Turn on auto parry in training so you can see and hear the timing. It just takes practice to learn the rhythm and be consistent enough to sustain a multi-hit parry.
Just try all the characters and play the one you like most. No one online is good enough to make the tiers a problem, and no one plays Yun or Chun either.
The thing I’d say is find out what your character’s best super is, and use it. Bam, you’re now ahead of 80% of the other guys online.
I’m pretty crappy compared to a lot of people here, and I’ve only been playing about a year and a half, and mostly online, but here’s some advicce anyway.
Don’t call Yun a cheeseball character. Ken is considered better than Yun by some of the best players these days, or at least as good. Yun is also really hard to learn how to use well, where other characters have a much easier time cheesing in lag (Urien and Alex especially). I suppose that’s just my opinion, but even doing Yun’s bnb (and finding legit ways to start it) seems way harder to me than any other character’s mandatory damage dealing methods. Also, people drop on Yun a lot, which is pretty frustrating for me especially, because I have way too many subs, and I’m not even good with Yun so usually when I’m winning I feel like I deserve it…
Also, don’t get hung up on parries at this stage of the game. Learning to block well is way more important. Learn how to parry stuff in training mode, sure, but don’t be too stressed about using it. Parrying is almost always a risk. Knowing how to parry stuff is great, but it’s not mandatory very often. If you watch high level play, you’ll see a lot less parrying than you see from a lot of online players. Honestly, I still suck at it a lot, but I’m at least good enough that I win around 60% of my ranked matches; which is sort of a meaningless statistic, but it’s better than the 1/4 I was sitting at for the first few months I played. I don’t understand how some people parry so much online, because in lag I can’t even parry spammed moves consistently.
For you main, basically everyone except Sean and Twelve are viable, but if you actually want to get good at the game please do not use either of them. The odds of there being a breakthrough 16 years into this game’s life for either of them seems quite low. I’d mess around with learning bnbs and basic gameplay strats for whoever you find fun, and when you start feeling like you’re using somebody correctly, stick with that character. That’s what I did with Dudley, anyway. He was the 5th character I tried to main, and things went better with him than Yang, Q, Akuma, or Yun pretty much instantly, so I stuck with him. I still sub way too many characters, but I try to at least use Dudley somewhat every time I play.
Oh, and don’t try to start out with Akuma either, he’s too complicated. Learn Ken or Ryu before learning Akuma, because their basics apply. People told me that, and I got super angry, thinking they were being condescending. But it turns out its true. Akuma has tons of tricks that there’s no sense in learning at the point of the game you’re at. You’ll always be able to cheese some people with jump back fireballs online (I still struggle against it with dudley sometimes), but that kind of play doesn’t foster improvement. Also, pretty much everybody online (including me, when used him) gets way too greedy with Raging Demon and KKZ. They are RARELY worth using. His SA1 is a better option 90%+ of the time. His EX supers are satisfying, but very hard to guarantee. People use them as hail marrys way too much online, and you’ll wind up throwing the match against players who are paying attention. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been about to lose to an Akuma, but I won instead because I baited KKZ, which gave me free EX machinegun combo.
Hopefully some of that was useful.
Character strength doesn’t matter at a beginner to intermediate level.
I believe you must learn the game before learning a character.
Lose the attitude about “YES I do study strategies.” You must be open minded and realize you know nothing.
Watching match videos is one of the best tools. And not randoms streams. I mean top player videos.
Learn your combos.
you should focus on less games and less characters. pick a character and stick with it. no matter who you pick there are videos of top players playing that character (besides Sean). try to understand what they do, try to do the things they do, and if you don’t understand why they don’t work for you, you can come back here with more specific questions 
It’s very hard to give people generic tips to improve. If you’re a real beginner you just have a lot of legwork in front of you.
Focus on the basics first, it’s going to make you better at playing any character and even any game. Learn when to push what buttons(and at what ranges), learn to anti-air, learn to punish things on whiff and block, learn basic offensive mix-up patterns. Play a character you like, regardless of whether the character is considered strong or weak: it doesn’t matter much before people start getting really good.
Don’t bother with parrying before you’ve got the basics down. It’s a great tool when you understand how the game “flows”, but it’s probably going to get you killed a lot before you reach that level.
I have a question about typical forward-moving specials (Alex elbows, Urien tackles, Q dash attacks, Yun Lungepunch, Remy blue-something-kick, probably others): how safe/unsafe do they tend to be on block? I know Alex’s elbows are pretty bad on block, and Q is semi-safe but negative, but I have no idea about the other ones. I’ve seen a lot of good Uriens in particular just throw out tackles, so I’m a bit curious to how safe that is as Urien is a character I like quite a bit myself.
Alex Slash Elbow: LK: -2, MK/HK: -8, EX: -6
Urien Chariot Tackle: LK: -10, MK: -11, HK: -12, EX: -9
Q Dash Punch: LP/MP: -2, HP: -3, EX: -21
Yun Dash Punch: LP/MP/HP: -11, EX: -2
Remy Cold Blue Kick: LK/MK: -4, HK: -6, EX: -2 (All are +5 if only the tip of his foot hits you at the end of the animation)
I read on here and other places on the internet that some players like to practice using arcade mode. Sounds like a good idea but I was wondering what should I focus on when playing arcade mode. Here are things I can think of:
-Spacing/Ground Game
-Punishing any unsafe move at a moment’s notice
-Hit confirming and continuing offense
Any other suggestions?
Spacing/ground game is something I think you need a human opponent to practice against, simply because an entity that reads your inputs and has a preprogrammed AI will play a completely different game compared to a human.
Case in point: one of my training partners in ST played a guy who was a high-score monster in that game, as in “perfect the fuck out of every CPU and then beat Shin Akuma”. He was extremely proficient at playing against the AI, but he got completely destroyed when he tried to play an actual human being that reacted completely differently in almost any scenario.
As for punishing stuff and hit-confirming? Yeah, arcade works for that. =)
i use arcade mode for spacing and ground game. CPU does not act like a human, but it sometimes does unorthodox things that give me ideas.
i use arcade mode to practice execution on my punishes from different ranges, cpu is pretty predictable after a while
It was tested only on PS2 version: Yun’s EX lunge will cross all characters, except Ibuki, Q, Remy and Yang, if they parry it at the corner. This is a bug?
After some games yesterday where a lot of my losses stemmed from getting jumped in on, or rather getting my attempted AA option beaten, I’ve realized I need to change my approach to the anti-air game. I usually expend a lot of my focus on the ground game to get whiff punishes/dash in throws and tend to not react as well as I’d like to people taking to the air. I’ve mitigated this weakness for quite some time by trying to space myself at the end of the jump arc of my opponent to get a clean DP that’s easy to react to (i.e. the ST approach), but as people have gotten better, this approach seems worse and worse, especially since I’m not really standing at that spot anymore when playing the ground game / trying to get in.
The options I tend to use with Ken, and the disadvantages I can see with each of them, are:
One option I realize I don’t use enough is OS parry into jab. I thought a bit about it last night, and it seems like a really hard option to beat, and possibly one that nets me a mix-up afterwards, even though the damage itself is abysmal, so it starts making sense when people say that s.LP is the best AA in the game (though I assume there’s usually a parry OS in there as well). Is there anything to this option that I should know before I start trying to implement it? And are there any other good AA options I’m missing out on?
A lot of people will parry immediately again if they parry something while jumping in.
Since the next expected thing is either another jab if you’re just mashing jabs or something.
Or a special cancel, or even super.
You didn’t mention special cancels, i’m not sure why. but they usually have really varied timing. like shoryu, hadou and tatsu are all going to hit different at different times.
It’s all so specific though. A lot depends on the jump arc and characters. You already know the answers it’s just keeping it fresh. Including just letting them land/blocking.
If Q is jumping at you with that. block or get out of the way.
Consider, looking at Q sometime, to understand. He can’t do anything huge from a jump in, really unless he hits that. You block that or aren’t even there, then what is he going to do? Just flail or put himself in a bad position by even wanting to jump at you in a neutral position where you have all the options.
If its online, say so considering latency removes options and jumps occur more for risk reward.
You can go deeper and look at how he might use that as a block tick to make you stand there and not be prepared for CDB Command Grab. So you don’t want to try backdash after blocking, but back dash before he kicks you is fine. Since you may be in a bad spot to commit. Like already in the corner. But I guess you need to explain more on how that’s not in your favor, like you are too late and eating the fat combo, or what happened after he got sent down with the trade that even helped him. Since him getting knocked out of the air with a special should be a knockdown for you. Its not a position where he gets to combo off of the trade.
Not really a prediction. You can react to jumps fine, where that’s considered now they made a mistake and dash under only if they gave you the room to do that and they’re not already all over you incoming. Versus jumping on you waking up, them doing it in that position being meaty forcing it on you, not giving you the room/time to dash. They had the advantage to set it up and take away those options.
There was a player who trained himself to dash on reaction, I think to just jump backs, he talked about once. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do the same to jump forward. Or in your way remember tendencies of a player, and what they can do + what they like to do here, so even though its a prediction, its an educated one you expected in that situation.
Yeah, that makes sense!
can we ban the announcer guy.
yeah as haxalot said on walk unders it has everything to do with just knowing when they decide to jump if they’re close enough to make it or not.
it’s a prediction on the jumpers part not the one being jumped-in on. the jumper is expecting you to do something like throw out a normal and wants to get a fat jump-in combo. risky.
When I said that the DP trade with Q j.HK wasn’t in my favor, I meant damage wise. MP or HP DP definitely do less damage than a j.HK on a trade, LP I believe is closer but still does less damage that what I’m trading with.
It should also be noted that a lot of the problems I’m mentioning here comes from playing that very same Q-player offline, and 70% of my losses against him comes from him getting a jump-in. He makes a point of not trying to play the mid-range game against me and therefore jumps a lot, and a lot of the time I’m not getting the good end of the bargain when he does. After seeing your responses here, it just makes it even more clear that this problem is entirely my own fault for having sloppy AAs / making bad decisions in the AA department.
Thanks for the insights, guys. =)
If that’s often an issue for you just try crouching when he jumps in. Because you’re crouching the only timing when the jump in will hit is smaller, meaning your timing for a successful parry becomes more obvious/easier (he can’t do an early jump in to mess with you since you’re too low to be hit).
Also since Q’s fierce/roundhouse are so pretty slow you’ll see it coming since he will have to do it long before he is anywhere near the ground.
So, new random question: when you guys decide to go for a parry, what factors influence that decision? Currently I’m mostly using parries in a rather limited fashion, i.e. punishing telegraphed moves, or as part of semi-gimmicky setups (like using a negative-on-block move up close -> parry). Most my attempts to be fancy or clever with parries beyond that end up me getting hit by something, so I think my decision making behind parrying needs some thought.