Don’t forget when escaping gief…jump back roundhouse!! It will smack lariat at almost half screens distance…
How do you guys fight dhalsims? I know we have talked about it, but recently I am beaten by a guy may be 4 to 5 times straight, I got the first 2 wins only. Situation is whenever I do Gouken Flip, he IAT to my back, I am too slow to counter that. If I don’t GF, he don’t IAT. He’s smart about fireball wars, whenever I got EX, he won’t do fireball, he only slide throw them or jump back slow teleport. His ultra is Yoga Shangrila, and he’s pretty familiar with the range and execution.
btw, i know when i have low life, I stayed calm. What other method can kill this dhalsim?
Abel- If you safe jump Abel on his wake up, you can use forward throw as an option select to catch his EX roll. 
I’ve only had a trouble with a handful of Dhalsims, and they’ve all beat me the same way LOL (teleport to super) except for one, he just fucking used long pokes both matches and I couldn’t get around them. I normally beat them b/c Gouken can zone him so well, but this is what I’ve been doing to win.
-if he IAT- close standing hard kick beats that shit everytime if he tries to teleport anywhere around you. From there RUSH HIS ASS DOWN.
-If I want to zone him, I normally block his long arm punches from across the screen b/c they move you out of range and I fireball and/or GF rush down from there
-if you are full screen, use lk or mk Gouken Flip dive kick and you can hit his arms and legs on the way down, you’ll be safe in most cases b/c the hit box on dive kick This also makes him weary of jumping around doing Yoga Shangrila b/c you aren’t grounded
-if he has Super, watch out for the teleport > Super (almost every Sim I’ve lost to, beat me this way)
The only way he should be landing Yoga Shangrila on you is if you are in middle of a move, Try doing random standing mp. to look like a fire ball to bait that shit then light his ass up. It’s not an instant grab so you can just buffer jump towards him when the Utlra starts and max punish him on the way down.
In fact, if you have Denjin you can buffer it during your jump and land a raw grounded Denjin as he recovers from his Ultra (you should land 6 hits pretty easily with the follow up for whatever. I’d say either reset him, or end with cr. roundhouse to untech his ass and safe jump him or GF grab him since one more hit would me stun city for him. And you’d have another unscaled combo for the win at this point. Or if you have shin sho, he could just eat that on the way down
If you time palm correctly too, you can use the invincibility frames to slide through his arms and tag his bitch ass.
The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any position Gouken can take to have any sort of advantage. Sure, when Zangief has made his way in, and started an offense, and missed an SPD, you can punish for that 35% of his life.
I like the character and the unique style, but he’s really getting frustrating. Certainly not because of his design, but because how inadequate everything feels.
His EX fireball loses in EX fireball fights.
His EX flip lets the opponent get a free meaty, and a free counter to your flip.
His EX hurricane loses to almost any crouching opponent, whether they attack you or not.
His EX counter is a sign that you have nothing better to defend yourself with, other than trusting your opponent to throw you a bone.
I would be fine with all of his, if we had a universal punch-counter instead. It would do away with the command input overlaps with the hurricane kick, and make it a viable tool without stealing your EX meter. As is, the opponent has 2 choices of either to attack or throw, while you have to consider which of the three counter measures will be the right one.
Add in the fact that a safe escape is still impossible, unlike Ryu’s DP to FADC or Bison’s EX flight, I think it’s a step in the right direction of balancing Gouken to a non-hopeless case of a contender.
With that rant out of the way…
I did play that Zangief guy, and prior to the fight I had 2 of my own strategies against Zangief: randomly jump and do HK hurricane to beat his lariat, and a meaty flip and throw on his lariat start-up after his wake-up. I didn’t quite pull them off, but I think theoretically they should work… at least the meaty flip throw. I think his only option to escape is EX green-hand, which puts him in Gouken’s situation with the EX flip on wake-up.
^ 3 things to remember about the Zangief match.
-
He can’t do shit with out getting close. Cr. hp prevents most walk ins and jump in attacks. Neutral jump beats the rest. St. Hk and st. mk are good keep away tools, as well as cr. lk/mp/hp ~ lp hado. This leads in to the my second point, making him use the Green hand.
-
Green Hand is punishable on block or you can neutral jump > max punish him. Make him use it and punish him for it. Bait it with st. mp and mixing that up with your lp/mp hado’s. If he get’s in close and knocks you down as long as you are not in the corner you can get up and use j. mp to beat all of his jump in follow ups.
Every thing with Gouken is character specific. Learning how to wake up with out being hit is the biggest challenge since you have to mix up all of the wake up tactics to survive. Other than that, it’s only a handful of the cast that he can’t rush down and safe jump the shit out of them once you’ve knocked them down. Do the same shit to them that they do to you.
EX palm loses in fireball fights, but EX GF and EX Palm rule. Sagat and Ryu have EX fireballs that can knock you down, when they have EX you never use EX FB, use lp hado instead at mid distance and focus absorb the 2nd hit (you’ll build some meter and they will lose and EX bar). Also if they have EX, throw your shit full screen to make them burn theirs, or condition them to keep throwing fireballs and time a EX GF to punish the shit out of them. Use that know weakness to set up your other shit, bait them to burn their EX meter with fireballs. I can’t stress enough that st. mp looks just like a lp hado and it will make people think you are going to hado, and they try to react with a counter fireball/attack or jump in just to eat a cr. fp or counter.
is this on his wake up? EX GF is good on wake up, but if you over do it then yeah. Sometimes the best choice is just to block and tech their throw to regain your spacing. Or work on the little things to avoid getting knocked down in the first place.
This only applies to certain characters, check the first page.
I suppose. I think this is more-less knowing your opponents patterns and what block strings you can’t kongo. EX kongo hit’s low and high so it takes the guess work out of the game. It’s no different than guessing when to srk without any meter (the opponent does a string, baits the srk reversal and the shot for it), and Gouken has a few ways to make the srk whiff.
You can add an extra input to avoid the overlap or you can just remember to start your moves by buffering or from a neutral position. The only time this should be an issue is on cross ups, and auto correct solves that.
This is a pain on his wake up. I’d say, take a note of all the different ways you can wake up and take it from there. Not unless they are a command grabber, blocking and teching does the trick. Jumping on your wake up or EX GF always takes care of command grabbers. Still the biggest issue is, figuring out why you are getting knocked down so much.
Gouken has a little bit of everything to counter anything, but the options are so widespread it’s hard to pull out the right one when it counts. You can dash through EX fireballs but it could also be a regular, slow fireball. Etc.
Sorry for the rant but I think all the handicaps added up result in something downright silly.
Another annoying thing is the incredibly long recovery on the aerial hurricane kick. It’s as if it’s not meant to actually hit the opponent, but fly the heck away and hope the opponent is a newb who can’t green-hand with Zangief or fireball with Ryu. Hit someone with the regular version air-to-air (I only do HK and EX), and chances are you’ll get thrown before you’ve even recovered.
LOL. It’s cool, Gouken can be very frustrating but once you get over the hump it feels good. Tiers aside, there are 2 different types of characters. You have front end characters and back end characters. Ryu, Balrog, Chun Li, Guile… etc… are examples of a front end character. Easy to pick up and easy to use normal tactics work on damn near everybody. As for Gouken, you learn him more on the back end and I agree with Capcom. The master should be hard to use. They screwed him on his wake up tatsu and air parry recovery, but aside from that. They got it right.
Tatsu is really only good for combos and when you want to rezone. EX Tatsu is a reliable anti air on non-wake up situations and I’m starting to find that lk tatsu is good too, and you can trade into ultra or another tatsu from it. Other than that, your primary course of action is to land an untech, reset, or palm combo to a frame trap. This is where you get to the good stuff.
Besides a slight more damage AND they want to set up a zoning trap, it’s no reason why some one should use tatsu in a combo. There is no set up opportunity (unless in the corner, but it’s very risky) and the opponent can wake up with no pressure with their stun level rapidly approaching 0. So basically Tatsu is just like the rest of his tools, it has a certain application for certain siuations. In fact, aside from cr. fp, Gouken doesn’t have an all purpose move, lol.
The other thing about Tatsu, is you really have to understand it’s hit box. You can safe jump it to hell, so it’s not a good idea to use it on jump in meaties. But, if it’s a non meaty that’s a different ball game it can be applied at this point.
Also if you look at any moves that are -4 or -5 on block you can use cr. lp > tatsu and give them a decent punishment and use FADC to cr.roundhouse > vortex or to go into another reset.
Air to Air tatsu is risky as hell. If you whiff, you’re getting punished period. It looks cool and it’s good if you can catch them doing something, but if you miss… lights out old man.
Condition them and punish them, and use the tatsu as a suprise.
Well put IAM…
The Master Gouken is indeed an acquired taste. And should be and is I think the most unique char ever created. As the years go on I think Gouken will be the new character model or at least the one waves of people flock too once one of us in this forum show up big in a tourney with him.
I don’t think people will be totally on board for a few years with gouken. Sorta like when people would still try to win sf2 tournaments with dhalsim back in the day.
Stupid question: what exactly does “meaty” mean? And is there any thread that explains basic sf4 lingo?
meaty means your move’s hitting frames are active on the first frame of your opponent’s wake up.
it forces them to block or reverse, they cant jump, mash normals or throw if you have a meaty attack on them.
“”(Gouken Flip Dive Kick no longer hit’s over head, but you can still use a well timed d+mk on their wake up to get the over head during mix up (very small window)""""""
Can someone Explain this to me in more detail. SO basically you CAN use Down MK as an overhead?
The :d: :mk: dive kick is an overhead, the demon flip dive kick is not.
Here’ are a couple of good option selects for Balrog and his rush punches.
Since you can cr. lp him out of many of his rush punches. Just ~ a tatsu of your choice when you knock him out of it. If he happens to do a lp version and makes you whiff, your ~ tatsu will not come out b/c your lp didn’t connect.
For his EX verison, you’d have to use cr. lk > EX Tatsu, but honestly depending where he is on the screen you may just want to get ready to back throw him out of his rush punch as soon as you see him glow. Most Balrogs only do it from mid screen, but you can also just opt to back throw the bastard out of his rush punch once you see him glow > whatever.
Another thing that Gouken can do is if you ever happen to cr. fp and he EX Armor absorbs it, you can cancel your cr. fp > kongo and still be able to counter as long as it wasn’t an armor breaking punch. I wouldn’t base an all around strategy around this, but it’s good to know if you find yourself in that situation.
Basically yes, but technically its a cross up. It is dependent on spacing and where you hit them at. I will not explain this any further. Wanna learn more? Peep the sig
WOW DID NOT KNOW THIS! Well time to carve this into my head and use it. Lets c how useful it is.
Ummm how useful is it lol Well ill eventually find out myself but yea
I didn’t know that either…sounds like useful information. Thanks
While the :d: :mk: dive kick is an overhead, it have very little hit stun or block stun unlike Akuma’s dive kick. Since it only work at the very top of the jump arc. There are pretty much no way to combo of it. Beside trying to use it to throw Anti-air timing off and catch them off guard, this will get punished -every time- after hit or block.
Not to say it is useless, but don’t over use it.
There are ways to combo into it for lp tick strings and your normal bnbs depending on when and where you hit the opponent. After an untech gives you the best set up, its prob a 1-2 frame window to lead into your max punishes. If you wanna test use a cr. roundhouse and time a low meaty on their wake up, if done correctly you will overhead them in the shins and continue your combo from there. If the dive kick happens to hit high lp will be your best option to avoid reversals as long as you hit in the waist you should be ok. You can land on standing opponents as well, but the timing isnt as favorable as it would be attacking their wake up.
This mix up is primarily specific to punish charge characters for blocking down-back too much while you GF them.
I guess that is a pretty good point. However, GF grabs can grab people who are ducking anyway. Wouldn’t GF still be a better choice for people who block GF crouching?