If you don’t have charge you can punish with HK
As for Blanka. i can’t lame him out. slide is safe from distance and goes under fireballs pretty easily, especially deejay’s.
I honestly need help with that match up. Any psn blanka mains?
Blanka isn’t a hard matchup for DJ imo. Cr. LP beats his hop shennanigans pretty good, and stuffs his blanka balls and his slide from certain ranges (at the distance the match starts at). You can stuff all of his lightning, and his normal upballs (EX wins) with a meaty jump MK, you just have to know that he gets up slightly later than other chars. You can punish most of his vertical balls with reversal EX sobat.
If he does U2 ground pound, then EX sobat through to hit him. If he does U1, you can hit it on activation with LK upkick/U2, or after you block with U2.
thanx double f and Cig i hate honda match ups which i think is much harder than blanka matches. expecially if its a danm good 1 where they can catch on to ur AS and jump in RH or fierce and then hands to push u in the corner! F’N SUX! and for blanka yea dat match 2 suck for of his slide but also c.Mp stuffs slides if they think ur gonna throw AS in the begining of the round start off with that. good blankas will read the AS and focus (how ryu players love to make there hado look like its comin out and its a focus and blanka slides in and eats a fat 1) and instead of slide hit u with a fierce ball and thats not good with deejays “HEY” backdash
I don’t think you can technically stuff his EX upballs with crossup mk. If you do it meaty enough, what seems to happen is that you land in time to block it, so it’s more of a safe-jump. The only problem is punishing it. Cause you lose your charge from the crossup. So if he does EX upball early and whiffs it the wrong way, he’s too far away to get him with any normals. If he does it late and your safe-jump works (you block it), the timing is still tricky to punish, and you still have no charge. But even if you fail to punish, it’s still worthwhile cause you got him to burn a meter. And a meter-less Blanka is much easier to pressure (and I believe a meaty crossup mk will stuff a regular upball).
Changing topics, I had an interesting night last night with a Gief player. I initially ran into him in ranked (he had around 4000 PP, 12K + BP), but I was able to control the match pretty well and won without losing a round.
Then he immediately messaged me asking for a first to 5 in Endless. So i accept the invite. I was pretty excited cause it’s hard to find good Gief’s online. I won the first match, he won the second, and then I went 4 straight to win it 5 - 1. The strange thing was that in those last 4 matches, each one actually got easier. As long as I avoided getting knocked down, I could control the space at mid-range very easily. I would make sure to always stay just slightly out of EX Hand range while i threw AS’s. Everything else was pretty basic. Deejay seems to have a good answer for all of Gief’s anti-fireball options (slide the lariat, space out hands). And he’s got 3 solid AA option for when Gief jumps the AS:
- Slide (for longer range, usually when Gief wants to use jumping fierce)
- standing strong (far version, best for when Gief is jumping in with mk)
- air-to-air jumping fierce (i started this when he began using jumping strong to stuff my slides, similar to Honda)
He also tried to use his double knee drop, but that is slide-able if you get the tip of your high foot to touch his knees, or it can just be jump fierce’d.
Anyway, I started thinking afterward about the numbers for that matchup. I know Gief’s are usually only worried about the “Dangerous 5” (Akuma, Sagat, Seth, Guile, Blanka). But i think you can add Deejay to that list. He can lame Gief out just like Guile does, except he can control so much more horizontal space using slide coupled with his light AS. And from the ground Guile’s main AA normal, cr. fierce, has limited range and can be empty-jumped. Also, Deejay’s auto-correct light and EX upkicks can get you out of crossup bodysplash / knee drop shenanigans (something that Guile cannot do).
The new tier list has Guile-Gief as 6-4, and Deejay-Gief as 5-5. But i think it should be the other way around. 6 for Deej and 5 for Guile. What do u guys think?
Another thing that DJ can do to control the space that i noticed when i was watching the DJ/Gief matchups they have on IPW (granted they are probably older so i don’t know how much they really apply to the matchups)and began to use myself is that Dj can actually control some more of the horizontal space with dread kicks. Since gief has high health, a lot of gief players like to think “aww fuck it, i’ll just walk forward to them see if the do anything about that” and if you’re trying to lame people out and are walking backwards you can throw a random rh/ex dread kick and get a couple hits and move yourself away from the corner and you’re one backdash away from being in slide distance if you do it from full screen.
The difference between Guile/Zangief and Dee Jay/Zangief is that Zangief has a much much harder time walking forward vs. Guile than he does vs. Dee Jay.
It’s harder to EX green hand through Guile’s fireball, so even at 2/5th screen and closer, sonic boom is an option for Guile at any given time. Because it’s easy for Dee Jay’s fireballs to be EX green hand’ed through, he doesn’t have this option.
It’s also harder to option select poke Guile with Zangief. Zangief’s main way to poke his way in vs. most characters is to mix up option select buffer with s.short from distance with walk forward into SPD range (where we go into a different option tree). It’s really hard to do this with Guile because backfist and neutral fierce are his go to pokes in this matchup. You have to look for CH s.strong as Zangief which has a much lower reward/risk ratio.
Then we get into another factor of the walking game. Zangief can walk down Dee Jay much easier than he can walk down Guile for a couple reasons. Dee Jay doesn’t have safe lows from distance. Guile at least has low forward which pushes Zangief far out. Slide is never safe vs. Zangief (even at “perfect” range, jab SPD is always guaranteed). Low forward and low short are both low damage and dangerously close to jab SPD range. So this means that Zangief can just jiggle walk, whereas with Guile you have to occasionally buffer in low block which slows you down.
Also, Dee Jay is much more likely to be holding a down charge for anti air than Guile is. Guile can play vs. Zangief without holding charges at all, using low fierce, neutral forward, backfist and back fierce as his anti-air options vs. Zangief. Some of these have built in redundancies vs. Zangief various jump arcs (short jump vs. regular jump; jump forward vs. jump fierce vs. jump empty, plus all possible permutations of the above). For Dee Jay to have a solid anti air vs. all permutations he uses short upkick and jump back rh. Two problems here. Both lose to Siberian Blizzard while none of Guile’s options lose to SB. Then jump back rh may not be possible if you have your back to the corner or short upkick requires a down charge which lets Zangief set the range.
In short, Zangief gets more out of every individual damage opportunity on Guile (because knees are safe on Guile + a billion other wakeup options that Guile’s only defense to is "guess right). He gets far less guaranteed vs. Dee Jay, but makes up for it by being able to create more options with more potential flash points for something to happen. Since SSF4 is a game about denying opportunities more than it’s about damage, the Guile match turns out to be considerably harder in the long run. I agree with 6-4 Guile/Zangief and 5-5 Dee Jay/Zangief.
–Jay Snyder
Viscant@aol.com
I agree on the most part, but Dee Jay has more anti airs than just upkick and jump back rh. His standing strong and standing fierce work well against Gief, maybe it’s something you don’t see too often, but it is there and it can’t be U2’d. I think it works better against Zangief than some other characters especially his jumping moves that have a high horizontal range are likely to lose to far mp.
Yes, Dee Jay has other options like s.strong, s.fierce for empties, slide occasionally; just like Guile has air throw, EX flash kick, jump back RH. The difference is that these options don’t have enough redundancies built in. Zangief has 6 main jump arcs and a handful of gimmicky ones. It’s near impossible to actually react to this, the vast majority of people only pick their option based on history or a previous read. Wrong guesses lead to 250+ damage and a knockdown. Even though Zangief has been severely nerfed in this version (with more nerfs to come) simple jump mixups are still brutally effective in this version if your opponent isn’t using an option with adequate redundancy or simply doesn’t have one.
–Jay Snyder
Viscant@aol.com
Jay, I hadn’t really considered those things you pointed out. You’re absolutely right though.
Guile’s SB recovery is such a huge factor. Not just in the Gief match, but in any match where his opponent has a move that can go through fireballs, yet becomes useless against Guile: EX Hand, EX Sobat, EX Scissor Kicks, EX Blanka Ball, etc. etc. Not only does he shut down those moves, he can also punish them.
You’re right about the normals too. Deejay doesn’t have anything with the speed and range of Guile’s backfist. So to keep that distance between you and Gief, your only option is basically Air Slashers. You could try to throw out some standing RH’s i guess, but it’s pry a bad idea cause Gief just flat out has better normals for footsies. Like you said, cr. mk can only be used at a dangerously close distance. I only use it as a quick punish on whiffed green hand if i need to create some space.
Also, you mentioned Gief has more nerfs to come. Are you talking about the EX Hand change where it won’t knock down anymore? I’ve heard a couple people make the argument that no knockdown is a good thing cause it leaves you with a few + frames. However, I play Gief a little bit as a tertiary character, and I personally would much rather have the knockdown. I think the amount of options / mixups you have as your opponent wakes up far exceeds the mixup potential from a couple + frames point blank. What do you think?
yall forgot about using jumping lk for air to air vs some moves.
Any idea how to beat dhalsim using deejay?
Step 1: pick Abel
For dhalsim, I usually stay on max distance from him and throw max outs until he teleports. Just be patient. Don’t try to come to him, just out lame him because if you try to jump in or start the bootleg vortex, his anti air will beat you, then you’ll get thrown.
If he teleports you can do cl mp for the anti air, walk foward and tick throw once he lands. If you’re really good you can neutral jump hp and start a combo, but beware on the timing because they can just teleport and then super.
^you can’t lame sim out, or at least a good sim. I’m pretty sure he wins in fireball wars, and he will walk you to the corner and make things worse for you.
From full screen you can’t do much except throw fireballs, cr. HP to try and beat his far HP at a certain distance, or try and focus fish for his long arms. Don’t be obvious that you want to get close, be patient and keep him in suspense.
From a little closer I try to go for cr. MK trade with his limbs and get closer, or try and knee shot or empty jump just outside his back HK range to get close. Random cr. HP can be good, cuz it will trade in your favor same with cr. MK (you can get closer).
I’m not sure what jump ins are good, but jump LP can beat some of his AA kicks at the right time at certain distances, but loses if he tries to undercut you with his HP. Don’t jump on him when you get close, cuz he has good anti airs.
If he teleports low, do st. MP, if he teleports high in the air do n. jump early HP. I don’t know what to do against offensive sims drills, but I imagine st. MP or st. HP will beat them.
Watch out for his jump back HP when in range, and also tech after close slides cuz they like to throw after.
I’m not to sure about the sim matchup, cuz I hardly play good sims, and I never played much SF4 vanilla, so I never learned the matchup. All matchups were basically new to me when I started playing ssf4. I still don’t really know how to fight dhalsim, viper, fuerte, abel and some others. Just not enough experience against them yet.
ha, this sounds like a dating tip for women
lol, epic.
A sim tip is if u ambiguous cross him up the game doesnt let him teleport behind you, only forward so just keep walkin and hit him with a fierce, mk or sweep if he teleports ur wake up jump in.
Using that close S. MP on teleport is helping me tremendously against scrubby Dhalsims. The only thing sad about it, is it’s training them to get better LOL. They stop teleporting and I stop getting opportunities to get life lead.
Also in a match the c. HK was stuffing a lot of his normals (that weren’t c. HP or s. HP). I’m gonna check in training to see if it was a fluke or not.
@verify, which way? If you jump in do you walk forwards or backwards (the way you jumped from)?
Also another thing you can do against people who teleport on wakup like Dhalsim (but not akuma)
untechable knockdown > meaty non cross up jump in > cr. LP > LK sobat (link the sobat after the cr. LP, don’t cancel into it).
If they teleport they get hit by the sobat. If they backdash, jump or try to tech the throw they get hit. If they block its kind of not safe though.