You can do it after a divekick so thats a good oportunity to do it IF YOU WANT to. There is a REASON it’s hard to land just like there’s a reason people dont use it a lot. Personally i’ve see great eveil ryu players use it on several occasions and so have I. Not that I am great, I’m humble.
You can use it as a quick punish when you close and you oponent fails at something. There are situations.
Also if you got to land an axe combo without using meter and you are going to burn some for damage why not end with the untech combo instead. I hope you follow cause i really dont want to explain. After that you can set up unblockable divekick and land another 300+ damage combo. Do i smell a loop?, just thinking out loud… Naahh don’t think so but you never know… Most unblockable divekicks if not all cant be followed up. Grrrr.
So basicly it is a tool, and every tool has a purpose and a good use. So burning down tools and discarding them is whats really useless.
This is the reason why I feel it should be a true overhead. Right now it’s useless, it’s too slow to use in block strings. It’s too easy to get blown up for trying to use it. If Capcom made it a true overhead, at least you can justify taking the risk once in a while. Either they block low and get hit(shouldn’t be hard to see it coming though) or block high and you’ll be +1 on block. But the way it is now, I don’t use it outside of opportunities to land dive kicks.
Anyways, I think E. Ryu players should start trying to use it more in dive kick combos. Almost every good ER player I see will just go for the big combo and end it with SRK and the situation between them and there opponent is reset. But if you go for this and land it, another successful DK or cross up into the big combo will leave nearly the entire cast about 1 hit away from stun. I’m sure it’s been explored though, I guess ER players feel the risk isn’t worth the reward. But it’s worked out well for me. I just can’t hit the axe kick combo though unfortunately.
I have used this before after getting a stun during a long combo. Since scaling is already pretty bad, just doing level 3 focus C.MP xx HK Axe Kick for the untechable knockdown and an easy setup is pretty nice and is usually the highest damage way to get an untechable knockdown. Against a few characters I guess you can do Cr. MP, C. HP xx MK axe kick Cr.LK xx LP, Cr. HK, and some others you can just sweep after tatsu, but this works on everybody and gives you the HK axe kick knockdown which we know leads to some shenanigans. However, usually given the chance to punish something, or in a hit confirm, I think getting the (significant) extra damage, meter, and pushback to the corner makes doing a full combo a better choice
It is a good point that you brought up the damage scaling. After a few hits it goes to hell, especially since focus attacks scale differently, damage is usually the better choice, but that untechable knockdown is a nice option when you want to get certain setups.
I can’t speak for “better” players, but I won’t use it in a dive kick combo because with the cancel, it’s very difficult to hit confirm and if you don’t confirm it, you’ll get hit out of it nearly every time. Good players will jab you out on purpose, but even bad players will press a button before they get hit, and it’s so slow you get stuffed anyway. It’s just easier to go to jabs or cl.mp xx mk axe kick. They’re both true block strings so you’re not getting jabbed or dp’d out of them.
I use the dive kick into bnb, I haven’t done it much into untechable. I prefer the 368 or so damage. I have been mess around with untechable kd axe kicks.
My BnB for this combo is dive kick, cr. LP, cl. MP, HK axe kick. You have to do the dive kick kind of high though, normally where the charcter head/chest is and they’re waking up(preferably from a throw). But I can normally hit confirm this. If it’s blocked then just do the MK axe kick instead or something else.
thats a great way to hitconfirm, i dont understand why people say it not enought to hitconfirm. if thats not enought try playing 3s and you’ll learn what hitconfirming really is.
and actionly its just like ryu doing jumpin hp, cr. mp, cr. hp ~ tatsu. only with less hitstun for confirming.
The problem with “just do the mk axe kick” is that it removes your ability to set up offense in case they block - you give up frame advantage.
With Seth, I hit-confirm crossup j.hk/divekick cr.lp into cl.hp (as in, the cl.hp is hit-confirmed), so I wouldn’t be surprised if the same is possible with E Ryu.
If you get a good read on someone or you have to roll the dice and need the divekick/j.mk mixup to work, then doing raw cl.mp xx mk axe kick could be worth it if you’re going to do a FADC combo because of scaling.