I always react too slow for an anti-air or throw escape. What’s the best way to train myself to react fast enough? Do I have to see it coming?
Also, I main Ryu and sub Fei Long. Are shoryuken and flame kick their best AAs respectively, or would something else be better?
Lots of people say you can improve your reaction time, but I’m skeptical of that. I think with experience, and improvements in reading players, you aren’t as caught off guard, so reaction time kind of improves. That and I think getting used to in game queues helps too.
You could probably practice your reaction in Training. I haven’t tried it or know anyone who has tried it so I’m assuming people normally learn from experience.
I was actually thinking of practicing my DP reactions against Chun-Li’s Hazanshu because I rarely ever fight Chun-Li players at all, although she is my main. But when I come across a Chun-Li while using someone like Ryu, I get slammed by random Hazanshu’s all the time when I could have punished with a DP. Then when I’m Chun-Li, good Shotokan players can DP my Hazanshu’s almost every time on reaction. I can’t get better at punishing and / or blocking Hazanshu if I don’t play against Chun-Li often, so the training mode would probably be good for me.
Reaction also requires you to be really focused and aware. Of course you can’t be slackin’. I know a player who has great reaction timing and when I watch him play, I could tell he’s focused as hell. You really gotta get into it.
Like a lot of things in fighting games, just playing a hell of a lot is the biggest help.
1.) You’ll start to recognize the startup frames of things much earlier.
2.) You’ll learn what your opponents’ options are. It’s a lot easier to react to only one or two options than a whole bunch of them. Here’s a recent frontpage article on that subject.
Here’s a quick little reaction time test. Obviously, it doesn’t help with seeing things you need to react to, but you might be able to improve it a little bit with this. (since there’s so many more variables in fighting games than in this little test) The rest is just experience and getting used to seeing what you need to react to so you can react to it when you need to.
My reaction times were pretty good on that test. Then again, you only have one thing to focus on; the light turning green. You knew that the light was going to turn green so you had your finger on the button, waiting for it.
In an actual Street Fighter match, if you wait on a certain thing to happen and you have your fingers ready for the motion to counter and it doesn’t happen or your opponent does something else, it’ll mess you up and something bad could happen if you weren’t prepared to counter it.
So you have to be prepared for anything. Don’t just try to look for one thing because you never know. That is, unless your opponent is very predictable, lol.
it might be less reaction time and more so execution. Just look for patterns in your opponent and be ready for anything, the more practice you get the less you’ll notice that you have to react less and your pressing more.
Fei Long main here. If you are playing online you need to be careful about thinking your reaction time isn’t what it normally is, especially with Fei’s flame kick, It’s best used as early as possible, unlike Sagat’s or ryu’s dragon pushes. Fei’s standing roundhouse is really good against close jump ins, but it will feel like it’s terrible if you try to use it online.
As for pure reaction, it’s been said around here that most of reaction is anticipation. That test that was posted may test your reaction time yea, but your expecting that green light, I averaged about a quarter of a second I think on it. You can have that reaction in the game but you have to know when its possible they may jump. This is especially big when you are cornered. if you can feel that jump coming you can AA and make a clean escape. Just seeing the jump and reacting will slow you down immensely. Fei also has the advantage (I guess) of a backwards SRK motion, so if your just practicing with a friend buffer the hell out of it when you think something’s coming and let fly when you see the jump. Yea, it’s obvious when they see you ducking 8 times, but it will get your mind in a state of anticipating a jump. You have to be calm but ready, or you’ll react slow and take a jump kick to the head, or too fast and throw an empty flame kick against something like a Viper Feint Knuckle.
http://www.shoryuken.com/entry.php?b=963
Blog by me, don’t feel like it’s an insult, focus mainly on the second half
Play a faster game, or on a faster speed setting. In a recent interview Daigo said he trained himself to react to ST Guile’s c.mk by playing on speed 10.
Reaction tests are inaccurate. You get practice variables from repeating it (can’t remember the proper word for it).
Regardless, all I can figure is practice, the more you practice at the game, the better your reactions will be. I used to never be able to throw escape until I started watching very carefully and observing my opponent. You just have to be ready, you won’t pick it up straight away but with practice, you’ll get there.
I was kinda in the same boat at the start of the game. I couldn’t tech a throw to save my life when this game first came out.
The key to me hasnt necessarily been working on being able to react to a move once your opponent has thrown it out as much as being able to spot bnb combos and setups that my opponent gravitates toward and knowing the matchup well enough to know how to stuff them.
It might sound like a guessing game but once you learn to read your opponents actions your “reaction time” gets a huge bonus.
one thing i think to my self a lot when playing is “what is this characters game against my character” or what would i do/ what would be a smart/likely move the opponent might throw out now"
That works to a point but it doesn’t work to well on reaction times. If I’m playing on auto pilot and just rushing down I can nail most things I know, but it kind of plateaus at least me and probably most people. The number 1 rule of street fighter 4 is don’t jump, yet my first move to start the first round against plasma chuckers is jump forward roundhouse and maybe 1 in 20 shotos upper cut it and 1 in 3 throw a fire ball which is pretty stupid but most the others will block it but if they have time to stand and block they have time to upper cut, even sadder is I use that jump in just to test the opponent and try not to jump in round 2 and there are usually on dragon punches galore at the start of round 2 for no reason. Now you would think if a shoto has 20-65k GPs or 3-5k BPs and can’t upper cut a jump in on reaction or throws a fireball at round start that they played a lot but are missing something.
I been working on reaction times in this game lately and yeah a lot of it has to do with playing a lot and number 2. Basically, don’t always play to win but play to practice something. If your opponent is jumping a lot focus on punishing jumps instead of any thing else. At the end of the round if I have ultra and the opponent is about half a screen away I stop everything and work on ultra punishing the fire ball, EX wheel kick, Chicken wing, etc. You will get tunnel vision and may lose more but it will improve your reactions by a lot and you can do flashy god like reaction stuff sometimes. The big issue is the more stimuli the longer it takes to react and if someone has like a good ground game jumps can be hard to recognize in time, but if you practice anti airing eventually you can do it without thinking. I do notice, people who use normals like crouch hard punch can anti air easier and sometimes normals are just easier like for ambi cross ups.
Just pick something specific during a match up to work on and you will increase your reaction time as eventually you won’t have to process or think about it, you can probably get them faster than a test if you get hyped during a match of course nervousness may retard reaction time.
Throws, you will pick up from playing you always go for a throw when you get close or your opponent walks up or has a silly parlor trick like Blanka roll up and throw and then you learn to press c. lp + c. lk when someone is block stringing you and in range to throw. Just learn the exceptions the hard way like Akuma with ultra