In at least two articles, I have mentioned the utility of the roll pause technique as a way to input multiple inputs at once without having to go through the effort of:
a) moving the stick from a charged back position all the
way through a dead zone to the neutral point
b) then past the opposite side’s dead zone before hitting
the microswitch opposite to where you started
c) all prior to reaching the farthest contact point of the throw against the restrictor gate (note: these terms were explained in my earlier input mechanics guide here).
As you can see, that is a lot of (largely unnecessary) stick movement to have to pull off in a very strict window of available time, so a technique to cut down on the amount of stick motion/distance would be optimal. Which is where the roll pause comes in, of course. That said, throughout all of my earlier discussions, I haven’t done a great job explaining how to actually DO the roll pause technique. So this follow-up post is my last honest attempt to clear up any confusion.
The best way to envision a roll pause is as a “bounce” you perform from your initial charged back direction before landing on another back direction. Here’s how that works. If you press against the gate during a charged Down/Back direction and then push off of that direction on the stick with a strong enough “flick”, the stick will often bounce with enough force to pass through the neutral zone of the stick AND hit the microswitches on the other side.
Ever notice how when you are driving a car and then brake suddenly, the car continues to lurch forward a specific distance (usually dependent on speed) before coming to a stop? Well, your joystick operates in the exact same way. This principle is known in physics as inertia and, simply stated, it means that an object in motion tends to want to stay in motion. In this case, the force with which you press the stick against the gate in the charged position, coupled with the force with which you bounce from that starting Down/Back position to the Back one will cause you to pass through the neutral point of the stick while travelling between these two back inputs (and consequently, produces “phantom inputs” on the opposite side of the stick from where you started). Meaning: you have to use much less intentional force to hit those microswitches on the other side of your stick and also have to travel a shorter stick distance to do so (especially when compared to going all the way to the opposite side’s throw zone and back again!).
This is partly why I noted a key difference between a roll pause and riding the gate. When you are riding the gate, you are simply moving the stick from one direction to another (say, Down/Back to Back) while pressing hard against the gate. There is no bounce between the two charged directions (since you never leave your charging back position while pressing hard against the restrictor gate) and thus no additional inputs except for the two that you intentionally inputted.
Now compare this with a roll pause between Down/Back and Back. In this case, the roll pause (done correctly) will cause the stick to go from a Down/Back input, optimally bounce through the neutral zone in a rolling curve to Back, while hitting the microswitches for some version of Toward along the way. More importantly, note that you are never using a lot of intentional force to input these "phantom" directions; rather, you are letting the natural mechanics of the spring’s physics do most of this work for you. As a result, you have managed to input a toward direction (if not several) in much faster time than would ordinarily be possible by only going as far as is necessary to activate the opposite side’s microswitch before heading to a back direction again. Returning to an earlier pic I posted in my input mechanics post, the red curve below between Down/Back and Back is a very rough representation of the bounce that occurs during a successful roll pause.
The reason this technique is called a “roll pause” is because, instead of going directly from one direction to its adjacent, we are instead using an inertia-facilitated bounce to create a rolling curve during the incredibly brief pause between the two charging back directions . . . a pause which, in effect, adds in at least one Toward direction without any large amount of effort on our part to move in that direction.
This roll pause then provides even greater benefit at higher levels of play because, by using this method of inputting, you will have successfully inputted three of the directions for a Super/Ultra 1 (Down/Back -> some version of Toward -> Back) with much less intentional stick movement . . . and therefore only need one final directional input to activate a desired Super/Ultra (i.e., Toward). The roll pause similarly allows you to shift from a Down/Back direction to a Back direction in record time to accomplish a charge buffered move using the same physics principle. In short, by not having to spend a lot of energy/distance to input your first Toward direction, you save a ton of time when inputting and thus increase your chances of fitting a move such as a Super into a normal or special’s narrow cancel window (and also shortening the time required between two charge moves).
Here’s something else to note as well: It doesn’t really matter which direction you start with for a roll pause involving a charge back. In my input mechanics post, I purposely focused on a roll pause from either Down/Back to Back, or Back to Down/Back, simply because it was the easiest to understand. But the truth is that you can do a roll pause using many different sequences, including Up/Back to Back, Up/Back to Down/Back, or even Down/Back to Down/Back, assuming you are quick enough. The reason is because USF’s short cuts allow you to use variants of base directions (specifically, those for Back and Toward), with only the last one requiring a strict Toward direction for a special/Super. Observe that in each of the sequences above, your first input for a super will always contain a back direction, the roll pause helps accomplish some version of toward for the second input, and the next input after that always contains another variant of back . . . after which you only have to move the stick to a true Toward for the final input in the sequence. The one limitation with these alternative sequences is that you have to input all of them quickly, so as not to do another move (such as a walk or jump) because you took too many frames to go from one input to another. That is not really a problem once you get used to it, however.
So at this point, we’ve officially covered how the roll pause works, why the roll pause works, and what’s required to get the roll pause to work. The only thing that remains is for you to learn to do it yourself. As always, this is a muscle memory exercise and will require you to take it to training to discover on your own terms. It’s a chore, I know, but necessary to reach your optimal level of play. To this end, and as a useful set of training exercises, I would suggest doing each of the challenges below in order of ascending difficulty:
Challenge 1 - perform a Max Out from a Down/Back direction to Back, roll pausing a Toward direction in between. Remember: you never want to be purposely moving the stick to Toward with a great deal of time and effort to get this move to happen. In fact, the entire input movement should occur super fast, once you learn to move your stick only the minimum amount required to perform the whole thing.
Challenge 2 - after this, set the training opponent to auto block and try using a crouching normal canceled into a Dread Kick or Max Out. Use a roll pause from Down/Back to Back to perform this and remember not to move a large amount in the Toward direction at all when performing this cancel.
Challenge 3 - once you are comfortable doing the roll pause on a “dead” opponent, set up Zangief as an opponent and record him doing a version of his green hand. Then set to playback. In this training exercise, your job is to whiff punish the green hand with a low normal cancelled into a Light Dread/Sobat using the roll pause technique in Challenge 3 above. The purpose of this exercise is to take your muscle memory from a training situation to a more common “in the heat of battle” set up.
Challenge 4 - Once you have the simple special cancel using a roll pause down consistently in Challenge 4, try doing a cancel from low normal into special into Super. This should be easier at this point since your roll pause from Down/Back to Back covers the first three inputs for the Super and you only have to do the final Toward to get the Super cancel from the special (note that the starting special was already inputted by the first Toward direction during the roll pause).
Challenge 5 - Lastly, try for a straight cancel from normal into super, starting with Dee Jay’s heavier attack normals first (since these have more frames to cancel from) and then ending with his lightest (in particular, standing and crouching Short, which both have limited frames for cancelling). Use the roll pause from Down/Back to Back for crouching normals, and a roll pause from Back to Down/Back or (Up/Back) for a standing normal.
FINAL NOTE When doing a roll pause, you should be letting the force of your stick’s bounce accomplish most of the movement in the toward direction. If you find that you are instead using your thumb and index finger to push the stick all the way to the Towards direction, you are doing the roll pause incorrectly. Yes, the technique sounds difficult at first . . . but it actually isn’t when you hit on it yourself through your own muscle memory. As always, practice makes perfect - and once you do, the power in your beat will increase exponentially.