Perfect! I play against my friend who plays Alex alot so ill try it out along with the other options.
whats the best punish vs fang when he does point blank fireball? I have been using sweep but most people I’ve played and content with taking the trade
@flame1626 and @DaMonkee , I spent a couple of minutes in training mode and found out the following:
Alex’ slashes are -4, -6 and -7 for LK, MK and HK respectively, so the 8-frame s.HP doesn’t punish any of them. Don’t use that.
LK slash is easy to recognize and has short range, so while it’s pretty hard to punish on block, it’s not a viable option from a lot of ranges, and obviously it’s pretty easy to reaction whiff punish. You might have to just let this one go on block, though jab or short into whatever is a good idea. Safe to reversal super as well.
MK and HK essentially both have three ranges you need to recognize. The first one is a relatively small sweetspot where the moves push you out of c.MK-range. Any closer and you can punish with c.MK into whatever you want. Further away than the sweetspot and they’re whiffing the move and are thus wide open. If they’re in the safe-to-c.MK-range though, the only thing that actually punishes them is reversal super, so make sure to recognize this spacing so that they don’t whiff punish your attempted punish. They’re really negative though so you can do a long range poke and take control back if they try to push anything, or even dash up.
I also tried raw JFT as a punish but couldn’t get it to work. I don’t recommend using other buttons than c.MK to punish slashes since they tend to push other moves out.
EX is completely free on block though. s.HP into whatever. gogo.
c.MK -> EX Mujinkyaku seems very good here if you do it early enough. You often get enough forward momentum to avoid the trade entirely, unless you’re in the corner.
Admittedly I only tested this on LP fireball, other versions may act differently, but the LP one seems like the best combo breaker.
I think he meant shp on block and then confirm it after into orochi or tenko. I think thats a decent option if you’re lazy and just want the pressure. It would only lose to jabs on a blocked lk slash and even then its a 1f window. I was planning on just hitting crmk every time and confirm after but now i guess i have to look out for that range. What do u think of trying to throw out smk or slk to interrupt it before, over punishing after? slk buffered into negative edge sappo > tenko seems very tempting.
@Naeras Yeah I wasn’t saying that would punish. But the best no brain answers are st.mp, cr.mk or st.hp. I only said st.hp because it forces alex to block after blocking any elbow. If he doesn’t block and continues his pressure then he eats a fat st.hp counterhit combo. So, if you’re not going for the punish because you can’t differentiate the different strengths of elbow and just trying to end his turn, st.hp is fine.
@DaMonkee If I’m too far away to use Karin’s hit-confirm combo, then I use I use st.mp x orochi in cases like this as my generic low-risk low-reward “punish” combo. I’m not very good, so I can’t keep track of the timing for Alex’s Laura’s different elbows, Birdie’s different shoulders/bullheads, Alex’s chops and elbows, etc. st.mp x orochi has 5f startup, so it punishes a lot of these without too much risk.
@GreyQ That’s good too. That’s what I do because it’s safer and more universal among the other cast members. ST.HP is greedy but works in this case. If it were me, I’d be content with ending Alex’s turn with st.mp or cr.mk.
Recognizing the different strengths of special moves is tough. I use context to figure it out most of the time. For example: elbow canceled out of st.lp will be lk. Or Bolt Charge (laura) out of cr.hp will be mp. I assume this is how almost everyone figures it out. However, a person could go into training mode, record Alex doing each slash with identical setups, and then just practice punishing each kind. I hardly have that time anymore but, in SF4 that was a lot of my training time. In SF 5 you can make the dummy do each randomly which is really helpful.
Yeh, that’s what I did. Tested it for like 10 minutes by making the dummy do random elbow strengths from different ranges, then tried a couple of punishes for each of them.
You can generally tell which version of the move it is by the range it’s done from though. Or, to be more precise, you can tell LK from the other versions since LK has significantly shorter range than the others, and every version that isn’t LK is negative enough that you can punish it with c.MK.
There’s different audio cues for HK and MK as well (he says “elbow” for one of them and yells “SLASH” for the other), so that’s another way to tell those two apart, but that’s really not that important.
This guy gets it. 
Has anyone been able to find a way to deal with Vega’s EX wall dives? I’ve tried j. LP, j. MP, st. HP, EX ressenha but nothing works reliably. If I go air to air, he can do it early and it’ll beat me, if I try EX ressenha, he can either grab me or it’ll cross me up and I’ll still lose. There doesn’t seem to be a foolproof method to beating his EX wall dive, it’s all a guessing game in his favor. I can usually beat a Vega just fine but when he starts abusing his EX wall dives, there’s nothing I can do about it and I eventually lose to that move alone and since Vega doesn’t really have too many uses for his EX meter outside of super, he has practically all the meter in the world to spam it.
Consider using command dashes to get out of the situation. Stop trying to beat him. Let him waste meter.
Guile lolz
What’s a good general game plan against Bisons? I don’t run into them too often in ranked, but when I do, I get destroyed.
The Bisons I usually face just runs backwards and I usually lose patience and chase them all over and just eat their moves.
Bison’s a tough matchup, because he can actually do what you’re describing there and give you a lot of trouble for it. He has things he can do fullscreen, so you have to come to him. The problem is that you have to be the aggressor, and actively walk into your effective range… which, incidentally, is the range where Bison’s really good. He’s really hard to challenge in a poke battle (his pokes are aren’t that much better than Karins, but he has higher health and more options),his throw range is longer than Karin, and he’s one of the harder characters to anti-air because of his jump angle and the fact that you need different timings to beat different jump-ins from him. Online doesn’t help either, since reacting to slides and scissor kicks is even tougher than usual.
The good news is that once Karin actually gets momentum, she can ride that to victory fairly easily. Bison has no easy answer to her close range game, and he’ll pretty much need to either V-reversal or guess correctly otherwise.
If Bison goes on the offensive, I suggest V-reversaling out, and proceed to take the free safejump it gives you. Bison players won’t do this very often, but take the chance whenever it presents itself.
edit #12: holy fuck I need to get some sleep, I can’t write english for shit at the moment
Question; how do you guys feel about the Gief match-up? While I feel I can handle it fine with Ken (in fact I’d say he probably wins overall), I’m thinking the match-up might be more comfortable for me using Karin. Since Karin can both bully him in neutral and on offense, while Ken can only really do the latter well.
Gief can’t use s.hk against Karin, because she is able to whiff punish it easily with v.skill or s.hk. If the Karin’s player is capable of AA Gief consinstently without ex ressenha, s.mk can become a nightmare for him.
However, there are tools like orochi that are too risky against Gief, because on block he can punish with ex command grab or super.
Karin just have to be patient cos bullying him with your superior pokes is enough. You just have to be careful to not be cornered. Pressuring too much, even you may do a lot of damage, it’s risky because once he gets the momentum he can kill Karin very quickly.
Gief can’t punish blocked orochi with nothing except for CA.If you go for a frame trap orochi though, he can vskill and punish with spd,etc.Another great Karin poke vs Gief is her sweep (at long or max range).He can’t punish it with anything,except like crlp.
Generally the plan vs Gief remains,pretty much, the same as it always was in SF.You want to keep him out and play a poking game and whiff punish anything unsafe he might do.Keep him at a mid range.Crmk,stmk,crhk,sthk are all good pokes for that.No need to use much (neutral) orochi in that matchup imo.Karin’s vskill can be good in neutral if used occasionally.If you get too predictable he can use his vskill and punish you with spd,etc.
Also your antairs must be on point.His jlk like Ryu’s jlk can give Karin trouble if she doesn’t have ex meter.His other jumpins are easier to deal with Karin’s traditional anti airs.If you have meter (ex ressenha,ex tenko) against jumping Gief use it.
I always forget that ex command grab can’t reach to punish orochi by little! However it’s a bad idea to be that close at -2.
Orochi is -2 on block.All of Gief’s spds have startup of 5 frames.So he can not punish you whatsoever.But as i said,imo there is no need to use orochi in neutral against Zangief.
Another thing to notice is that his air spd(forget the name lol) can grab ex ressenha.That doesn’t happen if you use ex tenko though.You need better spacing though.
I think the Gief matchup is a nightmare.
On paper, it’s probably a 5-5. But Gief players LOVE a 5-5 and will relish it.
Anti airing him without EX bar is a problem.
His V-Skill through your long pokes is a problem…
Vacuuming your extended throwboxes on S.MK with SPD sucks.
His V-Reversal is a problem.
Super is a gigantic issue.
After all of this, Health/Damage in general is a huge issue because Karin can’t risk being in close where she can do damage.
On the positive side, Karin doesn’t have to worry about his charged S.HP or S.HK at all, can use her Vskill pretty liberally, and does have a legit reversal that he has to respect.