Hey guys i’ve been playing gouken for about 6 months now but i’m struggling to get past the 1000pp gap. The problems im having is dealing with immense pressure from the opposition. It seems as if gouken cant do anything if they are jab spamming him to death as everything i try to counter with gets counter-hit.
I have the basics down, i.e combos that lead into ult 2 and his b n b Strong->low fierce-> hadoken FADC stuff. I can do them quite effectively in a lot of matches but it just seems that i become to predictable aswell.
The only way i can seem to “Get in” with gouken is his demon flip, but the problem is everyone blocks my stuff for so long and then suddenly SHORYUKEN. And once im knocked down i get fucked up something chronic.
I really really want to improve, i play everyday and do my best to learn from my mistakes but it seems that everyone has something that i dont, and i was wondering if anyone could help me see why.
Below are 2 links, 1 containing a montage of a losing streak i had (the rose match youll see what i mean by “i cant seem to do counter or do anything”), and the other containing a video of me playing a ryu, who i dominate to start, but once he gets in a rhythm he just counter hits me i think 5 times in a row, everytime i try and do something. Please ignore some of my fuck ups like me not doing my ultra 2 after ex palm, i was extremely frustrated and i fucked up a lot of inputs.
I dont expect an easy answer, but i just need some advice that is gonna help me stop those who just constantly rush me down. Please be as detailed as possible. Thanks.
Not an expert by any means (about 2k PP) but here’s what I see:
you open yourself too much. Stop empty focusing or at least FADC when you see they’re not going to work. Tatsu is extremely risky on its own, if you whiff you get a full punish and that can lose you the round. Don’t throw palms from nowhere hoping they’ll land, they’re kinda predictable and easily punishable. I like wakeup kongos as well, but it can be risky, use scarcely.
get in your range. You’re trying to get close to the opponent when this is not Gouken’s strength. Stay mid-screen and zone the hell out of them. Use more LP fireballs, esp against Ryus who usually think they’re the best fireballers around (but they’re not, you are). Hold your fireballs so they’re not predictable, space them out a little from time to time so as not to fall into a rhythm. Zoning only can make a huge difference in a round.
be patient. Instead of going in using your 1 block string, either mix it up more (throw more, lk flip>air parry, flip>grab, cr. mp>fireball) or wait it out. Learn to be better at blocking, esp. crossups, and teching. Don’t waste your meter. And when a mediocre Ryu tries to crossup>SRK you, block and punish. Wait for the right time and go for it. Once they’re down, either mix up your flips or go back to your range and zone. Once you’re comfortable with that, try to bait them and profit.
As the person before me said, you need to cancel some focuses, not let them rip every time. You eat double damage every time because you absorb the first attack and then get hit by the second. Practice when to let go of the focus and when to cancel it with a dash. Forward dash is very fast, use it more.
Thanks for the advice. I can see what you both mean.
Nobody can seem to answer the problem with footsies though. Why is it if a ryu/ken/cammy get in close i have no way to get them off, or even counter any of there moves? Surely i cant JUST really on a lucky kongo read or perfect throw teching?
<blockquote class=“Quote” rel=“GuyJohnson”>STUFF</blockquote>
Ok…so what you need to do is stop playing online for a while. I see what you’re saying about people rushing you down and everything but its not due to them being great or anything…and tbh honest its not that you suck or anything, its that you lack alot of the meta game. To start off, our bnb is not cl.st.mp, cr.hp, lp hado. Its cl.st.mp, cr.hp, ex palm which allows a follow up of your choice. Second, you need to stop taking projectile chip damage. That shit adds up. I saw you block about 4-5 hado’s in a row when you could’ve easily neutral jumped them as you were no where near your opponent. You should always, first, neutral jump them if you can and second option, fadc them to build Ultra meter (never diagonal jump over them). And third is the meta portion. You need to learn when to block, when to poke, when to fireball, when to predict and when to not do all of those things. You should go on youtube and watch Kyo Anton as imo opinion is the best at poking and spacing. Dont just watch him play, look at the spacing and analyze the thought process behind certain pokes and decisions being made. After that check out Strawberry and Infiltration and really analyze their playstyle because they are masters at spacing, fireballing and decision making as well. Then after you get done with that study Bullcat because he doesnt fireball at all. He relies on Goukens lateral movement, power and godlike normals. Do allllll of that while training in training mode for a few hours a day and practicing what you’ve learned…face Ryu with his Ultra 2 and on the hardest difficulty setting. Play and really learn how to space things out. Learn the recovery on our fireball and when you can move after. Take about 4 days and work on just defending…no attacking at all. Just let the cpu beat on you while blocking while you mix 70% teching and the other 30% split between ex flip/kongo/and backdash. Take another few days to work on looking for patterns. The quicker you can pick up on patterns, the quicker you can exploit your opponent and take away all of their options. I feel like you havent really filled the void of what type of Gouken you want to be yet. After you work on all of these things you’ll start to develop your own playstyle whether it be a zoner, rushdown, footsie based or a mix of two or all of those things. After you figure out all of these things, THEN you go online and play. You play people in endless and you’ll get to apply what you’ve learned while at the same time learning all the 40 matchups back and forth. From there you’ll be essentially done and will be in the zone of just honing your skills and building on all that you’ve learned.
This was very long but I felt like you needed the help and wanted specifics. Its such an uphill battle with Gouken but once you reach a certain level it gets good. I apologize if its not as easy as saying,“Hey, you need to not fireball there”. That doesnt tell you anything. You need to work on the things I mentioned above and it will make you a better player overall instead of teaching you to not do this one thing in that one instance. Hope this helped.
This post is not meant to insult you (great way to start a post lol)
This is the same issue all Goukens have to face. Those characters (Ryu/Cammy/80% of the cast) are playing to their strengths with counter hit fishing and making openings. Your defense needs to be better then their offense and you need to know how to avoid or get out of the suck. In short, at certain distances and against certain characters, pressing buttons trying to “outmash” them will get you knocked out. My theory is if I feel like trying to outmash them but know that will get me hit, I kongo or block. I find my space and then use my normals to keep them out of theirs.
Dek’s advice is good. Your reactions are not there yet. Blocking the computer on hard difficulty will help you recognize where you can punish and how. Too many times in your montage where I saw a 300+ point Gouken punish (after a blocked shoryuken, for example), you saw a grab or sweep or even got counter hit. Try to maximize your punish opportunities!
Spacing. That is all.
You need to work on your defense and you need to learn when kongo is good and when it is bad. I didn’t see you use it much so I’m assuming you don’t trust it. It’s not just for panicky defense. Kongo tip #43: Empty jump in front of a punch happy Ken and kongo as you land…good fun! LEARN KONGO.
You abuse ex meter. Gouken should always have 1 bar in stock in case he lands a bnb starter like cl.st.mp or needs to get out of a hairy situation. In other words, just because you have an ex bar doesn’t mean it’s a great time to ex flip to nothing.
Flip grabs and tick throws. You mentioned that your offense was getting you nowhere…and that’s mostly true. If the other player only has to worry about 2/3rds of your options, you are making it easy mode for them. So, I use throws a lot…especially because there’s a timing difference between forward throw and back throw which can mess people up. Once you train them to tech a lot, you can land all sorts of punishes by simply doing something other than throwing. Kongo tip #12: Kongo feeds on crouch techs.
Backdash can create space and help you avoid being in their “strong zone” but it’s not anywhere as good as I would like it. It works well when you are about to be put in that “close up” situation you were asking about.
Mostly, 6 months is not a lot of time with Gouken, or any character really. At 6 months of Gouken time, I was finally getting the hang of following up an ex palm with corner juggles. I didn’t start employing hado > FADC antics until a year or so in, because I didn’t have the timing/muscle memory. You are doing well for 6 months. Follow the advice here. Once you understand Gouken’s spacing (which I think is about 75% of his game or more) you can then start getting deep with match up strategies. Also, stop thinking about points. The point system is poorly designed IMO.
you need to practice your anti-airs.
i don’t remember you punishing a jumper in either video.
a character like gouken, who is weak on the inside, cannot allow anyone to jump in on him.
a jump-in is a cheap way to close distance and set up up combos, but it is unsafe. don’t let other players jump on you
the number 1 thing you need to do, in my opinion, is practice hitting jumpers with ex tatsu.
you’ll want to know when to use crouching hard punch, crouching middle kick and close standing hard kick, and sometimes you’ll want to meet people in the air with jumping middle punch or jump back hard kick, but the main tool you have to tell jumpers to get lost is ex tatsu.
it does 200 damage and 200 stun.
after one or two of those they’ll have it in their heads that they are going to take big damage for jumping in and they’ll stop doing it so much.
that’s great for you.
there are a lot of things you could do to improve your game, but if you ex tatsu someone every time they jump at you, if you make it your mission, you should see an immediate and drastic increase in points.
practicing it will also place you at the range where gouken is strongest.
you’ll start getting this feeling “oh, i’m too close to use ex tatsu” and you’ll want to move out to that range - instant spacing improvement for you.
Match-up Experience
I’ve found that almost 75% of my game is built on knowing the other player’s character almost as well as he does for the Gouken match-up. Unfortunately, that’s come almost entirely from getting the shit stomped out of me by that same character at some other point. A lot of my biggest “Ah Ha!” moments are playing pro-longed sets with the same player (I don’t do endless as often as I should, so it’s when someone just keeps re-joining my ranked games over and over). It’s shit like realizing that far st. fp will stuff ken’s far st. mk with frame advantage and also Akuma’s far st. hk which they both like to do at range just outside of cr.mk. The more match-up knowledge you get, the more you’ll hopefully realize there is no general strategy for Gouken, you’re Gouken should look a little (or a lot) different for almost every single match-up.
I think ultimately what I have a hard time explaining to my friends that are still learning their characters is that you need to have a feel for your high percentage plays based on your spacing and your frame +/-. You just blocked Ryu’s cr.mp instead of a jab? That changes your tech timing. If they follow-up with a second cr. mp, I’d bet 2 to 1 odds they are going to block string out with a cr.mk to hado. If you know that, you can plan out a strategy and then start getting your muscle memory up to speed with where your planned response is at.
Defense
Everyone has their tips for how to get your defense where it needs to be and almost all of the advice is good (training room defense only, spend a whole evening practicing Anti-Air with normals and ex tatsu, etc). My little learning point was to just give up on using ex.tatsu when I’m getting pressured hard. People who know my play style will frame trap/endless pressure me for days if they are mixing in armor breakers since I almost never use Ex. tatsu to get them off. If you’re tossing out Ex. tatsu during non-jump in pressure, it means you’re nervous that your defense isn’t going to hold up and you’re hoping to get lucky because the risk/reward ratio for any any other situation is F’ing terrible. You need to have complete faith in the fact that you can crouch tech/ high-low block your way out of any non-grapple situation until there’s that natural shift in the momentum tide for you to reset back to neutral frame advantage/spacing and orchestrate an attack.
In summary - go get your ass beat and don’t worry about the points, they’ll come from just being out there. When fighting, focus on THAT particular match, against THAT particular character, played by THAT particular person.
P.S. some of those are 3k+ PP players that would give lots of us some serious struggles, don’t go in expecting to win - go in hoping to learn how a good player will plan to square up against your old man.
<font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>Thanks for the advice, especially you Climaxter, you actually put a lot of my questions to rest. I just cant believe that most matches i have to get beat on and do my best to tech (which im not that good at) to win. </span></font><br><br><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>Its really hard to explain the problems i have with this game because people say i need to understand the fundamentals like frame data teching fadc etc, but i have a grasp of that to a basic level. All the most frustrating things i find so hard to comprehend are what so many players understand (that may not make much sense). Its as if the majority of players have read some secret guide of the more unspoken aspects of the game. I know that sounds stupid but thats the only way i can explain it : /.</span></font><br><br><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>As a reward for everyones help tough, here is a video of me getting completely butt-fucked by a Yun. ENJOY!</span></font><br><br><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RDc0EPfA34&feature=youtu.be</span></font><div><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”><br></span></font></div><div><font face=“Arial, Verdana” size=“2”><span style=“line-height: normal;”>I tried everything on wakeup, i swear nothing worked. I know this dude was obviously alot better than me but i think this has to be one of (11) the worst beatings i’ve ever had.<br></span></font><br></div>
Yun is clearly one of Gouken’s worst match-ups, it seems that every thing he does has better priority. You can always try and kongo your way out of the divekicks, but this is unsafe and won’t work for long. I usually try to be more aggressive with Yuns, for a purely psychological advantage. Because if they know what they’re doing it’s over.<br>
<p>Here, watch this fight of mine. This was a mirror match. A couple of days after this I suffered a hand injury, as a result of gaming. It was the second time I got the injury so I haven’t played since.</p><p>I still laugh at getting perfected in the 2nd round. I had around 70pp (my previous highest was 2500pp on a different account) and Trinitron had 3000pp. Good game.</p><p><a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG-s4wOWa5o”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG-s4wOWa5o</a></p>
Guy Johnson. I wonder how your Gouken is doing these days? The one thing I would recommend next to all the other advice is to stop crouch teching AS much. Unless your timing is impeccable you are just un-blocking every time you do that. If you feel a tick grab is coming stand and grab. There are a lot more frames to tech a grab. Also - mind games =D.