Ironically I already sold my soul to Ibuki in Season 1 even though Chun Li was technically a “better” character. On top of feeling Chun would get nerfed and she would be a good new main, she was my favorite character and I preferred her pressure, mix up and damage options to Chun. Chun was good at countering the offense, but there was just some matchups where you felt like you had to press a million buttons and spin the stick around to open someone up with Chun, but with Ibuki all it took was some frame traps into command dash or EX raida jump target mix ups and you got way more reward per hit with much safer oki and standing resets where the opponent has to hold dat 50/50 pressure for free.
Juri is basically my Season 2 Chun now that can control mid range and has better pressure and damage with full stores/charge. She’s also much more threatening from a range than Chun is. Now that Chun’s offense is nerfed you can’t just go HAM in the matchups where people can play lame against you (Guile, Sim, Nash, Gief and so on). Which those combined together means she doesn’t have any range during the match where she is especially powerful anymore. Whereas Juri with a couple stores and a level 2 V Skill charge shuts out half the moves list for a lot of characters. While having similarly strong or better pressure (especially once in V Trigger). Her ability to have many ways to use her V Skill and have a very threatening V Skill means that when optimized you can get her V Trigger about as fast as Chun can get hers and can actually dictate how you get it rather than just having to get beat up with only one okish CC button and a nearly useless V Skill for building gauge.
Juri also has top tier AA especially once Season 2.1 hits where she gets frame 1 upper invincibility on her DP. Her s.HP can cover the anti air angle that Chun’s s.HK can with less recovery and is also cancelable into stores so you can gain a powerup for AAing. Plus as of the beta her s.LP still seems to not be too bad of an AA either.
I thought about it hard, but between Ibuki who’s just a good character for tournaments and Juri who’s basically better suited for mid/far range and has much cleaner AA, I think it’s time to officially drop Chun competitively. Only matchup I might still bust her out for is Gief, but I think Juri can fight Gief well enough so it’s not even worth bothering keeping a half assed Chun for one matchup.
Still main Chun-Li
Laura is still my side gal
I’ve tried learning Ibuki and got "okay-ish"
I still can’t get the hang of Juri. I get too frustrated because of how much I loved her 4.
All in all it leads me back to Chun.
I am kinda stuck in a weird place now. I am at that ultra platinum level and it feels impossible to consistently win with Chun and keep going higher. It feels ridiculously hard to open people up with Chun, especially people who aren’t auto piloting defence.
The issue with Chun is that you yourself have to be extremely aware during pressure. It feels way harder to pressure someone than any other character, I have to change my pressure pattern against everyone and this level of consistency and awareness is really tough.
Look at this round for example, this was round 2 in a match and I noticed that the guy like to delay tech. Sometimes I time it right, sometimes a bit late but my issue is that I could have easily lost the round if her St. MK didn’t hit me airborne. That was a very real possibility.
THAT is what sucks the most. No matter how much you outplay them, there is a real possibility of losing. That is the real story of Chun, you outplay them the whole round then they get a lucky hit and Chun dies. S1 was also like this but her pressure and VT allowed her to do these comebacks but know, you either play perfect or die.
That Laura screwed up. As soon as the screen freeze showed you were airborne. I would have used avante’ (vskill) under you
after that I’d been free to do any number of things plus had you in the corner
You did the right thing though by not Ex SBK. I think that is what he wanted and once you didn’t he just hit fierce because that’s what Wolfkrone does.
I don’t take as much issue with it anymore because that’s kind of how the whole game is when VT gets into the mix (even for Chun’s imo). 2-3 correct mixup decisions and then stun and then death. For characters as explosive as Balrog or Laura, it’s more often just 2 decisions until the stun and then death. Also for their VTs there’s a lot of stuff to process, so you have to absolutely be on point when you guess correctly, so you can take away the momentum they need to comeback. It’s actually kind of a good thing that Chun’s combos/knockdowns tend to be longer than average as that can kill more of the timer on people’s VTs.
I actually think that round in the video was totally fine. You were pressuring and getting the other player to mostly clam up or press buttons at the wrong time and even when he was just blocking, you’re building up white chip so the next opening is even more dangerous. The opponent even only gained one EX bar after taking all that (he started the round with 2 bars, so that’s what makes the situation dangerous at the end, but he pretty much would have had to use it all for it to count and there’s a 3rd round after that).
After blocked EX legs, backdashing was probably the smartest choice because the opponent would’ve had to make a really hard read and commit to something you could easily stuff to get a full CC punish off of that. The only thing I would point out is that it looked like you were ready to stuff Laura’s command dash with cr. LP, but didn’t follow it anything and then hesitated (I don’t know if you attempted to do a followup and it didn’t come out or if you thought that alone would kill). Being ready to follow through when you catch stuff like that in this game is crucial.
-I’ve been getting a little more mileage out of walk-up standing jabs to fish for counterhit into cr. MK xx Legs on opponents who tend to start mashing as soon as they see you walking forward. It seems to catch these types of players more than walkup st. MP or walk-up cr. LP/LK (more travel time to be in range for these I think and crouching after walking probably takes a couple more frames to perform as well). The latter seems more suited for players who want to delay their tech a bit and for players who REALLY delay their tech, walk-up with the slower buttons like B+HP or even put your nuts on the table and do st. HK or F+HK point blank. Feels very satisfying to call people out on that level.
I agree that VTs are really stupid – they dictate the pace of the game far too much right now. Still, having started fgs with sfv I love this game so I’m still trucking with chun. Urien matchup is pure bullshit but I think I can compete reasonably well (certainly not favorably, but well enough) with other characters.
Delayed buttons are super good though and I would argue absolutely necessary for any chun player who wants to progress to higher levels (i have noticed players of other characters, even at diamond+, don’t need to use this basic tech but i guess chun players just need to be better than everyone else). ch st.mp, cr.hp…, while punishing to misconfirm, is one of the only ways chun goes into actually good damage. I’ve almost completely stopped using shimmies; in most cases, manually counterhitting techs is far stronger. Of course you run into some unusual players that just mash back throw (rather than late tech) and you lose, but I suppose that comes with the territory.
**Other throw baits I’ve been using: vt f+hk, st.lp -> block, and fake tick throws: walk up as if to throw then just block on the edge of throw range and punish if the bait is successful. It’s hard but really funny. Of course, properly timed delayed attacks are better than all of these, but they’re all reasonable options.
I’ve also been going more ham after fwd throws. Don’t know if you guys have adopted this but playing safe just loses you too much damage. In s1 I would always go for safe options (st.hp or fireball against 3f chars) but I have noticed that people don’t really react to the dash in time, at least at my level, so I go for pressure more often, start pressure w/ dash-cr.lp against 4fs, etc. Of course you still have to mix it up with things that actually beat wakeup 3f, but I have been getting a lot more mileage out of throws with this tactic.
Yeah, being fully aware that after forward throw -> dash up throw isn’t real vs 3 framers can still be used to condition them into pressing buttons to try and stop it and hurting them for it. It’s kind of the same as dealing with Alex’s powerbomb -> dash… it can definitely be stuffed (I think he might even be minus enough to punish his dash in this situation), but if they’re thinking about that too much, people tend to get caught by his meaty st. HK instead because they were too quick to press buttons to beat the dash. And then dash up powerbomb kind of becomes a thing because you put the fear of being countered from a distance into them and they start hesitating. Chun can use similar psychology with her forward throw (step-> F+MP, step-> st. HP, HP Kikoken, F+HK in the corner as true meatys on quickrise that can be converted after). Cammy does it too and her dash up after throw isn’t real either.
Give them more to think about (the real stuff) and they won’t have time to process and react to a dash up throw (the fake stuff) most of the time.
It is a little concerning. However, with months before the game is released, it’s safe to assume that she’ll probably undergo some model differences before the release date. How many changes did she go thorugh before SFV was released? Enough to make her the stunning beauty she is today.
Gotta say, I am starting to believe in Dime’s Super philosophy. I had this really cool punish today. If I can work more on improving my footsie game, and whiff punish then i can see that being a really good approach.
Good stuff. That was a sweet punish on the sweep… looking like me up in here
The save to super strategy is a good one but it has this caveat:
It is matchup and player tempo specific. Against defensive players with good defense that don’t like to rush and play like idiots, I like the save to super strategy… it allows chun to get big damage without taking to many risks and making you pay for risks is how defensive players operate, so it counters their playstyle.
But against highly offensive players it can be detrimental to hit super in say the middle of the round and lose your SBK and also a lot of your offensive threats since wiff punish st.hp xx super is a big huge threat… losing it can feel like you have no fall back.
Once you are saving to super though I find against certain types of players that really clam up… it’s good to go on the offense looking for an aggressive confirm.
Against players with really nice defense though, early in the round if you have full super already it can be good to go for one ex legs combo since you may not want to blow your super really early in the round and since it will replenish to a super again, very quickly.
You can easily use 4 meters in a round where you start off with super by doing one combo into ex legs, then getting your super back and combining into it. This way you don’t lose to much by trying to hold a super for an entire round.
I’ve tried to save for super in S2 but for me it’s just not helping my game. With Chun’s nerfs I need more help than ever at getting in on opponents and that means dumping meter for EX Kikoken and Ex Legs. EX Kikoken to deal with fireballs and force pressure onto the opponent(so rare to do now), and EX legs to keep people honest because they love pressing buttons after Chun’s buttons. I feel like EX legs is really important at getting other characters to respect Chun and think twice about things since she has so few ways of getting characters to do that. With air options nerfed and MANY characters who can contest and challenge her ground game, I consider EX legs paramount over even super.
Even EX SBK, especially now with all these momentum 50/50 characters. I don’t feel like people care about the threat of Chun with Super. It just does such poor damage with the majority of the ways you have to confirm into it. Afterwards I feel really vulnerable and helpless, and it doesn’t feel like it was worth the meter dump. Mainly, because again, I don’t have the damage to contest against characters and one opening is all it takes for many characters to end you.
In S1 it made more sense I think to try since she had so much other stuff to fall back on. But now? I don’t know. I’ve lost more games trying to wait to land my super vs just using my meter to run my game. Without being able to use my meter somewhat more freely I feel like I am playing an even more hobbled character after an already overnerfed character.
Maybe I’m overthinking it too much and relying on them (EX) too much though. Dunno. I wish more people would chime on the issue and share their experiences.
If you have super you have a bigger deterrent to fireballs than ex legs on block or ex kikoken to go through them.
You can also stuff the startup of a fireball with st.hp and confirm into super and you can st.hk CC into super etc.
But it’s not for all matchups and strategies.
Ammraed has it righ in tha you need to up your footsies to pull it off. It’s a semi defensive style where you go aggressive with pokes but defensive with walking forward and jumping forward. Chun is happy to trade fireballs and gain meter, as an example.
One matchup I find it stellar in is versus gief. If he misses armor st.hp or you backdash an SPD it’s pretty much a free st.hp xx super or raw super everytime.
-Generally you can try to stay out of the range of divekick (or at the distance where you can walk or backdash out of its range once she jumps), then you can whiff punish the landing recovery of it.
-On block it’s really hard for her not to be negative or even unless it touches below the knees, so checking it with cr. LK is usually a way to get a counterhit confirm or take back momentum. Really only EX divekick or hooligan -> divekick (when spaced right) will leave her at advantage on block most of the time.
-If you’re looking for the take-off before divekick (either she jumps or does hooligan) and you’re close, then air to air j. MP xx Air Legs or jump back LP will hit her before she can act.
-I wouldn’t recommend challenging her V-Trigger dive kick with anything other than EX SBK because it travels very fast and will stuff a lot of your other anti air moves before you can react (not saying it isn’t possible, but not really worth the risk). If you block it though and it’s going to cross over to the other side, press BACK + 3 punches so you can V-Reversal it and kill her pressure (Forward + 3 punches will result in you V-Reversaling on the opposite side and whiffing).
-EX SBK tends to be the AA that works on them most of the time, so the smart Cammy players will be looking for you to not be charging before they go for a divekick. However, if they jump you can react by popping raw V-Trigger and during the freeze animation, you can hold down and get enough charge to EX SBK after the freeze for an anti-air.
Here is couple more of added tips from my experience against Cammy.
From max range, Use st.HK A LOT… A LOT. At this range most Cammy players will either jump or try V-skill, Holligan or just walk and block and from this range st.HK does wonders.
If She is in the dive kick range and you see the jump then jump forward and HP. J.HP have a fantastic hit box for air to air. I have been starting to always air to air against Cammy now.
Like Darklight said, Cammy is mostly negative after regular divkicks unless aimed low so it is not a bad idea to challenge with cr.LK.
Another general tip vs Cammy is that once she got trigger, just wait for the cr.HP VTC activation. I try to actually move in range and block just so they get to do this and get it over with. If you can get her to activate this on block then you are at a good position.
Don’t meaty Cammy with heavies if you get her in the corner, don’t let her use that V-reversal to escape. Just use F.MP at max range and poke at her from there.
