Street Fighter 5 – How to Play Competitively

Street Fighter 5 has been out for a few weeks now and a lot of the newcomers are finally starting to get the hang of playing Capcom’s latest entry into the fighting game genre. If you’re still struggling to score wins online, be sure to check out the best characters for beginners and mistakes new players make to improve your game. If you’re still playing Street Fighter 5 on a regular basis, it probably means you’re trying to get better at the game and possibly even have aspirations to compete in one of the many Street Fighter 5 tournaments, such as the Evolution Fighting Game Championship in July. If you fall into this category, we’ve got some tips to help you make the jump from casual to competitive.

Learn Frame Data

One of the biggest tips that we can provide in order to take your game to the next level is to start learning the frame data for each character. We’ve already taught you how to use frame data, but essentially it allows you to immediately know which attacks you can punish, which attacks are safe if the opponent blocks, and which attacks give you advantage so you can continue offensive pressure. You can certainly figure all of this out without using frame data, but it’s a lot of extra effort when the frame data is readily available and will save you a lot of time.

Training Mode

As much as we all want to jump right into ranked matches (or even casual matches), training mode is a very important part of becoming a better player. Some people admittedly see more improvement from playing matches over and over instead of going into training mode for hours, but if you’re one of those players, you probably don’t need our help anyway. For most people, training mode and be extremely beneficial. There are a multitude of settings that will help you replicate any situation that you’re having trouble with, or you can just practice your combos and frame traps over and over again until you have them committed to muscle memory. It’s important to spend a few minutes or even an hour a day in training mode until you’re more comfortable with your character and any match-up issues you may be having.

Correct Mistakes

Every time you lose a match online you should ask yourself why you lost that match. If you got locked down in the corner, look into the frame data for the opponent’s character to determine when you could’ve attacked to potentially get yourself out of the corner. If you missed a combo, head into training mode and grind out that combo until you can hit it more often than not. If you have problems with the match-up, figure out if you need to get better with your character, or if it’s a bad match-up and you should be looking into a secondary character.

Watch High-Level Players

Another great way to improve your game is to check out YouTube videos and Twitch streams of people using your character at a high level of play. If you’re new to Street Fighter or simply high-level Street Fighter, there are a lot of ideas and concepts that you may not even think of due to the fact that you don’t have years and years of experience. Many of the current high-level Street Fighter players have been playing the series for many years. That experience goes a long way and with the help of the modern internet, it’s easier than ever to learn from these veteran players.

Go to Tournaments

Once you feel confident in your skills you will face the real test. No matter how good you may think you are, more than likely there’s someone better. If that weren’t enough, if you’ve never been to a tournament before, you will almost certainly suffer from tournament nerves. You won’t be able to play up to your normal level of skill because you’ll be out of your comfort zone with the pressure to win mounting in the back of your mind. The best way to overcome tournament nerves is to simply complete in as many tournament as possible. That doesn’t mean you should spend hundreds of dollars traveling all over, but if there are some local events close to you, attend as many as you can to improve your skills and quell those tournament nerves.

Be sure to check out essential tactics for the Street Fighter 5 cast, as well as how to use footsies and other useful articles in our Street Fighter 5 guide hub!