Bryan counterplay (Tekken 7)

General Counter Gameplay

Bryan’s gameplan revolves around fishing for CHs. Every good Bryan player will try to mixup their timing and exploit your tendency to press should they find it. Although many moves leave him at minus frames, the threat of a CH follow up keeps people still and allows Bryan to continue pressing even at a disadvantage. The general strategy against Bryan is to know when to press and when not to. It’s generally hard for a Bryan player to sustain a pressure playstyle because he severely lacks poking tools that leave him only at a small disadvantage on block. In many of his moves, it’s going to be your turn after you block something that has a follow up because many of these moves often leave him at -5 on block or greater.

After blocking a first hit, he is left at a heavy disadvantage and have you gain the opportunity to do the mix up. If they don’t adjust immediately, you will have a lot of free mixup opportunities until they have enough. For instance, if he stops at df2 and does not commit to the follow up, he will be left at -6. You can then do a low, slow + on block move, or do a mid check that would leave you at a small disadvantage so you could sidestep after. In this situation, the moves he can sidestep are limited and most of his panic moves are too slow to come out. If he does ff2 after for example, moves up to 14f will stop him but anything further will be armored. If he does orbital, many mids will net you a float combo. Try to observe what he does next time you block df2 because they might try to follow up with the extension.

If we still aren’t sure if he will commit and want to be a bit safer, it’s a good idea to sidestep guard or delay our moves. This will change the timing of your moves, beat some of his options, and make it harder for the Bryan player to get a counter. If we only decide to play his guessing game, we become predictable and the risk reward goes in his favor because he only needs to CH once to deal massive amounts of damage. If you followed everything so far, Bryan will be forced to constantly take risks, try to constantly time his moves, and have him back off on times he won’t need to. Very good players will adjust to each other quickly but at that point, it’s a matter of adjusting to the adjustment and so on.

Ranges

Up Close

When fighting Bryan, you generally want him to be up close. Not only does he lack generic poking tools, but he also lacks reliable panic and get off me moves because they are either situational or too slow. Whenever he initiates, jabs will be his go to pressure starter because this is his fastest move that provide him a small advantage but this generally becomes a common flowchart where they do a jab or 1,2 followed by something to stop you from pressing (another jab, df2, d2, any mid with a CH followup) or a move to give him plus frames (b1 or hatchet) to continue pressure. Good Bryan players, on the other hand, will use jabs and combine them with movement like sidesteps or dash guards to mix up their timing while also trying to download when you will mostly press. Despite this though, they still, from time to time, follow the same flowchart earlier.

Mid Range

Because Bryan often suffer at close range, many Bryan players like to stay at mid-range which he excels at. He can keep you out with 3+4 or find opportunities where they can use their slower moves like b1 or hatchet if you don’t engage. 3+4 is linear but he can cover this with ff4 which is a high tracking CH launcher and has a guaranteed follow up on regular hit. He also has the best orbital in the game which has good range and only -5 on block. To top it off, he has ff2 which is a safe powercrush high that pushes back on block. As we can see, Bryan has a lot of tools to stop us from approaching him and but it's not impossible for us to get in.

First, instead of approaching Bryan, it’s better to let him come to us. To force this, try to get a life lead and then turtle up. If we keep holding back and not press too much, a Bryan player should have a hard time dealing damage. He does not have any strong lows, mixups, or plus on block moves in his strings. His main source of damage is from CHs so on a very significant life lead and if you can block snake edge on reaction, the only comeback strategy a Bryan can do is to do hatchet kicks and mixup his mids hoping you would duck. In situations where we need to approach him, there’s no one clear solution that can beat his keep out game because he has all the moves he needs to cover everything we might do. The best strategy here is to be patient. It only takes around 15-20 seconds on average for a round to end so there are ways we can use the time to find openings and cause him to hesitate. One way to do this is to bait and punish him.

Most of the time, Bryan players will use 3+4 move when they see you approaching. What we can do is to stay at a range where it whiffs and then punish afterwards. This move recovers very slowly and even if we don’t punish it, we can safely get inside his space. If we misjudge the spacing and block a 3+4, there’s the common flowchart which is 3+4 into another keep out move (it’s usually another 3+4). After blocking the first 3+4, either dash and immediately sidestep block right to make any keep out move whiff or sidestep right and duck. Another option is to use moves that are safe long range moves but test out if it consistently reaches first. Sometimes when block 3+4 at tip range, far reaching options will whiff when blocking 3+4. A safer alternative approach is dash guarding. Besides 3+4 and ff2, any keep out move he whiffs or we block like orbital, ff4, and magic 4 should leave us at a fairly high plus frames and doesn’t push us back too much. Instead of going for a mixup, it’s sometimes better to use these frames to get closer. Keep this in mind if he spams his keep out and always remember to try and not rush Bryan.

b1 on block and qcb3 (hatchet) on hit

There will be multiple times you’ll find yourself blocking a b1 or getting hit with qcb3. Fortunately, most Bryan players predictably default to pressing something afterward which helps us simplify our decision making. There are 3 things we can do: sidestep, hold back, or challenge with either jab strings, magic 4, or dickjab. After blocking b1 or eating hatchet, many of Bryan’s common follow ups are slow enough that we could sneak in 10-11f moves. Usually, this beats many of Bryan’s options that track sidestep right. For a Bryan player to beat this, he must use a 14f move and below to stop us from pressing but in this instance, he runs the risk of getting sidestepped and launched. We could alternate with these two options but if we don’t want to take risks, we can just backdash but this opens us up to slower moves that continue his pressure like another b1 or qcb3. Besides b1 and qcb3 however, any other move will leave him at minus frames which allows us to take our turn. All three are good options to do but each of them can net you a bigger gain on a hard read. Adjust accordingly to the Bryan’s tendencies.

At the Wall

Another area Bryan specializes in is the wall game. When you find yourself near the wall, get out immediately. DO NOT ATTACK in this situation and just continue to move away. He has ff2 (safe powercrush), FC df21 (13f punisher from crouch), taunt (unblockable that gives him a guaranteed followup), and b4 (safe mid that gives a free jet upper when near the wall). All of these moves lead to a wall splat that takes away more than 40% of your life if you get hit.