I’m not really conscious of every single little thing I do so I don’t see how I can provide all that information? If it’s a mistake then it’s a mistake, I would think.
And the Dudley match is completely worthless? I thought I gained something from that.
So… basically you’re saying you’re playing on autopilot? That’s not good lol.
Re-watch the first round of the Dudley match and tell me what you gained from that.
You didn’t land any of your hit confirm combos, you did unsafe whiffed moves, both normals and specials, you didn’t do any proper punishes on whiffed SRKs. Two good things that you did was your ability to do U2 through a fireball, and EX nb through a fireball. Otherwise, you ended up eating a lot of unnecessary damage from random pokes and hits.
I suggest practicing your most basic hit confirm combos, the ones that start off of a cr.jab. Just perform that one combo, and ONLY that combo, if you’re having trouble doing her other ones. It’s the easiest to perform and one of the most important ones that you’ll need to win a match.
Defensively? I found that you played extremely aggressively. You pressed a lot of buttons, often at bad times, and you did a lot of random kazegiris, neckbreakers, and a lot of hiens for no practical reason. You really need to analyze your matches yourself, and try to figure out why you performed each and every one of your normal of special moves. If you can’t think of a reason why you shouldn’t have done that, then it was probably an incorrect move to make, and you need to re-evaluate your overall strategy for your match ups.
Blocking is an extremely under-rated ability in fighting games. I would argue its the most important thing to learn first, and is often what I train my newer players to do starting off. Skull Girls does an extremely good job of doing a training mode for this skill, but until it catches onto other fighting games, you’ll have to be self-motivated to learn this properly. Don’t be afraid to block, if you’re in a disadvantageous situation. You ate quite a few fireballs in your match that you shouldn’t have. Learn to walk up and block, or neutral jump over a fireball. Both are very safe moves to make, that allow you to gain some ground, or at least cause Sagat to get lazy in his fireball game.
The knockdown game can be easily learned. As of now, you play too aggressive on a character that has habitually, throughout the match, thrown too many unsafe uppercuts. I’m more concerned that you’re not focusing on the fundamentals of spacing, zoning, and especially learning how to correctly anti-air. Sagat jumped in on you way too many times, definitely learn to do her anti-airs to stop him from playing a close-up game.
Stop neck-breaking randomly. It’s a terrible strategy. It does not work reliably. As for your vortex, I’m not sure why you ever stopped it. He was unable to block it, so you should’ve repeated it until he died. Doing a walk up grab, in that manner, is too obvious. You just held forward the entire time and telegraphed your intentions, and he did an uppercut to beat you. Later on, he did the same thing when you were point-blank next to him as he got up, and he did a random EX uppercut. You should’ve either gone for a safe jump, a kunai vortex, or something else, other than walking up next to him.
I cannot stress how important it is that you learn Ibuki’s hit confirm combos. Your target combos worked well after your vortex, but you forget to do the HP part of her TC4. You only do the jab, strong, into neckbreaker combo, and you’re missing out on free damage by not putting the HP in there.
Hey guys,
one how are you guys uploading videos? I would like to be critiqued! I have only been playing as Ibuki for about a week and a half. (same amount of time ive had SSFAE)
If anyone is on and wants to play some games with me lemme know
gtag - ishadow reaperi
With a camera?
Thanks etrouble, now I know to go get my camcorder and set up the tripod and record. Not that there are several other ways to record gameplay footage, and I said im new to the game so I dont know if this one has a way to upload replays to youtube like a few other games have.
But thank you none the less for your most helpful response.
-edit- I was hoping for a much easier way then that. Not everyone has a camcorder.
For PC, Fraps is by far the best, and only costs like 40 bucks. There’s a lot of free alternatives though. For most of them you can specify the resolution (most important) and frame rate, and other settings.
For PS3/360, the cheapest option is getting an EasyCap which is like 20 bucks on Amazon. Most cheap options here only do 480p and 30fps. If you’re willing to shell out some real cash, Happauge tuner cards and boxes, like the ones seen at tournament streams or Excellent Adventures show, cost hundreds of dollars.
A basic camera will suffice but most viewers would prefer at least something like an EasyCap.
I sense sarcasm in your post, I’m sure you meant well, but it sounds likes sarcasm. I’m being truthful here, a camera is the best for your money. It’s more expensive than a cap card, since your cheapest camcorder would be like $50-$100, but it has more universal utility than a cap card.
Also, it seems that most people nowadays have camcorders built into their phone, and that would be the best option, since you’ve already paid for it.
You don’t need anything super high quality, just get whatever works.
Unfortunately I have fraps but play on xbox. Ha. Recording with my phone is an option I hadnt thought of. I will try that. Thanks guys.
I made a post in the general discussion asking for help… got some feedback but basically a replay was requested. So here it is…
[media=youtube]A1lHiL7BvcU[/media]
This is a some what typical game for me against a higher skilled player. As much as i try not to use neckbreakers randomly, i do throw out one or two. Some of them were on reaction to what i thought would catch but were too slow, otherwise were simply a “i dont know what else to do at this point so lets see if i get lucky”. I know that’s not ideal, but it usually comes towards the end of the round - and i figure it’s better than a random ultra 
For the most part i try to be patient and wait for my opening, but alot of times i get counter hit because im too slow or there wasnt a big enough gap. Let me know if you want a second by second replay of what went through my head - i would do one anyway but it’s a long replay and i don’t want to waste my team and yours if it’s not necessary.
HALP! thanks 
Some stuff I noticed on your video:
Target LP MP cr.HK HK ? Forget it. At the beginning you got an opening to continue your vortex, and you lost it because instead of doing a neckbreaker/tsumuji you went for this combo
cr.HK HK ? Forget it as well. Use combos that will put your opponent down, not up
Little mistake at 1:17, you couldn’t do another neckbreaker
Your neckbreakers WERE actually random, and there were WAY TOO MUCH random EX NBs in this match, lucky you the guy didn’t punish anythin. I can’t think of anything Fei Long has that you can catch with neckbreaker in your situation, except a focus when he’s kinda close to you. EX neckbreaker should only be used on reaction to punish a fireball. You even used a neckbreaker as an anti-air. If you don’t know what to do… Well, don’t do anything and just watch him doing something. You said you tried to be patient, but you doing random neckbreakers shows that you were definitely not patient at all =)
I think you didn’t really understand the use of cr.MP xx neckbreaker, or maybe you don’t have the actual good distance yet. You should use it only when your opponent is outside of your cr.MP range, to catch him walking/dashing. You did it sometimes, but you were way too close and he blocked it.
I’d say that globally, you’re not sharp enough in the footsies/zoning domain (which is especially in the Fei Long matchup the most important thing to do). You always managed to stay way too far from Fei Long to do anything, and whenever you’re close, you cr.MP, which is obviously a bad choice. Keep in mind that if you are willin to stay far away from a good Fei Long, you’ll just end up in the corner and get raped HARD.
Also, mix your options on wakeup. What’d you do if the guy just autopilot backdash and avoid all of your kunais? your vortex is extremely autopilot, I’d advice you to try to add some stuff to it.
PS: god, English voices in this game are soooo bad, looks like the guy who tried to do Fei Long’s voice has never heard of Bruce Lee -__-
I think my problem is i’ve learnt some bad habbits and i have a hard time breaking them… Thinking I might put in the effort to learn someone new, hopefully a different playstyle and change of pace will cause me to look at the game differently and react to situations better and in turn this will improve my overall ibuki play. Im not giving up on her or anything, as i would love to main her and be pro like all of you, but i think im at a point where it’s just not working for me - i have too many bad habbits and im far too auto pilot and i really dont feel like spending another 20+ hrs in training mode just to break a bad habbit when it could be spent learning someone new and enjoying the game on a different level.
MY reaction times seems pretty poor. Alot of the stuff i do that seems “random” is half the time i delayed reaction to what my opponent does. Sometimes it works, most times it doesnt. I’m still not good at recognising patterns it would also seem, so i have trouble predicting what will happen next. I think i play the whole game as reaction rather than prediction and recognising patterns.
With luck, this is something that will develop further through learning a new character because right now i feel like im pretty much stuck in my ways and just do the same crap over and over til i either win or most likely lose. It’s frustrating but knowing what i know now, hopefully when it comes to learning a new character i won’t develop bad habbits and do it the right way from the start.
Does this seem like a solid decision for the time being or is it going to be a long road and not worth my effort. I just really dont know what to do to improve my over all level of skill as i REALLY dont want to learn a shoto as i hate them. But if i have to, i’ll pick ryu, i’ll learn it and hate every second if it means i’ll be overall better!
TL:DR i dunno, just read it (THANKS!! if you do)
Overall, you did pretty well, I just wanted to point a few things out that I noticed, some of which you’ve already mentioned in your post:
[LIST]
[]You did a great job playing patiently in this matchup, since Fei-Long has excellent tools to control Ibuki’s options. However, for much of the time, you simply crouch-blocked. It’s important to change your positioning during this matchup, in order to bait Fei-Long into whiffing his pokes, or his rekkas. You just stood still at mid-range, which makes it very easy for Fei-long to throw out pokes and rekkas without much fear. Don’t be afraid to move around and poke him back with safe normals, and an occasional LK/MK tsumuji if you feel like he’s just not pressing buttons anymore.
[]You know your cr.mp xx NB option select well. For the most part, you did a good job landing it. In the first round, you accidentally got him to block the cr.mp, but since he stopped blocking, the NB caught him. It’s dangerous to do this, since he gets a free punish, but just wanted to point that out.
[]Your vortex was shaky in round 1, but you got a good run going in round 2. One thing that I noticed is that you really enjoy doing Ibuki’s cr.RH, st.RH target combo, but you don’t really do any follow-ups with it. In fact, most of the time you simply jumped back, which is a mistake, because you lose momentum as well as positioning. Once or twice he did flame kick after the launcher, and you weren’t in any position to punish him, which is a lost opportunity for free damage. I suggest you learn how to SJC command dash out of the launcher, or if you’re unable to do that yet, just simply walk forward and maintain your threat against him. If he does a reversal, you’re in a perfect position to hit him with a combo to knock him down. If he just blocks, you’re still close enough to where you’re able to poke him, and potentially land another knockdown, or random damage. It’s important to make Fei-Long feel vulnerable like this, it’s a huge psychological edge for you, and can make him on edge. You don’t always need to be pressing buttons to be a threat, just be in a good, safe position to have the OPTION of hitting him with mix-ups or offensive pressure.
[]You had a few unsafe neckbreakers, but you know that. At one point in the game, you escaped the corner by doing a neckbreaker as he did EX chicken wing. I’m not sure if this was intentional, or you did it on reaction, or you just simply panicked and threw it out there and you got lucky, but it worked. However, realize that neckbreakers should primarily be used to end your combos, or go through fireballs or spammed focus attacks, and nothing else. You can use it for a cute gimmick on their wake-up, but I’d avoid stuff like that until you can get that bad habit of yours under control.
[]Your weakness appears to be your footsie game in this matchup. It’s understandable since Ibuki doesn’t have too many options in the close-mid range game compared to Fei-Long’s dominance in that area, but it’s a useful teacher for exposing how you react under pressure from a superior character with better options. Always be on the look-out for Fei-Long slow, yet damaging pokes, if he whiffs it, you’re in a prime position to land a cr.HK, or sometimes a cr.mp xx NB. It’s difficult to react to, but a lot of it is knowing their patterns, and anticipating the cr.FP, or poorly spaced st.FP. It’s almost like an option select, where if you see it coming, and press your counter attack at the right time you’ll hit them out of it. Either they hit you and you block, or they whiff it and your counter-poke comes out. Hard to explain without practicing it with you, but you’ll get it soon enough. Realize that Fei-Long’s rekkas can be beaten by cr.mp and st.lp. It’s not too reliably, and you’ll lose the risk v. reward factor, but you can try to use if you see it coming, it kind of fucks with their mind when they realize that their rekka isn’t all that powerful. It’s more of a psychological attack if anything. You’re probably best off having him just whiff it and punish.
[]Sorry this is getting lengthy, last bullet point I promise. If this is AE 2012 version, the second rekka is ALWAYS unsafe, unless they space it out perfectly so they get pushed back to the max distance. Punishable with st.jab hit confirm combos.
[/LIST]
Anyways, it would be awesome if we could get a run-through of what you were thinking as you played the match, with time-stamps for each event. I’m happy to see that you’ve recorded your match after our request that you do, but as you can see, I can help you with a LOT more specific details, than as if you just said “I get beat by Fei-Long…halpz”.
It’s called reaching a plateau. It happens to everybody, your case is no different than anybody else’s. What’s important is how you deal with this seemingly stunted level of improvement, which is the crisis you’re happening now.
Bad habits aren’t permanent, they’re ironed out through training, practice, and heavy doses of offline casual and tournament games. Everybody in the world starts off with bad habits and auto-pilot motions, but you have to learn to break through that barrier, so that you’re able to play much more fluid and adaptive. This is done by training. Once you’ve trained up a variety of skills and discovered new tools and tricks to utilize and master, you’ll be able to break those habits and use other methods to win a match. Many of these bad habits and such aren’t broken in training mode, they’re broken through playing actual matches. In fact, you’re not even aware of your bad habits until you start doing so. This is because you’re not in a controlled environment, you’re in a live match, where you don’t know what’s happening, so you resort to your “default” gameplan, which results in a linear gameplay, which can be easily predicted. It’s when whatever you’ve worked out in training mode goes right out the window, because you’re in a situation where you’re not allowed time to think, you have to rely on your muscle memory and state of mind to help you out. After awhile, you’ll feel more comfortable with your character and their many options, so you’ll be able to think more clearly, stay calm, and have the training to back that up so that whatever move you decide to make, you can do it instantly, without hesitation.
Its not necessary to play this game as a reactionary character, many people don’t have great reactions, doesn’t stop them from becoming good players. If you don’t have the greatest reactions, then you’ll have to work on knowing your options, and your opponent’s options, at any given point in time. Learn the ranges at which you dominate, and the ranges at which your opponent controls. That way, once you know your opponent’s options, you don’t need godlike reactions to beat them, you beat them with sheer strategy and fundamentals.
Think of it this way. You can either learn one character, stick with them through and through, and reach a higher level. OR, you can learn several characters at a mediocre level, and still not reach the higher levels. This plateau is something that you will experience with EVERY character. If you hate using a shoto, then using them isn’t going to benefit you much if you can’t tolerate it. Sure you might learn a few basic things about fundamentals here and there, but ultimately you’re going to get frustrated and possibly give up before you get into the real MEAT of high level SF play.
Also, you’re doing fine, in fact I would say you’re playing better than the majority of newer players. You just have some holes in your game play, both major and minor ones, that you need to work on. They’re going to carry with you no matter what other game or character you play, you just sort of have to man up and discover ways to correct these errors. For starters, stop doing cr.HK, st.HK target combo, since you don’t know how to follow it up. Make that your ONE goal for a day, or a week, or a month, until you stop using it. Just stop, rely on other combos and setups. Once you master that, move on to another goal, and so forth and so forth, so that you eventually become a well-rounded player.
I don’t agree with that one. I’d rather prefer advising him to forget about cr.HK HK if not the occasional bonus mixup in a lengthy set. cr.HK HK is basically all you don’t want with Ibuki, and even more when playing Fei Long: you’re pushing him far away and leaving him some space to take a breathe. If you’d stop at sweeping, you’d have started a vortex, and this is WAY MORE interesting. I think the best is to totally forget this target combo and focus on more important things for now, when he’ll be able to master his combos and vortex, he may have a room for a new mixup here 
I would definitely not advise to use cr.MP in the Fei Long matchup. Its slow startup is often beaten by Fei’s rekkas. st.LP is a way better/safer option as it is not whiff punishable (unless your opponent has 1f reaction time). I like when I have some space to walk back st.LP, only if it does not make me loose too much space, otherwise it’d be a free gift.
Anyway I totally agree with eltrouble’s second post. evil_scrag, you’ve reached a checkpoint now. I’d say you are at the frontier between “low level+” and “medium level-”. It’s usually hard to go through these steps as you usually have to force yourself into forgetting a lot of stuff to set up safer stuff.
As an example, I spent some time in my replay channel today to watch matches I’ve recorded months ago (I posted some of them on the critique thread), and god, I can’t even recognize myself lol. My style has totally changed now, I can see how unsafe I was, I also understand how my poor handling of the space made me loose a lot of games. And it made me happy about how I’ve improved since this time.
As an example, I’m trying these times to mix even more my game by totally forgetting about kunais. As of now, my strategy relies way too much on kunais, so I’m learning a lot of safe jumps & safe hitbox crossups and try to play only with them. Pretty hard, but teaches a lot.
I’ll go through the play-by-play later on today when i have more time. Just want to say one thing for now - the Cr.HK st.HK combo that you see me do a lot is directly a result of being absolutely destroyed by focus attacks lately. I never used to use it at all, until i seemed to run into a string of opponents that would spam FA at times and distances when a sweep seemed likely (or maybe that’s just me being predictable again)… So generally once i see my opponent start Focus Attacking, that’s usually when i stop going for the sweep and start going for the TC - just incase.
Also, one thing you’ll notice is i never use FA offensively yet some times it feels like i get beat by them every time. Should i work on incorporating them more into my game? Like rather than looking for the b.mp > dash > throw that i use now (as i haven’t practiced SJC), should i be looking to FA more often? Or just mix it up between the 2?
It’s probably for the best if he forgets about cr.HK st.HK, but I’m just saying, if he really wants to practice using it, he should either learn how to SJC, or take the less risky approach and simply walk up. I agree with you as well that he should stick to basics, but that TC is actually a really good mix-up potential that doesn’t cause him to rely on the vortex. I feel like every new Ibuki player wants to learn the vortex, and think that that’s the key to winning with her, and then one day they’re going to play someone who knows how to block/avoid that shit, and they’re going to lose horribly because they neglect the basics. Unless you mean that they should use safe-jump setups, by most new players don’t know how to do that consistently, or are willing to practice it. It’s never as fun as practicing SJC dashes and ultras 
It’s definitely a very situational setup with that HK target combo. I think it’s invaluable for finding data on how players react to pressure situations, since nobody can seem to relax when Ibuki starts up her launcher combos and mix-ups (except for Ibuki players of course).
cr.mp is a bit risky, but it has its uses. Probably too advanced spacing stuff for newer players, but I’ve used it well at the mid-range, for when Fei-Long is fishing for a lengthy rekka string. Also, it catches a lot of his pokes early if you do it right in front of him, although this obviously will work much better on a Fei-Long that just loves pressing buttons at close-to-mid range. It really depends on who you’re playing and how the match is coming along, but you’re probably right, that he should stick to st.lp. I’m a big fan of counter-poking people back though, especially with light and quick attacks with good priority.
Well, I’ll give you this, you’re pretty astute for realizing that that HK target combo kills focus attack characters. 2 quick st.jabs also do the job. If you can react quick enough to his Focus attack, and you’re already doing a st.mk, you can cancel into Kazegiri to punish, although this is usually pretty damn difficult and not reliable at all. Your best option is usually to do a focus attack yourself, and backdash if he connects, or backdash early if he’s stupid enough to try and go for a level 3 focus crumple. But during this specific match, you only used it to end your combos, where there’s literally no threat of a focus attack. Be mindful of that, you’re better off going for the knockdown.
Focus attacks can get around some pokes and attacks, and they’re useful against Ibuki because her tsumujis come out pretty slowly, but they’re not unstoppable.
I say hold off on using focus attacks offensively. You can use it to blow past Dhalsim’s or Seth’s stretchy arms, or go through fireballs, or absorb it to build meter, but overall, I’d wait until you master the basics, before you moving on to more specific mechanics of the game. They can be useful depending on the situation, but they’re not so critical that you should learn it asap, they have very situational uses, situations of which you won’t learn easily until you master basic spacing and timing principles.
But when you do have time, be sure to get that play-by-play done whenever you can. It would be very beneficial to you if we can examine your thought process, as well as help future new players who might have the same mentality.
+1
By the way, if you can cr.HK.HK on reaction a focus, you should have no problem doing a Raida/neckbreaker to punish the FA.
I personnally just back off a bit when I see a focus. I don’t wanna take the risk of getting stupidly countered trying to beat the FA with a neckbreaker, so I usually just wait for what happens next.
If you’re going to pick up a new character to help you learn the game, I would suggest picking a turtle-style oriented character, such as Dhalsim or Sagat. If you’re willing to use a charge character, Honda and Guile are good choices.
The idea here is that since you’re picking a character that have little to no “rushdown” aspect, you’re forced to see the game differently; with spacing, zoning, and footsies.
Even better if you can play against rushdown/pressure characters or players so if you want to win, you probably don’t want to be anywhere near your opponent (such as vs Gief).
I took a couple replays and rendered them for some critique (be warned, they’re pretty bad).
EDIT: For the second video, skip to about 1:50. Not sure why there’s a long blank spot at the beginning.
[media=youtube]nI6j76FAZJ8[/media]
[media=youtube]iv16wVWBhbQ[/media]
I noticed that I use the launcher target combo cr.HK, HK a lot and that I need to stop. I also notice that I jump a lot, which is bad as well. I used to jump all the time whenever I needed to move across the screen and at least I’ve cut back a bit on jumping so much.
I have also cut back a ton on random Neckbreakers, but I do throw a couple out in the Rose video. I honestly couldn’t tell you why and that is absolutely a reason to never do that. The two fireball punish EX Neckbreakers were the only non-combo ones that are acceptable I would say.
The Hiens I used were also bad habit from “fishing” for a super basically. I don’t really know what to spend my meter on half the time.
I don’t have a ton of match-up knowledge and so I don’t know what is punishable by some characters (probably obvious in the Rose video).
Just looking for some advice and such. Hopefully I will be able to work these bad habits out soon.