I started (seriously) learning and playing SF4 around Feb of this year… So far, I’ve invested at least 100+ hours into the game. But, I am having a lot of problems that are really making me depressed and feel really inadequate and I just need some guidance here. My first biggest problem I want to address is that my reaction timing is absolute garbage. When I play people (offline & online), they tend to jump around a lot and I cannot seem to react fast enough and anti-air them, and sometimes they do cross-ups and I can’t tell which direction to block from fast enough and then I get hit and punished bad for not blocking. These are only a few examples, but I just have no idea how to enhance my ability to react. My eyes are able to detect when my opponent makes a mistake, but my brain sends a signal to my hands telling me to press a button way too late and I miss the punish. My reactions are just delayed and is there something I can do to improve that? Like is there exercises I can do or anything that can help me? I need to be able to process things visually fast enough and then react just as fast with my hands.
Then another thing I am struggling with is FADC. It has really become the bane of my existence. Granted, I’ve only been using an arcade stick for a month now, and I use a very comfortable grip technique (Daigo grip), yet I just cannot FADC for sh*t. Especially when my character is facing left. My arm just can’t do the double dash motion for some reason. It just feels weird. When my character is facing right, it feels more comfortable and I can do it easier but still not 100% accurately. Is this something that will improve over time, or will I forever be stuck with this inconsistent FADC? I just can’t get my hands to do what I want. That’s just the problem… So yeah…
The problem with your reaction speed is that it is currently a thought process. Your’re seeing a punishable jump, you’re thinking “I can punish that” and then deciding what anti air to use and then doing the input. The good part in that sequence is that you’re making the right anti air choice! But it needs to be a non thought reaction. You need to see the jump and instinctively anti air or block - without thinking about it - something that hopefully just comes in time.
It was a similar problem when I first started jujitsu, a straight arm should be a free arm bar, but if you have to stop and clock that your opponent has given you a straight arm - if they know what they’re doing its already too late. Your body needs to be moving into position for the arm bar before you’ve even clocked it.
Its something that will come with time as long as you keep practicing.
Can’t hugely help with FADCs, as I can’t really do them myself. But when I was considering them I found Gootecks FADC training video very useful.
The answer to both of these is to focus in on the smaller bits.
Being good at FGs to me is an ability to evaluate situations and choose from appropriate responses. No matter how fast your reactions are, if you don’t know your responses or worse, cannot see the situation then the best you can hope for is to get lucky. So focus in on problem areas. Take a match and say, I’m going to anti-air every jump in. Nothing else matters, just gonna jam a fist up their nose if they take to the air. Take another match, I’m going to punish every unsafe move. Eventually it will become second nature.
Same thing for FADC. What is a FADC? 1. Special Move 2. Cancel into Focus Attack 3. Dash out of the FA 4. Something Awesome.
So break it down. Special move into Focus Attack. Got it? Ok, now FA into Dash. You’re doing great! Now put them all together. One small tip, when cancelling into the FA, you will want to hold it slightly before dashing - if you just press it the FA will just come out and mess things up.
Practice Practice Practice. - It doesn’t matter how many hours you put in if you’re not practicing the right things! It definitely gets better if you focus on improvements.