Pokkén Tournament Grab / Normal Attack Interaction

[Deaga]

So, of course everyone knows of the attack triangle, meaning that normal attacks trump grabs. However, sometimes, when attacking through a grab, the attack will whiff, or just not complete (I honestly can't tell), while other times the move will go through completely, meaning the attack animation completes and I hit my opponent.

Does anyone what triggers each case? Is it the attack (or grab) coming too late or too early? Or something else entirely?

 

[MuscleSpirit]

It happens whenever you grab someone out of the startup frames of their attack. You can see it happen in training mode by setting the dummy reaction to 'Normal Attack', knocking it down and doing a meaty grab on its wakeup.

When this happens, the attack will "tech" the grab and cancel out the grab animation, but the attack will be cancelled out as well. I haven't actually looked at it frame-by-frame, but it looks like both players are back in neutral (+0) after that happens.

It essentially makes grabbing people after knockdown (and potentially whenever they block a move with enough frame advantage) safer than usual.

 

[Deaga]

Thanks for the info! So if you attack a grab too late, they'll cancel each other out, but if you attack earlier, you'll beat the grab. Is that correct?

Stil, knowing this is accurate game behavior is nice. I thought it was lag or something online... Now I'll know to go into faster moves (or counters or grabs or AAAA GOTTA READ'EM ALL) when that happens, rather than trying some strong and slow move and getting punished.

 

[meleebrawler]

Whenever I grapple break, I grab back, don't know if it's possible to counter-grapple break this since everybody seems to be scared into block when a grapple break happens.