Soul Calibur 5 – How to Perform a Guard Impact

The trick to doing just guard

To do the just guard, you have to press and let go of the guard button (for a total press of four frames or less) while your opponent is mid swing. You have to have already let go of the button before the attack connects to activate just guard. You have to let go of guard roughly 0.25 seconds before the hit connects.

The best way I've found to practice

Go to training and select a fairly slow character like Nightmare or Astaroth as your opponent. Set the CPU to counter after attack. The computer will automatically attack after each time you do. It's pretty easy to nail down the exact timing when you initiate it with your own attack. Attack, just guard, attack, just guard. After a while you'll be getting it on every try.

Practical timing in a live match

The three scenarios I've found the easiest to time against real opponents are:

1. Immediately after a guard. Many less experienced players will counterattack as soon as they're done blocking. If you practice using the method described above, it should be pretty easy to time when that counterattack is coming.

2. The last hit of an obvious combo. Most characters in the game have their trademark combos that a large portion of players use (usually B, B). Getting the timing between these two hits down is relatively easy. Guard the first hit and use just guard on the second. The timing should come naturally after some practice.

3. Unblockables. Probably the hardest of these three to time, but totally worth it if the people you play against favor using these. Unblockables are generally slow, so you have a second or two to prepare yourself and get the timing just right.

In the context of a 3D fighter, a fuzzy guard is basically a technique that allows you to block attacks in multiple hitboxes at once, usually low and mid (mid may also include throws). The big problem is that a fuzzy guard can effectively neutralize a good mix-up - that is, approaches or attacks that are intended to leave the defender guessing.

From what I've seen about the SCV fuzzy guard so far, it seems to hurt mix-ups pretty badly. The specific way it works has been outlined and demonstrated on YouTube:

By holding guard and tapping up (instead of holding up) your character will begin his jump animation but will not actually leave the ground. During that entire time your character is in a guard state and will block any moves that come in contact with him. However, if your opponent throws any low move (normal or special) the game will detect it and force your character to jump, successfully avoiding the low attack. This makes many mix-ups in the game easily avoidable, as long as you can get the tapping down.

IOW, tapping up while guarding will cause you to visibly start to jump, but instead resume guarding. At this point, if you get hit with a mid/high, you will block it. However, if your opponent throws a low attack while doing this, you will automatically jump and avoid it. The effect is that you are thus blocking multiple hitboxes simultaneously because the game made the "best choice" for you by either blocking or jumping.

YouTube demo (same video as in the post linked above; Note: contains some language):

Also note: In 2D fighters "fuzzy guard" often has a completely different meaning, but I won't go into that here since it's not immediately relevant.