Gonna have to use the replay system to lab scenarios.

A large part of tekken is just general knowledge of the opponents character. It’s a very hard game to be a newcomer in. Especially in its current state.

You have to lab a lot with this game. It’s a franchise that really relies on legacy knowledge and knowledge checks.

Watch your replays

Learn how to counter and punish

you have to change characters. It's not the same game since S2. Asuka and Lars are top 2 imo. Change to them or people who are like them.

Main Lars silent entry and then press a random button no one knows what will happen not even you.

Learn the cheesey easy to win moves ...

memorize them. use them constantly to the point of muscle memory.

Then learn moves 1 by 1 as a set up to the cheese. Make sure that you focus your play style around the cheese and slowly extend your moveset knowledge

Then learn combo paths

Then focus on defence.

I am not patronizing when I say this but having a 10 loss streak is absolutely perfect for starting to learn/improve. Detach yourself from results, toss out all of what you thought was prior knowledge, and now start incorporating all of the fresh new lessons.

Take a look at the beginner videos but just start with applying one section and nothing else. If you think you can operate with everything that is provided in a video incorporate more (most people overthink and play awkwardly).

Personally I would start with the mindset of: "if I get hit, it's not my turn to attack" and "my initial goal is to hopkick/launch/whiff punish when the opponent throws something that doesn't reach me." Play simple yet rewarding characters like Paul so you actually start to feel into the game. If someone was to tell me that they don't feel hyped after deathfisting someone then they are LIARS!

I practiced in the treasure battle mode. Players who have more experience than me, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I noticed that the higher ranked CPU is like whiffing much less then the lower ranked online players. So you can practice your block punishers, or you will be forced to make the cpu opponent whiff via sidestepping or learn evasive moves of your main, or even get used to parry moves of your main character. If I was wrong feel free to call me a moron. Take care

Prior experience in fighting games at a good level or not?

Im asking so I can know what guides to share

Watch your replays. Do you know your opponents moves? Maybe you need to improve your decision making. Are you pressing buttons when it's not your turn?

40 hours isn't anything for Tekken. There is a lot of beginner advice out there, but what helped me was I think Peter Y Mao video. He said don't worry about matchup knowledge until you get to orange. Learn your character inside and out and you'll climb.

It's not really Tekkens fault tbh, but people tend to use slow high damaging moves or launchers all the time when they first start because no one blocks or punishes.

If you watch high level matches the majority of it is safe moves and looking for an opening. Low level play openings are 24/7 like Walmart.

Fundamentally in the long run you want to learn to play safe first (this will get you past dans and teals easily) and then learn to gamble with high risk moves after your opponent is conditioned. You'll plateau flowcharting some characters will allow you to get higher than others flowcharting.

i was pretty casual at T7 and got more serious at getting good at T8.

in S1 i got to TK with multiple characters. in S2 that's around kishin. for both seasons this represents top 10% of all players in ranked.

it became pretty clear to me that to get to top 10%, you just need to be "good" at your character. have some good flow charts and get your offense going. every character has 100+ moves but everyone only needs the best 10-20 moves.

but to get into the top 5% and top 1% or further? now you need to put in real homework. every character's top moves and strings, you need to know their frame data and highs/lows so you can punish. there's a ton of purple/blue rank players that rely on certain flow charts but they completely fall apart and don't know what to do when they get duck and launched.

and then of course, it's not just knowing what to do but being able to do it in reaction. if you can't block/launch a snake edge on reaction your skill ceiling is severely limited and no amount of homework will allow you to rank higher.

This isn't specific to Tekken, but fighting games in general.

There's more to playing than learning big combos.

My friend and I have been playing a lot of Mortal Kombat 1. He has been playing the same character the entire time and has only ever won a single match where as I have switched to multiple characters and won several.

I ask him what he does to practice and just says he practices this one combo over and over.

The issue is he can never actually implement the combo in a real fight because thats all he does is try that combo and becomes extremely predictable.

I told him he needs to mix up his attacks. He never uses lows or his other combos.

Learn the game mechanics and your character before trying to do high end combos.

Very well said. I have made it to blue ranks and still hit a wall. Now I'm brushing back on my movement and learning my characters more before I explore and learn match ups.

Exactly. Tekken isn't a game where you can win just by playing more. And while you can practice things during matches, Practice Mode can isolate situations and make practicing much more efficient. For example, a Bryan online might do 1 Snake Edge per round, but in Practice Mode you can make Bryan do 1 Snake Edge every few seconds.

That being said, I think playing in real matches is important to begin with. It gives you a baseline idea of what matchups you need to practice, and within those matchups, what situations/moves in particular. If you don't have that baseline, you'll be posting here with a thread titled "How am I supposed to lab when everyone has 100+ moves?"

It needs to get to a point where if someone asks a player what's the strength and weaknesses of a specific character. The player should be able to give a clear breakdown of that character. If someone struggles to do this, that means they have a lot of homework to do. 

So there's a lot to improve here.

First off, heat burst into heat smash first thing in the round is really bad. King is great in heat as his throws are homing, Jag Sprint becomes armored, Jag sprint options become powered.

You rely on doing the same string over and over that will be reactable and majorly punishable in higher ranks. I get that it worked here but it won't work that well in higher levels of play. You don't know neutral like at all. You don't know how to poke. I didn't see a single giant swing. You don't know how to shining wizard which is important for combo ender and such.

Fundamentally you're playing the character wrong. Your entire game style and plan needs a complete overhaul. Learn and focus more on poking, learn giant swing, learn shining wizard especially at the end of combos because the running power bomb is max damage ender as well as where you get your oki from. Jag sprint is....fine I guess. Technically there's nothing wrong with using it but lay off just doing 50/50 mix ups as it doesn't help you as a player. Once you're in heat though try to delay your attacks because you can absorb attacks and react accordingly. Learn a better combo since you're only doing 50 damage. You should be getting 65-70.

Overall you may have reached Raijin, you're playing like a red rank. You're basically hoping they don't know what to do against your character and that's bad.

Heat smash round start is a choice you don't see often. It's very aggressive high commitment on the offence. It's hard to judge too hard when the Anna didn't break one throw. You can't judge King game play till you find a game where throws get broken then you see how they adapt.

definitely watch out heat smashing at the beginning of a round. i'm sure you've already ran into it at raijin but ppl will step you and launch you. buffer giant swing and other grabs into your moves. like a simple jab into giant swing

Bro you're wayyy too unga and you're probably getting eaten alive with sidesteps. Spam b1+2 grab, it's a really underrated homing 12f option. It'll make people respect the SS even if they break it. Spam mids. His poking is very good. Throw out DF2 for counter hits all the time and eventually you'll know exactly when to press it. Getting isw and GS down is essential. Learn even one wavu. You don't have to do loads just learn to do one into mix up and it confuses people with your timing.

Also, Tekken is Tekken. It requires a HUGE amount of match up knowledge. But it's the most rewarding game in the world when you start to figure it out. God speed! RAWR

Not even the tier list of pro players matters, imagine from the average Tekken redditor who mash after every single side step so he can come here to farm karma lol

i dont really trust ppl to know enough about the characters for a skill ceiling tier list, not myself either. i mean we're talking 1% of tekken 8 players xd. i bet the majority will just be echoing other ppls opinions, maybe without intending to.

i hope the skill floor list will be based more on their own opinions, that'll make an interesting list fs

Leaving a comment here to remember to reach out for some 1v1's once Im done with studying for finals.

Play a lot. And actively try to learn. I play on PC and keep a notes tab open behind my game. Whenever I get dominated I’ll alt+tab and note down whatever it was that crushed me. At the end of my session I’ll have a good little list of things that I can take to the lab and work on.

Stopped thinking EWGF was my only move.

Being comfortable not attacking if I felt there was nothing to gain from doing it.

Korean levers ��

Time.

i mean TBH green/yellow you can spam literally 1 launcher and climb to it under prob 100 games easy.

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Literally just any say snake edge or hellsweep combo.

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What helped me climb out of red was actually taking every character to the lab with the frame data bot and actually wanting to learn it.

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Seeing a move and knowing what is the most absolute optimal option I can use was a game changer.

Raven: make his clone/jitsu magic much clearer to read for the enemy.

Lee in season 1 had the T8 identity down lmao, he does not have oppressive plus frames like drag just enough to make you want to mash, and his movement is bottom 5 overall but thats ok Lee has ch tools for that situation, (223, 44:4, d3, ff4, df2 *the evasion nerfs reverted*). Heat burst from ws23 was fine since his heat was trash in season 1 just toning down the damage of ws23 a bit so its not a 100 damage luncher from a i14 low punish and still a -14 mid is good. pretty much season 1 Lee with season 2 ff2 with slight damage adjustments made in season 2.

If they really want to make Lee use more then make the heat exclusive move d1+2 or df3+4 have an option to go full crouch.

Edit : Season 2 changes are ok but I prefer the hms u3+4 being a heat engager, df323 still the same as now, No power crush heat engagers allowed. The low changes made in season 2 are good, removed pushback on ff3 is ok. Make fuckin 1:1 2 splat more consistently!!!! while the blazing kick changes killed my muscle memory, I think its better that its a qcf motion now.

Heihachi balancing:

Df1,1 no tracking

just frame windows tighter, only gold spark tailspins

1,1 and df1 to -4 instead of -5

b3,2 remove knockdown +15

Reina:

HW 3+4 should NOT. BE. PLUS. Forget being broken af, worse it removes almost all decision making for the player when selecting an HW option it's super lame..

D2,1+2 in heat is way too good. Why does it have every property known to man? I don't care that it's a heat consuming move or a super sayan install, the issue it's strong to the point it just warps Reina's heat gameplan, like HW 3+4 warps her HW plan. Just lames down decision making for reina further and dumbsdown choosing options. I like the move, it looks cool.. just.. make it a bit less op please?

First of all start with these changes then we can maybe talk about some other less grandiose nerfs.

Also I really hope they're able to fix the tracking issues... Rn you can just step(not SW) HW 2 EVEN to the LEFT- to the one side it's SUPPOSED to cover. A bunch of stuff like this are whack for this char- including a lot of other chars in this game.

Get rid of Bryan’s forced full crouch game n just make qcb1 an actual just frame

Also requiem should be -12

Hate propaganda? Brother I play Bryan 😂, I put him down in season 2 cause he completely lost his identity so I’ve been playing t7 instead.

And guess what? T7 Bryan is way more fun & isn’t giga buffed like some arcade mode boss, he’s an actually balanced character with a clear cut identity & gameplan.

Yea b+1 same frame or else it’s -0/-5 on block smth like that.

Honestly I don’t think Bryan needs qcb1, but since the devs rnt gonna get rid of it I think this is the fairest way to balance it & keep it in the game