I feel like birdie is great against almost every character as long as they’re in st. mk range. If you mistime an AA from a jump in or miss it completely, it’s always huge trouble. As a lot of you mentioned, cammy and nash seem very hard. Cammy can just walk in and out the birdie’s range and spam her own st. mk because it has amazing range and is faster too so you don’t really have the best tools to keep her at bay.
I actually find ryu being the hardest matchup. When I was using ryu birdie was coincidentially the character I had the easiest time against. He’s got several tools to get past fireballs but none of them are reliable enough to deal with a ryu player who is spacing and using the proper fireball strengths properly.
I’m not sure I agree with that. When you have a meter EX Dolphin Dive is pretty easy to use to shut down the fireball game, and if they start using it as a mid range poke, they are in stand MK range.
First thing I would say to anyone struggling with Fang is to ignore the poison when you play.
The poison actually takes a long time before it becomes a threat when Fang is locking you down with blockstrings and coming at you up close, but he really needs Vtrigger for that to become a serious threat imo. If you have a Fang that wants to walk himself back into a corner, let him do it. He wont stay in the corner for long if you stand around at full screen filling your face with doughnuts. If he does stay in the corner, if you get to hanging drop range, he can’t throw anymore poison, because you can chain him on reaction. If he puts the poison cloud on the floor while you are close to him then you can f.hp through it, or you can EX bullhorn or Vtrig bullhead through it if he tries pressing buttons from behind the cloud, or you can dive through his projectiles with EX revenger.
I feel like once I am in on Fang, I just have to be aware of st.hp which is crazy good on block and his 2 hit normals. Sometimes they panic and do the command dash through your legs, but if you are looking for it you can throw out a lk to put a stop to it. Once I am in I just go ham sandwich with the normal pressure and try to make him want to keep holding back so I can start to tack on grabs to the end of the later pressure strings. I don’t think Fang has much in the way of a ‘get off me’ tool without spending meter, so if you can close him down early in the game all the better.
Just my thoughts on the matchup, by no means a definitive guide and I have yet to play a gold or higher level Fang player to see how this holds up against a good player.
i just disagree with the most of people here, in my experience birdie struggles only against nash and sim, and he is ok vs chun, vega, bison, cammy and definitely has de advantage vs ryu, ken, mika, laura etc.
Against ryu we should practice punish fireballs with bullhorn in reaction. also birdie has the super, and ex bull horn to punish ryu’s fireball in a reactionary way. Chains, bull revenger, df.hp to punish it in anticipation. In midrange birdie footsies are better than ryu, ryu has to take a lot of risk (like jumping, f.hp or dashing in or just walking) to get a chance to do damage or try to play very conservative zoning hoping birdie don’t react in time. also if you analice de damage potencial, birdie has de advantage, the comeback potential is huge if birdie has v.trigger and the bull head specially the ex version becomes a nightmare for ryu.
Yeah… No. Birdie st.mk is 8 frames start-up and Cammy st.mk is 9 frames start-up. Cammy recovers 3-frames quicker on whiff, but they are both -2 on block.
Ryu is also one of Birdie’s best match-ups so far.
Agreed. Even when I lose to some of the other characters, I know it’s because of me just learning the match up and the character and not because it’s not in my favor.
Hmmm I guess I’ll practice my range then, it seems to outpoke all of my own attempts.
Another issue I’m having is dealing with punishing chun’s tiger knee motion kicks. Twice already I’ve been stuck in a loop of them approaching with tiger knee kicks and then a bnb blockstring, rinse and repeat. Standing lk got caught in a frame trap and trying to AA it with c. mp would trade at best. Any suggestions?
Do keep in mind that Cammy’s hitboxes on sMK are better than Birdie’s. If spaced well she can still stuff Birdie’s sMK when they’re both in active frames.
Birdies st.mk is good against her c.hk
after the shoulder tackle, she is - so unless they jump after it or backdash, Birdies command grab will hit her out of her grab/buttons. I reccomend checking with 2x st.lk after blocking it for the first time to see what habit the opponent has.
I feel like can is very good in this matchup, unless she has meter for the ex shoulder with armor.
You can regular bullhorn through her fireball, if she goes for maximum charged fb in neutral you can get her with dive
A few questions. (I’m alternating between Super Silver and Silver to give you an idea of the level of opponents)…
Bison: This match up feels very difficult to me. He has pressure that feels air-tight. It feels like I have the footsies advantage but then I get opened up with a single mistake and there is very little I can do but block, V-reversal, or c.lk c.lk out of pressure. It just feels ironclad, and difficult to punish – like I chip away bits of health while he eats my lifebar on a single mistake. Any suggestions?
Sim: Honestly, what the fuck? Right now I dodge YF and eat donuts for fast V-Trigger, and make use of f+HP. These options feel inconsistent at best. Granted, a lot of my problems probably arise from a lack of match up knowledge (not too many Sims in ranked it seems) but I feel unable to approach in almost any situation. Even if I get in, he seems slippery and soon I’m at full screen again. Any tips here?
Mika: I simply get steam rolled by competent Mikas. General guidance would be appreciated.
Everyone else, doing ok against. So many rage quitters still though. So…many.
I really don’t agree with you, bullhorn is not fast or far enough to punish a zoning Ryu on reaction. It goes so very short, unless you do EX, but you hardly have meter to do all that.
I feel that both Ryu and Nash are quite hard for Birdie, since they both tend to avoid the midrange where Birdie is really good, unless they have fireballs covering their approach.
My 2 cents. Ryu is at the moment my favorite matchup as Birdie.
You don’t need to do anything, you don’t need to take risks, it’s all up to Ryu and he has no good way to open or mix you up. What can Ryu do other than jump, fireball or play footsies? Cr.mp beats like every jumpin I’ve seen. Birdie footsies are better and convert into more damage. Any blocked sweep, any blocked fireball from up close gives you st.mp x ex.head which you can extend with meter. You can just hang back, eat donuts, throw bottle that goes under his fireball and go in for a mixup, you don’t need to do much more. Ryu has to be super careful with throwing fireballs as birdie has like 6 ways to punish those. Ryu doesn’t win this by zoning or keeping away either. All he can do is chuck plasma. Birdie can build meter, throw bottle for mixup, punish obvious fireballs with revenger or ex .chains. Slightly closer than full screen Ryu needs to worry about ex.revenger, ex.chains, jumpins, F+HP and even the slide. Try playing this matchup as Ryu and you’ll see how careful they have to be. If you block a DP = GG, you’re taking half life. The only times I lose to a Ryu is if he’s just a way better player who whiff punishes my stuff and just out footsies me or can read and punish me with tick throws and wakeup pressure.
Okay. Quick question about R. Mika. What’s the best way to punish her F. HK on block, and what’s the best normal to throw out to stuff it? I keep getting pressured by that kick, and Mikas seem to love to go into a hit-or-command-throw guessing game on block.
This site has it as -4 on block, so I guess I should practice that LK into L.Bullhead link?
She doesn’t have a F.HK. I’ll assume you mean the dropkick, hold down HK.
If it’s charged then it’s +2 so you either block or get away. Mika most likely will go for st.lk st.mp (block it) to continue pressure or a command grab (back dash, jump or ex.SPD).
If it’s not charged (why the hell not??) and in that case you can st.lk x l.bullhead if you’re close (this is a cancel, not a link). It’s a cancel because you cancel the st.lk animation into a special. A link is when you let a move finish animation and then time the 2nd move right after the first one with no breaks in between so it comboes.
ps. also try F+HP (bull charge) to beat her dropkick, or if you see her charging, neutral jump or ex.chain on reaction.
when ryu throws a hadoken he extend his hurt box toward, so the bullhorn hit his arms, it’s very reactionable if you practice it. anyway there are no risk in that because you are only releasing a button, if you miss you only get a bit of chipp damage, if you get it you do damage/know down.
on other topic, i have some troubles against bison, the midrange game look advantageous at first glance but when they are going nuts with raw scissors, dash in and stomps/devil reverse to bait my anti airs i feel very inconsistent on my winning, do you know a way to stop that and force bison to play a more grounded classical neutral game?.