F.A.N.G. General Thread: Nothing up the Sleeve

F.A.N.G. Is going to be my main, but I need some help with some of his cancels and other techs. I’m desperately trying to improve my SF skills. Help me please!!!

Fangs v-reversal can b punished in many many situations, so be very careful. The best get off my move is a any link to light kick poison ground thing (nack forward lk). Gives you much needed room when opp is on u. Beware some supers/specials can punish, but very few.

lk/ex bomb should be safe, against rush down I just mash st.mp honestly. usually stops them from rushing in, and they just jump into
cr.hp/st.mk stuff

5 tips to start playing FANG now!
-Your go-to anti-airs are, from closest to farthest, cr.HP, cr.MK, and st.MK. You will get the most damage from landing a cr.HP, but its bad horizontal range is limited to people jumping in deep.
-FANG’s primary normal in grounded footsies is cr.MP. You can downback during it, allowing you to build charge for your specials. Relative to that, you use st.MP to occupy space, df.HP as your longest-ranged normal, cr.HK as a go-to low, st.HK if you have the time to set up its hit confirms/frame traps, and st.HP for counter hit fishing.
-FANG’s projectiles are used for proactive zoning, so you want to occupy as much of the screen as possible. MK cloud/bomb is faster, but use HK if you want to follow it with a V-Skill or arcing shot, as its duration is long enough to protect you from being interrupted. The arcing shots are also really good when you get a knockdown, as the two shots in both MP and LP versions cover common wakeup options and DO NOT DISAPPEAR ON HIT. Reserve HP shots for when you are near fullscreen, as they are easy to dodge and punish otherwise.
-After you’ve hit them with the forward jump HK crossup a few times, they will be aware of it and unlikely to get hit by it again. Remember that you can combo off of j.HP and j.MK if you land in front of them! Also, you can get that last pixel of damage which poison ignores in by doing an instant j.MK during your back jump as you land from a jump in. Pro players call this a “fuzzy guard”, and it works because you retain your standing hurtbox after blocking a jump in, meaning you will get hit by a jump back air normal if you switch to crouch blocking.
-FANG’s command dash/crouch are currently underrated aspects of the character. Use his command dash to slip right past those pesky Hadokens, and command crouch under telegraphed pokes to punish with the follow up kick. As a sweet bonus, try canceling his arcing shots into EX command dash or EX shots into HK command dash to get in on people. They’ll never see it coming!

One thing that I’ve been having somewhat luck with for baiting crush counters is a not up close cr.mk into st.hp, most people try to punish it or hit something dumb and get crush counter’d.

It’s 6frame start up and most jabs are too far away to actually hit you, so it’s okish if they don’t have a good reversal that they can mash out.

This, uh, isn’t true? You don’t need to fuzzy to hit with j.MK as an instant overhead. It will hit people’s crouching hitboxes if you do it instantly while rising, which is easy to time thanks to SFV’s input leniency buffer. It’s a 50/50 between that and a low.

Speaking of lows, I was playing around with sweep VTC, and it’s easy to use the VT pause to tell whether they blocked it, it hit normally, or it hit as a crush counter, and respond accordingly. If you swept from max distance, tho, just be aware that if it hit but wasn’t a crush counter, you can’t quite do st.HP, and while you can hit cr.MP, LP Ryubenda wont connect off of it and LP Sotoja will only hit with its first hit, so you’ll need to do EX Sotoja to get the knockdown off of it.

Id be cautious about this tactic. even at perfect frame scenario, all they need is a 7f move(or faster) to beat that situation; many strong and forward buttons are within that range.

cr mp to st hp is a 7f gap (cr.mp is +1)

st.lp to st hp is a 6 frame gap (st lt is +2)

A very subtle change to the combat system: this move will beat out 6 frame strongs and forwards(theoretically). If both hit-boxes collide, the move with the higher strength will always win. In the case of strong/forwards, this will result in a successful counterhit.

But even then, you are wagering that your opponent is going to be throwing out a strong/forward instead of lights, jabs, throws, and command grabs.

LOL i definitely agree it’s luck, but I do think that getting a counter hit st. hp is not easy XD

I just did this in a match and it immediately worked lol. I know theres a post under you saying its not a good idea but ima abuse it for a bit <_<;

@Unomia , I said cr.mk not cr.mp.

cr.mk would make it 6 frames because it’s +2 on block and you can space it far enough that most jabs won’t be able to touch you/people online go for dumb punishes that aren’t jabs/fast reversals.

Also most of you have prolly seen all this(like the guide or the frame data info), but here’s some screen shots I did of the prima e-guide.

It’s got frame data, info on special moves, strategy’s for close range, med rage, long range, etc. Stuff like that.

https://chrisxbloody.imgur.com/

If lp lunge hits, dash HP or HK will meaty on neutral tech. Beats 3 frame jabs and up. If you read that they’ll sleep or back tech you can use the opportunity to either set up your wall or start small ball offense.

In the corner you can also plant a meaty mk trap after lunge or sweep. If they neutral or back roll and start swinging you can confirm into off the trap hit into HK or c.MP. Invincible reversals will probably catch you on the recovery of trap so get in their head

I’m not really sure how I’m feeling about FANG after using him for a while. Might be the salt speaking, because I’ve just lost aproximately like 20 games, but I had a realization just now when I hit a nash player with nishikyu like 5 times plus a standing HP, only to have him do more damage from a BNB combo using one ex bar. I’m sure there’s plenty of untapped potential, but even during poison state, it seems like a single jump-in done towards you that is sucessful does the same amount, if not more damage, than you getting like 4 or 5 good reads in neutral. I welcome everyone to correct me and point out the flaw in my argument, I’m trying to find a reason to stay with fang(other than the fact that until alex is released, I have no characters I particularly care about).

Welcome to the life of Dhalsim!

In sf4

Bafael just posted a lot of knowledge on F.A.N.G on reddit, you guys should check it out! https://reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/46pem4/bafael_here_with_fang_complete_ive_temporarily/

Here are my thoughts on the character so far:

Fang has an interesting distance from the opponent where both j.MK will connect normally and j.HK will connect as a cross-up and both hits can be combo’ed from (much harder with the j.MK). Even though it is a timing mixup (you will press MK earlier and HK later) it is still very hard for many people to block. You can check this yourself by starting training in the middle of the map and doing three whiffed cr.MPs and one cr.MK. I tested against Ken, because of height the distance may be different for other characters. From this distance both the normal jump attack and the cross-up will connect. This also works in the corner - if you start on a side in training mode just figure out the number of whiffed attacks to get to the distance so you can test it.

In normal play if you end a combo with MP Sotoja (the charge at you claw attack) then you may be at this special distance if they quick-rise in place. The LP version will put you a little further away and the HP will put you a little closer. Unfortunately there is really no incentive at any point in SF5 to wake up any other way than back quickrise so if they are doing this either walk forward a bit to get to the distance or better yet just start up your zoning game with a V-Skill or MP Nishikyu (up poison ball). Jumping at this distance is obviously not a safe jump and you might even get auto-corrected DP for it, but in my experience most players will not risk an attack when you are jumping in for a cross-up.

In the corner you can end a combo with EX Ryobenda (ground poison gas) and get a LOT of time to do something. The something I’ve had the most luck with is to quickly move forward a bit with either st. HP or cr. MP and immediately place a HK Ryobenda right in front of their face as they recover. Then you can use HK command dash which will actually push them into the gas allowing you to combo them (I use st. HK, cr. MP, LP Sotoja). This is brutally hard to block since they have to switch from guarding one direction to another on the frame that Fang crosses them over. I’ve done this trick dozens of times and have yet to see anyone block it.

Another setup has worked for me about 90% of the time is Crush Counter Sweep (close) into MK Ryobenda into jumping cross-up HK into combo. For whatever reason this works much better than cr.HK (cc), MK Ryobenda, command dash through. If they actually start waking up holding forward you can do a HK Ryobenda instead which will slow you you down enough to the point where they have to hold back to block the gas instead of forward and you can still combo your cross up HK.

Never, ever do cr.LP after a blocked st.HK. I have no idea why people do this but even in the top 200 you see plenty of Fangs doing this. Either do st.LK if you think it you will get a counter-hit into cr.MP, LP Sotoja or st.LP which will also lead to the same combo or keep frame advantage if they block that too.

Never, ever punish DPs with anything other than st.HP, LK command dash! Again I see high ranked Fangs doing massively sub-optimal combos like st.HP into cr.HK and it drives me nuts. Without meter or v-trigger you should be doing st.HP, lk command dash, st.HP, HP Sotoja. You can figure out where to add supers, EX moves and V Trigger cancels.

For anti-air, after cr.HP (2 hits) cancel into HK command dash into st.HK stops working, I’ve had some luck with: cr. HP (2 hits), walk forward a bit, then either grab or cr. MK. If the cr. MK hits it was probably a counter so you can do cr.MP, LP Sotoja. If they block the cr. MK just remember you are +2 and go from there.

Every now and then you will find yourself in a place with frame advantage but to far to combo anything or grab. Or you are right next to them behind them after a command dash. In these situations I’ve had good luck just doing st.LK, st.LP and if they are still close enough, st.LK. I think this does something like 99 damage and ends with you having slight frame advantage, so you can try for either a st.HP or risk a V Skill, Nishikyu or Ryobenda to start up your zoning game again. In a sense the massive pushback of normals in SF5 kind of helps him out here and I kind of feel this is how the character was meant to be played.

fang has the aa dhalsim meh

you’re right my bad, i don’t know why i was thinking about mp -_-

any fang players want to follow me and share and learn with me please follow twitch.tv/colorsupreme. I stream often and would love grow with this community

Hmm so had a heavy play session today and I’m just having a few concerns.

  • Why are we using cr.hp as an anti air? Unless I’m wrong it basically resets the situation back to neutral but with you both next to eachother, isn’t this terrible for FANG?

  • I’m kind of feeling that once players get more used to teching knockdowns FANG’s going to have a much harder time, the only way he gets a hard knockdown is counterhit sweep which is very punishable even at max range. I guess the question here is are tech traps a thing here and has anyone found any good ones for FANG?

  • To quote my friend after FANG says “Take the poison” using his V-Skill “Ok”, it just has such little impact it feels there is no reason not to just ignore it and carry on approaching.

  • Character specific here but what is everyone doing against Lisa, feels her dashing attack that goes into a cinematic just ignores FANG’s lp and mp balls and once she’s in behind a electric ball I just haven’t a clue what to do? Also finding her super armour move pretty tricky to deal with and I’m not sure what to do about her j.mk, it seems to beat my j.hp cleanly and as for cr.hp, Lisa resetting next to me seems almost as bad as being hit.

On the plus side I’m loving mp balls into ex command dash in neutral and when my opponent’s don’t tech their knockdowns FANG can have a field day, I’m just hoping there is a way to punish teching enough to give them a reason not to a few months down the line.

  1. You can cancel c.HP into specials to apply poison, or to do a tricky cross up with the command dash. I personally like to play aggressively so I always go for cross ups to apply pressure, but you could cancel it into the LK trap and create space + poison, I believe. I use s.MK against Zangief and when people are neutral jumping in the corner/to avoid V-Skill.

  2. I feel like Poison’s value depends on the match up. If people want to walk into it and give me free damage, then please, feel free to do so. I’m still not going to let you in easily. Unless you’re Cammy or something anyway…
    Also, the fact they can’t recover gray health while poisoned is a great bonus. F.A.N.G has decent pressure with some of his normals, and you can really build that gray damage up before landing one stray s.MP or something.

  3. Against Laura, it helps to know her frame data. If you block her light shoulder tackle, it’s -2. You can jab her out of any normal she would try. Once you’ve proven that to her you can start doing more interesting stuff like frame traps/throws/etc. Medium shoulder tackle is punishable, and EX Shoulder tackle can be stuffed on wake up by a meaty c.MK, since the two-hits are very fast and break the armor (and give counter hit for a follow up combo). Or, you can just throw her on wake up and beat it that way.

I find Laura has to take risks to get in, and as long as you’re blocking her pressure, there are lots of places to jab her to put things back into your favor. If she charges the lightning, you can jump punish pretty easy with j.HP. Or command dash through it if they like to jump after it. Her overhead is punishable on block, and it’s not THAT fast, just need to be mindful of it. Use your normals to keep her out and anti air her when you can. She’s barely any better at dealing with pressure than F.A.N.G is!

To expand on c.HP, cancelling the first hit grants a knockdown. So light trap for free damage plus poison, medium and heavy to plant for oki. Or command dash to pass through either to get away or immediately pressure on their tech.

Cancelling the second hit resets them. Im not sure if they recover before you plant a trap but going for dash or nothing at all can provide left right mixups.

Also, on a more…glass half full perspective, poison status lasts for 500 frames at 50 damage which means the DOT accrues a little over 8 seconds real time. In a perfect world where you keep the status refreshed an opponent will take up to 600 damage passively by time out.

It definitely ain’t two minutes when we look at the long term haha