Guide to blocking ground transitions

[Sajiky]

This might be worth making sticky since I see have seen a lot of people struggling with it.

In trying to figure out blocking ground transitions what I found didn't help a ton, so when I figured it out fairly clearly I thought I could pass what I learned on.

First of all the instructions I have found are a bit to vague, yes as your opponent starts to transition you hold down r2 and flick the right sick in the direction he moves. This is correct as far as it goes but a bit misleading.

You do have to wait for him to move to flick the stick, but you can hold down r2 while waiting for him to transition then (while still holding it down) flick the right stick. Also what is not made clear is that flicking the stick to either right or left are not the only directions used. If your opponent tries to posture up you have to flick the stick up and if you are postured up your self and the opponent is trying to pull you back down into guard then you flick the stick down.

Here is how to get a good feel for it.

Go into practice and set up a practice match where you take for the player you're going to play with somebody who's really good at the ground game and for your opponent take somebody that is not so good at the ground game you can even use a player you just created that has no skills yet. You want to set the practice for just ground game, but you want the advanced ground game, the basic ground game your opponent won't try to make any transitions for you to block.

In practice mode get to the ground and then hold down r2 and wait for your opponent to make a transition. If you're holding down r2 when he makes the transitions the word defend will show up on the circle to show you which way to flick the right stick. It only works like this in practice in actual matches it won't tell you which direction you need to flick the stick block.

I hope this is useful in helping some people figure out this more difficult part of the game that seems to trouble a lot of people. If it is useful enough feel free to sticky it.

[ClassActFan]

Sajiky, you are an absolute boss for this post. Thank you. I can't invest as much time in playing the game as I'd like. I'm not a fan of the skills challenges at all, either (too short and not very helpful; just my honest opinion, albeit others' experiences differ), so I've practiced on the fly. While I've gotten a lot better on the ground, I still struggle. I didn't know whether or not you could hold down the R-Trigger when defending transitions. I thought you had to try to time hitting the R-trigger with flicking the stick, so that's a gamechanger to know that!

I'm addicted to the Ultimate Team mode; my records are pretty poor with my fighters, but I'm still having a blast, because I've at least been competitive in 95% of the fights.

[killakrok]

This is how I learned the ground game pretty quickly.

If you go practice against a good ground fighter and use both controllers you can drill all of the different escapes and advances from every position on one controller while blocking them with another.

With "your" player on top, take the controller for the player on the bottom and use RS to see what each escape/transition animation looks like from the bottom. This way you can know what directions are available to escape and what animation corresponds to each direction. Most positions only have 2 options and some have 3 including a getup which looks really different from the left and right options in most cases.

The most difficult positions to master in my option are side control and back sitting because the general rule of "if they go right block right, if they go left block left" doesn't really work in side control because the bottom guy moves out left in order to transition right, and vica versa, so learning what transition it is in practice mode beforehand REALLY helps. Back sitting is also risky because people can easily reverse to guard bottom if you don't stop the immediate reversal to guard. Both of the transitions from this position have "tells" that are around hand fighting in a certain direction so they can be hard to notice and master if you don't do it ahead of time in a controlled environment.

Knowing what direction to block in instances with only one escape direction like crucifix can also be really helpful to keep dominant positions.

Pressing L1 (special modifier), L2 (submission modifier), as well as L1+ L2 when controlling "your" fighter allows you to see if you have any special BJJ escapes or transitions with L1, submissions with L2, or special submissions (L1+L2) from every position. This is really helpful since you may not be able to quickly discover these in the middle of an intense fight.

Going into practice mode and drilling each position for just 2 minutes drastically improves your ground game.

[dansel]

So the only way to get better in the ground game is to learn the animations? i agree, that some animations are just misleading . ok, its time to hit the practice mode

[GameplayDevUFC]

I've been thinking of making a video of all moves that are denied left, all moves that are denied right, etc...just a rapid fire of animations one after the other that people could watch over and over to learn the directions.

I think they are intuitive, but I decided the directions so I should think that.

Maybe a video like this would help.

Only problem is it would take a bit of work to put together.

I'm curious if people think it would be worth the effort?

[eyeamg0dly]

it would be useful for sure. however there are already videos that describe the transitions and how to block them that have already been linked in the how to thread and other threads

[MalformedDC2009]

Quote: Originally Posted by GameplayDevUFC

I've been thinking of making a video of all moves that are denied left, all moves that are denied right, etc...just a rapid fire of animations one after the other that people could watch over and over to learn the directions. I think they are intuitive, but I decided the directions so I should think that. Maybe a video like this would help. Only problem is it would take a bit of work to put together. I'm curious if people think it would be worth the effort?

I have already figured out almost every denial.
But I think having a rapid fire video of something like this would still be SUPER useful for both veterans (as a refresher) and newbies. I think even veterans would learn some denials that they did not know before.

[killakrok]

Quote: Originally Posted by GameplayDevUFC

I've been thinking of making a video of all moves that are denied left, all moves that are denied right, etc...just a rapid fire of animations one after the other that people could watch over and over to learn the directions. I'm curious if people think it would be worth the effort?

Would be super helpful.