Best way I found how to deal with Yuri is to pressure her. She has two wakeup options if you make sure you’re not too patient on her wakup. The two being chewbacca aka yuri dp or ex command grab, which both of these moves can be safe jumped and she can be punished if in corner. If she pressures you, alternate guard her and make her jump. You can get ballsy and do a s.A or B to stop her jump or just run forward, this isnt advised because she can obviously poke you to stop the run. Using shen, she poke her, if you have two stocks and in corner, most yuri’s really bring the heat, so just super saiyan them or guard attack/cancel to get out of danger. She is indeed a nuisance but she can be “dealt” with.
I definitely have hit her out of the nonsense with CABC with Shen when she gets stupid or obvious with the divekick setups, but outside of that it just feels like if i don’t have a life lead I’m hella boned. If she sits back it’s so hard to go at her because of Stand B anti-air and meter options. Alternate guarding her seems like a really really REALLY risky option, for me the command grab isn’t the problem, it’s just going straight back into dive-kick pressure. Like Stand C, xx demon flip dive kick, then mix in low pokes into another flip, and sooner or later that dumbass move is going to cross up, or back turn me mid block and mindfuck me.
I’ve burned 2 or 3 CD counters in a round before just trying to stay neutral, and it never feels like I can keep her away. I just feel like I must be missing something hella obvious, but for the life of me I just don’t know where to start with her. Most of the time unless she makes a bad mistake, or i get a scrubby crouch C, Stand B, HD intterrupt, i get blowed up pretty bad.
I’ll keep the alt guard and safe jump advice in mind, I just have a feeling it’s not quite the starting point for where I personally am making mistakes in the matchup.
It would help a lot if you’d be able to upload vids. If you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, it’s hard for us to know, and we can only give general advice.
Anyway, exploit the fact that you actually have air dominance. Yes, once Yuri is in the air, and you’re on the floor, it sucks, but j.CD should beat out a good part of her options. His j.CD is soooo dominant, Yuri will be forced to advance from the ground, once she does that, there’s room for reaction supers and just generally whoring st.C all day.
And if you get even one solid j.CD on her, it’s go time. Safejump her knockdown, and just hop all day. Her options are extremely limited once she’s actually forced to start blocking, and every meter she spends on GCCD is a victory for you, as, the less meter she has, the more of an advantage you have at landing that random hit to do ridiculous damage.
I hope that helps. My experience with Yuri is extremely limited, so I’m kind of going off a ‘common sense’ feeling, and taking into account what I think the strengths and weaknesses of Shen are.
Phoenix - Thanks for the input man. Sadly we haven’t recorded the last few tourneys here so I don’t have any new footage to use as an example. I had the same thought process as you did when I first started having problems, I.E. just get her to sit still once and start the hop game. The main problem with this, as I’ve mentioned is her Stand B. I seriously don’t think most people have seen how amazingly stupid this move is. I get flat out destroyed in the hop game by it. In most situations, getting hop checked by Stand B is whatever, take your 50 damage and move on, (especially with Shen where risk-reward is still insanely in his favor to try and hop again). But with Yuri, getting anti-aired by stand B means she demon flips, air grabs you, and now you are in the awful mixup again.
Even J.CD has been getting blown up by this for me of late. I too expected J.CD to kind of be the great equalizer if i could get her to sit still, but it’s so easy to tap that quick stand move and just brush Shen off. In all honesty if I could find a way to slow down Stand B, even that would make a MASSIVE difference in trying to fight her.
Any suggestions for a good third character to join Ash and Mai on a team? I was thinking King or Ryo or Kula, since those are the characters I’m most comfortable with playstyle wise. EX Iori is another option for me, as far as ease and familiarity goes.
Sounds like you’re not mixing up or using all your options. As a shen player, I know the ropes. Once you somewhat get in, you do standing close C into forward+B, QCF+P, feint. At this point you have so many options and you are SAFE. If the Yuri player keeps using s.B to stop your hop, sweep her, or delay your hop. That’s when you can get in or use j.CD to safe hop her when she is getting up from the sweep or combo you landed. You can also just run up and far s.C her s.B once the autoguard comes in. Another option is after the feint, run up command grab because most players look for the hop. Since the hop is so fast, it’s hard to try and react to the command grab. I just gave you about 4 options to get in on yuri, here’s a 5th. After the feint, poke her with s.B, if she is giving you that much of a hard time, HD her if you have the meter. However, you could just poke her. Instead of feinting, you can always keep the charge from qcf+C, it’s about -4 on block, but most players don’t look for a Shen player to do his punch all the way through when not in a combo, which catches them off guard… take that as an advantage. Also after feint, you can neutral hop j.CD, I’m pretty sure that would beat Yuri’s s.B or trade in your favor. Hope you take these options and use them bro, as for getting mixed up, it’s always about 50/50 with Yuri, but eventually you should start learning her patterns like I have.
Depends on you’re playstyle, if you run EX Iori, it’s best to put him first or last since you use Ash. Ash is pretty meter heavy and he is usually anchor on most teams. Ryo can break guards easily but he can get blown up if an opponent times a rolll to go inside of Kouken, and it’s not safe on block or timed roll, which equals you getting hurt bad in most situations.
Kula is good, but she is somewhat meter heavy for damage. I suggest putting her second so she can have something to start with whether it’s a matchup in her favor or just having even 1 bar of meter.
King is an all purpose character and probably your best option to have on your team. She plays any position well and can be swapped at order select and it will have no difference on how effective she would be. I would suggest dropping Mai due to her weaknesses and the fact that she is meter heavy as well, but if that’s the character you want to run, then whatever.
Sounds good. I think I can go with King and then just Mai or Ash (not both) if ever. Thanks!
That’s cool. Y’all guys helping each other out. I’m sorry I don’t have internet at home to check out stuff and try to give input. So I’m happy everyone is learning together and giving each other feedback. Keep up the good work people. I’ll continue to try to sap the school’s internet then get kicked out of the library at the end of the day. Can’t pay them bills yo.
Ask anything, right?
Sorry I couldn’t find a Joe thread but, can anybody give me advice on how to land the Px4 qcb.p DC qcb.D part of his stun combos. It seems you can only get one hit of the Px4 before you cancel into the followup. Also, is there any shortcuts to doing the move (kind of like Honda hands in SF4)?
What are the most common/universal safe jump set ups in KoF?
I’ve been using command grab into cross up j.D with Beni as a “safe” jump in but I’m not really sure if its actually safe haha.
No such thing as a universal safejump setup. But yes, Beni’s command grab gives enough advantage to safejump. Crossing up also gives a bit of room to ‘screw up your safejump’ by a bit and still be okay, due to the opponent having to switch his inputs and such.
In general Hard knockdowns and resets are the best chances for you to hit safejumps. Softknockdowns are also possible, but the opponent can screw with oyu by not recovery rolling.
Unlike older KOF’s, the wakeuptimes for characters are almost universally the same now (Raiden being an exception), so once you’ve found a setup, or get the ‘feel’ for safejumping, you’re going to be consistent on everyone.
Joe’s stun combo as presented by Rogueyoshi
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Inputs for this combo are:
cr.Bx2, St.A, Forward+B, Ex Slash Kick, Tiger Kick(B), Bakretsuken finish, DC Heel Kick(D), Bakretsuken finish(second punch from finish MUST hit or it fails), Tiger Kick(B), Bakretsuken finish(both hits), DC Heel Kick, Bakretsuken finish(second hit only), Tiger Kick(B), Bakretsuken Finish, Bakretsuken(Juggle), Bakretsuken Finish, Neutral jump D.
The hard parts in the combo is indeed the Bakretsuken finishes needed to continue the combo. Rogueyoshi said they are 1 frame links from the other moves. However, to make this easier, once ex Slash Kick is done, do the Tiger Kick(B Version), during the ending animations of tiger kick, start hitting C at least 2 or 3 times. Immediately when Joe touches the ground, qcb+C, then Drive Cancel into Heel Kick. Treat the Heel kick the same way as the previous Tiger Kick, but Joe recovers faster from this move so you have to make sure you buffer bakretsuken earlier than before. Now timing comes in, and you have to make sure the last upper hit or second hit of the Bakretsuken finish is the only hit after Heel Kick to juggle your upcoming Tiger Kick. This part is not easy, but not too hard. After the tiger kick, baretsuken finish again into a Drive cancel, then you want to make sure the last hit of Bakretsuken connects for the next Tiger Kick just like before. Now here is the final and hard part. The next bakretsuken has to hit twice, which means you have to be a little lenient on the buffer for the finish because you have timed it so that last hit connects, there is a somewhat different timing(perhaps this is one of the 1 frame links rogueyoshi was talking about). After that, you juggle with basic Bakretsuken twice then do finish IMMEDIATELY after the second hit of normal Bakretsuken. Then you neutral jump D.
I myself have not gotten this stun down, I am down the last rep of bakretsuken. My advice for the bakretsuken fininishers is to start hitting C when you do tiger kick, and when you come down, just QCB+C. Hope that helps you out.
EDIT: You can shortcut the move like Honda, but it’s much hard because you only have two punch buttons compared to three. The latency for ex moves in the game is pretty high. You don’t have to hit both punch buttons at once for it, they just need to be within 2-3 frames of another for it to be done. Just turn inputs on in training mode and do A,C,A,C and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a 50/50 chance ex Bakretsuken will come out instead of normal. Which is what you do not want
Adding more to the Joe combos, just be sure to buffer your next special while your current one is still active: after you perform a dp+B, start mashing A/C to buffer the Bakuretsuken, then time qcb+[P] during the tail end of the DP to get an immediate ender. Even if it’s technically a 1 frame link (which I have no clue), his juggles are special-based so be sure to hold down the button for every special and the window will be increased dramatically.
In addition to Phoenix’s comments, sometimes you can use the old SF2 timing trick and base your safejump timing off of animations (usually from a hard knockdown). For instance, after landing Shen’s qcf qcf+P DM the opponent goes into a sliding hard knockdown, and if you base your hyper hop timing based off of when the opponent finally settles on the ground and stops sliding, you can get much more consistent results than arbitrarily feeling it out every time (especially since that DM can hit opponents at variable heights, so the SFIV method of whiffing normals doesn’t work in this case).
Thanks for the info phoenix/Sparkster, just one more question! How can I tell if I’ve found a safe jump set up? Do they hit at the waist like in SFIV?
Reversal speeds vary by character, but pretty much anything that’s 3 frame startup or slower is technically safejumpable, though some of those 3 frame moves are difficult (see Shen’s CABC super) to consistently safejump without having your timing/setup down pat. Honestly it’s going to be hard to test these in training mode since you’ll likely have to program a dummy to perform the safejump, then get the reversal timing yourself and see if your recorded setup can block in time.
But to answer your question, a safejump should hit very deep as a meaty though I’m not 100% sure you can aim for hitting waist height (especially with variable character heights like Raiden and Chin). You can get a really easy idea for how deep one should hit by doing EX Iori’s rekka > safejump followup, or just kick a Kyo and do hcb+K > super jump forward > j.whatever which hits deep enough to safejump any 4 frame or slower reversals. That should show your the height you’d wanna aim for.
I know that Ash isn’t used that often, but does anyone have any tips on how to play him?
I personally like to put out Genie to limit the movement of the enemy, then chuck out a ventose or two, but this is basic Ash play (afaik), but beyond that I don’t know that much about him.
Another really easy and super reliable safejump is qcf+A, qcf+P, P follow-up with EX kyo in the corner. If you instantly superjumps it safejumps practically everything even, 2 frame reversals. Only 0/1 frame reversals are not safejumpable.
But yeah there is no visual cue to ‘see’ if you hit a safejump, there isn’ t really something like that in SF4 either, despite you (Aervid) apparently thinking so. You’re going to have to record the dummy doing a safejump, and try to reversal it.
How to be aggressive with chin…
What are Takuma’s anti airs or how does he deal with them? I can’t seem to find a reliable anti air.