Dealing With Oni's Punishability

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

Playing Oni for almost a year now and one thing that really bugs me is that he is a SSS Tier damage sponge. Every single special is punishable by the slowest of start ups, and a large majority of his normals sit at -2 or -4 on block as well! Unless you’ve got pretty solid inputs a missed link can mean a full 300-400 damage combo! I just don’t see this happening to many other characters but I guess that is what attributes to his next-to-bottom tier position. Needless to say Oni is not exactly FG noob friendly, but the amount of information available on Oni is extremely limited and there doesn’t seem to be a compendium of information like most other popular characters, so with that being said… What are some general or character specifics tips or tricks you use to maintain safety while trying to keep pressure?

I’m personally having extreme amounts of difficulties with footsie and pressure heavy characters like Yun, Yang, Chun Li, Rose, Vega, Juri, and Ibuki. Any specifics on these would be fantastic!

2

yun-on hard knockdown a meaty crouch hardpunch trades or stuffs with his upkicks in your favor. you can throw him out of ex upkicks now, not sure about hard upkicks but you might be able to as well. med and light upkicks still arent throwable but they wiff over your head if your crouching letting you punish. what this means is his stupid rush punch into upkicks 50/50 is now not so bad. choose to block or throw. after yuns normal block strings or shoulder roll on block if you press stand med kick it will stuff out their neutral jump dive kick follow up they all love to do to keep pressure. practice being able to anti air divekicks with stand jab, stand med punch, and stand hard punch, and forward hard kick. i assume you know your dash up or cross up options after anti air jabs, stand med, and stand hard punch, and your light slash meaty fireball and slash dp meter build after forward hk. dont bother trying to focus in between his shoulder roll strings when he has 2 or 3 bars. if hes super smart hell focus/red focus cancel his shoulder roll for the crumple. beware of the hail mary blocked shoulder roll into ex redfocus cancel. when your in the corner try to focus one of yuns stand hardkikcs at the end of his strings if he likes to stick that out, if really desperate you can tatsu out if hes a backdash spammer.

yang-idk i get wrecked against good yangs.

chun-what the match boils down to is you trying to focus in on one of her long range normals and start your pressure/punish. so youll be walking back and forth just in her sweep range. smart chuns will catch on and start doing her quicker normals that will break your focus or do normals into ex legs. if you cant get the timing down then try to fireball in the midrange, mix these in with forward light punch to keep them on their toes. another alternative, try to stomp her normals then get a meaty setup with an os behind it to catch her backdash. you can hard stomp on her wake up which beats backdash and ex birdkicks. smart chuns will focus back dash this or focus punish for crumple, or wake up neutral jump air throw. which you then respond with meaty set ups or meaty throws. hard match for you shes a counterpick for a reason.

rose-same thing as chun, focus in on her stand med kick, stand hard kick, or stand forward and go to town. roses see this and start soul spiraling in the midrange to break your focus dash in attempts, to counter this you need to play with the spacing to get a blocked light or ex soul spiral. off a blocked soul spiral you can stand light kick into tatsu punish, its a tight punish hard to get it online consistently but thems the breaks. rose on wakeup will probably be backdashing until you pin her in the corner so option select your meaties with sweep or forward hardpunch. once you get her in the corner feel free to meaty throw her all day. if she tries her soul satelite into soul throw ambiguous mixup on you your ultra 1 with kicks blows that up, if you dont have ultra 1 crouch medium punch timed right stuffs it out all day. with redfocus here rose can no longer 4 button tech with 2 bars so if you notice her 4 button teching without the 2 bar you can buffer your super off of a normal to catch the backdash.

vega-hard match, you cant push any buttons at the midrange which opens up the lane for vega to kara throw you. if the vegas a scrub and likes to izuna drop all day or do that cross up crap, neutral jump mp beats that out. if you land a stomp then dash up neutral jump mp with a tatsu os behind it should catch the command backdash. if you stomp and the opponent doesnt delay wake up a lot you can lk slash in crouch lk for a meaty low setup that eats vega up. if the vega is izuna dropping and mixing up left or right afterwards, if you focus you can still punish regardless of which side he landed on, if he landed in front you can let the focus go and crumple if he landed back you can still dash towards him and get a punish. since its pretty hard to focus in on one of vegas normals youll probably jumping at him a lot. dont end your crouch med kick with a fireball cuz he can ex roll through it.

juri-idk i dont play any good juris. you can compete and even win the fireball war with her because of the nature of her having to store one first. try and bait a divekick with forward lp and punish. you cant stomp juri on her wakeup her pinwheel kick beats that out, so its the old meaty or not meaty or throw pressure. dont meet her in the air unless you think you can beat her out with airdash.

ibuki- hard match up.
1.her tripple kick series isnt a true block string, ibukis will test you on your knowledge of this and try to get away with all 3 kicks on block giving a shitload of chip damage. so focus forward the last kick on reaction and start your pressure. after they learn that you are focusing his third kick, they will wait and delay her stand mk to catch the forward dash and combo you. this gets beat by just crouch blocking because then your at neutral position again.
2.if you land a hard knockdown then meaty crouch light kicks eat ibuki up until she gets meter. at which point you wanna bait out the ex up kick and in response you focus attack forward to punish, dont make the mistake of waiting for the kunai follow up because she can choose not to throw it and recover quicker. just focus forward after blocking the exupkick, the focus will eat the kunai if it was thrown and the forward dash lets you punish with whatever.
3.against ibukis that like to teleport mixup you are probably safe to tap jabs during her strings to try and catch her out.
4.against ibukis that like to tick throw you off the kunai block, try to stay disciplined and crouch tech, dont stand grab, because the moment they figure out your grab spamming theyll mix in their command grab and blow that up, which also means you shouldnt spam 4 button tech if you didnt have 2 bars. crouch hard punch eats up ibukis due to her slow crouch tech.
5.ibuki has a stupid overhead wiff into low mixup on your wakeup that is super hard to see. dp that shit dont try and block it.
6. if your pro enough you can try to focus the kunai mixup and backdash out, but ive never gotten the timing down to consistently wake up focus a meaty kunai setup, hopefully you can as this takes away a lot of ibukis mixups.
7.mixing in your kara throw and low checking ibuki during your strings once she starts stand teching works well with her due to her 4 frame crouch lk and her crouch buttons being slow.

3

I find b+MP wrecks divekick.

4

Thanks a ton Boxinstevefox, so much juicy info there! I can’t thank you enough man, really. It’s good to know the struggle against these characters is real too, sometimes I get down on myself over it but knowing that they’re hard match ups for a lot of people helps.

5

np man, if you have any more match up questions ask away. though there are a lot of matchups i dont know and some of my info might be dated with dwu and chars getting changes to their moves, ill try to help.

6

How about Seth’s match up? I find him pretty inescapable.

7

seth-idk hes one of the characters that got significantly changed from ae to ultra. most of my experience has been with online shenanigan seths, they thrived off that wall jump, and cancelling into tandem crap. before he had a 3/4 screen fireball punish with that wall jump now that thats gone your free to try electric fireballs from far(his wall jump only reaches midscreen now i believe). dont focus backdash his fireballs, his stretchy arms will punish the recovery frames on your back dash and your greylife will be gone, focus forward. your best bet for getting in will probably be getting seth to throw a fireball and jump tatsuing in for the punish, practice being able to do that from full screen.

if you smell a jump in coming try to meet him in the air neutral jump hk beats seth. your main goal is to try and get seth in the corner, you have a bunch of unblockables on seth off forward throw and stomp in the corner. if you can do the labwork and make a setup for seth off of dwu then your golden, because seth will start dwu every knockdown you do to him in the corner once he sees you got unblockables on him still. idk thats how i got most of my online wins on seth, either unloading a full bar combo into him then unblockable in the corner or he zones me out/mixes me up to death.

off of the knockdown fireball teleport mixup if seth chooses to go in front instead of back you can ultra on reaction, so assume good seths will go back. hes one of those characters that will try to bait you with focus at the midrange stay disciplined dont try to tatsu or mk slash. if he picks ultra 2 then you can make good use of your air dash to try and bait it out, if he picks ultra one it means you shouldnt jump in on him because the hitbox got a lot farther up from before, not even air dash can get you out. ultra 1 is probably the way to go, it takes away his front teleport mixup and gives you an os to his teleport on knockdown, and it takes away some corner mixups. ultra 2 if your confident you can get the touch to redfocus combo him, or if you can reaction ultra his divekick.

edit-crouch hp is your best anti air against his divekicks all around, stand hp is pretty terrible at anti airing his divekicks for some reason, as well as focus dashing forward to either absorb the hit then punish or simply crossing under and crouch light kick punish. dont focus his divekick on your wakeup he can legs you if he sees it, practice auto correct dping the divekick on your wake.

it turns out his meaty jump in setups are very meaty, you cant low profile under them with crouch mk. if not done meaty you can low profile them, but if they were done with this timing then you could have gotten a dp out instead.

some stomps on your wake up you can beat out with crouch hp.

8

Insomnia cant sleep, so gonna do a little mini write up on cody though most onis shouldnt be having trouble with him, hes just you with shittier defense but a better focus and better ultras.

cody-as with all characters with good forward moving specials(except rose) neutral jump mp or hk eats up greedy codys, they all love to progress forward with crack kicks and ruffian kicks. you can play the mini game of walking back and forth and neutral jumping to see how many times you can get the cody do that low ruffian kick.

something to consider against cody and pretty much any char with a godlike neutral jump normal, they all love to jump in or focus attack in and neutral jump normal to punish if you grabbed or crouch teched to combo or continue pressure(gouken, sakura, adon). against these ppl off the blocked jump in simply crouch tech into crouch 3 punches (cr lk+lp, cr+3ppp). this os will tech the grab attempt, and if they neutral jumped your cr.hp will come out and stuff their normal. if they didnt jump or simply blocked to bait a dp or something then your cr.jab will come out and you can string together a block string.

since codys focus attack is godlike he will try to close in on you once he figures out your moves are focus bait. if he focuses too close to you you can reaction stand lk into tatsu or just reaction tatsuhes one of the few characters id advise reaction tatsuing if focus was done close, as his backdash is just as bad as yours some ppl will advise that you stand mk to break codys focus done too close, but the spacing difference between the 1st hit of stand mk and 2nd hit only coming out for stand mk is way too hard to judge imo. if i were cody and trying to bait a stand mk id purposely get hit by a few and then take a half step back, absorb the 2nd hit and get a crumple combo for big damage.

if you get a stomp you can dash up neutral jump mp os dp which beats ex zonk, however due to the buff cody got, this safejump os loses to ex criminal upper. i experimented and setups that do beat ex criminal upper loses to ex zonk and vice versa. so now you have a deejay situation where you can choose to do a meaty grab which beats ex criminal upper(and wake up focus if they thought you were gonna stomp on wake), or will you do a safejump setup that beats zonk but loses to criminal upper? this same setup can be used off of combos that end in tatsus, just react to the quick rise, if he quick rose do the mp on the way down of neutral jump, if he didnt quickrise you can neutral jump again for the same setup. btw if the cody has no bar go for meaty pressure or tick throw.

if cody grabs his knife dont freak out use your fireballs and f+lp feints to bait cody into jumping and dp him, or land a random f+lk or stepkick. DO NOT start jumping at him his air to air and anti airs become godlike.

good codys wont be ruffian kicking all over the place, and instead theyll use rock throw pressure to corner you. however this opens up the lane for you do focus in on one of his rocks and punish. off a blocked rock he has enough frames to try and do a ruffian kick frame trap,kinda like gouken and his palm after blocked fireball pressure, except unlike gouken he cant punish you for neutral jumping so neutral jump that shit and punish.

on defense you should treat cody like sakura, dont press anything during their block strings, its ok to eat throws from cody as he doesnt have any mixups off of throws. its only when you get nervous and get frame trapped does he get huge damage.

lastly if the cody picked u2, you can forward throw then light slash in and mp electric fireball until he has ultra. from there switch up to using lp electric fireball to bait out the ultra. if cody wakes up ultra, the dust will go through the fireball and the dust will hit you, however the following hits of the ultra wont combo letting you punish big.

9

Honestly dude feel free to write as much as you want. There is such a lack of information for Oni match up I guarantee that people will be all over this if they need help. Thanks a lot!

10

I agree completely with Cdrive. I am constantly looking for your post as I find them so helpful.
I just wish I could contribute more to this forum for Oni as I see there isn’t much info on Him. I am still a rookie and get a chance to run some games every once in a while.

Also I am going to try to get more serious with USF4, so if anyone down to run some games let me know.

11

kk, hopefully the more ppl we get playing oni, the more capcom will see what buffs he really needs. imo the lack of ppl playing him is what lead to him not getting any meaningful buffs. im sure capcom has win percentage ratios for tourneys and such, the fact that very few ppl enter with him in tourneys at all probably skew the numbers and matchup footage slightly. aka"i want more ppl playing him to see how bad he is, then they too can complain to capcom" huehuehue.

akuma-one of the first matchups i learned, my brother mained akuma when i picked up oni day 1.

-1st thing i need to get out of the way, you should not be getting hit with cross up/ambiguous tatsu, ever. akuma will get this off of sweeps, both random footsy ones and off tatsu sweeps. he will mix this up with regular jump ins or divekicks to mess your blocks up. the timing for anything other then a tatsu is very different. cross up tatsu timing is very late in his jump, while the divekick is very early. if you see the cross/ambiguous tatsu coming crouch mk will low profile you underneath it, taking away the left right mixup. once akuma sees this he will start wiff palm throw or empty jump throw to try and punish the recovery frames of the mk, this you can beat by 3 button teching with crouch mk(cr lp+lk+mk)

-2nd you should not be losing to air based akumas, ever. this means those online scrubs that like to demon flip kick or palm or fireball all day cuz they think its too laggy for you to reaction dp them. your dp straight up blows up akumas that like to dive kick you during neutral. crouch hp for divekicks done right on top of you to try to be ambiguous or cross you up, stand hp for divekicks done from midrange, forward hk for far range. you can air to air the dive kicks, air dash them, hell you can even low profile them. on top of this your dp is very good at auto correcting. as much shit as i give oni for being a bad character his anti airs are very strong(though the payoff for landing them is another discussion). you guys should know your followups by now, off anti air lp dp f+hk into meter building or meaty fireball, anti air stand hp or crouch hp into meaty f+hp or fireball for those scrubs that like to hold up forward to test if your gonna anti air again. off anti air jab you can forward dash for a left right cross under.

-3rd any hard knock down into a dive kick setup that would actually hit you, can be dped. there is no way for akuma to make a divekick that would have hit you, wiff you if you dped, thanks to onis extremley vertical no horizontal range dp. so off any knock down if you see a demon flip divekick coming your way dp that shit. the only way akuma can safely set you up off his demon flips is to wiff palm front or back into meaty lows/frame trap or grabs attempt. if he is palming you then you have to just deal with the pressure. i cannot comment on delay wakeup because i have seen some fucked up setups from japanese akumas when they see dwu. meaty/cross up air fireballs seem to be the new hotness now amongst akumas who still like to vortex, my brother however never got the timing down to do it consistently, its actually pretty hard to do. so assume most online scrub akumas cant do it either.

-4, you lose to ground based akuma, for one reason only stand far round house(hk). this thing is what makes the matchup retarded. whoever thought to gave akuma something that travels 1 box, breaks focus, starts his most damaging combos, and only leaves him at -2 when blocked should be shot. common ways akuma will use this, to close space, off of 3 light attacks in block string to frame trap, off of 1 light and 1 med attack in a block string to trap, random ones while walking back and forth in neutral, to keep pressure in the corner. if blocked, dont try and press buttons, the range akuma will be and the frame data just dont give you anything to work with. the answer to this? you will pretty much just have to let akuma do this. dont press buttons in the mid range, no focus forward while akuma is on the ground, youll be doing a lot of walk up block walk up block…IF akuma starts getting predictable with this from far or far med range you can do 3 things, try to neutral jump punish though this is the slower option and needs to be done preemptively however if wiffed it is safe. you can try to stomp his roundhouse, this can be done on reaction or as a read, however if you got too predictable with your stomps the akuma can simply wait for it/focus and punish your wiffed stomp on recovery. lastly at far med to far range you can stick out stand mp buffered into tatsu or fireball fadc to stuff out the startup or recovery of akumas stand hk, this requires the akuma to walk too far out and go into auto pilot though, good akumas will know the spacing once you hit them with this and maintain med to close med range.

-5 on knockdown akuma is one of the chars that you can bait their dp with meaty lk stomp(off of stomp lk slash in then lk stomp, off of soft knockdown dash up once then lk stomp it will be meaty if quick rise). this will net you wins against a lot of online akumas, however once they know the matchup they will start blocking on wake after which they can sweep punish, if they cant get the timing down they can just reversal uppercut on block. they can also wake up focus which can be beat by meaty grabs and yadda yada you know the drill.

-6 dont bother os tatsuing akumas that teleport on wake, your tatsu wont catch up in time, and now that akuma rocking u2 is the new hotness youll be ultra punished for your trouble. you could probably os ultra 1 off of one of the old unblockable setups oni has on akuma(foward throw light slash in jump mk, forward throw dash up cr mk then jump mk) it might still be punishable by teleport cancel u2 i havent tested yet.

-7if you have four bar or three bar and a little extra and land a random touch try to work in the following combo cr.hp light slash fadc cr hp slash fadc cr hp>>>various ender(the ender will stun if you go for the hk slash reset and it lands, if your in the corner and do the ex tatsu ender back mp into overhead/tick throw/stomp/low check mixup it will stun, if you do the stomp ender and land a meaty or tick throw it will stun) if you need to you can add stand or crjab before the cr.hp to make it easier, the whole sequence does 850+ stun. this is how i auto win vs my brother who plays evil ryu and i get a touch.

-8 lastly if the match is close and the akuma starts going full screen chucking fireballs in the attempt to get the hail mary ex demon flip just spam forward lp or crouch mk/whatever normal you can buffer dp into. ex demon flip cant cross you up, and the akuma cant cut the jump short like with regular demon flip palm.

12

Oni has loads of safe options

On block:
EX Tatsu is -1
HK Demon Palm is -1
LK Demon Slash is -2
MK Demon Slash is -4

13

ex tatsu is good. hk demon palm is focus bait, long startup time single hit can be focused on reaction. lk demon slash -2 point blank on block puts you in the opponents 50-50. mk demon slash -4 point blank is dp punishable and throw punishable universally. You can’t just look at block values and assume a move is safe just because it’s not really negative. distance left on block and start up need to be considered as well.

14

vs oni (the fraud test)

ever lose to another oni and feel like they just frauded you out? NO MORE, now you too can call yourself legit and win with real tactics instead of the typical jump around airdash all day land random jump in do cross up slashes and stomp stomp bullshit running rampant online.

-oni is another character that blows up your stomp attempts with any dp except maybe ex. this is due to onis no horizontal range straight up dp so dont even try to bait a dp with a stomp. this means no stomps on wake, no wake up stomps, no stomps off blocked slash, no jump lk block stomp. this loses to mashers and is unsafe on block, ill explain why in a minute.

-stomps are a fraudulent move. they are -7(lk) and -6(mk) respectively on block, and only work on people who dont know how to block and punish them or press too many buttons. stomps done meaty(knock down meaty setups can be replaced with stomps instead of the meaty normal) or done point blank(jump lk blocked, lk slash blocked, air reset and stomp upon landing, focus attack level 1 dash forward stomp) should be blocked standing instead of crouching, as the shrunken hurtbox of your character causes less pushback and more damaging punishes are possible. off a blocked mk stomp done in the above scenarios you can back mp punish, crouch hp into fireball or tatsu punish(slash is not possible to combo here there is too much pushback it wiffs), stand lk into tatsu punish(fireball does not combo at max distance). it is not possible to dp punish blocked stomps unless its ex. i want you to go into training room and get the dumby to do the above scenarios to you(as this is the typical scenario where stomps happen) and block and punish. stomps done from further down a block string are safe due to the pushback(though i think you can kara super punish if you want to be a badass), and these stomps shouldnt catch you as they only catch ppl pressing buttons. the oni mirror match will teach you a valuable lesson, to just take block string pressure and just block. its only when you start freaking out/getting impatient and start pressing buttons does oni get his damage and stomps in.

-vs air dash tatsu, with ultra here, meter is very very important. with 3 bar red focus combos being so easy to confirm expect onis to not be blowing bar on air dash ex tatsus, and if they are then good for you, they are down a meter and have no post hit setup on you even if they did hit. so expect normal air dash tatsus post hard and soft knockdown. for hard knockdown setups dwu screws up the timing for the tatsu to hit, for soft knockdown setups(mostly after being hit by a cross up slash) just dont quickrise and then they have to manually time the dash tatsu or abandon it. if you feel like it you can wake up cr hp to blow up most dash tatsu timings, if you feel like being safe crouch blocking/low mk will get you out of most attempts to dash tatsu as most onis screw up the timing for a regular dash tatsu to hit crouching opponents.

-vs that awful cross up slash, just play the computer in training mode on hardest, this will train you to see the cross up slashes and block on reaction and punish. the other way around it is to know the normals most onis cancel cross up slash from, back mp, stand mp, tc1, stand mk first hit and try to get a read on how the oni likes to set it up. the most common times onis like to cross up slash:off a dropped combo they like to cross up slash to try and salvage some damage, when close to stun or at the end of a fadc combo to try and rack up stun, when down on life and needing to make a comeback/get out of the corner. if they have 1 bar and ultra and flash yellow just hold forward.

there are 2 ways to play this matchup defensively and rush down.
to play defensively you stay very solid, with better knowledge of onis normals and habits you can win the oni mirror off pure footsys and AA. this is how i usually play if i dont want to be bothered with baiting out dp and stomps online. typical online onis will be jumping around air dashing and stomping everywhere, just let them do it and slowly press them to the corner, try to stay grounded as much as possible AA with far hk, stand hp, crouch hp. try to stay around the midrange focusing back and forth wiffing normals to try and bait the f+hp or sweep or any of the other focus bait normals you know oni has. even better if you keep sticking out crouch mk or lk and get the other oni to stomp and you focus to crumple. this will get you easy wins against onis that dont know the matchup.

the other way to play the matchup, hyper aggressive, focus dash forward after blocking a crouch mk as the fireball wont be a true block string, fadc off of a mk slash or f+hp. get on the inside and start doing blocked slash or blocked focus attack mixups and try to bait out a dp. vary up between kara throws and frame traps to carry the other oni to the corner from there you can maintain corner pressure. if the other oni isnt a masher then abuse him with your block string pressure until you get a random touch, if he is a masher then bait the dp.

on defense it will usually be one oni in block stun while the other oni trys to show off his cool block strings and tick kara throw setups. just dont press anything, you can block the cross up slash on reaction, and you know oni doesnt get anything off his forward throw, at most he gets a left right post block mixup on a jump in lk in the corner. the ex stomp you can block on reaction, and by now you should have formed the habit of stand blocking stomps anyway.

on defense
-post stepkick block quickly tapping 2 jabs stuffs most of what oni can throw at you besides dp fadc ultra.
-post slash the safest option is to just block, the 2nd safest is to 4 button tech when you dont have 2 meter, 3rd safest is to late tech with normal and 3 button techs(this option if done correctly will block the dp post slash, block the stomp post slash, and tech the throw. you know that when you get a bead on how the other person is teching then its game over when you get inside, so vary up the tech timings if you feel that you cant afford to be thrown.
-every hard knockdown should be delayed, the timings for most of onis stuff from 2012 require him to commit, so this will take away a lot of his meaty options forcing him to manually time things.
-dont quickrise unless you want to try and bait a blocked stomp or something.
-try to anti air with normals, your dp can be baited by empty jumping

on offense the safest option is probably just letting the other oni get up, staying at just the right distance so that he cant fadc his dp(shouldnt be too far because the range on his dp sucks) then continuing pressure. when first stringing together your first block string try to space things out, giving the other oni time to mash, this is a good test to see if your dealing with a masher or not. if he does mash out then tighten up your strings and bait and punish. if he doesn’t mash then kara throw.

kara super and air super shenaynays
this should be self evident but dont dp or jump at an oni with full meter stocked especially if hes airdash spamming. if he is air dash spamming and YOU have super feel free to walk forward and kara demon punish the recovery frames if done too close, or better yet walk forward and f+hp red focus crumple combo and make him regret choosing oni for his airdash.

if the other oni is focus spamming try and punish with f+hp cancel super or cr+hk cancel super.

15

This is all very helpful! I have been playing since late last August and have been using Oni from the start. I am currently having issues adapting to ultra however. In AE 2012 I was a 2000 - 2500 PP player and now I can’t even hit 1000pp. Are there any new moves you guys use that you picked up in light of all the nerfs he received?

16

Nothing really to be honest. Oni plays exactly the same as 2012, if you used unblockables and meaty setups in a lot of Onis matchups I can see why it would be hard, by now everyone should have figured out that off knockdown oni really needed to commit to any setup making it very obvious what you were going for, thus DWU destroys these old setups. Unless you’ve found something to deal with DWU your probably just manually timing everything which online is hard to do when your talking about 1-4 frames of leeway to stuff out a wake up throw or tech or reversal. All of your problem matchups got some kind of buff while you got mostly nerfs, I can see why this is a problem.

That being said:
-DP fadc ultra has been made easier in ultra. Remember how low your dp fadc would launch in 2012 giving you almost no time to input the ultra? If you dropped it consistently because of this your in luck, dp fadc launches much higher giving you more time to input the ultra correctly.
-save your meter. If you can consistently get to 3 bars you now have access to very easy good/high damage punish combos, anything you could punish F+HP with (blocked condor spire, blocked sumo headbutt, wiffed cannon spike that went flying over your head for example) can be redfocus cancelled into ultra for easy damage.
-Learn which problem matchups got what nerfs. Actually read and familiarize all the characters changes. Some characters got nerfs to their reversals/specials like yun being able to be thrown out of ex upkicks same with cody criminal upper.

17

Vs dudley THE TANK(muh brother in a quest to maintain that im a fraud also mained dudley for a couple of months)

If you know a good dudley with a connection or have a good training partner then befriend these people. The dudley matchup is the one that will force you to tighten your game up. Anything you do can be punished by dudley. A good dudley will force you to play the matchup clean, lest you want to become easily baited into doing stupid shit that will let the dudley train start rolling.

Range recognition-There are a couple of ranges you need to keep in mind when playing a good dudley.

Your best range-Is about a box and a half away from dudley. At this range you can counter poke with stand medium punch buffered into tatsu, you can counter poke the recovery on all of dudleys duck ins except maybe ex(important to note for later), and the recovery on his f+hp. After conditioning duddles into not ducking in at this range, you are now free to start chucking plasma and f+lp feints. If dudley starts focusing at this range then let him, hes either gonna focus back which lets you put him in the corner more, or focus forward which you can try to punish wish stand mk or lk or mp. The more you can maintain this range after getting the life lead, the more you can get random hits and damage. Dont poke at dudley with F+lk, as this normal out of all your poke normals has the biggest tendency to be stand hk punished by dudley.

At some point dudley will start to get jumpy to try and test your AA, this is where establishing a strong AA game comes in. He will probably interchange the jump hk with other buttons to try and get you to wiff something with long recovery.(ill edit this part later, i dont have my ps3 on me atm so i cant go into specifics of what AAs what).

The range at which you can start stand blocking safely-Get the dumby dudley in training room to walk point blank to you, then do 3 jabs chained. This distance is the range where you can safely stand block, you cannot get stand checked by crouch lk because your hurtbox shrank(some people will say that technically its 2 normals in a block string but 1 normal+2 target combo hits will still leave you in range to be stand checked due to the no pushback on target combos). This takes away a lot of the possible overhead mixups if you want to block them and be safe about it. This applies to your wake up as well, if dudley tries to 50/50 you on your wake you can stand block at this distance. The only thing you are open to by doing this is crouch mk and hk, both are slower so if you have the reactions you can block them, even if you cant block the crouch mk then its the lesser of 2 evils imo. Getting swept is much better then being lowchecked into combo for big damage.

The dudley focus rangeAnything closer then your “best range” vs dudley which is about a box, dudley is free to focus pressure you now. IMO dont press anything here, your fireballs will be absorbed and crumpled, your 2 hitter normals stand mk and stand hk get absorbed on the 2nd hit and crumpled, if you try and chase with tatsu then duddles can focus back dash early and bait it then punish. Just try and stay disciplined here, this range is where most of dudleys free crumple combos happen, because you get nervous or dont recognize the change in distance and continue to press buttons. At this range dudley is also free to duck in straight/upper your wiffed normals(stand mp/stand lk) and punish your f+lk with stand hk, yet another reason to try and be conservative with your normals here. If you want you can try to focus fish for dudleys forward hp or hp at this range, but realize you are open to duck straights and jump ins(if your busy focus back dashing you arent in position to AA). Recognize this distance and try to work yourself back out or try to go in hard.

Dudley is -2= off of light punch machinegun blow, focus attack lvl 1 dash forward and any normal duck in cancelled off a normal(ex duck in off of stand hk leaves him at +1 or 0 i believe). You know the nature of -2 mixups. Dudley players know this too and will start grabbing and conditioning you into crouch teching or stand tech/reckless dp. What beats a lot of the -2 setups you have as oni? Delay teching/3 button tech beats a lot of that, if you delay tech correctly you shouldnt get hit with the grab/short swing blow mixup/overhead/low mixups. Only extremley late frame traps from duddley(hes godlike if he can do this) will outright beat this, also realize you are opening yourself up to more block string pressure if dudley decides do crouch jab again into w/e. If dudley is delaying his frame traps as well then he is opening himself up to being grabbed. Rock paper scissors.

At close rangehonestly its whoever has the advantage. Try to stay out of close range unless you just knocked dudley down or you got a jump in. It just takes 1 blocked crouch jab from you, or a blocked anything from dudley to start pressure. The advantage dudley has on you is that his offense has much better flow then yours. You will start to notice that Onis offense has all these gaps in them, gaps where you are at -2 in grab range with little options or waiting for the opponent to get back up. 1 reset is all it takes to stun you and kill you. Dudley can reset and kill you much easier then you can to him. I cant count how many times ive seen dudley kill an oni with 1 bar or no bar and a sliver of health left. Oni doesnt do that to the tank known as dudley very often, and if he does then he better have a full bar to unload.

mixupsdudley has a bunch of squirly left and right frame trap/throw/high low mixups he can do to you off of focus resets and knockdown corpse hopping with dp in the corner. IMO its worth it to 4 button tech these even if you spend the 2 meter to get out. Yes yes “b, bu…but muh meter” but hear me out. It is worth burning two meter to get you out of a reset that would stun and KILL you and end the round, then to save that meter for a combo that probably wont kill the tank dudley. If you wanted to save that meter for dp fadc dudley can punish you going front or back anyway(you are so free to dudleys ultra 1 if you fadc back its not funny) and if he read that you were gonna dp he could just bait it with short swing blow and make it unfadc able anyways.

On defenseFirst things first, test the dudley to see if he can even do the crouch lk into crouch jab link consistently, if he cant then good for you stand block everything and win. Try to train yourself to block the high low mixup(you only need to worry about it for 3 normals in the block string anyway), if you cant see the mixup and block then focus back dashing our will get you out of a lot of block string pressure until dudley starts delaying his buttons and punishing with whatever.

On offense

In your blockstringsIf you have dudley in a block string dont make it a habit of ending your strings with fireball, dudley can and will duck under these (its a prerequisite skill needed against ken and akuma dont assume he cant do it to you.) Try to vary your block string into kara throw timing. This matters when you see dudley with 3 bar because if you get into the habit of doing the same string into kara then duddles can reaction short swing blow your throw attempt red focus into crumple combo. DONT stomp dudley point blank/meaty, that 1-2 frame punish that oni has vs oni for a blocked stomp becomes a 3-4 frame punish with dudleys stand hk being 4 frame start up instead of 5(oni back mp). You are basically giving dudley damage if you stomp him point blank. Dont make it a habit of block stringing into a stomp either to try and make it safe, if the dudley knows this is how your making your stomps safe then he can wait and focus forward your spaced stomp and hk punish anyway.

On knockdown/general tactics The one saving grace in this matchup:dudley is free to meaty crouch light kicks if he doesn’t have 1 bar for ex uppercut. At the beginning of the round I try to squirl out a knockdown and get my damage in until dudley gets bar, from here you have 2 choices: you can back off and sit on your lead and capitalize on any mistakes(preffered method for longer sets). OR you can continue pressure and try to bait out the ex uppercut for more damage/continued opportunities to pressure(will only work for a short time). It doesnt even matter if you get hit with the ex uppercut, the fact that he spent the bar means you can pressure him on wake for free and you are essentially meter starving dudley from reaching that 2nd and 3rd bar so he cant red focus punish everything you do/rofl combo you. Once dudley realizes your meter starving him, he will start to preserve his meter and delay tech everything/focus back dash on wake, forcing neutral play again. Prepare to be clowned once dudley gets three bar and tries to pay you back for those rounds he didnt know you were meter starving him. Don’t jump at dudley in the corner your jump ins arent very good and he can duck out of most of your stuff (ex duck gets him out of everything) and switch places with you in the corner.

18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqDY3om7LuY For those who have trouble with the new buffed t.hawk matchup. If you want to get a handle on all of thawks options.