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How to Organize 'Mental Stack' in Fighting Games
Mental stack often shapes the course of a match, but not every player understands exactly what it is and how it affects them. Let’s break it down.
The core of fighting games is recognizing situations and responding accordingly. Like any head-to-head sport, you have to directly outplay your opponent to win, but this is where the complexity lies. You have to consider each possible move your opponent can make, and be ready for any number of them. Sometimes, this isn’t realistic. That’s what mental stack is.
What is Mental Stack?
Mental stack is how much a player has to keep track of during a match. It might sound like hyperbole, but mental stack might be the single most important factor in a fighting game set. It informs the decisions of both parties, can incentivize going for normally risky options, and cause slip-ups that wouldn’t usually happen.
We can all recall watching matches won on a hail mary, or lost seemingly asleep at the wheel. The layers stacked that led to those results were piled too high.
Fighting games are set apart from slower games in part due to the moment to moment action. Many fighting game fans appreciate more interaction between players, and don’t want to see games that were decided the second the match started.
Jump ins are just one part of the mental stack
© Capcom
What goes into the mental stack?
Due to this, there’s often many options both players can take at any given moment. Games are ever evolving, which is why games like SF2 and Smash Melee are played competitively to this day. Watching high level gameplay of those titles will somehow manage to surprise any viewer.
The mental stack preys on the instincts built up while learning the game. At some point you find yourself checking Drive Rush with a jab, anti airing to discourage jumps, and whiff punishing slow swings with the perfectly fast and spaced normal. Congrats, you are now a prime target for mental stacking.
Having to consider all these possible futures is what constitutes the mental stack. A jump in attack in Granblue Fantasy Versus might take a relatively long time to land, so it technically should be anti aired every time. But when you’re worried about Charlotta’s Shining Onslaught hitting you from full screen, the jump in takes a little longer to register to you.
Charlotta's Shining Onslaught
© Cygames
It doesn’t end when neutral does, it’s present when you’re on offense and defense. On offense, you have to consider the opponent’s defensive options critically, as an errant wake-up super might have you on the other side of a knockdown. Even in the most oppressive fighting games, there’s usually a few answers to get you out. Each of those answers puts different amounts of weight on the offensive player’s mind, shaping their decisions.
This ever present itch at the back of the players mind is just that at first, an itch. But it can quickly spiral if you aren’t keeping up well with your opponent’s decision making. You might always tech throws in DBFZ vs the training mode recording, but when you throw a quick airdash overhead on the next slot, the throws start to seem a little harder to tech.
How does mental stack affect you?
The point is, mental stack is an almost physical load that the players have to bear. This weight erodes reactions, increasing the hit rate of options that usually never result in successful openings. Xrd Ky’s Greed Sever is a 24 frame overhead, and it almost always gets blocked. But trust me, with his other mixups, 5D overhead, and aggressive pressure resets, everyone gets hit by a Greed Sever or 2. Let’s see you be the outlier.
Mental stack affects players of all skill levels too, arguably affects better players more, as they will be more cognizant of the options the other player has available to them. Even Daigo can’t tech every throw.
That’s an important piece of the puzzle, the only stacks that can be placed are of options the opponent is aware of. Beginners will have to build up their understanding of the game, its mechanics, and the capabilities of the roster as well, before having a full grasp on what is coming. Once you show off the building blocks of a complete game plan, you can then go off-road and throw opponents for a loop with risky options and callouts.
You might know that against a newer player, many setups go out the window, since they might not even get the first layer that makes your strategies legitimate to a knowledgeable player. High level opponents will understand and (sometimes) respect the groundwork you did to inform your decisions.
How do you overcome the mental stack?
Once you are cognizant of these options, you’ve only just got to the starting line. Combating mental stack is a skill that can be worked on like any other, bit by bit, situation by situation. In the beginning, even just two options is a lot to think about, but with time and experience, it becomes easier to manage.
Mental stack is much harder to combat as a new player since there is so much friction between what their brain wants and getting the input to the controller in time to succeed. Once you’ve grinded enough, you can cut down, “see jump, remember your anti air, remember what button it is, push button” to, “see jump, anti air” through muscle memory.
It might seem like top players have insane reactions, but often they have just been in similar situations so often, they are quicker to recognize what’s happening and have practiced their counterplay just as much. Sorry to break the illusion. But, even the best players aren’t immune to mental stack, they’ll forget that chip damage can kill too sometimes.
Can mental stack be avoided?
Since a heavy mental stack is so taxing, often players will opt to simply clear themselves of demanding situations altogether. Think of Guilty Gear’s I-NO, her mixup capability is so potent, it’s probably better to try to fight your way out of it, or try to escape the situation entirely than attempt to block.
That’s still going to be risky, but sometimes risk is better than having your mental stack piled too high, since that will make you prone to mistakes either way. Like always in FGs, these tactics go both ways. By keeping you locked down at the other side of the screen, UMVC3 Morrigan players are keeping themselves away from your potent Zero/Dante/Vergil mixups.
It’s not always choosing between a rock and a hard place. Players have developed ways to counter multiple options at once to remove layers of the mental stack. Take Guilty Gear’s throw OS for example. In GG, you can hide a throw input within normals, so players cleverly used this to combat falling mix ups where the opponent lands close for a low, or airdashes for an overhead. They overlay their anti air 6P with throw (6/4HS), by inputting 6P+HS. It seems like a lot to remember at first, but it's actually a key step in having less to think about in the long run.
Does mental stack ever go away?
Mental stack management is a journey unique to each player. Between option selects, thoughtful situational choices, and some honest, dedicated lab time, you’ll figure out any game, and learn to use the mental stack to crush the other player.
The best way we know to lessen the mental stack is keeping our energy levels up. As you keep playing, the stack will get easier to maintain.
