Why Your Wavedashing Is Useless - Tekken 8 Beginner Tips 

'Don't play high level Tekken by yourself' 'Even a toddler can mix you up' 'Why are you playing chess when your opponent is eating the pieces?' Some gems were learned today

'Why are you playing chess when your opponent is eating the pieces?' Great line😂

Adapting your playstyle to counter your opponent -> high level Stubbornly sticking to whatever you personally think "proper Tekken" is -> low level

"[You should] hide the best techniques of your main characters until appropriate. It's also a perfect example of why you don't necessarily want to be flashy. If you want to win by any means necessary, you first have to realize exactly what IS necessary." -Seth Killian, Domination 101

When you do something in Tekken, you either do it to start something or to stop something. Truly a game of something happening.

in low skill level tekken, most people dont even know the moves that they spam are unsafe, because no one is punishing it.

Really valuable video. Particularly appreciate that you countered the idea that playing 'simply' is 'cheese.' Only throwing scissors against an opponent who only throws paper isn't cheese; it's using the correct option based on the patterns you've observed. Throwing in a bunch of rock just to 'mix things up' isn't playing smart in that context; it's playing suicidal.

Coming from other fighting games this is very much a similar situation around big plus frames, frame traps, spacing traps, oki, and counters/parries. If they don't know that you are in an advantageous offensive position, they won't respect it. High level players will respect it, but will also be able to simply block it until your turn is over or reversal through your offense if you just run the simple frame trap, meaty, or mix-up you get from your advantage, so against those players you get to push your advantage with for instance movement options that layers the mix-up even more. In 2D fighting games you don't try to respect the reversal or delay tech on wake-up if they've only shown to wake up with a button or a jump, you just meaty them and get another combo for free.

Sounded like he's using wavedash to be stylish.

I'm loving how your twitch stream just spawns a youtube video out of one question from chat and you just dive into ranked head first to demonstrate your point. Live problem + Live solution = Great tutorial

I like how you answer the question.

Mid ranks are pretty funny. It's really the point where everyone trys to play their own game and hopes the opponent isn't allowed to play theirs. It's why 1 and dones are so common. They don't want their opponent to adapt AND they don't want to adapt themselves and have to change how they play their own game.

dude you’re the goat i’ve learned so much more about tekken and competitive philosophy in general. you explain and show things so well

Awesome video! The key to learning Tekken is to watch what your opponent does and try to beat that. When you start losing to backdashes and steps, then you start applying wave dash. But you don’t do it blindly. You do it when you need it. Keepout still exists in high level too.

honestly your outro slaps hard man. Please keep it.

I remember when some koreans visited our country during the start of Tekken Tag 2 and the pique of T6. They learned that in each country, people play differently and things like Korean Wave Dashing and Back Dash can actually work against them. Koreans and mostly western players rely on frame data which is not bad at all, on the hand, in some countries like mine, we rely on visual instincts. Yes that's a word. I'm not a high level player or anything, but, Tekken boils down to understanding which button or direction to use against a character's staple move. Since everyone uses Mishimas, Bryan's, Steve's, etch. people have much more familiar and ease adapting to these characters and their staple moves. Ironically, the characters that has more options to either counter, grapple and juggle you at all directions - or in other words, characters that are rarely seen being played are the things we worry about. The reason? Muscle memory. Both in the hands and in the eyes. And yes, the eyes have muscles. And there are Six Muscles of the Eyes. Characters like King, A.King, Nina who actually knows how to use chain grabs (A lost art), Kuma and such weird yet simple characters (Maybe not the case with Nina or the Kings if you throw in their chain throws) are much scarier to people here if we see signs that these guys are pros. It all boils down to understanding when to adjust - when to get defensive and offensive, when to strike or counter with what your character has and using moves that normally people didn't even think one would use on that character.

this video couldn't have come at a better time. I've been attempting to use wavedash in my neutral but kept getting hit by mids, and was baffled. Thank you coach PhiDX

A common advice I see directed towards new players is “look up how pros play your character”. However, this advice should come with nuance. High level sets involve mind games that are pointless to emulate at low level play against mashers! You can not play mind games against someone playing mindlessly!!! Instead, take the “look up how pros play your character” advice and focus on trying to identifying the key moves. Ask yourself “what moves do they use the most often”, “in what situations are certain moves used”, “what moves are used for whiff punishing/keep out/approach/pressure”. This is what you’re trying to emulate before getting into the advanced strats!

Phi was legit having fun with this one. MORE

I'm just happy to see you don't use the turtleneck sweater for Dvj anymore in Tekken 8.

Wavedash block is actually one of the closest things to feinting Tekken has! It feels very good to use

Great point after great point. Love the way you articulate this

It's certainly useless if you haven't sufficiently intimidated your opponent to respect your advance or applying a correct mixup with it. Most people learn wave dash without understanding the application of it.

This is why you are such a great creator, a lot of us try to replicate what we see other people do without knowing why. You explain why you do what you do so well

7:00 - Now that you mention that, it might by why I'm stuck where I am in purple ranks. After having watched and admired so many high-level players I try and mirror their playstyle since they're such professionals at the game, yet at the end of the day I always lose to textbook mixups and pressure while trying too hard to focus on my own defensive ability. Essentially, I'm getting too into my own head when I play this game.

Your videos are so helpful, I can't thank you enough! I try to watch every vid to grow my brain. Keep going!!!

It's like you spoke directly to me when you said a lot of players get frustrated cause they try to force an option which is why I think I need to work on adapting to my opponent while applying good pressure and proper punishment. Thanks for the video this really helps!

i love your outro for no reason at all 🔥🔥🔥🔥

That IS a good question. I have wondered this myself, especially when I've experienced being put into paralysis when confronted by someone doing to me. I've always wanted that fear from an opponent and figured the reason I couldn't make anything come of it was down to my wavedash being too slow to really set up stuff without the opponent realizing they don't have to stand there and take it (the transitions between each crouch dash are too slow to give the opponent any need to stop playing until I commit to my option). I thought one of the best times to go for it is against a grounded foe (meaning they have to stand up into a 50/50 situation) but spring kicks eff with it.

PhiDX low key makes these videos to show off his mechanical skills. And I'm all here for it.

Ur outro dance is 🔥🔥❤❤

This explains question and video response summarizes well my frustration with trying to play Devil Jin how I think they should be played, vs what I end up having to do to win. Also terrifying to see you can just pull out a Devil Jin like that to demonstrate and wavedash into EWGF so effortlessly lol

Thank you for this info. Very helpful

To anyone that needs to hear it wavedashes are a tool for pressure …….it’s used for observation of your opponent and if done fast enough you can actually duck under high attacks and get a super big whiff opening it has to be used with skill tho and it’s also good to cover distance and make your opponent think to either interrupt you out of fear or defend against your next attack bc you don’t miss

Excellent explanation 🔥! Well phrased

Seriously I’m that Kaz player who try’s to wavedash and apply the blender while it’s not working and switching back to King 😂😂😂 this is such a good advice… it sounds so easy when you hear it but hard to apply. This is the first Tekken Im really improving my skills and this channel helps

Great coaching as always.

As someone who's loved watching high level Mishima players for years (but is an absolute beginner at them), fucking thank you for at last giving me my ticket into learning the Mishima's and Jin for real. For years, I've had the wrong perception of the Mishima's, always imagining that you needed to learn the wave dashes immediately, or else. Looking at that video though, it's maybe helped me to give me a compass to strip all of that bullshit, and focus purely on basics, at least until I build enough muscle memory to incorporate the really slick shit that people like Qudans, Devilster, Keisuke and Anakin are known for.

first video ever seen from you, yo useem like a super nice guy, subbed.

I was doing this and it was just handing free damage opportunities to my opponent! Your video helped a lot- I’ll stick to those fundamentals while I learn the game cheers

Thanks to your guide about frametraps and your basic game plan tips I stopped just trying to mash electrics and hellsweeps like this and went from being stuck in Warrior to Vanquisher in a single session, people really do be mashing unsafe moves left and right at these lower ranks lol

You are like pure gold! love your stuff

Lily is another that has this option. Her dew glide is very nice for movement but at the beginning the main thing you should learn with the movement is dew glide canceling. It allows you to poke and retreat when you get it down. For the aggressive players this is probably the best thing to learn since you can keep the pressure but slowly learn to back off.

Great tip! Thank you 🙏

I think this video was the message that I needed.

This is my new favourite tekken channel

This is a great conversation that applies to things in real life and in video games. If you dont know WHY youre doing something, you might be better off not doing it until you understand why you do it, when and where you should do it, and how you should do it. People wanna do the wavu pressure but dont actually know WHY its happening and WHY it works. Even at the highest levels of play, mishimas rarely succeed because they are characters that live and die by the sword, a lot of top players will just df1 or keep out to shut down wavu/electric pressure, and usually they wont even give them the chance to start the mishima pressure.

So I just recently picked up wavedashing with Jin. So far I only use it to close distance quickly after ending a combo or if I know that their scared, then I'll go for a low or mid mix after getting a knock down. But watching this video was pretty neat info and helps expand my knowledge and gameplan. I also have a tendency to play pretty defensive and simple to seewhat my opponent does before I make my own moves and plans.

Thanks phi this has been a real problem for me since i had to switch mians for tekken 8 thanks!

Great words my man!!! Even though I've played Tekken for years, my mind gets overloaded sometimes. This really helped me reset my mindset and think about things correctly. Thanks again, keep it up!

Would love to play Devil Jin I think he looks so sick but the execution barrier is scary.

I’ve watched so many tekken videos and this advice if applied right is likely the best tekken advice

i needed this thank you

This is great advice and something I learned organically and quickly the first time I ever played Tekken (5) ever online or in a competitive environment. In college, my first tourney at the gaming club it was immediately clear I was not on the same tier as just about every other player based on the one or two warm up matches I played. I managed to get lucky and my first round was against the other guy who was just about as bad and clueless as me and I managed to win. The next opponent definitely had competitive knowledge, and though he came out strong, I made him bleed after I decided to press some buttons and ignore his advanced looking movement. I forced him to play a more "casual" Tekken on my level of whiff punishing, mixups, and frametraps not even knowing those names and having only the slightest of intentionality behind some sequences and made it a close seeming match at the end of the day. I've played a lot of Tekken online since then and to this day, when I see players going ham on movement I laugh because either it's probably someone trying to "style" on me, or they are too stupid to realize I'm not even good enough to react properly to that bullshit. Bruh, I will press a button. Your movement better actually be clean and making me whiff, or do some dangerous and very punishable options. But again, when I'm warmed up competitive, I'll have those moves understood and worked out.

Any character can "wavedash" if you just do a forwards korean backdash (➡️ ➡️↘️➡️ ➡️↘️➡️...). With Jack for example you can do: ➡️ ➡️↘️➡️ ➡️↘️⬇️↙️1= fcdb1 ➡️ ➡️↘️➡️ ➡️↘️➡️ ➡️1=ff1 That's an ancient jack strat to mix up jackhammer and his main low poke in a very ambiguous way. If you play any other character with strong fc moves I highly recommend this technique

Honestly even at high level most of the times you really only need like 2-3 consecutive crouch dashes, also very important to be able to cancel them into blocks. If you watch Qudans play he does these wavu-feints that really are just crouch dashes canceled into a block. I think what happens is that new Mishima players know their character has difficult execution and start obesessing over it, thinking they should just always do Electris/Wavus. In practice when it comes to Electrics/Wavus , especially crouch dashes its more about when you them rather then just doing randomly for the sake of it.

Makes really sense!

"Don't force an option because you wanna do it." There's a lot of characters this applies to.

Godlike content. Consistently.

Bro perfect timing, Yesterday i did terrible against my friends. Exactly what i needed.

Thx for the video, I feel I need the kind of a wisdom for my scrub Kazuya ;)

Nice work as always. I would like to request an anti Leo tip. Mainly the super plus knee mixup nonsense...I'm lost.

I remember a game I played against a Reina and they kep wavedashing me. I remember saying out loud "you think you're JDCR? gtfo of my face with thtat" and launched them into the game winning combo. So yeah don't just wave dash cuz you seen high level players do it. There needs to be an established level of "intimidation"

Frame trap and counter hit to get them honest when they are honest the point of wave dashing is to get them to freeze up for a mix up

I use with King Wavedash mostly for oki pressure or if they are to defencive. Mixing up Multithrows and Mids is nice.

Thanks! U really dummy proof explaining tekken for me

Low level player, been playing Jin. Wave dash pressure is obviously pointless down here. But it's been good doing 1-3 wave dashes to close distance because they don't expect the timing of the moves to come out. That's basically been it's only use for me.

irrelevant, but I just saw the outro for the first time. Absolute fucking gold sir

Might be biased but this is the best tekken channel

I think a lot of players misunderstand the use of wavedash. Often times, it's like a badge of honor to showcase that you can do it, but often there isn't a plan around it.

this man is a content MACHINE.. Birds are fruit

PhiDX: "Modern problems require modern solutions" 🧐

Everytime I go into youtube after losing and making lot of blunder on my Kazuya, I always ended up on this kind of video it exactly tells me the answer I needed.. damn. I have to change my option again

Just to add to your opponent 'eating the chess pieces' idea; that first, you have to enforce the rules of the game. Then you can play the game together. So, once you've set up respect for counters and punishes, then the movement begins...

Ah yes. Wavedash pressure. That's when I wavedash and end up pressuring myself 😂😂😂😂

The stuff... this stuff, is good stuff.

To beat mashers use keep out moves

Honestly, this applies to every competitive game. People in low, mid and high level will play differently and you have to adapt. Good players can lose to the dumbest plays because they don't see them coming.

That deserves a super wabedash tutorial

pls do a wavedash tutorial , your backdash one helped alot

"Most people are gonna mash, because that's all the know" For some reason this sentence sounded so philosophical xD

what do you feel is the best for playing on a stick, square or octagonal stick restrictor gates? I've tried the square one, but felt difficult to wavedash and eletric consistantly, dont know if other options are better or not

So this may be a dumb question, but as someone new to a leverless controller, what bindings are normally on the four buttons to the right of the usual 1,2,3,4 buttons? Im sure there's some preference involved, but I'm curious what a good starting point is to go off of since I'm new to the controller and to Tekken.

I love the TTT2 song

what fighting pad do you use, PhiDX?

Great vid

The way he's using the guy he's fighting as an example for a lesson while the guy is probably trying his ass off is funny as hell. Like I would be mad as hell if I was being used as a test dummy when I'm trying my ass off.

Dont play high level tekken by yourself is a perfect quote. I am by no means high level, mid reds but I will find myself trying to play a solid game againt lower level mashers I remember yesterday being down 2-0 against a Lars, and then I just decided to stand back a bit and watch, he was whiffing so much I just used the same launcher probably 15 times in a row off of every whiff and beat him the next 3 games handily. He adapted a bit in the second game and wouldnt give me as much space to just watch him whiff over and over again but I still managed to catch him enough times.

I'm sadly in some in between where I'm just scrubby enough to want to mash but scared enough to one the power of wave dashing. So i just freeze and get mixed to death. Gotta learn to side step appropriately.

There's no reason to think ten steps ahead of someone who isn't thinking beyond their next

The more I learn about Tekken the more I think that the solution to most of these problems is fundamentally the same. "How do I get them to respect my wavedash pressure and stop mashing?" By giving them a reason to stop mashing

Love when you go into heat and DJ’s all like “mmm, chi-cken nugget”.

This question is like "Why i dont overtake if I swap the lane and try to pass?". Because you have to accelerate first. Only then it makes sense to try to overtake. This here is exactly the same. You have to punish his aggression first until he start to not mash. Then can you use wavedash as pressure.

Hey @PhiDx I was wondering and forgive me if you've already covered this but, Throughout my experience battling the AI GHOST in Tekken 8, I've accumulated considerable knowledge. However, I'm uncertain if confronting the GHOST in Tekken 8 is an effective method for enhancing my skills. Could engaging in bouts against the GHOST in Tekken 8 be considered a beneficial form of practice?

CHESS PIECES EATER... god that sounded like a derogatory term🤣🤣

How was the hwoarang mashing? I thought it meant randomly just pressing buttons?

I wanted to learn to play Devil Jin in T8 (Bryan main) and I was frustrated cause I was stuck in Tenryu/Mighty Ruler, cause I was expecting people to be scared of wavedash, and getting hellswept… I was just getting raw launched in the face… Then I just decided to jab check pressure, shackle people into +8 frame traps, and used throws all day. Now I’m a Fujin. LOLOL another example of Chess vs. Piece eaters.

"dont force an option just cause you wanna do it" not me on lili throwing my TNS match tonight against a victor on stream because matterhorn is flashy. i find myself just reverting to "eh it looks cool and is satisfying when it hits" rather than "this can instantly lose the round if i whiff"

It has a purpose! Wavedashing boosts confidence, and I mean that unironically. When I do a wavu into an electric I instantly feel just a bit better.

Haven't played online since t7, but in yellow ranks whenever I would start off a match by backdashing and doing ss electrics and whiff punishing, most people stop mashing and try to play defensively. Then you get to wavedash and do mixups.