Tekken Tag Tournament 2/System/Backdash Cancelling
Movement and Defense
This series of lessons is aimed to introduce all possible commands you can do with the directional pad/stick, show practical and creative uses of such commands, and introduce fundamental aspects of movement and defense.
- Walking, Crouching and Blocking
- Jumps and Hops
- Forward Dash and Running
- Sidestepping and Sidewalking
- Backdash Cancelling
- Crouch Dashes and Sways
- Backflips and Wall Jumps
- The Idea of Spacing
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Backdash Cancelling
Lesson Objectives
- To introduce Backdashes and its benefits
- To show the importance of cancelling a backdash
Now, we're gonna move on to the topic of backdash. Mastering the backdash is considered fundamental to this game, 'cause it helps you greatly in your defense, gets you out of sticky situations, and many others. So, stretch your wrist!!!
Backdashing
Are your opponents too annoying? Are they using every move in their arsenal to make life hard for you? You want those pesky players to just back away, but you can't even attack them without getting hit? You want to get a little bit breathing room but is walking away a bit slow? Now, be happy! You have been given the gift of backdashing!!!
Backdashing gives you the option to do a small leap away from your opponent with the same speed as a forward dash or sidestep! Having this tool helps a lot, since there are many times in this game that you're gonna be too close to your opponent (and trust me, half the time, it's a bad thing). You can do a backdash by tap-and-holding b~B, just like in a forward dash (you can do a backdash by just double tapping bb, but by not continuing to hold the back direction you won't be able to do a standing block, so you aren't totally protected). You can combine your backdash along with forward dash (f~f~b~B) or a sidestep (b~b~u) for more varied movement, and depending on situations, they can be nifty!
Backdash-Cancelling
There's a little problem again though. Even though a backdash can help you through a lot of stuff, sometimes you just want to just get away from your opponent as fast as possible (e.g., when you want to tag, you only have a pixel of health point left, your opponent has bonus damage, etc.). The issue with backdashing is that it has a slow recovery animation near the end, and this severely slows you down. Usually, the pace of the game is very fast, and using backdashing to get some precious space can seem too slow because of this. This leads us to a more advanced form of backdashing called the Korean Backdash (abbreviated as KBC. A bunch of korean TTT1 players innovated this technique, hence the name). This is more commonly known to us as backdash-cancelling.
Backdash Cancelling can be done by doing a regular backdash (b~B) then holding DB long enough to register as crouch when the slow part of the backdash occurs, then repeat. Backdash cancelling gives you a lot of benefits, such as letting you do another backdash right away (giving that precious space in a quicker time) and allowing you to attack again, in the case of your backdash dodging your opponent's attack. The trick to this is to be able to do the inputs with precision and timing (just twitching the stick to b and db won't do it right, there's rhythm involved). The effectiveness of the KBD depends heavily on execution, so it's important to practice getting used to this technique.
I gotta admit, backdash cancelling is HARD. But remember, it's always good to always spend even just five minutes of your time doing backdash-cancels and training your backdash cancel is like a wrist exercise. You're actually training your muscle memory and response here, and you can only get the benefits of training when you rest. Find some time to always practice doing KBD when warming up to a match, even in just a minimal time. And soon enough, you're gonna get it. Don't be impatient and try to master the whole thing in just one day or two, or you're gonna end up with a bucket of frustration and carpal-tunnel syndrome. Remember, work smart!