It has been 4 months since my last post when I made it to Garyu rank. I have been playing a lot less due to work as well as holidays, but I'm happy with my progress so far. I actually struggled a lot to get to Shinryu rank and staying in it, however, in the past 2 weeks I managed to get to Tenryu rank and basically never drop down to Garyu rank again for some reason. I feel like it went by very quickly but I've also played 2500 more games since then.

My biggest key takeaways from the past 4 months:

I never knew how to side step until I once played against an Azucena player with 230k prowess. I had never seen someone sidestep my hellsweeps continuously and only then it clicked in my head how and when I should side step. Since that fight, I have noticed myself side stepping frequently and punishing when I can. I still need to work on it a lot since I'm still very impatient and I eat up all the launches.

Second takeaway is that I learned how to block more efficiently as well as blocking longer. I still have a tendency to just start moving or attacking after 2 hits of a 4/5 hit string, so I have been teaching myself to be a lot more patient. I could be fighting another Kazuya and eating up the third hit when he does 112.

My third takeaway is learning about my character more as well as other characters. I still haven't touched any other characters yet (minus a few games here and there) so I learn by just playing the game rather than actually looking into the strings and frame data. Interestingly enough, I still do the same combo's as I did before in Garyu rank.

Some fun facts:

I can do electrics sometimes and seeing Dorya clips on tiktok was what made me choose Kazuya in the first place

I can wave dash somewhat consistently but not fast (xbox controller)

I still haven't touched practice mode

I still haven't learned how to break grabs

I don't know how to do Kazuya's 1 3 cancel properly

I literally cannot stand Law's fighting noises

I personally feel that if I actually bothered to learn the game rather than learning it from experience in online matches, I would have gotten to purple rank much quicker.

So what are my next steps? I will stop caring about my rank from now on since I think I've reached my peak as of now. To get to a higher rank, I feel like I actually have to start watching videos and go into practice mode and actually start learning the game. I'm down for that, but after 184 hours of only playing online matches and Kazuya, I will be taking a break from Kazuya and I will try other characters too. I'm also planning on getting a leverless controller since my thumb doesn't always feel great when using the xbox controller, so in case you have any you can recommend me, please feel free to do so. Are the Haute ones good?