You should know that my reaction neckbreaking sucks balls. I lost to an Akuma yesterday who was just teleporting each time he was down, and I couldn’t punish it -__-
Funny fact in my case: for this kind of matchup in which I don’t have that much defensive options (Dudley, Yun, Rufus, Viper), I usually go for “kill him before you get hit”. Moreover, even funnier, rushing Viper is very efficient. Viper players are used to have the match under control. And unlike Yun, they don’t have a mashable anti-air. I played Will2Pac at the last ranking and could’ve won if I was able to end a Tsumuji with a lower kick -__- . He couldn’t deal the super jump crossups everywhere
I love the C.Viper match-up, I know it so well ^_^. Alongside vs. Boxer, Makoto, and of course Ibuki, vs. C.Viper one of the match-ups I’d say I have enough experience/knowledge with to do well against even the best.
Still mind-f’d about her corner unblockable though… When I find it I’ll post a video with it in.
There is only one thing disturbing me against Viper: Burning kicks.
Basically what I do is either cr.MK to lower my hitbox, or HK command dash soon enough to avoid it. Problem is that both things get me out, but make the same situation happen again :-/
Lariat doesn’t beat a specially timed kunai; aim it outside of his Lariat hitbox and you’ll most likely stuff it. If he gets smart and tries something else to get out of vortex (EX running bear grab or EX green hand) you can mix it up with j.MK (sj.MK is probably easier) aimed at Gief’s head, also avoiding his Lariat hitbox and stuffing it.
Mash spd is always a threat, but it is much less a threat when
-you are fully aware of it
-you have good control of your strings
-you are well aware of your spacing
-you know how to bait it out
-you know how to punish it as hard as possible
His damage output is pretty insane and Ibuki doesn’t have a normal which is good enough to cover enough options from him (except far.st.LP which is difficult to convert into a lot of damage).
You don’t really need to jump in this match-up so Lariat isn’t really a problem, but because the risk for jumping in is so high so you wouldn’t want to do it anyway. Thankfully Ibuki is able to punish an SPD with Hashinsho allowing backdash to be a good option, but Zangief can option-select his Ultra Combo II to beat it, which is a big punish.
st.Roundhouse resets work well especially if you cancel into an overhead or the new f+Roundhouse. The big problem is that Ibuki’s only way to score a hard knockdown without being too close is either from an option-selected normal, which trades badly with Zangief’s pokes, or cr.Roundhouse. He’s not invulnerable to the Kunai Vortex, but he can escape it for free with EX Banishing Flat. Ibuki really has to out-footsie Zangief to score a knockdown, and it’s only effective for as long as Zangief doesn’t have meter.
Anti-airing must be done with cr.Fierce unless you are pretty much within SPD range, and even then Zangief can do the low jump to bait ether ageman or cr.Fierce.
In terms of Ibuki’s Vortex, cross-up j.Forward (and other safe-jumps) lose to the EX Grab (not sure which one it was), and if you go for the option Mingo has posted, it’s not ambiguous at all, Zangief just has to block and look out either for the overhead, or he’s in a good position to start threatening with SPD. If you do a big block-string with Ibuki you’re going to be cancelling into a backdash, which puts Zangief where he wants you, and you don’t even get to deal chip damage (unless you did TC6 sj.Tsumuji which I think was a true-block string when I did it).
tl;dr
Zangief:
Zangief has scarier Okizeme/Vortex
Can option-select to punish escape attempts with an Ultra Combo, which gives him Okizeme after
High stun/damage output
Can punish every counter for SPD (except backdash) with reaction Lariat
When making a good read, more damage from it
You have to play better than the Zangief player to the same number of games.
As of 2 weeks, I’ll no longer be ahead of everyone else sitting Physics/Chemistry/Maths A-Level this next year. I’ll actually have to start studying again. Hopefully not for too long since I’ll be working pretty much full time. If you told me my exams were in 2 months I’d love that so I could just get it over with. Still, me doing so much this week, which was pretty unrealistic when planned, I believe I can definitely balance time to play Street Fighter alongside work, easy.
Please wait patiently for the Tournament videos. Everything rocked, but since there’s a big stream going on now I’m waiting before writing the article, after all the event was done for awareness so everyone has o be available to take a look. =)
Next time I run an event, I won’t pick the poshest place in London to do it. Here’s a sneak peak:
EDIT: This post is so madly off-topic. So to make it on-topic… Something to do with Ibuki getting beat by Zangief. Harder than fighting Dictator etc. bla bla bla coughcough Seth easy for Ibuki cough
vs. Gen, if he does his DP and you won’t want to risk messing up the punish or having him Rekka you out, you can cleanly punish it with st.Roundhouse every time without waiting for it to fall down. If you can’t HJC just either link into Kazegiri (Roundhouse for more damage) or Yoroitoshi.
His damage output either comes from st.MP or spd’s. He usually doesn’t do a lot of damage unless he makes epic reads or his opponent suicides into his arms.
st.LP, st.MP, cr.MP xx special, cr.MK, and cr.HK or TC10 are excellent footsie normals in this matchup.
You really need to stop thinking that you have to cr.MP xx neckbreaker all day, and instead cater your use of normals towards what your opponent is doing.
You also have neutral jump kunai, Hien, and Tsumuji. While they are generally a bit more unsafe, they do give some chip damage, and usually require Gief to do something stupid like jump at you to directly punish.
Jumping on his wakeup is a entirely different from jumping in at midrange.
I usually don’t have a problem having Ibuki’s cr.MP stuffed by anything Gief has in particular.
I’d say the risk of getting counterhit or trading is lower than the risk of Gief getting hit by cr.MP into neckbreaker or something.
Mixing up vortex with sj.MK hitbox safe jump + option select Neckbreaker will catch this escape attempt.
Ibuki has to outfootsie everyone to get a knockdown. This is nothing new.
Just watch your spacing better. There’s a range where regardless if Gief does his short jump or not, you’ll still be able to antiair with whatever. Also I prefer b+MP over cr.HP since for some reason cr.HP seems to trade more; probably because it’s slower or some hitbox or something.
You should really learn to mix up your vortex between kunai and sj.LK/sj.MK.
Pressuring Gief can be a risk, yes. But I believe that you can turn it into your favor with Tsumuji loops and other high damage combos.
If your execution isn’t up to snuff, then putting on any kind of pressure on Gief probably isn’t favor anymore.
Lastly, I mash backdash out of Gief’s pressure all day. I don’t think you understand how difficult it is to option select a 720 input just to catch a backdash. Off a jumpin, maybe. But off a meaty jab, lol glhf. Unless you’re like Desk or something.
Suplex or SPD does 220, 180 repetitively, and sets up another one. On Ibuki that’s significant, and even then if he gets a full combo like body splash, cr.Short xx Lariat (which also sets-up Okizeme) that does a chunk too.
st.Strong isn’t a very good footsie in this match-up. What do you suppose it beats exactly? Zangief should be out of range of this move, but it does work as very good meaty pressure as it was the only way I could do much damage besides st.Roundhouse as an anti-air (and that’s only if you Tsumuji Loop).
TC10 and cr.Roundhouse are the same thing…
They’re all very unsafe and deal pretty much naught chip damage. Neutral Jump Kunai is easy to react to, but it does work as a good bait for a jump if you neutral jump into nothing, but then only something like Raida or EX Kazegiri will actually anti-air. Hien is unsafe on hit…
I never said it wasn’t. I don’t think Lariat is a good wake-up option at all. In fact I would almost never do it unless the Ibuki player is just terrible with Okizeme.
Depends on the amount of meter both charcaters have. Generally the idea is to time the cr.Strong to beat something like Banishing Flat which is used to get closer, but I’d say getting his by cr.Roundhouse by Zangief is just as bad. Also if you whiff a long normal like that, you can’t anti-air Zangief as you don’t have enough time. I don’t think doing this over an over, and mixing it with something like neutral jump kunai is very good at all. You don’t want to mix-up two things that are punished the same way. st.Jab should be used on reaction to pokes really.
These set-ups don’t look the same, and even I can react to when a Kunai is on screen vs. a safe-jump. Side-note, if Zangief is into using FADC, using st.Roundhouse launcher on the way down will option-select into far.st.Roundhouse to punish him.
cr.Fierce has a better hit-box you just have to do it earlier. It’s strange because I struggle to make Ageman work in this match-up whereas you struggle to make cr.Fierce work. Zangief will simply not jump in that range, and should only just when he’s making a read anyway, it won’t happen very often.
Zangief would have to be close to Ibuki for her to pull off these combos, whereas Zangief’s damage output is pretty high without crazy execution and at footsie range.
Zangief has other option-selects to cover backdashes. The point is that the risk/reward is in Zangief’s favour, assuming he’s the same stamina or something. His Ultra Combo II also covers EX Kazegiri as an escape option too.
Ibuki has great ways too deal with Zangief, but the point being that it’s much harder for Ibuki.
Oh I forget, Hammer Kick and Bonsho Kick are pretty good, though don’t do Bonsho Kick unless you’re doing it as a read since it’s unsafe to SPD. Hammer Kick is nice to use out of range as a punish for Banishing Flat at the range where Neutral Jumps miss.
He’s not going to be landing suplex at midrange, nor will he be able to do anything but jab spd at midrange.
Again, his only damage output comes from st.MP at midrange, or his mixup game which he requires suplex or EX spd to setup. After an spd knockdown and green handing to get close, doing a meaty spd here usually puts him at risk.
Then don’t use it.
TC10 = cr.HK xx st.HK
cr.HK = just cr.HK
Kunai has 7f startup. That’s 0.116 seconds to react to. If you can do this, you must be Sako like. Either that or you are incredibly obvious with your kunai or you do it way at the peak of Ibuki’s jump, like vortex or something.
Getting Gief to jump at you is good. It puts your antiair-ability to the test for some easy damage. Have a little faith in your antiair game.
Maybe I’m wrong about Hien, but I haven’t had a Gief punish it yet.
Whiffing banishing flat just to get closer is a terrible idea… kind of reminds me of Niko saying he pwns (bad) Giefs just because he can reaction punish green hands with st.LP.
Gief’s cr.HK has poor range slow startup, slow recovery, and iirc, punishable on block (-5). The range is kind of deceiving since he moves forward a bit.
Then just neutral jump more instead of neutral jump kunai all the time.
No I meant they react to the neutral jump, and itself. Actually I remember when I baited his Ultra Combo II by neutral jumping and doing a Kunai close to the ground. Might not happen ever again though. If you normal jump on it’s own and he reacts to that, you can get a j.Forward as an anti-air which is actually really good. Just make sure you don’t go for it if he has Ultra Combo II.
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Thanks for the Zangief discussion though. I understand your points of view and I wanted to make sure my opinions weren’t too out there. Overall we can combine ideas and help figure out matches through this sort of debate.
Got a chance to play against Cuongster’s Yun today, I could finally see how did the matchup change.
Well, seriously, I could really feel that it changed. Positively. His pressure is less safe, looks like you can vortex him more efficiently.
Moreover, EX lunge punch now leaving him -1, you can Yoroitoshi IN HIS FACE!!!
Anyway, I still have a lot of trouble against dive kicks: I should go for f.LK anti air sako-like lol. Seriously, do we have any normal able to punish it? He told me that when he plays F-Word, he often get hit by the cr.MP OS Neckbreaker, but it does not seem to be a good solution imho… Any insights? I usually try to go for nj.MK, but when I play a good Yun (which was the case) I just forget it, it’s waaaay too risky. I’d rather just block it and wait.
Anyway, I’m pretty satisfied of the result. Okay, I lost around 7 - 1, but… There is a 1! and some rounds. Let’s just say I didn’t feel like I was raped. But Cuongster plays in a very smart way and is not overoffensive even if he plays Yun, so it’s kinda hard to reach him!
Oh, and I feel like I may reach 3000 PP soon \o/
BTW, Tsumuji loops when playing IRL are soo godlike.
