This is a little different than the others of these, but I sometimes don’t really know what to talk about here. I’m hoping that this will jumpstart some more discussion ideas as well.
I was just thinking that sometimes I’m talking to Ferris and I say something I think is super common knowledge and it’s new to him and I think he’s incredibly strong/smart.
So ask me questions, I have a bunch of random knowledge that I don’t quite know how to parse out properly and I can do a better job when specific questions are asked.
You mentioned a mp safeball setup vs around 10 members of the cast earlier, What are the safeball setups you use vs characters? And any unorthodox uses for ball in any matchups or in general?
Do you scout for vertical and b.jumps at mid screen and try to tag em with hk upball? I think it’s a lot of free damage I never used to go for.
If you have good tech for specific characters and situations you can ask what people do in those situations to spark discussion in case people are unsure what to ask.
I don’t generally use a string for mp safeballs because if I’ve forced my opponent to block already I can use an LP safeball that is way more lenient on me messing up.
The MP Safeball list is Ryu, Gief, E.Ryu, Hawk, Dan, Oni, Rose, and Guile. Little less than 10, but I also use it vs. Ken if the lifetotals are correct(his meterless punish only does 60 damage, and ball does 30ish chip and you actually get a fair number of counterhits on stepkick from it too). Charge characters who have broken their charge are also good targets.
yeah this is actually sometime I think is really smart. When lifetotals are close and time is running down people love to back jump, a chase down ex upball is just what the doctor ordered. Also really useful vs. Rufus, I probably get the majority of my nj aa upballs on him because they are always trying to throw off divekick AAs and trying to make you react to neutral jumps with stuff. In addition to this depending on the range I will also try for fierce ball AA if I think the person will throw out their normal early.
I think picking up on people bad habits to jump is really smart. I also like to use hop back to bait forward jumps when people are far then upball them. Another useful way to bait jump forward is to walk backwards, then walk forwards and cr.fierce the jump. For whatever reason people love jumping when you’re almost a full screen away, which isn’t safe vs. Blanka!
This is actually a pretty good idea, but it’s hard because a lot of what I do just seems pretty intuitive to me at this point.
I guess this is a good one though, you land a f.throw in the corner, whats your go to mixup and why?
Ok vs a 3 frame reversal I don’t really know. Vs 4 frame I would do dash hop crossup j.mk into st.mp counter hit trap. Safe vs reversals. Keeps them in the corner. Max pressure I know how to apply.
What are the strings for safeball? My entire sfiv career I’ve never used a safeball once. Not on purpose at least.
A safe jump setup wich keep them in the corner and don’t do the opposite.
With life lead I would do the same think like The Mullah said and after a st mp in guard to open mixup game.
If I don’t take the lead I would go for lp roll (dash or hop) following by overhead and link ultra.
If I really need the damage I like to do fp.ball over the body meaty cr.mk/lk/throw or lp.ball into the same. Lp.ball never crosses up but looks very much like it does. I manually time it so I spend a lot of time just sitting there and then ball into the corner. Because the distance and time is so small, reacting to what ball I used or what side I’m on is really hard. Especially if you can mix in MP ball to fake-fake cross up. When I do this I lean toward the fake crossup which keeps me out of the corner. I’ve often gotten a pretty good series into dizzy just with this. Backfires dramatically if I get DP’d or throw teched into the corner though.
If I have a life lead or don’t want to close a round I’ll often just do a j.mk safe jump though
See I’ve been using a different primary corner mixup off of f.throw since December. f.throw, whiff hp ball, whiff cr.strong, j.mk/hp/empty jump low. You guys should play with this you might like it. If you f.throw a bit farther out you want to whiff cl.mp though.
Throw mixups shouldn’t lose to reversals unless they lead to ultra, thats kind of how I feel now.
st.lp xx hp ball knocks down now in that situation so it’s now safe and doesn’t make you burn a bar if you are confident in the punish.
u1 is max damage.
st.jab xx ex ball fadc mp elec is max damage for 3 bars but it’s a huge waste unless it would kill, it only does like 70 more damage than the other options.
they are really variable based on where you start the string, but the most common are
cr.mk, cr.lk, st.lp xx lp ball
cr.mk, cr.lp xx lp ball
cr.lk, [cr.lk], cr.lp xx lp ball
cr.lk, [cr.lk], st.lp, cr.lp xx ball
cl.mp, cr.lk, st.lp xx lp ball
cr.mk, cr.mk xx lp ball
I don’t really use defined strings often anymore because I realize just a little bit of spacing makes a huge difference, and I’ve got much better at eyeballing where I start etc.
I think you have to really grind safeballs for them to be intuitive.
Yes that was what i was thinking. So really the reason it feels like a 12 frame normal is because when youre poking with it it actually is a 12 frame normal.
Oh, this seemed like a good place to ask Blanka related questions. I guess I’ll go look in a different thread for help.
Sorry I interrupted your high level thread.