Infact .. if you can't guess that well in general then holding mid stun comes as a savior mechanic to players like that specificly! because then when you mess up, if the opponent starts to style on you with stun after stun. you can stuff all that back into his face with a hold and tone him down..
think about it .. if you hold and he continues striking .. then you dont get more damage ...
but obviously theres a risk ... and that is the throw ... so in the end there is a risk to it. despite me arguing with rikuto about restricting your play to mid/low holds and completely ignoring the high hold. It DOES infact cover many options but I just wanted to point out to him that its NOT every option.. and high holds do have a great value if a defender knows whats coming, or if the attacker knows the gimmick and goes for setups like the ones I mentioned.. I can elaborate on this further by giving more acctual examples if anyone wishes..
I never said there was no risk, I said that every risk could be avoided within those few options.
Low holds avoid standing throws and standing holds avoid low throws. This is not untrue, therefore you can avoid every option in the game by sticking to the holds i presented so long as you guess correctly.
a simple example apart from the ones Ive already mentioned would be ...
HITOMI's .. that move has a high mid and low variety ..
if you weigh it out ...
- the low followup would do nothing but knock me down .. so Im not too worried about that..
- the high follow up would'nt be too bad if I was mid screen .. BUT, if I was behind a wall that can either trigger a wall combo or even a dangerzone combo .. and for me that is a much higher risk than a mere knockdown. and I WOULD go for a HIGH hold.
- the follow up is MID. if I went for the HIGH hold the first hit attack would hit me but the 2nd has no variation. limiting the "guessing" to simply that single MID option! here I dont go straight away and hold .. because I KNOW the follow up is MID ... now the trained eye can spot the start animation of the move so once I see it i would go for that MID hold. But I wouldnt straight away for 2 reasons ...
1) the possibility of a free cancel (and thats where the opponent can do pretty much anything .. and yes as a defender I AM at a disadvantage )
2) the risk of a throw. which would result in a high counter throw.
What are you attempting to argue here? Every option you presented can still be avoided by low holds and mid holds.
.. you can argue that Rikuto's MID/LOW only argument would work the same by:
- reset the situation if he went for the LOW hold as the HIGH follow up would whiff,
and would beat the followup (if not delayed), would lose to the MID leading to the same situation of mine with having to weigh out the only MID , a hold cancel, and throw risk
- however, if he does a MID hold, that would put him in a state where hes open to the HIGH follow-up that would put him straight into the wall or danger zone and give the opponent that garanteed UNHOLDABLE damage. despite him beating the MID option or getting knocked down with the LOW
.... and you can still escape it by simply guessing within the three options given.
now looking at the 2 senarios ... i would MUCH rather go for the HIGH hold first and a possible MID 2nd over the LOW then MID (even though it would reach the same outcome from if the attacker went for the MID) because the risk of the knockdown is minimal over the risk of HIGH into enviromental garanteed stuff. and if I have the chance to stuff it and get me a nice chunk of damage then even BETTER! .
And in return for your greedy preference of reflecting the high, you will open yourself up to further risk of getting high-counter wall thrown by Hitomi. By the way, that's going to hurt. A lot. Low throws? Not quite so much.
Holding low avoids the high, the low, and the more damaging potential of high-counter throw punishment into a wall (which comes in addition to the damage you already took from the first stun). It may well be that he was fishing for a hold from the very start so he could do this. Even if he can throw you on reaction when you hold he still has to wait for you to do it, so eventually his hand is going to be forced lest the stun expire.
It's not as overcomplicated as you're making it out to be, your greed to reflect damage in that situation is. Now if you want to dissect the risk/reward for a specific situation mid-string and find if any truly payout better by sticking to two separate options than that is entirely possible, if not very situational. The example you listed above is not a very ideal one. These are all done mid-string however, and you can avoid such nonsense by simply guessing right on the first attack.... which you were more likely to do if you had just stuck with mids/lows.
going for a DICE ROLL as rikuto would put it in this situation is madness because if you give yourself a 50/50 chance of getting a MID hold and the attacker went for the HIGH .. that immediately leads to massive damage and can destroy you
Is it madness?
Hold high -- get thrown into wall for big damage, get mid punched into wall for big damage, get low swept for minor damage.
Hold mid, get thrown into wall for big damage, get high kicked into wall for big damage, get low swept for minor damage.
Hold low, get low thrown for moderate damage, get mid punched into wall for big damage.
As you can see, more bad, nasty, painful things can happen to you if you stick to highs and mids. By choosing the low/mid route, you are not only lessening the number of horrible things that can happen to you, but the horrible things that WILL happen to you hurt much less half of the time.
again I would like to keep the argument specifictly what is being presented in the argument itself ...
and i do have the highest respect for VirtuaPAI for all his contributions he has enlightened us with throughout the years. even before I knew this forum even exsisted I knew of his tutorials in gamefaqs etc... . I'm not trying to be a smart ass or anything like that but I am simply trying to hold a healthy debate. but it seems that everytime I say something someone's out for blood.
Not out for blood, I'm just not one to humor a debate of things that I know are for a fact are untrue. If something is wrong, and years of tournament experience and labwork tell me its wrong, and a new guy comes along with zero tournament experience and posts a multiple walls-of-text with tons of broken examples telling me its right, because he is still enthusiastic and really truly wants to believe it, I have to stop and go....
"Yo, dawg. You're wrong."
Honestly I'm a little impressed at your general insanity and tail chasing to figure this out, because it reminds me of when i was trying to make something of the game so very long ago. The logic is practically circular, because at the end of the day there is absolutely no smart way to win in these situations but you're going to keep convincing yourself that there is through theory fighter. And when it doesn't work out for you, you'll switch up to the opposite end of the logic until that doesn't work. And around and around and around.
And then, after many years of attempting to optimize your guessing you will realize something.
The game seriously fucking sucks, and everything is random as shit.