Hello, I’m Snover and I’m a noob at SSF4 AE. I really want to learn about this game and improve, so here’s a fe questions:
What’s common sense for a competetive player in competetive play? (Like what they usually do, what they should do, what they need to know, etc, basics.)
I like to use Evil Ryu, any advice for him?
How to properly use a focus attack?
How to properly use a grab? ( I feel I’m a bit too predictable.)
How do I pull off the Ex shoryu to ultra combo?
Hey Snover,
I’m relatively new as well, so I’m sure more experienced people will be able to offer better advice. But I’ll do what I can!
Look up guides on footsies and fundamentals, there are quite a few in the stickies of this sub-forum
Evil Ryu relies heavily on his longer and more complex combos, your other questions suggest you might not be able to pull said combos off yet, so I would suggest switching to Ryu to learn the basics, as he is much more forgiving as a beginner with his bigger health pool, yet his moves are somewhat similar.
There are lots of ways to use focus attacks, main ones include absorbing projectiles and cancelling other moves. I’m not too hot on the best times to use focus attacks on their own though, so I’ll leave that for someone more experienced - generally when you think your opponent will just use the one strike that you can absorb and then counter attack with the focus release though I guess.
As above I’ll leave someone else to answer the ins and outs of that.
With E.Ryu I’m not 100% sure if that needs to FADC to work, but with Ryu it doesn’t need the FADC, just got to work on the timing (not 100% sure if it works mid screen? Might be corner only?)
If you are a noob, switch to regular Ryu for now, there is no benefit to playing E. Ryu and you are just playing a character with less health.
I’m gonna parrot these other guys and say that Ryu is basically E.Ryu but with no axe-kick tatsu-SRK combos, so he’s a lot easier to learn for a newbie. I also started out playing him, but quickly realized that I couldn’t win with him, much less style like Sakonoko. Ryu is the staple character for learning fundamentals, but feel free to move on after you think you’ve got them down.
Go in range where it’s best to avoid or counter hit the other guy with ease. Go in range where you can use your attacks with a high chance of hitting.
His ex downward kick can hit crouching players.
Break guard with it, release it early trying to hit the other guy who might want to counter attack or move away, absorb a hit and release, dash forward if it stuns, dash back if it’s a light counter. Viper can’t focus counter since it’s very slow, can spam those lightning gloves with high priority safe on block.
Walk forward, take a step back, walk forward grab.
Check if that’s in the combo challenge area.
Uh, folks. You don’t need optimal combos with E Ryu to do well. Simple buttons => light tatsu, shoryuken is enough. Heavy duty combo optimization doesn’t matter to the beginner one bit. It’s like telling some beginner to not play a KOF13 character because that character has a hard HD combo, when it’ll take a long time for the beginner to get to HD combos at all.
The difference between Ryu’s and E Ryu’s preferred spacings and the basic feel of their movement - Evil’s walk speed and dashes are so much better it’s not funny.
For Evil Ryu, the basic important stuff:
cr.mk spacing. It’s his most important button. You need to have a good feel for the range of that button. cr.mp and st.mk are important as well.
cr.mk xx fireball and cr.mk xx light tatsu, shoryuken are your bread and butter combos from footsie range.
Up close, something like cr.mp, cr.mp xx heavy tatsu or fireball should do fine.
Also, see the info packet in my signature. Has a bunch of good stuff for a beginner to the genre, from establishing a good mindset for learning to explanations for how the neutral game works to an indepth breakdown of the SF4 engine so you can understand why the stuff that works, works.
Recommended comfort moves for Evil Ryu: cr.mk, cr.hp, st.hp, cr.mp, fireball, j.mk, j.mk
Never, ever jump forward. Neutral and backwards jumps are allowed.
(cr. = crouching cl. = close standing st. = far standing, j. = diagonal jumping nj. = neutral jumping, lp/mp/hp = light/medium/heavy punch, lk/mk/hk for kicks respectively)
Komatik,
I see what you’re saying but the thing is most people crouchblock a ton, so cr.mk xx tatsu doesn’t work and gets you blown up, at least in my experience. The standard E. Ryu combo without optimization is H.P => m.Axe kick => cr.mp xx l.tatsu => shoryuken, and that can only easily be done either off of a punish, or off of an FADC’d fireball, which is why I personally think E.Ryu isn’t a great starting character. Too much stuff to learn to be effective and have fun at the same time (Again, for me). I chose to learn other characters and come back once I felt comfortable with spacing, timing, and FADCs.
That said, E. Ryu is still a fun character, and I love his design, and I’m not trying to tell people not to play him until they “git gud”. Just sharing why “noobs” might find find him frustrating.
Edit: E. Ryu does need to FADC his shoryuken to go into ultra if his opponent is grounded, you press SRK, then quickly use a focus attack, dash, then ultra. the timings are different for U1 and U2, and also midscreen vs corner.
