Critique my gameplay please!

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

Hi guys. My current goal is to find and practice what I lack to stay consistently over 1000pp with Ryu. I currently bounce back and forth between 450 - 750pp but whenever I get around 700pp I get straight up demolished by someone 800 - 1000pp as though I’ve jumped up a league. I don’t know what I’m missing though.

Personal concerns:

When is the best time to use the combo cr.lp/lk x3, cr.mk xx hadoken? As much as I’ve been drilling this combo, I don’t even know when to use it. When I’ve knocked down my opponent I never initiate with an attack anymore, I more often than not do one of 3 things:

*Feign a walk up grab and block at the last second to bait a special
*Grab
*fj.mk behind their head and follow with a cr.hk and repeat.

Is there a trick to good dashing? I’ve been training it for a while and am aware it’s the simplest thing to do, but I can’t shake it from feeling awkward or studdery.

For the couple months worth of time I’ve played I still can’t do cr.mk xx hadoken without canceling into shoryuken every now and then. Is there a trick to keeping these 2 moves separate? Doing a full half circle for hadoken seems excessive.

https://youtu.be/rd0yYSLECsc

After seeing my gameplay video, what do you think I should work on first and foremost? What do you think is essential – step by step – just for staying above 1000pp?

2

Biggest issue i saw was your punish game, good work on the baits, the opponent dp’d and you blocked but cr.mk xx fireball just won’t cut it. At very best f.HP xx DP if there is enough time but the simple and easy ways to get damage are cr.mk xx hk tatsu or cr.hp xx hp dp if you’re close

Sweep less from close range, it’s very unsafe, substitute it with cr.mk xx fireball for chip on block and damage on hit

There was a fair amount of jumping going on which is generally bad but your opponent wasn’t antiairing so i guess you could abuse that, but when you face someone who can AA this will leave you with a big hole in your game, try work on walking your way to your opponent, neutral jump fireballs on reaction or jump forward if outside of AA range, focus absorb f.dash/b.dash. Mix up your approach.

3

That was fantastic advice, Thanks a lot. I’ve had it in the back of my mind that I shouldn’t be jumping but put it off, now I’m sorely regretting it. It’s weird how all the rest of your skills can be tied to a bad habit. Just because of this one change, I can’t even seem to think to block, attack…etc correctly, all my skills separate from jumping are out the window now because I spend all my time repressing jumps XD. I forgot I even had Hadoken till 2 games after incorporating this advice and have been perfected 3 times in 3 games LOL. Back to square one.

My sweeping is a habit I’m already trying to weed out. Since being 600pp+ It’s become painfully apparent that it leaves you completely vulnerable a moment afterward.

I’m excited about the new punishes you gave me. By f.HP do you mean solar plexus strike? Also, if cr.mk xx hk tatsu does more damage than cr.mk xx hadoken why not use that instead? cr.hp xx hp dp seems kind of tricky to pull off consistently. Anyway, I’m off to train. I’ll update on my progress later.

4

it will take quite a while to retrain from bad habits, depending on your ability to tolerate losses it may be more productive to just focus on one of the above mentioned points while playing for a night that way its not too overwhleming.

Yeah most characters can punish blocked sweep with sweep at the very least, some characters can do a super or ultra punish which will hurt alot more…

Yeah f.hp being solar plexus. Cr.mk xx tatsu only hits on standing opponents so as a punish it’s guarunteed whereas in the neutral game if you through it out on a crouching opponent it will whiff and you’ll get punished. If you’re doing a confirm that starts with cr.lp x2 you can use cr.HP to stand the opponent up (its one of the moves properties) and cancel it into tatsu to make sure it connects.

When it comes to combo finishers there are pros to each special move, fireball is the safest when you’re unsure if you’re going to punish in time, it also allows you to confirm into fadc sweep/bigger combo if in corner, tatsu is best for corner carry and solid damage, dp is for max damage and to keep opponent close for mixups on their wakeup.

5

So I’m not doing nearly as bad as I thought I would. It actually didn’t take me long. I’ve pretty much corrected my sweeping habit, my forward jumping is ALMOST corrected. SRS xx hp.srk is tricky, I can do it, but it’s hard to break the cr.mk xx hadoken habit when those punish moments are so quick to act on.

I’ve realized my execution is awful. I have a habit of trying to do specials without letting my stick touch the gate, but I can’t land them consistently that way. I guess I’ve watched too many Daigo videos lol. I’m not sure how to progress my way toward his efficiency.

I have a few questions:

How do you keep from doing cr.mk xx srk in place of cr.mk xx hadoken? I know I can consistently do it if I do it slow enough. But is there a way to do it quickly and consistently?

I’ve seen people block my cross ups plenty of times. But I can’t seem to block it at all, ever. What can I do?

Sometimes I run into players who have fantastic block string execution and drill me nonstop. I had a game earlier today against akuma. 85% of the time he spammed so many ex fireballs and multi hit fireballs that I couldn’t focus dash or dash toward him, but when he would actually fight me up close his blockstrings were so tight that I had no room to counter hit (which I usually don’t find too difficult) and by the end I’d be out of range to attack but any attempt to dash or scoot forward would get me railed. WTF?

Dashing. I’ve been trying to get good at dashing for a while now and it’s still stuttery, slow, and awkward. Is there a trick to getting good and quick with them?

When you shortcut srk do you press down-forward, ride the gate to down and then down-forward again? Or slap down-forward twice with a small dip in the second motion to trigger down? Either way landing it seems difficult to do consistently.

6

I assume you meant solar plexus when you said SRS? Solar plexus cancelled into hp dp is easy just mash it you cant miss.

Spend time in training mode trying to hit the move/combo consecutive times, need that consistency and muscle memory wired in.

The only way to do cr.mk xx fireball instead of dp is to delay your inputs from the walking forward to the cr.mk and then into the fireball, the bigger of a gap you’ll leave for the game to forget your forward input the less likely it is for dp to come out, all about testing how slowly you can do the motions and still have the correct things come out and combo. You want the game to register d,df,f+P not f,d,df,f+P

As for crossups you just need to stand block the right direction early enough simple as that, it may just be how quick you are to recognise a move will crossup and to switch direction, sometimes its a bit of a gamble some jumpins are so ambiguous you just have to take a guess and dedicate to a side, making a decision and going for it will be better than being halfway through switching directions and not blocking any direction at all.

As far as the akuma there are probably opportunities that you don’t know of as far as zoning and beating pressure, the only real way to help you on this would be if you were to upload a video and i could break down where it goes wrong.

I find it easier to hold focus and dash, not sure why, just stops any random inputs like upforward causing you grief like jumps when trying to input a dash, other than that its just again practice and muscle memory, hit the lab and do dashes from one side to the other.

Personally i find doing df,d,df to be the best because when antiairing you don’t want to be standing because that gives you less time for a jumpin to hit you therefore less time to execute the dp. Holding down and crouching during all inputs will help with that, I also just find it easier to execute, just start off in the df position and wiggle it back and forth and press LP over and over in training mode to get a feel for the timing.