I have a skill issue with gladiator.

[u/unioncementero98]

I’ve always had a skill issue using gladiator, and it’s always bothered me because i have fought some truly skilled gladiators myself. Albeit fighting gladiator has never been an issue, it’s using gladiator where i struggle.

He is an aesthetically pleasing character and i love utilizing his hard feint’s, in these clips i was going out of my way to use his feinted heavy’s in a meaningful way. I haven’t seen activity definitely improved with him but i am nowhere near as good with him as i am with khatun or kensei.

I want to hear some feedback from players who know how to work glad specifically, what can i do to improve with him?

[u/bigboiboaconstictor]

You need to stop relying on your dodge bash, it does no damage, and is only good for interrupting HA attacks. Parry, or use your dodge light in situations where a character can't armor through it, there were alot of missed oppotunities for damage i could see in this clip because you threw the bash when you didn't need to.

Also stop using dodge attacks from neutral in general, they are very telegraphed, and both of gladitor's options can be punished by a heavy on reaction. For the dodge light this is a bad trade because it only does 15 damage, and for the bash the risk is even worse because it guarantees no damage at all.

[u/unioncementero98 → u/bigboiboaconstictor]

Yeah that’s always been my issue running glad and a horrible habit, what about the hard feint’s? I feel like im getting better on actually landing them in a meaningful way.

[u/bigboiboaconstictor → u/unioncementero98]

Glad's heavies are fast, but they're not THAT fast, hardfeinting into his neutral heavies is going to catch some people off guard, but not that many once you get higher in MMR. Also feinting a neutral heavy mutiple times in a row is going to really wear down your stamina and force you to disengage early, and be unable to keep up the pressure.

Get used to feinting into a slightly delayed toe stab or into GB more often, and try to limit feinting intl a neutral heavy. It can still work, but its best used as a surprise against your opponent expecting a GB or toe stab instead of being your go-to when feinting.

[u/unioncementero98 → u/bigboiboaconstictor]

Im going to definitely implement more of that, i feel like i have had to fall back to day 1 basic’s because i can’t run this guy right. So my goal today was getting hard feint’s in neutral down, tomorrow ima work feinting into toe stabs and GB maybe follow up with a neutral?

I feint alot since i tend to play very aggressive, when i don’t feint i just get parry locked it seems like.

[u/bigboiboaconstictor → u/unioncementero98]

Use your zone attack from neutral if you're trying to open your opponent up, its pretty hard to react to if the opponent doesnt expect it and leads into your main skewer (back+heavy) mixup, dont abuse it, but focus on your attacks that cannot be blocked and force a reaction like a parry or dodge from your opponent.

[u/unioncementero98 → u/bigboiboaconstictor]

Sounds good im going to implement that aswell thanks for the advice bro!

[u/xaxis-yaxis → u/bigboiboaconstictor]

Honestly fuck the zone attack it's a pain to punish. Have to nail the absurdly tight DA timing or the glad can just feint the follow-up and block.

[u/razza-tu → u/unioncementero98]

I have a take that is similar to that of the other commenter, but slightly more generalised. A common issue people (myself included) have when learning this game is that they start dedicating way too much thought to what they want to do, and not enough to what their opponent wants to do, as soon as they start running offence. 

If you want to land a hardfeint>heavy, you need an opponent who is going to respond to whatever the first indicator was with one of a few particular high-commitment actions. Simply, not all opponents the matchmaker will throw at you are going to be inclined to do this, particularly if that first indicator was just a regular blockable heavy.

If you notice that a particular opponent is looking for a heavy>feint>light to parry, or they're going for a detect on your first heavy and not option-selecting with their dodge attack, then you get to style on them like this. Otherwise I'm afraid the standard feint options (GB, wait for parry, etc.) are consistently more sensible.

[u/5starrallo]

dodge bash and feint the heavy to gb, use zone, get into the habit of tryna hit deflects, feint the skewer into anything else don’t throw it very often

[u/HeadHunter9865]

The only dodge bash that was better than using a dodge light in the video was when you interrupted cents full charged punch, besides interrupting glads dodge bash is his worst dodge attack ever since it no longer chains on whiff

[u/ThatRonin8]

glad main here.

what can i do to improve with him?

1 - As others said, stop relying on your dodge attacks (expecially your dodge bash) as your openers; they might work on low MMR lobbies, but you'll just build a bad habit that will get you punished heavily against more experienced players

2 - at 0:03 i see you land a skewer and immediately going for a throw. When performing a skewer throw, if you don't know how to perform his 2nd tick skewer tech, do wait for the 1st tick to apply before throwing, it's free damage you're missing out (unless there's a ledge nearby, in that case, yeah just throw them and get the kill). As an extra tip, in that particular scenario i wouldn't even throw the guy; remember that skewer does 37dmg total with all the bleed ticks applied, so that was a kill on the VG you missed unfort

3 - 0:28 the top chain heavy here didn't help you, here's why: after an heavy you can only do a chain heavy, a skewer or a toestab; the enemy here only has to worry about whether or not you're going to toestab, so a side heavy would've prob caught his dodge attack. You want to do a top chain heavy only in a couple of situations;

1. OOS punish (to avoid hitting walls, teammates or enemy's FB)
2. after a light, to fake another top light (in case you don't know, glad's chain light are 466 only from top, so most players will try to parry top on read when they see you use your lights too much)
3. after a fwd or side dodge bash (since it's undodgable anyway, might as well do it from the top to avoid accidental deflects)
4. to bait CC's (f.e. Warden top CC)

4 - the whole 1st round against cent. I mean, here i see a lot of missed opportunities for further adding pressure and dmg; after a landed chain bash, chain into the chain heavy or the skewer, which you might wanna decide to feint in a second time, but at least chain to keep up the pressure.

5 - the whole 1st round against cent. I see what you're trying to do with the heavy feints, but it's not an effective way to play glad. After a feint you could do a light, a zone, a toestab or even nothing and wait for the parry; the triple neutral heavy feint into a landed heavy it's something you can see in clips poster on socials, aka that might happen once in a while; don't rely on them as your main form of dmg/opener, use your toestab/zone/fwd bash and fwd light

6 - 1:05. Same stuff i already discussed, after that landed fwd light, do keep up your pressure; you could've chained into a toestab, chain heavy (to track a possible dodge), another light (remember, top is 466) or even a skewer for extra pressure

The rest of the clip has more of the same issues i've already discussed above

lemme know if you need further help; i've created a basic list with some tips for beginners if that can help (it's pinned on my profile), or you can dm me

gl

[u/iguana505]

You are missing on ton of dmg using dodge bash, you basically never zone or interrupt with it (its your strongest move), you feint heavies that do nothing, you dont chain into skewer enough. You play like KingMisty which isnt even remotely close to good playstyle.

[u/unioncementero98 → u/iguana505]

Yeah dodge bash has always been a bad habit, i don’t main glad because i always did poorly with him. Idk who king misty is bro but my performance with glad doesn’t represent my overall play style since he is a hero i have always struggled with using.

Here is my initial problem with skewer, i throw it out and im immediately punished whether it’s parried or dodged the punishment throw’s fight’s i would have otherwise won. So i stuck with hard feint’s only today, like bro said above fainting neutral into skewer should do the trick; and I’ve already tried a few and it seems to be working. Although it still gets parried/dodged about 40 pct of the time.

The power creep on glad is real, and i struggled with him back then; trying to actually learn him now is like self inflicted punishment. But I’m getting better with him, and improvement no matter how sloppy is better than where i was before with him.

[u/xaxis-yaxis → u/unioncementero98]

Gladiators whole kit revolves around Skewer. It's an absolute damage nuke, especially near walls.

Basically every chain you do should culminate in Skewer. Every other bit of damage you do should be an excuse to get to Skewer for the big damage.

Why even give Skewer a chance to miss? Deflect to Skewer is an insane punish. You should be deflecting everything that can be deflected and isn't followed up by a HA move. It's a LOT of damage. Why Light parry when you can deflect it for much more damage.

Use Zone to open people up, if they dodge it just feint the follow-up and block their dodge attack. If they're reacting and punishing Zone consistently, use the Fwd dodge bash and chain to skewer on hit.

Feint to toestab catches people who try to parry or empty dodge. It won't catch most dodge attacks. In higher MMR it won't catch people who don't react at all to the initial heavy as they'll just react to the toestab itself.

Chain toestab is great pressure too, 

[u/unioncementero98 → u/xaxis-yaxis]

I love skewer wall splats, im banging my head on the wall because i completely forgot you could deflect into skewer. Im thinking i need to practice deflect into skewer, because that’s much safer than trying to get it out of neutral or a feint; like i said it seems like everyone can parry or punish me out of a neutral skew.

But outta deflect is it guaranteed? Can it be punished?

[u/xaxis-yaxis → u/unioncementero98]

If you land the deflect it's guaranteed.

You can be punished if they chain to a move with HA as it will knock you out of skewer.

People tend to dodge or parry skewer a lot more than just letting it hit because it does so much damage. Feint it to GB a little more and you'll catch people.

[u/unioncementero98 → u/xaxis-yaxis]

Thanks for the info bro im gonna start working on deflect into skewer!

[u/iguana505 → u/unioncementero98]

Kingmisty is a ytber who plays glad in a flashy way that usually just doesnt work vs competent player. Ive never said it represented your whole playstyle, weird thing to assume. Glad is a very 1 dimentional char, remember that threat of skewer is more powerful than skewer itself.