I can block, and I can anti air. That only works as a gameplan with defensive characters like Sagat, and only against bad players. I'm trying to play Dee Jay now, he's an aggressive mixup character with SUPPOSEDLY strong midrange tools. Now what? I've found out most, if not all of those midrange options don't recover fast enough to not be punished by Drive Impact immediately and reliably. If my opponent isn't approaching me, I have no idea what to do. Trying to get in close feels stupid, despite popular belief many low rank players can and will check any form of walkup, jump in, or dash. Poking with medium range tools gets me dead. When I'm up close, mixups feel braindead. Either my opponent is pressing buttons and I win, or they don't and my "mixup" is defeated by a jab or just not attacking like an idiot. Surely being on offense is more complicated than "be within punching range, throw out safe moves until too far to throw out safe moves. Otherwise, stop punching to try and throw and get hit confirmed off of a light attack and die.".
#I can block, what now?
vapid cedar
I find most of my gameplan consists of hitting people with safe moves at good ranges. Having more than one neuron firing at any given time makes that a pointless adventure for me. I can't figure out what I'm actually supposed to be ya know, doing and stuff. I say all this stuff, but I felt pretty good playing Balrog in SFV. Felt like I was actually using my brain, controlling my opponent up close, threatening from midrange. Had good mixups with throw. Now I feel like the opposite like I learned nothing at all. I also notice, that from my current perspective, I was always pressing buttons as Balrog. Difference is that Balrog is like always safe on block and his important moves are plus on block from a long radius, so hitting my opponent to pressure them made sense. So I don't know how to reconcile those two realities either. I don't feel like I learned anything less or more than when I was playing balrog and don't feel like I was somehow lacking some information now. But when I played then, I felt like I knew what I was doing. Being bad always makes me feel like an idiot, so I may just be overthinking this, but it feels like I only ever beat people pressing buttons and if they don't press buttons I'm just blindly swinging probably safe moves hoping they are dumb and pressing buttons all the time.
tame flower
keep in mind the main buttons in SF6 are light. those should be your main options for oki/blockstrings. Part of that is because you can use 2 lights into your opponent’s DI and often still have time to DI back, and also they’re way easier to confirm off of now
vapid cedar
I see. What if I hit a light or two and go for a medium rolling sobat or whatever. Whenever I do something stronger than a light neutral or a fireball it seems to be punished by drive impact somehow
tame flower
think of DI like ken spamming EXDP in the middle of your blockstring in SFV
sure he can make you hurt for having a gap there
but if you catch on to what he s doing you can delete his hp for it
if you catch on that they are using DI a lot, start using lighter buttons so you can react
vapid cedar
Alright, I’ll focus more on that then. I’m also just having a hard time reacting to it. Idk what changed, when I was playing in the beta I reacted easily, now I can’t counter DI to save my life lol
vapid cedar
Everything just feels so wild and unsafe, like I can’t control tempo or have my opponent feel threatened no matter how patient I am. Maybe I’m just playing like crap and overthinking it lol. Everything feels so fast I’m recently finding out I’m having trouble anti airing
rotund elk
so I can talk on some points you listed if you want
but as you say you understood balrog in 5 well, my first suggestion would be to watch some high level dj and see what they're doing. That will likely fill in most of the info you're lookin for
I know kizziekay got a good dj, if you wanna check out his twitch vods
I'm sure there's others, as well as random replay vids on youtube, just don't know em myself
vapid cedar
I watched part of the TNS tournament and saw some Dee Jay players. They're much more passive than I was lol. Usually sitting at a distance and trying to use Jus Cool, fireballs, and drive rush to freak people out. I'm not sure how exactly to apply that to my own gameplay, but I definitely need to work on picking up punishes using those options better than I was