I try to use turn punch but ryu is too fast for a lot of attacks. Balrog’s jump is crap. without and super, am I just fked?
You have to time turn punches right for them to get through fireballs, and they should b e spaced right, because they aren’t invincible and can be stopped.
Besides TAP, he’s got good ol’ universal FADC, and Balrog has a great dash. Then there’s his absurd amount of armored EX moves. And of course, Ultra 1 and Super can go right through fireballs with its opening invincibility frames
I say Balrog has a large variety of ways to get around fireballs.
Fireballs aren’t a problem at all for Rog, like DeathReaper said:
dash upper ex - cr.lp - cr.mp xx HB
dash - ultra can punish a fireball from almost full screen
TAP (don’t use it too often and never use it if you are far away from your opponent)
You can combo after a TAP if it does counter hit
Lp HB is a good way of leap frogging forward through them too, sneaky way of making up ground while keeping charge. Alternate moves though, mix it up. Hp HB can hit a shoto mid-fireball from a nice distance away, without meter.
Balrog’s jump is crap? Excluding the change in AE he has some of the best Jumping Normals for forward/back jumps and his neutral jump is one of the few that can wiggle in a chosen direction, his jump is perfectly fine in terms of fireball, especially pre-JFierce nerf because it’s range is ludicrously good and if you connect it at a far enough range where you can’t BnB combo you can almost be certain you can combo into sweep at the very least - UTKD is not to be sniffed at when gaining ground and positioning.
Failing that everything above says it all - He has five DPunches all armor useable excluding TAP which also goes through. It’s actually not all that difficult (or at least, I’ve done it quite a few times) to use ArmorCancel Torpedo to absorb two hits rather than one, makes good use of absorbing a fireball (1-2 hits) and if just a plain fireball, also absorbing the opponents poke if, for example, they like to use CMK afterwards anticipating EX rushes.
Failing that, Dash Ultra/Super or plain Ultra/Super.
LightHeadbutting to make meter and gaining ground is also good, see this clip for a laugh, poor inexperienced fireball keepaway Guile.
[media=youtube]PeqWTyGtFec"]YouTube - SF4 RopeDrink [Balrog[/media]
Personally I like TAP when it hits at the glove through Fireballs, it can catch Counter-Hit for a followup or, failing that, versus characters that have quick reversals that can catch you on recovery I find you can bait a move via FocusCancel Backdash on connect for a full jumpin - At worse they don’t do anything, you’ve wasted two bars, but hey, you’re closer. For characters that don’t slot into that, cancelforward dash may throw them off completely and put you into CH CJab mode or a throw if not a full combo.
Perfect video example ropey. Maybe didn’t even need the last one to be ex’d but it certainly proved a point. 
I used EX in the event he decided to FlashKick, which would have beaten it - Unless it was EX FK which I think would have traded or lost at that range and given I was on 0.1 remaining health that was a lost round - I didn’t want that to happen, this bloke not only taunted me but despite being inexperienced he played on my frustration of having to deal with that garbage every round of all our matches. In the end I said “Fuck this” and went back to good ole Headbutting into Range, and I laughed when he fell for it.
I would say take RopeDrink’s advice, it’s good. When I’m against a fireball spammer (not someone who just has a really good fireball/zoning game, there is definitely a difference between the two) I usually Lp.Headbutt through them either until I’ve got meter or until I’m in range for a TAP, and either do an EX rush or TAP through a fireball. I also like to Lp.Headbutt until Hp.Headbutt is in range, and hit them with that, this is good since if you’ve got ultra, boom, you can land it after the headbutt (of course you can got through just with ultra, but if something cocks up and they block your ultra or whatever, you’ve lost your ultra meter and get punished, whereas if your headbutt gets blocked or whatever, yeah, you’ll probably get punished, but you’ll still have ultra).
Blocking is really good against fireball spammers. Don’t be afraid to block, especially against characters like guile. block and push him into the corner, then get balsy with forcus absorbs, headbutts, and TAPS. They’re trying to zone you out and maintain positional advantage with you in the corner and them mid-screen, blocking and moving forward puts them in the corner, and gives you the positional advantage.
Also j.hp has lower body invincibility and avoids fireballs well.
This may also be helpful (the title is a link to the full article):
walk…thats the way to play against guile and sagat and anyone else that uses alot of fb…walk them into the corner and get into rh range
Following on from my previous post, I’ve been re-evaluating my game a bit now that AE is 100% coming to PC in July. I’ve succeeded mostly on shinanigans and giving the impression that Balrog has mixups and mindgames versus players who are likely just used to Balrogs who spam jabs. When a good opponent turns up who has any form of patience and isn’t a masher, my style will go down to 50/50 versus them or worse.
So, relating to the topic, this means I have to stop with all the nonsense shinanigans and get back to Balrogs strong point, footsies!
I had an encounter with a Ken Player who put my usual style to shame and when at an appropriate distance he’d peg me with patient fireballs (not fireball spam but patient, opportunistic fireballs) in order to get the space he wanted.
There is no other way to combat that than to stay grounded and push forward, through them, not with specials but with absorb dashes, blocking and jumping (Back/Forward at range, Neutral at midscreen / close) until in range for normal attacks.
I have to work on it as it’ll help improve my patience and defence because, normally, when my old style failed I’d start doing stupid crap like EX’ing into waiting CMK Fireballs / Tatsu’s, Neutral Jumps or Focus Baiting. Jumping over too close resulted in AA or SRK’s, not getting in on time resulted in taking heavy chip or regular damage over time and losing me any lifelead (if any to begin with).
Up close, Roundhouse is usually the go-to normal but I actually really love Standing Forward. It hits low and has a deceptively long range, will connect against Crouching Normals and Fireball Animations whilst also being very quick allowing for decent recovery. If I’m pushing up to a Shoto who likes to CMK a lot trying for CMK Fireballs on counterhit or as a defensive blockstring I’ll in & out of the range and use it to try and stuff said normals or fireballs, also can be used as an OS into SUPER.
Failing that, Far Standing Jab is also good at a closer range for combo’ing into Sweep or a Dash Punch - If you’ve some form of godlike reaction and can FSJab a player starting up a Fireball into EX RU headbutt combo you’re putting out some serious pain.
Do not use TAP up close to close the gap - I do it quite often purely for armor breaking and because if it catches someone backjumping after a fireball you can Ultra them and will also clip some characters on their neutral jumps but not many, also heavily combo’able on a counterhit - otherwise it’ll eat a punish, DEFINATELY if it’s blocked deep (Free SRK) and often you can be thrown, neutral jumped or poked out of it casually. In short, you’re more likely to eat damage than cause damage with it so restrict it to ‘every now and then’ unless you’re at extreme far range and just want to move to about midscreen in one go through a fireball.
Take note of wether the opponent has his AA’s down and, if so, jump less. We all love trying for that anticipated fireball into free jumpin combo but it won’t happen often versus anyone with a braincell so jumping in the hope of a fireball most likely will net you an SRK to the nutsack.
Light Headbutt for meter and distance through fireballs (Works perfectly fine on even the slowest of the slow, such as light Sonic Booms) but don’t go for this at mid/close range as it’s very risky.
If you have charge then when you decide to move forward, do a back/forward motion beforehand because if you decide to sacrifice your charge and someone just happens to throw a risky fireball as you begin to move, all it’d take is a press of 3xP or 3xK on reaction to put the charge to use and Ultra them in the face.
@Rope:
Just a few notes:
-Ken’s fireballs have crap recovery. As such, he can’t zone with them as effectively as the other shotos because they’re relatively easy to punish on reaction with a jump-in. Anytime you’re within jump-in range, throwing fireballs is very unsafe for Ken.
If you’re outside Rog’s jump-in range and he throws a fireball, just fadc or neutral jump his fireball, and then get within range. If he’s still throwing fireballs after that, punish with a reaction jump-in. If he stops, then that’s where your footsies come into play.
-L1 TAP is “safe” on block against reversal SRKs even if done deep, but it does leave you in a very bad situation if blocked.
-regarding headbutting through slow Sonic Booms at long range: When the opportunity presents itself this is fine, but good Guile players will often follow their slow Sonic Booms in, and if you’ve been waiting at long range you won’t have any safe options to get past it. For this reason you probably don’t want to be waiting at long range so you can headbutt through Guile’s sonic booms.
While on the topics of bad fireballs, keep in mind that in SSF4 most/all cr.mk xx hado’s aren’t block strings, especially at max distance. I haven’t tested EVERYONE, but in general, every shoto except ryu can do cr.mk at point blank and it’s not a block string. Ryu’s cr.mk xx hado isn’t a block string at max distance, so if he’s trying to zone with cr.mk hado to get you out of roundhouse range, you can headbutt or Ultra/super through it.
Of course we know Ken’s recovery is dire in terms of fireballs and very punishable - I said it simply to highlight that it wasn’t one of those Shoto players we all meet who just seem to recklessly throw fireballs for the hell of it, he was using them wisely and it was throwing me off, rarely if at all unsafe and usually in an unpredictable manner. This is a direct contrast to the opponents I typically meet (85%) who don’t even know how to use them effectively or are the type mashing them out with no thought…
In short, it was encouraging me to avoid long distance specials (closing the gap), stay grounded, save/build meter while bulldogging forward into the players sweep/roundhouse range and actually adopt some footsies rather than my usual garbage. He very very very rarely if ever allowed a jumpin punish fireball as it was rare he’d just take a chance with them.
It was an enjoyable session in terms of learning experience, especially after having played so many jump-back fireball Akuma’s that day… Quite literally beating on one 20-0 and he just didn’t seem to realise that Akuma’s strength vs Balrog isn’t always in his projectiles and he’d open all rounds with jumpback fireball and eating forward-dash TAP AA’s as an opener each and every time, thats how bad it was and how bad most opponents are on GFWL…
Can’t wait for AE to be released. I’m no pro but I will most definately appreciate a better challenge so I can, myself, learn more. Lot of people will be getting both versions so some of the experienced console players will no doubt crop up and, of course, we’ve Ono / Evil Ryu / Ibuki and whatever other characters have projectiles to learn against.
I’m also dreading the increased recovery on Headbutt. It’s a huge part of my mixup game, nevermind projectile avoidance for meter.