Animation cancelling... is dumb.

[Meerkat]

So a lot of people make a big deal about animation cancelling in Blade & Soul, and I really don’t understand why.  As far as I can tell, animation cancelling is just extra mechanical difficulty that does nothing to improve the game.  Before some #MLGdudebro jumps in and starts screaming “INCREASES SKILL GAP” while going cross-eyed, let’s break this shit down.

 

In fighting games, animation cancelling is an advanced technique staple to high level gameplay.  In Guilty Gear, animation cancelling can be used at any time ( as long as you have enough super bar ), but is expensive to use, consuming up to 50% of your super bar per use.  This places the emphasis on intelligent use of animation cancellation.  You’re either pushing an advantage home by extending a combo, or trying to guard following a mistake before your opponent punishes with his own sphincter shredding combo.  In any other case, it is better to save your super bar.  In Guilty Gear, animation cancelling is a gameplay refinement; a situational technique to master, not spam.

 

In Blade & Soul, animation cancelling is the default action.  There’s no thought involved, just carpal tunnel inducing key mashing.  Since when does mindless key mashing improve a game?  Never.

 

Here’s the thing about playing games competitively: it requires skill.  Not everybody can play at a high level.  I can’t beat Michael Phelps at swimming or Usain Bolt at running.  Some of you won’t be able to beat me in gaming.  What games do is abstract the competition, marginalizing physicality so that the mind is the greater determinant in success.  Competitive gaming is strong because it is accessible; a knee injury won’t end your career.  It’s why chess is one of the greatest games.  It’s purely a match of intellect with no outside interference.  All you need is a keen mind.

 

So again, how is button mashing a skill?  In fact, easy as it is, if you’re having difficulty perfecting the requisite button mashing, you’ve lost effectiveness.  Against an otherwise perfectly even opponent, you might lose because you were less effective at mashing.  That’s crazy.

 

Worse yet, Blade & Soul animation cancelling is actually tied to latency.  The better your latency, the more effective animation cancelling becomes.  And it doesn't even end there!  Your ability to animation cancel might even be tied to frame rate, so if you have less performance, you might actually be doing less damage!  We have a mechanic that can be affected by circumstances entirely out of the player’s control.  That’s not crazy, that’s patently absurd!

 

Let me give you another example.  Sometimes, in FPS games, the devs forget to cap the fire rate for semi-auto weapons meaning you buy a mouse with a frictionless scroll wheel, bind fire to the scroll wheel and just let the *cricket*er rip so that you’re supposedly semi-auto weapon that’s supposed to be balanced by slower fire rate is now a 4,000 RPM death ray.  Or other times when action input rate is tied to frame rate, allowing players to actually shoot more rapidly as a result of higher framerate.

 

That’s what Blade & Soul animation cancelling is.  It’s just frame buffering.  It adds nothing to the game.

 

Who wins from this?  Kids with better ping?  Second tier wannabes who can’t make it in a real PvP game?  Bots that can reliably input at 33 ms?  I just don’t get it.

 

In fact, there’s no reason at all to not macro animation cancelling.  An animation cancelling macro would improve consistency while not changing gameplay while removing physical bullshit and reducing tedium.  Except you’ll get banned for it because I guess it makes you look like a bot since we’re doing bot-like things ( see the problem there? ).

 

And here’s the kicker:  Supposedly, animation cancelling wasn’t even intended as part of the game’s design.  It was just discovered to be a thing, and the design team left it in because they were too lazy to fix the animations.  That, or they thought it would add to Blade & Soul’s #MLG viability while entirely failing to understand why animation cancelling works in fighting games.  The result is that we’re saddled with a crap mechanic that doesn’t improve the game, puts players with poor ping at disadvantage, creates artificial mechanical difficulty and is just dumb.

 

So, how to improve Blade & Soul combat?  A few ways.  Remove animation cancelling altogether and rebalance moves so classes can retain effectiveness.  Or have animation cancelling serve more to break long animations ( reset to neutral stance ) and cost focus.  This of course also requires animations to be changed so that animation cancelling actually makes sense.

 

And let's be clear here.  I'm not asking Blade & Soul to be made easier.  Memorizing how to time left click / right click isn't that hard in the first place regardless.  I'm talking about streamlining Blade & Soul's combat to make it MORE competitive.  When we isolate out more mechanical bullshit, especially this kind of bullshit that's tied to latency and performance, we increase accessibility, allowing more players to play competitively which actually strengthens the competitive scene.  Isolate as much as possible to level out the playing field as much as possible so the strength of a player's mind becomes the determinant.  Think about this carefully.  Which games have successful competitive scenes and which games don't.  How often do competitive games have massively larger player bases than non-competitive / dead games.  This is pro-competition.  It's why professional teams have salary caps, F1 championship cars have so many limitations on weight, aero, power, downforce, tires, etc., why fighters are divided into weight classes.  To level out the playing field.

 

Animation cancelling in Blade & Soul is excess fat.  You trim the fat for the lean meat.  We don't have to all end at the same place, but we should all start from the same place.  That is the spirit of competition.

 

TD;DR:  Animation cancelling is dumb because it doesn’t add anything to combat strategy, while being impacted by non-player factors, and should either be removed or implemented in a way similar to top tier fighting games to improve the competitive aspect of this game.

[TwoPunchMan]

can you imagine destroyers without animation cancelling RMB/LMB ?.. even if you rebalance them back to viable state, the entire flow of the class would still be ruined and most people would be pissed regardless. Animation cancelling isn't just for added mechanics but also for the feel of it.

[Meerkat]

7 minutes ago, TwoPunchMan said:

can you imagine destroyers without animation cancelling RMB/LMB ?.. even if you rebalance them back to viable state, the entire flow of the class would still be ruined and most people would be pissed regardless. Animation cancelling isn't just for added mechanics but also for the feel of it.

 

We know for certain ping effects animation cancelling.  I suspect framerate does as well.

 

So leaving DPS tied to latency and system performance is a better solution?

 

And if the feel is important, just have the left click animation be four quick axe swings, each doing quarter damage, that you can actually animation cancel out of to end the animation so you can guard or perform a different ability as the situation demands.

[PvPMS]

I play Destroyer on max graphics on a laptop with college wifi, and I have absolutely no problem animation cancelling outside of world bosses. Using ping as an excuse to get rid of a core skill for destroyers is a joke. In fact, I find any game that doesn't implement clipping/animation cancelling for dps rather dry. If it bothers you so much, just play a class that isn't dependent on it for dps instead of trying to ruin the game for the rest of us.

[Meerkat]

15 minutes ago, PvPMS said:

I play Destroyer on max graphics on a laptop with college wifi, and I have absolutely no problem animation cancelling outside of world bosses. Using ping as an excuse to get rid of a core skill for destroyers is a joke. In fact, I find any game that doesn't implement clipping/animation cancelling for dps rather dry. If it bothers you so much, just play a class that isn't dependent on it for dps instead of trying to ruin the game for the rest of us.

 

Spamming mouse clicks isn't a skill, it's just a thing you do.  If spamming mouse clicks is all you need to have fun why aren't you playing one of those clicker heroes games?

 

Have you played BF3?  Tried the AN-94?  The rifle capable of 1,000 RPM in two-round burst mode?  It's not a bad rifle, except very few people use it because if you oversample, your DPS gets shot to hell.

 

What if one day you're no longer privileged to blazing fast uni Internet, and get stuck with some 2 mbit connection at a hotel or something.  Does having your DPS get *cricket*ed by latency sound fun?

 

The type of things I'm proposing would make playing a destroyer more consistent, and therefore, more accessible for more players by removing constraints tied to latency and performance.

[PvPMS]

Just now, Elmala said:

 

 

5 minutes ago, Meerkat said:

 

Spamming mouse clicks isn't a skill, it's just a thing you do.  If spamming mouse clicks is all you need to have fun why aren't you playing one of those clicker heroes games?

 

Have you played BF3?  Tried the AN-94?  The rifle capable of 1,000 RPM in two-round burst mode?  It's not a bad rifle, except very few people use it because if you oversample, your DPS gets shot to hell.

 

What if one day you're no longer privileged to blazing fast uni Internet, and get stuck with some 2 mbit connection at a hotel or something.  Does having your DPS get *cricket*ed by latency sound fun?

 

The type of things I'm proposing would make playing a destroyer more consistent, and therefore, more accessible for more players by removing constraints tied to latency and performance.

If that were to happen, I would switch to fm or summoner and stop crying about things I can't have because I'm not willing to pay for better internet. Besides, what you're complaining about concerns pve more than pvp. In PvP, you can't get away with just spamming left and right click. This game is known for having weak pve gameplay. If you want a game where clipping on PvE is more skill-based, go play Skyforge. You're also disregarding the fact that Destroyer is meant to be an easy class. It's only rated half a star more difficult than summoner I believe, so it's intended to accommodate people with a desire to play a simpler class. 

[Jamein]

Your entire argument falls apart because all you keep talking about is mashing buttons, if you are just mashing buttons you will fail your animation cancels, if a KFM spams 3rf as quick as possible 3 won't hit and F won't proc. You need to time it and get a rhythm for it. Destroyer is the same, if you spam LMB/RMB as fast as possible, you'll cancel LMB too early and won't get the regen from it and fail.

 

Ping is a factor though I'll give you that but there's absolutely nothing that can be done about that and ping effects everything in all MMO's not just anicancels.

Although I will point out, people can do the animation cancel on destro at 200 ping, and a KFM could still do it at like 120 ping. Not saying it will be as fast or effective, but its still do-able and better than not doing it. Ping however is a completely separate argument because it effects all things in the game.

 

In the end, animation cancelling correctly does increase the skill cap on classes, and separates the good players from the bad players. A KFM who only spams shinkick during stunlock combo, will forever be worse off than a KFM who can fit in 3rf during that combo. It's about abusing GCD's for maximum effect, people who can do that are better off, but they should be as they clearly understand their class a lot better than someone who doesn't push out every bit of damage they can, it's not about mashing buttons, it's about knowing which buttons to press and when and the only time you're at a severe disadvantage is if you are playing with 150+ ping which most people aren't. You can't balance the game around high ping users, that's not fair. That's why you have servers in different regions.

 

[Meerkat]

22 minutes ago, Jamein said:

In the end, animation cancelling correctly does increase the skill cap on classes, and separates the good players from the bad players. A KFM who only spams shinkick during stunlock combo, will forever be worse off than a KFM who can fit in 3rf during that combo. It's about abusing GCD's for maximum effect, people who can do that are better off, but they should be as they clearly understand their class a lot better than someone who doesn't push out every bit of damage they can, it's not about mashing buttons, it's about knowing which buttons to press and when.

 

 

Yeah... I realize there's a rhythm to it.  But that's the thing.  In the end, if you're doing 50 ms +/- 3 ms -> 50 ms +/- 3 ms -> 65 ms +/- 3 ms, that's just muscle memory over and over and over.  You'd be no different from a bot, except you can't beat a bot in input consistency.

 

Compare Blade & Soul's version of animation cancelling to Guilty Gear's version of animation cancelling.  Tell me which game does it better.  Keep in mind, Guilty Gear is a premiere fighting game, competitively standing on equal grounds as Street Fighter.  How does Blade & Soul compare to Street Fighter?

 

Think about how much the mechanics of the game would change just by adding a focus cost to animation cancelling to Blade & Soul.  You would have to choose between a berserker mode where you'd sacrifice focus generation for on-demand DPS, or you'd play it a bit more safe to save up for your other abilities.

 

By the way, let's be clear here.  "Animation cancelling" in Blade & Soul is actually closer to frame buffering in fighting games, and frame buffering, which shaves off a handful of frames at most, isn't nearly as powerful in fighting games.

 

[Tyranei]

Gonna have to agree with Meerkat here, at least on the ping and frame-rate points.  In general, though, I think the skill-cap increase from animation cancelling is a nice addition that allows another thing players can improve themselves on.

 

As a Blade Dancer, its a well-understood fact that ping can vastly affect our animation-cancelling during PvP.  Around 50 ping can mean the difference of an instance or two of a rotation of LMB/F, which can be a huge loss of damage.  I have the best possible internet available in my area and my ping bounces between 50 to 160.  I don't have the option of making that better (as will apply to the majority of Americans, our internet choices are pretty bad compared to other countries).

 

Similar logic (though less relevant specifically to the subject of animation cancelling) can be applied to frame-rate.  I don't know how many people have actually tested their own performance on varying degrees on frame-rates (including unsteady frame-rates) but its pretty clear how big of a difference frame-rate can make in player performance.  Someone with 60 fps will perform better than someone with 30 fps on the basis his view is less stuttered and animations are much easier to notice and predict.  Someone with unstable frame-rate can have noticeable difficulties reacting to situations if their opponent suddenly does things from the player's perspective.  Someone with 120+ fps will perform better than those another with 60 fps.  I'm not saying that's always the case, but more of an explanation in regards to the same person experiencing different frame-rates.

 

Still, I don't think there's much that can be done in relation to these particular points.  Ping will always vary (especially in America) and people obviously have different rigs running the game, causing differences in frame-rate performance.

[Jamein]

10 minutes ago, Meerkat said:

 

Yeah... I realize there's a rhythm to it.  But that's the thing.  In the end, if you're doing 50 ms +/- 3 ms -> 50 ms +/- 3 ms -> 65 ms +/- 3 ms, that's just muscle memory over and over and over.  You'd be no different from a bot.

It's a combination of muscle memory and understanding your situation/GCD's to know what you can fit in and where.

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Compare Blade & Soul's version of animation cancelling to Guilty Gear's version of animation cancelling.  Tell me which game does it better.  Keep in mind, Guilty Gear is a premiere fighting game, competitively standing on equal grounds as Street Fighter.

 You're comparing an MMO to a fighting game, absolutely no point to that the similarities end at the fact that it's 1v1. The gameplay and style of fighting in BNS is massively different taking on a more counter play/tactical stance than a reaction based one. Baiting out CC's/Escapes understanding your opponents cooldowns etc. 

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Think about how much the mechanics of the game would change just by adding a focus cost to animation cancelling to Blade & Soul.  You would have to choose between a berserker mode where you'd sacrifice focus generation for on-demand DPS, or you'd play it a bit more safe to save up for your other abilities.

 

There are focus costs.... you animation cancel certain skills because they give and take focus. Destroyer LMB gives it back, RMB uses it up, if you can't anicancel and just spam RMB you deplete focus so fast and become useless.

3rf for a KFM is self sustaining.

 

You're completely misunderstanding the use of anicancelling, you don't just go spamming it whenever you want. You still have to set yourself up in a situation where its usable (for Destro and KFM anyway).

FM's are a different breed, but they anicancel LMB/RMB inbetween the GCD on your skills because they don't share a CD, so like I said its about abusing your GCD's to get as much damage out as possible, not about spamming your buttons.

 

[SinNoAria]

Main problem is that ping actually affects the ability to do animation canceling in certain instances.

 

In other games with animation cancel, ping is less of an issue because you can do the animation cancel without it being tied to the ping. (Ping still matters, but...)

 

Other game: I can do 1 -> 5 -> 2 -> 1

 

If I have a ping delay, I can still do it, I just have to know my ping and account for it.

 

In B&S: I get -> 2 -> tab (second form) -> RMB

 

Problem is with ping delay, the tab second form is delayed. And because the window is so short, I might not even get to use tab.  Essentially, I hit 2. 2 procs, there is a short delay between me receiving the proc and tab changing from skill 1 to skill 2. Then, when I hit tab, there is ANOTHER delay and if the total delay was too long, tab won't even activate, it will fizzle due to it no longer being valid for use.

 

 

[Meerkat]

23 minutes ago, Tyranei said:

Gonna have to agree with Meerkat here, at least on the ping and frame-rate points.  In general, though, I think the skill-cap increase from animation cancelling is a nice addition that allows another thing players can improve themselves on.

 

Exactly.  One of the nice things about competing in a game is that it is accessible, much more accessible than real world competitions.  If you've got short arms, guess what?  You're not going to get into the NBA.  But you can still play a basketball game extremely well.  And another nice thing?  Correctly done, games can help level the playing field so matches are more likely to be determined by skill.  It's why most competitive games like Counterstrike can hold a locked 60 FPS even on low end machines.  To eliminate variance introduced by non-player factors.

 

It's one of the reasons why I respect chess as much as I do.  It's a pure mental battle entirely divorced of physical ability.  I'm not talking physical endurance improving mental endurance here; in the end, we're all still humans.  I'm talking about the fact that there is no skill required to move a piece across a board.

 

22 minutes ago, Jamein said:

 You're comparing an MMO to a fighting game, absolutely no point to that the similarities end at the fact that it's 1v1. The gameplay and style of fighting in BNS is massively different taking on a more counter play/tactical stance than a reaction based one. Baiting out CC's/Escapes understanding your opponents cooldowns etc. 

There are focus costs.... you animation cancel certain skills because they give and take focus. Destroyer LMB gives it back, RMB uses it up, if you can't anicancel and just spam

 

Blade & Soul promotes itself as being competition ready.  I'm putting Blade & Soul's feet to the fire and seeing how it stands up.  Certain aspects do: the counterplay between CC & escapes works well.  A lot of other aspects don't.

 

I'm not misunderstanding animation cancelling.  You're failing to understand that animation cancellation has been done many times in the past; that I'm comparing Blade & Soul's implementation to other implementations from games with serious competitive pedigree.

 

You have no idea how often I get called elitist scum or a tryhard.  For me, that's a badge of honour.

[KaLnoX]

Dont tell me op got his hp melted in pvp by a destro using ani cancel.....

[Meerkat]

5 minutes ago, KaLnoX said:

Dont tell me op got his hp melted in pvp by a destro using ani cancel.....

 

Nah, I play Blade & Soul nice and casual.  Save my pubstarring for high skillcap FPS games.

[KaLnoX]

2 minutes ago, Meerkat said:

 

Nah, I play Blade & Soul nice and casual.  Save my gohard for high skillcap FPS games.

 

Thank god thats the case...

[Sokucu]

I can bet i am very good at it,but can't leave without saying it looks cheap,not even hitting anything,no clash,no sound but seeing damage ... I want to see my character swing his weapon,hit the enemy,spill his blood.But no.Since that '' Bug '' is allowed,i feel myself obliged to do it.Heck actually i am even doing it unwillingly now.Can't say i am talented for being able to do such crap.But,apparently some people feel themselves special for simple things ...

 

 

 

 

[azraelkun]

All that u all saying would be nice if kfms n des didnt macro lb rb .

Ps i like the fact of ani cancels in general what i dont like is that des in 2 secs can ani cancel 80% of ur hp but sin in 2 secs can ani cancel 20% ...u get it now!

[Meerkat]

5 minutes ago, KaLnoX said:

Thank god thats the case...

 

Indeed.  I can't take a game that can't maintain steady performance and drops input seriously.

 

Plus, shooting peeps in the face feels good.

[KaLnoX]

2 minutes ago, Meerkat said:

 

Indeed.  I can't take a game that can't maintain steady performance and drops input seriously.

 

....yet here you are :/ Still, granted though.

[Meerkat]

4 minutes ago, KaLnoX said:

 

....yet here you are :/ Still, granted though.

 

I am here.  What can I say?  I want games I play to be good.

 

But instead of me always having to respond to people, let's try this.  Ignoring all the framerate and ping related issues with animation cancelling, tell me how Blade & Soul's animation cancelling system is a superior system to the animation cancelling / frame buffering systems in competitive fighting games.

 

And don't be a moron like that other guy and just try to brush off Blade & Soul as being incomparable to a fighting game, as if fighting games didn't also involve baiting and CC.

[Jamein]

26 minutes ago, Meerkat said:

Blade & Soul promotes itself as being competition ready.  I'm putting Blade & Soul's feet to the fire and seeing how it stands up.  Certain aspects do: the counterplay between CC & escapes works well.  A lot of other aspects don't.

If you want to analze that then go look at the korean scene as that is where we are heading, right now BNS EU/NA isn't competition ready but that's where they are heading towards this year with content releases being rushed to catch up with korea.

Animation cancelling has been in the korean competitive scene for a long time.

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I'm not misunderstanding animation cancelling.  You're failing to understand that animation cancellation has been done many times in the past; that I'm comparing Blade & Soul's implementation to other implementations from games with serious competitive pedigree.

Again, you're comparing it to completely different games with absolutely different mechanics and style of play. Both are games with a 1v1 aspect, but are so different that you can't compare one competitive scene to another. So many games use forms of animation cancelling, BnS is no different in that regard. Not to mention your entire argument falls absolutely flat in a competitive LAN scene which is where finals are held because everyones ping is the same, so ping advantage goes out the window and it comes down to who is better, and animation cancelling is a big part of that for certain classes.

 

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How much time do you spend analyzing the mechanics of the games you play?

Plenty, I'm not interested in the PVE aspect of the game so I spend most of the time understanding the other classes that I don't play and trying to improve on how to beat them consistently. If I'm playing a game I tend to want to know all the mechanics, I find that fun.

 

Animation cancelling is just an added layer of skill simple as that. Its effected by ping just like anything in this game is but lets not kid ourselves if someone with 30 ping fights against someone with 60 ping, the 30 ping player might have that slightly minuscule edge, but skill level will matter more, mainly because you don't just spam animation cancels you set them up to be used so again, the counter plays are way more important.

 

Honestly all this is such a moot point, animation cancelling IS part of the game now and classes are balanced with that in mind and the competitive scene has been going for a while. If you don't like it thats fair enough, but that's how this game works . Just because another game does it differently doesn't mean its better, it just has a different take on it.

5 minutes ago, Meerkat said:

 

And don't be a moron like that other guy and just try to brush off Blade & Soul as being incomparable to a fighting game, as if fighting games didn't also involve baiting and CC.

If you can't hold a debate without resorting to insults then fair enough I'm out you're clearly not worth talking too.

Comparing a fighting game to an MMO is the most retarded thing I've heard.

May as well complain that mounts in other games don't turn corners or handle as well as driving in Need for Speed.

[KaLnoX]

8 minutes ago, Meerkat said:

 

I am here.  What can I say?  I want games I play to be good.

 

But instead of me always having to respond to people, let's try this.  Ignoring all the framerate and ping related issues with animation cancelling, tell me how Blade & Soul's animation cancelling system is a superior system to the animation cancelling / frame buffering systems in competitive fighting games.

 

And don't be a moron like that other guy and just try to brush off Blade & Soul as being incomparable to a fighting game, as if fighting games didn't also involve baiting and CC.

 

Incomparable? Making up notions now? I never said or suggested such a thing, even remotely. I'm merely getting a slight lel out of the anti cancel bitchfest. Chill out.

[Meerkat]

11 minutes ago, Jamein said:

If you want to analze that then go look at the korean scene as that is where we are heading, right now BNS EU/NA isn't competition ready but that's where they are heading towards this year with content releases being rushed to catch up with korea.

 

If you're willing to put down the moolah, you can make any game competitive, at least for a while.

 

Even Paladins is starting off with a very healthy $100k tourney pot ( http://esportsobserver.com/why-hi-rezs-100k-founders-tournament-could-put-it-ahead-of-the-pack/ ) for it's very first tourney, and that money is attracting a lot of very good FPS players.  Kicker:  A lot of very good FPS players think Paladins is junk.

 

Just because people play in tournaments with each other doesn't mean a game is competitive.

 

But yeah, please tell me about Blade & Soul's comp scene.  A super special $40k first pot is pretty decent for a five year old game's NA / EU rollout is pretty decent I guess.  Don't see Justin Wong or Daigo Umehara giving a shit though.

 

4 minutes ago, KaLnoX said:

 

Incomparable? Making up notions now? I never said or suggested such a thing, even remotely. I'm merely getting a slight lel out of the anti cancel bitchfest. Chill out.

 

I didn't say you were a moron, unless you'd like to be "the other guy" as well.

[Brainy]

@Meerkat

I don't even know where to start...

 

First of all, animation canceling is not just button mashing. You need very good timing to pull it off.

Second, this is just a PvE issue (it's not even an issue, but let's assume it for your sake), which means nothing for most players. If you don't like to ani-cancel, don't do it, if you feel you do low damage without it, roll a different class. Why does it bother you that others do it ?

 

As for PvP, the cases are rare when you can ani-cancel and it's mostly used the way you said about that other fighting game, to punish the other player when he did a mistake. ("In Guilty Gear, animation cancelling can be used at any time ( as long as you have enough super bar ), but is expensive to use, consuming up to 50% of your super bar per use.  This places the emphasis on intelligent use of animation cancellation." )

[Meerkat]

28 minutes ago, Brainy said:

@Meerkat

As for PvP, the cases are rare when you can ani-cancel and it's mostly used the way you said about that other fighting game, to punish the other player when he did a mistake. ("In Guilty Gear, animation cancelling can be used at any time ( as long as you have enough super bar ), but is expensive to use, consuming up to 50% of your super bar per use.  This places the emphasis on intelligent use of animation cancellation." )

 

In Guilty Gear, there's a character called Dizzy.  One of her signature moves is a massive ice spike that comes out of the ground, dealing very high damage.  However, it also has a very long recovery animation before you can perform a new move.  If you whiff your ice spike, you can get punished extremely easily.  You can, however, use the equivalent of five focus ( or three focus with incredibly good timing ) to cancel the recovery animation.

 

So yeah, it's exactly the same.

 

But in the meantime, how good does your timing have to be?  Watch this.

 

 

See the ice spike?  Then the blue flash on the right side player?  That's pretty much the exact time.  You have about a 100 ms window to hit 25% super bar consumption.  Miss that window, you red flash and you use 50% super bar.

 

But yeah, tell me about timings.

 

Guilty Gear is *cricket*ing nuts.  I spent hours trying to learn just that one character's FRC's.  And I still couldn't do it consistently.  That's throw your keyboard out the window difficulty.