I’ve been fighting against Ken a lot lately and I swear he can go from being downed to invulnerable via his wake-up shoryuken. How do you counter this? Aside from the obvious block and then punish.
I can’t get any meatys or anything out because I get shoryukened the second the guy is even able to be hit. It’s ridiculous. It limits a lot of my options. I have to just stay grounded and block just in case he does it.
Cross ups work sometimes but, sometimes my cross up will be a little late and he’ll still pull off the shoryuken the second he’s able to be hit.
Does he really go from being downed and thus unhittable to being invulnerable? Is it really that safe(unless blocked)? If so it completely takes away advantage you get from a knock down.
I know this is a hotly debated subject and I’m just asking if it really is as powerful as it seems and how to fight against it when it removes a good chunk of my options.
That’s how it works yeah. Reversal moves are ones that are invulnerable on the first frame, and the good ones hit before the invulnerability wears off. Ken and Ryu’s are particularly hard to deal with because they hit really fast.
You either have to teach them to stop doing it by either blocking or making them whiff (this one becomes big once they start learning to FADC), or find a way to safe-jump it or whatever. It’s much less of a pain to deal with in the case of Sagat’s 5 frame uppercut instead of a 3 frame Shoryu. There’s some stuff you can do like fake a jump-in or something that recovers so you can block as they get up to bait it out, and if they’re sufficiently scared of eating huge damage you can then start going for offense on those ambiguous setups when the risk:reward ratio is in your favour.
Oh yeah, fireball characters can just lay back and do meaty projectiles instead if you’re afraid the guy’s a masher.
If they never learn not to do it, you get a free win by abusing the same tactic over and over.
In Gief’s case, step 1 means punishing jumpouts, and step 2 (which is what you really want to do) means wakeup SPDs. In your case, step 1 is block (or bait a whiff) and punish, step 2 is a combo that starts meaty.
Basically. Reversal happy shotos are easy to beat on wake up because there aren’t any mindgames involved. If they’re always DP’ing your cross-ups, then you’re probably doing too it too often and too predictably. Instead of going for the cross-up, fake them out by adjusting your spacing like you’re gonna jump in but then just walk forward and throw them.
I’m not saying always. This player has mind-games and his answer to my rushdown is a wake up DP. But, he mixes it up so I don’t know if he will or not. It pretty much means I’m too scared to rush down or meaty. I just throw meaty fireballs at him. He blocks them and we’re reset. I hate it.
Also do you have to block these high or low? I swear I’ve been hit by both. Obviously that’s not true though.
I think those are pretty good mind games, then. If his “You no scare, I no scare” has you too mind-fucked to rush him down, then mix it up with a little shuffle step on KD. Make him unwilling to commit to a non FADC DP.
Also, trying to meaty a shoto is never a good idea.
But, I do agree it is a good mind-game. It’s a totally random rock-paper-scissors scenario I end up in. I get SRK’d when I try to hit. I get thrown when I try to block and I get swept or counter hit when I try to throw.
theres not really much advantage to doing meaties in sf4. better to press your button after you already see they didn’t reversal. of course this is asking to eat wakeup poke/throw or delayed dp if you do it too much but that’s only from advanced players and if they start trying that with any regularity youre going to stomp them.
I mean to walk rapidly back and forth from in-and-out of your throw range. It makes players somewhat hesitant to do wakeup throw (since it’ll whiff), and seeing your character moving around tends to make your opponent believe that doing a DP on wakeup is a good idea.
Of course, this, like any other wakeup tactic, is only good in moderation, and with a certain amount of randomness added in.
I had trouble with this too until I did the walking back and forth idea. That really, really helps. People start panicking really bad when you start doing that. Are you out of range for a DP? Maybe a throw? Standing roundhouse to my face?
If they stand up and do nothing, just dash forward and try a throw to start it all over again.
Since I play El Fuerte, I fake with a run stop. They do a Shoryuken, I block it, they get ultra’d
Now for non Elf users, you have to play smart. The first thing I do is knock Ryu down, and see what he does. if he naturally wakeup srks, I keep knocking him down and blocking the srk, then punish. He’ll learn to not wakeup. A good Ryu won’t spam a srk, or wakeup srk alot unless you jump at them while they are recovering (really stupid btw), they would probably backdash on wakeup. So knocking them down is a solid way to sort the men from the boys.
It isn’t really powerful at all. Wake up SRK is generally not a good idea. It’s high risk/low reward. As others have said, definitely make him pay for that. That said, you should basically never try to meaty a shoto with 2 bars and a UC (unless you have a really, really good reason to).
If you’re problem is eating dps if you try to meaty but getting thrown if you don’t, you’re being too predictable.
That’s actually not what a reversal is. Reversals have nothing to do with invulnerable or not, they have to do with the timing of the input. You have a certain amount of frames (depending on the game) to input a reversal following wake up, blockstun, etc.
It’s fairly standard to associate moves worth actually doing in a reversal situation with being a reversal itself. You have to be paying a fair amount of attention to notice a reversal fireball or something so they may as well not exist most of the time. There’s probably more precise language for it though.
From my perspective, there’s no sense confusing people on mechanics. Might as well just post how they really work. It’s relevant too in SF4 due to meaty focus attacks.
And, I dunno, reversal fireballs are pretty common and easy to notice.
Alright, making sure the OP doesn’t get lost in all this:
A Reversal is a term for a move done on the very first frame you are able to move after being knocked down, or in block stun or in hit stun. If this move happens to begin with invincible frames (like a DP), then it will beat or trade with any meaty attacks. Being “reversal” also grants any special armor break properties, meaning that standing over someone and readying a focus attack is generally a bad idea (but FA’ing late can occasionally be useful).
What Delta is getting is are moves or tactics that are generally considered useful on wakeup - things like doing a DP, but also backdashing, focus attacks, or anti-air normals.
Like I said earlier, it’s not always first frame. SF2 was one frame, many later games were 2, and SF4 is up to–what?–4 frame reversals? It’s a pretty long window these days, comparatively. This is why meaties are generally a bad idea in SF4, at least against characters with reliable reversals.
ok, after writing that sentence, I get what delta was getting at. english is stupid. =p