Most of her moves have faster start-up and less recovery. Her damage is comparable to Evil’s with her tatsu loops, but she doesn’t have to spend meter on them. They both have 950 health, but she has 1000 stun. Her armor breakers (tatsu) are faster and safer than evil’s, so is sakura top tier if she’s better than evil? Or is there something that makes evil better than her. I’m not sure which one of them has the hardest execution, so that might be a factor in why people use evil or sakura.
As someone that’s mained Sakura since vanilla and is currently playing around with picking up E.Ryu, I would say definitely not. Both characters are about the same if they can open the opponent up with their high dmg. However, Evil Ryu has much better tools for dealing with different matchups. In particular, ERyu’s footsie game is just so much better; while Sakura has her far st.hk and cr.mk buffered into srk, it’s still not as good as Eryu’s c.mk
Thank you for your input and the example, but what about her tatsu? They get in her in for free. I made the mistake of throwing out a cr.mk when she went for a tatsu and I’ve been afraid of the match every since.
I don’t think she’s better than Evil Ryu is in USF4. While Sakura has her advantages over Evil Ryu, he also has some over her. For example her fireball and wake up is not as good as Evil Ryu’s. Her EX shouken can be safely meaty jabbed(with a OS) so she can’t even throw it out as a hail mary unless her opponents go for a throw instead. And because it’s so slow she has to rely on normals to anti-air. She has great normals for that, but they get blown up easily by dive kicks just like the one Evil Ryu has. She also got hit with some nerfs coming into USF4 while Evil Ryu only got buffs. They both have their positives and negatives but overall I think Evil Ryu wins the match up and is the better character.
She has much better mixups than Evil Ryu, but Evil Ryu is much better all around. I think of Evil Ryu as the footsie, high damage character, since DWU somewhat killed his cheap setups. Whereas Sakura you bully your way in (for most matchups).
Really? I was wondering which character had the most good match-ups. But personally I think it’s dead even.
I understand what people are saying about evil having better footies because when evil lands a cr.mk with two bars it turns into big damage. For sakura to do that, i think she needs three. I’ve seen multiple sakuras fadc ex srk to combo, but have never seen a single one fadc a non-ex. I wouldn’t say evil has better footsies though because sakura can still out-prioritize most of the buttons he wants to press especially because her tatsu is like a combination of evil’s f.mk and axe kick. But i do agree that evil has more range when has two bars.
I don’t know if it’s specific characters, but I know some that don’t seem to care whether or not you’re doing a jump in or dive kick. Once you hit them with a couple dive kicks they delay their anti-air’s and then you will get hit regardless of what you decide to use. I think the reason most people get caught because they’ve trained themselves to anti-air as soon as possible.
I don’t think her nerfs effect this matchup. Her jump in got dp’d before and unless evil players want to trade with her fierce, they will continue to dp. Ex tastu could be plus one and your still not going to want to press a button, so whether or not it’s plus 1 or 10 you’re either going to block, tech or try to dp out of pressure.
At the tip of evil ryu’s cr.mk range, sakura can blow through the block string with an srk. And just outside of evil’s cr.mk range (about one big square) she can whiff punish and react to fireballs with tatsu, but this is where the players skill are going to come into play, which is why i think the match is even. If evil guesses wrong twice, he’s dead.
If you look at the match between chris g and sako at capcom cup, it looks dead even. A lot of rounds were lost on both sides because of drop combos (on both sides). Ironically, chris g lost because sakura’s srk’s hitbox had not yet been expanded forward. That match seems to be about how well the sakura players can block and or whiff punish cr.mk, and evil’s ability to keep her from getting in, and both players awareness of spacing like when not of all sakura’s tatsu will connect or when evil’s f.mk will whiff.
[I don’t know because i don’t play her, but can sakura whiff punish s.mk with her dp? Since the hitbox has been expanded forward and the move itself already moved forward quite a bit. If she’s capable of still whiff punishing cr.mk at a range where s.mk will whiff then that would be worth knowing, and will say that the match is to her advantage, but could still go either way (6-4).]