Talking with a friend today about some Guilty Gear stuff. I asked him if he worked on any combo or corner pressure or okizeme stuff and was like "How can I focus on that when I can't even defend myself?" which I thought was an interestingly misguided view of how defense works.

It's extremely understandable and I feel kinda common to not realize that completely neglecting parts of your game to focus on other parts screws you up long term because establishing threat/risk is part of what makes defnese (and really, offense) work.

If your AA is just a poke out of the air, but my reward for jumping in is huge, I'm going to keep jumping in. If a risky move gets me poked or maybe knocked down but you lack a followup? I'm going to keep doing it. The payout matrix is still heavily in my favor.

New or developing players will get their shit rushed down mercilessly and assume they have to block better and while blocking better will help, the real reason they're getting run down on is because they can't establish a threat.

What you change can change how players approach you. One of my friend was talking about playing another Sol who is in all other ways better than me... but talked about how he wasn't afraid to do certain stuff because he didn't do CH 2d combos like I do. It changes the matchup.

Project 2 is explaining to the kids why strike/throw mixups are so important so they stop leaning on 5D to open people up