You sir deserve a can of cold coke in this warm weather, thanks!
In your post matt, you are suggesting that Ken should be linking their light attacks and cancelling into fierce DP’s, i.e;
cr.lk > cr.lp xx fierce DP
But Ken players should be cancelling their light attacks into each other and then linking the DP, i.e (using your annotations);
cr.lk xx cr.lp > fierce DP.
This is by far the more reliable and safer bnb combo for Ken and should form the basis of EVERY aspiring Ken player…
Peace,
G.
How do you guys feel about ken in this version?
I want my sweep and my crouch hitting tatsu back!!!
Just gonna add to Joutai’s post on the ground game.
I find that kens sweep (also st. HK) is pretty tough to actually whiff punish the standard shoto fare style moves (aka low forward). Mistiming the whiff punish usually has people being able to hold focus attack and eat up that sweep of yours and throw it back. If anything it feels like a 1 frame link timing (lol!). However, it doesn’t mean that kens sweep is garbage. 3 solutions out of this:
- Brute force reaction time. Can be done.
- Bait out slow recovery normals with light attacks etc, all that jazz, then punish.
- Whiff punish with step kick. You can’t really “whiff punish” with step kick, but by doing it, you get close and force the deep step kick mindgame,
fierce shoryu, throw, tech, another step kick etc. The only problem with this is that you cant rely on this 100% because it is focusable from the very beginning.
There are also some spacing stuff from block strings and normals that give the “perfect range” for low forward style moves to be whiffed and then punished.
Here’s a couple “setups”:
- After max distance step kick poke. Low forward will whiff here if they stick it out, and I THINK shoto sweep whiffs here too.
- After max distance low forward poke. Low forward whiffs here only.
- cr. LK cr. LK cr. MP cr. MK blockstring, I don’t remember exactly the blockstring, but it was something to this effect. Might be useless blockstring, but it forces the correct spacng for the low forward whiff. You guys can experiment with it more.
- Blocked tip of sweep. If they low forward here, you can whiff punish this with another sweep.
With people baiting step-kicks with focus attacks, the best thing to do in my opinion is to back off bit and throw jab fireballs at the tip of step-kick range. If they focus, it would take a slight bit for it to reach and Ken would recover a bit as they dash. If they dash forward, it’s kinda like the step-kick mix-up of DP, throw, block, or attack. If they back-dash, you gain space and push them into the corner.
Same with people that neutral jump to try to punish the step-kick. Try to make them land on the fireball.
Of course, the counter to this is anti-fireballs and jump ins but that’s just another guessing game to add to the mix.
But you can probably see a mix-up with your opponents options being:
Focus, neutral jump, forward jump, and block.
Your options would be:
Fireball, step-kick.
For people that use a game-plan off of a step-kick, these are some situations:
Opponent forward jumps, you switch positioning (Works better against characters without a X-Up)
Opponent neutral jumps, your step-kick gets hit unless you time it to avoid the active frames of the jump normal.
Opponent blocks an up-close step-kick, you play the DP, attack, or block mix-up.
Opponent blocks the tip of the step-kick, you’re both kinda neutral because of distancing.
Opponent focus, you get hit but you can kind of avoid this with patience and spacing.
If they’re focusing, it would be better to use step-kicks outside their focus range so you can:
[LIST]
[]Throw out a normal if they dash forward
[]Step-kick or fireball if they back-dash.
[/LIST]
I could probably have written this better but I’m too lazy. 
I don’t really try too many close range fireballs just because of the fear of getting jumped in on. But I’m gonna implement this more into my game and we will see how she goes.
Reminds me of a funny story, I was playing endless one time against a chun and as soon as he realized that I was poking alot with step kick, he starts to so alot of st. LK to stuff step kick. So then I’m like ok how do I get past this, I tried st. MK, st. HK, jabs, cr. MP, jump ins (got AAed YEAH) none of which actually was able to beat that st.LK of hers. So round 3 I go for mid screen/close range fireballs, and it worked, and I stopped fireballs just to see what the results were, and the guy stopped mashing st. LK, and was so afraid of step kick I just walked the guy to the corner and it was gg.
So I guess for characters that effectively shut down ken’s normals (vega etc) close range fireball might be the key to make the match easier.
To quote my favorite player: “Fireballs are like a full screen poke without a hurt-box” - John Choi
Although Choi gets a lot of unneeded hate, his fireball usage is quite amazing once you analyze the times he uses it. Although this is a SFA2 video, it would help people understand his quote if people analyzed his spacing and what normal he beats out with his fireball. It looks like he uses Kens normals when he takes the initiative to attack and counter-pokes with fireballs when he’s on defense.
The video really shows how Choi uses fireballs as a footsie tool to poke instead of zoning you out to make you jump. Look at his spacing, it’s usually around sweep range or the normal he’s countering.
Also, walk-up fireball’s are sick 
[media=youtube]NPcu_9DXAuQ[/media]
Thanks man, forgot that it was a link. Chaining is definitely easier.
Love him. When they took away his 7-frame sweep, I was a little upset since I used it an absolute ton. However, after learning kara-throws, kara-hadokens, kara-shorys, kara-focus, LP shory > EX shory, his backdash-beating OS, his jump-in OSs, his step-kick mindgame, and his frame traps on top of the extra EX Shory damage they gave him? He’s a really powerful character with a lot of mindgame setups.
Really, finding out that 1 meter in the corner can churn out 404 damage with pretty easy execution? Hot damn that was great day.
I also always loved how he’s been 5-5 with almost all the cast. If I ever run into a problem matchup with Chun, Ken is almost a guarantee even matchup to alternate with.
Better than Super about the same or slightly weaker than AE… depends on the match ups. Combo to sweep was useless on some characters with strong wake up like Akuma
He got his cr.MK back from Super, the FTK buff is great. All he needs is Ryus movement speed and one frame removed from sweep start up and he’s golden
Vanilla/Super c.mk had 4 active frames AE/2012 only 2
ryu’s c.mk had 5 active frames in all versions except AE
personally i’d like to have 70 damage on c.mk again like in vanilla that way both ryu and kens c.mk-fb would do 130 dmg
They hidden nerfed it in AE and put it back in 2012. I looked at the frame data files for Ken when they released the patch for 2012 on the PC version if the game. The active frames are the same as Super.
Guys, talking about OS I have a question about Rose. As I said in other post I hate this match up. Good Roses always give me trouble. So, after a knockdown I have this bad habit of doing raw fierce srk on Rose’s wake up as a weird punishment against Roses that abuses of bd. For me, so far, its working very well. This raw srk is beating all most all of her options, only her soul throw hits Ken. If she does a bd, spiral ex, throw, ultra 2, or crouch tech Ken wins. And if she blocks I just fadc it on the second hit. And If she does wake up ultra 1 Ken’s fierce srk invincibility leaves him in front of her with the opportunity of doing a great combo after pass through her ultra 1 animation. But these days, after playing a lot with a friend, he’ve started to perform a focus->bd on wake up, in this scenario fierce srk only hits 1 time, and this kinda blows my weird strategy. Cause I only fadc on the second hit of the fierce srk but it hits just one time, so Im losing my time and falling in front of Rose wide open after the srk.
So, I found very hard to hit c.LK, c.LP+c.HK as an OS, sometimes Ken doesnt hit the c.HK, her bd is the best in the game and you must do this OS the best way possible to hit it. Sometimes I just miss the timing of meaty c.LK and she escapes free. I never tried before, but I think that using c.LK, step kick + close s.LK you cant hit Rose, she recoveries before it. I think the same of c.LK chained into close s.LK + ex tatsu, the move comes out very fast, but she escapes. So Im starting to think that if Rose wake up using focus->bd, she beats all OS that Ken does. Including raw fierce srk. I only can think of a raw throw to beat this. Is that so, or Im not seeing another possibility? How do you guys deal with Rose’s wake up?
Peace
churros for the timing of the OS sweep (meaty cr. LK, cr. LP + HK), I use visual cues to time my meaties, USUALLY when the character does the backflip to get up and the moment feet touches the ground, thats when I do my meaties. It’s not “true” meaty timing, but it does the job. It’s just a general guideline.
If she does focus backdash on wakeup, you can react to it as soon as you see the focus, just sweep that shit. I usually can’t react to it unless I look for it, so when I get ready for my OS, I get ready to expect 3 outcomes: 1) focus bd 2) backdash 3) block or reversal.
Just remember to use safe jump OS f.srk as well. It beats most of her options without worrying about getting reversal’ed.
You know, most topics talk about options when Ken’s in a mix-up or more technical situation. There’s never been talk about Ken’s neutral game and how you can use it to condition fear or complacency to take advantage of the opponent’s hesitation. You know, the more fundamental aspects of Street Fighter. The use of movement and tools to dictate the pace or “tell the story” of a match.
By “tell a story” I mean putting your opponents into habits that you can take advantage of.
I like using Yang as an example for footsies, since he has a nice walk-speed but has short range (pretend he doesn’t have a dive-kick, that adds a bunch of different layers that’s more Yang specific and doesn’t apply to the entire cast.). I know it’s the Ken forum but I think talking about the neutral game from the perspective of a character that doesn’t have amazing footsie normals, which means you have to use movement to beat your opponent.
I’d type more but I don’t even know if people even really browse here anymore. Also, I want to write about Yang vs Dictator, to be more specific. How a fast but short range character can instill fear against a fast and long range character.
the best fear is the fear of the step kick
Glad to see yall digging still
Been watching some ST matches… does anyone think throwing a fireball after an opponent does a string that puts them out of cr.MK range and requires them to walk forward is useful?
Like Bison doing a scissor kick, st.MK walk forward MK and you fireball during the walk forward? Vega doing cr.MK, cr.MP walk forward cr.MP?
You’d kinda put them in a mix-up if you mix in fake fireballs during the walk forward.
Edit: Blockstun doesn’t push back far enough for this to be effective 
actually usually after a block string from both of vega and dictator … if a am out of c.mk range i’d wanna check if they are in st. rh range or sweep range and if they are … i’d throw them out … but if both did not do the walk forward once … i’d usually either back dash into a comfortable range or throw out long active normals such as cr.mp buffered into a fireball or just a standing mp … I wont do this unless I am sure we are at neutral frames or they are at a disadvantage .
I do use the ex fireball sometimes at particular ranges not just because I cant reach the opponent with normals but also if u noticed ex firballs push ken back a litlle bit specially on the lower part of the body …or to blow up their focus dash attempts… its the same for all ex firballs … i bet u once were in the perfect range of ur cr.mk against ryu and when u stuck it out u got hit by an ex fireball right ??
another thing i like to do every now n then is throw out standing short … this move is awesome in footsies and lets u punish lots of low normals or crouching medium punches from lots of characters cos it makes ur opponents normals wiff when ken lifts his leg up .