Not entirely clear about what the umbrella of universal pointers is meant to summarize but I'm just gonna paraphrase Sajam here a bit, as you get higher and higher in ranks the reality is there aren't just gonna be really any universal catch all things to improve on. The things to improve on are gonna become more and more specific.
Like you can say learn match ups better but that is also just a lot of playing and memorization of situations and movedata and like you're still tackling that one by one(move by move) and you're not downloading an entire character into your brain all at once. There is just no universal "learn to anti air and this will be something you can apply across almost all your matches".
I guess and this is something that people generally do not do(cause to most it isn't fun) but I think the value from my own experience(from other games) and from what I know from others and even from pros talking about it in other games is any game that has replays learn to use that.
Learning how you can take out self critical info from your own replays or replays from other players is I guess one of those more universal skills that can speed up improvement a lot.
Scout yourself, your habits, and what other people are keying off on. You'll find holes in your game, in areas that can be worked on, optimized or whatever. It's not like you can't get better in neutral, or at footsies, or even anti airing. Even your combo selection, heat of the moment you might not always realize, oh I could have saved some drive bar here, or honestly I need to get better confirms in this situation.
Adaptability is imo the hardest skill in fighting games, the better you get. That takes reps, and some self scouting to go along with genuinely being able to process game info quicker and apply adjustments.
A lot
of the fun in this game for me, and part of my struggle at times has been not realizing in the moment how bad I can be about not picking up on a certain habit that has an easy answer, or just spending more drive gauge than I needed on drc combos, when a simple counter hit confirm into special into knockdown was gonna let me run my offense anyway.
Blanka really became enemy public number 1 after evo japan lmao
Rightfully so, lightning beast is some bullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllshit. His heavy kick is insane too, especially as a button he can throw from drive rush. Shits infuriating to try to check.
This is one of my biggest disappointments with some of the footage we been saying is how in tact the rest of the systems mechanics seem to be. NO one is noticing more of an extended hurt box on drive rushes, or a pc state, or tap parry being more punishable, and by all accounts the damage output still looks nutty. Think this game would benefit from some damage reduction across the board, slow down the meter gain to boot.