So my best bet is to hold? I thought that there were more situations where you could stagger escape and get out of stun, but there are also specific unstaggerable critical burst setups that are tailor made against people that try stagger escaping.
Well not exactly, but there are instances where you shouldn't have to stagger out. Particularly strings that have follow ups that you are familiar with on string to react, or an opponent that will always go for a specific launcher that will land or some slow mixup to chip your HP away, so you have to hold it and condition them to not use that launcher and make them benefit you more where you can stagger out of things if that's what you prefer.
You just have to be careful for when you want to hold because holding in itself also extends the stun for the attacker, aka holding incorrectly. If someone hits you in a stun that leaves you in +12 for them, and if you hold, they have an advantage window time to +24 or whatever because you held thus extending the stun. It's one of those situations where sometimes holding out of nowhere will jupe the opponent because they were waiting for you to stagger out, but instead you chose to hold so they may sit there watching you expecting to stagger out. This varies by player.
1).Stagger escaping is mostly useful against short stuns, and sit down or slip stuns that can guarantee Critical bursts when unstaggered, but are useless against +35 lift stuns that become +25 when stagger escaped on fastest timing?
Yeah, with the exception of slip stuns. The slip stun is too deep to stagger out of things, but some slips allow you to instantly hold from that scenario if they went with a slow follow up. A crumple stun is another option where you can instantly hold out of, but you can't SE out of it because one of the main purposes of a crumple stun is to have an option that stops stagger escaping in the first place. If someone was using that type of stun on you a multitude of times, it's because they are trying to prevent you for using it and they caught on to you.
Not entirely too useless since it varies by opponents and what they follow up with, but knowing such numbers requires a decent chunk of match up experience on what you can hold out of and what you can stagger out of. If you lack some experience with a certain character then it may very well end up being useless as there are certain moves for each individual character in the roster where you don't have to truly respect and you'll be missing your chances on what to hold.
2). If I get into a stun that guarantees a big frame advantage like +18 or +25 after a lift stun etc, my best bet to defend against and get out of stun is to guess correctly on a hold, which brings me to my next point that I have to have a good Matchup knowledge to get out of stuns right?
Yeah because the stun is pretty deep. Mentioning once more that you still have to be careful with holding because it will extend the stun for the opponent which also applies for not only in DOA5, but for DOA6 as well.
You do need a decent chunk of matchup knowledge on what to expect for holding and SE out of things.
3). If the opponent times their throw on my stagger escape, I cannot do a fast move and beat the throw, but I can if I don't stagger? Meaning I will score a Hi Counter Hit on his throw attempt because strikes beat throws?
A little bit of reverse. You can still be able to attack after you stagger out (if they decide to throw you after it), strikes will always beat throws (except OHs). The most dangerous anti-stagger mixups is ones that condition you to fall for a frame trap, reset stun from some heavy low mixup, or an Offensive Throw. These are things you have to react to and it varies by player on what they aim for.
The only time you can't attack is if you stagger out, they wait until you finish, and then they attack slightly before you to keep you in block check or they do an OH.
So basically safest way to defend against it is to guess right on the type of launcher when they reach the stun threshold and guess right on whether they go for a high or mid launcher or Critical burst?
Yeah. You just need a strong chunk of match up experience so that you'll know what to hold or what to expect from players.
Remembering specific setups is also key, things like Jann Lee sitdown into CB is like the meme norm of popularized things of testing out stagger a while back, and generally not easy to get out of due to netplay and buffering, but it was always the testing ground for things like that.
Cause if i try to Stagger escape or guess and do a correct hold but I am doing the wrong one, I'll get put into a deeper stun leading to the highest possible launch height that'll cause the most amount of damage?
Generally guaranteed attacks or launchers that bypass SE are on the lower end of damage on default. It's only when you are in CH/HiC state where the damage goes up on where they become dangerous for stun launch combos. An example, Akira: 66P > 6KP (launcher in lvl 1 stun) > P > P > P > 3H+KP46P+K on NH, damage is like 76. You can't stagger out of this at all. If this lands on CH, damage is 89 with no wall. This is a situation where you might as well hold the launcher, but you wouldn't have known that if you never had the match up experience, which isn't your fault if you haven't. You'd have to find people that play the characters to develop a learning from it.
Another important bit, is that if you get hit on CH or HiC, the better option here generally is to hold it since you are about to take more damage than initially because the opponent got a CH off you. The general following is
1) NH: If it's like pretty slow setups, by all means hold or stagger out
2) CH: If you were hit on CH, you may have to condition yourself to hold more often but intelligently.
3) HiC: The biggest damage bonus, if you were hit on HiC, you have to pay super close attention to the follow up and pray to the heavens that you'll hold the move on whatever it is that's coming. Otherwise you can lose half your health or more because you chose to stagger out against setups into launchers that SE can't help with.
Overall, incorrectly holding and staggering out too much for things you shouldn't is just rough all around. Both can get you killed in rounds if you lack match up experience. But the safest option between the two is holding.
Basically my Matchup knowledge has to be strong if I want to defend against stuns, or else I am gonna be put into a deep stun if I am unfamiliar with the strings and then launched?
Yes.
If you have zero (or heck even very small) match up knowledge, stagger escaping would be useless because you wouldn't exactly know on what to stagger out of, or unsure when is a good chance to strike after you stagger out. A good pinpoint is to check tournament footage of players reacting to certain moves and seeing them only stagger out when they need to.
