Hey guys,
I’ve been using ken for awhile now and having real big trouble versing Gouki. His rushdown is hella annoying but makes it worst is his stupid tatsu! When i block it i try and punish but he justs does another one and bam, knockdown. Someone told me that you can super reversal it but its super strict timing. Is this correct? What other tips would you give to a tatsu-happy Gouki? I know you can parry it of course but then its a guessing game (low/mid) first. He also crosses me up with his dive kick…
Gotta be more specific then that. To beat hurricanes you really should super. Block his hurricane, then quickly do the super motion and drum all the kick buttons after he stops kicking.
Tatsu happy gouki’s? I’d say super them after every blocked tatsu. I don’t believe the timing is that strict, unless you’re going for the super after a blocked lk tatsu. It’s funny that the Gouki you’re facing doesn’t do a lot of demon flipping. That’s what I see a lot of with Gouki players around here and the tastu stuff is pretty easy to block/counter. Have you tried parry/ lp Shoryu? That works pretty well as an attack stuffer. If they try to mix you up with dive kick, then parrry and shoryu. That dive kick is hard to see coming if mixed up properly, but if it’s just thrown out randomly…bait.
True enough. I still see a lot of Demon Flippers around here in El Paso. I shoryu on reaction now. I don’t know why some people resort to using tastu’s with Gouki when he is perfectly capable of being played without having to rely on Tastu’s. His Tatsu stuff is quite good, but he can be played well without using that.
It’s probably not the speed with which the punishment must be executed that is the problem for you, rather it’s you trying to see the end of the tetsumaki and then punishing. If you go to practice mode and try it out, you should not have any trouble with punishing either MK or HK tetsumaki, and if you do, practice it until you don’t. If you have trouble with the LK tetsumaki as well, practice on punishing it as well - it’s not a move that akuma should be able to use and get away with often, if at all.
Also keep in mind that you can buffer the first motions of the punishment during the block animation of the last tetsumaki kick, which should make it easier for you. Furthermore, you don’t even have to do shippu - doing LP-shoryu (x2), or fierce shoryu, or mp shoryu --> sa3 as punishment might even be easier for you because then you don’t have to do any fast qcf, qcf motions.
Therefore, if you guess between HK and MK tetsumaki, you should always get the punishment half of the time.
So, if you block LK tetsumaki you should punish this on reaction (or you will learn to in time or w/ practice), and if you block more than one kick you’ll guess either HK or MK. Even though you might eat the last kick of HK or let him get away for free with MK sometimes, by handling the tetsumakis like this you will ensure that the risk/reward is tilted heavily in your favour, and thus your opponent will either cut down on the tetsumakis or start to lose more games, hopefully both
There are also numerous other ways to handle and punish the tetsumaki, but I believe that the above described method is the easiest way to get results - just play the odds until you know which risks are safe to take! Personally I usually try to see if its MK/HK and then punish with shoryu, while another ken player in my area almost always goes for the red parry on second or third hit in order to get an easy LP shoryu x2 with minimum need for guessing or straining the reflexes.
Ken is for sure a character that does not need to fear tetsumakis, so just practice and play more until you learn how to defend against them!
