Pokkén Basics Chapter 10 Basic Defense

In chapter 9, we went over how there is only one mixup in Pokkén. Grab or not grab. There are a lot of ways you can play into this and try to weight the decision making in your favor. Backdash, jump, command counter, red armor, or even an invincible reversal or Burst activation if you have one. But let me tell you how I look at this.

The best defensive option in Pokkén, and most 3D fighting games, is... not blocking - nor is it any of those ways I mentioned. And it's not attacking either. It's movement. Guessing your way out of mixup is cool, but spacing yourself in such a way that you don't have to deal with the mixup at all is infinitely better. Even in duel phase, using evasive options such as walking backwards, backdashing, and jumping are extremely effective and low commitment to stay out of mixup range. Now if you do find yourself in mixup range, here are a few tips to keep yourself from taking too much damage.

-Homing cancel
-Perfect block
-Delay tech
-Backdash

The first two are specific to field phase, even though Machamp can mimic a perfect block in duel phase with Submission. 

Homing Cancel

is when you press X to start homing, but press R before the attack becomes active. This is a useful technique because it nullfies meaties with slower startups from being a factor. If you committed to breaking a throw, but the opponent started charging counter, you can press R to block instead. Also meaties that were effective in duel phase like Shadow Mewtwo's Vortex, and Blaziken's EX Heat Wave can be defended against by committing to breaking the throw but then pressing R once you see the opponent is starting up a slow attack. Homing cancels let you also defend against the throw vs homing mixup when you're negative on block. At -8 doing a homing cancel will break the grab but you can block in time to stop homings. There's some more nuance to this and it can be beaten by things like like delayed grabs, and really fast moves like Blaze Kicks, but those are the basics. To practice homing canceling, use a move that puts you at -8, set the opponent who has an 11 frame grab to block and then grab on reaction. Then press X long enough to break the grab but not do damage, then press R. Grab them back before they're done recovering from their animation. Homing cancels let you get unique punishes with characters who would prefer not to end in homing.

Perfect blocking

is an extension of the homing cancel technique. When your character goes from homing into block, you get stuck in your blocking animation for a while before you can do anything else. But you're always stuck for about the same amount of time. Meaning, if you homing and then block, attacks that normally would put you in large amounts of block stun suddenly don't as you recover from your block animation in the same amount of time that you would if you didn't block anything at all. This lets you punish moves that should be safe or even positive on block. The window for this isn't very big, and I have a short video explaining exactly how to perform this, but it's very useful to punish or gain frame advantage against reactable single target moves including Burst shockwaves.. 

Delay Tech

is something I personally use a lot. This isn't a technical term,it's  just what I call it. It's the same thing is just inputting a throw break, but doing after blocking for a few frames. So, if I'm knocked down, I'll often commit to blocking but then after a bit, I'll go for a dive kick or even a 2Y. This is to first, make sure I don't eat too much damage initially as I'm getting up. But secondly, to avoid people trying to react to the fact that I'm blocking and try to throw me once they see it. A meaty throw can still beat this, and so can a delayed attack, but that's where I mix in what I think is often the best defensive option.

Backdashing

has a small amount of invincibility as it's starting up. So if your opponent goes for a meaty attack with few active frames, you'll avoid it. It also beats grabs that are done very meaty as well, but this isn't always reliable since most people don't use meaty setups for their grabs. I once asked on Twitter, which type of jab is better, mid low, or high? But the answer is it doesn't really matter because you can backdash both of them since jabs almost universally don't have enough active frames to catch backdashes. 

Those are some of the techniques I used to defend myself, homing canceling, perfect blocking, delay teching, and backdashing. Notice, how none of those methods I listed were block. Blocking is good since it makes sure the most damage you can get is from a grab. The problem I have with blocking in Pokkén, however, is that a lot of grabs still do way too much damage, and there's no real throw break system so you can't react to them. And you can't even safely delay tech without committing to a normal  with significant recovery. Just remember that avoiding the mixup with movement is far better than any other defensive option.

With this chapter, you should now have a complete understanding of the mechanics and basic strategy involved in Pokkén Tournament DX. The final Chapter, Chapter 11, will be all about combining everything we learned into an effective tournament winning strategy.