Ok first of all, I had a really tough match with a Hakan yesterday.
Basically his slide move goes thru fireballs and its fast enough to pull full screen away and on reaction if you missed timed a Yoga flame (Which eventually stops it). Even if i managed to block, Hakan has tons on options up close, his grab can catch you while your jumping, and it seems i cant him on the counter after the sliding too, he recovers too fast to 360 grab me. He usually mashes the slide button in hope to catch me up close so he could grab me or do any type of mixup.
The best thing to do is IAT when i see the slide coming and yoga sniper him on the other side. But that doesnt work for me too often because his full screen slide is FAST.
How can you punish the slide move and what ways are there to counter it or to avoid it completely.
This match-up should be a nightmare for Hakan, unless he ends up close to you WITH OIL, which should be very very hard for him to do. But unless he manages to get a throw, command grab, or slide against you, he really shouldn’t be able to oil up safely around you ever. Hitting him while he oils up decreases the amount of time the oil stays around. EX-oil slide goes through fireballs (I don’t think any of the other slides do), but it moves so damn slow if he is not oiled up and you should be able to see it coming from a mile away.
Inch towards him to be in range of hitting him and be sure to block low when he slides. Yoga tower works against slides too and makes him completely pass by you. Slides can be grabbed after block if he’s not oiled up. Anti-air and keep him mid-full screen away. You shouldn’t need to jump much at all in this match either so long as you aren’t next to him. Anytime you are in range of hitting him, attack him, but don’t just throw out attacks if they won’t reach cause he can probably counter poke you that way.
Hakan is about as free an opponent as you can hope for in this game. You can punish any slide with a U2 on reaction, so I use U2 exclusively against him. Just feel your opponent out, if he doesn’t have oil, wait for him to attempt to oil up and hit him with a fp which will both stop him from oiling up as well as frustrate him endlessly, forcing him to make a mistake like trying to jump in or do an impromptu slide. As Dhalsim22 stated above me, Tower is your friend in this match. Believe me, Hakans fear Sim, not vice versa. The only time he’s even a remote danger is if he’s oiled up and you’re knocked down — his EX oil dive (360+k) move can be a hassle on wake-up for Sim, I generally just teleport away when that occurs. Also, b+hk owns any jump-ins.
I wouldn’t underestimate hakan’s ability to get in on dhalsim w/o the slide. If hakan oils at full screen (only punishable by IAT, but that is risky considering you put yourself next to him) he then has the ability to counter limbs with dnc out of focus. Basically he focus’s your limb, dashes out, and then is able to immediately cancel his dash with a normal, in this case probably a forward sweep, which lets him get in on untechable knockdown.
Hakan and sim are my two mains in super. Poor hakan, slept on so much. Reminds me of how people thought of dhalsim for the first several months of vanilla.
Not only is it not free for dhalsim, but it’s at least even and maybe even a loss for him. The problem is that none of you have played against a good hakan (because they don’t exist yet). Hakan has normals and jumping attacks that deal well with sim’s normals from good ranges and he has option selects and mixups that blow sim up up close. Slide is in fact not punishable on block unless the hakan does it from a stupid range. But the real issue is that its hard to stop him from oiling up. If you’re throwing out fires or limbs from range, hakan can easily trade some blood for oil. You can then stop and wait for him to oil and hope to punish with iat, but that can be hard to spot. And if you’re waiting around, hakan can use that to start inching or sliding his way forward instead.
That’s just when he’s not oiled. Oilkan, with his focus dash normal canceling and general speed and range, can be really hard to keep out.
The Butler told me that he likes to play more closely up on hakan so hakan can’t oil up. That makes sense to me, but I don’t think hakan has all that much to fear from an offensive sim.
Probably quite true — so I’ll rephrase my initial statement that all the Hakans I’ve played THUS far have been fairly free (and wildly predictable) The only Hakan that I’ve played that had an above average mix-up game (KokoBananaMan) started doing the ex oil dive wake up shenanigans and was punished immediately. Sadly, he was my only challenge so far, but I’m sure that won’t last forever…
I look forward to seeing Hakan progress, I really do.
I actually played a really good Hakan once. If forget because I don’t know Hakan’s normals. He has some safe jumps that stuff some of sim’s long mid range pokes and has some air-air stuffs for jumping fierce. He knew how to lock down my sim with some tick resets once he scored a slide knockdown. I say you have to play vs him like Zangief. It was a real long time ago, and didn’t bother to learn or review why I lost. What Ultradavid describes seems accurate to what I played.
I’ve only played like vs. 4 or 5 Hakans though. But don’t sleep on him.
A St. Louis player named Flying Dragon came down to Nashville to play in a tournament this weekend. He pulled out Hakan and a lot of us were impressed with what we saw. He definitely had some shenanigans. He’d slide, then fadc, then command grab or slide again. He’d focus crumble then use Ultra 2, and a bunch of other stuff that I never considered because really… who plays Hakan? He ended up losing a lot but he pulled out a few wins against good players.
Hakan is the only grapple char that I HATE seeing when I am using Sim. Probaly because I ALWAYS get that Hakan player that REALLY knows how to play. I admit I have played some free’er than free ones but I normally seem to draw the amazing ones. You know the ones that counter every limb with the correct normal or make you wish you didnt have a fireball. Kind of scary to watch half your life disappear from ONE combo from Hakan. Yes the ones I play seem to know actual combos that have more than 4 hits! WTF
This matchup I’m usually in the air punishing any move he does below. But just block the slide and throw. Or Jump neutral and teleport behind him, punish, and reset the distance by teleporting back. That’s what I do
I only faced one good Hakan player who abused everyone severely because he controlled the air too with his air mid punch and had solid ground game but I never see any other good ones to be honest.
A good Hakan player knows they can slide while you are in the air and counter any limb you stick out, so don’t become predictable in the air. I tested this with a friend, and once they knock you down, they are in.
There’s not much to go by as most have said here, there simply IS no good Hakans to go by. There’s a decent Hakan here in NY that can be pretty tricky, but from playing him, and also from noticing Wildcat’s online matches with Sims, (Granted, they’re only online after all) It seems that Hakan simply has no answer for the yoga tower, amongst other things. And when I see Wildcat consistently losing to unknown online Sims, it makes me wonder.
