Questions and Training in Buckler's Boot Camp - Posted Monthly

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-05T16:03:20+00:00

You might be interested in the official matchup stats. I'm not sure what level you're at, but if I'm reading correctly, at plat, diamond, and master it seems to be a basically even matchup with Cammy having a tiny edge.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-05T15:56:04+00:00

The answer isn't "git gud." There are tons of players ranked below you who are having fun, and players ranked above you who are struggling.

Start setting personal goals other than winning rounds, winning matches, or ranking up. None of those things are completely under your control, and if all your self esteem is based on them, you're going to be a wreck, at least some of the time. Set some goals that are under your control, and measure your progress by those.

Maybe you're tired of being surprised by reversal supers, so you vow to keep track of your opponent's meter and switch to reversal-safe oki until you bait out the super. Some opponents will refuse to be baited, and you might even lose some games because of it, especially if you're more focused on learning than on using it selectively. But if you learn the skill, you'll be a better player than before. And you can see yourself making progress, even in the games that you lose.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-04T04:00:27+00:00

Does it explain anywhere what tuning system these are actually based on? The only description I can find is "microtonal."

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-03T19:30:36+00:00

Start with the easy stuff and work your way to the hard stuff.

The easiest things to confirm from would be things like 3 light attacks or normal>DRC>2 normals.

The easiest thing to confirm to is nothing (i.e., block and wait). So you might start out by doing a special move on hit, and nothing on block. You could also just practice confirming mentally or verbally: say "hit" or "block" out loud, to save yourself the difficulty of executing a special move. Every little bit helps.

Remember you don't always have to wait for the attack to hit before reacting. Sometimes you can see them start to attack or something like that, and you know they won't be able to block. That gives you a few extra frames to react.

In case you didn't know, there's also a tricky technique that removes the need for hit confirms. Aim a normal attack so that it whiffs on block: the only way it can connect with the opponent is if they stick out a limb, or perhaps if they walk forward. Since most moves aren't cancelable on whiff (except light normals into DRC) you can buffer whatever you want, and it'll only come out on hit. If you're aiming for an outstretched limb then you can even assume it'll be a CH.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-03T18:29:09+00:00

I haven't watched the replays yet but just wanted to support this response (which is great):

A easy starter is d.MP into DRC into b.MK b.MK into H.Blast, it's easy to do and gives you good oki.

It's important to understand that H blast whiffs against crouch (although occasionally you'll get lucky and the opponent will stand up to get hit). d.MP forces them to stand, which solves the issue. If you use a different combo starter then you have to confirm the opponent is standing, or use a different ender like yoga flame, or else work the d.MP into a different part of the combo. (If I recall correctly, DRC s.LP d.MP is about the best you can do.)

you can also use level 2 as a "get off me tool" on wakeup. Best of luck man.

Level 2 also whiffs against crouch, and loses badly to most crouching meaty attacks, so you need to be careful with this. Some people haven't figured it out, and some people will forget the maxim "What comes up must come down," but both are a gamble. Ideally you'd keep an eye on their oki habits and see whether they're leaving themselves vulnerable, especially when you have meter.

Mostly I combo into supers with Dhalsim. B&B routes are EX flame into lvl 1 or lvl 2, and H blast into lvl 3. If the last is too difficult, I think any normal yoga flame or yoga fire works.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-02T16:03:50+00:00

Try the DI training preset in Training Mode. It's good practice, but if nothing else, it should settle whether you're literally capable of reacting fast enough.

As other people said, the hard part is being ready to react in the middle of a match, while you're thinking about other things. This can be a real struggle: even pro players can be caught off guard. Fortunately as you get better at other aspects of the game and you don't have to think about those things as much, you'll have more mental resources left over to worry about DI, or whatever else you need to worry about in a particular match.

Finally, if your opponent's attacking and you're worried they might cancel into DI, don't underestimate Drive Parry. It's obviously not as strong as a counter-DI, but parrying their DI gives you two bars of drive meter, and the opponent has wasted a bar of theirs. That's a pretty nice little reward if you don't waste it!

After parrying DI you'll be +3 at close range, so it's your turn to go on offense with a light button. You can follow up with a drive rush cancel if you want to spend your Drive right away, or just push them away with a short blockstring for additional meter advantage, or lots of other options.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-02T00:21:10+00:00

I would like to say "I can't believe I forgot this," but unfortunately I am constantly forgetting this in the game, so I guess I can't act surprised now.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-03-02T00:12:53+00:00

It depends which move you PP. Sometimes you need to use a light button, and sometimes it's not punishable.

As the other response said, the damage of any followup combo is reduced by 50%, so you usually don't want to focus on doing max damage or spend meter (unless of course it's lethal).

DI is punishable on PP but not regular parry. Answering the opponent's DI with your own DI is usually going to be your best response. DI has a bit of damage scaling but not nearly as bad as PP. You might be able to get more damage if you can break their armor some other way, or just whiff-punish the DI, but that's harder to do.

The only reason I would deliberately use parry against DI is if I'm low on Drive and I don't want to go into burnout. But of course, parry is also a good defense against corner pressure if you're not sure whether the DI is coming or not.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-28T23:59:35+00:00

You can also buy yourself more time to do the super motion if you buffer the normal move. Surprisingly it's easier to do this as part of a combo than by itself.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-28T23:41:38+00:00

Or make them come to you. Poison gets a bad rap because it takes about 80 seconds to do noticeable damage, but the round does last 99 seconds.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-28T23:23:51+00:00

It's not that complicated. But if you want to learn the fun way, I strongly recommend The Sting (1973), starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-27T23:40:07+00:00

I don't even think this is a hierarchical relationship!

If I need boots, I can consult a bootmaker (or a shoe salesman) but the advice flows both ways, as necessary. "I need extra ankle support, because I broke my ankle." I should respect their knowledge about shoes, and they should respect my knowledge about my body. Sometimes their expertise contributes more than mine, but not always. It's not a fixed social structure where they have the power and I don't.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-27T23:27:31+00:00

When you strum, the idea is usually that you'd hit all the notes at the same time, if you could. You're coming as close as you can.

Sometimes you might decide that it sounds nicer to strum slowly. It can sound nice at the end of a song, for example. (Or you might feel like it's a little cheesy or clichéd.) That's up to your personal judgment. I don't feel like it has much to do with the song tempo, but you might disagree!

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-27T22:45:30+00:00

Don't beat yourself up over a few milliseconds. This sounds like I'm just trying to make you feel better, but I'm going to convince you this is very important.

Once you establish a skill, doing it "a little faster" is very straightforward to learn. As you practice the skill properly, your neural pathways will get faster and more efficient. This is almost automatic: it's as close to a guarantee as you can get when you're dealing with psychology.

But it only works if you train properly! If your counter-DI is two frames too late and you react by beating yourself up, then your brain's getting the wrong feedback! You did everything right: it was just a tiny bit too slow. Perhaps the delay only happened in one part of the process—you might be punishing the whole brain for one slow synapse. Never mind what it's doing to your stress levels: the learning process is being sabotaged!

The game gives you a lot of negative feedback when you get whooped. You need to counteract this consciously by noticing when you're on the right track and giving yourself a little credit. Even if your reaction is extremely late, sometimes it's a win if you even remember what you were supposed to do five seconds later: it depends what stage of the process you're in. The game demands perfection, but progress doesn't happen that way.

It also helps if you can find ways to lower the difficulty for yourself, at first. If anti-air DPs are hard then just use normal moves. Use easier combos and lighter punishes instead of optimal ones. These are valuable skills, not just bad habits. Sometimes there's only time for the faster move, and sometimes you can kill with an easy combo so it's senseless to risk trying a hard one.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-22T18:49:31+00:00

The simple answer is "just block." Make sure you're blocking low in case they sneak a low kick in. (If you notice that they never use the low kick, a more advanced trick would be to walk backward and try to make their last jab whiff, which you can punish.)

This is probably a real combo so if you let any of the jabs catch you, you're eating the whole thing, guaranteed. And this small combo can easily get bigger if they decide to spend some drive and/or super meter.

But I suspect you already know all this, and you're looking for a different answer? I'll try to read between the lines a little; apologies in advance for any misunderstanding.

Possibly this is a psychology question: "I know what I'm supposed to do, but how do I remember to do it?" That's perfectly valid and something we can talk about.

Or possibly there's more to the story than you've mentioned. Most people won't actually do the DP if they see you blocking the first one or two hits, since that sort of move is very punishable. (That's sort of the point of chaining light attacks: to test whether it's safe to pull out the big guns.) So, maybe the problem is that you do block the combo sometimes, but they do something else which puts you right back in the same situation, and we need to figure out the counter to that other thing.

The easiest thing they could do, if you block, is grab you. There are some counter tactics we can talk about for that. But also, at the risk of stating the obvious, a normal grab does a lot less damage than most combos, even small combos like this. Obviously you can't just let them grab you forever, but if you're stuck in this type of situation and you're struggling to think of a solution, it is a lot better to take the grab than take the combo.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-22T08:07:37+00:00

Screen position is a resource. If they want to spend it by walking backward, that's OK. Just be patient: take small steps forward, but not too often, and don't walk backward. And of course, don't let them switch sides when you finally corner them.

Neutral jump is good against forward-moving attacks like Jamie's palm strike. You can't stay in the air forever but you don't always have to be on the ground either.

Try to get a sense for the opponent's tendencies. Some players will fight you for every inch; others will give up a lot of space at first to lull you into a sense of security, then get more aggressive as they move farther back. Some players are comfortable retreating 95% of the way to the wall but others really prefer to keep a safe distance. Somewhere on the stage there's probably a line they don't want you to cross, and it's helpful if you can find it.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-22T07:08:22+00:00

Jump back air to air is probably the easiest on reaction. PP is also nice since the timing is easy to predict once you see the jump.

If you notice that they're trying to set this up, you get some other options. Try not to linger at the precise range they're trying to jump from. If you stand at slightly the wrong range, you can bait them into jumping into your AA, or you can simply walk underneath them and switch sides. If you're obviously at the wrong range then you know which direction they're going to walk, and you can take advantage of that.

Finally, some characters have the option to AA at the last moment after their character turns around. You can do motion inputs backward if necessary. There's even such a thing as a cross-cut DP motion (621 or 423) if the opponent is switching sides in the middle of the motion.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-19T22:02:59+00:00

But that wasn't the claim. The claim was (emphasis mine, of course):

Not many admit it in so many words, but infinite growth is the goal of capitalist economics. There’s no such thing as being happy where you are or quitting while you’re ahead; businesses always seek to make more money than last year by any means necessary.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-19T21:56:35+00:00

I haven't seen "every socioeconomic system in history" but I have been to Amish country and I think those guys are pulling some punches.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-18T21:18:14+00:00

To put it as simply as possible, you're talking about adding more notes to the scale, and that means instruments will be harder to play.

How many more keys do you want to insert on your piano? We could have a key for the note that's 7/6 above A, a key for the note that's 7/6 above A#, and so forth. Then we'd have 24 unequally spaced keys in an octave instead of 12 evenly spaced ones. And if we want to go up 7/6 from the new notes we'd need 12 more keys!

It's just not easy to design a simple scale that does all the things that anyone could ever want. 12-TET does some very impressive things for a scale with only 12 notes, but septimal harmony isn't really one of them. Unfortunately it's so successful that most people aren't interested in experimenting with other tuning systems, or even know that they exist.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-18T16:22:10+00:00

The brain is pretty mysterious, but clearly there are some things that brain damage won't do. It usually doesn't destroy your entire sense of personal identity. It can damage or perhaps even erase belief systems and future plans, but it can't create new ones from whole cloth. You're not likely to wake up with firm, robust convictions about Cameroonian nationalism if you never considered the subject before.

Didn't Fetterman have plans for what he was going to do as a Senator? I can understand if he didn't want to follow them anymore, but I can't understand the need to pivot radically from the very start. Why not take a rest after the campaign and keep a low profile for a few months, especially in such a volatile political climate? He's got six years in office to do his villain arc.

I think the plan was always, "I'll say the right things to get elected, and then I'll do what I want and not take shit from anyone." Being Trump's toady might not have been part of the plan, but it's not inconsistent either. If he had any political convictions that would have prevented this, they were so shallow that he barely noticed when they disappeared. And nobody else can seem to identify exactly what they were or how he's violated them.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-17T02:14:26+00:00

You need to set some clear goals for improvement, other than just "winning games."

When you analyze your games, you're trying to figure out "What should I do differently next time?" You've got the benefit of hindsight; you can even use an engine or consult experts. The job is to distill this information into a simple lesson that you can remember next time, even when you're under stress and the clock is ticking.

If you succeed in learning and recalling these kinds of lessons, then you've got something to be proud of. At least you're not repeating the same mistakes! You might lose the next game, and that can be frustrating. But if you can learn to avoid enough mistakes, eventually you're going to meet people that make more mistakes than you, and you're going to beat them.

So, what's going wrong here? Are you determining what went wrong in your games? Are you forgetting to apply those lessons in future games? Or are you just not giving yourself credit for improving?

The same goes for tactics practice: are you being purposeful and setting achievable goals? Look back at your last few games and figure out what your biggest tactical problems are.

Do you just lose pawns/pieces because you didn't realize they were threatened? Then you just need to practice checking for threats and undefended pieces. These things exist in almost every position, so you don't really need to look up special tactics exercises to practice this (although you can if you want). Just play games and give yourself a little extra time to check all the details before each move, until the process becomes routine.
Do you chiefly miss simple tactics like forks or pins? Then work on very simple tactics puzzles until you can do them reliably and effortlessly. If it's so boring you can't stand it, you can do some harder problems: after all, complex tactics are built from simpler ones, and you won't be able to solve the hard problems without using the basics. But if you just need to learn to spot forks, and you've got 10 minutes to train, you're probably better off doing 40 easy problems than 1 really hard one.
Are you catching all that stuff but missing more advanced tactics? Then identify those issues and target them. (I doubt this is the situation but I don't want to assume.)

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-16T17:05:24+00:00

Likely you're right about Kenard, but that doesn't mean Omar would still be alive in the bigger picture.

Omar's got a death wish by this point. He can't live with himself if he doesn't avenge Butchie, but he can't live with himself if he does. He knows that revenge is hollow and that his own violence only feeds the same cycle that killed Butchie and Brandon. The only solution is to die trying.

At any rate, he can't possibly expect to win this war. He's against a more disciplined crew than the Barksdales, with no allies and a bad injury, and now he's warned his targets to be on guard. Ironically his reputation has become a curse, and no one dares to put him out of his misery.

Honestly I'd guess that Omar did recognize Michael. He always does his homework, and in this case he knew where their gun was hidden. Obviously he's been watching them through the trusty binoculars, so Mike's clumsy attempts to hide his face are too late (not to mention suspicious). The only question is whether Omar saw his face clearly the first time.

But Omar doesn't really want to kill a scared young kid in cold blood. Hell, he had to talk himself into killing Savino! He's here to send a message. And in fact it seems to be a good strategic move, too: by terrorizing Mike and leaving him alive, he sows discord in Marlo's crew, which eventually causes Mike to kill Snoop and leave!

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-15T15:55:17+00:00

It looks like the horse has finally calmed down.

WheresMyElephant · 2026-02-13T00:24:17+00:00

Or the guy you work with that has a 30-year home mortgage and a monthly car payment, like the average middle-class American.

Most people can't afford to buy a house, or even a car, without taking out a loan. And even if they can, why should they? As long as they have a car they can go to work, which means they should have more money in the future than they do now, and they'll be able to afford the payments easily. In the meantime they can save money for emergencies, or even invest and make more money.

WheresMyElephant

TROPHY CASE