Hi, I'm Ryu Housen, the previous Steam Guide writer for this exact topic in Tekken 7. I have not always used this name (you might even say I'm "The Man Who Erased His Name"; thank the Yakuza series for that one), but I have now garnered a significant amount of experience playing Tekken since writing that guide over 6 years ago. That said, I felt in all that time, I never really needed to update it much, but now with a new game and new things to talk about, I thought why not rework that guide for Tekken 8?

The first thing I will say about Tekken as a whole is that it is very different from a lot of fighting games. There is a monumental barrier for beginners because there is an even bigger delineation between casual play and top level play. You might see a bunch of moves at casual play, but only see a few solid (or even arguably basic) moves in top level play. A lot of the learning process of Tekken is knowing what is actually good about your character and what moves you can weed out from the hundreds of things available to you. That being said, if you take nothing else from this, take your time with Tekken. There is no shortcut to getting better at it, and there is certainly no rush, either. That much was clear over the lifespan of Tekken 7, and it definitely won't change for Tekken 8.

Tekken 8's main mechanic is all about Heat. Funny quips about getting your character in Heat aside, you've got:

• A multitude of Heat Engagers, which put your character in a Heated state upon landing successfully
  
• The aforementioned Heat state, which enhances the character's moves and makes them deal chip damage
  
• Heat Smash, an enhanced attack that usually deals a ton of damage (essentially replacing Rage Drives)
  
• Heat Dash, which can be performed while in Heat after any Heat Engager, effectively acting as either a launcher, a pressure tool, or extra wall carry

Heat affects every character in a different way, and the game encourages you to use Heat Engagers to gain an advantage. As it's still relatively new, not all benefits from Heat have been explored and fleshed out, so experiment away.

Some things from Tekken 7 were also changed:

• (Feb 2 edit) Tornado replaces Screw entirely as the combo extender. Like Screw, it sends opponents up in the air, but unlike Screw, it can still be used at the wall (like Bound from T6 and TTT2), meaning the optimal combo route might involve saving your Tornado for the wall combo.
  
• Rage Arts are mostly homogenized (at least for now). All of them hit at the same speed, are always mids, and are always -15 on block (what does that mean? More on that later). (Feb 2 Edit) Asuka seems to be the only exception, being capable of charging her RA to make it safe and troll people into attacking it.
  
• Power crushes are safer to use if they've absorbed a move, but were not fast enough to actually punish said move; the difference in frame disadvantage may vary.

Some new stage hazards are also introduced, and some changes to existing ones are present as well:

• Wall Blast makes the opponent blast upwards into the air for extra juggle potential
  
• Wall Bound is essentially a Wall Blast that makes you switch sides
  
• Floor Blast is basically a Wall Blast but done with moves that Floor Break, on any part of the stage
  
• There are "hard" variations of Wall Breaks and Floor Breaks, which makes them require two moves to break instead of one

You are going to be here a LOT if you really want to improve yourself as a player. Learning things about characters, situational awareness, and just general fiddling around with a bunch of moves; it all begins here.

One thing I want to get out of the way as soon as possible is that training mode is never set up properly by default. You'll need to change at least a few options (highlighted above) as soon as you can. The first ones to change (highlighted in yellow) are "Action After a Hit or Block" and "Ground Technique". The former absolutely should not be set to its default, but rather "Block All". It may not occur to first-time players, but Tekken has always internally counted combos differently from other games. Most strings are not what would be considered natural combos, or moves that reliably link into its other hits without the opponent being able to block between them. This setting easily weeds out fake combos like that, though that being said, they could be made reliable on counter-hit or on backturned opponents; that's for you to figure out or look up on your own. "Ground Technique" is another important one, and as a starting point, I would set it to one of the "side ukemi" options. This prevents the dummy from taking damage against ground moves after knockdowns you can immediately act against. This is especially useful during combos that can be easily dropped, as well as at the wall, and That Blasted Salami made a short demonstrating the importance of the side ukemi there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jShAlbQEE8

The options highlighted in green are the ones I encourage you to experiment with. You can change the opponent actions to "block all" to see how safe your moves generally are (more on this later), or have them crouching to see if any of them change on a crouching opponent. Wake Up options certainly doesn't have to be just "Stand Up", you can have them side roll or back roll to see how those options can potentially avoid a grounded follow-up.

Tekken is all about knowledge checking and figuring out a solution to combat your opponent's options. A huge step in that direction is knowing how good those options actually are. If your opponent is only relying on a few moves, and they are still winning against you, you'll have to figure out what exactly they're doing, and if there's actually any sauce, or if they've just been cheesing you the whole time. More often than not, you will find a weakness somewhere. Maybe you can interrupt their string, or duck under it. Perhaps you can sidestep or backdash out of the way. Your character might even be able to nullify it entirely with a reversal, power crush, low parry, and so on. Again, you have a multitude of options to choose from, which is why Tekken is so complex.

The main way you'll do this is via the "defense" options in Training Mode for dummy recordings. You can do up to 8 of them now, and the frequency settings are streamlined to be a bit less confusing (though I would've preferred the Tekken 7 recording interface since it was faster). It might be better to record the moves yourself and have the dummy block or sidestep, so you know what's viable for the opponent.

If these moves do happen to be safe, or have too many options afterwards (which became increasingly common as the Tekken 7 seasons went on), it then falls on you to figure out mid-game what your opponent likes to do, and see if you can still try to retaliate afterward. For instance, if the frame advantage is on your side, you can start your pressure. These scenarios have never been easier to analyze, now that Tekken 8's replay function allows you to insert yourself into them and see what you could've done at any point in the match.

One of the later additions to Tekken 7 was Frame Data displays and Punishment Training. Regardless of how you felt about the former feature getting paywalled (I was admittedly stupid enough to defend Bamco for it at the time), it was a massive quality of life improvement in learning how to deal with moves effectively and learning your punish game in general.

Reading the frame data looks incredibly difficult at first, but it's actually not too bad. The "attack startup frames" are just the point at which the move starts hitting. In the example above, this move hits on frame 10, or you can also call it i10 for short (as an aside, the game is designed to run at 60 frames per second, so i10 means the move is hitting within 1/6 of a second). i10s are generally the fastest move a character can throw out (only exceptions like Yoshimitsu's Flash move or attack reversals come out faster than this), and always constitute a character's basic standing punish. If your character is crouching, i11 is the general basic punish. But when exactly can these moves punish anything?

The second line is "frame advantage". You may also notice that it's colour coded. If the number is positive or blue, it means you can move that many frames before your opponent can; thus, you have the advantage. When it's negative or red, it means your opponent can move for that many frames before you can, and thus a disadvantage is present. If the advantage or disadvantage is 10 or more, you can actually hit them before they can do anything, including blocking-- which constitutes a punish. In the example above, you have a move that is -15 on block. That means you (or the opponent, depending on the perspective) can use a move that is i15 or faster to punish this move. For most characters, this is actually where you can launch the opponent for those wacky juggle combos people associate Tekken with. Some characters can launch at i14, while others need a move that's -16 to launch (which can occasionally be seen as a weakness, especially against certain moves). Anything between -10 and -15 is usually a medium reward punish, which can garner heavy frame advantage, or a knockdown. Training mode's punishment training will usually (at least indirectly) give you all the moves that cover this punish range, so unlike early seasons of Tekken 7, there's much less fiddling around with movelists for punishes.

Note that the active frame on which a move hits does change the frame advantage. That's what the numbers in brackets from "attack startup frames" represent; they show you how long the move is active for. In this case, because it's (12-12), that tells you it only hits on frame 12; however, if it said something like (12-13), it would be able to hit on frame 12 AND 13, giving it two active frames. And because the frame advantage on the first active frame was -15, hitting on the second frame would make it -14, thus making the punish less severe (at least against most characters).

All that being said, the numbers don't give you everything. Well, in this case, they kinda do, considering the last number at the bottom of those screenshots is "distance from opponent". Some moves, upon landing or getting blocked, can make that number high enough that your punishes don't actually work due to the immense pushback. Paul's Deathfist (the thing that deals a colossal amount of damage) may be -17 if blocked on paper, but it generally pushes back the opponent more than 2 units away. More often than not, you'll have to find an alternate punish if possible; fortunately, training mode's Punishment Training will usually give you that move right off the bat, though consistency varies between characters.

Some moves, even despite this, are intended to be pseudo-safe. One example of this is Bryan's 3+4 move. Despite it being -13, most i13 moves and faster can't exactly hit it due to the immense pushback. In that case, you'll simply have to use the frame advantage in other ways.

Feb 2 edit: I will also discuss whiff punishing here. Regardless if it hits, gets blocked, or whiffs entirely, every move has a recovery time before the character is able to block again. Some moves like jabs are difficult to whiff punish, while huge, "Hail Mary" moves like Jack's d+1+2 are much easier to. Sadly, the frame data overlay does not give you the exact length of recovery period (previous modded overlays for Tekken 7 did), thus depriving you of the exact frame window you have to hit someone before they can recover and block. Either way, as long as the display in Training Mode says "punish", you will have hit them before they can do anything.

Creating these scenarios isn't too difficult. You might want to get your opponent to do something first by intentionally whiffing small, less committal moves like jabs, or use a move that pushes them back significantly. For example, even though Paul's qcb+2 is -9 on block, it pushes the opponent back a decent bit, meaning they can't actually do too much with their frame advantage. If they still try to poke from that distance, it likely won't hit you, meaning as soon as you see them do a move, you can instantly punish them for it, or if you're confident enough, get a combo out of their single mistake. Some moves, like Electric Wind God Fist, practically mandate a faster, easier punish because of their small recovery period, so don't worry too much if you can't launch everything.

Feb 12 edit: You might also be wondering now, since i10s are your fastest move, does that mean that any move that gives you more than +10 frame advantage guarantees a free followup? This is not necessarily the case. Most heat engagers on hit will be +17; however, your opponent is still free to block or duck any followup you choose to do. That being said, that's all they can do for those 17 frames. If your next move is i17 or faster, none of their moves will come out, and they cannot backdash or sidestep out of the way. Some moves do a ballerina stun that gives you more than +10, but these also do not guarantee any followups. King's f,F+1 is an example of this, and a notorious followup from him would be a Giant Swing, which while strong, can still be ducked. Some moves do allow for a genuine followup, such as Feng's backturn 1, into his b+1+2, which is a good way to get into Heat state.

(The next few sections are almost a direct copy and paste from the previous guide while I try to flesh things out)
Most of the time, you have to treat low attacks as chip damage. They’re designed to catch you off guard and hit you when you least expect it (so like the overheads in Street Fighter, where most attacks can just be blocked low; this is the opposite in Tekken, just so you’re aware). However, if you do actually block a low, keep in mind that there is a transitional stance between crouching and standing called “While Standing”. This is the stance you will often take when attempting to punish a low. Practice doing your While Standing moves. You can mess them up easily if you hit too many directions at once; you just have to let go of down-back as soon as you block and hit a button to do a While Standing move. You can hit any button, but some are preferred for their speed, (this is usually WS4 at i11), while others launch (usually WS2, though this wildly varies between characters). Launching options can also be bypassed entirely if your character has a "Rising Toe Kick" (or colloquially known as a hopkick).
However, if you've played Street Fighter like me, you're probably thinking "but wait, overheads in SF are much slower than these lows you're talking about" and you're right, most of them are pretty much reactable all the time. The same applies to certain lows in Tekken that are equally slow, but have much more reward for hitting. This is where the meme lows like Bryan's Snake Edge and Law's Dragon Tail come into play. Contrary to what you may have experienced, they ARE reactable, and they're pretty darn punishable too if you manage to block them, to the point where most characters can land their delayed hopkick that deals even more damage than a regular launching move. Practice blocking these lows as well; try recording multiple actions with the training dummy along with their reactable low and see if that helps you deal with them.

There are many more things that I could cover, like throw breaks, extending combos, neutral game and the like, but there are much better resources for this than a text guide. As mentioned earlier, That Blasted Salami ( https://www.youtube.com/@ThatBlastedSalami ) has been an excellent forerunner of Tekken knowledge and character overviews recently, and is currently working on overviews for Tekken 8. There are also other creators like Coorejam and Applay for the smaller stuff. Some older stuff for Tekken 7 is still relevant as well.

Do not be worried about your losses. If you’re losing a lot but you’ve only just started playing the game, that’s completely normal. If you're only starting out, you haven’t even reached that point where you should want to win. Instead, you should work on the little things, like landing any combo, punishing blocked lows or recognizing strings and acting accordingly. These do much more for your growth as a player than just beating someone who probably also doesn’t know what they’re doing. A match should be measured by how well you did those little things and not the outcome. Even if you only checked a few boxes, it’s better than having done none of them, and if you couldn’t do anything, well... you now have a checklist for things you need to work on, and maybe you’ll learn a lot more as you play more and figure things out.

That is my incredibly long, perhaps unnecessary rant on how to get better at Tekken 8. I hope you find it useful as many people previously had for my last take on this in Tekken 7. And remember; at the end of the day, it's just a video game. We're meant to have fun here. A calm, cool, and collected mind will always fare better.