>I been in a rut for well over a year, but I feel like I’m
>finally making progress. Currently got a 69% win rate over my
>last 100 matches when I’m usually a sub 50% player.

i dropped from ~60% to less than 30% in casuals over the course of a few weeks about a month back. losing was not fun and i wasn't learning much from it so i decided to take a week or two off. when i came back to it i got my win rate in casuals back up over 50%. i do think that a lot of folks playing new characters helped me get that rate up but taking a break from the game did most of the heavy lifting

>I think it’s from playing Sam Sho.
>
>Never played the Sam Sho series before, but I’m in love with
>the new game. I love that slow tense shit. I’m playing a low
>tier in Darli against an army of Genjuros and barely holding
>on to a 40% win rate, but I think it’s making me a better
>fighting game player.

my understanding is samsho is almost all neutral so playing it is likely improving your overall understanding of footsies, which require a lot of patience and focus, especially in such an offensive game as SFV

i've found that playing several fighting games a great way to get better at fighting games in general, as they all share the same general concepts and mechanics but tend to specialize in a few areas. guilty gear and KOF are useful for execution; blazblue and guilty gear are good for oki; guilty gear and under night are good for combo routing; samsho, soul calibur, tekken are good for neutral, etc. if you're into a deep genre like fighting games it's good to break away every now and then and try your hand on a variant. maybe you can pull something useful from it that you can apply to the game you're taking a break from