 What's going on, everybody? Dato Dui here with another Dragon Ball Fighter tutorial video. This time covering the different ways that you should consider starting off your matches. Somebody recommended I cover this topic on my most recent stream. I'm sorry I can't recall your name right now, but thank you so much for the recommendation, as this is definitely something that players should learn. Because a good start allows you to set up for other mixups and other opportunities to get even more hits and put your opponent in the corner. The beginning of a match is also the perfect time to take a look at what your opponent's because usually what they do in the beginning can translate into habits they have that they'll carry on throughout the match. For example, if your opponent starts the match off with a raw Super Dash, you can kind of guess what kind of match this is going to be. Also I highly recommend against doing a Super Dash as an opener at any point because there are better ways to open up your opponent for more damage and better corner carry. And also the Super Dash leaves you incredibly vulnerable to just getting too aged. And having that happen is the opposite of a good start to a match. If you know you're going up against the kind of person that likes to click a lot of buttons randomly, then starting off the match with a simple heavy attack is pretty simple and sweet. After the heavy connects you can even follow with a Super Dash, which can lead to a pseudo hard knockdown, and then you can simply mix your opponent up and after that they should be in the corner. And if your opponent starts the match off with a heavy attack or they just started off by blocking low, you can always instant air dash in and hit them with an overhead attack. And that's really good because it sets up a full combo and that easily puts them in the corner and it also sets you up so that you can mix them up in the corner as well. If you do that correctly as well as throwing some assist, you're easily looking at taking away a 50% of the health from their point character. If you do choose to do this instant air dash in and attack, they can react with a down heavy, which is the opposite of what you want, as they'll pretty much get a full combo on you, and you'll be pretty close to being in the corner as well. That's okay though because instant air dashing doesn't mean you have to attack, you can just hold block in the air and if they choose to go for a down heavy, you should be able to punish them safely enough. Continuing with the theme of instant air dashing, you can also choose to instant air dash backwards. Of course this doesn't give you any pressure, but it does give you a chance to see what your opponent started the match off with, and maybe if they did something unsafe you can react appropriately with a key blast or something or an assist. But you'll mostly be doing this when you want to create some space between you and your opponent and get some data on how they like to start off the match, so that you may better react in future games. The only time this technique can be a little unsafe is when they super dash at you and they catch you during your back dash animation, which allows them to tag you with a hit and knock you back down. Also if the opponent chooses to start the match by dashing at you, all you really do is put yourself closer to your corner and you don't really get to learn anything about your opponent. The last universal way to start a match off is kind of a combination of the last two things. You start by jumping backwards in order to get an idea on what your opponent is going to do, and if you think they're just going to stand there and block, then you can dash in with an overhead and start your pressure up. Of course if it hits you're looking at an easy 50% off their life and you should be putting them in the corner as well. This is probably my favorite universal way to start off a match, as it's a nice combination between being safe and being aggressive. Of course these are just the universal ways to start off a match. The characters you play probably have certain specials that might be good at starting off matches, but I don't really want to get into all that as looking at every character would make this video way longer than it has to be. Just experiment with different ways you find with your characters and you should be alright. To end the video we'll look at some of my recent ranked games and see how my opponent opted to start the match and how I opted to start the match. Alright something to consider with this match is that this is the first match we played in a long set of games in which we got matched up against each other constantly. At this point right now we have no idea what the other player's tendencies are, so we're just starting off the match based on a gut feeling of what will work. So you see I opt to jump back and fire a key blast with Goku blue. I do this a lot as the key blast feels very safe and jumping back allows me to get some space from my opponent. My opponent opted to go for a heavy attack, which is good for me in this case as I avoided it by jumping backwards and he also called in Goku Black's beam assist. The reason he did this was actually pretty smart. If I would have been hit by the heavy attack I could have punished him, but by calling in the Goku Black assist he technically made it safe and of course if the heavy attack would have connected he could have easily comboed me into the corner. Luckily for me that key blast I threw happened to hit Goku Black on the way down so we're technically reset back into neutral. So something to take away from this game opener was that he used a risky move but used in a safe to make it a bit safer. In game 2 of our long set you can see that he opts to do the same thing again. Notice how he's showing a pattern of what he likes to start his match off with. If I was smarter at the time I probably could have just double jumped and came down on him with a heavy attack but I didn't think of that at the time and I just wanted to cancel his beam with the end. I did it a little too late and I got punished for it. Game 3 opens a little uneventfully but it's important to notice that he didn't stick with his usual strategy. I opt to jump back expecting the heavy attack in the Goku Black assist all while blocking just in case he does the super dash and he opts to jump forward and perform a light attack most likely expecting me to jump towards him so he could snag me with a hit or something. But yeah overall pretty uneventful opening for this game. Game 4 he opts to start with his usual pattern of the heavy attack with the Goku Black assist backing him up and at this point you see I'm still not punishing that opening at all and that definitely falls on me for not being able to spot patterns as quickly as I should be able to. I would strongly recommend that if you haven't ever thought about how you start off matches or how your opponent does you should definitely go check out the replay channel and watch some of your games and see what you subconsciously do when you're not thinking about it or even when you're overstressed after just losing a game and moving on to the next one. It's important to realize that you probably have weaknesses that you don't even know about and it's equally as important to realize that your opponent have weaknesses that you're just not seeing. With that said that pretty much wraps up the video. This time I do have a question I want to ask you guys and that's what's your favorite way to start off a match with your favorite character. Hopefully by doing this somebody else that plays your team or that certain character can look at how you start off a match and implement it into their game if they like that strategy. I'll be down in the comments as always and while you're down there if you enjoyed this video and channel make sure to click the like button and subscribe. I'm Dr. Oduya and I'll see you in the next one.