Gunz vs. Winner

After Challenger recalled to base and Yuel departed to Mid, Lars and Winner remained alone in Bot.

[Okay, let's get the little dudes out of the way real quick.] Lars approached the enemy frontline and unleashed Backfire Cannon, blasting the entire minion wave while pushing himself away.

It was an aggressive opening, one that made his intentions very clear.

[So, you want to compete.] William nodded. [What a coincidence because I want the exact same thing.] He summoned two Assault Drones behind his back. [Let's see which of us really deserves the No. 2 spot...!]

BAM! A bullet came flying at him as soon as he finished summoning the drones. And, as always, the bullet wasn't directed at him.

The shot targeted one of the drones behind William's back, and it connected perfectly as always.

[Impressive.] William admitted. [But, that's not enough to stop me.]

He fearlessly advanced toward the minion wave in order to place the enemies within the drones' attack range. Of course, this move made it that much easier for Gunz to shoot the drones, but it's fine. This was how a duel between a Droid and a Pirate had to go.

[I just have to move around a lot to make it hard for him.] William thought. [I've already got a good idea of how he moves, so I'm sure I can space him out.]

And so, William moved around in an arc while firing lasers at the enemy minions. And, since he made sure to stay close enough to the enemies, his drones provided supporting fire from behind. Combined, their shots melted the enemy minions one by one.

Meanwhile, Gunz did his best to chase the drones. But, it wasn't as easy as it sounded.

The guy had to constantly split his attention between shooting minions and shooting drones. Fortunately for him, the Attack Speed he built via Ninja Tabi made the task that much easier.

[Okay, so I shoot this dude.] Lars sniped a swordsman in the head to secure a last-hit. [And then, I'm in range to shoot this drone!] He turned 90 degrees and instantly fired at one of the drones!

He spent practically zero time on aiming this quick shot because he constantly kept tabs on Winner from the corner of his eye. This transition from shooting a swordsman to shooting a drone was so instantaneous that even Winner failed to react to it in time.

[Tch, I can't dodge this one.] William grimaced.

He tried his best to sidestep the shot on reaction but he wasn't fast enough. There were zero telegraphs about this quick shot coming, so William barely had any time to react.

[One thing I have to admit.] William conceded. [The way he can switch between targets on the fly without wasting any time is quite impressive. In terms of mechanical skill, I can agree he might be a little better than me overall. But, can he do THIS?]

It was time to reveal a technique that William has been concealing until now. He had no reason to use it in the previous scrims because his opponents were too weak to bother, but Gunz was definitely worth the effort.

And so, William fired a laser beam as soon as he finished the sidestep. As usual, his drones followed suit with beams of their own.

Then, as soon as William finished firing the shot, he quickly sidestepped again. Likewise, his drones moved along with him after a brief delay.

BAM! A bullet came flying in his direction, but it just barely missed the drone it was targeting.

"Geh!" Lars made a face. "So close, yooo! How did he even do that???"

It looked unreal. That sidestep had such perfect timing! No, even more than perfect! It seemed downright impossible, yo!

Winner should've been vulnerable while shooting, yet his recovery animation ended super fast. It's as if dude canceled it early by using some wizardry.

[I mean, I know you can do cancels like that with Dodge Roll and some skills, but dude didn't do anything special. He just stepped, yo.] Lars shook his head. [Am I going crazy? Nah, I probably just read the timing wrong, that's all it is.]

Lars ignored this one wacky incident and moved on. The next time Winner fired a laser beat, Lars shot the dude immediately! This time, he ain't gonna miss, yo!

BAM... and nothing else. The gun made a loud noise but there was no impact sound. The bullet didn't hit anything.

"What the...?" Lars's jaw dropped. "How is this even...?"

Just like last time, Winner sidestepped the shot way too quickly. And, his drones followed his footsteps soon enough, so Lars's accurate shot ended up whiffing. The heck, yo!?

[This doesn't make any sense!] Lars insisted. [I hafta get to the bottom of this. What's really happening here?]

Like last time, Winner's recovery animation was cut short as if he glitched out of it somehow. It was so bizarre. Maybe it was some special Droid bug?

[I don't remember anything like it, tho.] Lars thought back on the few times he played Droid, but he was drawing a blank on this topic. He never experienced anything like this.

[Well, Yuel hasn't said anything, so maybe I'm just imagining things?][Then again, I'm the one who has been shooting this dude. Yuel is only checking on my situation every now and then, so it's easy for him to miss these weird cancels.]

The whole thing felt rather inconsistent, too.

BAM! On the third shot, Lars finally landed a hit on one of the drones. This time, there was absolutely nothing strange about Winner's movements.

BAM! On the fourth shot, Lars missed again...

"How tho!?!?!?!" Lars was losing his mind. "This makes no sense, yo!"

BAM! BAM! BAM! Lars continued firing shots at the drones.

HIT. MISS. HIT. That was his score this round.

[Like, sometimes dude be doing that hax sidestep, but sometimes he doesn't. I just don't get it, yo.]

Throughout the many exchanges, Winner only pulled that glitch a handful of times. Maybe he wasn't very proficient at it, or maybe there were some special conditions that had to be fulfilled first. Either way, the whole thing was wack.

"Hey, my dude," Lars called out. "Is Droid bugged or something? I sometimes see him cancel his attack recovery animation like real fast."

"He cancels into it what?" Yuel asked.

"Into… a sidestep, I guess? At least, that's how it looks."

"I don't think I've seen him do that."

"Yeah, he only pulled that a couple of times so far. But, it catches me off-guard every dang time, making me whiff shots. Any idea what the heck that is?"

"If he's really canceling the animation into a step, then I do have one idea of what it might be…" Yuel was reluctant to continue. What he was about to suggest seemed very unlikely, especially for the middle school level.

[But, I already know they got a Korean player who can do it.] Yuel thought.[ So, maybe it's not a stretch to assume that other members can do it, too. I didn't expect this...]

"It's probably a Korean Step Cancel, or KC for short," Yuel explained.

"Wut? Is that some super-advanced Korean tech?"

"Something like that..." Yuel made a face. "We actually saw it a few times, remember? Back when we watched the Korean and Chinese teams at the world championship."

"Oh, yeah! I remember thinking there was something cool and weird about the way some of them were moving."

"Yes, they used the Korean Cancel quite often. It's a popular technique in the east, not so much in the west."

"And, you're saying Winner can do it?"

"Yes, that's how it seems."

"Sick, yo! So, how does it work, again? Does he, like, cancel his recovery animation with a step?"

"Yes, that's the gist of it. You can buffer a step during specific frames of the recovery animation and it'll cancel the animation into a step."

"Yo, that's rad as heck!" Lars exclaimed. "Why am I not using it then??? It sounds mad useful."

"You tried it before, remember?"

"Did I?"

"Yes, you did," Yuel insisted. "It sounds like you erased it from your memory because it didn't go that well."

"Dang, did I suck that much?"

"Hmm. That's a difficult question to answer," Yuel said. "You definitely did a lot better than me, that's for sure. But, it seemed like it'd take you a few good months to get proper results, so we dropped it."

"Oh yeah, it's coming back to me now, I think." Lars scratched his head. "So anyway, this KC thingy sounds like a real useful technique. Why isn't it more popular over here?"

"Because it's difficult to execute, extremely so," Yuel explained. "The timing is very strict. They say it's 'frame perfect' for most classes."

"Frame perfect?"

"It means you have to press a button at one very specific frame of the animation."

"Wait, isn't this game like 60 FPS?" Lars knotted his brows and tried to run the numbers. "That basically means… Hmm… Welp, I'm pretty sure it means something. Probably."

"It's 'frame perfect' specifically for 30 FPS," Yuel explained. "For 60 FPS it means there's a window of two frames, and for 120 FPS it means there are 4 frames."

"Oh, I get it! So, it's easier with more FPS."

"No, it's practically the same."

"Wait, wut? But you just said with higher FPS there are more frames in which I can do the cancel."

"True," Yuel said. "But, if your FPS is higher, then the actual time for the cancel remains the same. 2 frames in 60 FPS last as long as 1 frame in 30 FPS."

"Oh, yeah. That makes sense, I think." Lars nodded with a blank expression. "So anyway, how tight does the input need to be, exactly? Like, in real time, not according to them confusing frames."

"At 30 FPS, you have 30 frames per second. So, if you have to hit a specific frame, then you have 1 / 30 seconds to do it."

"Wait, that's less than a second, isn't it?"

"... yes, of course it is. You divide 1 second by 30 here."

"Dang, that sounds unreal! What the heck."

"Yes, it's that hard. I heard it's practically impossible to do with online lag."

"Heh, sounds like a fun challenge!" Lars grinned. "I remember learning a few animation cancel glitches like that for other games. It always feels awesome to pull them off! It's like you've mastered the system and stuff, yo! I really dunno how I slept on this Korean Cancel thing. Until now"

"That's how difficult it is," Yuel said. "So difficult, that even somebody like you quit early. You even erased it from your memory it seems."

"Dang, can't believe I actually forgot something like that."

"Well, that's just how hard it is to execute consistently."

"Is it really, tho?" Lars asked. "To me, it looks like he's just doing a step. Sure, the timing may be strict and stuff, but I'm sure anybody can get used to it with enough practice."

"It's not that simple. To put it into perspective: even most pros in the west don't bother learning it."

"Say what?"

"We often watch western pro matches, right? But tell me, when was the last time you saw somebody perform a Korean Cancel in a match?"

"Oh, good point..." Lars frowned as he tried to recall the last time he saw something similar to this technique. "Yeah, I only remember them Chinese pros pulling some godlike moves I didn't understand. But, the pros we usually watch make sense to me, so they're not doing any of this KC stuff, huh."

"And there you have it. Even pros, who are supposed to aim for the highest level of mastery, give up on this technique."

"Dang, it sounds like some godlike tech! I gotta master it too, yo!"

"I'm sure you will at some point." Yuel nodded. "But, the reason I haven't made you seriously practice KC until now is that you have many other problems to work on first."

"Haha, harsh…"

"It's the truth, and you have to face it."

With Lars's natural gift for mastering difficult techniques, he'll surely pick up and master the Korean Cancel in the future. However, that future wasn't here yet. The goof had plenty of other areas to improve in, which were far easier to work on and will contribute a lot more to Lars's overall performance.

"Besides," Yuel said. "KC isn't even as useful for marksmen."

"How come?" Lars titled his head. "This Winner dude over here is putting it to some good work."

"It has some uses for the early-game, but its value diminishes over time. Marksmen usually build a lot of Attack Speed, so their attack animation becomes very fast. As a result, it becomes even harder to use the Korean Step at such high speeds. And, it's barely even worth it to cancel a short attack animation."

"Yeah, I think I get watcha mean." Lars nodded. "Once I build some sick Attack Speed, I can already quickly move after shooting, so no need to animation cancel."

In this game, the Attack Speed stat affected the entire attack animation, from the startup frames and all the way to the recovery frames. As such, the higher the Attack Speed was, the faster and shorter the animation was. So, at certain speeds, it became outright impossible to even buffer a step in the right spot of the recovery animation.

[These are the same arguments I used last time to convince him to give up on KC.] Yuel sighed. [He pretty much made me repeat everything over again. Oh well, it's important to remind him about these things every now and then, to make sure he doesn't get carried away and start practicing it on his own.]

The goof was very impressionable, so he'd try to master any "cool" high-level technique he came across. So, it was important to put a leash on him every now and then, to make sure he focused on the things that mattered the most.

Time was a finite resource. Yuel and Lars only had so many hours a day to practice Classmancers, yet they had countless things to learn and master. As such, Lars didn't have the luxury to waste any of his precious time on less productive techniques like Korean Cancel.

And so, with Lars now convinced, the conversation died out. However, the laning duel between Lars and Winner raged on. The two of them continued their tango, with Lars stalking the drones and Winner moving them away.

Overall, they matched each other in terms of wave-clearing speeds, which was very different from how previous waves went down. In fact, Winner even had the edge this time.

[Dang, what gives?] Lars grumped. [I just can't destroy his drone fast enough anymore. It feels like his spacing got way better, yo! Or, is it me who got worse somehow?]

Part of it was that the conversation with Yuel distracted Lars a little, but that was no excuse. For reasons unclear, there was a significant improvement in how Winner maneuvered around the lane.

But, why? What was different from before?

[Yuel isn't here, for one. And, neither is that Challenger dude.] Lars thought as he checked his surroundings. [Thinking of it, it feels like there's suddenly a lot more open space around us. Could that be related?]

Perhaps Winner felt more comfortable moving around when there were fewer distractions present. In particular, having to deal with just Lars probably made things that much easier for him.

[Yuel didn't chase the dude around like me, but he did apply some pressure too.] Lars thought. [He sure did it quietly, tho. So much, that I barely noticed. But, I'm sure his presence had an impact on this dude.]

Basically, Lars and Yuel have been double-teaming Winner this entire time. It just didn't seem that way because Lars was the only one actively stalking Winner this entire time.

But, Yuel was also there in the shadows, further constraining the amount of available space Winner had to move in. And now, that constrain was gone.

[So, that's why it feels like he can suddenly move all over the place. And, there's also this sick technique all of a sudden.]

That Korean Cancel thingy was definitely guilty. It made Lars miss some critical shots, which allowed the drones to survive that much longer.

In fact, one of these little metal dudes was still hanging in there. This drone got hit twice and dodged twice, making the current score 2-2.

[Not bad. But I'm sorry, little dude. Victory is mine!]

BAM! Lars fired the decisive shot. The aim was 200% on point. It gonna be bullseye!

With this, the score will be 3-2. It'll be Lar's victory, yoooo!

However, long before the bullet even reached the drone, the little dude exploded all by itself…