Short thread on Xrd pressure

Fundamentally, your pressure should be able to beat 2 types of defense:

1. only mashes (or jumps or reversals)
2. only blocks

Frame traps beat mash, mixups and pressure resets beat block. You can also be patient and look to whiff punish or antiair.

"High level" defense can be anywhere on this spectrum of mash vs block.

To me, conditioning (at least in the short term) is about making your opponent change from mash to block, or block to mash. In the long term, you can read habits to guess when your opponent wants to switch.

GG pressure isn't different from other fighting games, until you consider Faultless Defense and Instant Block. FD pushes you out if you press too buttons, IB can create gaps to mash. Backdashes are also high invul and low recovery, and it can be hard to punish them hard.

To deal with FD and IB, do the same thing you would in other fighting games: combine stagger pressure with lights (P/K normals), mixups, and waiting (since FD/IB are often combined with mash). Adjust strings to control spacing and bait mash. Add delays to beat fuzzy defense.

And of course, remember the Tension meter favors the aggressor. On top of that, FD costs a lot of meter, and you can use Roman Cancel to convert if you hit them for a missed IB

Side note: Why do I call jumping and reversals mash? If you hold upback or churn a DP, you're mashing the input. Maybe a better name would be "commit" instead of mash.

Personally, if I fight someone who only blocks, I look at them as mashing on downback.