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0:45. At first I was like, crouching strong in footsies?? But on thinking it over, it makes sense for a few reasons. Iyo is probably expecting Daigo to do one of two things here: either finish his focus animation to try to hit Iyo or try a dragon punch. If Daigo tries to hit Iyo with his focus, crouching strong ducks right under Ryu’s focus attack as long as Dhalsim is at a little distance, so this is a safe way for Iyo to deal with the possibility of a full focus attack. If Daigo tries dragon punch, his dragon punch will have a really hard time hitting crouching strong. Dragon punch hitboxes only hit things that are on the ground in their first few hitting frames, so the only way a dragon punch will work here is if Daigo happens to perfectly time it to pick Iyo’s crouching strong up off the floor. And if Daigo had tried a fireball, crouching strong would have beaten it straight up. This is a real smart move here.
0:58. I like how Iyo waits for Daigo to finish his focus animation here. At this range might be too close for crouching strong to safely go under Ryu’s focus attack, and the 50 points of damage or whatever he’d deal to Daigo if he hit Daigo with anything here definitely pale in comparison to the potential 60% life Daigo could take off if he got a crumple stun on Iyo with 2 ex bars and ultra ready. Sim can’t afford to be too hasty. His punishment, the slide, is about as good as Sim is gonna get without super, ultra, or more time. Deals 100 damage and because you can’t quick stand after a sweep, Iyo gets to set up whatever positioning or traps he wants.
1:19. I think Iyo might actually be reacting to Daigo’s fireballs with a standing fierce. Yes, you usually want to avoid trades as Dhalsim, but I did the math a while ago, and if Sim trades his fierce with any character’s non-ex fireball, Sim comes out ahead on damage even considering his smaller health bar. And obviously, when you have lots of life and your trade will kill the opponent, then you should trade all day. Would be sick if he really is reacting to Daigo’s fireballs.
1:44. Awww, this is a huge miss. Instead of Daigo losing half his life, he only lost like 1/5 of it, not to mention that Iyo now has no meter and has lost the threat of super. By the way, it’s funny that sometimes things work in high level play that would never work in lower levels. I think the reason Daigo gets hit with this combo is that when he saw Iyo teleport, he expected Iyo to land on the other side, so he started blocking away from his back instead of his front. Well, Iyo teleports in front of him and gets a free combo. A lower level player probably would not have gotten hit by this because he doesn’t know what normally happens when Sim teleports and probably doesn’t know to block away from Sim instead of the fire anyway.
1:51. Why no antiair against Daigo’s jumping fierce, you wonder? Well from this range, Ryu’s jumping fierce actually beats Sim’s regular antiairs, and while slide can hurt him on the ground, you usually don’t want to give your opponent the chance to hurt you post-slide. Your opponent can dragon punch through your post-slide throw and back+short yoga fire, and if you teleport back Ryu can super or hurricane kick you. It’s a wheel of options guessing game, but as Sim you generally want to stay away from that kind of thing.
2:05. This is a retarded mistake. When putting an ultra out against a character who has ways out of it, make sure you wait to see what your opponent does. If he blocks, start your mixup, and if he reversals, punish! Iyo makes a noob mistake, wasting his ultra, taking damage, and losing positioning as a result. If he’d waited, he could have punished Daigo’s ex dp with back+fierce xx ex flame for 230 damage, which imo is about the same as the average expected damage from an ultra (assuming no super to follow it up). Instead, not only did he not deal 230 damage (ie 23% of Ryu’s life bar), but he ended up taking 140 damage (ie 16% of Sim’s life), a swing of 370 damage and 39% percentage points.
2:10. Random jab dragon punches at this range aren’t a huge risk for a Ryu with such a big life lead over Dhalsim. If the dragon punch hits, Ryu wins the round. If it doesn’t, oh well, all Sim has is back+forward or back+roundhouse, snce he’s too far for back+forward xx jab flame to connect.
2:16. I don’t really like this teleport here, but I get why he did it. Sim’s comeback potential is usually really small unless he can get some kind of major opening like a whiffed dragon punch or a teleport combo, which makes teleports really attractice if you have to make a comeback as Sim. If Daigo had stayed on the ground this fire-teleport trap might have worked, but I’m sure he saw it coming, so he jumped.
2:36. Kind of hard to know if Iyo knew Daigo was gonna hurricane like this or if he was just throwing out random teleport to try to catch Daigo doing a fireball for a nice little teleport combo. Pretty risky stuff, which is weird considering how risk averse Iyo was just a few seconds earlier when he was just hanging out and letting Daigo charge up a couple focuses.
3:02. I don’t like this teleport at all. I thought Iyo was at a good range and was in control, and now he lost a jab of health and is basically at Daigo’s full control.
3:15. I don’t like this ultra setup. Maybe if Iyo had thrown out a fire or something else for Daigo to deal with this could have worked, but he didn’t. I definitely do like Iyo’s follow-up slide to back+strong so that he can antiair Daigo back into the ultra if Daigo does a normal jump and still standing fierce Daigo if Daigo does an air hurricane or walk/slide forward if Daigo backs up, but I still think this trap could have been better. Iyo traded 70 damage to Daigo for worse positioning (Daigo is out of the corner!), which I don’t really think is worth it.
3:30. Ooo, wakeup super. I was gonna write that this isn’t that scrubby because the chip damage would have killed Daigo even if he’d blocked, but in fact Ryu can respond to the super startup with on-reaction ex dragon punch to go right through. Sometimes you gotta throw a hail mary, though, and Iyo gets the job done here.
4:09. Iyo sets up a good ultra here and does the right thing by waiting to see Daigo’s response, but then he messes up the punishment. I guess he was trying for down-back+fierce link to back+roundhouse for 190 damage, but it doesn’t work. I wish he’d gone for any of back+fierce xx ex flame for 230 damage or back+fierce xx strong flame for 160, both of which knock down and don’t require precise link timing. I can understand if he wants to save his super meter, but doing the strong flame combo for a bit less damage is imo still better than the combo he went for, since knocking the opponent down is always a good thing.
4:18. No antiair here. I guess he was expecting Daigo to use jumping fierce?
4:46. I would have preferred he do a roundhouse slide, both for the knockdown and for extra damage. Probably would have killed Daigo at this point.
4:50. Instead, Daigo lives and ends up doing something that I don’t think anyone in the US has ever seen before, certainly none of the good players I’ve talked with about it. If you’re wondering why Daigo hasn’t been using ex fireballs much, well, this is one reason (the other is that Sim can’t do jump back fierce overhead, since Ryu can punish that with super even if the fierce hits him). Jab dragon punch buffer into super means that if the dp doesn’t hit, Daigo keeps his super, and if it does, Ryu does the super and Iyo dies. Man.
5:07. You know, the mummy actually has a pretty hitbox in situations like this. It also puts the opponent into a juggle state, and since Iyo has full super, he might have been going for a juggle here. He doesn’t recover in time for Ryu to still be juggleable, but oh well.
5:11. Heh, Daigo scrubs out with a huge whiffed dragon punch. Iyo finally gets a punishment right and takes 440 health points off Daigo’s life bar.
5:14. Why the back teleport here? Iyo is trying to fake Daigo out into thinking that Iyo is gonna teleport behind Daigo for a teleport trap, in which case Daigo would have to block the other way. If Daigo had expected that, he would have been holding the stick the wrong way and would have been hit by the yoga fire.
5:24. I really like this response to Daigo’s hurricane kick. I usually go for a regular ol’ down-back+fierce, but in this situation that would have left Iyo in the corner with Daigo right next to him. Instead Iyo teleports behind Daigo, does 150 damage instead of 80, and has much much better positioning than he did before.
5:50. Wow, that was some craziness. Like usual when Ryu gets in on Sim, this all happened because Daigo guessed right a few times in a row and Iyo kept making mistakes. At 5:37, Iyo gets dragon punched, but it’s not as random as it seems; dragon punching after making Sim block a fireball is a common tactic for Ryu players. At 5:40, Iyo incorrectly thinks he has enough time to yoga fire Ryu’s fireball away, and takes damage and is forced to make backwards because of it. Just after that, Iyo throws a yoga fire at a very unsafe range. Daigo jumped simultaneously, so it’s not like he reacted to the fire, he just guessed a jump; if Iyo hadn’t thrown a fire, this would have been an antiair or at worst a block. Iyo then panics and backdashes to escape Daigo, but I guess that’s exactly what Daigo was looking for, because he uses 3/4 of his precious meter to ex fireball and focus dash forward. He sees that Iyo got hit with the ex fireball, and gets a free ultra. Now, that’s a couple mistakes by the Dhalsim player (too hasty in poking, throwing yoga fire at a bad time) and a couple of incorrect guesses (throwing yoga fire at a bad time again, backdashing), and three correct guesses (dragon punch, jump, ex fireball xx facd) and a nice windfall (Iyo doing fire too late and getting hit by a fireball) by the Ryu player. Pretty unfortunate series of events.
5:55. Iyo still manages to take the round, though. Maybe Daigo thought this dp would chip kill Iyo, maybe he thought he could get through if Iyo tried to cancel into flame/fire, maybe he thought Iyo would go for a throw or another attack, who knows. Iyo does the right thing by staying still.
6:14. Whoaaaa, why this teleport here? I don’t think this is a good idea at all.
6:25. Heh yeah, that works. Sweet.
6:27. Ugh. After a midscreen super you get a free fire-teleport trap, which Iyo starts up but for some reason can’t finish. He doesn’t get the air fierce, he does get the back+medium kick, and then he doesn’t get the flame. Man, that sucks. Daigo would have had like 10% life left if this had worked.
6:35. Notice that this is the same blocked fireball dragon punch setup Daigo used to hit Iyo at 5:37, but this time Iyo knows to block. If this dragon punch had hit, Daigo would have gotten enough meter for super on the spot and would have canceled into it via his buffered super motion for a big juggle, a la 4:50. Iyo rather bizarrely goes for a standing roundhouse punish, which whiffs, meaning Daigo gets off for free. Standing roundhouse does 10 more damage than fierce (90 to 80), but its hitbox and long startup aren’t suited to punishing dragon punches. Again, I would have preferred a roundhouse slide for 100 damage and the knockdown. If Iyo had hit his teleport trap combo and done a sweep here, Daigo might be dead and Iyo might already have taken the match.
6:56. Instead, Daigo makes a miraculous comeback to take the round. Let’s see how this happens. First, Iyo missed a combo and a punishment that could have already finished Daigo off. Second, if Iyo had punished Daigo’s dp and Daigo had lived, Daigo would have been out of range for the dash up throw he tries at 6:36 (which is basically a win for Daigo, since the throw tech leaves him way closer to Iyo than Iyo would like). Daigo then jumps at a range where Iyo can’t antiair him, which is good stuff from Daigo, but if you notice Iyo had just moved backwards into the exact range where that’s possible; if he’d stayed a bit closer or moved a backdash’s length backwards, Daigo’s jump would not have worked. Daigo then does crouching forward xx fireball, and Iyo must have been doing some limb, because it hits and Daigo then focus cancels into a dash. Luckily his sweep works, and Iyo is back to being alright. Daigo then jumps at that jumping fierce range again, and Iyo is of course still right where it’s effective. He blocks it and then correctly blocks a dragon punch, but then gets thrown a couple times and is now fully cornered. Daigo gets a random dragon punch, it trades with something Iyo did, and Daigo does ultra to take the round.
Ok, so let’s add this up. By my count, Iyo made 4 mistakes (missed teleport combo, missed punishment, standing at a bad range, standing at a bad range again) and 5 unfortunate guesses (trying to poke when Daigo did crouching forward xx fireball, not throw teching, not throw teching, blocking low when Daigo did an overhead, poking when Daigo did random dragon punch). That’s huge. This should have been Iyo’s round.
7:13. Heh man, Iyo just cannot get his combos today. Even though it worked, I don’t think this teleport was a good idea.
7:17. Iyo tries an antiair at Ryu’s jumping fierce sweet spot and loses a third of his life and gets cornered because of it.
7:27. He tries again and this time loses like 40-45% of his life.
7:33. Alright, he loses. This round shows why you do not want to stand at Ryu’s jumping fierce range, as well as why, if you do stand there, you don’t want to try to an antiair back+normal.