Welcome, one and all, to True Tech’s Top Tips: a.k.a True Tech is better than you and tells you why. This column will provide you with various tips, tactics and techniques in multiple games, primarily in BlazBlue, my current game of choice. Today in Volume 1 of the surely soon to be raving success that is True Tech’s Top Tips, I, True_Tech, will talk to you about reacting to Barrier Burst in Blazblue.
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Bursting has changed significantly, and in my opinion for the better, from the guilty gear games. The addition of a penalty, only one burst per round and an increased start-up based on your barrier gauge usage makes bursting even more of a thinking game. This however has put a damper on the previously very smart plan of baiting burst, as now people are less likely to burst and therefore less likely to take the bait.

Fear not mortals! Though you may no longer be able to freely bait burst, you can in most instances react to them. Now there are three types of burst: gold, green, and blue. They all have different start up depending on the amount of barrier gauge used. For more info, see http://s1.zetaboards.com/blazblue/pages/05#barrierburst. The basic idea is that you can freely react to the start up of a green or blue burst, while a gold burst is too fast and must be anticipated rather than reacted too. With that my young padawan, we come to the heart of the matter, you may ask yourself ‘how do I react to such things?’ Why young lad, tis quite simple. There are two universal solutions that all characters can do to react to burst.

Solution number 1 and easiest of the two would be to rapid cancel (RC), block and punish accordingly. An example of this can be seen here @ 1:43 notice how you can see the burst start to come out before the litchi player RC’s and then blocks.

Another prime example is shown here @ 3:21 by Wuku as you can see the he stops the combo, RC’s, then continues as normal. This is a really strong technique to get down, as it gives you first and foremost a free combo if you aren’t too slow. If you are in fact slow, you still get free pressure against a danger state opponent which can easily lead to death with the right mix up.