Just out of curiosity really, I see the wealth of knowledge and occasional videos that people are putting up here so I want to see how well they did this year.
Tell me your Evo Experience, did it change the way you thought about certain matchups? where did you place? anything.
I did terrible, did better at my first EVO (3-2), I went 1-2 this year. Had to play snake Eyes (Zangief) on my second match, we went to the last round. Played a Dictator in losers who down+backed me to death. We went to the last set, but I still have a hard time punishing scissor kicks on reaction or putting him in situations where I can bait and punish a scissor kick. So in general he just chipped me to death.
Lenocio and I chatted about using cr.mp after a blocked scissor kick to punish an incoming scissor kick, st.hk, st.mk etc. Still haven’t went into the lab to see how and in what situations that should work, but it’s on the list.
@Enig: I have one (well, kinda 2) pieces of tech against scissors, but they are reaction-based
I have armour-canceled a scissors, but that was a one-off.
Somethings for you to work on at a later date?
Thanks. I’ll try to get better at it, maybe i’ll study the sound ques or figure out any animation ques that can help me react to it better. Also i’ve finally decided that I need a pocket character, so i’m going to pick up Dictator for Balrog’s horrible matchups (Akuma, Seth, Ibuki). So I may have more insight about Dictator patterns and how to open him up.
Sucks that Balrog can’t force Dictator to jump though…that jump arc is stupid useless.
How’d everyone else do?
I really like neutral jump HP when I’m reading a kick, I think that’s more prediction then reaction.
I tried out cr.mp with some success but I don’t get many bison’s to get a full enough idea of how to use it, sounds good in theory though.
Where is everybody else?
Yeah Balrog vs Bison is a weird match. Both characters have awkward hurtboxes, you don’t really realise until you play against them. But yeah, I play both characters a fair bit. Balrog tactics that seem to work the best against Bison are -
Yeah neutral jump can work, but don’t rely on it too often. If a Bison player sees you neutral jumping to bait scissors, he’ll counter that next time with a headstomp.
Skull diver (head stomp followup) can be focused/anti-aired. Even the first hit of EX skull diver (hits twice) can be focused and avoided/countered. But yeah, those are just some matchup points from my experience.
Edit: Don’t mean to patronize. I guess it’s just for anyone having trouble with the matchup in general.
As far as Evo Balrogs (apart from PR Balrog), I saw Keno on stream. When he came to play against WeirdoNeo’s Juri, he switched to Adon, but still got eliminated. Anyway, having a secondary isn’t a bad idea.
Try using the standing med punch it just throws off akumas and seths game… remember how i told u i barely dash punch, well i barely down charge i stand up majority of the match and dominate with his normals… stand med punch hits seth dive kick clean/sometimes trade,and his wall dives,and his cross up attempts. now seth cant get in and start his bs … when i have time ill so you what i mean if your interested… akuma i play that matchup at a distance so i can hit him out the air with stand med and safely dash punch him. standing med punch is a under used normal its so good and 9/10 your going to get a counter hit off it
Also i find when you think bison is going to SK,throw out a st fierce betas it clean and during his recovery. tap on his jumpin because he really cant do shit about it, cr.hp his head stomps attempts. tap also makes close Sk whiffed landing you a counter hit leading to a new combo …
I went 3-2, wanted to get out of pools but was not able to this year 
Beat vega 2-0 first round, then a Bison 2-0 in the second. Third round I lost to a turtle Blanka… even though blanka gets dominated by boxer I personally have a hard time with him. Plus the Blanka player i play against most in my area(Phx, AZ) is Scumbag (from the evo moment 2 years ago LOL) who plays erratic and refuses to turtle. Beat a Guy player 2-1 in the next round then lost to Fubarduck’s Ibuki to get eliminated. I couldnt react and got hit with her OH run kicks into super twice and my meaty throw attempt got punished by wakeup ultra once. Those three occurences all lost me critical rounds in the set.
In regards to the Bison match, I would say that those four things that delusional listed are good, particularly 1 and 2. cr.MK to cr.HK frame trap works wonders for me. Against Bison, the match seems to devolve into a guess of when are you going to push a button or do a scissor then throwing out an EX HB for me quite often. To avoid that i try to be patient and wait for him to do something after a blocked scissor then whiff punish with st. RH. Just remember Bison has terrible damage and if you hit him with one st.RH or FP you can counteract several blocked scissors worth of chip damage. Your normals can combat his w/ range and speed, but they out damage by far.
A very good piece of tech that i use against bison is this: after comboing into HB, Ultra, once hes cornered follow up w/ an immediate lvl1 TAP to corner yourself then whiff a heavy HB to get out. If you do this he loses charge and can’t EX PC out of the corner, leaving him with only one option to escape jab throw pressure/mixups in doing an EX devils reverse. EX DR loses to jumping MP which also keeps him cornered so if you show that he will think twice before doing it again. If he headstomps you block and hes still cornered. Also, the obvious autocorrect U1 to punish wake up psycho is important too.
Enigmatic, do you really think that ibuki is bad for Rog? What makes you think that just curious? I find that Rog vs Ibuki is one of her worst matchups on paper.
You sound just like me in terms of the Blanka matchup. Also my local blanka(only one ofcourse, small area) is a jumpy gimick type player.
Chocoblanka just out defended me cause I was like ‘wtf I have to walk at you?’ (this was at shadowloo showdown)
that’s a good thought about the Ultra 1 ~headbutt out of cornerm I think i’ll look into that for sure 
Rog vs Ibuki seems in rogs favor purely on damage to me, but I feel she can get away with a lot of pressure when you don’t have meter.
you can TAP out of kunai vortex for free in most cases or the more consistant EX rush, and and she cant deal with cr.jab imo. I have a very good ibuki in tuscon, like 90 min away from me who was very pissed at me for losing to Fubarduck. Granted he was a smart player, but SF4 isnt really his game. I played pretty bad, def had a case of tournament jitters lol
Ibuki’s not a difficult matchup, as say Ibuki v Akuma (that matchup is fucked, that easily one of his worst matchups). Rog doesn’t have a good answer to her Vortex, TAP and ex.dashes DO work, but they’re very BAD answers to escaping the vortex. Blocking is the best way (but puts you in a worse situation i think). In general (as I said when I gave Fogo some advice from his match vids (“Gettin’ that Bike $!” AE Balrog Match-up Thread), if you’re getting consistently knocked down by Ibuki even after you get away from the vortex, you’ve got a bigger problem.
Ibuki is just faster on the ground than Balrog, she doesn’t hit hard, but if done right her vortex can eat your life away, also the mixup she gets after ex.slide is stupid since she can command dash and gets an ambiguous meaty cross-up/jump-in depending on what dash she uses. I think you have to generally put up a wall and wait for Ibuki to do something unsafe, then take advantage. She doesn’t really have a way to get in until you block her rekka kicks. Just stay out of cl.hk range, and i think Rog gets to steam roll most Ibuki’s for free.
Also Ibuki’s cr.lk isn’t as scary as her f+mk OH, i think. Block low like normal, but she has more surprise moves that hit high than hit low. I believe she can use f+mk like a hop kick (and avoid throws). Fubarduck’s Ibuki is legit, i think Kensou is a better Ibuki in terms of footsies, but you have to play to be considered better; he still has it though.
This… I think Rog’s jab kills ibuki in close and sweep stops her in her tracks at range. Don’t be over zealous. If you are on your feet in this match and keep it that way you don’t have to do too much. Everything you said, 3nigmatic is very good/true. However I disagree that TAP and Rush punch are poor options to escape the vortex. Maybe you know something I don’t, but I’ve always found them to be extremely effective ways of getting out.
Well, yes, they are effective ways of getting out of the Vortex, but what if she empty super jumps, or empty super jumps into cross-up j.lk? i’ll agree with you 99% of the time I have used ex.ru or TAP it’s been pretty free. Just know that Ibuki does have tools to punish his escape options since they are so few. Balrog isn’t like Bison where she has to do different setups/options for his different escape options (As he has more than 5 or so), so Balrog’s are really distinct and obviously if he doesn’t have meter all he has is TAP and backdash i suppose. I know and have seen Ibuki’s options for beating ex.ru and TAP, I don’t know how possible they are with kunai vortex, but definitely possibly with a meaty cross-up j.lk. (it’s an option select slide).
Right, OS neckbreaker off of a meaty jump in does beat both of those,. I usually try to wait until I see her wind up for the kunai before I let the TAP/EX rip. If I am unable to react I’ll attempt the block. That is prob why I most frequently get hit with the instant kunai…even though I KNOW that 99% of the time its going to hit in front, I never seem to expect it and it looks so wonky.
Also it is important to realize in this match when she throws an unsafe kunai, for every character, not just rog. If she throws it too late or times the set up incorrectly. You can block the kunai and punish her on her recovery frames.
Just as a follow up: here’s some footage of myself vs. the Ibuki player I was talking about in my other post from our ranbat a few weeks ago. It’s not my best performance (needs more cr.HP, less dropped EX RU combo) Other than that though I thought it was a pretty solid set, and I usually land my EX loop combos so I wasn’t too upset about that. Any feedback outside the obvious would be much apprecited Sorry I can’t time tag the video as its a stream archive. Usually only winners and grand finals get cut and put on YT.
The set starts at around 5 hours and 19 minutes in… Link: http://www.twitch.tv/teamhazmat/b/329939324