"Gettin' that Bike $!" AE Balrog Match-up Thread

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
621

It’s instant. There is no magic different way.

The only reason to use EX is because if it gets blocked you have more pushback in corner. There are some specific setups but it’s easy to see and determine the timing. I use this sometimes.

There are safeball setups that are usually determined by a blockstring… so you do a blockstring and end with LP ball and now it’s not punishable by some of the cast who could have punished it before. Also blocking it standing vs crouching is important. Gief has issues punishing from a crouched state on MP ball but can if he’s standing.

Balrog is not on this list. I’m about 99% sure LP punch can beat all setups and if it can’t then i know super/ultra can.

The setup i believe in AE 2012 is backthrow and then j.HK… in previous versions it was backthrow and j.MK (super easy). it’s pretty hard now which we don’t like to tell balrogs. Another reason this matchup is terrible.

622

o wow.

FoxisQuick, do you feel Blanka’s U2 is useless in this mu?

623

While we’re answering Blanka questions, I’ll add my few.

  1. Lately, been getting hit with a lot of EX rainbow ball. Can’t focus (well I think it’s focusable if you do it late in some situations), don’t know which way to block. Is it possible to counter, or do I just have to keep my eyes peeled to see which way to block?

  2. Blanka’s cross up/non-cross up U1 when you’re on knockdown. Is it difficult to pull up the cross up ultra? Am I better off just blocking it normally (crouching then standing) and if he manages to cross up then kudos to him?

624

  1. no you just c.HP. AA it, we forget this works. If you try to focus this on his wakeup it becomes a reversal and therefore breaks armor. Just c.HP!!!

  2. no, in 2012AE it’s super easy to see the crossup. Practice it and you’ll see the distances. REALLY straight forward. In like vanilla and stuff it was like super ambig impossible. I really miss the U1 days.

625

Oh crap, I forgot I usually play Bison when play against Blanka these days. Even though it might be slightly off-topic, what does Bison do about EX rainbow ball?

626

I dunno. The bison’s i play against just block. But i’m sure there are options.

627

what can I do against Akuma’s rh?

628

Shed tears.

edit: Ok srs though probably space it out and whiff punish it. That’s how you have to play vs akuma anyway. Because you can’t fall down, so you have keep that space and never get knocked down.

629

lol, you can counter poke Akuma’s st.rh (I assume you mean the far one) with cr.mp or st.lp, it’s just going to most likely fail.

630

The bisons I play just st.hk it on the way up.

631

Hey Veserius, is there anything else you can think in regards to the questions I asked earlier?

632

neutral game you should play footsies and have TAP stored at random points to blow up focus if you see it. Honestly if you have even a chip of life lead you don’t have to do much other than whiff punish and anti air. If your AA isn’t on point you’ll lose. If you’re eating random slides you need to represent random low block and focus to throw your opponent off and make them think about the risk:reward. I dunno watch this

to your other questions:
as foxisquick said hitting the corner stops that stuff instantly.
crossup horizontal ball can be done from a lot of situations. hit eletricity, either throw, sweep, slide, ultra, super. No real specific setup.
blanka ball is normally not safe on block. there are some weird situations involving rog’s transition between crouching and standing and him waking up that can make it safe, but blanka betting on you just rapidly changing your block or w/e is just not viable. You should always punish on block and on whiff.
b.throw, dash, j.hk is unblockable, but it’s difficult to execute. Just don’t reversal it cause you’ll probably get punished against a good Blanka.

633

Interesting explanation of the trade O/S technology. The bit about Balrog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uhRApiuecho#t=989s

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To expand on foxisquick’s point 1:

yes, absolutely correct. basically if he does it from mid screen, you can focus it, but when u have blanka knocked down, make sure you keep an eye out for rainbow ball. stay close and if u see the yellow flash and cr. fierce as blanka does his rainbow ball back hop, you will catch him on his way up. if you’re too late, its pretty tough to cr fierce at that time, so it might be better to guess a side. just don’t focus.

635

Unblockable on boxer if you do the rainbow correctly. You can cr.fierce/st.strong it on the way down, not too hard.

636

Here is my take on the matches that you did write ups for 3nig. I disagree with you on some of them and agree on others. Thought it might be good to have another opinion on the matches however.

Vs Blanka Rog def still wins. All you have to do is walk forward and block and blanka gets shut down. Veserius got a lot of it right. If you walk forward and block you can either punish slide on block or react w/ stand forward to stuff it. You can still punish blocked ball with U1 most of the time. Down fierce everything. WIth Rainbow ball he can make u whiff your down HP and whiff punish but it is very difficult. Jab stuffs all hops. If you get knocked down get ready to tech. Dont cr. tech his throws after ambiguous hops, you need to stand tech it. The unblockable no longer works, or is difficult to pull off, and it is pretty easy to block ambiguous U1 after fwd throw if you are used to it. In fact, if you do block U1, you can get a fat punish by just holding up fwd. I like to do jump RH, cr.jab, st.MP. EX RU into w/e. Most importantly DO NOT DASH PUNCH AT HIM. A good blanka will slide you out of it and start his shenanigans. lp.lp.mp is ur BNB in this match, you gotta be able to land it. I find that the only move that gives me trouble in this match is blanka’s stand strong, I can’t seem to get a consistent whiff punish with sweep. :confused:

VS Abel, I would have to say that Abel wins this match 6-4/5.5-4.5. It’s funny before last Saturday I would have said that this is 5-5, but I played Juicebox in about 50-75 matches rog vs abel and rog vs juri. Even box thinks this is bad for boxer now saying that it’s 6-4. Granted his reactions are extremely good… The only option that you have truthfully is to bait step kick and whiff punish. Everything else got shut down for me. Even if I stood just outside stand jab range and threw stand jabs to discourage him moving forward or using a move, I got whiff punished with cr mk buffered with COD. His oki game is too strong and you can’t hit hard enough as you must abandon your charge to footsie his step kick. What you have to keep in mind in this match is what you do when you block step kick. It is a horrible situation for rog imo. If you mash jab or throw(both 3 frames) that will beat all normal moves or specials from abel other than non-ex tornado. If you think he’s going to non-ex tornado you hold up. DO NOT BACKDASH you will get reaction stepkicked punished and get put back in the same situation best case scenario.

Vs Gen. I actually asked Eduardo about this match last week on his stream and he says he thinks Gen has the advantage. I would agree that many people lose to Gen regardless of character because they are unsure of how to fight him. On a basic level though gen crouch or stand strong buffered into hands keeps rog out extremely well in my experience. Gen has very good normals in mantis and people don’t even know it. (Stand strong 4 frames of start up, plus 5 on block!) 3 frame stand jab, and cr hk in crane is great for anti air on rog. Also, due to rog’s increased pushback when crouch blocking. Blocking anything canceled into hands puts him extremely far away. It’s tough to get in on a good Gen player, at any point in time crouch strong, stand strong, or stand fwd, CH into hands into super/ultra can do 500+ damage.

Vs Guile – Easy 6-4 for Guile imo. PR says this is rog’s worst match, and with him having significant experience against Dieminion, I’d say he’s prob right. Yeah, like you said you can push him to corner with extended combos. But if you get close enough to do that then Guile failed. You said, “So if I jump over a boom he has to normal, and then with Balrog he has to pick the right normal or he deals with a CH” Honestly, there is absolutely no reason Guile should get hit unless you jumped an EX boom, or if he threw it way late after you jumped. His lp boom starts up in 9frames, and recovers in 29, this is significantly faster than the rest of the plasma in the game. Plus, he has a myriad of 4-5 frame normals to anti air with and an air throw. The fact that flash kick is 4frames, fadc’able, and hits you when you are crouching in front of him (unlike jackknife maximum) makes meaty pressure a bit more complicated too. When I lose to guile I can’t get close to him. When I win, it’s not because I pushed him into the corner with a long combo. It’s because I walked him there and then he gave me the life lead trying to get out and I downback it and keep him there.

Vs Ibuki. I think Rog has a slight advantage. She doesn’t have unblockables, afaik, that work on rog. Her normals are good, but lose to boxer. Low jab gives her problems if you discourage her normal slide first w/ standing mk. Tsumuji pressure gets shut down if they try to extend it by EX rush punching. Watch out for stand short buffered into a special move though. You need to react to the illusion dash, it’s very unsafe. Learn her vortex setups and you shouldn’t have much of a problem. Often, whether a kunai hits in back or in front is determined by if she SJC or not(or her regular jump ins for that matter). Look for the dust at her feet and block accordingly. She can’t os behind a kunai so if you get neckbreaker’d out of TAP you know it’s a reaction. Her OHs are slow enough to react to. Also remember that if you get fwd thrown, 99% of the time an instant kunai hits in front but looks like a cross up.

Vs Cammy. I play Cammy on the side, and this is most definitely advantage Balrog. If you get vortexed as Boxer, then you should play Cammy for a little bit. Try to set up the vortex on Boxer in training mode and see how to block it. It is harder for her to cross up dive kick than on any other character against boxer. Most of the time you will be blocking dives in front. Also, because of boxer’s pushback she has a hard time tick throwing after anything other than either J.lk or one standing jab. After this, you can jab her walking forward to throw, or easily reaction tech. Do not cr. Tech against her, she’s too positive after jab and you will get trapped into cr/stand HP. 9/10 of her throws will come at those two points though and boxer can easily downback against her and not have to push anything as she has no over heads as long as you can block ambiguous jump shorts. Most of the time after a two hit drill, j.lk will cross, and after a single hit drill, j.lk will stay in front. If you get blown up by ex divekick in the neutral game, jump forward HP will completely shut it down; same goes for non ex for that matter. Boxer has the best tools to win this match imo, he’s too hard to vortex and her common unblockable set ups down work on him.

I would also say that Rog loses to Gief in the same way that he loses to Hawk, if not worse. The extended range of jab spd is a nightmare. And gief’s normals are very solid. I have much more success zoning out a good Hawk than I do a good gief.

I’d say Dhalsim is 5.5-4.5 in sim’s favor for the same reason that guile beats rog. Vega loses slightly to Rog 5.5-4.5. And I don’t think seth vs boxer is quite 7-3, closer to 6-4 although def awful.

Other than that I agree with the rest of your analysis,

637

Thanks for the opinion. There’s definitely a lot I don’t know about those matchups, but I feel that I can debate or at least offer some more insight on my opinion on the one’s i’ve included above.

Vs Guile
In short I agree with you, but as far as why i think it’s in Balrog’s favor if only slightly is described below.

Guile has a very good neutral game with throwing booms, yes I agree that Guile can keep constant pressure with booms. But it’s limited by two things (As far as it working): his access to meter and how close he is to the corner. When Guile is booming, his goals are to push you to deep corner, so he has all of mid-screen to pay with. Guile’s use ex.boom to regain mid-screen spacing because it has more pushback than the other booms. I think that in general Balrog’s don’t know the effective range of headbutt in this match. I don’t have the reactions to really take advantage of it, but like you said earlier, boom has a total animation of 38f meaning that if you’re within about 1/2 screen, you have access to down-charge and reactions, hp.hb rips through booms. So that aside, when You do get in range to jump over a boom Guile has to make a decision on which AA to use, because all of them won’t work and because he boomed he no longer has access to flash kick which is a general purpose AA. Some trades can be in Guile’s favor, but any type of air reset that doesn’t push Rog back a lot, is bad for him since after the air reset we have access to down and back charge plus spacing. In terms of meaty pressure, standing right out of grab range is probably more useful than actually trying a meaty. If you know Guile down his goal is to get spacing back which will involve you getting thrown or a blockstring into ex.boom. He doesn’t want to flash kick unless he see’s something since he can FADC for free, but if he burns two bars, that’s two less ex.booms he can use.

vs Zangief

I whole heartedly disagree with you here. In comparison, T. Hawk definitely has a much better neutral game i feel. Zangief can be kept out for 99s. Yes you have to make good decisions, but you have all of the tools there for you. This matchup is definitely about running down the timer. Balrog can always space himself out of jab spd range by getting him to block a cr.hk or a st.hp. That coupled with the truth that you’ll be using no meter (maybe ex.hb), you’re more likely to have super to cancel from cr.hk if he attempts to Focus absorb dash forward. In my experience i’ve played a lot of Gief, from Jan in Houston who IMO is the best Zangief in the south (or at least was when he was playing sf4) etc. I was fortunate enough to play Snake Eyes at EVO, and even though he won we went to the last match, last round. Between playing me and Jonas, if Jan were to play a Balrog player he’d always counterpick Seth/Cody because it’s too much of an uphill battle for Zangief against rog.

to expound upon the neutral game, Zangief’s pokes/neutral game are very straight forward, cr.lk, st.lk, st.mp, whiffed cr.mk/st.hk, random cr.hk/df+hk. Very straight forward, very easy to see, easy to counterpoke, easy to get the life lead. Balrog has AA’s for all of Gief’s ambiguous jump-ins and doesn’t need to leave the ground for anything.

On knockdown, yes Balrog gets owned, but who doesn’t own Balrog on knockdown? (that may be a bad argument lol)

vs Vega

I kinda disagree here with you as well, but the advantage I feel Vega has isn’t earth shattering. Vega is a lot like Bison…but with damage. Vega has better tools to lame rog out and can generally out poke and punish him in ranges rog can’t deal with. His st.mk/st.hk by themselves can keep rog out. Rog can pressure vega, but vega can do the same and with his kara throw, mixups, and range, he’s got far better mid-range tools than rog i think.

Edit: I know a lot of the MUs are outdated, i usually like to get a lot done at once and then modify them all since i usually end up having to shift matchups around due to length and the amount of text I get to post per page.

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Also this was something I found out a while back but didn’t put a lot of testing into. if you do a meaty cr.mp or a max distance meaty TAP, you can make some invincible attacks trade to favor Balrog, both in terms of damage and their ability to FADC. cr.mp is definitely easier to meaty against the cast with since it has a wider hitbox than cr.lp .

I think this has the most use against Shotos, notably Ken. You can do a simple setup like cr.hk, walk forward cr.mp around max distance. If he does a reversal srk, it’ll trade with the first hit and air reset him (unless they use jab srk which is only one hit) the trade is even but Balrog gets an air reset. Alternatively if you do it at MAX distance, Ken’s extra horizontal range on his dp causes him to tag Balrog but it’s on the second set of active frames so he can’t FADC and continues his animation (e.g. you get hit with the first hit, but the rest of them whiff) allowing you to get a big punish on his way down. He may srk past you making the punish more difficult, but at the least you should be able to get a focus attack punish into something nice or at least a cr.mp xx hp.hb

639

No prob, always glad to offer my take on matches that I have experience in :slight_smile:

I can see what you are saying about Guile, but in my experience Guile has plenty of time to cr or stand HP if you jump a boom. If you trap him in the corner he loses for sure though. I feel like vs good guile, my options get shut down and his tools for footsies(st.HP, back knuckle, st.RH, cr.MK, etc.) are as good or better in the match. But yeah, if your reactions are spot on to the point where you shut down his boom game at the proper range then its not so terrible. Easier said than done though :wink:

It seems that you have much more experience against Gief than I do. We have virtually no grappler players in PHX, which is a shame. From my experience this match is wholly footsie based like you said. I can def see how this can be considered a win for Rog if you can beat him on the ground and not get baited into whiffing down HP and eating a SPD. And seriously… who DOESNT own boxer on wake up? :frowning:

Vega is a lot like Bison in that all three of his standing kicks look the same as Bison and serve generally the same purpose for the most part; with the obvious exceptions of his st.LK being the cornerstone of his close pressure and kara throw set ups and st.HK hitting twice. That is where the similarities end though. Vega can’t do safe block strings very easily and loses the close game BAD to boxer. Once you get in, all you have to do is play for the knockdown and do safe jumps and meaties on his wake up and it is a wrap for claw. EX Scarlet Terror is only invincible for one frame and costs a bar that he needs to have for combos. If he barcelona dives during the neutral game then jump forward/back MP completely shuts it down. The fact that boxer can EASILY air to air barcelona dives and actually AA his jump RH and HP w/ down HP makes him fare better in this match than many other characters The range that is rough for Rog is between Vega’s cr.jab and st.mk. Here he can CH you with jabs, zone you with his standing kicks, and once you are scared to push buttons he will walk in and set up tick kara throws. Standing RH is a key footsie tool in this match. In that range i was talking about, I like to walk back slightly to bait a far MK. At the right range, st HK will CH his 8 frame far MK and whiff punish his faster far HK. You just have to anticipate/react. Defensively it is a matter of understanding his mixup game. It consists of corpse hopping into ambiguous meaties and a high/low/kara throw/late cosmic heel mixup. He can corpse hop most commonly after a slide, EX barcelona, or cosmic heel into scarlet terror(his only reliable meterless combo), and can do safe jumps in the same situations. His OH starts up in 20 frames making it among the slower ones in the game. Block low first so that he cant ambig. corpse hop into cr.lk izuna cancel, then either HB or switch your block if you see him OH. Always be ready to tech when you wake up, and know that if you block a far lk(the one that looks like bison’s st lk) theres prob a kara throw coming soon. Also, Vega is not allowed to roll at you ever. Cancel into roll is never safe on block, nor does the move have strike invincibility: HB or sweep will always win. You do not want to block his roll because then you have to guess HB or keep blocking. He can EX izuna any button you press in this situation and can keep pressuring with cr. MP/LP or walk up kara throw. This match comes down to can you get into cr.lp range and stay there. His escape options are pretty bad if you know how to shut it down, and he gets owned worse than rog does on wake up. Keep Claw on his ass and its an easy win.

640

One more thing about Cammy that I didnt mention but is absolutely key to not getting vortexed to death. DO NOT QUICK STAND AFTER DRILL…EVER! It is way easier to block the second mixup if you don’t quick stand into the first, and it is much more difficult for her to set up something ambiguous. And hopefully everyone already knows: dive kick is not an OH, you can block it low.