you see the little blue circle above your actions? make sure you're pointing that in some direction every turn. what it does is Influence the Direction you get knocked back when the enemy hits you (hence the name DI). the longer their combo goes on for, the stronger your DI gets, so make sure you're always using it. some helpful directions to DI are DI away on the ground, or DI in towards ninja specifically as they have a blindspot infront of them. in the air, you can DI up and away to try to get as much distance from them as possible, or DI down to try to reach the ground and wake up sooner.

https://youtu.be/xRlxYnpGLLw

see the little X icons under your healthbar? those are your free cancels. what they do is allow you to act if your opponent gets a turn during your attack. in english, that means if you're already committed to an attack and your opponent has a chance to react to it, it lets you either stop your attack and do something else, or continue your attack and hope they think you'll do something different. its really good for creating nasty 50/50s for your opponent to try to guess. you free cancel a move by pressing the switch at the bottom center of the screen, the same way as you flip a move. something to note is that free canceling puts both players at +0, meaning they act at the same time. this also means that if the move would otherwise be blocked, the opponent will instead parry it and be able to punish you.

you can only use free cancels as you use a move, not after you use a move. these do not behave like instant or whiff cancels. you can also only use them on melee moves, not projectiles or other moves like backsway.

you should pretty much always use these in neutral, as it makes guessing what you're going to do a multistep process, making your opponent guess multiple times, giving you greater odds of hitting them. however, you only have 2 of them, and the only way to get them back is to hit the opponent, or get hit yourself.

https://youtu.be/oN_EE93L9AA

we've all heard the story of the tortoise and the hare. the same principle taught in that story applies here too. rushing in blindly is often not the best strategy. instead, try to wait for your opponent to commit to something they cant back out of, and punish them from there. of course, this doesn't mean always use wait as an opener, as theres plenty of moves that punish that such as cowboy horizontal slice. instead, if you're not in any immediate danger, let your opponent do their thing and react accordingly.

in addition to this, if your opponent is extremely far away and will take a long time to get near you again, (e.g. near the ceiling while you're on the floor), use your hustle move. not only does it deal psychological damage to your opponent irl, but if you hold it for long enough you get a free bar of super meter.

https://youtu.be/19QPrgdXZj4

now that you've learned these techniques, remember that your opponent can also use them against you. in multiplayer you're able to press the buttons on their side of the screen to see what will happen if they choose any given action. use this to try and predict what they will do ahead of time, and stop them in their tracks before they can carry out their plan. after a fight has been going on for a while, or you've fought a specific person multiple times, you'll get a sense for what they're going to do before they do it. then, you'll be able to read what they do. but in return, they will also learn your habits. make sure you're always picking something different each time, and try not to be predictable.