AoDNC: Art of Discovering New Combos

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
#1

Hello guys. I always learnt new combos from combo videos, tutorials, articles, blog posts, forum posts.
I have always tried to replicate those wonderful sequences seen everywhere. But my question is: what’s the “scientific” process to discover a new combo?
How can i know that particular link works (even if it is extremely difficult). How can I say that normal link is “n” frames? I mean, many combos requires hours of training and exercise: how does anyone know that particular sequence is feasible in the first place?

An example, using Evil Ryu. Many of his links are awkard at best: c.mp -> c.mk or c.lp -> h.shoryuken or even better st.mp -> FADC -> st.mp

Damn, this seems to be very hard to achieve. How can one tell those links are doable before even attempting at practicing them?
I was looking at some Street Fighter V videos and many players seems to be able to do complex combos in the first hours of the beta. How is this possible?

#2

The token answer is probably - get in the lab. Just try shit out.

Even if you only have a year or two of experience, if you can’t link say…st. HK > cr. HP after a few minutes, then it probably can’t be done. More experienced players could probably rule out something that doesn’t work like the st. HK > cr. HP in under a minute, even with a brand new game like SFV. It’s just timing. Time is a fact with no gray areas. The gray areas involve character specific combos. Those are probably figured out by, you guessed it - hard work in training mode.

#3

Knowing whether combos are possible or not is a combination of frame data coming out early (either given by the developer or data mined) and/or people working in the lab.

#4

a way to eyeball it in Ultra is peak at the opponents health bar. every time you land a hit a flash goes across the health bar that gives a visual indication of how long they are stuck in hitstun. If you recover before the flash reaches the end you know that move can be linked into another move

#5

That flash on the life bar has nothing to do with hit stun duration. That’s an old wives tale from vanilla SF4.

#6

Just learn to read frame data in order to learn what combos or not before actually trying it.
There’s a sticky in this forum section that explains it for dummies, we got the USFIV wiki for in-depth frame data for all characters.
Basically you just just substract the startup of the move you want to combo into, from the advantage on block of the move you want to combo from.
If it’s equal to 0 or bigger it combos, if it’s slightly in the minus it doesn’t combo or only combos on counterhit.

There’s very specific scenarios where stuff combos that usually doesn’t due to reelback animations and/or the fact that you hit the opponent on a later active frame, but those are very specific and not really interesting to you if you just start out.

#7

this just look at the start up and the frame advantage yeah i stop practicing that bullshit just recently just stick to general and not character specific combos.

#8

when the SFV beta was on i tried alot of wierd stuff in training mod,these combo were not optimal as some people pointed me out but its still nice stuff and its always more fun to use combo you discovered yourself (well for me at least ^^) just try stuff and when you see that 2 moves link,try a 3rd one and so on :slight_smile: