trade with a normal (it’ll ether lose or win, never trade) This is one of lesser know reasons that Yun super 3 is so broken, when it’s active all of his normals have super level priority so his normals can literally never trade with an opponent’s normal, he’ll just crush through everything.

I am always a sucker for having concepts and terms explained to me. There’s so much jargon in the fighting game world, that until it’s either explained like this or I see it like a hundred times during a tournament, it will never stick in my mind.

This type of content is so great! By the way, the struggling with the Hadouken into Super Hadouken made me laugh because I just remembered that back in the SF4 days, while doing some E.Honda trials for the first time, I was really upset because one of them demanded a headbutt followed by a super headbutt....and I just couldn't do that. I remember starting to practice just this part of the combo, positioning E.Honda on the completely opposite side of the screen when compared to the dummy: my intent was to take the time headbutt travels through the screen and try to complete the 2 seconds of back charging needed for the Super command 🤣. Course, I had no idea of how move canceling worked, and when I finally figured it all...I was just feeling that stupid and scrub 🤣🤣🤣

A good example of priority in current gen games is Johnny's "Jocker Trick" super from Strive. It destroys any projectiles including other supers, no matter who input first, and it hits your opponent just because it's designed to have this priority privilege

People confuse fuzzy guard with F-Shiki; the act of making them block a jumping attack and keeping their hurtbox standing even though they are crouching, thus making it easier to hit with another overhead attack as long as they're still in block stun.

SF Alpha 3 had a priority system. "Red Flash" -- if two moves trade and they're on opposing "sides", the bigger move (e.g. light < medium < heavy) had a random chance to win clean instead of trading. By "opposing sides" I mean it's unique to the move: Take Chun's s.mp vs chun's s.hp. Chun's s.mp uses her "back" arm (the one furthest from the camera), and s.hp uses her "front" arm, so a priority flash is possible. They will usually trade, but s.hp will win clean with a red flash 25% of the time. I believe the main point was to nerf jab spamming.

I remember seeing Sajam talk about how Guile's perfect Boom loops have awkward timing BECAUSE they have to be perfects, which didn't make sense to me since I thought of them as just normal Booms with cleaner inputs. I never knew you could finish the input in the back position to start charging the exact frame after it comes out. Really weird interaction.

I always suspected that "priority" is a word that people use to fill in the gaps in their knowledge when explaining why their move lost. But i did know about heavier moves beating lighter moves as a correct usage of priority.

Seeing 3rd strike ken doing fireball into super was the first time i could clearly see that special into super shortcut is a thing.

The part about charge partitioning was new to me. I’ve seen ppl play third strike and stuff and have urien dash forward and headbutt, same for sfv but I had no idea how to they were doing that

Fun fact not only can Vatista from UNICLR do true charge partitions (famously she breaks up an [8]2 divekick charge with a 2gem in order to have enough frames to do the overhead divekick as an instant overhead instead of needing to do a full jump into it), but Terry can actually partition the charge for Rising Tackle in Smash.....for some reason.

The input buffering at the top of the episode is the backbone of my favorite Third Strike combo, Ryu's jHK->2HP->H Shoryu->Shin Shoryu. It's like 65% on jump in hit confirm...

I didn't know you could use a normal fireball as part of a super, that's cool! These videos are amazing, I also love the ones you've done on fighting game terminology, it's good stuff!!! Next up: links, strings and combos. What's the difference?

This video is awesome!!! Answered so many questions I've had for years. I wish I could subscribe twice

Nice. Please do fuzzy guard. Also Darkstalkers 3 actually has priority which is where some of the confusion around priority arose from.

This kind of knowledge is what I've been looking for to improve! Thankyou for being so thorough with your examples!

charge partition is the one that annoys me because its in literally 2 games, 3S and UNI

Ex fireballs gong through regular fireballs i would also say is priority in SF6

Yyooooo thank you much for the new video!!! I’m kinda bored af at work and this is perfect timing!!! 🙏🙏😃😃🙏🙏

Still tryna get into SF6 from Tekken and this does help a lot! There's a little bit of this kinda stuff in Tekken but it's much easier to figure out IMO. Thanks for doing these type of vids dudeman!

I've never heard of any of this except priority. Good fighting game 101 session. Appreciate it

I’ve never really understood how priority really works. Thanks for clearing that up!!

Virtua Fighter has a very simple priority system where the damage of an attack determines priority, IE a higher damage move will always beat a lower damage move if they connect on the same frame. Trades only happen if the two attacks clashing deal the same amount of damage. Strikes also take "priority" over throws, as in you cannot be grabbed out of startup frames of a striking attack (but I don't think anyone really uses that term to describe the system for the most part).

Something that puzzled me about the term tripguard is that it's literally just "landing recovery" (an immediately obvious term) but in reverse, and applied to the person on the ground. So "nice tripguard" somehow means "nice avoiding the air attack to punish the landing recovery" even though the term "tripguard" itself is allegedly referring to whether the person in the air can block upon landing or not.

Finally. I needed a video that would tell me things people assume I would know but don't.

8:04 there is actually one game that utilises the priority system how you state here - Pokken. In it, there are two kinds of priorities - Projectile Priority and Strike Priority. With Projectile Priority, if they're at the same value, they cancel each other out. Otherwise, higher priority value projectile wins the clash. There are also three special kinds of Projectile Priority values - "None" (projectile passes through anything without interacting), "S" (cancels numbered projectiles and passes through another S) and "S+" (can't be destroyed by assists on top of other properties of S projectile) Strike priority works a little weird, too. Equal strikes cancel each other put, the ones within one number (e.g. 3 and 4) cancel each other out, too, but the player who threw out a higher priority button recovers 10 frames faster; finally, if the difference is 2 or higher, higher priority move wins. And there's even more weird stuff on top of that, too

In SF6 I rather trade just to stop pressure since most chars don't get too much off of trades unless in the corner, plus I'm using low tier so I have to press things

This video is almost a history of Street Fighter. SF2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Neat

An interpretation for the old idea of priority is basically an evaluation of the distance between the hitbox and hurtbox of your attack. I like to use the term "negative priority" if the hurtbox expands past the hitbox (extremely rare case).

Love how knowledgeable u are. Thank you for this!

The priority argument is what I've noticed some people don't understand what it is and how it works, even in Master-rank. I get annoyed when people throw out arguments like "That character has priority moves!" etc, even though they don't have any priority in said moves...

can't believe I keep hearing new stuff after so many tutorials... I understand why I was afraid of fighting games on the first place

In some way you have to have priorities in a fighting game, at one point or another, like for the throws, because you can't trade strike with a throw. Developers have to make a choice there. I was surprised they gave priority to strikes in sf6, as in third strike, throws have priority. Then of course they had to give priority to supers because, well, you can't have a regular throw win over a super (actually in third strike there's a pretty huge priority list, like some command grabs even have priority over others, and super grabs have priority over super strikes). That's actually why genei jin is so powerful in that game. It's not just that it speeds up yun's moves or allows for crazy juggles, it also gives all his grounded moves super art priority, which means that whatever move the other player throws (even a throw), yun's 2f startup light attack will win and start a combo. There's a very interesting video about that out there. If you don't know it, check it out I wonder how they went with the supers in sf6, but i bet they gave priority to them over normals. And how do they deal with supers that connect on the same frame ?

Thanks JM i didnt know about trip guard and i thought i just wasnt blocking low lmao

I never comment on videos - but just wanted to say thank you for this content! So well done and informative

About those "tripguard", My KOF brain simply can't accept it and usually piss me off. In KOF if you are landing from a jump you can't block Supers, So when in SF6 with Zangief I do SuperLV2 and the other player get to block after jump back I just can't deal with it. I know are different rules but damn.

I knew about priority in SFV, but then I learned that it's almost standalone for the series as a whole.

That would explain why I keep accidentally doing supers when I'm trying to spam fireballs too quickly with meter.

Priority is more of an all encompassing term for spacing, hurtbox positions, invincibility etc

jmcrofts, the encyclopedia of fighting game knowledge

jm sometimes people don't do shortcuts but if it works that mean you are executing well

Thanks for clarifying charge partitioning. I now wish it existed in other games

What's the music in the first bit about super cancelling?

I think the way we use "trip guard" can be cleared up if we just called it trip guard break. Mahvel games already have guard break glitch so we already have a simple solution by including trip guard break into our vocab

Anygame with a super jump and an airial special or super can be done by instant ensigna motion (johnny from gg made this famous). You can do an air special or jump a milimeter off the ground. If its half circle or qcf in air its d df f fu u ub b then button. And the opposite for half circle back or quarter circle back in air moves as well. Its great for using some op airial moves for indtdnt over heads or interrupts on rush down.

Great vid as usual

most of that would have been new to me 1-2 years into my "taking fighting game seriously" journey -- and all of it is stuff I needed to learn when jumping from smash to traditional fighting games! I also didn't know about charge partitioning being gone in SF6 !

I remember as a young one saying that Vega kick as a CPU had ultimate priority. Ahahaha

I mean, being realistic, saying you have "frame advantage" is functionally the same as saying you have "priority" in that situation... so it makes sense for non-FG nerds to say that, since it's more natural to use priority instead of frame advantage. However, due to priority systems acutally existing in FGs, it IS important to make the distinction... so yes, using even just "advantage" is overall better. Also, another exemple of a priority system is found in Samurai Shodown, where if two players grab at the exact same time, since there's no grab-teching, it's always P1 that has priority of grab (or is it P2? I don't remember, but either way, it's always the same side who'll grab).

Ryu FADC Shortcut into U1: (during ex fireball or w/e) F, Mp+Mk+QCF, QCF, PPP

What is the music playing at the start of the video?

"Confirm" A lot of people call everything that's a combo a confirm.

I wonder how much of the priority conversation was manipulated by Smash Bros. Smash kinda hates explaining itself beyond really vague stuff, but one of the few things I remember Melee explaining was that it had priority, specifically mentioning it as a strength for I think Bowser; most of his attacks have really high priority, so you can just muscle right through your opponents. The fact this really doesn't work out for him, I think, is part of an unrelated conversation about how competitive Smash isn't really the game Smash is designed to be; heavies with high priority just don't work out in a controlled 1v1, but they make a lot of sense when you put them in the context of a big free-for-all where someone like Bowser can just punch through a smaller skirmish woth impunity.

i learned the input shortcuts a while ago for kof 15

This was informative. How many frames are you not allowed to block low after whiffing a jump normal SF6? Can I get a guaranteed hit on my opponent if I hit them within the 1st 2 frames of their landing? Or is there only 1 frame where you cannot block? Thank you. I guess with the frame counter in SF6, I can actually test this myself.

A lot of people don’t even know what neutral is and I’m talking about pros who think neutral it’s grounded footsies like in sf.

I feel like people misuse “fuzzy” and “meaty” as well

I played a lot of SF5 and I never knew that priority worked like that. I thought it was only crush counters that had priority.

huh, this explains soooooo many of my accidental supers.

It's funny you used Chun Li in ST for demonstrating the LACK OF TRIP GUARD in SF2 but if Chun Li did headstomp (down + mk), she CAN actually GAIN trip guard and block instantly! I don't understand why strikes beat throws in 6. Throws should always beat strike on the same frame. And command throws are so stupidly nerfed in modern fighters.

jmcrofts blowing my fucking MIND in the first 40 seconds of the video. I've played SF for years and never knew that!

Please tell me the double QCF trick works in VI. That would make using supers in combo substantially easier.

Trip Guard is actually what the devs call the specific hit box that allows you to do what you described as “Trip Guard”. You wouldn’t know about this unless you’ve tried to make a fighting game. You actually showed that in SF II that extra hit box is missing.

Charge partitioning was such a cool mechanic. Allowed greater flexibility with charge characters. Ive seen some people say its a glitch in sf3 so anyone ever ask a dev if it was implemented or a bug?

question, what wins? command grab or regular grab? and other question, are hurt boxes differentiated between grab and strikes?

Sfiii remy's stance flashkick 🎩👌

I think the priority system from SFV should be in SFVI. Lights are really oppressive with DR and that would change that a little.

Incredible how SF6 manages to be a better SF in every possible aspect.

Chun-Li's leg days have high priority. Guile's leg days have low priority.

Thanks!

I like how some people are acting like they knew all of this the entire time when nothing surfaced in the last 30 years. 🤣🤣 Some of it was referred to as a move you can cancel

Sir, i need u to publish a fgc handbook with these terms so we can all b a lot less dopey

Thanks for the great advice as always. You're one of the biggest reasons i was finally able to start progressing through Plat on sf6. Keep up the good work❤

I’m really jonesing for the next mk1 stream🫠

I actually didn't know street fighter had landing lag like Smash

Does someone knows if strikes also have priority over comand grabs?

You should make a video on why people are mashing jab in sf6

more like this please

lmao love the dotodoya slander

Dude your knowledge and the way you explain shit is incredible. Idk half of this shit

I think the old SF2 series CPU's cheating tactics ruined my sense of priority of attacks. So many times they did a hard attack that for some reason cancelled out my attack.. terrible that they actually used this as a feature in recent iterations!

Meanwhile in the hall of Justice, my fucking timing is ass and I eat the miss timed throw because I didn’t want to mash. T-T

The worst offenders are "fuzzy" and "chicken"

could you define "fuzzy blocking" ive heard it multiple times but i still don't understand it

Learned super cancelling from SF EX.. series was busted lolfun. So upset Fighting EX Layer wasn't successful

Priority system in 5 was so terrible, crazy how that passes anyone's checklist IMO

Whats the difference between Trip Guard and Safe Jump?

**JmCrofts explains "charge partitioning"** Boy I'm glad I already can't play charge characters, this seems like a ton of work lol.

I seriously need a full term explain and mechanics play in kof02UM, I've been playing for so long, yet I still don't know every technique. Has someone done that all ready?

So there's one interaction that confuses me, maybe because I can't see hit boxes. Ken's low HP loses to Ryu's low MK when done at the same time. Maybe even loses to low LP? Is this priority or hit box.. geometry?

I'm probably the millionth guy to say this, and if I am I'm really sorry, but you're mic is facing the wrong way. If you set it to cardioid mode and face it so the dials are facing towards you that will probably get you the best sounds out of it. Also, you speak to the front of it, not the top :D

People saying a move has good priority when it's down to s or hitbox reasons has always been by biggest pet peeve

Please repost from 09:00 till 09:40... I felt so bad for you after 3 fails that I couldn't listen anymore 😢 Just trolling Love your content 😊

DSP uses every term wrong. Netcode, priority, latency, and more. Its wild to hear

I thought throws had priority over strikes in the last 3 SF games. Interesting

Okay the fact people confuse Charge Partitioning and Charge Buffering is kinda odd to me. First off: obviously nobody has cleared all of the Xrd trial combos because lord knows charge buffering is mandatory for like… every damn charge character and made me hate my life. The number of times I had to hit c.S with Venom and IMMEDIATELY hold down to get my charge move to connect in a true combo but without getting a crouching attack is too damn high. Secondly: ain’t nobody must’ve partitioned their hard drives before. CMON MAN. WE ARE THE FGC, WE’RE BETTER THAN THIS

why does remy have Guile's special moves?