How to apply whiff punishing to your footsie game (in general and online)

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
1

When I was playing 3rd Strike recently against really good people, it came to me. My position on screen and mixing up my pressure/approach suddenly started to make sense.

Now the question is, I know the ranges of my attacks, but I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to add whiff punishing to my footsie game.
As of right now, I either only focus on whiffs, or on approaching. I can’t seem to think of both at the same time and find myself auto-piloting a lot of times.
I guess that could be because whiff punishing being super difficult online, so I just concentrate on my approach. It feels like it has to be a read, even when I look out for a specific move, I can’t react to it in time.
I’m not amazing at it offline either, but there I can at least get it working most of the time that I try.

I know how to practice whiff punishes, but my reactions just feel out of place for it. I can whiff punish Bison’s sMK offline, but online, I just can’t do it.
I have the same issue with doing uppercuts on jump-ins. I usually just use a normal instead, since I can’t do the motion quickly enough after I’ve realized that I’m getting jumped at.
(I’m still pretty shaky on the uppercut shortcut, quite often Super comes out on accident, so I’m still using the traditional inputs for anti-air uppercut).

Any advice appreaciated. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be simply too difficult for online play. I do most of my matches online :confused:

TL;DR

  1. How do I stop having to focus on whiff punishing and my approach/pressure individually? Does it come with time and experience?
  2. Is whiff punishing even reliable online (assuming you have a decent ping with another player)? I can’t seem to get it to work most of the time, so I shy away from it.
2

Yes, whiff punishing is harder online than offline, (especially if you also happen to have a monitor with display lag) but it’s definitely doable regardless.

Also, this is a very good explanation of how to approach whiff punishment and counterpoking:

3

[quote=“Naeras, post:2, topic:177700”]

Yes, whiff punishing is harder online than offline, (especially if you also happen to have a monitor with display lag) but it’s definitely doable regardless.

Also, this is a very good explanation of how to approach whiff punishment and counterpoking:

[/quote]

I don’t remember exactly, but I think the display latency on my monitor is 21ms, so not really ideal for reaction.
I have watched that video before. As I said though, I can’t get it to work online :frowning:
Since I only joined USF4 about 4 months ago, and it having so many characters, I mostly didn’t bother looking with it. SF5’s release is so near and I don’t want to “waste” my time on it.
I don’t plan on playing USF4 that much in the future, unless SF5 turns out to be not enjoyable for me.

With SF5 I’ll be able to really dig into the hard stuff (and go to more than just 1 offline tournament). The fact that the roster is less than 50% of USF4’s roster is also less intimidating.
The effort I’ll put into it won’t be useless after a couple of months, like in the case of USF4 for me. Being part of the new generation will be quite interesting.