by
jchensor
Published on 10-08-2010 05:30 AM

I'm sure many people have heard the term "Plinking" in regards to Super Street Fighter IV around these parts. Do you even know what Plinking is? Ever wondered why it works or how you are supposed to use it? Are you confused as to what different kinds of Plinking techniques there are? Well, in this very extensive FAQ, all your Plinking questions will be answered!




What is Plinking?
Plinking is a technique first written about here on SRK by KIRBYSIM. It technically stands for "P-Linking," which itself stands for "Priority-Linking." It's a technique utilized by many players to help land their 1-frame and 2-frame links more consistently in battle by taking advantage of a trick that allows you to repeat a button input for 2 frames in a row.

The term "Priority Linking" is used because of the nature of how Plinking works: the input you want repeated can be controlled knowing the "priority" of the buttons in Street Fighter IV.


How does Plinking technically help?
Without Plinking, if you are trying to hit a 1-frame link, you have to hit the button press on that one exact frame. Since one frame is 1/60th of a second, this means you only have a window of .0167 seconds to press the button at the right time. By using Plinking, you allow yourself to register the same button press for two frames in a row. That means even if you attempt the 1-frame link and perform it one frame too early, the Plink results in hitting the same button the very next frame, giving you a successful execution of the 1-frame link. You increase your window from .0167 seconds (1 frame) to .033 seconds (2 frames). And if you have a 2-frame link, Plinking lets you go from a .033 window (2 frames) to a .050 second (3 frames) window. It may not sound like a big difference, but it's actually a pretty significant increase when used in actual combat.


How do you perform a Plink?
Performing a Plink is pretty straight forward. All it really involves is hitting two different buttons exactly 1-frame apart from each other. The first button is what I usually refer to as the "Target" button. This is always the button you are trying to link with and whose input you want repeated. The second button is the button that triggers the repeated input. I call the second button the "Plinker."

On a standard 6-button joystick layout:





...most players use the button immediately to the left of the Target Button as the Plinker, hitting the Target Button with their middle finger and the Plinker with their index finger.

So let's say you are Guy and want to perform his Crouching Light Punch into Standing Medium Punch link. Most players will, after connecting with the first hit, Plink the Standing Medium Punch with the Light Punch button. If they are Bison and want to connect a Standing Hard Kick after a Standing Light Kick, they will use Medium Kick as the Plinker by hitting it immediately after the Hard Kick button.

Now, the button that acts as the Plinker can technically be any button that has lower priority than the Target Button. The priority list is:

< < < < <

...with Hard Kick having the highest priority. If you are trying to Plink an attack, you can use any of the buttons to the left of it in that list as the Plinker. So if you are trying to link Hard Punch, you can technically use Light Punch, Medium Punch, Light Kick, or Medium Kick.


Why does Plinking work?
This actually involves two parts. Both, to be fully explained, need a bit of a history lesson on Capcom Fighting Games. If you want to skip the history lessons, just move on to the next question.

So for the first part, prior to Capcom Vs. SNK 2, all Capcom Fighting Games had a set rule: if you press two buttons at the same time, the weaker of the two buttons came out. So for example, hitting Light Punch and Hard Punch on the exact same frame would result in a Light Punch. But an Option Select was discovered in Capcom Vs. SNK 1. Throws actually took priority over all Normal Attacks. So if you pressed Light Punch and Hard Punch at the same time in CvS1, the character would throw out a Light Punch... unless they were in range for a Throw at which the Throw would execute. This allowed characters like Chun Li, who had a great standing Light Punch poke, to just hold forward on the joystick and poke with Light Punches by pressing both Light Punch and Hard Punch at the same time. If she got within range, she would Throw. If she were just a bit too far, the Light Punch would come out and keep the opponent locked down.

So starting with Capcom Vs. SNK 2, Capcom decided to nip that in the bud and changed the game to register the stronger attack when two buttons are pressed simultaneously. So now, if you hit Light Punch and Hard Punch at the same time, a Hard Punch would come out, resulting in a far less useful Option Select. It's been like this for most Capcom games since CvS2.

The second part is unique to the Street Fighter IV series. Throughout the history of Capcom Fighting Games, Capcom has always tried to aid players in hitting buttons at the same time. They know that sometimes you can be a frame off, so they tweak their input recognition to allow for these kinds of disparity. This is why Kara Throws exist in Third Strike, for example. They knew you might be one frame or two frames off when hitting Light Punch and Light Kick at the same time, so they allowed the first few frames of any Normal Attack to be canceled into a Throw to accommodate people who might not have hit the two buttons at the exact same time.

Street Fighter IV does this as well, but does it through different means. In older games, hitting the two buttons slightly off still resulted in a Throw because the game recognized both buttons as being pressed very recently. Street Fighter IV goes a different route and, instead of recognizing that the buttons were both just pressed recently, it repeats the previous button input on the next frame any time two buttons are pressed 1-frame apart. So if you hit Light Punch one frame before hitting Light Kick for your Throw, it will register Light Punch on the first frame and both Light Punch and Light Kick on the second frame. Why this change? I don't know, but my guess is that this technique produced more reliable results for online play.


Oh... kay? And again, why does Plinking work??
So now, if we take those two concepts and add them together, you can see why Plinking works. It means that if I hit Hard Punch followed by a Medium Punch one frame later, the first frame registers me as hitting Hard Punch and the second frame registers me as hitting Hard Punch and Medium Punch at the same time. But since the higher priority move comes out (Hard Punch) and the lower priority move is disregarded (Medium Punch), it's exactly like me hitting Hard Punch for two frames in a row. And this improves your chances for hitting that 1-frame link.


So... isn't that the same as Double Tapping? I'm REALLY good at Double Tapping really fast, so I can get the same results, right?
No. And this is important to understand. Double Tapping is not as effective as Plinking.

For those who don't know what Double Tapping is, it's basically just hitting the same button twice in a row as quickly as possible. Most players do this by hitting one button twice using two different fingers.

However, the way Fighting Games, in general, process button presses is that they check the button for one of two states: pressed or released. If it detects a button is pressed one frame and sees that it is pressed on the very next frame, it treats the button as if it were held down instead of being pressed again. So it thinks you only pressed the button once. In order for a button to register two presses in a row, there has to be at least one frame of the button released in between two frames of the button pressed. So Double Tapping, at its fastest, takes 3 frames: pressed, released, and pressed.

And herein lies the problem: the middle frame is one where nothing is being held down. So if you attempt a 1-frame link and Double Tap one frame too early, the frame you meant to connect on will actually be when the button is released, so you'll miss the link. Double Tapping, when performed absolutely perfectly, makes your link successful only if you are timed the first button perfectly or if you timed it 2 frames too early. But if you time it 1 frame too early, it misses. So it's harder to be consistent with Double Tapping, especially because it's very hard to actually perform it perfectly in exactly 3 frames consistently.

For some reason, Plinking ignores this rule. On the second frame, where the input is repeated, it actually treats that as a new button press as opposed to having the button held down. It is literally the only way to register the same button press for two frames in a row. Without Plinking, it is physically impossible to do this.


So how can I tell if I'm Plinking correctly?
Training Mode + Input Display is your friend, here. Let's say you are planning on doing Ryu's Crouching Medium Punch into Crouching Medium Kick link. This is a 1-frame link. You can improve your chances of landing this Combo by Plinking the Crouching Medium Kick. So most players would hit Crouching Medium Punch and then Plink it by pressing the Light Kick button immediately afterwards while holding Down on the controller.

If performed correctly, you will see in the Input Display (excluding the Down and the Medium Punch):





Remember, the older inputs are on the bottom, so that's showing Medium Kick immediately followed by Light Kick + Medium Kick. This is how you know you've Plinked correctly. Practice this a bunch of times until you get this input sequence consistently. It'll help you learn the timing for Plinking, as that timing is universal for every Plink attempt. The two buttons will always be pressed with the same timing.

The two most common failed Plink attempts will look like this in the Input Display:



That means you hit the buttons too fast so that they actually registered as one simultaneous input. This means you need to slow your timing down very slightly. The other mistake is:




This means you hit the buttons too slowly, so that the Light Kick wasn't quick enough to Plink the Medium Kick. They were too far apart, so it just registered as two different individual button presses. Press the second button quicker.

So just make sure you see the inputs look like the first example and not like the other two (see the photo for an exact example). Once you can consistently get it down to produce the pattern at the top of this question, that means you are getting Plinking down pretty well.


I'm using a pad, so it's actually easier for me to use, for example, Medium Kick as the Target Button and Medium Punch as the Plinker. That should work, right?
Well... yes and no. The reason it is not wise to Plink a Kick with its corresponding Punch button is because, remember, the second frame actually counts as both buttons being pressed. In all the examples I've given so far, the Target Button overrides the the Plinker, so the Plinker button is ignored completely.

But in this case... well, lemme ask you: what happens when you press a Punch and Kick of the same strength at the same time? You Throw, Focus Attack, or Taunt. And since all Normals can be Kara Canceled into all three of those, your Plink will result in one of those three actions instead of repeating the first button's input as the second frame registers both buttons being pressed at the same time.

The caveat to this is that if you are trying to link into a crouching move, Light Kick can be Plinked by Light Punch and Hard Kick can be Plinked by Hard Punch only because you cannot Throw or Taunt while Crouching. You can Focus while Crouching, however, so you can never Plink Medium Kick with a Medium Punch.

But I'd still advise against using Hard Punch to Plink Hard Kick because remembering to use one method while Standing and another method while Crouching may just end up confusing you. Learning one technique is always preferable. As for Plinking Light Kick with Light Punch, see next question.


I never see people talk about Plinking Light Punches and Light Kicks. Why not?
Well, there are no buttons of lower priority than Light Punch. So you can't Plink Light Punch at all. If you try using any other button, the first frame will register as Light Punch but the second Frame will register as Light Punch + the other button, and the other button will always take priority and override the Light Punch.

For Light Kick, the only move with a lower priority is Light Punch, so whenever you try to Plink a Light Kick, you'll come out with a Throw on the second frame instead of a repeated Light Kick. However, in some cases, if you are trying to link a Crouching Light Kick, then Plinking is entirely possible. This is very useful, for example, with Zangief, who has to link multiple Crouching Light Kicks in a row for his Bread N' Butter (BnB) Combo, all of which are 1-frame links. So in this case, Plinking actually works. Just don't Plink a Standing Light Kick at the end, or else you'll get the Throw Whiff. Just end the BnB with a Crouching Light Kick into EX Green Hand instead.


Man, this is really awkward. I can't get used to it at all. I can land these links more consistently without Plinking. Are you sure this is worth learning?
Yeah, that's what I said too, early on. But I was wrong. Plinking increases your chances to hit hard links significantly. But I will agree 100%: it is very awkward.

At first, anyhow. Honestly, once you start getting used to it, it becomes second nature. You tend to start Plinking even when you don't need to. But that's really the only trick to getting good at Plinking: keep trying it, get used to it, and have it become second nature.

I found the best way to get used to it was doing the Trial Mode Combos, which are typically full of impractical and difficult links. Go find the trials that contain links such as Boxer's Stand Light Punch into Low Medium Punch canceled into Dashing Straight and just practice on that. Once you can do that, go find other Combos with links.

The reason why Trials works best is because it forces you to try Combos you aren't comfortable with already, so you won't have muscle memory of familiar combos to hurt you while trying to learn Plinking. Once you've done a bunch of Trial Mode Combos using Plinking, then go to Training Mode and start using Plinking on your favorite Combos with your main character. You'll now have some Plinking muscle memory built up that you can inject into your old stand-by Combos.

And as I said before, once you start getting used to it, it actually becomes very natural.


I've heard about something called Triple Plinking. Is there such a thing?
Yes, actually. However, it's not what you think it is. By the sounds of it, Triple Plinking should repeat an input for three frames instead of just two, making 1-frame links even easier! But that's not what it does.

It's actually just a technique used to cover up the most common error made when Plinking. However, the caveat is that it only works well for links involving Hard Punches and Hard Kicks. The idea is that, instead of Plinking with one extra button, you perform the Plink with all three buttons of the same type. So in other words, if you want to link into a Standing Hard Punch, you piano all three Punches: Hard Punch, Medium Punch, and then Light Punch (note: By "piano," I'm referring to the term used in the Fighting Game Community that describes the action of rapping your fingers across multiple buttons quickly, as if playing scales or arpeggios on a piano at high speeds without hitting any notes simultaneously).

The reason for this is because... well, remember what I said earlier? That one of the most common mistakes was hitting the buttons too fast? When you do that, your inputs look like this, if you recall:



...and that means you hit them too fast, registering them as one input. I think this error occurs far more often than hitting the buttons too slow. So the trick is this: by adding a third button to the end of the Plinking sequence, you can cover up that mistake. The Light Punch at the end of your button pianoing, if you hit the first two buttons too fast, ends up Plinking the Hard Punch! You'll see this in your Input Display:





You hit the first two buttons too quickly, making them count as one input. But the Light Punch saves your Plink attempt. Even though the last frame is registering all three buttons, the Hard Punch takes priority so Hard Punch comes out (obviously, this doesn't work for characters with moves that involve Three Punches like Zangief and Vega).

So that helps out if you hit the buttons too quickly. What happens, though, if you actually hit the first two buttons with the correct timing? What does the superfluous third button end up doing? You'll see in the Input Display:







...which means the third button did nothing: you actually did your Plink successfully! You still managed to repeat the Hard Punch for two frames like you wanted and tacked on a harmless Light Punch at the end on the third frame. So most of the time, the Light Punch at the end doesn't cause any errors to occur.

And now let's say you accidentally hit the last two buttons too quickly so they register at the same time. Now what happens? The input you get will look like:




...and this is still a successful Plink! All three buttons, again, register only as Hard Punch, so that's still Hard Punch two frames in a row.

So anytime you have a link Combo that involves a Hard Punch or a Hard Kick, Triple Plinking is very useful. You can go ahead and piano all three buttons a bit faster than you normally would intentionally, because the majority of the results will lead to a successful Plink. So for Combos like Rufus's Bread N' Butter (Stand Light Kick into Stand Hard Punch), Cammy's Sako Combo (Close Standing Medium Punch into Crouching Hard Punch), or Balrog's Sweep Combo (Standing Light Punch into Crouching Hard Kick), Triple Plinking will make that link all the more easy to pull off.


So can I Triple Plink other buttons like Medium Punch or Medium Kick?
Technically you can, but again, in order to do that, it requires dangerous button combinations. For example, if you try to Triple Plink the Medium Kick with Light Kick and Light Punch, you might accidentally Throw. If you try to Triple Plink the Medium Kick with Medium Punch and Light Punch, you might accidentally Focus Attack. The reason the Triple Plinks work so well for the Hard Attacks is because most characters do not have any commands that involve those button combinations, so you can never get an unintended move.


I also heard something about Double Plinking involving four buttons and something about Plinking with these other buttons and...
Okay, okay. Stop right there. There is no Double Plinking involving a ton of buttons and stuff like that. I mean, there are some crazy things you can do. For example, after a close ranged Crouching Medium Punch with Ryu, both Crouching Medium Punch and Crouching Medium Kick can Combo after that. So technically, if you can find a way to Twister your Fingers just right so you Plink both buttons to give yourself a FOUR frame window to land your link so that your Input Display looks like this:






...over the span of exactly four frames, hey, man, more power to you. Good luck with that, okay? But, yeah... there really isn't any such thing as Double Plinking.


I heard something about "Blinking." What on earth is that?
Alioune from France recently discovered a bug in the way Street Fighter IV registers button inputs. Plinking can occur whenever you hit two buttons in a row. And weirdly enough, one of those buttons that can count as an input is... the Back Button!

Thus, "Blinking" basically stands for "Back-Plinking" if you are on the XBox 360. I suppose on the PlayStation 3, it would be called "Slinking" for "Select-Plinking?" I don't know, but it does work on both systems with those respective buttons. Now that button does nothing in the middle of combat, so technically speaking it has the LOWEST priority of all the buttons. And that means it can be used to Plink any button. So all the caveats I said earlier about Plinking Light Attacks and such all go out the window with Blinking. You can Plink Light Punch with the Back Button and, on the Input Display, it'll read:




...because the Back Button doesn't register as anything!! It just doubles up the Light Punch! So yes, now you can Plink any button using the same Back button as the Plinker every time... even Light Punches and Light Kicks, and you won't get accidental Throws or Focus Attacks and what not.


That sounds really good!
It is.


Why don't people do it all the time?
Because the Back Button / Select Button is in a really awkward location. Plinking with it requires you to remove your left hand from the Joystick / D-Pad of your controller. So it's a really bad idea to use it.


Wait. My joystick has 8 buttons. Can't I map one of the extra buttons to nothing and use that?
That doesn't work. It works specifically with the Back / Select button. Unassigned buttons don't cut it.


Okay, so I'll map the 7th or 8th button to Back or Select.
You can't do that. It's not an option in the Button Config menu.


Fine. I'll REWIRE MY CONTROLLER so that one of those buttons is physically the Back / Select Button.
Yeah, you can do that. And it will work, too.


Isn't that cheating? Shouldn't it be banned?
Yeah, technically it is cheating in a way. But it's impossible to prove, really, and can you really accuse someone of doing such a thing by watching how they play? Kinda hard.

But here's the real truth: while Plinking is really useful to players and helps them accomplish a lot of things they normally wouldn't be able to accomplish consistently, if you are losing to a player who can "Blink" Light Punches and Light Kicks, you are probably losing for reasons MORE than just that. It gives people an advantage, but is it really that much bigger of an advantage to completely turn a fight around? Most likely not. I can only think of a couple of certain instances where it may make a difference, but I don't think it'll really actually ever be a huge factor. I mean, if you compare this to something like Roll Canceling in CvS2, Blinking barely registers on the game-changing scale. It's nothing to be really concerned about.


Can I ask a question you haven't covered here?
Yeah, go for it. Hope you found this guide helpful!

And for your entertainment, watch Desk (a.k.a. biffotasty) perform these combos. You can see him using a lot of Plinking, particularly in the Sakura Combos when he does the Close Standing Medium Kicks. Enjoy!