Health Management

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think people pay enough attention to health management around here. Health management is one of the most critical aspects of actually winning a match in VF against a strong opponent. To help rectify this, I submit this wall of text.

For those who don't know, health management refers to changing your fighting strategy based on both where you and your opponent's health bars are at. To give a simple example, if you are being pressured by a ring out, but you have a lot more health than your opponent, it makes sense to avoid the ring-out at all costs, even if that means taking some damage. Whereas if your health is almost gone, you have to avoid damage at all costs, even if it increases the chances your opponent's ring-out attempt will be successful.

Health management should play a critical role in your approach to a fighting game, because it is often the field on which high level matches are lost and won. Let's take a look at the basic aspects of health management.

Damage: This one is rather obvious, and most people pay a good deal of attention to this aspect. Possibly even to a fault, but I'll get to that later. Damage is, as the term implies, the amount of damage an attack, string, or juggle does to your opponent.

Risk: In terms of health management, risk should be defined as how much you stand to lose if the attack vector that you choose backfires. A move might be riskier because it is either unsafe if blocked, has a longer execution window, or is easy to whiff. Keep in mind that the risk of a move is not a constant. It varies depending on character match-ups and how good your opponent is at defending it.

Spacing and Evasion: Spacing is how close you are to your opponent. Evasion is moving around your opponent's attacks, by sidestepping or otherwise. In health management terms these two things mainly apply to whiff baiting and ring-outs. For other applications, the same tactics are usually correct regardless of the health situation.

The first thing I'd like to address is weighing risk against damage. An extreme example would be a punch that instantly kills your opponent, but takes has a 600 frame execution window. Even though this move would have the best damage in the game, it would be worthless because you could never successfully execute it. Even a complete beginner at VF would be able to easily counter the move and make you eat damage.

At the other extreme, we have a move that only does 1 damage, but has infinite range, 8 frame execution, and is unblock-able. Even if your opponent were able to sidestep this move some of the time, you could still catch them with it from across the screen at practically zero risk to yourself. Such a move could actually be considered very useful, despite being the lowest damaging move in the game.

All good high level strategies involve mixing low risk with high damage. The key to good health management is recognizing what nets you the highest advantage in health the highest percent of the time, balance it against the risk of screwing it up or being successfully defended, and execute it in such a way that your opponent can't adapt. The better you can do this, the better of a player you will be. And no move or setup should be counted out if it can accomplish this over the short or long term.

VF beginners often wonder how you know what the best move is to do when you are not reacting to something your opponent is already doing. Understanding the relationship risk vs. damage is the key to figuring out what moves to do when as you are developing your fighting style.

One thing I often hear from people is, "Isn't it better just to play the game as well as possible at all times, instead of adjusting to how much health you have?". This is completely missing the point. What the person who asks this question has failed to realize, is that good health management and playing well are one in the same. Could you hope to win a fight ten against one by fighting the same way as the ten people you are fighting against? If not, how could you hope to win a match with a tenth of the health of your opponent by fighting the same way as when you have equal health?

With the rest of this post I am going to give some general health management tactics. This stuff is mainly for beginners, as it's mostly stuff that all players eventually subconsciously pick up on as they get better. It should be noted that these tactics are opinion and should be taken as such. If you have anything helpful or constructive to add then by all means do. I'd like people to add some tactics for more specific situations, and also some character specific strategies. I'm considering doing up some for Eileen myself later and posting them in the Eileen section of the Dojo.

Situation: Round start
Risk: Normal
Tactics: Good health management starts from the very beginning of the match. Because the base risk is normal, or that is to say, your health and spacing are equal to your opponents', there are several valid choices to start edging your opponents' health from here. However, what you must be careful of is that the choices your opponent has available are equally wide. In general this situation does not favor high risk moves, due to the high probability your opponent will choose a defensive option like blocking or evasion that is inherently safer than most offensive options. In general the best way to manage your risk here is to go with the safe defensive options and maybe mix in a little poking until you establish what opening strategies your opponent favors. After you do that, playing to counter those strategies while exercising caution against change-ups will usually put you ahead in the health game right from the start.

Situation: Early round, health advantage
Risk: Normal
Tactics: If you have come out of the opening of a round with a lead in your health, congratulations! All you have to do now is not get hit for the rest of the round and you win. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wink.gif In all seriousness though, the best way to play an early lead is to aim to keep it. In general you need to keep the pressure on to retain a lead, but the ways to do this are extremely varied, so it is difficult to give a generalized strategy. My best advice is to avoid setups that are too risky or conditional, play an even game between offense and defense, and attack your opponent primarily at their most obvious weak points. If they are weak against pressure, now is the time to pressure. If they are overly aggressive now is the time to defend and punish. Just a word of caution here, be wary of the strategies in the section below.

Situation: Early round, health disadvantage
Risk: Normal
Tactics: Once again, most of the strategies that apply here are beyond generalization, and the playing field is still wide open. There are however a few specific tried and true tactics that any character can use to reverse an early disadvantage. Turtlers will often do this by playing extremely defensively in the hopes that their opponent will chose a high risk attack option in frustration. Aggressive players will look for an opening to take some big damage here and pull an immediate reversal. In this situation you can very often just get lucky and catch a mistake by your opponent to get back in the game. The main thing you have to keep in mind is to be smart about what you do, and not give your opponent any opportunities to put the match in the bag.

Situation: Mid-game, health advantage
Risk: Medium Low
Tactics: Mid-game is reached when one player's health drops below 50%. If you are on top here, you are in good shape, but you must exercise caution going ahead. Mid-game is usually the point where ring-outs and and wall damage become viable, which both present good opportunities for both you to finish your opponent off, and for your opponent to pull a reversal. Your opponent will generally be looking for big damage at this point, so they will be looking for smart ways to catch you off guard with their high risk high reward setups. If you skillfully counter their attempts, it's often enough to put the match away.

Situation: Mid-game, health disadvantage
Risk: Medium High to High
Tactics: Ok, good news bad news time. The good news is that the round is far from over, and you still have plenty of opportunities to get back in the game. The bad news is, that in order to come out ahead, you will have to outplay your opponent consistently for the rest of the round, and not make any big mistakes. In this situation, because the odds are now considerably against you, if you can't exploit your opponent's weaknesses to a greater degree than they can exploit yours, you will lose. In general, you need to be looking for high damage combos and ring-outs. In the end though, superior knowledge and execution of situational attack and defense options are the only thing that can put you back on top from here consistently.

Situation: Endgame, health advantage
Risk: Medium Low to Low
Tactics: Endgame is the point at which one player's health drops to the point where they can be finished by a low damage combo or poking. At this stage you are not considered to have an advantage unless you can survive at least one moderately damaging combo. How you play this stage depends largely on how much health you have. The biggest mistake you can make here is to underestimate your opponent. Strong opponents perfect their endgame strategy to the point where they can make a comeback even if you have full health and they could be killed by a low punch. If you are clearly better that your opponent and you have a large lead, you can relax, but otherwise, you still need to play a tight game, and focus primarily on low risk moves and getting guaranteed damage.

Situation: Endgame, health disadvantage
Risk: High
Tactics: Wall damage is now mostly irrelevant since you would be killed by even a normal combo, but now you have the timer to worry about. It is possible for a player to come out on top of this if they're good enough, but even if you are a lot better than your opponent you can still easily lose a match at this point. There are however, a few ways good tactics for making a comeback here. The first and best is to evade, space or punish. If your opponent is being overly aggressive and careless here, this actually has a chance of working. You can also try to get a ring-out, but only if you're already is a situation where a clear opportunity exists. If you try to force a ring-out setup you opponent will see it a mile away and it will almost never work. The next way is to find something specific about your opponent you can attack repeatedly without having them defend and punish you successfully. The more high level setups you master, the more feasible this becomes. If there aren't any setups in your arsenal that can do this, the last resort is to try to chip away your opponents health with low risk moves until the health equalized. Odds are this won't work, but it's about the only option left with a remotely reasonable chance of working.

Situation: Endgame, no advantage
Risk: High
Tactics: No advantage endgame occurs when both players are close enough to death that a short combo or even a single hit is enough to finish them off. This really isn't a good place to be at for either player, because for all intents and purposes the round is now a crap-shot. In this situation what often happens is both players will try to space each other out in a game of chicken, to try and create an opening that can be safely attacked. The timer will be counting down, so any health advantage, no matter how small, is relevant. The smart player who has the health advantage in this situation will not try to wait out the timer. Committing yourself to waiting out the timer in this situation is the worst thing you could do, because when your opponent attacks (and they will, because they have to) it will cause a distraction. The right way to handle this situation for both players is just ignore the timer and focus on finding a defensive hole. You have no hope of winning the match if you have already lost to the pressure of the timer.

In conclusion, after going through these strategies, it should be readily apparent that the key to good health management is to never give up an advantage. If you never give up an advantage, you never lose. I hope that after reading this you have a better idea of how this can be accomplished.

 

Good points and strategies on health management.[/size]