| Yes in "Tetris Guidelines". In fact, greater feats can be accomplished in modern Tetris games, thanks to these strong guidelines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmG0NcbrLTE Strong players practice these loops all the time. Its possible thanks to the "bag randomizer". -------- The BT Cannon is a TSpin double (4 damage + B2B bonus) + TSpin Triple (6 damage + B2B bonus), for a total of 11 damage. The DT-cannon followup is a TSpin Triple followed by TSpin Double for a total of 12 damage. Finally, the Perfect Clear is 10 damage, for a total of 33 damage per loop. -------- Other players practice triple-perfect clear starts, for 30-straight damage in some ~30 tetriminos dropped. But the BT-cannon + DT Cannon -> Perfect clear setup is a beautiful arrangement. The whole loop is carried out over 5 bags IIRC, or 35 pieces (5 bags * 7 pieces per bag == 35 sets of each piece). That's enough for the 4x T-pieces needed for the BT-cannon + DT Cannon (which offer significant amounts of damage) 35 pieces * 4 pieces == 140 minos, or 14 lines (the Tetris board is exactly 10 pieces wide). Which lines up with not only a perfect bag loop (the 35th piece finishes the bag, meaning piece#36 is a new bag, allowing you to loop), but also divides perfectly with 140 minos aka 14 lines, meaning the perfect clear is possible. ------ Thanks to Tetris Guidelines bag randomizer, bag#6 is effectively the same situation as bag#1 (start of a new bag). So you loop the sequence and can continuously apply the BT-cannon / DT-cannon / perfect clear loop almost perpetually. In practice, its "only" a 90%+ chance of continuing each loop, but that's a high enough probability to effectively use the technique in competitive games. EDIT: The existence of the "Hold Piece", in combination with the "easy to count" 7-bag randomizer, allows for some incredible feats in Tetris Guidelines that classic-Tetris players are unfamiliar with. Its a different game, more about quick-reaction speed and twitch reaction rather than the planning-centric classic-Tetris. But its these attributes that make Tetris-Guideline games better for player-vs-player setups. Practiced strategies are more reliable and less contingent on luck. |
It's true that there's a lot of different builds (I'm personally more partial to the albatross special than DT cannons) and builds are not only related to what you can build, also how you should respond to your opponent. Like, is the game even fun when you're just spamming t-spins with Tafokint's T-spin factory?
I'm a pretty highly ranked Tetris player, top ten in Finland in T99, Tetr.io and Puyo Puyo Tetris and somewhere in the top 100 as well, and in reality I think fancier builds like DT-cannons are too fragile and reliant on a clean-ish stack that they're not even viable in high level play. If you take ten seconds to set up a tetris or 15 seconds for a triple T-spin then you're gonna get spammed to death before you can reply with your fancy build.
In modern PVP Tetris I think there's only three tactics. If you're not too technical, you need be fast at tetrises and hope you can outpace your opponent.
If you're slower, you have to deal more damage in the same time or less = T-spins for double damage. It took me a year of practicing to intuitively start leaving t-spin doubles in more unconventional setups. There's the risk of being outpaced and spammed but the double damage mitigates it a bit.
Third option is comboing. I think it's the hardest to pull off but it's also the most effective. With a three wide hole it's fairly easy to get a combo going but there's always a huge risk of topping out by a badly timed attack from the opponent. Four wide is harder to keep going but it's safer.
Depending on the game and network code, combo builds can be game breaking and actually stagger the enemy so that they can't even reply to your attacks. It is however the least effective build in terms of how many pieces you need and the return damage for each clear and there's the most unknowns in how you're supposed to stack.
But to sum up in short, I don't think "builds" per se are the way to go in PVP. The "stack, attack and reply" formula simply leaves too large holes for your opponent to attack and it's not variable enough. Seeing parts of builds as patterns, like using a roof on a T-shaped hole to build a triple T-spin is useful if you can figure it out whilst clearing garbage and keeping a constant battering on your enemy going.
Personally, I think TTC forcing guidelines on single player games is boring. TGM TAP+ was the pinnacle in terms of game behavior and algorithms, IMO holds and the floor kicks in Terror Instinct made everything a bit too easy and all the difficulty comes from being ridiculously fast instead of being super meticulous and eloquent in your stacking.