I found when I was testing that s.MP trades more with ball whereas c.LP / c.MP hit clean more consistently, Guess I’ll need to go to the training room for that.
Considering a good blanka will probably try and trick you with AA, would it not be better to just block and punish U2 unless the chip is going to kill you or make you too vulnerable to chip death?
c.MK again I found trades with slide, but does beat the ball. Maybe I’m just not timing it right but I tried it for a while. Back to the training room >.>
After playing more against Chun I’m finding this match to get harder, not easier. Do you have any tips for Chun?
Cr always for counting med range and long range balls, block or footsy/poke with St Mp for close balls and hops. The MK timing does take some getting used to, but even trades are in your favor.
Usually blocking the Ultra is better, but you can punish on reaction more when you get better at telling the two apart. Actually I’ve found after I proved I could consistantly punish it that my friend was almost always throwing out AA versions from that point on. I think it will come to be people will find U2 useless against Hawk.
As for Chun. I played one Chun. He was pretty good and schooled me round one. The end of round one I figured him out and he really couldn’t do much the rest of the match. I think this matchup comes down to footsies. It really felt like I was playing a different opponent round two and three, like he suddenly forgot most of her combos and moves. I don’t have enough to truly analyse the matchup though. Though I do find eating a 360 and a few standing roundhouse usually scares the hell out of people no matter how good they are. Learn to anticipate what you can punish with standing Roundhouse and Cr Fierce.
Have not had a chance to test this matchup yet, however if you are on PSN it would be a good trial for both of us if we test this match out. Your Gouken and my Hawk, and you can see what I do and if it works.
Guile can shut down hawk with like 3 buttons. very tough. This will be an extremely boring/infuriating matchup.
Sim does relatively big damage (yeah I said it) and has more than enough tools to keep you out. you can’t just randomly poke with a high priority normal like some other characters to counter stretchy arms either. All your moves must be calculated and then sim can just air teleport away.
Gouken is wtf land all day long. we all know it’s hard to get it. Once you do, you’ll eat counter attacks if you splash (crossup or otherwise) and then it starts all over again. Though, obviously if you do get in again, empty jump to ultra for easy damage… unless they tatsu on wake up for some reason but it’s looking like that move isn’t complete garbage this time around.
Ryu gets free ultra off hawk dives (either on block for U1 or on your way down to him for U2). hadouken lp shoryuken is way more effective than i’d like to admit. Especially since lp shoryu seems to continue to be active while in the air. I literally did a spire just to close ground and hit him but I lost… and he was entirely airborne. seriously?
In general, as I said before, st. MP owns most pokes from other characters. st. HP does hit a bit farther too but i don’t think it’s active for as long. Don’t use st. RH all day cause you will get focus baited. mix in st. and cr. MK cause they’re also awesome and you can buffer spire. st. MK is also a great 360/720 buffer off of jump in.
Cody’s wakeup is, like the other poster said, terrible without meter. I’ve beat wakeup criminal upper with a non-crossup splash. watch for Cody’s slide after you block a string ending in criminal upper–if you attack with st. RH or something he’ll go under you and hit.
I’ve got nothing for Vega but it seems like it could be trouble. Sure you can focus wall dives but anything but the latest DP loses to izuna drop.
Fuerte you have options for. FA if you expect slam, DP if you expect slide or his grab. Fuerte is actually a good matchup for T.Hawk as he gets stuffed for pretty much all his approaches by s.MP and s.HK, and if he does approach, the grab and 360 the slams and slides. You can s.HK all of his off the wall options too from what I’ve tested so far.
I haven’t seen any mention of Cammy yet, so figured I’d throw a little bit in there.
The main thing here is definitely let her come to you, any attempts to jump in or Dive are gonna be stuffed by cannon spike, and even cross ups are a rough situation, she beats splash clean. It feels like a repeat of cheesing Gief in vanilla during challenge modes, but you just need to spam the living crap out of Cr LP to stop her. Getting a 360 or DP off after a blocked spiral arrow was a complete crapshoot since you can be counting on Cammy to spam Cannon Spike as soon as she recovers from it. You can punish a blocked Cannon Spike (only if she did it right in your face) with standing HK as she’s coming down to the ground, which might help to teach the Cammy to not spam it since so many get in the habit of it being hard to punish.
Winning a match really just game down to standing in one spot and punish anything she tried to throw by spamming cr LP, and in the case blocking random Cannon Spikes, HK on her recovery. If you end up getting comboed I’d say go for the usual scrub-alicious tactic of mashing out DP/360. Feels retarded everytime I do it but beats missing that small frame gap and losing the chance to punish. Spire to build meter is risky because she could Spiral Arrow you on reaction.
You can punish cammy’s DP with dash up 360. Learn what ranges spiral arrow is safe from so you know if you can 360 punish. If you use U1 or have super, you can almost always punish close range spiral arrows with 720.
I haven’t tested it, but can someone find out if reversal ultra 2 can punish blocked cannon spike?
While I do have a ps3 I don’t see myself getting ssf4 for it till a couple more weeks and than I still don’t seem to play as well since I have one of the madcats wireless fightpad and I seem to think there is to much input lag on those compared to a wired fight pad.
Not playing for bragging rights, it is for matchup experimentation. Even if there were a little lag it wouldn’t be a big deal, can still explore options and move properties.
Personally I always found I was better using the ps controller than any fightpad ive ever owned.
Also, never found any lag playing wireless with the ps3 controller at all.
I played a Guile today that I thought would be pretty good 2000 / 4000 (Character / Battle - not that these things are the end all be all indicators, but) and actually beat him. It was close - I was doing my standard Guile stuff. Stay up pretty close, try to bait flash kicks, neutral jump a lot, dive if he throws out a sonic boom and I can get him, EX through sonic booms, empty jumps to throws, cross up tricks.
What surprised me is that I stuffed his flash kick 4 times (best 3/5) with jumping jab. Back in ST I used jumping jab all the time since it had crazy priority but haven’t been using it much in SSF4 (more fierce and roundhouse.)
Anyway, if you are jumping in on a Guile, jumping jab might be useful. I was only getting him early in the flash kick though, probably not useful from very far away.
akuma–backdash fierce 360/720 demon flip shenanigans. I was getting locked down by block strings into demon flip palm/kick into strings into tick throw. Once you backdash 360 the flip, momentum shifts. Akuma loses life very quickly and, I feel, any command grab chance you have should be for MAX damage unless you are inching into lp typhoon range. Akuma gets free teleport on wakeup so you have to anticipate where he’ll teleport and dive there to stay in close but this basically eliminates a lot of your ways to do damage. air fireballs aren’t too bad. I feel that gouken’s are worse. this is a battle about patience and using your long range (and damaging) pokes to get a life lead. you have to make akuma come to you.
focus dashing through a fireball into command throw teaches shotos to stop that crap pretty quickly–I mean, we all know it but man does it open up the game.
EDIT: crossup tatsu beats TB since you miss and then get hit.
j.jab is still amazing, it stuffs a lot more than you’d think in lots of matchups. For instance, it stuffs every single thing Juri can do short of a fireball or ultra.
Not playing for bragging rights either just want to give you the best possible match up I can. Also I’ve been using a fight pad since day one of sf4 and I can’t do everything I can do now with the ps3 controller. The thumb pad gives me problems but I do own a fight pad for the ps3 and maybe it wasn’t the wireless causing the input lag maybe it was the psn but there always seemed to be some where as xbl was much smoother. Anyways I’m still going to try and pick a copy of it for ps3 this weekend because a good local friend only owns a ps3 and we can’t always play at my or his house. If I do get it ill let you know.