Floored State
Certain attacks, specials, DMs, and throws will place the player in a knockdown state as in any fighting game. When knocked down, the player is immune to all but OTG (off the ground) attacks but is placed at a large disadvantage while the standing opponent is free to act. There are two types of Floored States, detailed below.
Soft Knockdown
This is the more common knockdown, which allows the grounded player to quickly roll backwards to recover fast by pressing 
+ 
just before the character hits the ground. This 'quick rise' technique reduces the amount of time the player is on the ground, which generally leaves less time for the opponent to move into a setup, and in certain instances a quick rise can be used to punish botched combos.
- While recovery rolling often keeps the player safe from ambiguous roll setups and meaty attacks, occasionally deciding to stay floored can mess with the opponent's next setup and can therefore sidestep their most powerful mixup. The risk to this option is that the opponent could react to the longer knockdown to set up a crossup, meaty hop, or ambiguous roll, or move to a favorable spacing.
- Quick-rising carries an additional risk. On wakeup from a hard knockdown or after a hitreset, a player has about 8 frames of throw invulnerability. Quick-rising negates all throw invulnerability, so the rising player can be put into immediate grab mixups.
Hard Knockdown
The rarer and often more valuable of the two knockdowns. The downed player cannot quickstand from this type of floored state which in turn leaves the standing player with a guaranteed timing for the next course of action. Not all hard knockdowns leave the offensive player with a large frame advantage, so the strongest hard knockdowns are those with positional and frame advantage afterward.
Knowing which options are possible after a hard knockdown is important when considering how to maintain the initiative with a stronger okizeme. As an example:
- Vice can end her HD combos with either her instant grab DM (
×2 + 
), her standard instant grab (
+ 
), or her shoulder tackle and splash (
+ > 
+ ). All three of these options result in a hard knockdown, but each results in a different spacing and frame advantage for the Vice player. The DM grab deals the most damage of the three options but throws the opponent backward and fullscreen which prevents the player from getting back in on the opponent. The tackle option keeps the opponent in front of the player, but Vice bounces back just out of the corner and recovers only a fraction of a second faster than the opponent. Her instant grab deals the least amount of damage of all three options but keeps the opponent in front of the player and gives Vice an enormous frame advantage and plenty of close offensive options afterward.
- As a rule of thumb, most DM's and Neomaxes deal the most damage as combo enders but often leave the player with minimal frame advantage.
