Destin's Sakura Advanced Play Guide

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
101

Yeah I really should get back to finishing that stuff up before my ideas are outdated. Sagat is just such a mountain, and I know so much about Bison that will probably take alot of space as well.

This is all theory, for but rufus, a few things I was going to put was that you should option select your throw breaks with cr.lp, cr.lk (for the throw break), and crouch hp. That only adds one 1 frame to your option select, which is a bit, but the fact that you crush his dive kick makes it very valuable. I have to choose with vega, and it’s much harder.

Also, post galactic tornado, I think the best bet is probably stand lk maybe buffer hk tastu. This could possibly avoid a ex messaih afterwards.

Oh yeah, I think I listed this in the guide, but, the most important thing for rufus, far and away, is punishing his whiffed jump HK’s with stand fierce instead of throw. You will want to do a deal of neutral jumping to stop his dive kicks. He will then want to jump HK to stuff your neutral jumps, and to get huge damage. But to get past your neutral jump mk, he has to throw it out in anticipation, not reaction. Therefore, if he whiffs, you want to scare the shit out of him with half his health and possible mixup win. It is a mixup game not particularly in your favor, but much better than giving him free dive kicks in.

Also yeah, stand Hk and HP can work well against divekicks sometime.

102

I thought that damn punch was safe on block? =\

103

time to head to training and test it!
also, i hear rog’s straight was punishable with standing lk into tatsu? does that sound about right?

104

Galactic Tornado is safe on block but he’s left with a frame disadvantage, -1 on all versions 'cept for EX, which is -2.

Apparently pretty much everything Balrog does is unsafe on block, I’m guessing that all changes if he does shit at the “right range”, which he should.

105

In my eyes, Galactic Tornado is safe on block at all times if he has EX meter. There’s always a chance for random Messiah =\ So unfortunately, I cannot agree with Destin on this one. Rufus’ Galactic Tornado = Sakura’s roundhouse.Hurricane imo~

Also jab.DAP is safe at the right distance, ex.Overhead is punishable with s.Short -> ex.Hurricane, all other punches are beatable with c.Forward -> Shoryu unless they’re ex version which in case Sakura will rarely trade and get beat unless it’s an ex.Shoryu. :tup:

106

So where Rufus can Galactic Tornado ~> EX Jesus Kick, Sakura can HK Shunpuu ~> EX Shou?

Jesus Kick is a bit safer than a Shou though :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll have to remember that about the dash punches :slight_smile:

107

Sorry guys, bit of mis-communication here, I think we were on slightly different pages (due to my poor wording).

The move is -1. But it is important you make the pressure stop there. I suggested stand lk because it is your longest range fast move, so range dependent you should be able to stop the jump post tornado. Also, the move has a fairly fast recovery, what should be tested in training mode is if rufus does tornado -> reversal ex messiah, and you do stand lk -> block, do you still block the messiah? I said buffer the hk hurricane in there in case you hit a rufus trying to jump, although perhaps ex hurricane would be an even better option. If you don’t hit them, then the move should not come out (because the lk whiffed), and you are left in the blocking position, which is perfect for punishing the ex messiah, or the jab snake strike they sometimes throw out.

If you see rufus beginning to block after tornado, start your mixups!

Hope this clears things up!

Dash straight is only punishable at certain ranges, specifically not at the tip, but it’s important to hit him for trying it at those ranges.

Rog’s ex straight, ex upper, and ex armor break thing are not punishable at all.

108

In the sense that both are relatively safe and have followups that are invincible on startup. I’m not telling Sakuras to start using this tactic because it’s damn unsafe btw~

I’ve tried to use s.Short after Galactic Tornado only to eat that fgt move ex.Messiah; what happens is the s.Short whiffs because of the ex.Messiah’s invincibility frames so a buffered Hurricane would never come out since there was no initial contact =(

And just in case I get lost in translation here too~ I meant you could beat Rog’s punches with c.Forward -> Shoryu before his hits. All except jab.DAP at the right distance :tup: c.Forward -> Shoryu < ex.Punches < c.Forward -> ex.Shoryu.

109

The s.short should whiff, and the hk hurricane will not come out. But you are saying that the messiah punishes the whiff recovery of stand lk? That is what I needed tested. In terms of frames, that could be the case, depending on how fast the messiah hit, I was banking on it not reaching her by frame one. That’s why it was only theoretical. It is important in your test that you do that stand lk at near or on the reversal frame though. If that doesn’t work, look through her moves for something that has less overall active frames, maybe crouch lp. That probably won’t have the range to stop the jump, which is unfortunate, letting him reestablish pressure after tornado, which is traditionally the end of his pressure.

Edit: This has nothing to do with wierd invul frames on the hurricane kicks, it was attempting to take advantage of how slow rufus’s ex messiah was. It may not be possible though to use her stand lk.

Double Edit: Ok, nevermind, I stand by my claim. My friend does this with bison’s crouch lk, which has a total of 12 frames, sakura’s stand lk also has a total of 12 frames. Because it works with Bison, I am lead to believe it also works with sakura and your timing of the lk might be off. The only thing that could prevent it from working is sakura isn’t crouching while bison is, but I doubt that will be an issue. I will test this next time I am somewhere with a game though just to make sure, my interest is piqued.

110

Hehe unless you wanted to blow 3/4 of your bar, which is still somewhat a bad idea methinks ^^;

Ah right, I was getting a bit confused :stuck_out_tongue: Need pretty good reactions to stop those dash punches before they get to you, my reactions suck ass :frowning:

111

Yeaaaaaah man, this thread is off the chain. Got to actually put some stuff into live practice after workin on it for a few days.

-srk -> fadc -> hp -> -stuff- : is mad good. I mean, it’s not like ya’ll dont already know, but I felt like a champ getting like, 1/3rd of a bar from a random poke. Saw a light at the end of the tunnel (till my shit got repo’d by srk -> fadc -> ultra. :frowning: )

-edit-
I did have a question I wanna ask, but I think I’ll actually re-read and retry again before I ask.

112

i’ve been having some trouble with the input srk -> fadc -> hp. how are you getting it when you do it?

113

I had to break it down bit by bit (kinda obvious, but just follow me with this)

-First thing I worked on was making sure I could do the HP immediately after the dash. I dont know numbers as to how many frames you have for this to link, but I know that being able to do this is just a simple-yet-important skill anyway. Dash-in HK or Dash-in c.mk is mad good for zoning, so normals after dashes, yeah that’s important.

-Next, I worked on doing SRK -> FADC, because, well, my other main is balrog, I dont have too much of a damn reason to FADC so I was assuming I’d be missing some trick. Didnt know 1-frame dash buffering was in SF4, ironically its awesome that GGAC transfers over.
*Didnt really take too long to throw together, just making sure the timing was there and all.

-Next thing I did was just throw those 2 together. SRK -> FADC -> HP. Tried to see where all the pitfalls come in.

  1. there’s the blatent “shit didnt link”, meaning you’re late.
  2. then there’s something like c.lk -> lk.hurri coming out, if you KNOW for a fact you hit HP, then you’re early.(forgive me, i forget what it’s called)
    *Knowing that, you just have to work to adjust your timing. Put it in the pocket.

-After that, I went to doing all sorts of various stuff that goes INTO the link. Practical stuff (c.mk), horribly impractical stuff (jump-in -> c.lk -> c.lp -> s.lk -> The Business), just stuff to get used to different looks into srk.

-last, practiced doing combos after landing the HP. For what I can do, this part is pretty much done, but I’m still on that easy mac lk.hurri -> lk link.

Slap it all together, and then you just work on the exec_ to get it under your fingers, slap it in during friendlies/casuals so you get used to trying it knowing good and well gief is gunna grab your ass for messin up.

114

I did it in pieces too. I first learned srk FADC on frame 1 (didn’t take long coming from guilty gear), then I learned getting that hp out on frame 1 using P-linking (as far as I know it is a 1 frame link, 2f links are easy, this one is hard, so it is probably 1f). Finally just added on the combo which was burned into my hands by then.

Something of an aside, but back when I was playing sakura, I hadn’t realized just how many characters do not have 3f normals, or good quick recovery 3f normals at least. I think its somewhere around 1/5th of the cast. If you are up against these guys, I would suggest abusing the fuck out of lk tatsu. You will be at +0, which means your stand lk, crouch lp, stand lp, and close stand hp will beat anything they throw out. You could probably do stupid shit like stand lk, lk tatsu, stand lk, walk forwards stand lp, wait, crouch hp lk tatsu, lk, lk, lk tastu. I mean, the opportunities to mix them up should be really good. You would only have to worry about backdash for the most part, or invul moves. If you can find some sort of high damage backdash punish for these characters, it should make your offense against them REALLY strong.

I was just musing about this while fighting a few characters with +0 moves and 3f jabs as vega. I had to wait out so much rushdown, it was almost boring. Backdashing was pretty much my only option. So I figured, if akuma can do this to vega, what is stopping sakura? Same for rufus, abel, gouken, and I think a few more.

Also, I began using cr.hp as an option select with vega against dive kick characters, specifically rufus. It was working amazingly well. If it worked this well with vega, it should work even better with sakura given that her’s is faster and has better priority. My only worry is that it won’t have the horizontal range, but maybe you guys could try option selecting throw breaks against rufus with lp+lk+hp for me next time one is rushing you down? Thanks in advance.

115

i was just wondering if any one else here grabs after the ex tatsu resets. i found it useful when they start blocking all the mix ups. they start to think that your going to grab them and thats when u nj. hk them into combo. also it gives them one more thing to think about when doing the mix ups which is always good. the biggest problem ive seen with it is that when u go for the regular combo and they go to grab, well u get grabbed.

116

cool, thx. i can do the fadc > hp, but i can’t do the one frame fadc out of the srk. i’m using a stick and it seems to all get haywire in that instant i’m supposed to perform the move. i was told it was

-> fadc -> hp

or something like that. i didn’t play GGAC, so i lose there. is there a certain time out of the srk that you have to do it? (i.e. after the third hit, etc).

117

@codal: yeah that works if they’re going to block, but your goal is to mix them up so that they guess wrong as to where you’re going to attack from. Im not a pro by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I can safely say you shouldnt be WANTING to throw them, but maybe opting to tick or something as an alternative if they guess right.

@ballin: All in all, I know you have to do it BEFORE the 4th hit, because your feet are off the ground on the 4th his, so you cant do it. I read somewhere that the 3rd hit gives you the most advantage. (maybe this thread, maybe somewhere else?) I do know that you can do it off the 1st or 2nd hit and have it link.

-The one frame dash thing isnt so bad, you might do it by accident and not realize it. You just want to do 6, 6MP+MK instead of 6MP+MK, 6. Take it slow and just work it from there. I’m over here on a f’n 360 pad. >.>

118

i noticed general vivi actually grabs a lot after the mixup

119

I would do it on hit 3 because that gives you more time to hit confirm the combo, and does more damage. Very little downside, if any. It is possible on the first 2 hits though.

120

Sorry if I sound like an impatient douche, but I’d like to know more about what you think on the Bison matchup as I play against him a lot, and I wanna know if our approach is similar. If you don’t have the time though, then ignore this post. =D