The hardest part for me is no matter how hard i keep practicing i will lose, I will loose to low ranked people and high ranked people. When ever i see signs of progress another crack in my gameplay shows, An endless cycle. It’s hard not to get discouraged my friends. Bah
Playing fighting games is a lot like talking to girls. Just because you lose (or get rejected) a couple of times, doesn’t mean you suck all around. It means you lost, it means there’s room to improve. The fact that you can identify cracks in your gameplay means that you are becoming a strong player. It doesn’t mean you are going to win. SF4 although one of the fairer games, the better player doesn’t always win, it’s the more prepared player, the player who makes the right choices, who thinks ahead, who’s willing to play to win.
It’s good to record yourself and then play for a bit, then look at your current game play and your past game play. Often you’ll feel that you’ve gotten much better, but also you’ll notice that you’ve dropped bad habits for worse habits or you’ve picked up a new habit that makes you more likely to lose (or win). Pick and chose, also identify what specifically makes you not do so well.
Also don’t put yourself down, that’s the easiest way to lose every match before its begun.
I never thought about identifying cracks in my gameplay means im becoming better, Thanks for the tips man i really appreciate it =D.
Try and identify where you took the most of your damage from. So many players consistently perform the same move / action and take chunks of damage for it, which adds up in a match. I.E. Constantly jumping even though the opponent is anti-airing consistently. That damage adds up.
I usually play about 6 hours each day, I’M going to add time to watch my matches. Thanks guy’s I’m trying to get good enough to actually be happy with my self. Big tournament in chicago i might go to Ultimate Fighting Game Tournament 10. That’s if i can lol
So for the Oni match-up, I see some people resort to U2. What other match-ups favour Rog’s U2 and why?
@Genjiknight Here’s why I use U2 personally, but only on characters that can be hit by it crouching easily. Pretty sure it can be done on every croucher it just has difficult timing on the smaller bodies.
Also I don’t think it’s down to character size per se but more their crouch height. It hits consistently on Ibuki and she’s pretty tiny.
Two matchups: El Fuerte and Dudley
These two matchups have some oki that really put Balrog in a bad position.
Fuerte, his cr.hk shuts down and/or low profiles most of his wakeup options and is crazy positive. IMO very hard for me/Balrog to deal with. So when you have U2, he has to respect your wakeup, he can no longer slide since you can U2 that highly telegraphed move. This makes it a bit easier if you get knocked down. cr.hk is worse than splash mountain from fuerte.
Against Duley, you no longer have to deal with his f+hk overhead on wakeup (since it stuffs headbutt) and you can punish all versions machine gun blow on block.
You can also punish all but short dan kicks with U2, but i don’t feel it makes the matchup easier. I’d also say anyone who has a habit of doing meaty short/meaty throw setups (e.g. Sakura).
Aight, thanks for the tips!
@Genjiknight, I forgot. The Fei Long Matchup. I use U2 in this match because i can punish a handful of things:
(1)I don’t really have to worry about heavy pressure on my wakeup as much: I can U2 anything where is body is close, and his cr.mk low profiles but is not special cancellable so I can armor through those attacks.
(2)You can punish his overhead on block in MOST situations (both in the corner and mid-screen)
(3)In deep corner you can punish all of his rekkas except the first hit of ex.rekka
(4)You’ve got a second follow-up to fishing to punish rekkas with cr.lk buffered mk.ru so if it hits, you can go for grab, tech trap, block or U2
I made this yesterday do you guys agree on most of them?
Vega surprised me but when I think about it, it makes sense.
I tend to think the rufus match is slightly more in rufus’ favor. and bison more towards 6-4 balrogs favor.
Other then that, looks about just about perfect to me.
I always thought Adon and Ibuki did pretty well against Balrog. I thought they would be 5/5 matchups.
I watched that set you played against Vega and thought you’d win easily, but then you kinda kept getting hit by Vega’s EX wall dive followup attacks (after blocking the first part). I remember you using TAP and cr.HP to punish and avoid it, and it worked sometimes. When TAP and cr.HP don’t work, why not use a jump attack like j.MP? Is it too risky?
Speaking of Balrog’s bad matchups, are there any characters that counter his bad matchups? Just wondering.
Well that’s one of the reasons I picked Fei Long because he counters Seth, Hakan, and fight’s Vega better although I think Cammy is a better pick overall but of course it’s basically a different playstyle while Fei Long is basically playing a better Balrog.
A while back me an @Emanuelb had a conversation about matchups. And my idea of the matchups were skewed, probably more so because they’re based off of what i’ve seen and less tournament experience. I think its really easy to say that if a character doesn’t have overall good matchups, they will have significantly fewer tournament appearances. And thus a bad matchup, may not appear so. I agree with most of them for the most part. My differences are generally .5 or just 1 one way or the other. Aside from a couple.
These were the numbers I gave in 2012 for matchups:
(Balrog on left)
- Abel: 4.5-5.5
- Adon: 4-6
- Akuma: 4-6
- Blanka: 4-6
- C. Viper: 5.5-4.5
- Cammy: 4.5-5.5
- Chun Li: 4.5-5.5
- Cody: 5-5
- Dan: 6-4
- Dee Jay: 6-4
- Dhalsim: 5-5
- Dudley: 5.5-4.5
- E. Honda: 5-5
- El Fuerte: 7-3
- Evil Ryu: 5-5
- Fei Long: 5.5-4.5
- Gen: 5.5-4.55
- Gouken: 5.5-4.5
- Guile: 5-5
- Guy: 6-4
- Hakan: 4-6
- Ibuki: 4.5-5.5
- Juri: 5-5
- Ken: 4-6
- M. Bison (Dic): 4.5-5.5
- Makoto: 6-4
- Oni: 5-5
- Rose: 5-5
- Rufus: 5-5
- Ryu: 5.5-4.5
- Sagat: 4.5-5.5
- Sakura: 6-4
- Seth: 3 - 7
- T. Hawk: 4-6
- Vega (Claw): 4.5-5.5
- Yang: 5.5-4.5
- Yun: 5.5-4.5
- Zangief: 6-4
I think Adon is 6-4 Adon, Although Balrog can definitely handle his neutral game a lot better than most of the cast. Adon has a significant advantage in his st.hk which is difficult to counterpoke because it outranges or has similar range to balrog’s cr.hk. Along with safe sweep and air jaguar, Balrog can’t easily keep him out because his AA’s can be shutdown or mistimed (esp cr.hp and headbutt). Also Adon’s damage off of simple BnBs is pretty silly. If the changes stick in Ultra, the match will be 5-5 or 6-4 Balrog easy.
I also think that Vega is a 5-5 of 6-5 matchup in Vega’s favor. Simply because of vega’s cr.mp. If Vega gets the life lead, he’s better tooled to time Balrog out. late hp.hb beats flying Barcelona 99% of the time unless you headbutt toward deep corner. I think Vega’s ability to be really lame is what puts the match in his favor. If Vega gets invincible 4f ex.st, the matchup will change significantly i feel.
And also my opinion on dictator is skewed, I have a lot of problem with that character, which doesn’t seem to be the case in the community as a whole.
I say Dictator counters (to a degree) a lot of Boxer’s bad matchups without changing the playstyle significantly (like Fei Long). Dictator’s playstyle IMO is kinda anti-vortex, incredibly defensive with enough wakeup options that sometimes can’t be countered 100% even without meter. But that’s my weakness as a player, not the character.
Really keen to hear your opinion on the Adon matchup now Eduardo.
How do you deal with Gamerbee?
Got bodied by an Adon in tournament this weekend who I previously beat with ease 
Oh, ok, cause I’m finding some of Rog’s match-ups pretty tough and I was just wondering if there was anyone other that Fei (not really my style) that could counter the match-ups.
Honestly I just play it lame and react to the jaguar kicks. I think balrog is really strong against Adon just because he can’t really open you up.
Hey guys, I could do with a little advice. I feel like I can do pretty well with Rog, it’s just when I face someone who jumps a lot, I’m not really sure what to do. I got owned buy a Guy who jumped a lot on knockdown and I found it difficult to escape the pressure. And today I faced a Gouken, who I did better against, but the constant cross ups messed me up. He also has a sort of focus jump? I couldn’t tell which jumps were focused and which weren’t, so when I cr.hp’d a jump in, if it was a focus, I’d get punished. Is there a way to tell?
What are Rog’s best options on wake up?
Thanks guys!