Hi. I'm Moqlnkn. If you hate reading things on the Steam client, then you aren't alone. Here's a link to a similar guide[docs.google.com], written by me a long time ago, which goes into even greater depth.


External Resources

You should also read Playing To Win[www.sirlin.net] by the great David Sirlin because I will assume from this point onward that you do, indeed, want to win, and will not let "cheapness" or "scrubbiness" or "spamming" or "lag" or "i suck" get in the way of you continuously striving to win. Even in circumstances where you seem to have no hope of winning, keep trying to win. This is a prerequisite for beginning to comprehend footsies.

Lastly for this introduction, there are two very similar "footsies guides" out there. Well, there are several who claim to be footsies guides, but, so far, I've only found two that even come close to scratching the surface of footsies.

The first is Eric "Juicebox" Albino's YouTube video, My Explanation Of Footsies. He also has a followup video, More Footsies Examples/Matchup Consideration if you'd like to hear even more of his ranting. He's an excellent streamer, by the way, although he doesn't stream USF4 anymore.

The second is the infamous Footsies Handbook[sonichurricane.com], which is built more practically, and links to all sorts of videos and presents a bunch of interesting circumstances which, if considered carefully, can get you to the inevitable conclusion that is "footsies," given enough time. If you learn better through example, as opposed to direct explanation, then that's the guide for you.


Who is this guide tailored toward?

If you've been playing fighting games for over a year and you can't seem to even compete with top players, then it's tailored toward you. If you've played me online and I just sat there and blocked for 99 seconds straight and won, then it's tailored toward you. If you are brand new to the genre and you have no idea what a "throw tech" is, then you should probably come back later, but it's still possible to grasp at least something from this guide.

Be aware that "footsies" are, in this context, heavily based around USF4 footsies, but the concepts can apply in varying quantities for every fighting game. For example, Tekken has footsies, but there's that third dimension that you have to worry about which throws a wrench into everything.

Okay! Hopefully I've weeded out all the players who I don't want reading this guide by now. If you are still reading, then HI! That means you actually want to get better. There's a good chance you already know footsies if that's the case, so I can only hope to give you a different perspective on the topic today. Let's get started right away!

No, this "footsies" does not refer to two Japanese school girls playing with their toes in the bathhouse. Footsies is the ground game, the neutral game, what two high-level players are doing when they are on equal footing and a decent distance away from one another. Footsies is not something you do, it is something you think about. It is not a practice, but a strategy. You cannot say "My opponent is doing this, so I'll do this." You have to say "I think my opponent will do this, so I'll do this right now."

In the concrete terms you're looking for, Footsies is a goal - to get from a neutral or disadvantageous position to an advantageous one. You don't want immediate damage, but the potential for even more damage. At the same time, Footsies is preventing your opponent from doing the same thing, i.e. stopping them from forcing an advantage upon you.

The clearest example is anti-air. If Player 1 jumps at Player 2 and Player 2 blocks, then Player 1 has won footsies. Player 1 has advantage, and Player 2 is at disadvantage, and footsies is over until Player 2 escapes by blocking a string or teching a throw. The problem with this example is that this literally does not work against, say, Fuudo. If you jump a thousand times against Fuudo, he will hit you out of the air every single time, and, suddenly, it's Player 2's advantage, not Player 1's, even though Player 1 had the initiative to jump and Player 2 just reacted. Jumping is fake footsies, a tricky gimmick that lets a bad player potentially avoid having to play footsies altogether.

Real footsies is something that isn't reactable. If I ask most players "What is Ryu's best poke," they'll probably say either cr.MK or cr.HK. They're wrong (which I'll talk about in later sections), but the point is that you can't react to cr.MK with a punish. It's too fast. It's not humanly possible. Some characters can react and punish cr.HK at certain ranges if they block it, but it's still a fast, long-range low, and there are instances where even high level players fall for it, i.e. while they're trying to walk backwards.

Ergo, footsies is not reaction. Sitting back and waiting and reacting to what the opponent does is just another form of fake footsies. What if your opponent doesn't do anything that's reactable? Sure, if you play only online, then yeah, you can get free offense from random anti-airs and block punishes, but that's not going to work against high-level players, especially in a tournament setting. It's just not feasible.

Okay, so there's three things I've said about footsies thus far:
1) Footsies is how you try and earn a strategic advantage against the opponent, whether that be frame advantage or meter advantage or knockdown etc.
2) You aren't allowed to do things which are likely to get you punished, such as random uppercuts and desperate jump-ins.
3) You aren't allowed to wait and take zero risk.

But what are footsies, then? I've sure talked a lot about what they aren't. You'd think I'd get to the answer of "What are footsies?" in the section titled "What Are Footsies," but I'm not. It's simply not possible. As I stated earlier, Footsies are not literal things you do, but rather are things to look for from the opponent. You need to know what they're trying to do, AND you need to know the counter-strategy to their strategy, AND you need to be able to execute it successfully. That encompasses the essence of footsies. Understand that and you are able to learn footsies, and you're also able to continue onto the next section. If you do not fully understand the concept, then please re-read this section, or at least these last two paragraphs.

See, this is why our education system stinks - if you sneeze and mishear the instructor, or you just don't get something the first time, you have to raise your hand and ask him to repeat it, slowing down the entire class. CHILDREN LEARN AT DIFFERENT RATES! Stop putting everyone into one room and expecting every human being to learn the same content in exactly the same amount of time. Anyway, I digress.

Well then, where do we begin? The beginning!

Blocking is overpowered, at least in USF4. If you just block everything, there is very little the opponent can do to you. I mean, there's literally only three ways to damage an opponent who is blocking:
1) Damage them while they're blocking - Chip damage
2) Do something which isn't blockable - Throws and Lv3 Focus
3) Trick them into not blocking - Overheads, lows, and crossups

Let's go through these one at a time and try to build a gameplan around them. Firstly, chip damage. You cannot build a gameplan around chip damage. You can throw in chip damage as an extra, but you will never win a high-level game from chip damage alone. Even characters like Dictator and Fei Long, who excel at dealing high chip damage with safe special moves and pokes, cannot win this way. Next.

Second is unblockable moves. For obvious reasons, you cannot build a gameplan around Lv3 Focus - it's way too slow to come out, and very punishable if the opponent reacts with a backdash. You can get tricky with it, armor through a poke and start a crappy mixup, but you can't have it as your gameplan's foundation. Throws, on the other hand, are a different story. I'll talk about those in a second.

Thirdly is overheads, lows, and crossups. Well, you can't really rely on these things in the neutral, but remember that footsies is not neutral. It's the process of getting from the neutral to an advantageous position. Still, lows and overheads and crossups see very little use in high level footsies by themselves. The threat comes after you've pushed away from the neutral... which I'll talk about right now.

Throws! O throws, how beautiful you are. Imagine this game without throws, and how overpowered blocking would be. Throws are vital. Throws are everything. Throws are the reason you can't block forever. However, throws have one crucial flaw, and that is their range. You can't throw the opponent from half screen unless you're Zangief (and we all know what happens when you play Zangief). This begs the question, then, how do I get in range of my throws?

Some of you are yelling at your screens "EX CANNON STRIKE!" or "EX LUNGE PUNCH!" or "LK SCISSOR KICK!" ...You know who you are. But I'd like to focus on universal thought processes, not ones specific to certain characters. The general answer here is "to move forward." There are three universal ways to move forward in USF4:
1) Walk forward
2) Dash forward
3) Jump forward

We've already talked about #3 and why you shouldn't use it. So we're left with walking and dashing. It doesn't take ten years of fighting game experience to tell that dashing is a faster but riskier version of walking. Dashing has its uses, but it fails to give the player control over exactly where they end up, as dashing only goes a set distance. It's also completely vulnerable. Walking, on the other hand, gives the player complete control over how far they walk in either direction. You have choice. Walking is the way to go.

And so this is counter number one. If my opponent is just blocking, then I can walk up to them and throw them. Some of you are going "duh" and everyone else is going "how is this relevant?" Well, it's perfectly relevant if you consider where I began this section. I asked "how do you beat a blocking opponent?" as a starting point, and then I answered it by saying "walk forward!" The more astute readers will be able to guess what the next section will be called.

Oh no, I tried holding down-back, and the opponent just walked up and threw me. Their forward walk is faster than my back walk, after all. WHAT DO

Well, recall the weakness of walk-up-throw - the range of the throw. Basically every attack in the game that isn't a throw has greater range than the throw. So just hit them. Hit them before they get to you. If they do get into throw range, then you have to start making tough decisions, but, in the neutral game (remember that the two players must be a fair distance away in order for it to be neutral), there is no threat of throw unless the opponent moves in close first.

This is poking. The way to beat walking is poking. "Great, Moqlnkn," you say, "let's move onto the next section." But wait! There's so much more to talk about here. This is where the game starts to get interesting.

When do you poke? ... Well that's a pretty general question. But it's important to realize that, once you've committed to a poke, you've also committed to not blocking, and the gameplan starts to expand but also build up gray areas along with it. To answer this question in its most basic form, consider two Ryus standing in cr.MK range, and ask yourself "If both Ryus hit cr.MK here, who wins?" The answer is "whoever presses the button first." Ironically, if the Ryus are out of cr.MK range, it's whoever presses the button last, but, for now, let's pretend you're actually in range of the poke you're trying to use and apply it to the idea of poking.

The scenario now reads this: Player 1, you, is sitting there blocking. Player 2 walks into cr.MK range and presses cr.MK. You also press cr.MK. Who wins?

Again, it's whoever presses the button first, but the important part here is where is Player 2 when Player 1 hits cr.MK, assuming Player 1 hits it first? If Player 2 immediately hits cr.MK out of his forward walk, then Player 1 has to hit cr.MK while Player 2 is walking, and, if Player 2 is walking exactly to the range of cr.MK, then, when Player 1 hits cr.MK, the players are out of the range of cr.MK.

Uh oh. "We can't have that" you say. "You can't press cr.MK when you aren't in range of cr.MK." That is, indeed a logical conclusion. But what happens if you think that way? If Player 1 waits until Player 2 is in cr.MK range to hit cr.MK, then who wins? Player 2 wins, because Player 2 hits the button the instant he enters cr.MK range! We can't have that either, can we?

We can. We absolutely can. Only bad players would say "Well, what if Player 2 doesn't walk forward? You can't press a button unless it's in range already! If it whiffs, then Player 2 can whiff punish!" The last statement here is true, but it misses the bigger picture. Player 1, if he hits the button early, while it's out of range, is exercising Predictive Poking. He is trying to stop Player 2 from walking forward by predicting he will walk forward. Note that word "will" - he hasn't done it yet, hence the prediction part.

Player 2, on the other hand, is not Predictively Poking. He is Aggressively Poking. If you walk up to the range of cr.MK and hit cr.MK, that's not Predictively Poking, that's just... hitting a button, Aggressively Poking, which anybody who's been playing fighting games for a week can do. I mean, think about it - what's the point of doing that? If you walk into the range, the best thing that happens is the opponent blocks the cr.MK, and nothing happens. However, Predictively Poking is a way to get the poke to actually connect and deal damage. Predictive Poking is a defensive tactic which beats forward walks, and Aggressive Poking entails walking forward. That being said, it's pretty clear what the next section is going to be titled.

Specifically, this is how to beat Predictive Poking. We've already established that there is a fundamental weakness to Predictive Poking - it's the "prediction" part. You have to walk into a Predictive Poke. The way to beat Predictive Poking is to not walk forward. If you don't walk forward, then the poke whiffs, and you can whiff punish, or at least dash in for free as the opponent recovers.

"Great, how do I beat whiff punishing?" Hold up there! We aren't done with this section yet, although an observant reader already knows the answer to that question. What is "whiff punishment?" What is a whiff? What is a punish? How do I whiff punish? When do I whiff punish?

A "whiff" is when the opponent's attack misses, and then "whiff punishment" is the act of punishing them for whiffing... i.e. hitting them while they are still in their attacking animation. This can seem hard to do at first, but realize that, when a character sticks their leg out trying to hit you, you can hit that leg. In other words, when a player attacks, not only are they unable to block, but they are also extending their hurtbox, which means you can hit them more easily. You can even whiff punish a Dhalsim from full screen with a short range normal attack that has no business hitting the opponent who is all the way over there.

When we were talking about poking, there were two key things to consider - range and timing. Let's do the same with whiff punishment.

How far away do you have to be for whiff punishment to be viable? Well, the opponent obviously has to actually whiff, so the minimum distance you need to be is just outside the range of the attack you're trying to whiff punish.

When do you hit the button? You hit your whiff punish after the opponent hits their poke. The timing changes depending on what move you use and what move the opponent uses.

Note that this is a BIG difference between the scenario presented in the previous section, where a Predictive Poke beats an Aggressive Poke. If you're Predictively Poking, it doesn't really matter what poke the opponent is going for because they're walking into your Predictive Poke and getting Counter Hit. However, when trying to Whiff Punish, you must consider what poke the opponent is going to use. The way you punish Ryu's cr.MK and st.MK can be different, depending on your character. This is why Training Mode exists - set the dummy to spam a poke, then try to whiff punish it. See what works, see what doesn't work, see how consistent different whiff punishes are. What about all those normals you don't use? E.Honda st.MK? Cammy st.MP? Hakan cr.HK? What are they useful for? Maybe they just so happen to be whiff punish tools that work in situations where all your other pokes do not. Of course, there's no way to know for certain until you try them out in every possible whiff punish scenario.

I'd like to end this section by clarifying that whiff punishment is, just like Predictive Poking, a prediction... kind of. It's not a reaction... kind of. It's a little bit of both. I like to call it "Awareness." In order to whiff punish, you need to be constantly reacting to the facts as they are presented through the game. But you also need to have a pretty good understanding of which pokes your opponent is looking for, and already have the testing ready to counter those pokes, which is prediction (i.e. adaptation) and knowledge. And then of course you execute, but, for the most part, doing Dudley st.HK into EX MGB isn't that much of a challenge. Whiff punishment is hard, but not because of execution.

Whiff punishment is hard, and so a lot of players don't do it. They say "Predictive Poking is risky, so I won't do it," and they say "Whiff punishment is hard AND risky, so I especially won't do that." Some pokes are super slow and you can react to them and whiff punish them, like a Hugo heavy attack, but most matchups won't have too many of those opportunities. A good opponent won't give them to you anyway. But you can't afford to just not try, because then the opponent is perfectly able to control your every movement. If you never attempt a whiff punish, then... well, you can't beat predictive poking unless you do something crazy like jump forward, and we've already talked about jumping forward.

"W-wait! Moql-sama! H-how doth one 'beat whiff punishing!?' You're missing a section!!!"

Nope. I didn't miss anything. How do you beat an opponent that is looking to whiff punish your poke? Don't poke. Don't whiff. Don't give them anything to whiff punish. Do anything except attack, and their whiff punish is thwarted. This includes, for instance, walking forward. If you walk forward, suddenly, your poke is in range, and you can't be whiff-punished anymore.

Ah, but wait, we've already been here, already seen this movie - this is Aggressive Poking again! Aggressive Poking, or any tactic that involves you walking forward, ensures you do not whiff because your attack is in range. You can also just walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, throw, and feel like Daigo. In fact, if you get your opponent to stop pressing pokes because you're just whiff punishing everything, then you have them right where you want them. If they stop attacking you in the neutral, you have completely free reign over how the fight goes. This is why adaptation is important.

When people say "that guy is really good at footsies," they mean
1) He knows the ranges,
2) He knows which normals are good at whiff punishing which pokes, and
3) He knows what the opponent wants to do and can counter correctly on a dime.

The opponent will have certain things in mind that they want to do. Adaptation is being able to realize that and capitalize.

"I know you're going to wait and block, so I'm going to walk up and throw you."
"I know you're going to walk at me, so I'm going to throw out a Predictive Poke."
"I know you're going to Predictively Poke, so I'm going to stay back, wait, and whiff punish you."
"I know you're going to wait for a whiff punish, so I'm going to walk up and attack you."
"I know you're going to walk at me, so I'm going to throw out a..." oh wait, I've already said this one.

This is footsies. Every millisecond, each player has to adapt to his opponent and switch between these strategies accordingly. If you don't adapt, you become predictable, and are overthrown. Knowledge and practice are a necessary prerequisite to be able to play footsies to its fullest capacity, but no amount of knowledge can save you if you are unable to adapt.

I sincerely hope that anybody who has made it this far has actually learned something. That is all I could hope for, really, as it's the only reason I make guides the way I do. I've never done one of these on the Steam platform before (I've always used Google Docs up until this point...) so if you see anything awkward or incorrect, or any links stop working, or anything like that, please let me know as soon as possible.

I played a guy today that was like "keep stroking your ego, fgc nerd" and I'm like "I'm just tryna play the game man." He ragequit because I played Gen, by the way. Yeah, he was one of those I was talking about in the introduction, one of the ones I wanted weeded out. Anyway, know that I love love LOVE to remove nasty comments from my profile, so please send as many as possible within the next 24 hours so that I can successfully get off on not caring. :D Just kidding. I have no plans on removing this guide anytime soon for any reason, so you can rely on it being here in case you need it for reference. This is just a fraction of what I've learned from nearly ten years of playing every fighting game in existence, a conglomeration of all the most important things anyway. If I get positive feedback on this one, I'll probably make more in the future. T'anks for reading!

\oFTo/