Closers PvP General Terminology

Categorical Damage: This is an additional damage type that affects different types or categories, being ‘Unarmoured, Lightweights, Middleweights, Heavyweights, Buildings and Transcendent’. Players used to be considered Unarmoured, however this is no longer the case and categorical damage no longer has an effect in PvP.

Chip/Poke Damage: This is all damage dealt or incurred while in neutral that does not result in a catch. For instance, Levia’s Mamushi Swamp skill will continuously tick for chip damage while you remain in close proximity to her. A Seha that hits you with his Chain Explosion can do over 100k in True Damage with a single strike, but if it did not lead into a combo, it is referred to as damage done as chip/poke. This typically differs from ‘Trading’.

Combat Dodge: Default key Space Bar, which results in it often being referred to as a verb: 'to space'. This is a skill every character has and when timed correctly, will immune/iframe an enemy attack (although some attacks can bypass this invulnerability), and has a passive 60% damage resist. To ‘Perfect Space’ or ‘Perfect Dodge’ is to successfully avoid an attack with the invulnerability granted by a well-timed combat dodge. People may often say ‘to space in’ or ‘to space out’ when referring to using this ability as approach or retreat respectively. Different characters have different combat dodge speeds, distances and startups. Sylvi, Levia and Wolfgang will also be put in an aerial state and lifted from the ground upon usage.

Conditional Damage: Also called the ABCs, for Aerial, Back and Chase. These are the damage modifiers which can increase overall damage done, and managing to land conditionals in combos is one of the greatest factors for damage, being able to grant up to (and possibly more than) double damage in skills when all ABCs are applied.

Cooldown: The time it takes for a skill to be usable. Important abbreviations include CD (for ‘cooldown’) and CDR (for the ‘cooldown reduction’ stat).

Damage Resist: This is a state in which the character will take less damage than normal. A limited number of skills have increased resistance to damage, with the most common number being 80%. Skills like Psychic Satellite, Superspeed, Pulse Cannon and the like all have 80% Damage Resist, and playing around this is crucial to the game-plan of certain characters. Often called DR or just ‘Resist’.

Desync: A common factor of Closers PvP, most evident in grabs. Often a character will use a skill with grab properties and then proceed to go into a grab follow-up animation, yet their opponent will not have been grabbed. Common with Yuri’s Spin-Kick Rapid Shot and J’s Neck Grab. Other skills, like Sylvi’s Telekinetic Orb or Harpy's Cyclone, also suffer from desync, but the lack of a follow-up animation make it less noticeable. The more lag/latency there is between two players, the more likely a grab is to desync.

Example of a Desync: https://i.gyazo.com/a2f74a2101743538005c551cb8ae6c1b.mp4

Empowered State: This mode is achieved by using the ‘Empowered State’ skill, often abbreviated as just ‘emp state’. In PvP, its base duration is doubled and it will give all characters a damage increase according to their ‘Damage Bonus during Empowered State’ stat. The skill itself works similar to an FM in which it can Time Freeze enemies near the user and is also Grab Immune (but lacks Damage Reduction), though do keep in mind its Time Freeze range is much smaller than most FMs.

Force Cancel: Default key C, often abbreviated as FC or just Cancel. The skill which allows you to break out of an enemy combo; managing this in PvP is extremely important to victory, as every character is capable of infinite-comboing and Force Cancel may be your only tool to escape. Do note that Force Cancel puts you in air during its animation and will trigger Aerial versions of skills if one immediately uses them after cancelling. If one uses a skill immediately out of Force Cancel, they may not gain the iframe from the ability (by skipping its animation) and lose it preemptively.

Get-up: Also known as 'wake-up'. When a character has been knocked down and is on the ground, they will remain on the ground and be vulnerable to restands for a short while. After this, they will 'get-up', either by doing an attack (if the player presses the attack key) or roll out  (if the player is holding a directional key). These animations have an iframe tied to them and different characters have different get-up speeds - being the time it takes for them to get the iframe - and different lingering iframes - being the time after a get-up attack or a roll that they retain iframe. Certain characters have a very noticeable "fast get-up", which let them rise from the ground far faster than other characters, being J, Soma, Luna, Tein, Levia and Wolfgang.

Grab: A skill which will bypass Super Armour Level 1. These are abilities with a passive Super Armour Crash value of 1, enabling them to stagger people out of their skills and follow up into a combo.

Example of a Grab: https://i.gyazo.com/33373bde3ade0e2142e129ebd9bd8591.mp4

Grab Immune: A skill which has a Super Armour Level of 2. These skills allow the user to become completely immune to grabs during their duration and can only be broken by Special Moves (which have a Super Armour Crash Level of 2 and higher). Often abbreviated as 'GI', but also called Grab Resist, or ‘GR’.

Example of a Grab Immune (then followed by a grab): https://i.gyazo.com/cb59e9484a8c8f20ff18f7e5019b0fda.mp4

Hard Knockdown: An attribute give to certain skills in the game, where after one is hit, if a combo is not continued/the character is not juggled, the enemy will fall to the ground. This is a good property to have in skills, as the forced air lift means that the skill will almost certainly proc Chase damage in addition to forcing enemies to play a get up animation if the combo is dropped which can either be punished in wake-up setplays or will simply result in a reset to neutral. If the skill hits the enemy for a catch and the player is not ready, the knockdown state also allows time to approach with a restand and confirm into a combo as well.

Example of a Hard Knockdown: https://i.gyazo.com/51787761bc8910da8759a129bf3054ea.mp4

Invulnerability/iframe: A state in which a character is completely immune to anything and everything. During an iframe, a character cannot be damaged at all, cannot be grabbed, staggered or interacted with in any way.

Example of an iframe: https://i.gyazo.com/054fb2b3691c59e766c07dbe6e1f7d85.mp4

Linger: Can be used to refer to either Super Armour lingers or hitbox lingers. When referring to Super Armours, it means that the skill can retain its Super Armour state for a long time. For instance, if a Seha uses Phase Aura Blade in the air and presses no other keys, he will retain Super Armour, Damage Reduction and Grab Immunity until he touches the ground. On the other hand, if he uses False Empowerment (his V skill), he can be staggered as soon as he begins to fall. Some skills have no linger (can be staggered immediately after), some skills have partial linger (one can briefly fall and retain armour for a short period after the skill animation ends) or full linger (one can fall fully from the ceiling to the ground and retain armour even after the skill animation ends). When used to refer to hitboxes, it simply means that the skill's active hitbox remains active for a while even after the animation has expired (notorious with some abilities, like Sylvi's Magnetic Infusion, Violet FM3, Levia enh Sacri and FMs, etc).

Example of a skill with no linger: https://i.gyazo.com/cdfd3505e9e57cab9aa79bf8d1c88ac1.mp4
Example of a skill with full fall linger: https://i.gyazo.com/6bb6f3522f0d7d129bd1d5bf67206b80.mp4

Note that abilities can also have ground linger. Seha's Firegrinder gives Seha very long Super Armour, Damage Reduction and Grab Immunity that lasts well beyond the final fire pulse, up until he swings, reloads his sword and returns to a neutral standing animation. During this time, the player is free to cancel the skill animation with any directional input or a combat dodge at any time, allowing for great mixups that are difficult to punish. Many skills have this property, such as Yuri's Spin-Kick Rapid Shot, Seha's Point Blank, Tein's EX Aegis Rush, etc. In the context of iframes, it usually makes them unpunishable as one can chain the iframe straight into a Combat Dodge and get its associated 'perfect dodge' immunity if they are being attacked during the iframe, evident in the full fall linger example given.

Neutral: Whenever neither player is getting staggered or comboed and retains freedom of movement and skill usage, they are in neutral. The neutral game is when characters have full access to their tools and typically entails the majority of a match.

Recatch: To catch an enemy after having already caught them before. Commonly used in regards to post-Force Cancel catching; ‘to recatch’ someone shortly after they have used their FC, enabling you to combo them without them being able to escape.

Restand: Skills with a ‘restand’ property are capable of picking up an enemy from the ground. This allows a player to rescue a potentially dropped combo by restanding the enemy from the ground. Some combos are entirely dependent on purposefully dropping an enemy and then restanding them right after.

Example of a restand: https://i.gyazo.com/df864309882f87331631ac6515206177.mp4

Reversal: Often called ‘FC Recatch’ or ‘FC Reversal’, but generally just 'Reversal'. It means to immediately catch an enemy (while they are comboing you) after you have used a Force Cancel, converting their combo into your own.

Safe Combo: To combo an enemy while being relatively immune to FC reversals. This can be done by comboing outside of the practical range of their grab (such as a Yuri using her bullets to deal damage from offscreen or a Seha using aerial advantage to stay outside grab range), or by chaining invulnerabilities and grab immunes together. Some characters can safe combo far better than others, whilst other characters are easier to safe combo against (J can be hard because he can always Reversal you with a grab or a dash grab, Sylvi can be easy because of the limited range on her grab and slow mobility). One must always keep in mind the grabs and FMs an opponent has and attempt to safe combo around this, as different characters will require different kinds of safe comboing.

Setplay: A common term in fighting games, most often referring to knockdown and wake-up pressure but in general being a 'set of pre-planned actions'. To put it more simply, setplay is a "set" of pre-determined actions ("plays") a player engages in response to an event: a flowchart execution of skills that has a high chance of succeeding. In Closers, this typically refers to how FMs are used (often consecutively) to punish cancels and wake-ups. For example, as a Sylvi: "Use FM3. When enemy uses Cancel, trap them in freeze with FM1." Or a Seha: "When enemy rolls from knockdown, dash FM1 on getup location for a guaranteed hit." Or a Tein: "When enemy Cancels, use FM2 to instantly recatch." Setplays may have conditions to working; Sylvi's for example will not work on characters that have a fast mobility tool and requires fast reaction times, whilst Seha's is dependent on the enemy not having an instant iframe up to avoid the full FM duration, but given the right circumstances and proper execution by the players, such actions can typically lead to a successful catch > recatch.

Example of a setplay: https://i.gyazo.com/ea523abb6d97a9666f0aeccb6fdf19b8.mp4

Soft Hitstun: The opposite of a Hard Knockdown. In Closers, aerial hitstun does not translate to the ground, so if one is staggered in the air and that is not a hard knockdown, they will regain full control of their character and access to their tools as soon as they touch the ground. The only exception to this is if they're hitstunned while on the ground itself (or sufficiently near it so that the game treats them as being on the ground). This is not a good property to have in skills, as most soft hitstuns are unsuited to combo juggles as they have no air lift (which means they cannot proc Chase on the ground) and result in the enemy start a process of force grounded as soon as the skill connects if in the air. This allows enemies to then escape or reversal. When on ground and used to combo on ground, soft hitstuns will be consistent and typically offer no trouble (at the cost of Chase procs) but the transition from air to ground can be troublesome. There are exceptions to a soft hitstun's negative properties, such as Seha's EX Pulse Cannon, which vacuums characters upwards and thus will both always proc Chase and prevent combo dropping or Tina's Cool Your Head, which has its starter hits also vacuum the enemy to centre which prevents combo drops.

Example of a soft hitstun (and its associated forced grounding): https://i.gyazo.com/0c626a2bc0ef50ed520fb25eef5dead3.mp4
Example of a soft hitstun combo drop: https://i.gyazo.com/bfb30b02f797b08d99aadd61c80daae3.mp4 and https://i.gyazo.com/620dc6ec1ef23bc5178dc2a133e23a7e.mp4

Skills that are notoriously bad for this include: Shockwave (non-EX), Dash, Supercluster (non-EX), Wormhole, Magnetic Infusion, Railgun, Kung-Fu Hustle (ground-use), Endless Pursuit (aerial use on near-grounded enemies), Special Move: Black Sabbath (first hit), EX Indra, and most characters' grounded auto attacks. Many different characters have unreliable soft hitstuns, so be aware of them and create combos around this property.

Special Move/FM: The three skills with the prefix ‘Special Move’ that each character has. The term FM, short for ‘Finishing Move’ (their original name) is how they are most commonly referred to. These skills have a passive Time Freeze, 80% damage reduction a Super Armour value of 2 as well as a Super Armour Crash value of 2, which enable it to bypass even grab immunes while simultaneously being grab immune.

Stagger/Hitstun: The state where a character is unable to act – be it moving or attacking – due to being damaged by a skill. This is generally not used to refer to grabs (which will always stagger unless immuned), but rather regular skills and their catching potential in the neutral game. If one is being comboed, it means they are getting staggere over and over and cannot break out.

Super Armour: Almost all skills – save for a few exceptions – have passive Super Armour. Abbreviated as SA (or just ‘Armour’), while in Super Armour a character cannot be staggered, however they will still incur damage. Different skills may have different Super Armour levels, however only the first 3 are relevant in PvP. Regular movement, basic attacks and jumps have no Super Armour and can be staggered, however Combat Dodge has passive Super Armour 1 during its animation. Almost all skills have Super Armour 1 and a few exceptions (grab immunes and FMs) have Super Armour 2.

Super Armour Crash: This is a property of a skill that enables it to bypass the stagger resistance yielded by Super Armour, abbreviated as SAC. As a rule of thumb, a skill that has a Super Armour Crash level that matches or exceeds that of another skill’s Super Armour will be able to stagger through it. All grabs have a Super Armour Crash value of 1, which is what enables them to bypass regular skill protection, whilst Special Moves have a Super Armour Crash value of 2, which enables them to pierce even grab immunes. Note that Force Cancel is somewhat unique in that it bestows the caster with a temporary iframe, but its animation itself has no Super Armour, making it susceptible to Time Freezes.

Time Freeze: A unique property to Special Moves and Empowered State, where if an enemy is within close proximity to the caster, they will be momentarily frozen in time and unable to use regular movement abilities. Also sometimes called FM Freeze, or FM Hold. If someone is time frozen and they have no Super Amour, they will not be able to use any skills (aside from FC) until the freeze expires. If someone is time frozen and they are in Super Armour, they may break out of the time freeze by using another skill.

Trade: ‘To trade’ is most commonly interpreted as simultaneously damaging and being damaged by an enemy while maintaining Super Armour. Two characters throwing skills at one another while both failing to stagger will be trading, being different from chip/poke damage in the sense that both dealing and receiving damage occurs at the same time. Also used to refer to any exchange of abilities, such as ‘trading grabs’ meaning to have both the player and their enemy use their grabs and hit each other at the same time. This should not be confused with Chip/Poke Damage.

True Damage: A passive given to Seha's abilities, which allows his attacks to bypass all damage reduction and defence stat values. Violet, with her EX Camilia, also deals True Damage.