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Written by: SK
This write-up is intended for intermediate level players. It is not intended for advanced players. The one who wrote it isn’t that good at this anyway (guaranteed).
This is about anti-airing in DFCI, especially air-to-airs. I believe that skill at anti-airing in DFCI is directly connected to how successful one will be. Air-to-airing is important for characters with strong air-to-airs and characters who have weak grounded anti-airs and therefore have an easier time using air-to-airs. Now, I want to discuss the first objective when using air-to-airs.
Take this for instance: the opponent character (Tomoka) jumps and intends to cover herself with j.C. At that time, your own character (Qwenthur) runs forward to make the opponent's character jump over you.
In a situation like that, you can think of your character as being in a favorable position, reason being that the opponent character’s back is turned to you and their air attack won’t hit you. When the opponent is in this position (ignoring the existence of power blast and anti anti-air moves for now), their options are landing or double jumping.
After jumping over people, it is common for people to double jump to correct their position. The idea is it’s better to double jump to correct themselves rather than let themselves land and risk being attacked on landing. People who play characters with j.Cs that are particularly hard to beat with a grounded anti-air seem to be especially prone to using this tactic.
What to aim for in air-to-airing this double jump situation
In most cases, the difficult part of this is landing the air-to-air consistently every time. The reason is that normally the double jump will go out of range for an anti-air to reach, and they also still have the option to just do one jump instead of two. You shouldn’t single-mindedly focus on catching a double jump.
However, if you create a situation like the one from earlier where the opponent’s air attack after a single jump wouldn’t reach you, you can focus on catching the double jump and benefit greatly from it. With this approach, there’s not a lot of risk on your end if they choose to land after one jump instead (I won’t say “there’s no risk at all”).
In summary: if the opponent jumps and you get to a spacing where the opponent’s jump attack can’t reach you, that’s your chance to try to anti-air their double jump!
That example was about when the opponent character jumps past your character. In the case of the common situation where you attempt to check the opponent’s 5B>jc j.C by pushblocking the 5B to push them out too far for their j.C to reach you, you’ve forced the opponent into a situation where they have to choose between landing or double jumping. This kind of situation is another chance to go for air-to-airs.
When you pushblock the 5B, the opponent’s immediate jump cancel>j.C option doesn’t reach you anymore, opening up the possibility of a double jump instead.
There are other situations that present opportunities for air-to-airs with various timings, like when an opponent air techs or when an opponent blocks an assist in the air.
If you recognize situations like this and stay on the lookout for opponents double jumping, your win percentage should go up. For the time being, it might be good to commit air-to-air responses to your muscle memory! This is just what I feel when fighting, but I think that intermediate level players typically respond to this kind of situation by double jumping. Therefore, a snappy anti-air reaction might secure an immediate win for you. I was giving examples of air-to-airing here, but options like cross-under anti-airs, 2AB anti-airs, or strong grounded anti-airs for characters who have them are good options too.
I was talking about situations where the opponent double jumped to correct their positioning, but it is also common for people to not correct themselves and instead run away with a backwards double jump. Usually an air-to-air won’t reach in that situation, so running forward into a grounded anti-air or targeting their landing with a j.C would be a valid solution.
This last part is important: you shouldn’t go for an air-to-air in this kind of situation every single time. If your opponent is good, they will double jump into an immediate air normal and beat your air-to-air or take advantage of your concern about the double jump option and go on the offense after landing from their first jump. In other words, it’s about having a read on the opponent. Therefore, do the brain dead air-to-airing in moderation_(:3｣∠)_
End.
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