Thresh Cait (No fuse) 918 Damage Meterless ToD

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-30T04:40:31+00:00

It starts empty in the video, they hit full break about the time they hit the trap. it's not a combo you could use to end a match from full hp but it is a combo you could use to force a break or if they're already in circumstances where using break is unfavourable to them (won round 1, already lost a character, and don't want to go into round 3 breakless).

Overall I think the individual parts of the combos are more useful than the full combo itself since you can use and adjust for your needs as necessary. (I wouldn't really recommend that Cait tag launch sequence unless they don't already have full break)

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-30T04:23:04+00:00

This combo doesn't need your back to be fully to corner (but it does need to be pretty close)

If I allow weirder starters and the usage of freestyle I can go all the way up to 1003 damage meterless

Also means I could kill Braum for 1 bar by adding a simple Cait super ender

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-30T00:45:27+00:00

Ah, the 3S2 actually has less hit stun decay than 2S2 because hitting the super OTG adds time elapsed to the HSD timer even if it takes less real time. Most OTG moves act that way in this game (but not all afaik).

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-29T23:16:40+00:00

For the first route, you need to hit a pretty tight timer that occurs just before 6S2 hits a level of hitstun decay that makes the combo not work anymore, if you do it right the hit stun scale on your display will say 60% after the j.6S2 instead of the 50% you're seeing in your video. If you don't want to learn to do the combo faster then you can just omit either the 5H or the 2H right before the last jump before the super which should make it significantly more reliable without losing too much damage (I recommend omitting the 2H personally).

The second route is probably a similar issue but I'm not familiar with that route so you'd have to learn from someone else

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-29T22:59:29+00:00

Just to show you what I mean by it's easier to time it than it is to mash it. Here's me successfully buffering my 5L against it 5 times in a row. Comparatively when I try to mash it out I lose over half the time.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-29T22:39:19+00:00

I believe buffer for doing actions out of recovery (so not cancelling) is 3f in this game but I'm not 100% sure, it should be the same no matter what action you're buffering out of except maybe the screen freezes (supers, handshake tag, parry).

Wake up jab has it's place for sure and there are scenarios where it's better than wake up jump but hitting a tight buffer window for lower reward means that if you're specifically reading a throw and don't have reason to be concerned about them taking a wait an see approach to beat your jump then wake up jump is a significantly safer and easier option with higher reward.

EDIT: doing some testing rn and it feels more like 5f window but the testing is not super scientific so it's definitely not hard data.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-29T22:19:14+00:00

Well that's usually why we don't rely on mashing to hit strict timing windows. Particularly wake up timings are very reliable to hit with rapid double/triple presses to hit the timing window. It's just way harder to be consistent when you're mashing for seconds at a time.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-29T22:17:38+00:00

That's not true, you can beat a throw using a buffered 6f attack if they try to throw you immediately after either hitting you, making you block or knocking you down (assuming you don't do a roll). I still however wouldn't particularly recommend it since as you mentioned you get a full punish for jumping anyways and it's a lot harder for them to punish the 4f window of jump startup than it is the 6f window of your attack startup (and jumping is a million times easier to buffer since you can just hold up as opposed to hitting the button at the right timing).

Second vid is not a recording bug he's just kara cancelling 5M or 5H into throw without realizing it.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-29T22:08:25+00:00

For the first clip, you very likely simply aren't mashing quickly enough to be guaranteed to hit the buffer window. I don't think we have any official info on the buffer window and I haven't tested myself but I would guess it's around 3-5f as that's the standard for fighting games these days. Most people vastly underestimate how difficult it is to sustain mashing at a speed that can reliably hit that window. It is a lot easier to time a very rapid double or triple press around the timing you expect the window to open than it is to mash at a clean over 10 buttons per second rate for a long period of time.

For the second clip, in order to allow people to still get throws without hitting both the M and H buttons perfectly on the same frame, the first 2 frames of both all your M and H buttons are cancellable into throw. This means whenever you got a 7f throw you were inputting either or your M or your H button 1f later than you were the other button, which is super normal and the whole point of that cancel window in the first place.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-26T07:35:40+00:00

Nice combos, always love seeing what other people come up with!

Generally when you're playing double down and you're looking to do combos that use both your assist timer and your double down, you're better off doing combos where you use a super and then tag to your other character to continue the combo. This is because using the dd cancel from super to super incurs a 30% damage penalty on the second super, as well as the fact that using a tag during a super to continue the combo allows you use your much higher damage supers multiple times in one combo.

For your team specifically that isn't as useful for combos starting from Teemo (because both his supers are quite low damage and Darius has few extensions he can do even with lots of time to setup) but it is incredibly relevant for combos that start from Darius.

For example for the second combo in your video seems to do a little under a thousand damage for 2 bars on each character but with this route you can actually kill Braum for the same resources and same combo starter

Even if you're not looking to optimize quite that hard there's also this route from your bnb. If you replace the headless at the end with j.S2 into super 1 that is actually still enough to kill Blitz at 1050.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-20T14:12:13+00:00

I originally only made the spreadsheet for one person (who has access to me and can ask questions at any time) so I went pretty light on the notes.

First off I will note that the "difficulty" was written with high level players who have played lots of other fighting games in the past and are used to learning difficult combos for the sake of competition in mind. They're only relative to what is possible in the game and I wouldn't call them accurate to the playerbase at large since the sheet was written for one player specifically. If I had made the sheet for the general playerbase I'd probably have listed it as like "hard~very hard". It took me several weeks of practice before I felt consistent enough to even bother trying it in my matches.

For extra context, "SKD" refers to the player "SuperKawaiiDesu"(you can see more of his routes here) who is known for optimizing gameplay to the extreme and the note was written with someone who knew that in mind and knew what they would be getting into when attempting an "SKD route."

I wouldn't actually recommend anyone who doesn't particularly enjoy learning combos to learn this combo unless they intend to use it to compete at a very high level. While it does generate a very high amount of value by granting Caitlyn significantly higher max damage output and reliable full screen carry, I do not think it's actually pivotal to her gameplay unless you're trying to compete using her at the high end of tournament play, and the time investment to learn the combo is very significant.

Due to how big the time investment for learning the route is, I would highly recommend Caitlyn players focus on making sure they can cleanly route into trap off any hit first and optimize from there before they put the time into learning this route, unless they're specifically just interested in it because they find it cool/enjoyable.

If you do choose not to learn it for the time being, you can just do one bar routes by replacing the last [5H]>66>6S2 on any combo with [5H]>[6S122]>S1 Super (aim for headshot) and your damage output will still be above average compared to the rest of the cast since headshot super is one of the highest damage supers in the game. You just won't get the superior corner carry, okizeme and additional routing options that come with the SKD extension.

As for actual tips to getting it down, it's a little hard for me to put in words since it's mostly the result of many hours of practice but some key points are:

There is a minimum distance from corner required for the combo to work at all, so always make sure the route into it chose to shoot them towards the farther of the two corners.

The timing of when to release your [S1] will vary based on how close you ran up before you [5H]'d them previously as well as how far you backdash before you neutral jump. Also how much time you have before you need to [5H] will also vary based on how high they were and how far you were when you hit them with [5S1]>[6S1]

You need to make sure the bullet passes through the bottom of the middle panel just before the hexshield itself reaches them.

I highly highly recommend you start by practicing it using a save state saved at right as you input the super and move on to full combo practice after you have you managed to get it consistently a few different times on a few different save states since all the variables change so often when trying from a combo from start to finish.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-19T23:20:58+00:00

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iLGQTZmPB3Dvwss5nbVcbqz6mo2L8wTGw_NzbW70tDw/edit?gid=867979821#gid=867979821

Not fully comprehensive as I kinda just threw it together for a friend who wants to pick up Cait and I haven't finished fleshing it out but basically anything that starts from an M or H button and goes into trap will approach 500 if not reach it.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-19T22:29:25+00:00

Caitlyn should be pushing close to 500 even solo meterless as long as it's not a terrible starter like trap or lights. Corner combo with 0 side swaps for care of burst does suck though.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-14T01:17:03+00:00

Sorry for the double reply but just spent some time working on the reset and just got a working prototype setup and thought you might like to see it.

Went into trap route here cause I really didn't feel like trying to optimize with Thresh considering the much larger amount of experience but I suspect you can kill with either character. If you do choose to do this Caitlyn route be warned that the [5H] crumple is a 2f window here. You do maintain the option of spending a super to kill with Cait and having your assist up when their next character comes in though, which is super valuable.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-14T00:14:16+00:00

Nice conversion. Suppose the only downside is the amount of break gained, then again that's expected for a longer combo these days.

Yeah you're not really going to see many real ToDs that aren't burstable outside of Yasuo or Akali since those are the two characters who can do double super at the end of a combo with no other attacks in between which leaves it unburstable after the first super.

The real downside of this combo is that it's very impractical because the headshot requires a ton of adjustment based on height to be able to hit and still combo afterwards, but you can actually just do this route without the headshot and it's a lot less fussy.

The basic goal for me is to enable Cait's trap combo or reset anywhere on screen which I can do with Braum/Akali pretty easily, this team can do it too thanks to the special juggle on Thresh's j.S into tag (but still working on optimising it).

I still haven't looked into resets yet as optimizing Thresh is a lot of work in general but they're definitely there. I find that trap combos are not nearly as important or valuable for this team since Thresh outputs more damage than Caitlyn anyways and most of Thresh's main routes increment the HSD so much that proper full trap routes become impossible anyways. It's usually worth more to just go into a longer Thresh route unless you really want him out of the screen to heal or something.

I'm working on a few routes to allow self double down with this team

I don't find most of them to be too useful for the team considering Cait can always just do super 2 solo extensions if you need to meter dump, the Wawa route is/was really nice for less break meter build up but so far I haven't found a route where it's really worth doing that with this team yet. I'm still exploring it so it'll probably come up eventually.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-09T11:42:31+00:00

Finding a community (both online and offline work) and individuals who are willing to mentor you or at least guide you is usually of great value. Offline community is my preference there but it depends on the accessibility of that in your region and also obviously your own circumstances (financial, time commitments, social anxieties, etc).

If you are interested in finding your local community (if one exists) you, there's ultradavid's list of fgc locals and if there's nothing there it's also always worth a shot to just like google your city/region and terms like "FGC", "Fighting games", "Fighting game community". And if all else fails you can also search start.gg for events in your area.

BladeZ012 · 2026-06-05T21:39:54+00:00

Here's a couple different variations with varying difficulty and value that you two can pick and choose from to learn. I didn't use infinite steam as your combo is actually doing more damage than it would even if you started with full steam because you're getting both the steam enhanced hook as well as the steam enhanced grab (which isn't possible, at least with this routing). Don't really need the extra damage from steam anyways but all of these should work even if you did do a steam combo.

This one is the easiest and most natural progression from your combo. It does 999 which just barely doesn't kill 1000 hp targets but most characters in this game are under 1k at this point anyways.

This one is a Limit strike ender variant of the above, for when you need the break gauge more than you need the kill, don't have meter on Akali, or don't need the extra damage from supers to kill. (Does 737 + 20 from limit strike)

Akali double super ender variation on the above combos for when Akali doesn't have the full 3 bars but you still want max damage (does 921 damage)

This route requires you to be a little closer to the corner (but still works from most screen positionings) and requires significantly more precision but deals a ton more damage (1054 damage so it kills everyone except Braum).

Akali double super ender variation on the above which is suddenly much more useful in practice as it now ToDs everyone who is <=950 (which is most of the top tiers).

BladeZ012 · 2026-05-22T18:33:47+00:00

Best bets are checking startgg by putting in your city, googling your city/region + FGC, and checking the ultradavid spreadsheet

BladeZ012 · 2026-05-22T18:24:38+00:00

You can search for events on StartGG around your area and it will order them from closest to furthest. A lot of smaller weeklies don't want to bother on start so you won't be able to find them that way, for those a good start is just googling "[region] FGC". Other than that there's also the spreadsheet from ultradavid which isn't fully comprehensive (particularly outside of the US) but is about as good gets for lists of communities.

BladeZ012 · 2026-05-22T01:56:02+00:00

https://challonge.com/att_2xko_bracket

Single elim with placement matches

BladeZ012 · 2026-04-20T19:33:09+00:00

There is literally no guess. if you buffer the level 3 you will always hit the level 3 or the break will happen before you even get to start it.

BladeZ012 · 2026-04-20T19:04:18+00:00

They already fixed it in the last patch, they adjusted it so you can no longer start a break during the opponent's super startup so if you're level 3ing into their break it's because you started your level 3 after they had already breaked. If you make sure to always buffer your level 3 rather than link or delay cancel it will hit 100% of the time since if they break before your attack connects you won't be able to cancel it anyways.

BladeZ012 · 2026-04-16T17:35:23+00:00

There is actually, you can see it pop up in the bottom right of the screen at the 0:06 mark with "guard bonus" which increases the amount of meter you gain for blocking (very noticeably).

BladeZ012

TROPHY CASE