I seeing that apparently air Shunpu can cross up like the shoto’s air Tatus. I’m currently testing it now to make sure on it, but I’ve managed to get it work a number of times in ranked and right now in the lab. Be back to see if I can find the range for it.
EDIT: OK, from what I can gather, it looks like you have to aim the center of Sakura’s body towards the opponent’s head in order for this to work. The hitbox of the cross-up Shunpu is just at the edge of her center (almost literally outside her butt range). Works better on people with beefier hitboxes as well (I had I hard time recreating it on Ryu, but came noticeably easier on Kuma, for instance.) It’ll also snag people trying to jump away from her too in the same manner. Again, I’ll be testing more when I get the chance to.
It’s still 4f but the hitbox on it seemed to be nerfed badly, she can’t link it from cr.lk > cr.lp or from cl.hp xx tatsu > cl.hp xx tatsu > cr.hp like I seen in earlier builds.
Has anyone been able to link anything after her overhead? It almost feels like it gains no more frame advantage on counter hit as well, but that’s probably just me failing.
Ok, so after 3 days of playing Sakura, I can honestly say she is ass.
The nerf to her cr. fierce is ridiculous, but I need to adjust and just realize she’s not SF4 Sakura.
My go to punish if I can’t get a jump in or a fierce is to link cr. short to cr. jab and then chain into stand fierce then ex tatsu, jump fierce cr. fierce dash cancel, cr. fierce shouken.
Said combo is hard a shit to do.
She doesn’t get any special properties to any of her moves when you EX them, or at least I can’t find it.
She doesn’t have very good mid screen damage that is hit confirmable. Right not, I’ve got stand fierce into launcher, st. med kick – stand fierce --launcher, low forward shouken.
She doesn’t get very good damage off of a tag unless you have the corner.
I’m gonna keep working, but she’s really bad to me.
I think 3 normals is plenty of time to hit confirm, especially after a jump-in, and I have slow-ass reactions to boot! After all that was pretty much her go-to hit-confirm for Shou in SF4. I’ve been playing around with chaining normals into EX Shunpuu, it’s a bit fiddly but with a bit of forward movement it’s very doable, have a feeling it doesn’t work on small crouching characters but worst case scenario is you get a launcher instead.
I wonder if s.LP > c.MK is still a 3-framer and s.LP > s.LK a 5-framer (with starting from c.LP being a frame tighter).
Nah they didn’t go under projectiles in SFIV, Ex does go through them though.
Ex Tatsu launches them into the air
Ex Hadoken knocks them down and is 2 hit
Ex Shouken is invincible on startup
cr.mk st.hk chain is a safe chain on the majority of the cast, it’s not safe to the likes of Ryu/Jack/Julia’s super (from what I can see so far) and Lili’s f+mk
I think Lili could be potentially one of Sakura’s more severe matchups, Lili can divekick on Sakura easily and stop her fireball game and punish her cr.mk st.hk chain.
Lads keep in mind, Sakura’s design in this game is a support character, she has great tag cancel options, if you tag cancel her hp shouken, you can get a lot of damage from it and a free mixup on block, on paper, she doesn’t sound great, but in a team game, she’s pretty damn good. It’s still early, don’t give up on her yet.
The biggest change is that she can only hit confirm into crappy damage combos without meter. In 4 she can hit confirm two attacks into a fierce. In this, all she gets is a medium kick which is crappy.
1.) I don’t think there are “support” characters and “point” characters to be honest.
2.) I know what her special moves do and that doesn’t make them any better or worse
3.)A safe chain is only effective as that, a safe chain. It doesn’t get me any damage.
4.) What good is a tag cancel if you are playing someone with a brain? Because currently she only has low forward to use and if you are wrong, you burn the meter to keep her safe. Which ANY smart player will Alpha counter and tag to get both of your characters. And it’s hard to mix up on block because shouken isn’t an overhead like Hwang’s hunting hawk.
5.) She’s garbage, but I’m going to be the best with her regardless.
To clarify on point number 4, I’m saying your try and footsie with low forward dp. That’s all she has right now without using a boost combo or burning meter. So if you mistime your punish or they blocked it, you have to tag in to keep her safe.
1)But the whole point of this game is to get characters that cover each other’s weaknesses, usually a point character is a character that excels at neutral game and provides many opportunities for your anchor character to tag in and builds meter, the anchor character is usually someone that struggles at neutral but is dangerous upclose and burns up the meter, so point characters are very important in this game.
But her ex version are clearly better than her normal versions because of the reasons I listed.
A safe chain can be hitconfirmed into launcher to tag your anchor character in, it doesn’t matter about damage as long as your partner gets in, hell you might even get good damage off that depending on your partner.
That’s the intention of using the cr.mk xx hp shouken on block, it allows your partner to come in and they even have enough time to perform a mixup, yes it’s obviously risky if your opponent has 2 bars and a good AC, that’s when you shouldn’t do it, the mixup depends on the tools that your partner has, with Sakura/Asuka (my team), I can do shouken on block and then tag cance Asuka in and then I get a free j.hp on block and then I can do whatever I want from there, be it f+mp for high, df+hk for low, block for reversals, I can even do empty low cr.lk instead of the j.hp.
She’s not garbage, she’s just a different character than SFIV.
Ok, well how about we play sometime. I will show you why I think this character is garbage. Even if she isn’t 4 Sakura, she’s still the worst version of the character I’ve ever played. Hands down.
And damage is everything. What good is a boost combo if it only nets me like 200 damage.
I still don’t understand the point of listing her EX moves. Unless you have meter, then they don’t help much. Plus like I said, the big damage combos all require meter and are still really hard to do because they took away a lot of stuff she could do. I played her earlier builds and she was much better. I don’t know why they nerfed her.
EX hado knocking down doesn’t get me anything good since they can just roll out. Which completely negates the mix up.
EX dp has always had invincible start up, so…
EX tatsu was always safe on block, sooo…
I’m not saying they’re a viable use of meter, I’m just pointing this thing you said. (Ex DP is a good reversal though)
She doesn’t get any special properties to any of her moves when you EX them, or at least I can’t find it.
And cr.mk st.hk xx launcher will net you more than 200 damage, you can get 300-400 damage from her cr.mk st.hk, and an opportunity for your anchor character to do what they do best upclose.
If it was a 1v1, then yes she’d be a pretty shit character, but it’s not, it’s a team game, and Sakura happens to do pretty well at neutral to make up for her combo opportunitiy and all her tag cancels to give your partner a chance to shine.
Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean like EX ing them like that. My bad. I meant like how Ken gets a crumple on hit if you charge up his tatsu and then dash out of it. She doesn’t get any special properties for her moves like that. But at the start of the match it is a one v one. I have no meter and I’m trying to win with a gimped character.
She can kinda do that now but it’s very fiddly and doesn’t work as well or at all on crouching opponents. Starting with s.LPx2 with a bit of forward movement you can link into s.LK xx s.MP xx s.HP but then you obviously lose the low attack to start with, may be possible to start with a s.LK but that makes it even harder. Pretty fiddly and like you said linking or link chaining into c.MK is just as fiddly in my experience
One of the worst characters in the game if not the worst. Her cr. mk has terrible range. Lk tatsu being -4 on block ruins her grab game being that it was a good way to punish tech grabs. Her damage is crappy compared to most of the cast. In a game where some one, like law, can do cr mk into is gut punch special which is safe of block but if it hits he does tons of damage without meter it is so stupid to make lk tatsu punishable on block. The closest thing sakura has to that is cr mk into mk tatsu which is -2 i believe but the shitty things about that is thats the end of the combo, it will hit and you probably do just over 100 damage. We Sakura fans got screwed in this game. They gave so much to the rest of the cast and nothing to sakura. :(
