Advanced Tactics: Neutral, Spacing & Defense

This page assumes you already know the controls and can string together a basic combo. If you are still learning which button is which, start with the Guide first. What follows is the layer of play that separates someone who mashes buttons from someone who actually wins fights: how to control space, when to defend versus dodge, how to spend Ki without wasting it, and how to survive a crowd instead of getting surrounded and stun-locked. None of this is about flashy execution. It is about making good decisions under pressure.

The Neutral Game

Neutral is the state before anyone has committed to an attack — both fighters at range, feeling each other out. Most players lose here without realizing it, because they throw slow attacks into open space and get punished for the recovery. The goal in neutral is to win the exchange before it becomes a scramble.

Your neutral tools are your fast, low-commitment normals. Q Left Punch has the fastest startup in the game and the shortest recovery, so it is your default poke — you can throw it, see what happens, and still react. A Low Kick is your low poke for chipping at range and keeping opponents honest. Neither does much damage, but that is the point: they are cheap to throw and safe to whiff.

The opposite of a poke is S Roundhouse, your heaviest normal. It hits hard but has a slow recovery, which means if you throw it and it whiffs, you are wide open for a long moment. Never lead with S in neutral. Instead, bait it out of your opponent — walk just outside their range, let them swing something slow, and whiff-punish it: step in and hit them during the recovery frames when they can't block or move. Whiff-punishing a heavy attack is one of the most reliable ways to open someone up.

Remember that neutral is three-dimensional here. The ↑/↓ depth move shifts you in and out of the fighting plane, which lets you sidestep any linear attack — most importantly projectiles like Ki Blast. If an enemy is zoning you from across the screen, do not walk straight into the fireball. Depth-dodge past it, then close the gap. Reading when to depth-dodge instead of block saves you the chip damage a block would still eat.

Spacing & Footsies

Footsies is the art of standing at exactly the range where your fastest attack reaches and theirs doesn't. Find the edge of your A Low Kick's range and live there. From that spot you threaten to poke, threaten to whiff-punish, and force your opponent to make the first mistake.

When to dash in versus when to bait

Closing distance is a commitment, so pick your moment. Use double-tap → directional dash to close a gap quickly — but understand it is not invincible. If you dash into an attack, you eat it. Dash in when the opponent has just whiffed something slow, or right after you knocked them down and want to be in their face.

If the opponent is patient and blocking, dashing straight in gets you thrown or guard-broken. In that case, bait instead. Hover at the edge of range and let them get impatient. When they swing, you already have the whiff punish loaded. The dodge roll (double-tap ↓) is a strong approach against a zoning opponent because its i-frames let you pass through a projectile or a poke and come out at close range — just be aware you are committed for the duration of the roll.

Defense: Block vs Dodge

You have two real defensive options and they solve different problems.

Blocking is your low-effort answer to ordinary strings. Hold Shift and you take 70% less damage from most attacks. But two things beat it: a Throw (unblockable, so a patient blocker just gets grabbed) and a Guard Break (crushes the block outright). Blocking also does not make you invincible — chip damage still ticks your HP down, so you cannot simply turtle forever against a chip-heavy opponent.

This is why the dodge roll is often the better defense against exactly those threats. When you read a Guard Break or a chip-heavy special coming, roll through it — the i-frames mean you take nothing at all, and you come out positioned to punish the recovery. Against a normal poke string, block. Against a big committal move you can see coming, roll.

Anti-air with Uppercut

Jump-ins are handled by the Uppercut, input A,W (Low Kick then Right Punch in sequence). It beats opponents coming down on you from the air. The moment you see a jump, throw the Uppercut and you knock them out of the sky. Do not try to block a jump-in you can anti-air — the Uppercut both stops the attack and starts your offense.

Beating blockers

When your opponent refuses to stop blocking, stop hitting the block. Use the Throw (Q+A) — it is unblockable but has short range, so you must be right on top of them. Or use the Guard Break (W+S), which crushes the block entirely, though its slow startup means the opponent can react if they are watching. Mixing Throw and Guard Break against a blocker forces them to stop holding Shift, at which point your normals open them up again.

Frame Advantage & Punishing

Every move has startup, active, and recovery. When an attack is blocked, the defender is locked in a short block-stun while the attacker sits through their recovery. So a move's safety on block is roughly block-stun minus recovery: fast pokes recover before you do and stay safe, but slow, heavy moves leave the attacker stuck — guard the heavy hit, then punish the recovery with your fastest normal.

The game rewards this directly. Hit an enemy during their move (startup or active) and it's a COUNTER for bonus damage; hit them during recovery and it's a PUNISH. Dangerous enemy moves flash a warning color as they wind up — that tell is your cue to block or dodge and take your turn. Reading these windows is what turns a mashy fight into a read-based one.

Ki Economy

Your Ki gauge is a resource, and how you manage it decides fights. It fills passively at +2/s, plus +0.5× the damage you deal, +0.3× the damage you take, and +0.2× the damage you block. So you are always gaining meter just by playing — you rarely need to manually charge.

The manual charge (hold E) adds +15/s, which is fast, but the price is steep: you are completely immobile and take 1.5x damage while charging. Never charge in an enemy's face. Only charge when you have bought yourself a safe window — at long range after depth-dodging away, or immediately after a knockdown when nobody can reach you. The single best charge window is a boss phase-transition intro (see below), which is fully safe.

Match the special to the situation rather than dumping meter the instant you can afford something:

All specials can cancel from normals, meaning you can start a combo with a fast Q or W to confirm the hit, then cancel into a special for guaranteed damage. That is far more reliable than throwing a raw special and hoping it lands. Do not sit on a full 100% gauge either — a capped gauge is wasted income, because you stop gaining the passive meter you would otherwise bank. If you are full and see an opening, use it.

Oki & Knockdowns

Oki (short for "wake-up") is what you do while a downed opponent gets back up. A knockdown is the only time you get to dictate the pace, so learn to create them and then capitalize.

The Sweep (→A) causes a hard knockdown, putting the opponent flat on the ground with a fixed recovery. That fixed timing is what makes oki possible — you know exactly when they will be vulnerable again. The classic pressure is a meaty: time an attack so it becomes active right as they finish getting up, so they must block immediately or eat it.

Ki Burst (Shift+E) is a superb oki tool. Lay it down over a waking opponent and its AoE covers their get-up options, forcing a block that you can then Throw. On wakeup against a crowd it does double duty, clearing the enemies stacking up behind. A hard knockdown followed by meaty pressure is how you turn one opening into a whole fight's worth of momentum.

Crowd Control

Most stages are multi-enemy, and the way you die is by getting surrounded and juggled between opponents. The AI helps you here more than you might think: it coordinates turn-taking, so enemies approach one at a time rather than all rushing simultaneously. Your job is to exploit that — fight the one who steps up, and reposition before the next one arrives.

Positioning is everything. Never let enemies get on both sides of you. Keep moving so the crowd stays bunched on one side, ideally near a screen edge where they queue up in a line. A line of enemies is exactly what your piercing specials are for — Power Blast (pierces one) and Super Beam (fully piercing) turn a stacked crowd into free multi-hit damage.

Watch for Scout swarms specifically: Scouts are fast and fragile, and they will break the polite turn-taking by rushing you in numbers. When several fast enemies converge, drop a Ki Burst AoE to clear the immediate space, or use a hard knockdown with the Sweep to knock one down and buy yourself room to breathe. Trading a little meter to reset your positioning is almost always worth it.

Playing Bosses

Bosses do not play by the normal rules, so your combo instincts will get you hurt if you carry them over unchanged. Two facts matter most:

• Bosses have juggle resistance, so there are no infinite juggles — you cannot loop a launcher forever. Expect to land a few clean hits and then reset to neutral. Greed gets punished.
• Bosses have grab immunity while attacking. Your Throw only works during their idle frames. Do not try to Throw a boss mid-string; wait until it is genuinely standing still.

Patience wins boss fights. Block or dodge their strings, take your small punishes, and back off. The big payoff comes at the phase transitions: bosses shift phase at 66% and 33% HP, each with a brief invincible intro. You can't damage them during that window, so use it to charge Ki safely — this is the one moment where holding E carries no risk. Bank meter there and you will enter phase 3 with a full gauge.

Save your high-cost specials for phase 3, when the boss is at its most aggressive and you want to close the fight before it closes you. Dragon Fist as a finisher on a low-HP phase-3 boss ends fights that would otherwise drag into a dangerous scramble.

Scoring Efficiently

Once you can reliably survive, chase the score. The combo multiplier scales from 1.0x up to 3.0x, and it multiplies your score, not your damage — so long, unbroken combos are worth chasing purely for points even though they don't hurt the enemy any more. The stage clear bonus rewards three things: remaining HP, your maximum combo, and how fast you finished.

That creates real tension. Playing fast and clean maximizes the clear bonus, but going for a risky long combo or rushing a boss can get you killed, and a death costs far more than a bonus is worth. The rule is simple: survival first, style second. Take the safe punish over the greedy juggle when your HP is low; go for the flashy high-multiplier route only when you have the life to spend on it.

Quick Tips

• Lead with Q/A pokes, never with the slow S Roundhouse.
• Whiff-punish heavy attacks during their recovery — bait them out first.
• Depth-dodge (↑/↓) linear attacks and projectiles instead of blocking the chip.
• Roll (double-tap ↓) through Guard Breaks and chip-heavy specials — i-frames beat them clean.
• Anti-air jump-ins with Uppercut A,W.
• Beat turtles with Throw (Q+A) or Guard Break (W+S).
• Only charge E at safe range, after a knockdown, or during a boss phase intro.
• Cancel specials from a confirmed normal instead of throwing them raw.
• Line enemies up and hit them with piercing Power Blast or Super Beam.
• Use Ki Burst for both oki pressure and clearing Scout swarms.
• Never let enemies flank both sides of you — keep the crowd on one side.
• Against bosses: no infinites, Throw only in idle frames, save 100% for phase 3.

These tactics build directly on the fundamentals — if any input above was unfamiliar, review the Guide for the full control breakdown. To turn these neutral wins into damage, study the Combos page for confirmed strings and special cancels. And when you are ready to apply the patience and phase-timing advice above to specific opponents, the Bosses page details each boss's phases and signature moves so you know exactly what you are blocking, dodging, and punishing.