The King of Fighters XIII/Systems/Attacking: Throws Throwteching

Throws

Throws are universally performed by holding or + or while close to an opponent. One cannot be thrown during blockstun or during the startup of a jump or hop.

• Throws universally deal around 100 damage ( 10% ) and result in a hard or soft knockdown. The available setups after each throw varies by character due to spacing and frame advantage.
  
  
• A throw initiated with the button will result in the opponent being thrown in front of the throwing player. A throw started with tosses the opponent backwards.
  
  
• Upon pressing or , a throw attempt is initiated on the same frame. If a throw cannot be performed, a corresponding normal move will come out instead.
  
  

Throw Invulnerability

A player cannot be thrown for 8-9 frames after waking up from a hard knockdown, landing from a hitreset, or after recovering from blockstun. This window leaves plenty of time for the opponent to press a button to mitigate a tick throw although frametraps deal with the opponent pressing buttons as in Street Fighter or most fighting games.

• After teching a soft knockdown (Press + before landing on the ground), the rising player is immediately susceptible to throws on their first standing frame (as in Street Fighter IV).
  
  
• Certain normals (such as sobat kicks) and specials put the player in an airborne state and thus can avoid all manners of ground grabs.
  
  
• The startup period of a hop or jump is completely throw invulnerable. Even upon landing from an aerial approach (from a empty hop or jump-in) the player can always rehop to escape a command grab attempt since the recovery of a jump is throw invulnerable and can be continued into another jump/hop.
  
  

Throw Teching

Throw Techs are universally performed by holding or + or during a 10-16 frame window after being initially thrown. Upon a successful tech, no damage is dealt and both players become spaced back at a neutral situation.

• To correctly tech a throw, the corresponding input must be pressed: to tech throws initiated by throws, and to tech throws.
  • In order to tech both forward and backward throws, one can consecutively drum both buttons one after another ( ~ ); this is commonly referred to as 'pianoing' an input due to the action mimicing a keyboard glissando.

Empty Hopping into a Throw

• Most characters can typically hop at the opponent while doing no attack, land and immediately do a low attack or throw the opponent. Landing a low Crouching usually converts to a full combo for most characters but loses to the Throw Tech Option Select mentioned lower below. A powerful tool for grapplers then is to do an 'empty' hop at the opponent and immediately land and use an instant grab. It can be tough to react to the incoming player not attacking from a hop and is best dealt with by anti-airing or neutral hopping to punish the grab's whiff animation.
  
  
• At times a grappler may want a safer option that isn't so heavily punishable. One solution is to do an empty hop but land and use a normal throw to either grab a blocking opponent that forgets to tech, tech a throw the opponent may have used by an Option Select, or automatically attack with a Heavy normal if the opponent had jumped. This method punishes both jump out and roll out escape methods, though the opponent can negate the damage with a tech. The real advantage of this setup is the safety, especially if also combined with a empty safejump so that the player holds + / so that the player can also block a reversal attempt before doing a throw. Non-grapplers can also do this setup as a safe method of seeing how the opponent will react on wakeup or when being pressured.
  
  
• Deciding to throw with or is important to know from this setup. For starters, a throw will keep the opponent in front of the player which can potentially keep the opponent cornered. The opponent is thrown behind the player from a throw which can forfeit the corner advantage. So why possibly favor the grab? It comes down to analyzing each character's Close and . Daimon's Standing is a powerful anti-air that will beat out all jump attempts cleanly unlike his Close so it can better cover all of the opponent's options. Some characters like Iori have a really powerful anti-air Close that allow this Option Select to keep the opponent cornered while covering all bases. For other characters either normal may not anti-air well so pick a throw based on spacing preference; the choice is yours and yours alone.
  
  

Strategy Corner

• Throws can be incorporated from a run. Simply initiate a run ( ) and continue to hold until close to the opponent. Once in range, hold backwards and input a Heavy normal ( + or ). If the opponent was in a close proximity while in a grabable state, a throw will be initiated.
  • In KOF XIII, the distance between two characters required in order to perform a grab from a run has increased, making the technique very effective.
    
    
• While simple tick throws are less effective due to Alternate Guarding, throws are vital for punishing rolls and form part of the hop mixup through empty hops leading to immediate throws against blocking opponents.
  
  
• Correctly blocking offensive pressure from an incoming opponent's hop can be difficult, especially if the opponent begins to perform empty hops into throws or low hitconfirms. However, if a defending player uses the above piano method ( ~ ) timed correctly, multiple defensive options occur which will cover many of the opponents options in what is referred to as an 'Option Select':
  • If the input is timed late, then an opponent attacking with a jumping normal from a hop will be blocked before the defending player's normal is whiffed.
    
    
  • If the offensive opponent had performed an empty hop in order to throw the defender, the throw attempt will be teched.
    
    
  • If the offensive player had gone for a low attack from an empty hop, the buffered Throw Tech input will throw the offensive player out of the startup of a low attack.
    
    

• While the Throw Tech Option Select is a powerful tool, it will always lose to an instant command grab done from an empty hop.
  
  
• Additionally, as a player is waking up and facing a potential meaty jumping attack from a hop, this defensive option select will not work due to the lack of time to block and due to the tight ambiguity of whether an opponent's hop attack will be active as the defender wakes up, or if the meaty attack will be a low instead.