Complete SF4 education for someone who's only ever played Deejay

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

Hey guys,

I was thinking about giving Deejay a temporary rest to work on my overall fundamentals, since I only jumped into SF4 at Super, and went straight for Deejay.

I’d like to pick up a second character mostly to give me a more complete education and make me play parts of the game I don’t use a lot as a Deejay player. Here’s a vague attribute list off the top of my head I’d like the character to have:

  • Motion character
  • FADC-able DP
  • Good dashes
  • Good focus attack

It would also be cool if the character sort of covered Deejay’s bad match-ups, but that would just be a bonus.
Looking at the character selection, here are the ones that fit the criteria (I think):

Who seem interesting to me:

Adon - A non-fireball character who is strong against fireball chars is interesting. Two cool ultras.

Cammy - Flavour of month. Footsie and pressure based.

Fei Long - Interesting character because of strong offensive pressure on the ground, overhead and command grab to open people up.

Ken - Step kick pressure with kara throws is interesting. I hear you have all day to decide whether you want to FADC fierce DP. Kind of like a non-fireball character because they seem so bad.

Not that interested in but I think meet the criteria:

Ryu - Seems kind of obvious but I think I’d learn more if I purposefully go with a non-fireball char. Also too many Ryu players

Seth - Having everything is interesting. Never played a char with a command throw. Low health is worrying though

Akuma - Too many Akumas here. I’d rather not go full vortex.

Dan - Practically a non-fireball char.

Sakura - Not really interesting for me.

Sagat - Very zoning

Evil Ryu - I don’t really know. Seems fun enough

Who do you guys think I should pick up?

2

Gen.

Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk 2

3

Just pick Adon and win…

4

Fei Long. As long as you take the time to hit confirm Rekkas and learn his 1 frame links, then all you need is to walk forward and people will poop themselves.

5

People have suggested I use Fei to do the same thing you’re describing.

Good for hit confirms/whiff punishing in footsies, especially.

6

His combos are almost always going to end in a rekka, which are great for corner carrying capabilities. Then when you have them in the corner you can go to town. I’ve seen more people lose to a fei just trying to escape the corner than anything else. His only real weakness is getting in from the mid-long range game, especially when he’s being zone with fireballs.

I play a couple of good Fei Longs on a regular basis, much to my own chagrin :frowning: If anyone has the Fei matchup down, its me :smiley: Fei-Dee Jay matchup is just stupid. Makes you not want to even press a button.

7

I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking this way. We’re expanding our horizons Mike :stuck_out_tongue:

I didn’t have any time to play SF4 at home since posting the topic, but I did mess around with Adon trials on my 3DS copy of super.
That’s something that annoys me a lot about AE2012: When you go to do the trials, you revert two versions backwards.
It means I can’t really use trial mode for anything, I need to go to training mode and have a web browser near me with SRK forums or Wiki open.

I went straight to Adon because it seems like that might be the best character of the top picks in the Guile matchup (covering Deejays bad matchups is only a secondary concern of all this, but it’s still a concern).

But if I have time I’d like to play Fei, Ken and Cammy all (in that order), then bring them to offline Dublin casuals and see how they feel “in the field”.

8

There are some things about Adon that throw me, the lack of chainable light normals, and triggering a lot of accidental supers in training when trying to FADC.

Like I told Jcool at some point a while back, I like Adon and Guy as options to cover Dee Jay’s bad matchups in theory, the practice of getting to the level I am with Dee Jay with another character is the issue. But we’ll see!

9

Interesting, I didn’t know that Adon couldn’t chain light normals.

I also didn’t consider Guy on my list. Can he FADC that hurricane kick?

Edit: Eventhubs page says no, but I never know if I can trust that because so many of their pages still have info from Vanilla/Super/AE randomly and not 2012

10

Nope, hurricane kick is not FADCable, and it’s the main reason people put Guy way down on the tier list. It’s an ok GTFO move though, if you do a correct read, otherwise, you get killed for it.
I’ve switched to Honda lately, with mixed results, depending on my state of mind. I tend to lose patience and go on the offence even if I have the life lead and do stupid shit but my win rate is better than with DeeJay. Honda isn’t fun to play in ranked though, since 90% of the time you are fighting Ryu and if the guy can decently zone it’s always an uphill battle.

11

No different to tactical upkicks then really, so for my specific purposes Guy isn’t really a valid choice.

I think if I have moderate success with the choices in this specific topic, and I really want to experience all that SF4 life has to offer, the last thing I’ll try out is characters with mash moves: Honda, Blanka, Chun and Gen. Since all mash chars are also mostly charge characters I excluded them from this (I know how to hold a charge).

Getting the jab > hands piano motion down seems like it’d be a lot of fun though.

12

I can confirm my jab/c.mk hands cobos more frequently now than a month ago and it’s really satisfying to punish with jabxxHHS->jab.EX.HHS->HHS->st.HK. Than just walk forward and bait a dp and do it again or command throw since people litterally shit their pants after a combo like that.

Other than that, i think that Guy’s ex - hurricane hits low first, so it’s better than upkicks

13

Our local Honda’s trademark combo is: jab > HHS > HHS > Super, it’s pretty disheartening to get hit by it.

Yeah, I’m not arguing for better or worse, I’m just aiming for different.

I don’t have experience being under pressure and being able to think: "Okay, I have two bars, I’m just gonna wake-up reversal and cancel it if they block"
So it’s more about learning to play and think that way.

14

i would go with Evil Ryu you learn all the fundamentals plus you use a character that is slept on.

15

I would go Ryu, or if you are confident, Evil Ryu. He has some nice tricks. Your inputs have to be tight for his FADC combos but he is an enjoyable character.

16

From a fundamental “learning” perspective it doesn’t seem like there’s any real difference between them, but if I had to choose a Ryu to bring to casuals and maybe a tournament, I’d prefer Evil simply because:

(1) There are a lot of good local Ryu mainers, who I would definitely be substandard to.
(2) No-one really knows anything about Evil, so I might squeak some wins.
(3) To tie it loosely back to the “differences” part of the topic, Ryu and Deejay both have 1000 HP. Evil has less so I’d need to wrap my mind around playing with less HP to lose, which might make me less reckless.

So between these two at least, Evil seems like the clear choice.

17

I have a very solid fundamentals foundation from playing Gen.

You need to manage your meter and use it properly, which means you usually save it for super to poke>super>ultra, or punish a safejump with the 1f crane air reversal super. Otherwise you may use meter to get through fireballs, or character specific setups.

Gen is really dependent on using normals, but not links necessarily. Playing footsies allows you to get in your opponents head, and move with him until an opening comes. Whiff punishing is really big for Gen, you get super>ultra punishes, you get sweep>meaty setups, and a lot of meter with his pokes.

And finally, as a Gen player I would say that knowing your matchup specific stuff is Gens best tool. We watch eachother and notice we are more successful playing differently against specific matchups, but that is a big part of having two sets of normals.

I hope that helps.

18

I decided to go with Adon, mostly because I want to see how I do without a fireball, and he seems less boring than Fei (gameplay and personality wise) even if Fei is better.

Adon’s punish combos are super easy, and the Ultras are good fun. I can’t do hit confirms yet so that part of my game is super weak.

I miss upkicks already, haha. The reaction difference seems so much larger with a DP character. Having downcharge with Deejay I just need to visually see that I need to upkick, and go “UP AND LK” which is only 1 step, but with a motion character you need to do the DP motion, which is three steps; and in the super slowed down world of SF reactions, this seems like an eternity.

I also REALLY miss max-outs :frowning:

Jagga kicking over Sonic Booms almost makes up for it though. :sunglasses: