A Killer Instinct Guide for SFIV Players by Infil

All the focus in this guide so far has been on offense. Normals, specials, and shadow moves are all very strong and difficult to defend against, and all lead to combos that can do 50% or more through repeated use of heavy auto-doubles and shadow linkers. By themselves, these mechanics would not co-exist overly well together, as you would lose the entire match in about five openings, and most of the match would be spent watching the same combo.

Killer Instinct is most famous for its combo breaker mechanic that allows combos to be escaped at certain points, as long as the defense has good timing and good anticipation. The concept and implementation are quite simple, but they add a lot of interesting strategy and mind games to the game at all levels of play. Let’s first take a look at how they work. If you are not familiar with how combos work in KI, a quick refresher in the Combos section might help.

When your opponent hits you with any attack in the combo sequence, simply press the punch and kick buttons that match the strength of the offense’s attack, and you will perform a combo breaker. Easy! For example, to break your opponent’s medium auto-double, you would press MP+MK while the move is hitting you. You must be in the combo sequence to perform a combo breaker, which means stray normals and openers are not breakable. You can, however, break all auto-doubles, manuals, and linkers. Combo breakers do no damage by themselves; they are purely a means of escaping future damage. However, as an important bonus, breaking a combo will immediately regenerate all your white life, which can be a game-changer if your opponent attempts to stretch his combo too far.

When you successfully land a combo breaker, your opponent will get launched into the air and land with a soft knockdown. It doesn’t matter where you or your opponent are on the screen, combo breakers will never whiff and can never be blocked. Combo breakers can also be instinct canceled, which can lead to follow-up hits on the opponent who was just launched into the air.

Choosing to break is a risk. If you press buttons of the wrong strength or break with incorrect timing, you will get locked out. An icon will appear over your head and you will be unable to attempt combo breakers for 3 seconds (or until the combo ends), which will allow your opponent to transition to the highest damage combo he can manage without fear of being broken. If you get locked out, the game tells you how you messed up; pressing with the correct timing but the wrong strengths will put a red lockout above your character, while attempting any breaker with the wrong timing will show an orange lockout.

The timing for inputting combo breakers depends on what you are trying to break. If your opponent is doing an auto-double or a linker, you can break at any time including during startup frames all the way through to the end of the move’s final active frame. The timing is very wide and, unless you are trying to react to the strength used, you will rarely mistime a break on an auto-double or linker. If, however, you are trying to break a manual, you must break exactly on the hitstop, which is why breaking manuals is so much more difficult. When manuals are used in combos, Killer Instinct adds 4 frames of additional hitstopHitstop is a very brief window (usually between 2-6 frames) after any hit where the game pauses entirely to accentuate the attack landing. Hitstop is designed to increase the visual impact of strikes, so heavy attacks will have slightly more hitstop than light attacks. to help the defender, but inputting the correct strength will still require a guess. But hey, at least manuals come with some restrictions which might help you anticipate correctly.

Apart from normals and openers outside the combo sequence, enders are also never breakable unless they directly follow an opener. Since enders cash out white damage, going directly from an opener to an ender would not give the defender a chance to break, so the game makes the ender itself directly breakable instead (press HP+HK to break this outlier case). Watch out for these in matches and break them; even strong tournament players will accidentally perform an opener-ender sequence on occasion. There isn’t a ton of risk associated with trying to break an ender, so if you think it might be an opener-ender sequence, press HP+HK to find out! You cannot counter break opener-ender, so it is always a free break if you recognize it in time. Also, apart from Maya’s dagger toss combo trait, projectiles are never breakable. This includes often-used projectiles like Jago’s Shadow Endokuken and Spinal’s Shadow Searing Skull. To make up for this, shadow projectiles are never enders, meaning they can never cash out white damage.

Combo breakers are not just limited to the ground; you can also combo break in the air. If you have been launched into the air by any enemy attack, you will not be subject to the regular grounded fare of auto-doubles and linkers, but you can still be hit by normals and specials. These are breakable following the same rules; press P and K of the same strength as the offense to break.

And finally, we need to cover one special case. What happens if your opponent keeps you on the ground and keeps hitting you, but never transitions past the opener phase? Remember that I said you must be in the combo sequence to break, and that technically only happens once an opener has occurred. In fact, Season 1 Sadira had a special combo that tricked the game into never going past the opener, letting her get 50%+ unbreakable damage. The developers for Season 2 have tried to implement some stopgaps against this, but the community is still trying to figure out the specifics of when the combo sequence gets triggered when an opener is never used.

For example, Jago’s Endokuken is not an opener (because you cannot cancel it into auto-doubles or linkers), but it leaves you with enough frame advantage on hit to link a normal afterwards. Can Jago just do a normal into Endokuken forever, never hitting you with an opener and therefore never giving you a chance to break? The answer is no; the game will trigger the combo sequence if you perform a link after a non-opener special move. These cases actually happen fairly often in the game, including after Maya's daggers and Spinal's Searing Skulls. The offensive player must perform a manual to continue the combo; since these specials are not openers, auto-doubles and linkers are not possible. However, these manuals (and any subsequent follow-ups) are breakable and will begin the combo sequence.

You will also enter the combo sequence if a special move launches an opponent into the air, and the offense is able to hit the airborne opponent. Even just stray air hits are immediately breakable, since they are technically links after a non-opener special move, like above. Many characters in KI can recaptureRecapture is any attack that will hit an airborne opponent and bring them back to the ground, allowing the offense to continue with auto-doubles and linkers. Remember, auto-doubles and linkers are not possible on airborne opponents. you after hitting you into the air; the recapture attack itself will be breakable, as well as any part of the continued combo. Some characters base a lot of their gameplan around launching you into the air, then recapturing you for auto-doubles and linkers, so it's important to remember that you can combo break these moves.