I was playing ZenFire yesterday and I hit him with a bunch of cross-ups. He admits that he has a hard time judging which way to block. But besides having the ability to judge the blocking-direction correctly or being able to dp/anti-air consistently, I believe those dangerous or ambiguous cross-ups can be avoided by staying out of that ‘sweet zone’ of your opponent - in other words: by pushing better positions.
But, I do feel it’s hard to do that at times or most of the time even. Because, for example, your character’s ideal distance happens to be a good jump-in/cross-up distance for your opponent. So it’s sometimes impossible to avoid getting crossed up? How do you deal with that, positioning wise?
Se7in, I mean more something like: can you blame bad positioning for getting crossed up? Ofcourse there’s a lot of other factors. You could’ve whiffed a move or the opponent caught you off-guard, etc.
But I’m mostly interested in how one’s positioning game or abililty to maneuver the opponent affects getting crossed-up or not. Forgive me for being a bit vague
In that case, yes positioning is probably one of the biggest factors in cross ups. For example, a character that’s been knocked down toward the middle of the screen can easily be dashed over my many characters, as compared to one in the corner. Conversely, a character in the corner can be crossed up by certain moves, such as Rock’s Shift or Bison’s/Dhalsim’s Teleport (Not So Much the Tele).
It really depends on the matchup though. For example, jumping High-Low crossups are much more likely to come from characters like Blanka or Claw. Movement crossups more likely come from Rock, Bison, Hibiki, etc. Even characters without speed or specials that necessarily help crossups, such as the Shoto’s, often cross up with the j. RH provided the positioning allows for it.
Ok, so when we were playing yesterday I started complaining about those crossups. To illustrate what the situation was here’s a series of clips from replays: [media=youtube]7mDLqR6ZhAI"[/media]
So what happens is basically, a series of events lead to a situation where he’s standing within range of my attacks and he preemptively jumps over it. I’m not sure if he does it simply because the range is perfect and he can’t resist or cus he assumes I’m gonna stick something out and jumps to counter. As he floats towards me I tend to have a really hard time blocking. It has a lot to do with the fact that since I did a crouching move I recover from crouching and stand up into the j.mk making it not unlike a meaty attack. That’s where, unfortunately, I fail. I think that some of the situations where I stand up into the attack would not have hit me in the back if I was standing in the first place, I could be wrong.
For the record most of the situations in that video were blockable and some of them I did block or JD (unintentionally), but the rest are just me either guessing the side wrong or simply being too slow/sloppy.
So anyway, Anecdote tells me I bring it on myself for being in a bad position. I disagree with that. I don’t think the range is dangerous, it’s just a confluence of factors. Attacking with something (relatively) slow at that range is just a risk you take when you’re attacking.
You’re right and wrong. Those crossups in that video are all j. HK crossups that I was talking about. While I can’t disagree that range is mainly a number of factors, and that the threat of crossups greatens when you’re attacking, you have to remember that there are certain distances (ranges) and locations compared to your opponent where such a crossup is next to impossible, unless you move into that range or position.
Nothing wrong with getting crossed up sometimes; it’s a pretty common occurance in the game no matter how good you are… It’s just practicing blocking and knowing your character’s AAs… Be careful not to be too predictable; if you noticed in the clips, you got crossed up every time you tried to sweep which leads me to believe that you may abuse that move too much… I can’t say for sure because I didn’t see the whole match… But regardless, if you stay in a crouched position too long you’re just inviting them you jump in on you… It takes time to become confident in an upright position, but it’ll come with practice and more experiences with the distances… With shotos, you shouldn’t need to worry about being hit with a low attack if you’re standing out of sweep range, so learning the ranges of each character’s attack should help you out a lot…
dont poke with sweep…unless its gonna hit. Its a whiff punisher not a poke. Thats like poking with geese cFK, but I should be poking with cmk and jab + fireball.
There’s really no real reason for me to post, but I just want to point out I wasn’t really asking for or expecting comments on my play. Especially since all anyone got to see was eight clips lasting about 2 seconds each. I’m not the OP, I was just trying to give examples of what the two of us were talking about so ppl could better answer his question.
If he likes to cross up so much just don’t throw out a move. When he goes for the crossup, just jump back fierce (of course that’s not the only option). It’s easy and will train him not to jump at you so much, so then you can resume throwing out the pokes.
I noticed that a lot of your cross ups the most you did was Akuma cr shorts into hurricane. You had super and apparently never went for the most damaging options. Try cancelling the shorts into level 2’s. I didn’t really see anything ambigious about those cross ups so don’t be too reliant on them.
To Zenfire -
Its really just a matter of familiarizing yourself with the range. As soon as they leave the ground you should know whether or not its going to cross you up judging on where they jumped from. Also, if you JD or block a cross up I wouldn’t press anything. You’re at a disadvantage at that point, best just block whatever comes out and wait to start poking/go on offense again.
Yeah, I fucked up a bunch of times But I know should’ve gone for the level 2 super, after I watched that youtube-clip. These vids aren’t the best examples of my play, though. Sometimes I do wonder where wth I’m thinking while playing.
Maybe the whole position question is a bit too vague. I think I should’ve ask something like: what most often leads into getting crossed up?
Poor (?): poke selection, ground game, predictability, spacing, not being to anti-air properly/consistently? All of these things combined?
Usually when I get crossed up, I’m looking for something else. Like a poke from the other guy, so I don’t react to the cross-up attempt fast enough.
EDIT:
With bad position I meant this situation in particular:
ZenFire’s K-Rock is at maximum low roundhouse range. ZenFire tries to poke with low forward/roundhouse from this position, I believe it’s a risky position for him.
Because, it’s pretty easy for me to avoid that poke: I can either walk back or try to cross him up.
So I think ZenFire should stay a bit further away so he can zone me with fireballs and get easy anti-airs with standing roundhouse.
This eliminates having to endure cross-ups. And eventhough most of my cross-up attempt aren’t ambiguous, a cross-up is still more dangerous than a jump-in attack from the front.
