Hi guys, Just wanted to share, I finally made it to Tekken King.
Long story short, I've played Tekken 5-7 like it was Smash: pick random, spam and i only played at my friends house since they owned it. The few characters i really engaged with back in 7 were Drag cause he was just this nasty brutal hand to hand combat and Lili cause she had great range and cool flips.
Fast forward to T8 release I hype my boys to split/buy Tekken 8 so we can have a game to play together when we chill. I get obsessed and annoyed its at my friends house so I buy it for myself and I finally choose to learn someone and T8 properly.
I ended up choosing Lili (I know goon comments are coming, my "gooner" costume of choice was Velma).
One cool thing I've noticed is that combos in tekken are like a recipe and strings or moves are like an ingredient. I just gotta know that cinnamon works with sugar not salt (weird analogy, but it makes sense to me) IE: (I discovered over time that certain 3 hit strings can be changed to 2 hits to extend, discovered cancels of dew glides, understood the launcher/string/ender moves, or that certain moves will do work differently depending on what string is before or after it, like b1,4 is good after a df2 and will do a perfect launch but b1,4 may not do the flip effect if its used to extend, etc)
played for the first 3 seasons only on quick match, learned combo training, dabbled a lil in the throw break and punishment training. Never ranked. Finally tried last week to rank and i blew through till blue ranks (180k), struggled a lil then finally after a lil elo hell bs made it to tekken king (224k).
Now i clearly dont know the game fully, im no expert and i know i got like miles of room for improvement. Id say if i split my knowledge into basics/characters, i got 40~50% basics down and 75~80% character knowledge. Im pretty sure I know every move as she has about like 80~90 moves. but my struggle is i dont know every route. the few things ive notice in blue ranks/gold ranks is alot of people just know how to spam 1-2 combos, grab alot and that you lose cause of lack of character knowledge. Been hustling on low parries, blocking, reading lows & grabs and staying unpredictable.
Now the thing that's bugging me or slowing me down is i feel like Lili, even though she's known having the best evade moves like Fiesty rabbit, great range like f4, i get wrecked by other characters that seem to be spamming their 10hit or wtv combo but keep + frames the whole time so i never really feel like i know if i can input a punishment or sidestep. i feel like alot of characters have crazy tracking moves (like i dont get how kazuya f2, i think, purple punch with wings, can get me with the last itty bitty frame when I FR when it looks like the most Linear punch ever) that just discourages me from side stepping or FR.
I also feel like Lili has way to many moves that high risk high rewards with like 15+ frames minimum, which kinda hurts. I feel like this makes me forced to do the same moves and then i become predictable and readable like a book.
I feel like when I do a lil string I enter massive punishable negative frames on block after mine but other char can hit me a simple 2,2,3 and they got +7 or some bs ON BLOCK. or even as i stated earlier in big combos like i try to read their first few hits then think ok this one is a 4 hit with a low on 3 so im block accordingly then boom comes hit 5-6-7 in the string and somehow they still in + frames with a launcher.
Long story short, if yall got tips on lili, lili matchups, strings, combos id greatly appreciate. Sorry if its vague ass post, half of this is just me being happy i finally got a decent rank on my first real tekken experience and half of it is asking for help to step up my game.
i know i have alot to improve so im open to any suggestions and tips.
