start by identifying key moves every character uses and getting used to them

Only take your turn when it is written in stone. Take all the mixups and don't be a pussy that tries to subvert them with hopkicks, orbitals and armor moves, save that shit for the promos/ matches that matter.

(it's important to know when to hopkick etc. but most figure that out in a month)

After that month of learning to disrespect with hopkicks and armor moves is over you are not learning from it anymore, you are leaning on a crutch.

Deal with shit thrown at you repeatedly until your confidence in your defense outweighs the voice in your head telling you to do dumb shit(read: unsafe habits) to keep your turn going for longer than it has any right to.

The name of the game when you want to improve is sidestep, twitch duck, sidestep duck and backdash duck etc, most offensive flowcharts can be procedurally defended against in that manner.

I would say first obviously star blocking. Just let them be agresive the first 1 or 2 rounds and try to adapt, even if you lose.

Then try to 10 frame punish everything. At first you don’t really need to proper punish every mistake, but is very important to don’t let them get away with it and learn what is safe and not.

And last is proper movement, try to look for the whiff punish. That is an incredible way to make them respect your space.

Dont press

kbd , bd-ss , maintain just enough space for your whiff punishes to land , be patient , dont just mash at the 1st opportunity , learn your safest pokes/launchers , learn your block punishes for 10f and 14f , try to be unpredictable , ie - dont just flowchart . also sometimes your most unsafe moves will be your best friend if used sparingly as your opponent likely wont expect you to be throwing them out

https://preview.redd.it/06jm2p9df5df1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e254936e2f097406de170dcf3ef05c556ddc05ec

Better than my defense which is 212M

But still no dramas staring with shield though.

At the start make sure you get armor. If you get armor you will go through the whole level without any problems.

No bro, until they add more stuff you’ve basically beat the game

S grade warrior boots speed up games a lot :) The buff effects hellfire skill so you 1 or 2 shot enemies

Practice mode, practice mode, practice mode, practice mode, practice mode...

Load up practice mode, put two attacks that mess you up and keep having the bot do them. Eventually you'll get a feel for the sounds and/or visual subtleties that allow you to better react to certain attacks.

Start by really looking what your opponent is doing and less focussing on your stuff. And in additon: First you need to know the move you want to react to, than you need to see that move in the heat of a match, and only if you get this down, you eventually will be able to react to it. Maybe you need to improve knowledge and awareness?

Use this drill

https://youtu.be/Aqa-fjEPOEk

Experience is important, but staying calm is the key.

You might be looking into the wrong direction.

Sure you can train to react to specific lows you struggle with, if you manage to get familar with the animation you will be able to block these. But there are limits, you can not and will not be able to react to everything or even close to the amount you have to take. The Idea of becoming Neo by training to react to lows is not working.

Instead of training to block one low in one match up you need to learn how to handle lows in general instead.

Learning proper 2d movement or backdashing will allow you to escape a lot pressure/lows for free. This is literally the best defense you can get.

The 2nd best defense is what i teach. A combination of minor things like concepts or attitudes. These tend to be way more rewarding than just a backdash followed by a whiffpunish, but also come with a higher risk. A few of these might help you with your lows

Risk/Reward is the first concept when defending. In case your opponent pressures you with df1/d4 mid/low the whole time (or even way stronger lows/mids) You can use his obvious timings against him, which is very easy vs people that tend to mash the whole time (aka the whole playerbase). So an opponent is pressing over and over df1 df1 df1 d4 d4 df1 df1 like. What you do is guessing the right answer(which is what you know): a df1 can be sidestepped punish and a d4 can be low parried. So instead of reacting to the df1 or d4. The moment you blocked a df1, you read the timing that he will now do either of these and just guess. Since your parried low or stepped df1 would cause more damage than his success, the risk reward is in your favour. This will also evade wrong guessed highs randomly and this whole thing can work wonders vs unknown strings. So if you read an upcoming mixup situation, try to guess and know the answers: parry, sidestep, backdash or block and punish. This becomes even more valuable vs strings,

Another concept is to shorten reaction times. In theory you see an attack, identify a low and press down to block it. The opposite would be to hold down, see an attack and dont do anything to block it. This method shortens your reaction time by deleting your action time of prssing d- A lot people create fakemixups which are close in frames, where the mid becomes kind of seable. Because to block the mid, you just have to identify is and release the D button. Tricky and very uncommon, but people still do this.

I use a showcase for my basic defensive concepts, here It was recorded from a streamers view on twitch against a Steve i coached. You can see how some knowledge can cause a major difference when defending against pressure/lows. (I also teach how to handle traps and identify these. That Steve knew this as well)

So when you struggle to see certain snake egdes, beside being super reactable. Train these. When you struggle vs lows that are reactable but become gamechanging when not, practise mode. But dont focus to much on these and learn other things. Like 1 weak of practising to parry Kings db3 could also be a weak of practise to break throws which work in every matchup. Or 4 weaks of KBD practise might be enough to evade the next 4/5 db3 from King.

Defense is the hardest aspect of Tekken. Attacking can everybody but defending and proper punishment not .You can try set up a CPU in Practice with random attacks. This will train your reactions also for low attacks wich is very important. Alone good Defense and punishment can get you very far in this game

Block more and punish more

https://preview.redd.it/ju70dss0kwbf1.jpeg?width=857&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bef16f5483111bc7966d5ed3760fe751402fc58f

Grab drills, making sure youre punishing after ducks and blocks, sidestepping and making people whiff. As you get better and more familiar with matchups this will increase. Dont worry about the stats too much

Get in practice mode and put difficulty on very hard. Try blocking all CPU’s moves.

Nah man this is a shitty idea u can't learn from a CPU u can only learn how to combo or whiff punish. CPU can't mimic a real person an it's habits and it's mind u can't mind game a CPU. Just hop on quick match and try to figure out his habits everyone has its habits that's how flowcharts exist

Yeah someone from my Facebook community suggested so that’s how I improve

I recommend completely ignoring the stats, they are meaningless in terms of gauging whether someone is a good player and can sometimes even be misleading.

Granted your defense is lower than normal but that might not even be the real root of your problem.

Example: Maybe you’re not hitting your 112 punishes when you need to be. Once you’re hitting these, you can implement Kazuyas oki tools…which limit the options your opponent has to throw at you. (So instead of worrying about your opponent’s entire movelist you’re just defending a few specific options)

In this scenario, your “defense” would start to naturally go up even though the biggest change you made was more in the area of punishment and OKI.

If you want some help from this sub, I recommend posting some gameplay videos.

So I have ferocious tiger build, what’s your build be cause I’m see a lot of movement i haven’t seen before

Nice work, definitely gives me some ideas. Grapple pull into the bomb is a nice touch 👍

Alright let’s see…. Uh…. Replace Summer salt to someone that has defense sig ability. And Bombshell too.

This defence hurts my eyes. You're headed in the right direction

I’d cry if I saw that so good job

You want HP% on every move.

Then you want 50% Defense and 50% Resistance.

After that you can sort of do whatever you want. Special cooldown, meter gain or crit resist are good choices.

Dead calm is the worst counter in the game. It’s startup is ridiculously bad and it’s so situational I tend to just not use it most of the times. IMO muichiro is just a better giyu but giyu imo is still an A tier and has the best water wheel in the game. Shinobu assist is also very parry able but giyu water dragon assist is very good. Imo your team really isn’t a defense type team if you want defence play muichiro or sanemi. And for demons zohakutten

Replace Giyu with Muichiro and suddenly you got defense.

From what I've heard, dead calm is super inconsistent, so using it tends to be a bad idea. So heavy attacks would be your best way out of pressure

What platform do you play on?

Obanai and Gyomei are the best defense character that I played against. Their guard skill is just straight up unfair lol

Just so we are clear: 20k is my recommended amount, past that has less returns, and before that doesn't block as much as you could. So having hp/shield, def, then a resistance/other modifier would be best on your components I think.

Edit: here is a link to a video about defense with more explanation https://youtu.be/9icoHau-Uxc?si=rtTNAXKS5QtbHtvm

Extremely lowered gains at 40k-50k defense 5k-7k elemental resistance

mk so i'm dumb. on a non tank character can someone how to for dummies this for me and tell me flat out the suggested defense range

Did I sum this up correctly?

The first 5K armor provides around 37% dmg reduction. About every 5K armor past that provides around 9% additional DR with diminishing returns.

So 50K armor is about 56% DR. 20K armor is break point for returns as it provides roughly 43% DR.

I would say 20K - 30K is the ideal # to shoot for, look for HP or shields after that.

I wouldnt worry about stat ratios too much this early in the game. Im a new player aswell, but have just been training the stat i get the highest gains in. Im focusing the Battle Stat merrits now

As others have said early game ratios don't matter. Join a faction and train what ever that they have boosted (most change it up monthly). I think getting every stat to 200k then every stat to 1 mill on whatever order you prefer is a solid base

what is that combo?

Start worrying about ratio's around the time you start opening the Heavyweight gyms.