Attacks are moves that deal direct damage to the opponent. It is important to understand the nuanced properties of your character's attacks in order to play them effectively.
Block, Hit and CH Frames
Status Properties
Counter Hit
A counter hit, or CH, occurs when your attack interrupts or trades blows with your opponent's attack. Almost all moves inflict slightly more damage on CH. Some moves have special CH properties like launching, knocking down or gaining extra + frames. In many cases, a string follow-up that's not guaranteed on normal hit will become guaranteed on counter hit.
Characters focused on counter hits include Law, Steve, Josie and Bryan. Although almost every character benefits from landing counter hits.
The most common counter hit tool is known as the magic 4, an i11 or i12 high CH launching kick.
Clean Hit
A clean hit (CL) is only possible with certain moves. CL gives improved effects when an attack is landed in a way that meets its CL condition (usually landing the attack particularly close to the target).
Some examples:
- Paul's qcf+2 - Deals extra damage to close opponents
- Nina's f,F+4 - Deals extra damage when clean hit on downed opponent
- Feng's SS 4 - Sweeps on clean hit
- Akuma's d+3 - Can combo on clean hit
Combo Properties
Launcher
Launchers are attacks that initiate air-juggles by giving the player enough frame advantage to use moves before their opponent lands on the ground.
If an attack gives enough frame advantage only for particular guaranteed follow ups, it isn't considered a juggle combo and therefore not a launcher.
Screw
New to Tekken 7 and replacing bound from previous entries is the screw system.
Screws are primarily used for extending air juggle duration and wall travel.
Each character's screw attacks are noted in the in-game movelists with a green icon. This indicates that if that move lands on an airborne opponent, they will be put in screw state: spinning in the air before landing on their shoulders, feet in the air; allowing for reliable follow up attacks to continue the air juggle.
Spike
Spikes moves used on an airborne target, force opponents into an un-techable knockdown. They can usually be recognised as moves that spike opponents downward.
They also initiate floor breaks when used on airborne opponents.
Examples include:
- Asuka's d+2
- Lee's f+4,3
- Jack-7's f,f+1
Defensive Properties
Crush
Crushing is a concept that indicates invincibility to a specific type or types of attacks. Crushing moves can ignore by a level of attack: highs, mids, special mids, lows and/or by a type: attack moves, throws, projectiles.
Crushing is often confused with evasion.
Crushing moves are moves which ignore collision between the character's hurtboxes(of the player getting hit) and hitboxes(of the attacking player) of types of moves: even if hurtboxes collide with hitboxes, this fact is ignored by the game because of crushing properties of the move. Evasion happens because of lack of collision between character's hurtboxes and move's hitboxes: the game will register a hit if hurtboxes and hitboxes will collide and evasion happens when they don't.
Prime example would be hopkicks for crushing lows and Paul's backsway for evasion. Hopkicks are known to crush lows because they are invincible to lows due to the airborne state it gives to the player(starting at n-th frame), while Paul's backsway causes him to evade moves, which creates whiffs leading to a whiff punish.
Essentially, a crush is 100 percent consistent, and evasion is more nuanced.
Powercrush
New in Tekken 7, Powercrush attacks give superarmor to characters starting at i8, allowing them to power through mid and high attacks, without receiving a counter hit.
- Powercrushes cannot power through lows or throws.
- Lows can land counter hits.
- If grabbed during a powercrush, it is impossible to perform a throw escape.
Rage Arts
Rage Arts have enhanced powercrushing capabilities.
- Can't be counter hit, uninterruptable by lows or throws.
Homing
Homing attacks have enough tracking to always connect with an opponent who is sidestepping or sidewalking.
They are denoted in the in-game movelist by a blue circular arrow icon.
Wall Properties
Wall Splat
Wall Bound
Added in season 2, wall bounds are moves that knock opponents far away, if they collide with the wall during this time, they will rebound back toward their attacker, for an air juggle.
Wall bounds are a way of optimizing combo damage when launching opponents who are too close to the wall to maximise damage off a regular launcher, and too far to wall splat.