So the VERY first online match I played after you guys reminded me to incorporate it into my footsies was against a pretty good Gouken… except he was focus happy! He had a good FADC game and NEVER missed his chance to backthrow me into super/ultra… but… c.strong > 3k and s.roundhouse effed him up!
BTW, I noticed today Gouken is very one dimensional… it was ALWAYS fish for a focus crumple dash to backthrow to Ultra
Or
simply fish for a backthrow to Ultra.
I’ve played two great Goukens, both polar opposites.
Gouken A wastes no time in getting in your face and ending things up close. He’ll tick throw into forward throw, sweep, and once he gets those untechable knockdowns, have a field day with the demon flip. Basically, you can almost always beat / trade with his flips by jump up air throwing or jump up roundhouse, but if he’s coming down on you with one of his flips you MUST block high first. If you block low, you eat an overhead and a potential 400+ damage combo and a huge amount of stun, thanks to EX Big hand. Getting swept is no big deal… the only problem, again, is that if he throws… you really are boned. You have to guess right but the biggest threat here is the dive kick. Otherwise, he knows not to use many fireballs against me, and he’s very frugal with his footsie game as he knows that too much laziness means too much Cosmic Heel ST. He makes the ultra combos count when he needs them to most. I go about 50/50 with Gouken A. He’s the best player in my city, and the Gouken I posted in the “I think Vega is a crap character” thread or whatever it’s called. IIRC that’s where I posted it. This Gouken escapes meaty izunas by using EX Dive Kick. I don’t know the timing specifically, but one time I went for an izuna, he EX Dive Kicked and actually ended up punishing my recovery with his kick. Not cool.
Gouken B is a huge turtle. He zones zones zones with fireballs and generally tries to hold the fort down. This does not work well. Eventually I’ll Barcelona around one of his FB’s, and he’ll try to parry… no dice. Izuna, and he’s in deep shit. My rushdown game usually ate him alive. Pretty much once I get some meter, he’s in serious trouble as his fireball game is really unefective. He also has a bad habit of charging fireballs while I have ultra. No excuses… you must ultra those. Those are a free ultra. Telegraphing.
When I don’t have meter though, it’s extremely frustrating to get in. He struggled to get out of the corner and got hit by many, many izunas, not knowing that EX Dive Kick would get him out. His pressure game was strong when he wanted it to be. He played a lot like Vega. Keep people out, then tear them apart once you get in; end the match quick. Sometimes he’d hit me with some disgusting combos like EX Big Hand, focus cancel ultra (Gouken A can EX Big Hand, DASH ultra… no meter waste although you don’t get the full ultra).
I beat him 10-2 in a FT10 last we played. I didn’t stomp him or anything, just figured him out and kept punishing the same shit.
Also; amazing trick against Gouken!!! Bait a parry; use jump out fierce, the parry will not hit you ,and you can punish with a sweep. Does like 220-240 damage and an untechable knockdown!
When i play gouken vs another vega, if i block a jump out fierce… ex palm and 1/3 life is away. The jump out fierce is GREAT when he is down, if you corpse hop and then do it, or jump to his back and then do it, because we gouken’s usually use parry to defeat crossups and ambigous corpsehops, and even if we know that we shouldn’t parry too much vs vega… usually we do it anyway.
Gouken vs vega… is all about timming, because both demon flip kick and zoning with fireballs are mindgames. Both Gouken and vega have to guess, and you sure can barcelona over a fireball if you do it right, but if you don’t get the timming and the gouken hit’s with a fireball, it’s usually a free palm juggle into a wakeup mindgame.
Gouken jumping + mp vs barcelona is difficult to izuna in the air too, and leads to ultra. Be careful.
The good thing in this matchup for vega is that it is insanely hard to parry vega’s pokes, because if a gouken parry nothing, vega can punish hard from far away with df+hk.
A one hell of a strategy could be to jump a lot at first (vertical jump a lot, and jump over his fireball if you see the timming, if you jump from up close you usually can go over the fireball) to force him to be on the defensive and toss air fireballs more often… and when gouken does that, attack from the ground with the df+hk and more ground pokes and less jumping.
Whatever… i’m not very good giving advices because when i play gouken, i destroy vega’s… but when i play vega i destroy gouken’s… because i know both characters very well
pretty much just reiterating what everyone else said here. anytime you know something’s coming, regardless of what it is you should have a free punish in there somewhere. for FA (depending on skill) you have ST, cMK ST, stHK, cLP/cMPxx lpRCF, Izuna Drop, even stHP if he’s not paying attention but the 2 most effective tools you have are #1 throw and #2 backdash. If you have ultra and you know FA is coming… nail him.
