- The combos

Learn how to extend damage, hitconfirm, and execute effective combos in BlazBlue: Central Fiction. Discover combo finishers, resets, and how to punish enemy Burst.

Combos are sequences of attacks that deal damage and from which the enemy cannot escape unless they use BURST. Combos allow you to greatly extend the damage you can deal starting with any hit in the game.

When creating your own combos, a critical aspect is to properly HITCONFIRM by generally using at least 2 safe normals before committing to a stronger and UNSAFE/negative on block attack. After that, you’ll be trying to find a sequence of attacks that connects and maintains the enemy in hitstun, while you chase the enemy according to how far/high your attacks push him. At the end of the combo, you’ll be wanting to choose a combo finisher that ideally hits as hard as possible, allowing you to set up a favourable situation.

According to the combo finisher you use, you might either do a soft or hard KNOCKDOWN on the enemy or put him in STAGGER/crumpling state. You can also choose not to finish the combo, and instead let the enemy out of hitstun by leaving a gap of at least 1 frame, so that you create a chance to immediately start a new blockstring or MIXUP while the enemy’s still standing. This is called a RESET and it involves stopping the combo earlier, thus also giving up some damage, in exchange for the chance to start a new combo.

Sometimes though, the enemy doesn’t recover/tech as soon as possible from your sequence of attacks. In these cases, it’s possible to continue in a “fake/invalid combo” (blue color in combo count numbers) and deal some extra damage that the enemy could have avoided, had he teched at a certain point in your sequence of attacks. The enemy can decide NOT to tech with the intention of AVOIDING getting RESETED, or simply as a means to allow ground rolls to ESCAPE your grip. In this last case, you can continue your combo by picking the enemy from the ground with an OTG (off the ground) attack.

There are 3 ways to deal with the enemy’s BURST:

1. PUNISH the enemy's BURST: You need to PREDICT the exact moment when it’ll occur based on the enemy player’s tendencies and the specific situation (health, distance to corner, enemy’s state, combo starter strength, battle round). After predicting the moment, you need to GIVE UP your own combo to either GUARD or EVADE the enemy’s BURST wave. You can do this by using a jump cancellable attack and then jumping forward with Barrier Guard, using Rapid Cancel (if you have 50% heat meter) to cancel the recovery of your move, or cancelling your attack into a move with invulnerability frames. After that, the enemy will be in recovery from the BURST wave usage, so PUNISH the enemy with your strongest normal attack before he has time to guard.
2. PREVENT the enemy from using the BURST: You can grab, use a Distortion Drive, or enter your Overdrive mode. Grabs and Distortion Drives LOCK the enemy’s BURST possibility at the moment right after they occur. The Overdrive mode completely LOCKS the enemy’s BURST during the entire time it lasts.
3. Make the enemy’s BURST wave WHIFF: You need to be out of its reach. To be able to do so and also continue your combo, you need to use a BURST SAFE combo.