1

I don’t know how many people have played against this character, but it’s pretty stupid. When I play my friend it pretty much goes like this:

I divekick in, he blocks it low:

If I go for a throw, his jab wins
If I go for a standing short, his jab wins
If I go for a crouching jab, we trade
If I go for a low dive kick, he knocks me out of the air with a jab
If I go for a high divekick, he jabs but recovers in time, after that he can just jab me out

Heihachi has no reason to stop mashing jab because he gets punished for such low damage, but if his jab connects he’s doing 30-40%, just makes no sense to me.

2

Just sounds like your problem is the mashing, not the matchup. If he’s mashing jab then you should be able to get an easy CH after a DK with a simple c.lk/c.lp/s.lk. If you’re doing the DKs too high or too close to his head then then you’re on less frame advantage as it takes you more time to recover to the ground. Try spacing them more to his feet and if he ever mashes after it you should be able to easily catch him with a CH. From what you said it doesn’t seem like he does anything but mash under pressure which is a terrible way to attempt to get out.

3

I know my counter hit set ups, its just that the game still has the autoblock system from 4 in it, so jabs are still hard to punish.

I remember some Rufus players in 4 complaining about how OS tech shuts down their offense, the jab bullshit in this game is 100 times worse.

And the thing is, it’s not a terrible way to get out, couple that with the random counter and it’s extremely effective.

In 4 you could only get so much off of jab, maybe if you’re balrog if you mash jab you can cancel it into Super, but even of a blocked jab you don’t get anything (maybe a throw set up).

Heihachi gets huge damage with no meter if his jab connects, and even if Rufus blocks it it sets him up for his target combo which is a 50/50 into huge damage, probably 40%.

I just don’t get it.

4

I think going for chains is my best bet

Divekick -> short pause for trap short foward into ex gt

instead of

Dive kick -> short -> low foward -> GT (the link combo)

5

I’ve been doing:

Divekick, c.LP, c.LP (all three blocked) c.LK, c.MK to trap mashers. doesn’t work on Heihachi though. You got to get that XU dive kick going. Delay dive kick to XU beats all of the options you listed:

Thing is, Rufus is so powerful that he’s becoming predictable. People have been dealing with his divekicks for awhile now, and even though they’ve improved a good bit for this game, the utility is still the same. Remember that people know you’re gonna try to dive kick all over them, so use that against them and explore other options as well like

-empty jump low
-cross up MK
-late jump HP/HK (hits really low and hits MID not high, so they must stand block

And after a blocked dive kick, try neutral jumping and mixing in:

-xu dive kick
-delayed faked xu dive kick
-fake xu dive kick that makes you land on the other side and immediately go into a low
-normal jumping mk which is super underused… it LOOKS a little like dive kick, but falls at the normal rate and hits MID so no crouch blocking muahaha.

I’m not the best rufus but this stuff seems to help, especialy against the mashers of the game… Hope something in here can help you as well.

6

It might have something to do with the fact that its online, but even if its +5 just going for cr. Jab isn’t free because he also has a counter which he can get huge damage off of.

I’ll try delayed cross up divekick, but getting jabbed out of the air is also really deadly with Heihachi because of his ground juggles.

I don’t know how many people have played against a good Heihaci, but this character epitomizes what a Tekken character should be in this game, there’s definitely nothing like him in SF4.

7

you are +4 or +5 after blocked dive kick

u should have no problems with that

8

just dont get your divekick blocked rofl, its easy enough in this game

in all honesty though, just make them respect you so they stop mashing. divekick ex messiah wont be beat by anything

9

I’ve run Hei on point since day one and the matchup with Rufus is pretty terrible for me in my experience. While I haven’t resorted to mashing jab, I can say that Hei doesn’t have much else he can do against dk pressure. If you can manage to get in xu range, he has literally zero AA options. His b.mp doesn’t work, and his chrome dome will absorb the dive kick but not hit Rufus. If your opponent likes to counter right after a dive, stuffing your lk pressure, try following your dk with another one or a nj to bait out the counter and score a huge combo. You can also try throws.

With the frame data nerf I feel my slow jab (4 fr., not self cancelable like the sf cast) might give me a shot against poorly spaced dive kicks, but I can’t help but feel this is a matchup strongly in rufus’ favor. Especially since Rufus tribes in the air - a weak spot of hei’s

FWIW I’m B rank - not sure if that qualifies as good, but at the very least I’ve got some experience to draw on. Hope this helps.