so does daigo losing to john prove that ryu is still better than evil ryu? Some people might argue no because he beat alex valle, but I watched both matches at noticed that daigo landed several cr.mk’s against alex and I think he only hit one against john, but didn’t cancel into fireball. It’s true that daigo has great execution versus valle, but was lacking against john, but IMO john had horrible execution. John had a lot of drops and had it been daigo (ryu) who was playing against daigo (evil ryu), it would’ve been a clinic.
I’ve have this conspiracy that because popular players like daigo, pr balrog, and now even maximillion start using evil ryu that others followed suit and people assumed that because good players were flocking to him that he must be good, but I don’t evil got much better with ultra. f.mk became more consistent, cr.hk is great for whiff punishes, but doesn’t lead to the best set ups, but i do think his health buff was pretty good because evil has a hard time getting in and 900 health made it even harder.
I’ve been arguing with people who claim evil is top tier and call me a scumbag for playing him even though i picked him up in ae. There argument is pretty much that because he does big damage he’s the best, but they ignore the consistency of this damage. In most cases evil has to spend two bars to get his damage, but before he can do that, he has to get in. cr.mk is 7 frames and if that doesn’t work players have to get in with god like teleports and dive kicks which can be very risky. Evil ryu could have an infinite, but it won’t matter if he can’t touch the opponent.
Some i’m wondering if daigo’s loss is going to be the start of evil ryu getting exposed as being mid-tier. With evils being so prominent, players are going to want to find counters, and all they have to do is watch john’s match against daigo.
No, I don’t think Ryu is better than Evil Ryu overall in USF4. The match up is 5-5 IMO and Daigo lost because Choi outplayed him, simple as that. Both guys dropped a lot of combos during that set. Does this loss expose Evil Ryu? For the people who thought he was top 3 or the best in the game then yeah I guess so. I never thought that though, I figured he would end up at the bottom of top 10 when all is said and done and I still believe that.
5-5? I’m not necesarily disagreeing with you, but how does evil ryu get in if he can’t use cr.mk, which ryu can shut down? Jump? Because that exactly what ryu players want.
Far stand MK beats Ryu’s cr. MK, it goes over lows and hits low. Hop kick also goes over lows and hits low. If Evil Ryu can push Ryu to the corner he has fake cross ups that he can use from soft knockdowns from a number of a different ways(EX tatsu, LP SRK, LK tatsu, target combo). Land a combo on Ryu and get that set ups and if he guess wrong, he’s basically dead. Besides that, their is the obvious like Evil Ryu doing more damage. Ryu has the advantage up close but Evil Ryu can close the gap quickly by landing one low forward even if he eats 2 or 3 in return. Or hell, maybe you just play great footsies and counter poke effectively the way Daigo did to Valle.
Daigo was actually starting to outplay Choi in game 2. But Choi came through and basically won both rounds by hitting 2 forward fierce > SRK for big damage and giving himself the lead when it looked like Daigo was about to close it out. Those were clutch reads that helped him win it and not because of Ryu’s superior footsies. Basically what I’m saying is that their are many factors involved in who wins and loses. Choi won with better zoning and footsies in the first match then with amazing reads near the end of both rounds in the 2nd match. It doesn’t only boil down to what’s on paper.
Me saying all this may look like I’m giving the advantage to Evil Ryu, I’m definitely not. Like I said, I think it’s even. Ryu has the advantage over Evil Ryu in some categories and Evil Ryu has some over Ryu in others.
That was the kind of answer that I was looking for. Now I think that match might be 5.5 because Ryu can convert virtually any mistake into an ultra and evil ryu’s low health. I use to think it 6-4 ryu because I still to this day have not seen an evil get in on a ryu (when the players were of equal skill), and whenever an evil tried to mix-up his tactics to get in, he would catch a focus, ji.mp, dp, or a cr.mk that would lead into a super or ultra, and then the ryu player would just sit on the life lead.
I actually believe Evil Ryu beats regular Ryu. Evil Ryu naturally outranges Ryu with his pokes. Ryu is forced in the situation where he has to push forward and get in if played properly imo. You have Red fireballs to win fireball wars full screen, dive kicks simply for movement forward and away from fireballs, his dashes (forward and back), and his focus attack.
Obviously st.medium kick and low forward, but Evil Ryu also has hopkick now to blow up low pokes. Just because Daigo lost doesn’t mean Evil Ryu is worse- it just means Daigo got outplayed by Choi. Plain and simple.
Daigo seemed lost in his match. It was over before he could get serious. Which means all the credit goes to Choi!
People above pretty much said it all, although I still agree e.ryu is being overpraised. Guess it shows in the eventhubs tiers list.
I think he dropped 1.5 points since Daigo’s loss.
imo- Evil Ryu is being overpraised, but shouldn’t be slept on. His damage and options were good since the last version. It’s just being praised now because he was one of those characters that just didn’t get nerfed. He’s still top, it’s just people need to realize he has weaknesses like every character. He isn’t invincible now that Daigo picked him.
But personally from what I’ve seen from tournament results and tournaments I’ve personally been to, Evil Ryus are getting wrecked during pools or losing early on in the bracket. FChamp called him a scrubby shoto- which I can actually understand, but there are still shoto basics not everybody has. Arturo always tells me to be successful as a shoto player, you need to dedicate your time. It could take years to become a true shoto player.
In the grand scheme of things let’s look at some Ultra tournament results. Who’s making top 32 and who’s actually placing high during tournaments with Evil Ryu?
So far, the only Evil Ryus of note without looking at EVO right now are PR Rog, Laugh, 801 Strider and I. PR Rog and 801 Strider having alternates as well to cover Evil Ryu’s bad matchups. I actually don’t know if 801 Strider still uses him anymore after Ultra’s launch.
About this, whenever I see Evil Ryu vs Ryu, or other fireball zoners like Sagat or Guile. I always see the Evil Ryu player playing the aggressor and trying to push forward. I try to play really lame in these matches. I show them that I’m not going to lose a lot of life trying to chase them down. Sure I’ll do it if I get desperate. But I start off trying to get the life lead and start chucking a lot of red fireballs to let them know they have to come to me and not the other way around. I try to get them to waste EX meter which they gain nothing from since I’m throwing 2-3 hit red fireballs from nearly full screen to cancel them out. When they get close then I’ll try to go to work and use Evil Ryu’s long range normals or his dive kick to try and get in. Or maybe I’ll continue zoning with regular fireball or the jab red fireball to get them to jump at me so I can anti-air. This strat has worked out for me when I kept losing the Ryu(same goes for Gat and Guile) match up in the earlier days trying to chase them down and do my fancy combos. I always wondered how it would work at higher levels of play.
When I beat Dieminion at CEO, everybody questioned the way I was playing. But essentially I prevented him from constantly bullying me with sonic booms and st.fierces and forced him to jump at me and forced him into the corner. Evil Ryu’s zoning is amazing and he beats out almost all fireball zoners. (if not all)
He seemed to just play a lot like he did with Ryu, and it wasn’t really doing much for him. He never got in there, he just sort of stayed at poke range all day. It was weird.
Evil Ryu is good. But he (along with Yun) were both way hyped up. It feels like this happens a lot and then quickly gets forgotten once the game is actually out (remember when Akuma was “doomed” because he had an extra frame added to Demon Flip Palm or something?). While it’s somewhat justified, especially given that Yun is still crazy-good, I feel like the people who cry “top tier” are the people who think Evil Ryu and Yun were irrelevant or bad in AE 2012, which they sure as hell weren’t.
“to be successful as a shoto player, you need to dedicate your time” Arturo is so right. ER is still a shoto, and to play a shoto you’ve got to know 44 match ups in this game now, along with solid fundamentals (I’ve played a setplay Cammy since 09 so I’m struggling lol.) Lilevil is right there aren’t many Evil Ryus making it out of their pools, its sort of like Akuma in 2012. They’re strong characters but it still takes effort. Whenever an Akuma would make it out it’d be Infil or Tokido not a random Akuma same with Evil.
Here is another video with Daigo against a Ryu player, this time a Chinese Ryu player named “Blade”. This guy is pretty good and made Daigo work for his win. He starts off playing exactly like how he played against John Choi, footsies and zoning only. He loses the first game and then proceeds to spam hop kick to beat Blade Ryu’s sweep and low forward. It’s a interesting adjustment to make. I’ve tried doing this myself in the past to beat Ryu’s faster lows, but I end up stopping because they start focusing me or throwing fireballs in my face. Blade did do that but Daigo wouldn’t let up with the hop kick.
Another interesting thing to note is that it was a FT3 and Daigo lost 2 of the first 3, which would have been a loss had he played this guy in America. But with more room for mistakes, he came back and won the next two pretty easily. I don’t know if this is suppose to be his counter Ryu game plan or he just started doing it on the fly but it’s interesting to see how he changed it up when it looked like Blade was getting the better of him in the footsie battle.
Daigo will win Evo next year. Don’t you guys ever watch DBZ? Daigo got a new form (Evil Ryu), got owned (now he’s dead), and will spend 1 year training in the after life with the Kais (Bonchan, Sako, etc.) for Super Daigo 3.
Hop kick is great like that. Rice, just watch for their focus and hit confirm into tatsu. If you see their focus startup, you know your tatsu will hit. It’s really hard to confirm just off the hit of f+mk, but if you see a focus or get them to whiff throw, you should be able to get it.
As of late I’ve been abusing Evil Ryu’s walk speed and using hop kick more efficiently and it’s pretty godlike honestly. I feel like that set kind of showed Daigo that there’s more to Evil Ryu than what he had originally thought. I felt like the first two matches he was kind of getting out played though. The Ryu players got a bunch of good jump ins on Daigo after all.
I’m not going to make any arguments as to whether or not E.Ryu is just as good on the tier list as everyone makes him out to be, or if he wins or loses the OG Ryu matchup, but I will say this: John Choi jumped forward and scored off of it in a major way, at least once. Daigo never once jumped forward, unless it was part of his oki.
Also, here are two pieces I found a couple days ago.
Air’s blog can be a little confusing seeing as how his English could use some improving. Overall, I think it was a pretty insightful read for such a short elaboration. The SRK article was pretty cool since it got input from really good players, including John Choi himself.
This thread follows Daigo’s and Lil’ Evils adaptation of Evil Ryu’s footsie game.
Ryu’s anti-air game is rock solid, jumping in is a very risky option. Evil Ryu’s approach must begin on the ground. Evil Ryu (just like Ryu) wants to poke with c.mk into fireball. Since Ryu’s c.mk is faster, Evil Ryu will lose the match if he relies upon c.mk. As Daigo and Lil’ Evil have found, hop-kick and s.mk are effective counter pokes to Ryu’s c.mk – hop-kick has the benefit of leading into tatsu or ex-tatsu for continued mix-ups and more damage.
The ground game is an allegory for the rest of the matchup, highlighting the balance choices between the characters. Ryu is safer with a limited move set and Evil Ryu has more offensive options that lead to more damage. To me, they still appear balanced with this matchup firmly at 5:5.
On the down side for Eyu, pressuring with Eyu specific tools is a no go. Any time a close normal is performed, you will eat a hit if not fadc’d to safety. Close normals to fireball get sweep punished and close to wheel kicks get shoryuken mashed on or the light wheel kick gets sweep punished. Dive kick loses to damn near everything and expands his hit box not letting Eyu fake a jump in (still gets hit by shoryuken at stupid ranges.) All other jump in normals get low profiled.
On the super plus side where Eyu murders Ryu is 3 fold.
When it comes to footsies, Ryu suffers from can’t do enough can’t do too much syndrome. If Ryu does crouch forward to keep Eyu out, Eyu’s walk speed bodies that shit for a free sweep punish. If Ryu thinks he has to Hadoken, the range where he just misses sweep gets focus dashed into far jab for free. This FORCES Ryu to choose offense or defense. At this point you either walk him into the corner or watch him whiff with your superior walk speed. If you walk him into the corner, the game is yours. If you force him to whiff, ONE extra frame on you sweep doesn’t make enough of a difference to miss a sweep punish. Sure the slower crouch forward might get stuffed, but to do that Ryu has to be what, two frames earlier than Eyu. Please, if you aren’t baiting the crouch forward, you shouldn’t be worried about getting stuffed…
When it comes to meter, Ryu can’t keep up. If Eyu gets two meters, Ryu is going to have to deal with hadoken FADC into Eyu pressure. As long as you can hit your bnbs, you are going to turn one confirm into 1/3 Ryu’s life gone and another meter. The pressure afterwards leads to the second meter. The second meter becomes another FADC in if you choose or if you get the hit, an FADC combo that builds you another meter and a half. When it comes to meter, Eyu builds it, Ryu spends it, but damage difference is the world.
When Eyu players stop acting like Eyu’s punches are not the exact same as Ryu’s (other than crouch fierce,) their pressure will get GDLK. Ryu has decent pressure just using crouch strong step crouch jab step ect… Eyu player can not only do this, but has greater walk speed and a gigantic kara throw. Are you fucking kidding me? Why do I only get players online who cancel to hadoken or wheel kick online. My brother plays Eyu now and once he got tired of the will I punish your punishable string, he started doing old school pressure. That shit bodies. I can’t tell when he’s going to use his plus normals to shimmy or walk in and pressure more. Than the kara throws get ridiculous. He started jab pressuring me just to let me out so he could hop kick my crouch forward that I used to push him out. Solid pressure is too good, use it…
Consider this, Eyu players feel like this match up is in Eyu’s favor or even while Ryu player typically feel like the match up is even or not in Ryu’s favor. The mere fact that outside of the execution for combos, Ryu players have to work harder to win prove that the match up is not even for Ryu…
TL;DR Eyu beats Ryu because once he gets meter he always has it, Eyu can whiff punish Ryu or focus in on him while Ryu plasmas for his life and Eyu players haven’t been using the safest pressure… Also Eyu players feel better about the match up than Ryu players do…