My first instinct would be a mix of teleport and EX DP.
All of Gief’s green hands are very punishable on block, hell his non-EX green hands are fully punishable ON HIT! You can do a full BnB punish (cr.mp or cl.hp, lk.tatsu, hp.SRK) or at the very least you can punish it by mashing either HP SRK or HK tatsu to get a reversal and guaranteed punish, this specially is a very good option to use online because if the connection has any kind of lag it’ll be very hard to punish with normals.
Also, make sure to always try those scenarios in training mode, for example record Gief doing a green hand then crouch block, play it and start punishing it on block. Not only will doing that help you figure out what’s the best way to punish a move, but being trained to keep on punishing it in training mode will make it a lot easier to react to in a real match and punish because you’re used to it by now.
Oh and btw, a good Geif won’t give you many opportunities to block his Green hands, those blocked greenhand into SPD mixups only work online and it’s a very scrubby tactic.
- use Gief for 2 weeks. Visit Gief forum and read.
- training room with dummy gief doing GH and try to find an answer.
Beside this obvious solution to learn other chars weaknesses, I can tell you all GH are punishable by “5 framers” on hit and block except ex ones “on hit”.
Basically you need to mash a quick reversal everytime you eat a GH. If you’re good, you can even use a normal to combo punish. But this is why people eat SPD after GH usualy they don’t know when the blockstun end and lose too mush frames waiting.
You need to make him respect you first by punishing all those random GH and close sweep / st MK / st HK / … they all have - thousand frames disadvantage.
Next is to mix block with n.jump / backdash / frame trap / Teleport.
It’s very very very hard for Gief players to keep up against an opponent that mix a lot but stay focused on avoiding SPD while not running jumping away like a pussy. Because even if Gief have a lot of life, everytime he guess wrong, you can combo him hard with all his negative frames.
Lariat is a great anti air against meaties because of invincibility, but against delayed air attack like our dive, it’s a challenge to time the Lariat to beat it. So you can abuse dive kick (early “high in the air” flip).
Everytime I do a demon flip and it ends up crossing over the person I whiff a palm and try to shoot a red fireball immediately when I land, yet somehow I get a shoryuken EVERY SINGLE TIME. How is this even happening? Its like complete opposite inputs.
What’s probably happening is that your inputs get messed up during the switch and sfiv’s input leniency is pretty big. You just need to delay it a bit, but really, why would you want to go for that in the first place?
yeah, don’t hold down back during the flight 
keep neutral. or you’ll most likely input :df: :d: :db: 
when you will land and reset your guard on the right side. And if you try to attack with a punch, you’ll get a shaku fireball.
He wanted to get a shaku, and keeps getting sureyoucan instead. Why you’d want to cross-up shaku, I don’t know. It’s worth noting that the game interprets downback->forward as a half-circle forward, what’s inbetween doesn’t matter.
yes y the fuck r u going 4 cross over shaku?
If you even do a 4 frame cr.lk that’s not meaty will get you wakeup thrown, yet you want to pull off a 25 frame move right next to them on wakeup lol?
I’ve narrowed it down to Akuma/Rufus. I don’t like Sagat in this, and I just don’t like Gouken at all. I can’t seem to combo into U2 properly. I either get it way late, or not at all. Do you have to do the input super fast?
depends on what you cancel it from.
depends on the controller you use.
I never succeed in cr.MP or MK to U2 (ok with MK I could do it sometimes but rarely). That’s before I get a Hori FE. And now I can cr.MP U2 more than MK, go figure…
And for those cr MP/MK xx U2 you need to input the first :ub: KKK the exact same time the normal hit. So yeah pretty fast.
Am I wasting my time using Akuma as a secondary? (Main is Bison). Everyone always tells me I am due to how indepth Akuma is (character specific combos etc). My other ideas were Cammy/Rufus/Sagat/Gouken/Yun/Ibuki/Rose, heck even Yang (but he’s really not worth it atm). I feel like I’m doing okay so far against bad matchups/ones I hate. Except a Guile I faced, but 3 year Guile > 3 day Akuma so yeah, I just kept playing it to learn it, I know the Bison/Guile matchup, I just hate it.
if everything u say is true, keep playing akuma and doing what ur doing
Heh, alright. Gonna go into training mode in a few. Another thing with Bison, not much to play around with in training mode. The only character I have a real problem with now is Cammy (everyone does). I’ve been winning against her lately, but still frustrating. Also, I just saw my other post on the same page lol. What a character crisis.
I’ve been maining Akuma and alt Bison since Vanilla SF4 so I can relate to this I guess.
Even though those 2 aren’t the best combination in terms of matchups, I still think it works out very well overall (I use him almost always vs Viper and Ibuki instead of Akuma for example) specially because they play very differently so you won’t get bored. Guile is DEFINITELY MUCH EASIER with Akuma than Bison, that matchup is just stupid bad 8-2 at the very least.
If you’re willing to put in some work, I say go for Akuma, he doesn’t have many character specific combos btw (tatsu > sweep being the main thing to worry about), he has more character specific setups, but I say don’t worry about those, solid fundamentals alone will get you much further with Akuma than focusing on his vortex, the amount of options he has compared to Bison’s very linear playstyle is mind boggling and a ton of fun.
Focus on his main BnBs, pokes, fireballs, safejumps and anti airs at first, then go deeper with the character specific setups later.
However if you just want a secondary to throw out there every once in a while without working on him much, then no Akuma won’t be that useful, Cammy can get you further with less work IMO.
Ah, thanks for the input. Yeah, I’m currently stuck between bad matchups, or just using him as a main. Currently I’m just using him online against everyone. I’ve been dabbling around with Cammy a bit too, kinda got frustrated cause I always drop her links online (cant go to offline casuals as much these days). As for Guile, that matchup is crazy dumb, you know need to be average with Guile and it’s hell.
Okay guys, I’ve been playing SF4 since the release, but I was never that good tbh.
I’ve got fundamentals but I feel that I suffer ALOT from making bad decisions, and then suffering afterwards when I get pressured about it.
Now i’ve probably ‘‘mained’’ 80% of the cast up until now (Yeah…) but I feel like I’m settling in on Akuma right now. I know he is getting nerfed for Ultra, but I really don’t care, since the nerfs (up until now anyway) don’t seem ground breaking anyways.
Now, i feel like my worst matchups are Ryu, Balrog, Adon
Any tips against these mofos?
Also, I’d like to know what people do as their ‘‘training’’ in general. I got into an offline community recently and that’s a part of why I’m very motivated to start playing seriously now. For now, I’ve only attended one tournament, but we’ll see how far I’ll get. (Wasn’t playing Gouki anyway)
Anyways, sorry for the long writeup, but TL:DR version, having trouble against good Balrog, Adon, Ryus. Also what should I study on to get better in general? I know footsies take a long ass time to develop, but any pointers?
Thanks for anyone who ctually reads my long-ass post!
nothing better than a good recording of one match we could watch to begin with.
I know mate, I’ll try to get a match recorded asap. Now sick, so I won’t be playing for a few days tho ;/
I’m about to do the same as soon as I get my internet fixed