Critique my Sakura? :)

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
21

Alright, to start I’ve seen you’re pretty new so there are some basics that need to be developed. You’re jumping a lot and your neutral game is pretty much nonexistent :confused: you need to try and stay grounded and work your way in. I know it’s Sagat, but I still would like to see that. Air tatsu is a good way to get in, but it looked like you were just kinda doing it, which is really punishable, you need to space/time those correctly and make an educated guess when going in like that. Cr.mk into EX tatsu isn’t the best confirm in the world, you want to be doing cr.mk xx hp shou as your main hit confirm. It worked out okay here, but you want to get EX Tatsu off something that has forced stand (something with hp). You messed up your punish on the super, you should’ve waited on him to hit the ground. If you don’t know how to punish something that’s not super obvious, you need to not punish it. In this case, it was obvious but you jumped the gun. Lastly, whenever you hit EX tatsu and had Ultra, you popped it. It would have been nice to see you save it and do a set up and then kill with Ultra. Just because you can ultra, doesn’t mean you should, you can go for a set up and save it, and if that set up hits you get a kill. Lastly I noticed you seemed unsure what to do after a throw. You should always be prepared for that.

I know that’s a lot to throw at you, but I started out far worse lol. You really need to focus on your neutral and footsie game, we like to hark on that a lot around here because newer Sakura players go for gimmicks and things and don’t play it well enough. Try to land cr.mk xx hp shou in matches and then use that knockdown to get in. Use far standing roundhouse as a powerful footsie tool. Try not to jump in at people, if you’re going to take that big risk, understand you can get beat up pretty bad for it. Think about your jump ins, if you see a tendency of your opponent to let you get a jump in, you might take that risk, but it’s still a pretty big risk against most characters, and if you jump often people will just anti air you all day until you stop. Try to get in without jumping. Also, make sure you know Sakura’s really basic combos and confirms you can use. You don’t need loops yet, you just need some basic combos to get your damage and get a good situation for yourself afterwards. Then, learn some basic set ups you can do after a combo or a throw, so when those situations do come up you know what to do.

Again, I know that’s a lot, but if you need some specific help out of all that we here are more than happy to help ^_^. And remember, we all started somewhere, I went back and watched old videos of me and my friends, and we were, um, less than great. Be proud when you successfully add something to your game and make it work in a match, I saw you go for some good stuff.

22

thanks man… I’ve tried to play ground game against Sagat but it just ain’t workin. lol. I know this sounds like an excuse but, bout punishing the super, there’s a sudden lag, i was like frak it. But yeah, like you said, I shouldn’t have tried anything then.

Anyway, thanks again, I’ll try to post some more vids soon. This is my online play so its damn laggy. Crappy internet connection at my place. But yeah, thanks again for the pointers.

So, from what I read, I need to

  1. Stop jumping too much
  2. get my hit confirm right
  3. Get my basic sakura bnbs right

Correct? :slight_smile:

23

Those, and just be more aware of the situations you’re in and how to handle them. The Sonic Boom guide on footsies is a great read, high level stuff, but a great read.

You get the idea though, it just takes time :smiley:

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Why does Deebs keep following your threads and liking nearly every post you make, and you vice versa?
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Idk man, I don’t think he does, I think he just follows the Sakura threads in general and doesn’t like the fact you’re being a douchebag?

26

Whats the best way to stop mashing reversal having hard time doing BnB, when someone does dp in the middle of my combos

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Going back to my original question… Why do I end up with arguments from people on your side of the world? You live in England, but are you sure you’re not Irish? Seriously, no one called YOU a douche bag, yet somehow, I’m supposed to be nice to you.
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28

Harsh answer: Hit your combos properly. If you properly time your combos, people can’t reversal out, they’re still in the combo and hitstun. If you are constantly getting hit out of combos in matches, you should spend more time in training mode making sure you can land them.

On a lighter note, if somebody is literally dping between everything, just stop the combo and block at a safe point. They’ll go sailing past and you can punish them and be happy. I wouldn’t recommend this at a higher level unless you’re in some serious mind games and think you can call somebody out though >.>. At a low level you will notice people who reversal far too much and deserved to be punished for it, so you can do that until you have more confidence in your combos.

And reality is, we all drop combos. Top players drop combos in tournament winning matches, we just make mistakes. Just gotta suck it up and minimize those mistakes as much as humanly possible.

29

Here’s some recent matches I played against a friend who mains fei long and used to main gief. Looking for some feedback

So far I noticed I wasnt really on point with my anti airs in the fei long match, didn’t always go for the most optimal punish combos at times, that is, I sometimes use cr.mk xx sho too much to punish, when I should be going for tatsu loops. Kinda dropped all the tatsu loops for some reason, might be because there were some lag spikes at times from what i remember, because I usually dont drop them that often -_-. In the 2nd fight I tried to connect to his xbl party, while setting up my mic, which is why I stood still at times.

[media=youtube]wfqzDCrsSsw[/media]

Don’t really know the gief match up that well, once thing I noticed is that I should probably stop spamming jump back hk like a retard when he stops command throwing xD.

[media=youtube]2-o_pWSAY5Y[/media]

Also if it’s too long you can probably skip parts of the 2nd fight in the fei long match and maybe just skim through, or only comment on the gief match

30

My training partner mains Zangief so I can talk about that a lot. Basically he was letting you get away with murder in footsies lol. You gotta be less scared to anti that fool, but otherwise you were playing that mostly right. You can straight up stuff his lariat with j.hp if you space and time it correctly and even do that off a safejump set up. A strong Gief should be able to really compete in footsies though, so you need make sure you know that stuff.

It looks like you have the right ideas in those vids and are doing alright. Your neutral needs some work (whiffed pokes into uppercut is bad, mmmkay?) and you need a bit more awareness on what you and your opponents options are. As Sakura you’re getting good ideas, just need to keep up openings and pressure, would like to see what you do when you have those chances. Fei and Gief don’t really give you those chances though lol so I won’t complain here.

Doing pretty good though, keep up the work. I’d post vids of myself but I stopped playing online entirely 6~ months ago, and now when I get on I feel like I’m playing with a weight around my neck x_x and it’s not just combos, committing to walking forward is the bane of XBL.

31

Oh wow, that was fast, thanks :smiley:

I kind of get what you mean, but not entirely, could you give an example where that was the case. Like, I’m having a bit of trouble applying what you said.

32

Um, like when Fei Long knocked you down, you kinda just let him have his way with you. You know he has the option to beat you blocking, but you blocked and got grabbed and killed a couple times. The thing is it’s probably one of his least scary options to command grab. His command grab comes out insanely slow(14 frames much?), you can hit him out of it with anything (cl.hp into death is a great “fuck your bullshit” button). If it’s EX you can reversal it (still 12 frames and 1 hit of armor). It looked you had no idea what his options were versus your wake up options and just wait to see what would happen instead of reacting. You probably could’ve gotten out at least once with a backdash. Yeah he can punish it, but you weren’t using it so why would he respect it as one of your options?

When you end up in a situation where a character knocks you down/has you in pressure, you should know what that character has as an option to beat some of your options and vice-versa. It’s why we have option selects, to try and cover as many possible options as we can. I could go into specifics, but I’d be here awhile lol I hope that cleared things up just a bit.

EDIT: and I know that was fast lol I spend most of my early mornings online -_- not much else to do.

33

Yeah definitely cleared it up, and you’re right, I dont do that enough, it’s probably why I don’t use option selects much, unless something is super obvious like someone back dashing or teleporting every time on wake up.

Also, I didn’t even know his command grab had such a slow start up.

34

And that’s what stands out. Little things like this make a huge difference and can change entire MUs. Like Oni is really annoying in footsies until you realize his palm is -9 on block and you can uppercut it, or once you realize you can hit cl.hp after most divekicks and beat tons of options.

35

Erm what?

36

***[S]Ignore him man, he’s a sad little guy.[/S]***…

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You know what they say about the Irish. LOLOL
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38

I suck too, halp. lol

[media=youtube]SFXtZrsNtGI[/media]

39

Oh man… this is a mess @_@
I’d say first step to improving is go do Sakura trials, and keep doing them till you can do at least up to trial 20 10 times IN A ROW each.
And also in Street Fighter you don’t just do random special moves, you have to use normals mainly… with Sakura you only use special moves in combos and frame traps really :confused:
Learn her basic combos and start from there.

40

[LEFT]Yes, i’m quite aware of that. I’m not doing random moves, i just suck at combos and footsies :stuck_out_tongue: Got the stick in today and been in trials mode all day, that was on pad. Hopefully there will be some major improvement. I am having a bit of trouble with j.hp > s.mp > hadou > FDC, I can do each thing with ease on it’s own, and the first two and last two with ease, but linking s.mp into the hadou is killing me.[/LEFT]