HDR is great because it brought a lot of new players into the scene. And online play is great because it means that you don’t need to live in one of the few hotspots in the world in order to play against good competition. However, in talking with some people, it’s been brought up that there is a lot of talk in the threads on here based on what works well in online play. And that’s great! If you don’t have the desire or resources to travel to tournaments, then that may be enough for you.
This thread is for players who want to take their game to the next level, and compete offline. Certain strategies that may be effective in 50~100+ ping matches, may be countered easily offline, and thus a bad idea to become reliant on. In addition, there are other strategies that often feel too hard to time and space right online, but knowing about them and trying to learn them can boost your offline arsenal.
Depending on where you live, you may only really get solid offline experience against a few characters. Or you may live somewhere where you rarely get a chance to play anyone good offline. Between that and players having different styles (ex. Choi’s Ryu vs Valle’s vs DGV), I figure it would be good for everyone to pool their knowledge outside of the character specific threads to fill in the gaps between the information there vs playing offline.
So, if you have tips about things that you should or shouldn’t be doing offline vs online, share them here! I’ll start with a topic I know pretty well from the opposite side:
E.Honda vs Dhalsim - Full screen footsies
When playing online, Honda can be much more casual about doing random fierce headbutts and bursts of HHS from full screen to ~2/3 screen away. When you do this online, they may block a decent portion of the time, it might catch them by surprise and hit them some of the time, and occasionally they’ll counter your move. But offline, this strategy is much less effective! Against a good Dhalsim who’s not asleep, expect 90% of your headbutts to be countered. HHS will be countered less often, but still more than online. But even when it’s not punished, expect Sim to push you back out right after you do it.
Another tactic to gain ground as Honda is to use LP headbutt to go through fireballs. If you do the headbutt from full~2/3 screen away on reaction to his fireball you may get punished half the time online. Offline, expect to be punished 98% of the time. Don’t use this move to gain ground. Instead, reserve it for times when you are around sweep distance away and psychically predict a fireball. If you guess right, you get a knockdown and can start your mixups. If you guess wrong, you probably won’t get punished, but you might get pushed back a bit after block. So, don’t whore it out there either. But do use it smartly.
The correct way to gain ground from full screen against Dhalsim is to walk forward. However, Sim’s long range MP/HP and MK/HK can punish you for doing that. However, you can often counter his pokes with by randomly pressing cr.LK. I believe st/cr.LP may also work. By adding these quick random pokes between periods of blocking and walking, you can cause Sim to poke less often. If Sim throws a fireball, get good at jumping straight up over them. Then mix up what you do between jumping straight up and doing nothing, straight up MK, and straight up floaty HP. After each of these, mix up between blocking, walking, using cr.LK, and HHS(if buffered during MK or floaty HP). By mixing up what you do, you have a better chance of getting to half screen where it becomes harder for Sim to punish you on reaction.
Sim players: I think I’ve already covered this area from the Sim side in his thread, but feel free to ask if you have any questions about how full screen footsies with Honda.