I don’t think so, you’re getting jab jab short short (short), and that’s arguably Gouken’s ideal range, plus you’re at frame advantage from the short so you can basically do what you want from there. If you crouching medium punch then they’ll get tagged if they are Yun or something and try to neutral jump, you’ll beat any pokes, and you’ll be safe from any focus stuff. It’s not good and pretty weak in terms of payoff off jabs, but it still leads into a pretty solid situation.
I don’t know, I come from a Ryu/Sagat background, and there are some key strengths that you’re glossing over. Focus shenanigans are, for example, MUCH less effective against Gouken. Gouken’s fireball recovers 8 frames faster than Ryu’s, so Gouken can ignore an entire category of abuse that shotos normally put up with. As far as I can tell, you’re nearly always at frame advantage if someone decides to dash forward at anything other than point blank range with a perfectly timed focus dash. Focus dash forward is simply not an effective strategy against Gouken. There are match-ups and spacings where Gouken gets a straight up punish if you focus dash his fireball.
To me, Gouken’s zoning is about building meter and doing tiny amounts of chip very safely. I’ve played a lot of defensive characters, and more than any other - even Guile - Gouken can simply shut people out if he has meter.
You simply cannot come at Gouken aerially if he has meter. Sure jumping against shoto-types is usually a bad idea, but Gouken makes even the tricky jumps fail. You can’t do a bait empty jump outside of his anti-air range, because EX hurricane kick’s range is so huge. You can’t beat it, because its very invincible and fast. You can’t do Yun style neutral jumps and mix-up dive kick, because Gouken can literally just walk forward and EX hurricane kick a neutral jump. You can’t mix up the timing with forward jump into dive kick, like Evil Ryu or Seths love to do, because one timing of Tatsu will get full hits on either, and those characters have such low health that they can’t just gamble on eating 200 damage.
But what’s really opened up defensive play for me is discovering how strong Gouken’s light attacks are in the mid-range. They’re just so safe, and can be really irritating to deal with. You can’t focus them, they have great range and great hitboxes, and they’re special cancelable for tons of utility. Something as stupid as spamming crouching light kick can be surprisingly difficult for a lot of characters to deal with (hi Dudley). As light attacks, they’re incredibly hard to whiff punish. You can’t do it on reaction, so the only way to deal with it is to try and stick out your own normals pre-emptively, and once they’re playing non-reactionary footsies with your little light kicks you get the juicier options like standing hard kick, or making them eat a fireball, or charging focus or sweep. The only way they can deal with your shitty light attacks is to commit to bigger, unsafer options. And any of these light attacks can be canceled into a fireball to punish button pressing, or buffered into an EX tatsu.
Well thats it I’ve been real excited about Gouken lately and I had to write it all down, that’s my brain dump, ciao.
