Recently while playing online I encounter many players who tend to use LVL2 FA quite a lot as an offensive tool. If I block it, they dash in and attempt an attack; usually a throw, which I tech. However, this pattern gets repeated constantly until the other player scores a crumple stun of some sort. Usually players start the focus attack from roughly a quarter screen away.
How do I counter this overuse? I usually don’t have a charge when they start it, and when I do, Scissors comes out too slowly and trades into crumple stun for me (since only the second hit knocks down), and Psycho Crusher has a slow start up as well.
There are a few ways to combat focus attacks, the most obvious is some sort of armor break but as you stated before you aren’t getting that in on time.
- Another way might be to jab them out of it, 2 hits and they stop the focus.
- You can also try throwing them, you can either throw them straight up or you can wait for them to release and throw their hitbox when the focus comes out (this is a little more tricky but is possible). If they are focusing your jump ins try empty jumping into throw.
- You can also do a sort of ghetto parry of their focus with your own focus, since its a level 2 focus it won't armor break and so you are able to absorb the hit and retaliate with your own focus.
- Instead of trying to stuff it you can dodge it, back dash out of range then try to punish the recovery if they let go instead of dashing out of it. Either way you tell your opponent that you aren't going to get hit by it and it might force them to change their strategy.
- Super Canceling is also great for breaking armor, not sure if Bison's is that good for this but doing a move that runs into the absorb of the focus and then canceling into super does a lot of damage and really makes people think twice to focus you when you have super meter.
- Super or Ultra when you see that focus going just pull the trigger.
I think this comes down to reading your opponent, if they are going to sit there and focus you can’t just run into it. Try to look for the pattern of when they are focusing and anticipate them doing it and do your armor breaking move, maybe it’s a certain range you get at they think its safe to focus. Get into that range but instead of not having charge anticipate they are going to focus ahead of time and start charging earlier and break their armor. Learning the characters attack distance on a released focus will also do you wonders, I find that a lot of people don’t know their own range for focuses and will focus, hold it, and wiff if your close to the range but just outside.
These are just a few things I use in my matches, I don’t play Bison but I do play Boxer and focus attacks are fairly strong against my character so I had to learn how to combat them. Like I said before this is a pretty good example of knowing how to read your opponent when you play which is a key fundamental in anyone’s game. Look for patterns, look for openings use them to mount your attacks when you do this you will start to notice a lot of opportunities open up for you.
Bison actually has an easier time dealing with this than a lot of chars. RH SK is the way to go. It will double tap the focus and hit them on dash back. Dont do it from more than 3 Bison’s away though or you will eat focus.
Sadly normal PC is so sucky as to be unuseable even as an armor breaker.
I am a Ryu player that overuses focus attacks to get in. It’s a good tool, but the players that beat me just flat out outguess me a lot of the time. It’s totally a rock paper scissors mini-game once the dash forward after the focus occurs. The best thing to do is to just see what they like to do after their dash. Some people always throw, I usually always like to throw out a hit confirmable block string, but others like to throw out an SRK or some kind of special. Also, most of the time people like to use focus as an alternative to jumping in and it is safer, but its equally as bad as jumping if they are doing it predictably. You can look for it to happen at the end of a blocked string i.e. Ryu jumps in with j.rh, c.lk, c.lp x 3, at this point he could use a c.mk to hado or he could fa lvl2 and dash forward on you, or he could jump. If his tendency is to FA and then dash forward just be prepared to scissor kick at the end of a block string that puts him out of range.
EX Psycho crusher will own any focus free. Even if they try to backdash, they will get hit. Do not use any type of scissor kick, you can be hit out of that easily.
Try grabbing them before they flash for the LVL 2 FA. They’ll have to wait to flash (or when you see the ink come out of the focus attack), that gives you time to just grab them. Sometimes you might not be able to jab them in time. So try grabbing when this happens.
All right guys thanks for the tips. I used them tonight; basically, against characters that like to use this tactic, always have a LK scissor or backdash ready. After backdashing I usually forward dash and throw their recovery.
Some people are really scary; they focus attack the moment I hit with anything at all! Who has reaction time like that?