Reacting to fireballs isn’t the only use for U2 though. And you can still do it if she’s abusing fireball loops in the corner for pressure. Besides, reacting to flip kick with U1 isn’t exactly easy either, especially online.
The forum embeds it automatically. If it were up to me it would just be a link!
Because u2 is used to deter Poison from throwing fireballs. It’s an anti fireball ultra however, u2 is terrible against slow fireballs unless you activate it just in front of the fireball (the dust hits the fireball allowing the opponent to block in time).
There’s no way to know on start up which fireball strength she is using and because of the general range you counter fireballs with u2 from, it’s quite a risky read.
This doesn’t happen if you react to fireballs with u1 though, granted you need to be a lot closer.
I’m aware there are other uses with u2 but that’s universal usage not matchup specific.
U1 allows for easier hit confirms and is guaranteed to counter fireballs if you react to one, regardless of the strength used. Can be used to make the poison scared to cancel into flipkicks as well.
U2 is a very good universal pick for pretty much all matchups though just because of its versatility.
Are you saying you pick U1 against Poison at character select regardless of the player you’re facing? Maybe Poison isn’t the best example but there must be loads of instances where you don’t take the ‘standard’ ultra for a matchup either because you know you can exploit something against a particular player or (like me) you’re just not having success with the go-to ultra for whatever reason.
Nope. Never. I pick the ultra which is best for the matchup, some matchups you can use either ultra, it’s down to preference (eg Boxer).
If I “know” the player and feel I can exploit them because I’m used to their playstyle, i’ll just do so during the match but the ultra remains whichever one is better for the matchup.
Using ultras against certain players, because you know them, will backfire as soon as you play a different player, same character that plays completely different. Using the best ultra for the matchup won’t ever backfire though.
I know Ladno and BJ run U2 vs Poison while I think Sasaki uses U1 or mixes between U1 and U2, he used U1 exclusively in his matches vs -6 in topanga. Dunno if I’ve ever seen Chin play vs a Poison at all.
Just chiming in with comparisons to how everyone plays, don’t really have a personal view on this one.
Topanga has been uploaded to one of those chinese video sites again if you know where to look.
Because she is a fireball character, the logical ultra would be u2. When you get a better understanding of the matchup however, you will soon realise u1 is a lot better. Even for going through fireballs.
The same thing with the Guile matchup. U1 is much more consistent to go through fireballs with.
I bought topanga. I saw Sasaki vs -6. Sick match.
Oddly Sasaki used to usually run U1 in the Guile MU back in older versions but the limited stuff I’ve seen of him post-USF4 (not a lot of vids out there of him) he runs U2 now. there is a 20 minute endless match of him vs Negitoro’s Guile where he runs only U2. I think he does that because of F+MP into U2 more than anything though.
Surely that’s the same as any player-based strategy? It’ll only backfire if you make assumptions about playstyle before verifying it. And isn’t the ‘best ultra’ predicated on the opponent? Some opponents will make it very difficult for you to use the typical choice of Ultra if they know what they’re doing, as I’m sure you’re aware given the caliber of players you get to play against regularly. Equally some opponents will have playstyles or habits that go against the standard ‘optimal’ way to play a particular match-up, which means you can’t necessarily make decisions based on the ‘correct’ way the match-up should be played.
hey guys just got back from canada cup. I didn’t make it out of pools but i did beat valle’s hugo. I’ll post the vid here when I can
I saw you on stream, you zoned him out well.
I was pretty nervous playing on stream. Was afraid I was gonna get exposed. Once hugo gets in it’s brutal
Good shit man. I kind of wish you landed some more of your MK Ruffians you tried to do and got input errors. Valle was biting on every time you did F+HK - crLP. I think he only blocked it once out of 4-5 times. Your zoning was on point. It took you a little bit into the match before you dialed in the perfect badstone timing a bit better, early on you were holding it a BIT longer than you needed but you fixed that by ~3rd round. Your mixing up of regular/perfect/fake badstone was great and you were throwing those farHKs at the right range almost every time.
The knife work was great too, you didn’t let him get comfortable with the spacings you were playing before and switched it up which threw him off a bit. Plus unless the opponent knows specifically what to do knife throw is hard for Hugo to deal with as his options are his slow jump and big body getting tagged by the knife. Clap isn’t forward body strike invincible like it is projectile invincible so that usually loses. DD+MK is only lower body projectile invincible not strike so that loses. EX Lariat loses to knife armor break. He has to know what to do and after dealing with badstone so much he might not be in the mind set to remember to shift gears to specifically fight the knife.
Two things I wish Hugo players would do more in the MU though. I wish they’d whiff punish whiffed farHK with Hugo’s sMP, it’s not THAT hard to do on reaction from many ranges if you are expecting it, even if you aren’t the animation is fairly obvious for the whole thing, the return to neutral part of the animation leaves you extended pretty far and frame count is fairly high on farHK (29F). I also wish that Hugos would throw out stand/crouchLP or even a sMP on occasion when you threaten a knife throw. They always think they need to jump over it, you do fake knife then throwing out a jab at mid range is risk free every time if you did the knife throw itself chances are that the jab will eat the knife and it removes the threat without even taking chip or leaving themselves vulnerable to a countattack.
BTW in that setup David talks about in the corner post meat squasher there is an option I found but it’s not great. On wakeup double tap and hold forward, if you time it right you’ll either block the crossup or dash under the forward jump HP because they don’t hit at quite the same time, jHP hits a little later. If he OS jab or something like that you’ll get caught, and it doesn’t let you escape the corner but it dodges the setup which can surprise him.
You were afraid you were gonna get exposed but you ended up exposing Valle 
Was this the only Cody match on stream the entire day? I turned the stream off right before this happened but I started seeing tweets about it 10 minutes later!
ya timing the bad stones was hard cause I couldn’t hear the audio of the game cause it’s so loud on stage. I shoulda just used the headset they gave us. And no I was the only cody player on stream for the tournament 
Nicely done Ian.
Still believe it’s 6/4 (or better) in Cody’s favor. I’ve yet to play a single Hugo who made me feel differently.
Outside of the occasional 1 and done players, I’ve yet to lose a set to a Hugo, and I’d definitely say I was not the better player necessarily in all of those sets.
ya i agree. If valle had switched to ryu it would have been another story. I respect him for sticking to his guns though. It’s not easy using a mid-low tier character in tournaments . I’m also glad I got to show my dumb stuff like wakeup ruffian on stream. That wakeup option is underrated
Just watching a random mirror and one of the guys gets a post lk ruffian juggle near the start of the first game, albeit a small one: