How to put combos together

Can anyone give me advice on how to make combos? I have made quite a few combos myself, but ther are variations of moves I learned from other combos. I seem to have trouble taking and putting moves together into combos. Anyone got some advice?

And why does the computer Wolf always do the low drop kick () after various moves that he has no chance of it connectiong?

Thanks for your help.

 

...try the trial on PS2... and look at that thread on the ultimate combo... lots to learn from that....

 

Most of the stuff has already been invented, in terms of good combos. You can eg. try adding a punch or something in existing ones. For combo list, visit respective thread in Junky's Jungle (it's sticky) or get a text file from CreeD's file server in EFnet #vfhome on irc.

 

I sort of wanted to write something like this for my guide, but it didn't fit. So here goes.

1. More hits isn't always better - it used to be that the more hits you put in a combo, the better the damage was... for example kage's best TFT combo in VF2 was 7 or 8 hits. In VF4, the best TFT combos are all 3-4 hits, and regular combos tend to max out around five for the most damaging ones. You pretty much want to shoot for a big hit to start, a small hit and/or a medium hit... then end in another big hit. Combo enders should be moves that do ~30 points of damage and hit low to the floor, for example a kickflip, shoulder ram, etc. The reason behind the "less hits is better" theory is damage scaling - the more hits you add to a combo, the less damage each hit does (relative to its usual damage)

2. Another great way to end a combo is with a move that slams the opponent to the floor... for example wolf's b+P, pai's K,K, or Kage's f+K+G. You get a guaranteed df+P or df+K ground attack after these moves (in most cases) and that adds 10-13 points to your combo. If you are lucky, like in the case of wolf's b+P, the recovery is so good you can get a ground throw or u+P pounce.

3. If you can land 2 or 3 or 4 punches in a combo, you probably could improve it. It's better to substitute one medium hit in place of 2 or even 3 jabs. For example: Jacky's knee -> P -> P -> PPknee looks like a pretty good combo... big starger, big finisher, and a few small hits in between. But it's only ~80 pts. If you substitute a f+P,P in place of all those punches, you do almost the exact same damage... and instead of ending in f+K, end in f+P+K which slams and guarantees a df+K ground attack.
The difference is 97 points vs 83. Not that 83 is a 'bad' combo, a lot of characters would kill for easy 40% damage. Sarah has the same thing going on - you can do knee -> P -> P -> P -> db+K ... but if you do knee, df+P,K, they're still floated high enough for a third punch and the db+K ender.

4. Canned combos and sequences are good to put into your floats. For lau, even if you try to use my ideas about medium hits etc, it's hard to beat his canned because it's a medium hit, three jabs, and a heavy hit, and because it's one big canned combo they all come out much faster than anything you can home brew. Another useful way to use canned combos is if your character has a canned combo that's really damaging... Jacky's K,P,d+K... jeffry's K,K,P... Pai's K,K, lion and shun's K,K..
-K,K is a good combo to put in floats for anyone, it's quite damaging.

Some canned combos will hit really low to the ground and it makes them ideal to end floats with... for example kage's d+P+K,K... jeffry's ff+P,P and b,df+P,P... Aoi's f+K,K.

Finally, if you're experimenting and you think you have a good combo, but it just won't work, here are some tips -

- If a combo barely misses in one stance, try it in the other stance and see if that works.

- If you want to end a combo with a big move like a kickflip but it just barely misses, see if you can find a decent substitute. For example a lot of kage's good b+P+G combos end in ub+K+G, but sometimes they're just too far away for ub+K+G to hit... so substitute f,d,df+P which has more range. If you try a wolf combo and they're too far away to hit with a knee, a f+P might work instead. If you want to end akira combos with a shoulder ram and it misses, try a double palm instead.

-99% of the time, if your combo has a jab in it, you want to HOLD FORWARD while you do the jab. I don't mean press , which results in an elbow strike for most characters... I mean start holding forward before you use the jab, then press P... the result is a normal looking punch, but the character is actually taking a step forward. The sarah combo I listed earlier with three punches wouldn't work without using this trick. PS: It also works with high kicks, and in a few cases it's necessary to do rather than just . It's a good habit to get into.

-High punches are generally a little more damaging than low punches, so if you can substitute a high punch for a low punch in a combo, do it. For example jeffry's Knee, P, ff+P,P is better than knee, low punch, ff+P,P.
Also, swipe punches (specifically kage's db+P and jacky's b+P+K) are more damaging than regular punches.

-If a combo barely misses due to float height, try starting with a different floater. Use wolf's b,f+P+K instead of his f+K for example, or aoi's f+K instead of df+P. Otherwise, if you're sure you're using the best floater possible, try hitting with it from maximum range. A lot of combos will barely hit because you're far away from the opponent rather than close up. That's because by being far away, you interrupt with your combo starter later in the animation, so when you want to start your combo, you'll be recovered a tiny bit earlier than usual. Check out the jacky section of my faq and look at the b+K+G combos for an example of this.


I think that's it for now. Like GLC said, most of the best ones have been discovered. If you run through all the stuff I have listed here you will probably get the idea behind good combo making.