BlazBlue System mechanics and Controllers

Note: Taken From Shoryuken.com forums ^-^ the place or every fighting fanatic needs


The buttons are
weak - A
medium - B
strong - C
drive - D

PS3-
A - Square
B - Triangle
C - Circle
D - X


Xbox360
A - X
B - Y
C - B
D - A
* Got that?

Shoulder buttons are shortcuts

http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gameplayscreenexplainatyg3.png click for full size
this pic stolen from dustloop gives illustrations so i'll just copy paste this part

1 Health Bar: Displays your current health.

2 Barrier Gauge: The "Barrier Gauge" is needed for "barriers" that will defend you against the damage dealt by the enemy. The "Barrier Gauge" will refill over time.

3. Barrier Burst: Once per round, you have access to an "attack" which interrupts hit or block stun. You'll do a slight bit more damage in exchange, however, if you use it, you will have a lower defense modifier for the rest of the round!

4. Offense Gauge:This meter is similar to a see-saw: The more offensive you are to the opponent, the more the meter grows in your favor. When the meter is completely in your favor, the opponent is placed into a guard-break animation, allowing you to perform a combo.

5. Heat Counter: This showcases the number of hits performed in the combo. One important note to mention is that when a combo is "false", or could be recovered from, the word "HEAT" will turn a darker color!

6. Heat Gauge: The "Heat Gauge" is necessary for powerful attacks such as the "Distortion Drive". It is also necessary for a "Rapid Cancel". You can increase the "Heat Gauge" by landing an attack on the enemy.

7.Character Specific Gauges: You'll notice quite a few gauges here in this image that don't belong to Carl. This is to illustrate the location of different gauges! Some characters such as Tager, Rachal, Bang, Arakune and Carl use these meters to explain information otherwise unknown to the player. Below, you can see that Bang has an additional gauge which is used in his gameplay.

Terms I consider useful

Just Defend - when you tap back right before being hit, your character will glow and recover faster.

Rapid cancel aka RC - press a+b+c when you have 50% gauge and you will cancel your move's recovery allowing for blocking after unsafe moves or continuing combos.

Air tech - Recovering from hitstun in the air. Your character will blink white and emit a yellow ring when this happens

Ground Tech - after hitting the ground you can tech to avoid otg's not sure how on all the different situations one shouldn't/should use this yet.

Throw Tech - You can get out of throws by pushing the throw buttons while an exclamation mark appears above your head

Counter Hit - If a character is hit during the startup or active frames of a move, he will be counter hit. This causes extra hit stun and extra dizzy damage, as well as other possible effects depending on the move that hit them. Some moves may also be in counter-hit stat

Guard Crush - when your barrier gauge goes down to zero you can be guard crushed, causing you to be frozen for a few seconds leading to a free combo.

Alpha Counter aka DAA and various other names - with 50% gauge, while blocking press foward + a + b, will cause you to attack out of blockstun.

System Mechanics Information
Almost all this info is taken from Mike Z, and most is straight copy and pasted.

...damage scaling:
Damage in BB will actually scale down to zero, meaning if you do a combo long enough it will stop doing damage entirely no matter what you hit with. It will also stop giving you any Heat gauge for hitting. In practice this doesn't come up very often, but it sort of makes infinites pointless.
There is one exception to "no matter what you hit with", which is below. (Astral Finishes will still kill you.)

...negative-edge:
Turns out that in BB, you can't do specials/supers by releasing the button, only on the press. There are things that happen only on release (Carl's puppet, Arakune's bugs, Litchi's staff, etc) but I have no idea why this stupid decision was made. This makes BB a lot harder to play, since most people are used to using this feature quite often without even knowing it (for example, it makes doing specials inside of combos much easier).
To me, this is a reason to patch the game. (^.^)

...clashes, RCs, and FD:
- You can RC projectile moves after the projectile makes contact, even if you didn't physically hit the opponent. Examples: Tager Shot, Noel's supers, etc.
- Clashes are still in, but they're harder to get. Moves seem to trade a lot more than in Guilty Gear. If you do clash, you can cancel into any normal/special/super/throw, you can RC the move that clashed, or you can JC it if it was JCable, but you can't cancel into FD! Buh-bye DP->clash->FD, we don't miss you...
- You can still press 4AB to attempt an FD, even if you have no FD gauge or you bursted already. Nothing will happen (no shield), but you can still use it to stop your dash or to kara-cancel normals.

...throws:
- When someone is thrown, if they can tech there will be giant !! over the character's head indicating when they can tech.
- Any throw done to hitstun or blockstun is techable, including special/super grabs. (BOOOO techable 720 BOOOO!) In order for command throws to be untechable, the opponent must have returned to neutral state. This appears not to be true of Noel's backthrow->commandthrow or Taokaka comboing to Maul You super. Maybe I am blind, but I didn't see the !! for those.
- Any throw which connects as a counterhit is not techable. There will be a giant red X over the opponent, in addition to the !!
- To tech a throw, you must press B+C simultaneously. If you are mashing B+C and you hit it twice within the tech window, you will get Throw Escape Failure and screw yourself out of a tech. (Thanks Goryus for actually figuring out why). This ain't Marvel!
- Any successful throw done as part of a combo will do full damage, even if the combo is prorated down to nothing already. It doesn't reset the proration, so combo damage after a throw continues to be scaled.

...kara-cancels:
- Kara-throws (B~C, D~BC, etc) are present, as is kara-FD (A~B, C~AB, etc) and kara-specials(236+D~A). You can't kara-cancel moves in chains, only standalone normal moves.
Changing this to just a list of what each character's best karathrow is (as far as I can tell):
- Tager (needs magnetism): 5D~BC. Okay range. You can also kara-360 or 720 for some fun.
- Litchi: 2C~B. Very far.
- Taokaka: 5C~B. Pretty far.
- Noel: 6B~C. Very far.
- Ragna: 5B~C. Okay, but if you get it on the last possible frame then pretty far.
- Jin: None. None of his normals/D's move him at all. HAHAHAHAHA, srsly just DP instead.
- Rachel: None, but you can just use wind anyway.
- Carl: 6B~C. Farthest of anyone, as far as I could tell! Good job, kiddo.
- Arakune: 6B~C or 6C~B. Bad. Not worth using. Too bad no tele-throw off 3C.
- Bang: 6A~BC. Pretty far. This one is really hard, which fits with Bang's style. (Note: You can't kara-cancel his D's at all!)
- If you want to see how much these actually affect your position, hold A and do the karathrow with 4+B (if possible), which will do kara-FD instead of karathrow.

...airthrows:
- If you want to extend the range of your airthrow, you can just do 6,6+BC. You can airthrow literally on the same frame you airdash. Well, everyone except Tager, that is.

...option selecting:
Move input priority seems to be special/super > FD > throw > normal/command normal.
Button priority seems to be D > C > B > A, the opposite of GG.
What does this mean for you, the consumer? A few things, but basically - buffer throw breaks into every special move you do that's not with the A or B buttons.
- If you are being comboed, teching with BC will recover when you can but will also break throws if they try to combo one. This is obvious.
- 623+BC with Ragna (for example) will give you an INFERNO DIVIDAAA but will also tech throws. This works for all specials/supers that are with C or D, just use BC or BCD.
- 4+ABC will give you Faultless Defense but will also tech throws. Universal Defense! (It will also Rapid Cancel if you were doing something, so be careful.)

...blocking bursts:
Offensive bursts (from any time you could have attacked) are gold, defensive bursts (from hitstun/blockstun) are greenish.
Blocking an offensive burst is an instant guard crush, no matter where the guard gauge is. (Not sure about if you FD it, though.) Only offensive bursts auto-guardbreak, defensive bursts don't, so you don't have to worry about this if you are comboing someone.
This immediately made me try blockstring -> jumpcancel -> burst, which seems to work on some of the moves with longer blockstun. OMG brokenz?!
Nope! This is not a normal guard crush. It doesn't prorate, but...no matter what you do after it, you cannot kill the opponent. It will bring them down to zero life, but no winning until you stop the combo and do something else. Doesn't matter if it's a 999-hit black-beat combo or a 720, as long as they don't get to block they won't die. This includes comboing throws. (Astral Finishes will still kill you.)
To clarify - you can indeed kill someone off a regular guard crush.

...random useless junk:
- If you were blocking improperly, for example holding 4 and get hit low, a small colored ! will appear by your character. Apparently it's just there to make you feel bad. The color changes depending on how you screw up - block high+hit low, block low+hit high, block in the air and get hit by something you have to FD, etc. This doesn't happen unless you were trying to block, if you're just standing around and get hit there's no indication.
- The color of the !! for throws also changes, but I didn't look into why. It probably is related to the tech window

all info above this statement is from mike z

About Tager's 720 being techable, this is only possible when its from a combo or out of hit/block stun. basically if you combo into his 720 you can tech it and if you say mash it out while being in a combo or in a block string in the hopes of catching a 720 if they duck up, they can tech. your standard, punish, tick or whatever 720 is untechable though so don't worry tager can still do his stupid half life super.