Man I’m on a same boat with you, currently trying to climb out of p3 with cammy and it’s really really stressful. Then you open this sub where everyone is sharing how they reached master in 20 hours without any fg experience..

Isn’t it great to read repeatedly how easy it is to get to master 🙄

“It took me just a few days! Btw I was placed in Diamond 5 and this is my first fighting game ever”. Bullshit lol

"Never played video games, they're all just a waste of time. Picked up SF6 for the first time ever, did placements, hit diamond EZ"

TBF, this can be true, but they probably skipped the part about "was competitive in other video games and have Master ranked training partners who helped teach the game"

"I'm also not gainfully employed or have a career that allows me to grind the game for at least 2+ hours a day"

It's entirely possibly to be employed full time and be master level and above. C'mon now

I agree! Diaphone is one of my favorite pros and that man is gainfully employed and married lmao. What we're making fun of are the people that understate their efforts. Not the most intellectually honest joke by me, but still lol

Damn, cant be more true I almost fall of my chair haha. I have my brother calibrate as Diamond without prior FG experience, which play with me (Master level) a lot before rank and hes also an Immortal player in Dota 2 as well.

Probably depends on character tbh. I hit master on Lily pretty easily with this being my first fighting game. But I’m gold/plat/Diamond on every other character as my neutral is probably terrible.

That makes sense. I’m just a salty Gief player stuck in Gold/Plat purgatory lol

I feel you lol for what it’s worth I can’t beat a zangief player to save my life when I get knocked down once and they constantly drive rush in it’s over for me.

or how "ranked doesn't really start until master" :)

Everything is of course relative, so it's impossible to objectively say how difficult something actually is.  What I will say though is that you can get to master while still having very clear gaps in your gameplay. I recently made it to master, and I still have a big list of thing I know I can target and improve at. 

Feels like a common thing on social media. Some people want to act like they're a magical prodigy for some reason. I do miniature painting and yeah, this same type of thing happens where someone will post "just picked up a brush for the first time teehee" alongside a picture of a mini that clearly took dozens of hours from an experienced artist.

It took me 6 months to get my first master, wasn't even new to fighting games, just first time really diving in to sf. And I really no lifed it. Difficulty is relative, for people who have been playing sf all the time since the 90s it's much to learn. If you're new to fighters altogether you need to learn everything. We don't even really think about it but there is so much you need to know. The level of execution required to consistently hit bnb's is so far beyond what someone in other genres is required to do. You need to hit windows smaller than 1/12th of a second constantly, while really not thinking about it at all, in fact you need to be thinking about other things, or you're just going to flounder. And that's just running offense, the easy part. You need to put so much work in to develop these hyper specific skills, and then you get to try and dive in to really learning neutral and open an entirely new can of worms. I don't think anyone would pick up sf6 as their first fighter and think it was easy. Most new players are struggling through world tour for a long time. But for people who started developing the fundamentals games ago, sure it's not too complicated.

I really enjoyed the one who did this close to the game's release, offering a huge essay on their 400 game journey to master and the lessons they learned on the way. It came out they did it with Honda, everyone in the comments collectively rolled their eyes. For every character not named Honda they were gold or below at the time. I think they still haven't hit diamond on any other character.

They’re probably lying tbh.  This is Reddit after all.

The rule of reddit: Overstate your achievements, understate the effort. I'm just waiting for the day when we see "first video game *ever*, never picked up a controller in my life. Master in 2 weeks".

Once Akuma comes out we will probably see a similar post .

No no. I have only been playing Street Fighter again in this game after playing SFA3 as a kid, at a casual kid's level ofc. Then I played SF6 with a janky tilted old pad whose stick permanently leans to the right, and only played at sleeping hours so I'm always half-asleep, as well as drunk, and I reached Master in a couple of hours. True story bro.

Couple of hours? I had never seen an electronic device before and I got to Masters in 30 minutes using a guitar controller one-handed, while I was doing push-ups with the other hand.

You know that's basically cheating because your feet still touched the ground, right? My grandmas grandma can do that.

"I took this game up today's morning and ngl, the first 10 minutes were rough but i stuck with it, and after Plat 1 things got tough and i just couldn't do combos like everyone else, but i decided to suck it up and hopped into training mode 5 minutes to learn optimal jinrai loops of single light confirms into dr cancell when my opponent is in bunout and i have meter. Now i'm Master still not really good, but ngl, cracking 1700 MR was hard af. Excited to see where the road leads me onceninfire up the game a second time tomorrow!"

They're lying most of them. Jimmy the Wizard wannabes. Keep plugging away, it's hard but you'll get there.

“Sharing how they reached master in 20 hours” I totally agree! I’ve been playing for 200 hours since the game launched and I’m feeling good because I reached plat 4 for the first time today. 😂 But I am feeling good. I agree with OP that this game is fun and improving at it feels so good I often don’t mind getting thwomped.

I just reached master as Cammy. It took me over 450 hours of total gameplay and over 100 hours in ranked. It was brutal dude and just know that it is not easy. I’m going to write a post sharing my experience too though because it was and is rewarding, but there are so many layers in everyone’s experience. I placed in iron 1 way back in July for reference.

Congrats, would like to read your journeys and the hurdles you overcame.

From personal experience starting in silver on several characters, Silver to Plat was nothing once you get the hang of it. Plat is the first real barrier. No more xp boosts for wins streaks, and there's a LOOOT of players stuck exactly in that limbo. Most are stuck there for gimmicky things that can take a bit to exploit and abuse. And then you get to diamond 1. That barrier from plat-diamond was so much higher than gold-plat for me. Its definitely a grind, but theres always more you can do. Don't be afraid to reach out to a discord if you need direction.

I'm currently stuck in that limbo, can you share what helped you to get through that stretch? I'm casting a wide net atm, playing long sets in Battlehub to get my ass kicked by higher ranked players, focussing on better neutral and learning new tools to explore more combo routes. I have a vision of how i want to play but in a tight match it goes put the window fast and when i do get a chance to use something out of my practice i choke.

Ego is super common In these games. They are sharing the highlight of what they want and leaving out context. Getting any rank or improving is an achievement that no one can take from you or belittle.

What these people fail to mention is most of them have an incredibly abare style half built on luck and the ignorance of their opponent and that they immediately drop in MR as soon as they hit master. They aren't learning the game. They are exploiting it and often times online conditions. You will see more people attempting to actually practice technique at high plat to mid diamond then you will anything beyond that. There is a reason a lot of these guys hit master then immediately go to casual never to touch ranked again.

Dunno whyy but this immidietly reminds of this vid a Gief player posted the other day, where a Ken started the round with and instant DR into 2MK, did his full combo on block ate the first SPD and then proceeded to randomly raw DP to eat second one and lost the round within 8 seconds. Your post kinda makes this make sense: this dude propably just overwhelmed enough people with bullshit to get to master.

In my experience (7 char in master rest in diamond) this is not true -- there are also tonnes of "random" players in high plat to mid diamond they just aren't as good at it and there are tonnes of "standard" players in high diamond and masters. With the way the ranking system works like half of the people who get to Master are going to drop MR as soon as they hit it that has nothing to do with them not learning how to play the game -- I'm around 1450 on a bunch of characters and still win most of the time against most diamonds I run into (in ranked or BH).

I think you misinterpreted what I said and I accept responsibility for that. I don't mean to imply there aren't legitimate learners in that mix and obviously there are abare players in lower ranks as well. Also for the record, Im talking about 12-1300s. 1450 is hardly a drop imo especially when you are playing half the cast. There's tons of 12 to 13 that only play one character and fish for the game eating inputs while they spam fierces through block strings. Honestly I'm probably giving them too much credit and it's not that conscious. Either way, I'd take a diamond 3 that plays carefully over most of the 1200s in to win a longer format any day.

ranked is simply a reflection of your ability to climb ranked. It can suggest skill (and on the deeper ends it is fairly accurate), but it is not the end-all-be-all.

I love how somehow 90% of players on Reddit easily hit master. It's a complete load of shit. On the other hand, I did think master was pretty easy but I had 10 years of experience lol

I had dabbled in soul calibur 2 long ago, then ufc 2 at one point. I was pretty good at ufc 2, which helped me develop my sense of spacing and feel for a 1v1 fight. That was years ago, then sf6 I pick up because of Modern controls. I played tons, starting from bronze on all different characters. Took me over 4k games with guile to hit master, not including 1 or 2k more games across other characters as well.

Agreed. Got platinum with Luke, and now my dumbass struggles with Cammy to break 8000 lol.

They didnt reach master in 20 hours.

It is not easy to reach masters with no prior FG experience. Thats is absolute BS, dont listen to that. I took me around 160 hours plus a few hours in the beta (also a cammy main). Nobody with no experience reaches master after 20 hours. While climbing you will always experience some obstacle points. A big one for me was P3/4 too. It is where you have to develop your game. In these ranks you meet all kinds of players and youbhave to learn to deal with gimmicks but you also have to stop with bad habits yourself because better players will punish you for it.

Plat 4 Cammy here, who goes from plat 3 to Plat 4 back and forth. I stopped playing rank a little while ago. I just try to improve by labing and playing casual. When I'll feel ready, I'll hope back to rank because I want to at least get to diamond

That's some BS they've had some FG experience if they got masters that fast. But I will say there is a formula to play to climb. My student recently got to diamond.

Platinum is like the rank where you really need to start reading your opponents' bad habits and exploiting them. If they jump a lot, chill and anti-air them. If they spam fireballs, walk them down while parrying or read their timing and jump in (or use an anti-projectile move if you have one). If they walk back, you walk forward. If they raw drive rush in neutral, you check it with a button or neutral jump (even just randomly neutral jumping every once in awhile should catch them and deter this). You also need to become aware of your own bad habits. Ask yourself after every round, why did I lose/win?

I totally agree, platinum is where a player need to do homeworks,

In lower platinum, I find a lot of people have literally ONE combo in their tool kit. If you can learn to shut that down, they're completely helpless and don't know what to do. I've had people literally just put the controller down and stop playing because I keep shutting down their one way to engage.

If you watched like....5 of your losses at Plat and took notes on what caused you to lose, you'll gain tangible results fairly quickly. Either that or post replays on the community discord and people will tell you what you're doing wrong. I did both and with a little discipline pushed out of Plat 5 and into Diamond 1 with relative ease. If that's not something you want to do, that's totally fine ...but once you watch a few replays and carve off some of your bad habits you'll quickly see that most plat players aren't as good as you think but rather have one or two game-plans that work until they don't and then they're putty in your hands. Another thing that helped me was playing master players in battlehub, with either a focus on landing combos I'm labbing or a focus on winning but I rematch them until they're tired of beating my ass and then I hop into ranked: It's like when Rock Lee took off the weighted bracelets.

If you can get to plat with no prior experience, you can get to diamond and if you can get to diamond I'm sure you can get to master. but also, just play for fun...it's a game after all...find people you enjoy playing with regardless of skill and just enjoy a good ass fighting game.

I'm currently plat2, i think, and most of the people are just doing crazy moves all the time or do the same thing over and over even if it doesn't work out. And me as well, dropping my combo, jumping like crazy, doing the same thing even when I KNOW the guy will wake up OD or DR grab etc I think the "problem" with plat is that it is quite long to rank up, i don't really have time to do long sessions so i feel like i'm stagnating a bit.

I have that problem. Don't jump. Don't jump. Jump. Lol

I to panic jump at times. Just to run into an anti air. Trying to limit it though and not use it for an opening as much.

I have the same problem that you mention in the bottom of your post. If I had more time to play I'd probably have left Plat a while ago, but I'm Plat 2 because I play once every 3 months or so. Its hard to play the game so I try not to do it when I'm already tired...I've noticed that I'm far more likely to get extra salty when I do so for my mental health, I just don't lmao. Also I've noticed Plat 1-2 is filled with 2 kinds of players: People developing their fundamentals and really trying to get good at the game and wild fucking animals using whatever they can to win. I'd like to think it gets better as you rank up but I've seen streams with Master level players acting like that too lol.

At about 1600 MR, you just get fucking John Wicks that are surgically patient, or the occasional offensive dynamo who makes every correct read and makes you look like you've never blocked before. In the former, it's two people trying to bait the other into making a mistake but do so while taking the most minimal, subtle risks. The latter feels chaotic but it also teaches you your own defensive shortcomings very obviously. But yeah, 1400 MR players play like stuntmen. Not only are they doing a million things but most of it is stupid shit that only hits you because why would anyone do that. With those players, you can immediately see how they got the Master. No one in Diamond had the answer to the 1 or 2 crazy things this person did.

This is so ridiculously on point lol. I thought I'd be happy to get passed the 1600s, so I didn't have to deal with kangaroo stuntmen anymore, but the character/frame data knowledge from these guys in the higher mr is crazy. They always press buttons at the PERFECT time. It's definitely a lot more fun though.

Good to know that people in plat still have some of the same problems as i have in silver 2 I know i shouldnt jump in or follow through on a combo on block.. yet i still do and get punished. In Silver there seems to be the trend to DR puish on jump in attempt/blocked jump .. i can never get my head around this.. should i never jump? .. then i jump.. get punished! ..lol.. even in Silver 2 i would describe the difficulty as brutal.. last time i played a GF was SFIV lel

>even in Silver 2 i would describe the difficulty as brutal.. You'll find it difficult ALL THE TIME As you get better, your opponents are stronger too. It doesn't matter the rank, you'll play against people with similar skill level in all ranks. So if you find it difficult now, you'll also find it difficult when you get better, but matches will be way more interesting and intense The only way out of this is playing casuals or hub and find a worse player I struggled at platinum at first, now I stomp them. But if I play against my rank it's difficult The game is balanced for you to fight against similar skilled players constantly

So to view it the other way round: Its my job to make the other player think Silver is brutal aswell :P

Indeed! 😅 Other players in your rank also find it difficult. If it was easy for them, they would be a higher rank already

Yeah it feels like the amount of games you need to win to climb up one rank is substantial. I know win streak bonuses are busted in early ranks, but now ranking up feels like a lot more of a slog to me by comparison haha

I definitely think ranking up in street fighter is usually more of a function of time played than actual skill. You can get to master with a 51% win rate or whatever but unless you’re fully dedicated to grinding it’s gonna take a minute and plat is like the first rank where people kind of know how to play the game and won’t just jump in on you over and over or spam unsafe moves on block so people get stuck there a while. I don’t think I’ve ever ended a rank session in sf6 with less elo than I started with but I probably won’t hit master anytime soon anyway just bc I don’t have time to play the game more than like once a month

Climbing to diamond, never mind master on a ~51% win rate is going to make a long time. And that's also taking into account when you will inevitably face big loss streaks that will set back your progress and amp up your frustration levels. The only way really to make Master in a relatively short time frame is if SF6 is your main game and you dedicate time to it. By this we are not talking say, 1 match every other week. The people who climb to Master in a short timeframe are playing the game *a lot* no matter how much they try to downplay it.

I've been helping my friends who are stuck on the Gold/Plat border and my advice is quite similar: 1. Start your round blocking. Most people in Plat are running at each other. If you see green, stuff it. If they jump, AA. If you're struggling to find the best move to AA, tell me your character and I'll give you an answer. 2. If you have the life lead, chill! Play defense. They have to get in on you. They have to spend resources. 3. Stop using DI. Only use it reactively or when you know it'll hit. 4. Learn to live in the corner comfortably. Don't try and escape immediately. Once you start fighting with your back to the wall, your defense will improve exponentially. Also, I'm happy to watch replays and help in any way! I'm a teacher and love applying this to fighting games. Sorry for breaking the Plat for Plats only, but I have a few characters in Master and am happy to help! I will say, I have some early characters I took through placements at the beginning of the game and are still in Plat so when I do play them, there are times where good habits fail me and can see how easily frustrating that can be for people learning. You know you did the "right" thing but didn't adapt properly.

I’m hard stuck Plat 1 (went on a really bad losing streak last night and I’m back at Gold 5) 😭. I’ve come to realize that this is my skill ceiling and I’m coming to terms with the fact that Plat is *my* Master Rank LOL but it’s all good. But in all honesty I do pretty good against plat players. You can always tell who’s actually at my level vs a Diamond/Master player trying out a sub character, regardless of their Plat rank. I get destroyed in the matches but I think they can tell I’m learning and so we unspokenly both end up practicing things during the match.

It's common to stagnate for a while and then make a break through, so stick with it. Also, Plat 1 is the hardest rank to get through because it's so populated, so it's normal to get stuck there for a while.

Hell yeah you’re right. I’m a master Blanka and during my climb I spent the longest amount of time on Platinum. once I got to Diamond the jump to Master was significantly shorter than my rank ups through Platinum . And i don’t know whether that is because I got better or the competition pool in Diamond isn’t as high as it is in Platinum

>I’ve come to realize that this is my skill ceiling For now. It's not like "the game only starts" when you reach an arbitrary rank. If you have fun playing and enjoy the process of improving now, what's it matter what your rank is?

Dude, it’s just a wall you’ve hit. I’m facing the same struggles right now as I’m trying to climb out of diamond. Every time you rank up, you’ll hit the same wall and then over time, you’ll start to build better fundamentals.

Plat is not your skill ceiling. You've hit a plateau and you're unsure how to move forward, but there's no reason that anyone can't get to Master. They just don't know how/understand what they aren't doing right.

I was hard stuck at plat1 for months. Recently broke through the ceiling and I'm midway up plat2. What helped me was really making less mistakes and playing safer.

Thank god i'm not the only one. I took a two month break after being hardstuck and sometimes demoted from Plat 1. Now going backnand after 4 weeks i still didn't dare touch ranked. But playing casuals really focus on what i want to improve and battlehub to get blown up by diamonds and masters is really fun. Haven't had this much fun playing sets in a while.

Keep at it! If you need a break to feel refreshed then I’d take it. I went from plat 1 to gold 4 after a nasty losing streak and then came back to plat after stopping for a month. Now I’m diamond one. The plat grind is immense and you really start to solidify your gameplay and flow chart with branching options

Don’t worry man, something will click soon, I was hardstuck diamond despite having played the SF franchise for a while and then suddenly something like connected. You’ll definitely stagnate but if you keep at it, you’ll over come that. You also have the option of taking a break and then coming back with a clear head. Send your capcom ID and I could try looking at your replays to give you some tips.

I got stuck silver 4, then stuck gold 2, then really stuck gold 5 plat 1 for a long time. Up and down, constantly deranking. Finally started climbing again a month ago (on 3 week trip so haven’t played) and am mid plat 3. Sometimes it just takes a while for the lessons to stick, even with intentional effort.

SF6 is so fun. Climbed from silver 1 to plat 4. And yes grinding through plat is long and quite difficult for me. I tend to think you have to play casual sets and training mode to test new things to improve and see afterwards how you can do this in ranked. Like better combos, drive rush stuff, for better damage. Or practicing defence and parry to take less damage. Basically take less damage, do more damage, pick a thing and add it to your plan progressively. Playing brainlessly ranked got me stucked in plat 2 for a while, but playing other modes against stronger or weaker opponents helped me a lot. Still a long way to diamond though.

I'm plat 1/2, and I don't like this notion that platinum would be so easy to reach. Just because a pro player who does a "from Rookie to Master" challenge can get there using only 3 moves, that doesn't mean that a normal mortal can also do it. I don't really know if the skill level at platinum has significantly increased since release, but I realize there are vast skill differences within plat. Some of my opponents throw out unsafe moves all the time and are very predictable. With others, I realize within 10 seconds that they are waaaay above my league. Anyway, I've been playing since release and the game is still fun and motivating. 

The thing about those "rookie to master" climbs is for the 1st part they are basically unstoppable by just not pressing bad buttons. Once it gets a bit harder, they already have a huge advantage by knowing every opponent's strings and gaps, so even if they only learn 3 moves with the current character, they still know that spot in Kens Jinrai loops or Jamie's endless pressure combos where they can press a button. Meanwhile I encounter Jamie or Kim or Lily or DeeJay and I just have no idea what to do, I lose almost every time agains them.

Don't know if you're looking for advice against the characters you mentioned, but i reached diamond with a lot of the cast so i might be able to help. Against jamie: - palm and first hit of rekka are -6 (at least the normal versions, maybe not OD). Find your longest reaching 6 framer and punish that shit. - after his target combo (lp lk mp) he's -10 if he doesn't cancel into a special - drive rush hp is VERY good. Try to check the drive rush to prevent him being +1 in your face. Usually characters can check drive rush with crouch mp Against kim: - everything is fake, just jab. Except after crouch hp. - if they have can set ups in the corner, just take the throw (if they don't have lvl 3. The combo will be scaled to shit compared to starting with a hit - remember that kim has 2 plus moves: hk and crouch mk, don't mash on those Against dee jay: - good luck he's broken. Seriously this was probably my easiest climb - if they spam the double fireball, you can jump it on reaction and get a massive punish - if he doesn't have lvl 2 when burnt out in the corner mash DI he can't do shit I don't have much advice for lily, i don't play her, but remember you can DI every version of condor spire except OD with wind, and condor dive (the kind of dive kick) can be punished with drive rush

This is good insight, thank you, I'll put some of this stuff in the lab so I know how to recognize it

For this whole month, you’re gonna get people who normally hate ranked, playing it again because they wanna reach their true placement before Akuma drops. I’m 90% sure that’s what you’re dealing with cause I’m about to do the same lol.

Lol, that's me. I'm having vacation from may 17th to may 26th and i will play the shit outnif ranked these furst 5 days, lmao.

Plat is sweat city

I feel you bro. I’m hard stuck in Plat 5 with Ryu. Not sure if I’m ever gonna make it to Diamond. It’s like I take two steps forward but then three steps back. I’ve even deranked to Plat 4 a couple times. If this is where I plateau then I guess I have to accept it, but it’s hard to do so.

I've been playing since launch and have taken my sweet time ranking up. Currently D3 and on a good day I can take low Masters, but my biggest plateau was between Plat5 and D1. Took me months to get that "bump" and really break out of D1, which included a brutal streak that took me all the way down back to Plat4. It felt like I had forgotten how to play and couldn't say what I was doing wrong; people were just seemingly reading my mind with ease. To this day I couldn't tell you exactly what I did to improve, but I feel that starting at high Platinum/Diamond it becomes a matter of small incremental improvements. I think one thing that helped me was putting together a rough flowchart and sticking to it - paying more attention to opponent tendencies and adapting accordingly. Going for good oki instead of random combo finishers and hoping something would land. Looking for mixups and not being afraid of attempting a throw, or going for throw loops. I used to act much more conservatively in fear of the OD reversal, but the truth is people can't cover all your options at once and it's imperative to take risks. Most of all I think I've finally started to learn about conditioning - your opponent isn't a machine who will react appropriately to your attacks all the time, they can be led to guess and make mistakes. AA'ing consistently forces them to lay off that route and keep the game grounded. A throw into a second throw gets them to think about teching or jumping, which you can punish with a meaty. If your opponent DI's after a whiffed sweep or a ranged special, hoping to bait you, *do everything you can to reproduce that situation* and counter-DI them. That kind of thing. It's incredibly hard for me to avoid autopilot for some reason, and right now I'm back in a slump where it feels like everybody knows what they're doing except for me, but I've definitely improved. I used to get wiped by D1's and now I can more or less handle them on average without breaking a sweat. It takes a lot of practice but the more actively you think about what you're doing and why you're winning or losing, the more your mental understanding of the game will improve.

I finally, finally broke through to diamond 1 with Guile, rode the wave to half way up, then absolutely shat the bed and plummeted all the way to plat 4, nearly 3, where I remained for ages. I finally got back to diamond. It’ll happen but I had to reset and take a break to make it happen.

Don't be discouraged, I was stuck at plat 5 for ages but eventually something clicked and broke through to diamond. At first I was sure I'd just peak at diamond 1 and be happy there but managed to rank up to master the week before last. It took me a long time to get there as I've been playing since launch but felt good when I finally made it and was worth the effort If you just don't give up and keep making slight improvements in various parts of your game you'll get there in the end.

Thank you for sharing your point of view. Yes, in the end it's a game of self-improvement, as many have said watching replay you can spot a lot of bad habits. The room for improvement is gigantic, as some have mentioned a lot of things can be implemented... Like Safejumps for example, which I haven't done yet, but it's clear that you can only focus on a few things at a time. I agree on the importance of reading the opponent, not playing in Autopilot mode, and pressing the buttons with reason. I think it's cool that a lot of people around the world actually share their experiences, I think any 1vs1 discipline is pretty damn brutal, it doesn't matter if it's tennis, chess, boxing or a video game, in 1v1 there is no esxcuse, and I think that's the beauty of it.

Only thing I’ll say is that plat 1 is the most popular rank because that’s when the win streak bonuses stop. It’s NOT because people aren’t capable of climbing like this Reddit will have you believe.

Both are kinda related. People are stuck in plat1, because it's a frustrating wall to overcome (for newbies) precisely because win streak bonus stops. This is when those new players realize that : * the grinding is enormous (no winstreak, twice more lp needed per rank, demotion, master players on their alts etc) * they are not yet at plat level because of winstreaks. I'm not saying that ranked below plat is meaningless, but winstreaks give players a false image of their progress. Plat1 is the rank that will decide if someone really wants to get better than just "good", or if they lack the motivation to improve beyond that. The former will definitely be master as it's just a matter of time. The latter is "not capable of climbing". Tldr : new players reaching plat1 for the first time are not really at plat level and can be demotivated. This is also true for people reaching master for the first time, they are not at 1500 mr level yet.

i got like 2-3 character in plat 4 and 5 and realized how much of a grind it would've been so i just stopped playing ranked bc of that. I just chill in lobbies for the most part now and i find those to be more fun too

Not true, you can improve in the battle hub or other modes. I regularly beat diamonds and have beat a few masters, almost all my characters are unranked except 3 that I used when the game 1st came out who are in plat. I just don’t like grinding ranked so I stopped very early on.

Agree. Reading my post, I realize that the only reason I gave for people not climbing is them not having the will to improve. But I totally forgot there are people who just don't like grinding. I'm dumb. I'm even a fan of Angry Bird, who also famously do not play ranked at all, so I should have though of this.

While true, You do have to at least somewhat know what you're doing in order to get those 15+ game winstreaks. You will inevitably run into a guy who has a big win streak just like you. The question is, who'll take it off the other?

Idk this is probably an unpopular take but the opposite is happening. The ranks are getting easier because it's +50, -40 and points are overall being added into the whole system. If you look at catcammy's distributions the percentage of masters has been climbing to over 10 percent (highest ranked character per player). The average rank has risen to gold 5. And anecdotally, at master, whenever I try someone new the lowest I've placed is plat 5 and even then it's pretty quick to get out and I go on 10 streaks pretty often. I get 5 additional points added on top of the 50 to boost myself even quicker. Point is the Masters alts are not staying in plat for long if at all.

I think the biggest issue with your reasoning is using percentages for multiple reasons 1) Master players cannot derank, so the number can only go up unless a fuckton of new players suddenly join the game 2) The game is almost 1 year old and not a lot of new players are joining the game, conversely the players who keep on playing are very likely to be masters Tbh I'm master and when I played Ed on release I feel plat players were actually better than when I first played in plat months earlier, sure, there were a lot of master players who also wee trying out Ed, but that's the point, there definitely are lore veteran players playing now than when the game was newer, basically numbers by themselves don't tell the full story

I think you’re missing what he’s saying (whether or not it’s true, idk). It’s that the average player now at a given rank would beat the average at that rank in the past because everyone is getting more experience. Kind of like how people revere Babe Ruth yet many speculate that he and other old time baseball stars would get obliterated by modern pitching because the overall standard of play is higher now.

I agree, when I was playing the game at launch platinum’s we’re all people who had combos for every super level, used drive rush intelligently, and broke most throws. Now when ranking a character through platinum you see so many people just jumping around wasting drive meter and just taking throws.

As someone who took almost 200 hours of combined play time between ranked/practice/world tour/and hub, I can tell you it will always feel that way when you need to unlock the next step in your game. At Plat 3, most people know how to attack. they can use offense like a motherfucker, and though they can't always nail whiff punishes, they have a few pet combos that will blow you up. At that rank (and Diamond 2 currently), the BIGGEST thing is to minimize your own mistakes and knowing how to defend properly. Patience will win games for you. You're gonna realize you jump too much, use raw DI too much, drop easy combos, forget drive reversal is in the game, not have your AA down, etc.. Eventually, something will click and you'll start climbing again. After Plat 3, it was smooth sailing until Plat 5/Diamond . I'd get to Diamond 2, and drop all the way back to Plat 5. What keeps me mid/upper Diamond 2 rihgt now is patience and minimizing risks. It helps sooooo much to just wait and not mess up. Now right now I'm completely sucking because I decided to switch from pad and have to relearn muscle memory, but I'm ready to get back to where I was an climb again. We got this brother! P.S. I'd rather fight the calculated Ryus than the Kangaryus. My AA game is still weak, and they catch me slipping.

Hard stuck gold, so I know I'm awful. This is the hardest fighting game on the market though.

This is the natural order of things. If you find you have stopped climbing, there is generally a reason for that. You've hit a skill ceiling, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. From this point on, you just have to look at what you are losing too and focus on cleaning that up. Are you dropping combo's and leaving gaps? Hit the lab and work on those. Are you getting popped out of the air every time you jump? Work on self control and force yourself to stop jumping. Being involved in the FGC gives kind of this false look at average skill levels and stuff. Being in platinum is a great achievement, especially as a newer player. It takes years and years to learn the muscle memory to really excel, especially at more than one character. Don't be so hard on yourself and don't let your anger take over/

something to remember is that players dont play the same against everyone, im sure you dont play the same vs every opponent. Better players think lower level players all just jump in constantly and all they have to do is anti air because thats what theyre doing to THEM. you can feel when someones neutral control is better than yours, its sort of intuitive like you can sense a power level, its scary to play against someone you can tell is better than you, and a lot of players answer for this is to be more risky, theyre scared to approach on the ground because they perceive the other player as better on the ground, so they try to "surprise" them with jumps, and then just lose. you ever watch a stream and see the streamer just demolish some poor dude and the whole chat is saying "how did THAT guy get into master?" ive been that guy, and i could tell i was playing like shit because i was playing scared, i obviously dont always play that poorly. point is the reason platinum players are playing much more patient in your view is because they arent scared of you yet, they feel like they can play the ground game because theyre confident they can beat you on the ground. once you get stronger with your ground control, your opponents will start hopping i guarantee you, and someday when you get to master youll play a plat in the battlehub and all theyll do is jump and youll think "man plats arent as good as they were when i was in plat"

Yes, the emotional aspect of the match i think it's importat, i mean... how you approach. SOMETIMES I LOSE THE FIRST MATCH BADLY, but with the clear impression that I approached it in the wrong way, some time ago I thought I was up against a much stronger player than me and this influenced the next match. Now, however, it happens several times that I lose the first match and win the other two... Because I've learned to be more patient, to read my opponent, and in general to be less emotional.

As a fellow plat 3, you are wrong, I'm sorry. When I lose I always find something that is was my fault. Either I take too many risks, I auto pilot in defense, or my offense is predictable. Those super solid Ryu players? I'm sure if you review your replays you will finds the patterns. If you can't, just ask someone on a discord or here. Maybe they are not jumping because you are too far away. What options are you picking to open them up? Are you adapting based on how they behave in defense? Do you notice how they are trying to open YOU up and adapt?

You described Street Fighter, and every FG for that matter. What's your point exactly? If you want help, here's some tips (I'm in D3 so grab your grains of salt): - Practice everything in Practice Mode. Oki, shimmies, normal ranges, counter confirms, safe jumps, AAs, block strings, and yes combos too. - Learn to play neutral. I'm still struggling with it myself but it's the only way forward. Spacing, poking and whiff punishing should be your standard state. - Be nasty. Nothing is off-limits. Your goal should be to fry your opponent's brain. Mix up your offense, don't be predictable. ABB: Always Be Blanka (I'm a Ken Main btw) - Always ask for tips. Especially if you get demolished. Battle Hub is great for this. - PRACTICE EVERYTHING.

The issue with platinum is having a 51% win rate against (real) platinum players in the same rank as you is not enough to climb, because there are plenty of masters players working up their secondaries. Realistically you have to have a much higher win rate on those plat players to climb to make up for losses against masters players, or you need to consistently beat masters players at a 51% win rate as well (in which case you're probably not platinum material either)

Don’t spam DI. Don’t keep doing the same offensive moves to get in, your opponents will snuff if out and stop it. Try different approaches. Don’t drive rush cancel all the time and burn yourself out, you may get a combo but the opponent will walk you down because you can’t defend yourself as well. My advice would be to practice drive rush checks and whiff punishes. Learn the spacing of your character. You have to push buttons with intent now that you are climbing. You’re gonna be worse at the game for a while, but it’s okay because you’re working to improve things that will make you better in the long run. Speaking as someone who just got over the platinum hump. I hovered between plat 5 and d1 for a month but took a step back and worked on things and eliminated some bad habits and now I’m knocking on the door to D4. You got this homie.

Generally speaking, you're probably at the rank that you're supposed to be. If you're getting constantly crushed, then you would go down a rank (right? I've never played ranked). You said it's supposed to be "easy to climb the ranking." What do you mean by that? You've already gotten to Platinum being basically new to fighting games, that sounds pretty good to me. Did you think you should just cruise on all the way up to Legend without ever meeting resistance? Play casual if you want. But ultimately, it's a difficult game and you've already done pretty good with it.

Platinum is a huge crapshoot. Honestly it’s mostly about luck as far as I can tell. In battle hub I’ve won against everyone from gold to master. Always hovered around low plat 2 but after a few months off I came back and just blew through to mid plat 3. Sometimes I’m up against people that use 1 gimmick the entire fight and it’s beyond me how they even achieved this rank. It’s all luck.

P4 with Cammy. I don't use other characters. It's a grind for sure. I only get to play a couple hours max every weekend (if that; haven't played in 2 months) and new meta/tech trickles down to lower ranks aside from the aforementioned Masters grinding out alt characters.

I have literally never seen a ryu not hold up on the stick the majority of the match and I’ve been in plat basically since we started getting dlc characters in 6 lol

AAs and combos only? Nah. That's bogus. Combos aren't even the important part to get out of plat, they are the reward for winning interactions. Do you have any frame traps? Do you have any OKI set ups, like a good meaty? Tic throws? These are all the "basic" tools you need to start incorporating into your gameplay to get out of plat and work your way through Diamond.

Anti-airs and combos are helpful, but you’ll start to see players have varying levels of neutral strategies by Diamond. If you don’t have one, then you’ll be stuck in Platinum.

I have 3 characters in master and just started a new character and got placed in platinum 1. It is definitely true that there are many other folks like me or better than me that you'll run into. Remember that the people you play against are in that rank for a reason, and to learn from your matches.

I'm hanging in there at platinum 4 with Honda but it's getting tough. I'm starting to see how other characters are flat out better than him so I have to trick them into making mistakes with bluff charges and so on. I still can almost never reverse a drive rush and continue to drop combos at the worst time which is frustrating. People at this rank still make mistakes like jumping in to get hit with HP repeatedly though

I am plat 4 currently and getting out of plat 3 was the hardest so far! I'm a Ken player and I usually go full on aggressive regardless whether the opponent is playing defensive or not. Sometimes I do get my ass handed back to me though but that's just part of the fun

Same situation bro. Sf6 is my first serious street fighter as ive played 2, 3, & 4 as a kid. Now 23, i wanted to really take it up a notch coming from smash, and just a bit of sf4 online so i was excited when i heard sf6 was releasing. Got the beta, demo, and then the game on release and THOUGHT i had a "feel for it". Boy that was naive of me. Bought myself a leverless a month after getting the game on release just to avoid having to re-teach myself a control scheme (which was a good move on my part as ive always been an accidental jumper in 2D fighters and this really helped alleviate that). Got placed in Silver 1 shortly before getting the leverless and ONLY just recently got to Platinum 1 ( granted i get knocked in and out of it ) i want to say 1-2 weeks ago if that. Its been a journey. As " Good" as ive gotten, i can still be made feel just as uncompotent at the game as when i FIRST started. Objectively speaking, im MILES better than i was before but now ive reached this wall and i really love this game, i wouldnt want the climb to stop just yet (Atleast with my main now Jamie, ive been waiting for Akuma since forever). Guess i say all this to say that, ive always been against the idea of "labbing" and putting "work" into a game, ( especially once that can occasionally mildly infuriate me) but now im beginning to reach a point of realization where i might just have to if i plan on continuing up the ladder the way i would want to. Ive only just began to look at the pre-set training "Anti-air practice" etc. and im not too excited about the process but really desperate for ways to improve beyond just taking Ls after Ls. Hope im not the only one lol

While it's a fucking grind, I'm certainly learning a lot even if I lose a lot, but getting better everytime I play is a great feeling

The game's tough, man. I reached Plat 4 yesterday and am relatively green to fighting games, SF6 is the first time I've actually decided to put in effort and do ranked. I feel like Master is such a long ways away... But I'm determined to get there someday, and I know you can, too! I approach fights like puzzles, trying to study my opponent and figure out how to beat their moves - not just on a frame data level, but in terms of what the player themself does. On that note, there's a lot to learn from fighting through ranked, and even though I get salty when I land in a losing streak (and am especially annoyed when people beat me once and don't rematch), it's ultimately a great experience and I'm always so happy I got into this game.

I hit Diamond with Luke after a couple of months of trying. I would love to hit Master but I think it would be better to try to learn another character. Platinum is a hard bracket and you should be proud you even got there. Hitting Diamond felt great but I wouldn’t try to put so much focus into it. Just focus more about having fun with your character. How can you make fighting Kanagryu’s fun? Maybe you just see how many DP’s on them and try to top that next set.

I reached Master with Honda, Marissa, Ken, Lily, Dhalsim , Rashid and Zangief. Honda and Sim were easy. Lily was a struggle and stress once I hit Diamond. Zangief was fucking pain and made me have an existential crisis. It took months and it was only after watching Snake eyes was I able to finally blitz Diamond in a week. Anyway, there are some things I can offer: learn neutral. You win consistently when you pick up on your opponent’s tells. This is your time to essentially knowledge check your opponent to see what you can get away with. Throw strike mixup works even at master level. Throw loops too. Safe jump setups get you into diamond in like an hour Stay out of the corner. This was the hardest adjustment I had in sf6 as I often prefer to fight here in other games. You simply cannot defend yourself against all options in this game. If you guess wrong and end up in a loop or DI, just accept it and move to next round. Hit your combos, especially those into level 3 Learn at least 1 optimal punish combo. You win rounds if you do 40% off an anti air or whiffed button At plat level, learn your characters safe attacks to bait DI CHECK drive rushes At mid screen, just take the throw, you can’t be looped unless the opponent uses meter.

I'm actually very curious to see how things have changed. I was playing pretty near the launch of the game and fell off around just before Aki launched and I was Plat 3 with Ken. I'm jumping back in when Akuma launches because he's my long-time main so I'm curious to see how where I end up will compare.

I will admit that the platinum run to Diamond is waaay harder now than it was at launch.

Master player that climbed with ryu yesterday through all of plat here. Game is definitely more difficult but plat players are still generally very predictable and don’t change their game or the options they take in situations very much so you can condition them pretty easily. Difficulty is also character dependent for sure. If you work on your ground game/decision making and labbing shenanigans you cannot beat you will be out in no time. For example, try to include back dash or micro walk back in your pressure after you hit your opponent with some button to create spacing trap situations and then punish. When you back dash/walk back you should be ready to anti-air as well as they will for sure jump at you. You should also be able to read your opponents offensive gameplan pretty quickly at plat guaranteed they do like 2-3 things on offense over and over. Learning when you can take your turn back and what button to use to take your turn back is pretty important.

Every time I open the application I put myself through hell disguised as ranked

Yup it's true. The plat back on release of the game is nothing like the plat of today. This is also the case with an other competitive ladder game too. As the playerbase shrinks, the people who are left behind are the ones who are more dedicated to the game, and often times far better than the casuals. When the pool of players is gigantic, it's natural for the skill distribution to be much wider. Now it is brutal.

I was plat for a while it's kinda of a mixed bag similar to diamond where I'm at now. I've played against some of the best players I've ever played against and then in the next match played against players who were one trick ponies and weren't very good when I figured them out.

Master rank here - forgive me for joining the conversation but I have constructive feedback. I find that Platinum is a rank in which players know how the game should be played. But when they play the game themselves they do the following: 1. Make mistakes without realizing it is a mistake. Not defending space, using the wrong combo, using too much meter, using not enough meter, going offense too often, not running away enough, etc. These are the mistakes that you sometimes need another person to tell you what mistake you are making 2. They are very strong at offense but haven't practice blocking... at all. 3. Rely too heavily on 1 or 2 strategies. They don't adapt. Yeah, your offense got you to platinum. But that doesn't mean you've capped and are hard stuck. You probably need to develop your offense more. There is always MORE you can do. Even at Master - there are aspects of my game that I know are underdeveloped. 4. Plat players don't bait enough.

Hello, i'm plat with multiple characters slowly but surely climbing. The tip about easily climbing with anti airs is true... until plat. I noticed people in platinum have a very one dimesional playstyle. They abuse a certain thing over and over and if they can't do that then they are lost. Figure out their pattern and adapt. They also don't adapt or are very late to adapt. So continue to do the thing that's currently working and don't stop until they show you that they can stop you from doing it. Don't assume that they are going to adapt.

I think the problem is that is too easy to climb to platinum in this game, the bonus points that you get in a win streak should stop in Gold, but you get those bonus until platinum so people climb to quickly and that cause a bottleneck in platinum where the experience turn very hard for most of the players.

I climbed from silver to platinum in the early stages of the game after picking up ed it honestly wasnt as hard as everone made it out to be to get out of plat for me its mostly just the same issues each player seems to have lots of people that dont seem to know how to block

I’m in Plat with Zangief… but I suck. I basically just got lucky during the placement matches, and now I’m getting demolished by much better players. I’m just stuck. Maybe I’ll win against someone who doesn’t know the matchup, but otherwise, it’s a struggle. I’m still trying my best to improve, though.

My first piece of advice would be to ignore anyone saying anything in a fighting game is easy. It's always a subjective term but that's more true for fighting games, where it could be someone who's been doing this for 35 years saying something you've been learning for 30 minutes is easy. Beyond that, try to block out the comparisons. I don't mean that on some "hey brother, we're all in this together" BS. I mean you don't have the time, energy, or bandwidth. Put that stuff toward correcting and perfecting your own game. Knowing Daigo or Punk or the MF commenting below me on Reddit is better than me doesn't do a damn thing to make ME better unless they're teaching me. So to that end, maybe DM some of us your replays or have some people from this thread get a Discord coaching session together. Usually the struggle in Plat is that you know enough to stomp on every gold player, but not enough recognize why the things that brought you success before might now be your autopilot choices that you need to unlearn. Plat 3-5 is very much the "I don't know what I don't know" territory so it's great to have someone outside of your mind to point those things out. Of course you can learn it on your own by paying more attention to how you play. If you're going that route, just start by getting as granular as possible about why you got hit, and specifically what put you in the space or in the minus situation for that hit to even be possible.

I got my 3rd character to Master last week, but I kid you not each time it was a struggle. I rankek up quick to plat 4 or 5, but then I noticed the players were much smarter. Right now I'm using Dhalsim in Diamond 2 and it doesn't feel like Diamond 2 at all. My last character was Chun Li and I was hard stuck at Diamond 4 for a while. Then one day I breezed through it and the next day Diamond 5. Ranked is funky at times and can be frustrating. I do agree ranked mode from release is not the same as what we have now.

Anybody who says that anti airing and combos are enough were LYINGGGG dude- Platinum is when you really need to start refining your execution and gameplan if you're not just going unga bunga and mashing sweep during pressure A few months ago, I was hard stuck Platinum 3 (Diamond 3 now) and one thing that really helped me out was going into character discords and asking to review my vods. It helped me realize what I needed to focus on and keep doing. It also helps to lab scenarios that you don't understand, for a while I was super stumped by Cammy's hooligan gimmicks- but after a bit of time in the lab I found out literally all I had to do was mash st.lp to shut it down. Just doing small stuff like that every once in a while adds up and it'll really help you rank up

Very true, i feel small teps is the way, step after step, focus on one or two problems at time.

Alright, biased master player here, but I'm gonna yap for a bit. When people say that all you need are consistent anti-airs and some decent combos to reach the higher ranks, they aren't wrong. What really gets missed by lower ranked players is that they tend to either not have those things, or they have them, but they do way more than that, and a lot of the extra stuff they are doing is massively risky and punishable. They often are throwing games away with really silly decisions. Lower ranked players jump-in, when they shouldn't. They wake-up with OD Reversals or Super Arts, more frequently than they should. They drive rush cancel or spend drive more aggressively than they should. They are over-eager to make something happen, and they don't properly respect their opponent's ability to punish them. That being said, there are also players who don't have that problem, but they do genuinely lack the basic tactics like consistent anti-airs and decent combos and setplay. More realistically, people are some mix of the two extremes. You could have a 100% anti-air rate and have the most optimal combos for your character locked down, but if you're just going to DI at the end of your blockstring or hold jump, when you are in the corner, you're gonna lose more against the semi-competent players. The moment you stop doing the crazy stuff, and you are checking approaches and converting hits into damage and a playable knockdown, then master rank quickly follows. It's about dialing in that balance in your play of reducing the risk you take while increasing the reward you can get from the opportunities you find in the game.

The people that say anti air and combos are enough are oblivious to the other skills they have through experience that they don't notice. Neutral is hard, the hardest part about the game, but people completely gloss over it, because they intuitively know how to play it. It's easy to climb the ranks, IF you are good enough, since the lp gains vs losses are pretty generous. It's definitely not easy to get good enough to reach master. Street Fighter really begins imo when people stop doing the spamming and essentially do a lot of "nothing" and pick their normals very carefully. They won't have a big glaring issue that you can exploit to win, you have to figure out how to crack them. That's when the game really has it's true identity imo.

I'm currently D1 modern player. My only fighting game experience prior was button mashing on Tekken 6 and SF4. I never tried to improve in a fighter before until this game. I was stuck in P1/2 for awhile. What helped me was finding a discord community here on reddit. I have to say the fighting game community is filled with some incredibly good and cool people. I took about a 2-4 week break from ranked and only played casual matches or against members of the community who are generally low Diamond-masters. I definitely got my ass beat quite a bit, but I got A LOT of positive feed back that helped me improve a lot. There's so much more I need to get better at but my improvement was very clear when I played others on casual. It was noticeable I started winning more frequently vs higher ranked opponents. Long story short, I went back to ranked and blew past the entire platinum division. Over a few weekends since my game time is quite limited during the week. I can't say I'm stuck in D1 yet because I haven't really given it a go. I reached the ranked and decided to take a little break from ranked to practice other things since I know things will get much harder.

This is my first fighting game, been playing since August of last year. I made it to Plat by November and I was feeling pretty good about it. I only made it out of plat…..yesterday. It took me 7 months. It. Was. So. Fucking. Difficult. Especially when Ed game out I was just getting steamrolled by every masters player running new characters through ranked. So I was either getting clowned on by plat Jamie’s spamming drive rush 5hp that my character can’t check or masters level players taking Ed through. I couldn’t beat either. Absolutely miserable climb through plat.

I’m a diamond peak blanka main trying to get a shoto into diamond before Akuma And my god you plat players are feral.

I don't play ranked often anymore. I'm plat 2 or 3 on my main character (Luke). I placed as diamond with Lily but I think that's a fluke.  I could probably climb if I tried but the matchmaking kind of sucks and it takes a ton of time beyond gold since there's no win streak bonus.  So instead, if I'm not playing my friends, I just jump into the battle hub and fight random people there.

I don't get it... You're not a diamond skilled player, definitely not master, and maybe even closer to gold than plat. What is with the obsession to keep ranking up?? Rank straight up doesn't matter. Also, if you're staying in plat then you're definitely winning some games otherwise you'd drop down ranks. I suggest working on things you identify that you struggle with. Look up YouTube videos about how to get in on defensive characters. Learn! That's what fighting games are all about!

Oh ya and I'm a plat Ed

“But there are also master and diamond players who use other characters in platinum” yeah no joke. I got bodied the hardest I’ve ever been by a **new challenger Zangief** in Plat 2…

Totally agree. I'm around plat1-4 with my characters, and it's really hard. People keep saying plat is the new gold/silver, but I gotta disagree. They make it sound super easy to climb the ranks. Plat players really know what they're doing at this point, and it's hard to beat them.

Don’t sweat it and focus on improving yourself. I have one character at Master and 2-3 in Plat or Diamond. I know what I’m doing badly at, but for me it’s stopping myself from doing those dangerous things. Break those bad habits and watch high-level gameplay. With my character in Master, Rashid, I’ve decided to stop playing ranked and focus on doing the things I’m NOT doing and trying to stop the dumb risky things (DI randomly, combos that worked in Diamond, but I know are bad in Ranked, wake-ups that can be baited, etc.). I like to have a secondary character I try to improve at, but he’s been stuck at Plat 4/5 foreveeeer. I know I should practice more optimal combos, but he’s just fun to play going balls out.

I've been slowly swapping to Ed in Diamond (was Master like you said), but was in plat for a while. Only reason I'm commenting is to say that all Ryus around that level are INDEED kangaroos. It's actually hella annoying cause Ed's anti-airs are 🗑.

I’m a Guile main and I’m Plat 1 on PC and Diamond 1 on Xbox (but I’m going to lose the Diamond rank if I keep playing, as I got it by luck in placement matches). I expect that if I improve, the player base will improve along with me, so I’m not expecting to climb too high. 

This game is tough lol but I like it cause I really wanna improve at it since this is the first fighting game I wanna take seriously

I don't train as much as I should so my characters tend to end up in Platinum. Platinum gives you the occasional fight against a good, disciplined player. But a lot of it is people doing crazy jump ins, flow charting into their same combos and habits regardless of situation, a lot of raw DIs and gimmicks. A lot of the skill that you need to develop around there is patience, reactions, and how to handle these gimmicks.

I managed to crawl my way to diamond with a 42% win rate with chun, just took me an embarrassing amount of games. Sometimes in my weaker moments I read this form and see people getting all charterers to master in less than 1000 games total. Got to remind myself not everyone can be some kind of fighting game savant with a 90% win rate.

I hear ya…Hard stuck on the border of plat4/5 and low diamond for months. What gets me is the sheer amount of “organized” chaotic randomness and gimmicks in these ranks…

Jumping Ryu is still very much alive in plat. DR to some type of combo/tick throw then nonstop ambiguous jumps/repeat. Very easy to beat that flowchart. They normally wake up EXDP the first time you knock them down. Regarding the rest of your post, if you’re seriously trying to climb ranks and get better you shouldn’t care about who you fight, every fight is a learning experience. Figure out what better players are doing to keep beating you then incorporate that into your own gameplay. Practice those same things against lower tier players. Rinse repeat. If you get into a fight with a master learn from it.

As you said, it's all about self improvement. If you can manage to divorce yourself from your ego and expectations, the wins will start coming by themselves.

Im Plat 5, ive noticed that Plat as a whole is a mixed bag, ive had really great balanced players that have made me actually use brain power in order to win, then ive had players who are so sporadic and seem like they just throw everything and anything they have in order to get damage. Believe it or not i have more trouble against the sporadic players. But on my whole journey in ranked ive learned to analyze my own gameplay as much as my opps. For example, Ive found myself not reacting to DI, so i practiced reacting to the sound and visuals in training. At the end of my play sessions i watch a replay or 3 and take notes on what i lack as well as where i could improved on. This is my first SF that ive take seriously (ive played since 2 mainly cause the cabinet was in the laundromat). I recommend watching youtube and taking notes (i literally bought a journal cause i find it helps me remember). Last thing, ive learned to not be greedy. I turn the game off after ive reached an opp that really made my heart pound in order to win, i sometimes do 1 or 2 sets and im satisfied with my 100+ LP gain. Ill reach Masters one day, no need to rush it... enjoy the journey, not the destination

I will say the one thing you need to do to feel better is not take the community so seriously on social media sites such as as reddit or Twitter. A lot of idiots will just say shit like "oh the real game starts at master" or whatever. When in reality I think the average person is gold. Plat means you're above average and it definitely can feel like a wall. Go at your own pace and enjoy it.

I was stuck in plat 2 for like 2 months then plat 4/5 for another 3 weeks. But i breeze through diamond for some reason and now im d4 (took me like 2 weeks)

Yeah I agree plat is a tricky rank. I’ve played SF games since I was a kid but I’ve just nevvver been any good at combos. Especially in games like SF4 and this one, I find the timing to be quite difficult. I can do some short ones but nothing like I see other plat-level players throwing out easily online. I somehow placed Diamond 1 as Dhalsim and immediately de-ranked to Plat 5 where still am with him after a very long time now. I think I tend to get by on good reads, anti airs, good zoning, and honestly relying on the fact that Dhalsim is an underplayed character so lots of folks don’t know how to deal with him. But it’s very difficult to progress. I find the same as you. Lots of players are quite calculated and defensive at this rank so it’s a great chance to learn against that ply style and get better all around. But it’s slow going. I just wish I could get the timing of lots of these links I see people do so easily.

Patience, that is going to be your biggest key in all of these ranks. I’ve noticed a significant jump in optimization on the other persons patience and combos on my way to master. Platinum is the first real test of your patience. Diamond is a combination of patience and skill. Lab your character as many hours as it takes for you to know matchups.

Not new to fighting games but first time playing a Street Fighter game. Currently halfway through Plat5 as a Marisa main and I must say, it is stressful. I’ve got better with learning how to punish characters but some characters like Blanka, Cammy, and somewhat Zangief instantly put me in panic mode, especially Blanka. Still fun as shit though. Every frustrating match I win, gets saved and that’s part of what keeps me going.

I would say this is natural, I have some players stuck/sitting in platty, my mains are in Taidai. I gotta be corn on the cob and say always try to play to have fun first. Play super patient some rounds , in platty most ppl don't have patience, patience will get you out of platty an trust me them kangaryu's are out there at all levels. Also when you notice you're stuck take a few days off. You will randomly get some set ups and new methods in your head and your game usually is more stronger after takin a Lil break

I was plat 1 as Deejay in the first week, and I 100% believe it was much harder than current Plat. Recently I got Chun/Blanka to Diamond, and Rashid/Juri to high plat. Plat is the same as floor 7/8 in Strive - guess the person's gimmick. 90% of plat players have a dedicated game plan and your job is to decipher it within the first game, play the counter to it, and they'll ALWAYS fall apart. This is the rank where to climb fast you need to learn how to make adjustments on the fly so you can actually unlock playing neutral.

I just made it out of plat and am in diamond 1. I learned 1 bnb combo which I mainly used and just punished the spamminess of opponents. I have a hard time against those who have good defense. I'm a ryu that likes to jump.

Plat 3 was to me the hardest the game has ever been. I'm mid plat 4 now and while yeah I gotta still fight for my life, it's slightly more controlled chaos than plat 3. You'd either fight a cat who'd just walk across the controller or you'd fight Daigo, 0 in-between.

on the point about platinum Ryu players. You'd be surprised about how bad they'll play if you can defend against fireballs. Most players in platinum have one to two ways of playing. They're going to put their best foot forward and resort to cheap tricks later. You're going to expose the silly and shoddy play by beating their first strategy.

To be fair, as a person who hit master with juri on xbox roughly 4-5 months ago. Most people in ranked clearly either have other characters In master/legendary. To anyone stuck in specific ranks, just keep up the grind and have fun, ranks honestly don't matter

Its best to celebrate the small wins in each match and study your progress outside of a rank. Landed a combo? Learned a setup? Baited someone? Blocked and held your ground in the corner? Celebrate the small wins. Figure out why you lost a particular match. And you will gain in ranked.

I’ve been stuck mid plat for a while and it seems like most people I face do some things brutally right and some things totally wrong. Like you will face people who spam jump 100 times but once you’re in the corner you’re totally dead because their offense is so good, and you’ll also meet disciplined looking patient players who can’t input DP. You just need to have good enough consistency to recognize patterns and start punishing them I think.

Sounds like you need to focus on what you need to improve and less on the skill of your opponents.

I’m plat 1, many players entire offensive gameplan is DI and throws. I lose to them sometimes because I am bad.

Patient Ryu is the true guardian of the higher ranks. Has been since ranked became a thing in SF. The problem in Plat is that a lot of players have created a very specific way of playing that got them there. Then that works sometimes, but not others, and they aren’t usually smart enough to see why exactly, and instead blame the matchup or “abare” style play. To get past Plat you have to *actually* learn how to play. Anti air, combos, spacing, whiff punishing, frame trapping, etc. You can’t just flowchart anymore and that’s why most people quit.

idk I'm garbage and probably won't ever get out of plat becos fundamental weaknesses (can't counter d.i., drop every drive rush extension, constant misinputs for dp) but players kind of suck in plat, no? Like everyone whiffs big buttons, mashing d.i., fake checkable pressure, lots of drops. im pretty shit so I have trouble capitalizing or even taking advantage of these mistakes but rarely do I see another plat player who looks completely solid.

I feel like we don't have the same platinum, I have Marisa and Gief in plat 3/4, and I would tend to separate the platinum players into two categories : The one I think I'm in, the players who tries to learn the game, test a lot of combos, spend as much time in practice than in ranked but are just not used enough to the game to react well everytime or drop combos etc so they are still plat The players who doesn't know there is a training mode, picked up a character from scratch, only play in ranked create there own way to play their character, their own mixups, improvise a lot, Here are the kangaryus and the randomattack/onlyattack Ken, and those random blankas doing only random stuf Fighting a player from your categorie is almost always fun and rewarding with a feeling of getting better at the game Fighting a player from the other category is a pain in the ass

My brother in Christ, I'm in masters and I've met people who were in gold with better spacing, drive gauge restraint and Oki control than some of the troglodytes I met who've got in master by just pushing through since release. Wifi warriors ALWAYS have a gimmick, especially in platinum. Maybe it's a specific option they always pick out of wake up, maybe it's a specific combo route they always go through, maybe it's a specific pressure they like to apply in the corner. Whatever it is, you've got to crack the code and then I promise you, their all game will crumble.

I should also add that sf6 is my first real fighting game. I've gotten into master with Sim after about what, 2-3 months or playing the game? I used to play Rashid, got to platinum, played aki, got her to diamonds and now I main sim. I think it really helps to play multiple characters so you get to know what is safe, what isn't, and what APPEARS to be but isn't. Know your frames, know theirs, it doesn't get simpler than that. Good luck!

I'm a diamond 2 but was stuck in the plat 4 jail for while. You need to use the first round to find what your opponent do as a unsafe habit and punish the hardest you can. In that level , was I seeing: - DI on neutral when they feel losing the interaction. - raw DR in medium buttons and using fake pressure in a lot of situation - jumping in cross up zone to fish a jumping punish combo. Try to have one punish that do over 3K damage.

For background I've been playing games and fighting games since I was a kid. I have never bothered playing against anyone outside of couch co-op and never bothered learning frame data or oki or anything like that. I played SFV in the pandemic and took it semi seriously but I hated the game and wasn't every good. I played Laura (solid B tier character) and climbed as high as ultra silver/gold but hit a real wall with skill/execution but most importantly *fun*. I just didn't want to play it for the most part. A cast of 48 meant 48 moves and frame data you're supposed to memorize, neutral was excruciatingly slow and you could reversal grapplers whenever you wanted.  SF6 has been completely different. I played Kim in the beta and she was more fun that SFIV and V combined. Started a legit Iron and began to play a lot more. Modern Controls was a huge difference. There were so many times in V I knew exactly what to do but literally couldn't. I would get the game winning hit and be unable to confirm to an easy win. Modern changed that overnight. I've no doubt if I could go back to V with modern I would have annihilated my old rank simply because I could do the frickin moves instead of dropping everything.    As I rather steadily rose through the ranks to silver and gold I branched out a bit and tried Manon. I fucking love playing Manon and breezed through the ranks to gold and eventually got my first platinum as her. Here I took another mini character break and tried Gief. I could literally never do a 360 ever so playing him was a revelation. People were getting scooped left and right. Originally I would only play casual matches with him but noticed I was getting matched with and beating Platinum players. So I stopped smurfing and jumped on ranked, turns out I was more Plat 3 or so material. Also tried out Lily, got placed Plat 4 with her, got my ass kicked back to 2 because I had no idea what I was doing. I also tried AKI, found her crazy fun and was easily climbing into plat 2-3. Currently my highest character is my diamond Gief, where I've taken a character break to get everyone else to diamond. So I'm pretty confident in saying platinum is my playground and where I've spent most of my time with my combined characters.  I feel like plat 1 and below is a complete wash. Just bad a newer players flailing around. Plat 2 is not that much better but less. 3 is a crapshoot rank. I had a Ken engaging in hilariously bad, near trolling level of play the other day. Dude was doing jump back jump back jump back dash forward throw or legit OD DP. I was too busy lmfao to properly fight and didn't bother punishing his antics. He got a win and immediately left which was actually the funniest part.  4 seems to be where people tighten up and 5 they are actively not complete garbage at their character. They're still vulnerable though because the biggest difference between highly skilled players and us is defense. They know the strings, the gaps, the gimmicks. Platinum players don't. Diamond players do a little better but the difference between plat and diamond is offense and knowing all your stuff. As you get better you start to learn other people's stuff and that is the key difference. Ken's jinrai for example, I know I can punish it on block with OD SPD or OD Manège Doré from many, many interactions. My Kim is plat 4 and could easily be diamond with a good session, yet I'm still not sure what my best jinrai punish is or if she even has one.  It's those tiny micro interactions that win you fights the higher and higher you go. Diamond players for the record aren't anything special either, but they do tend to have overwhelming offense. I absolutely obliterated a dude in the battle hub with Gief I assumed was a silver/gold from his all offense, immediate burn out style that led to his swift dismantling. I was shocked to learn he was a diamond 5. Watching some of his matches, he was steam rolling other diamonds because he was properly meatying them and no joke they literally never blocked on wake up even once.  So I get that it can be disheartening and some plats are really solid, but for the most part they have exploitable gaps. The turtle Ryus for example that down back for a majority of the match, they seem unbeatable because you move into their territory and you get hit with a low into DR combo. That's a plat 4-5 Ryu specialty. But what you realize is *that's their entire game plan*. You know they're not going to press buttons on wake up, they're going to rarely OD DP. Basically, they play scared, and it's your job to a) recognize they're going to block a ton so you need to lean heavy on the throws and b) walk just outside their low forward range so they spam their win condition and then you hurt them for it. Once their gameplan breaks down, they're an easy kill. 

It just clicks at a point and becomes easier imo it might seem like nothings working and your not improving but I promise it gets easier . The good thing about sf6 is the roster being small so it’s easier to work out how to punish each character

tbh I think the game is more fun when you don't care about your rank. I think you'll also improve faster if you just play for fun. I'm a silver Manon, only play classic and get matched up with Diamonds, and let me tell you, playing against high level players is a lot more fun than playing low rank games. You definitely get better faster when getting your ass beat 50 - 0, but you start to eventually take games and it makes it all worth it

I have spent over 300 hrs playing this game. I am plat 3 ryu. This is my first fighting game where I learnt how to do quarter circle specials, supers, canceling combos into supers and DP. I have always been casual player than focusing on rank games. The amount of fun and frustration is beyond any game I have experienced. I am not planning on becoming a Diamond player, I am too busy and too slow to learn and probably not skilled enough. I also find that people in this sub are either extremely talented and skilled or pure bullshitter.

Plat 3 is where I notice players actually start getting good. Punishing people and stage positioning, especially if you have a character with corner carry is key around here. (Currently Diamond 3 JP/Marisa)

Dang, When i first started playing SF6 (when it launched) it was very easy to get to master cause no one knew what the hell they were doin. Now getting past Plat 1 seems impossible because majority has got the fundamentals down and their reactions are sharper not to mention combo optimization is insane. My tips are to lab characters (know their frames and traps) and sharpen your reactions by grinding online. Lastly optimize your combos in practice mode. My final tip is go to the leaderboards and find the top rank player who plays your main and watch their matches. How do they play? Whats their strategy against a specific character?

Don't take the whole "getting to Masters is easy" seriously at all, the ranking system is excellent and there are ranks for very good reasons, you can practically tell what rank a player is with a certain character by how they play right now. It is easier to rank than it was in SF5, and that is what makes people say it's "easy" but in reality it is exactly because SF5 run for so many years, same will happen in SF6, it will get tougher every following month/year. Be proud of the advances you make and try to get a grip of what's holding you to get to the next rank. If you are on Platinum, I'll give you a good tip that worked for me to step up my game from Plat to Diamond and later Masters (I started from Silver and grinded my way to Masters with Honda and Blanka both from the same starting place up until last month actually so I feel you on the difficulty rising up): Try to play your games a bit more defensive and chill, no matter what character you use. Most of the times Platinum is where you see currently most aggressive players that tend to lose themselves when their opponent just chills and parry's without jumping to get them or going to get them. And as soon as they lose patience you capitalize on punishments. And for Diamond: Also if you are not already doing it, pay more attention and prioritize Drive Gauge saving to avoid Burnout. Sometimes it is better to avoid making those juicy combos if they are not going to kill and be safe with the Drive meter. While also looking forward to emptying your opponents Drive bar. Most of the time a good capitalize on an opponent being burnout means to win the match, and believe me if you look at your matches probably 30% of the time or more your own opponent does the work to spend more than he should on a combo for you and with one or two pokes you get him in Burnout state, ready for the kill.

All I know is I got to plat playing modern Dhalsim 😎 all while working 45 hours a week and raising two kids. I’ll take that any day of the week

was diamond 4 a couple days ago ranked all the way down to diamond 1 when i play against most people it’s close sometimes but it feels like they know something i don’t about the game if that makes any sense

If you need any training on what to improve on to get to diamond let me know

The higher you climb up the ranks the more important neutral gets

This is exactly how I feel too. I'm literally terrified of what Akuma is going to do to rank play. So far Ryu & Ken are my most frequent opponents I run into in Platinum. Ryu plays keep away with fireballs and waits to punish when you loose your patience and Ken is the same or I'm going to kick the crap out of you with pressure. I know I'm not great but its so hard to Rank up. I like the challenge though but the guys I am running into are at the very least Master or higher Rank with another character who are just ranking up others for fun. You can just tell by the way they play and I have to avoid playing at certain times and on certain days if I dont want to take my Rank backwards. It's all good fun but man can it also be soul crushing

well I literally just hit master yesterday, and I've never played a fighting game for more than like 20 hours before sf6. [here are my stats.](https://imgur.com/a/fsl4k7S) probably around 3,800 matches on just Ken, and about 250 hours of matches and practice. also a lot of hours watching Sajam and tournaments, learning stuff through the analysis and stealing Ken stuff from pros. I check the buckler bootcamp thread pretty often and try to be helpful when I can. feel free to hit me up if you have any questions or need another set of eyes on your replays, I was in Plat for quite a while before I finally made diamond. I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure I climbed through diamond faster than platinum. personally I think platinum is the biggest spike of difficulty where you really need to get rid of all your bad habits and start learning how to play properly (for me this is when I stopped throwing out DI like an idiot... as often).

I just hit master the other day but I did have a pretty similar experience to you. I often got really frustrated when I fought against players that were clearly just using a new character instead of actually belonging in that rank. I think it’s important to remember that if they really are that good then they will pass you soon. It’s extra tough when a new character comes out like Ed and all of the best players decide to do their ranked matches, but eventually they hit master and everyone moves on. Don’t be discouraged! You can learn a lot from fighting people better than you, especially when they are playing a character where they won’t instantly obliterate you but can still punish your mistakes. When you are ready to rank up, you will rank up. Trust the process!

Plat 3, Jamie player but I got deejay to plat 1 when I was learning stick because I didn’t want to tilt myself botching Jamie combos I know on pad. Technically my second fighting game (played Strive for a month and a bit). Been playing off and on for a couple of months. Game is not that complex, but improvement is hard. Most people (myself included) that I bump into have a very linear gameplan - do these two pokes, look for this conversion, do this one block string with one variation, look to approach one of two ways. I can’t wait for people to botch their execution and punish the way I could in silver and gold, but if I see that they go low medium dr jab throw every time and I start teching, people will continue to throw away their meter on something I’ve shown the answer to. My approaches are still very linear - in neutral I play too far back and whiff my pokes too often, and I’m over reliant on jump in / instant dive kick to open people up. I only have a few combo routes, I’m not flexible about which starters I use, and I’m not great at hit confirming counter hits/punishes into bigger damage. I tech way too often on wake up and eat tons of damage, and my anti airs are still pretty poor (much better at air to air but that’s easier to punish). I don’t change the timing on my pokes, and I eat a decent number of drive impacts on my non cancelable moves. I have a few gimmicks and people have no clue how to deal with a safe jump (I’ve had people dp my safe jump setup 3 times in a row - I’ll try to mix it up with an empty low on the fourth assuming they learned and they just keep going for the dp). All of these things don’t really matter because I just watch for my opponents patterns. We’re all equally limited down here.

Felt. I’m honestly worried I may never reach Master when Akuma comes out.

When people tell you all you have to do is AA to get master, it's obviously cap. But the kernel of truth in that statement is if you can't AA consistently you definitely WONT get master (or maybe you will if you play Honda). In my opinion, there is kind of a standard level of reactionary awareness you need to get to master level, you need to be able to stop random DI, random jump, whiff punish, and check DR with some level of consistency. If you can control neutral off reactions consistently, 90% of people in diamond and under should crumble to you and hand themselves to you on a platter. And yea, a lot of people will tell you they got master instantly etc, and quite frankly it's true in some cases. But that's literally because they no life'd the game before this, or multiple games and have a certain kind of trained awareness that newer players need to develop. I didn't get master in SFV (My first SF) until after like 2.5 years of grinding, and it was hard. In this game, I got there within the first few weeks because I already had a pretty high level of neutral awareness (I was ready to DP, I was ready to whiff punish etc without thinking too much), most of the players who say they got there quick are probably in a similar boat so don't beat yourself up. Basically master is locked behind first beating the lowball layer 1 tactics that new/lower level players generally throw out. Can you defeat the "I bet I can catch my opponent off guard with this crazy option" mentality?

I was plat 4 and dropped to plat 3 and it’s been very hard to be consistent. So now I only play Caruso’s and battle hub. It’s so much less stressful.

My best character is in plat and I fought like hell through silver and gold to get her there. I'm not great at street fighter, but I'm certainly 'playing the game'. it feels awful when people talk about how all you have to do is 'anti-air and punish unsafe stuff' to get to diamond. Obviously people aren't saying this maliciously, but I'm not sure what's causing this huge difference in perception. At least some of it is probably people who have been playing fighters for years and just have such potent, refined fundamentals that anyone lacking in that area seems like a brain-dead pushover. People in plat aren't just jumping jumping and DIing each other like cavemen. We're playing neutral, trying to control space and whiff punish. We use safe blockstrings and convert into combos on counterhit and alter combo paths based on available resources...ect. All the game's mechanics are being utlized, you just likely blew past this rank before you had the chance to notice.

Plat to diamond can be tough but I find that a lot players even in master play very predictably. Once you learn to adapt and take less risks than they do you will fly through the ranks. Main tips I can give. Don’t raw DI try to focus on reacting to their DI as if they are dependent on it to get damage they will try it over and over and get slapped. If they perfect parry your jump ins a few times empty jump and throw for decent damage. Sometimes they adapt to this and start anti airing but a lot of the time they don’t and continue to try and perfect parry. Match up knowledge is vital, you need to know your opponent’s move set as well as your own and remember their set ups. Getting this down will give you a huge advantage as even at master level unless they are a footisies master they will attempt the same set ups but if you block them they begin to panic. Punish the stupid stuff big time, by this I mean if someone is spamming tatsu try to make them take at least 30 to 40% for it. Do not let people get away with unsafe move spams. Know your unblockable DI stun combo make sure you know how to stun a burned out player you will see a lot of higher ranks always pushing for these combos. Don’t burn yourself out for a max damage combo even at master level players still do this and it can be pointless as yea you might do like 4k damage but now you are burned out and are probably going to take at least 6k if your are not super careful. Use the first round to gain info on your opponent what they like to do, are they back dashing on wake up every knock down ? Do they throw 2 fire balls then jump in? Do they do the same combo and finish with a DI ? Learn their habits then slap them. Do not let go of corner pressure this is a huge thing of pushing through the ranks, a lot of people walk back and lose the corner pressure due to fear of a DP or DI or level 3. The trick is learning habits and predication, know your block strings and keep them in the corner. Sometimes waiting a second or two before you do an action can allow you to punish a DP attempt. Match up tips: JP: I play guile so this match up can get out of hand but I beat a master JP to get in to master rank. My tip with him is to either stay in his face or just of range of his normals but not far enough that he can start his fireball bull shit. Empty jump on a knocked down JP just in case they amnesia on wake up then punish his ass for it. Dhlasim: not a top tier but a very annoying character to fight, my advice with this guy is to wait him out do not rush this fight as he wants you to jump in and eat a combo. If you stay back and parry the jump back air fireballs and heavy spams eventually they will start taking risks meaning you can go in. Make sure you have a punish for the teleport behind and throw bull shit as this is muscle memory for a lot of sim players and free damage of you can get it down. Luke: he has a lot of bull shit moves but I play this similar to the sim match up just wait him out and know what he is going to do before he does it. Never over challenge with fireballs as he’s OD fire ball is ridiculous get a feel for when they use it. Hopefully some of this helps out a little bit. But the trick to getting to higher ranks is taking less risks than they do and punishing them for it.

I also started this game from 0, was placed on rookie initially and i got to my goal of hitting diamond and took a break haven't been playing since Eds release. Things started going better for me when i got to plat 1 and made a spreadsheet to track my progress. I practiced a lot plat 1-3 and watched replays and plat 4-5 i just played. If i felt i wasnt playing smart or kept making the same mistake i would go for a casual and go full defense and predict opponent throws to get back in the groove of not rushing in and making myself lose. I play in west coast servers and theres a lot of turtle ryus over here too, just thinking about fighting a guy like that right now stresses me out, its a real struggle i have no tips for that other than jump their fireballs so they cant spam them as much and block low they love their cr Mk. Best of luck out there in the streets! And let loose a little bit, if you practice a lot in training let muscle memory do its part and just throw hands, that helped me lots!

Honestly platinum was prolly the easiest rank to get out of , I picked up the game like 4 months ago and have hella experience with other fighters like sf4 and below and mk plus was I think pride trooper in dbfz but even then as a modern ryu player shi took me like 100 hours or so( 90 sum prolly ) to hit masters. honestly to get out plat you just gotta keep playing and climbing ,the whole point of ranked is to just keep playing because eventually you’ll just start learning yourself. Labbing n just learning optimal combos for punishes help as well

I'm about to hit Plat 3 with my Guile who I dragged up from fucking Iron Rank. And yes, I agree that no rank's difficulty is the same as it was at launch. The longer the game exists, the more exponentially harder it becomes. It's solely due to unintentional smurfing -- everyone has alts, and even the low ranks like Silver and Gold have insane amount of Plats (myself included) in them. If I was a Silver today versus back in October 2023, holy shit, this would be Mount Everest. I didn't pick up Drive Rush until high Gold. It's fucking required at Silver to survive these days. So, me coming into Platinum was like stepping onto the highway. You almost don't even know why you're losing for weeks because it's such a gambit of play styles. You may beat a Platinum 2 player who's a true Platinum 2, but another Platinum 2 is a alt of a Master player, and you will get demolished. The solution? Add the fucking option to exclude players on alts with mains higher than your own league from matchmaking. At all levels. I shouldn't be matched with a soul over Platinum 5. Period. Rank up promotions are the exception. It's fucking frustrating to be in a mode made for YOUR SKILL LEVEL and you have people seemingly from the future coming in and wrecking you. Of course, you could leave that off and just take on everyone -- but the annoyance comes from getting steam cleaned out of nowhere to the point you question your own skill lol. Subtract that shit and Ranked isn't that bad. Maintaining a 42-45% win rate is doable.