- Pick a character
- Understand your normals and their properties
- Practice execution of specials
- Understand the properties of your specials
- "Properties" are things like range, hit box, active frames, invulnerability, cancelability, does the move cause knockdown, etc.
With 2nd nature execution of specials:
- Learn when to use each move: some are anti air, some are good for zoning, some are good for confusing an enemy who is getting up
- Learn combos
With this, you can put together your general offensive gameplan. You should be able to execute your "bread and butter" combos 100% of the time at this point. B&B's are combos you do at predictable points, like a mid screen B&B, opponent in corner B&B, etc. Sometimes these are all the same combo and it's fine to rely on 1 or 2 combos while you learn more. You should also have at least 2 options of what you want to do in different situations, including at different ranges, what to do when an opponent jumps in on you, what to do when you are getting up or what to do when your opponent is getting up.
When you're comfortable on offense with your main character, you get to learn the same with the next character. With knowledge of what another character can do, you can start putting together a match up in your mind. For example, if you know the character you're facing has a strong up close game, then rely more on your longer range attacks.
You'll find out that sometimes you're character just doesn't have a good option in a certain situation or maybe you want to keep yourself from getting predictable. This is where Yomi comes in. Yomi is very basically thinking a step ahead to try and counter what you think your opponent's counter is going to be. Let's say your best option after getting knocked down is a dragon punch and you assume your opponent will counter this by blocking your move and countering. You can counter this by NOT throwing the dragon punch and throwing them or something.