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At 2:06, Iyo does jumping fierce into ultra. I do this too, I think it’s real smart. It forces the opponent into a really bad situation: sit there and try your hand at blocking Sim’s aegis games, try to jump out, or try to do some invincible move to get out. RF tries jumping out at first, but at that range Sim’s antiairs dominate Sagat’s jumping attacks, and Iyo sends him back with back+roundhouse. But then Iyo makes the mistake of trying to hit a mixup on a Sagat player who knows that his only way out of the ultra is to do some invincible move. Instead of waiting for RF to either start blocking the ultra (in which case Iyo would start his mixup games) or do a dragon punch (in which case Iyo would punish RF, probably for the win), Iyo does jump back fierce and predictably gets hit by RF’s dragon punch. This is something I’m guilty of doing a lot too, unfortunately. The ultra is a great move both for mixups and because it forces the opponent’s hand; if you’re trying to force his hand, wait for him to put it out on the table before doing anything yourself. Iyo tries to use the ultra to force RF into a bad situation again at 2:59, but it doesn’t really work out. Oh well, not a big deal, aegis didn’t always work out for Urien either, and Iyo still took off a bit of RF’s health with chip damage and still backed RF up into the corner.
At 6:59, Iyo uses the ultra at midscreen just after a tech throw. I think I understand this decision, but I don’t think it was a very good one. If RF jumps, dashes, or tiger knees toward Iyo, which I’m guessing is what Iyo was hoping for, RF eats an ultra (and probably juggle to super, if RF didn’t hit Iyo with anything). If RF does nothing, that’s fine, Iyo will start ultra mindgames on him. If RF moves backward, that’s fine too, because it’ll result in RF getting cornered, and Iyo will be able to set up shop exactly where he wants to be. I think this would be totally fine if RF were up on life, but he’s not, he needs to make up a lot of ground pretty quickly, and in doing the ultra here, he loses the best thing he has for forcing RF into a damaging situation. RF’s totally cool with jumping back, because honestly, what’s an ultra-less Dhalsim gonna do to take off a third of a turtling Sagat’s life in less than 20 seconds? Predictably, Iyo loses the round on time-out. He does basically the same thing at 8:20, but this time he guessed right, and RF tiger knees himself into 2nd place in the tournament.
Iyo uses the ultra in a similar way at 2:53 in the [media=youtube]8hqHMyM3dfk&feature=channel"[/media] against Kindevu. After a tech throw with Kindevu in the corner with Iyo well ahead in life and Kindevu near chip death, Iyo knows that he’s at a range where if he does ultra, Kindevu is dead. Kindevu can’t get through the ultra without dying, he can’t block it without dying, and if he jumps, Iyo’s gonna antiair him for the win. His best option is to try to jump out and hope Iyo messes up the antiair, but that’s obviously not a good enough option, and he dies.
For the most part, I like how Iyo dances through tiger shots. I rarely use yoga tower, I’ve focused on sliding under high shots and jump-drilling over low ones, but the tower is obviously very useful in fireball games. It both recovers faster than jump-drills and lets Sim keep the exact same positioning he had before, which can be really important. I wish Iyo did at least a bit of jump-drilling over low shots, though. I think getting Sagat into the corner is pretty big in this matchup, and yoga towering in the same place is not going to force Sagat backwards like jump-drilling small distances at a time will. Iyo basically waits for RF to throw a high tiger to move up with short slides, but you can’t really depend on Sagat to do that to move him back, I don’t think. If I need to deal damage, I want to be within my standing fierce range so that I can beat or trade with tiger shots (trading tiger shot with standing fierce is a slight win for you in damage and a bigger one in terms of dissuading him from throwing shots), and I’m not gonna get there unless I move forward.
Iyo also very rarely focuses RF’s tiger shots. I get why; focusing hurts your positioning, either by making you move backward or by making you move up too much at once, it’s risky for low-health Sim to take gray damage against Sagat, and it results in opportunity costs in the forms of potential damage dealing (from teleport combos, ex fireball setups, or standing fierces) and potential positional gains (from sliding under high shots, jump-drilling over low ones, or doing ex fire to back Sagat up). Lots of negatives there. But on the other hand, focusing gives you access to your totally sick ultra and all the threats and games that come with it. When is it better to gain ultra by losing ground, potentially losing health, and losing the opportunity to deal damage and gain ground? I’m not sure. Not usually, I guess.
Also, Iyo stores his meter for super a lot in this matchup. He uses ex yoga flames to gain ground a few times, but for the most part he doesn’t really seem to need ex flames. I personally have depended considerably on ex meter in this matchup, probably because my Sagat opponents have liked throwing out ex shots and I really don’t want to risk getting knocked down against Sagat in fireball wars if his ex blows through my regular fire. And although RF likes saving super more than my opponents do, this still actually bites Iyo a few times in the third game against RF. The super is nice, and Iyo uses it as a damaging antiair in the 2nd game, as a damage dealer in teleport combos a couple times, and as a threat against RF’s jumping whenever he has it, but I’m not sure if those things are more important than making sure Sim’s ass is covered in fireball wars and in backing Sagat up. Gotta consider and test a bit more.
Japanese Nationals Quarterfinals
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Look at Iyo deals with Kindevu’s jesus kick. After the jesus kick Rufus has a few different options to follow it up, a flash kick type thing, an overhead, a low attack, and nothing. Before Kindevu starts which follow-up he wants, Iyo does short slide buffered into super if he has it (that is, he does the motion for short slide xx super, and if the short hits, he gets super, and if it doesn’t hit, nothing happens). At 1:25 in the first game, Kindevu does the overhead, Iyo’s slide goes under it, and Iyo gets a free throw. At 2:19 in the first game, Kindevu starts to do the low attack, but Iyo does short slide, and since it hits Kindevu, the slide automatically cancels into super for beefy damage. I don’t think we get to see Kindevu try the flash kick thing so I’m not sure how short slide would deal with that, gonna have to try that out for myself. Jesus kick is unsafe on block if Rufus doesn’t do a follow-up, so short slide xx super would work well in that situation as well. Smart stuff.
Also look at how Iyo deals with Rufus’ jumps and dive kicks. Standing forward for preemptive antiair, standing roundhouse to deal with far jumps, jumping strong for closer jumps, back+roundhouse for regular jumps, back+strong for regular dive kicks, etc are all pretty standard and obvious. The interesting things he does are down-back+strong to beat close or low dive kicks and ex yoga blast to beat high dive kicks. Down-back+strong has a sick hitbox (I use it to beat things like Chun’s jumping roundhouse and Abel’s jumping forward) and comes out quickly, and it also does fairly good damage (for Dhalsim). EX blast, which I always forget about, comes out really fast (Sim’s fastest special move by far, faster than back+strong even), does great damage (…for Dhalsim), and has a sick hitbox; it’s a really good choice for air attacks coming down right on top of you.
At 1:15 in the first vid, you see why it’s a bad idea for people to try to focus Sim’s yoga fires. Kindevu focuses it, but Iyo teleports right next to him and punishes him with air fierce, back+forward kick xx jab flame. My guess for why Iyo doesn’t cancel into super is that he wants super to dissuade Kindevu from trying random jesus kicks. It doesn’t work, Kindevu does jesus kick anyway, but as above, Iyo shows him why that’s a bad idea.
At 1:48 of the first game, Kindevu jumps in and Iyo makes him land on an ultra, but Iyo doesn’t juggle Kindevu with a normal like standing forward even though it would have won the round. Kindevu’s a dead man walking anyway since the yoga fire Iyo puts out right after either forces Kindevu to die from block damage or to try to dp out of it, which he does, and which Iyo punishes for the win. But I’m not sure why Iyo didn’t just juggle in the first place. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him juggle after ultra. Juggling with a normal after an ultra or super resets the opponent back on his feet, meaning you don’t get to try a yoga fire trap on his wakeup and you don’t get to run the clock, but I’m not sure that’s better than giving up guaranteed damage. In my opinion, Rufus, with his invincible dragon punch slaps, isn’t a character you should be going for meaty jab fireball traps on much anyway (although maybe I like playing a little too standoffish). And there’s no doubt that guaranteed damage that would win the round for you without even using meter is your best option.
At the end of the first game, Iyo keeps punishing Kindevu’s mistakes with back+forward kick without canceling to jab flame. If you don’t think you’re in range for back+forward xx jab flame, down-back+strong to back+forward is usually still in range to work and has only 1 more frame of startup and does only 10 less damage. Back+roundhouse will also work at any range where back+forward kick will, and it’s only 1 frame slower and does 40 more damage than back+forward kick by itself.
Iyo loses the second game, in my opinion because of two main things: Rufus’ sick combos and just a few unfortunate choices. The five hit combo Rufus starts at :10 not only corners Iyo but takes off like a good third of Iyo’s life, and the reason it hit was that Iyo started trying to do something about Rufus’ dive kick a little too late. Kindevu then makes a couple questionable decisions, the first by letting Iyo teleport out of the corner and the second by trying to rush back in on Sim even though Kindevu had the huge life advantage. Iyo then plays well until when he jumps back and Kindevu does ex jesus and Iyo for some reason tries to knock him out of it instead of just teleporting to the other side and punishing with jumping fierce. His air back+forward trades, and Kindevu kills him. Kindevu hits Iyo like 6 times the whole round: low-hitting flip kick, the big combo right after, three trades, and an ultra, and Sim is dead.
In the second round, Rufus’ dive kicks again beat Iyo’s late antiairs a couple times, leading to big damage, but what really kills Iyo again here is his jumping. Iyo jumps himself back into the corner at 1:16 and tries to air fierce Kindevu, but instead Kindevu does ex dp and eats like 35% of Iyo’s health. When Sim jumps, there’s a guessing game for the opponent as to whether he’s going to teleport out of whatever antiair the opponent wants or whether he’s gonna attack in the air, and Iyo guesses wrong here (although even if Kindevu hadn’t attacked, it’s very rare for an opponent to actually get hit by Sim’s air attack; they almost always just block it). I don’t think it was a good idea to set up this guessing game while cornered against Rufus in the first place, since Rufus’ ex slaps dp has 8 years of active hit frames and does retarded damage, and since the payoff for getting Kindevu to block a jumping fierce is pretty small. If Kindevu had been hit by jumping fierce, Iyo could have gone into super and then set up an ultra trap, which is a great payoff, but again, it’s very rare that someone actually gets hit by that kind of fierce. Not a big fan of this move.
You can’t expect to make all the right decisions every time, and I think Iyo can be forgiven for some of his choices, like trying to antiair Kindevu’s dive kick too late a few times. I don’t think the jump in the corner was a good idea, but it wasn’t a terrible idea either. What was a bad idea for sure, though, was trying to beat ex jesus from so close. If you’re close to Rufus in the air and he does ex jesus, just teleport behind him and punish him with an air attack. The major lesson here, though, is that you can’t let Rufus in, because just a few wrong moves and you’re dead. Iyo makes only like 2 mistakes each round, some of which are definitely understandable, but that’s enough for Rufus to take the whole game.
Eh, don’t lump me in with the best Sim players. I’m not even saying that out of modesty, either, my Sim just really isn’t that great. And Combofiend has moved to Balrog, he doesn’t play Sim anymore.