Yeah. You gotta know the situation very well. Like, don’t do anything risky if an opponent has a good amount of stock. Honestly, I feel like I work myself into the corner a lot of times w/ Makoto… I really need to cut that habit. -___-…
Haha, I know what you mean. Sometimes I just wait in the corner when I’m sitting on a full meter against Gouki or Remy.
I know that feeling. Pretty much betting the match on one false move (kid) from your opponent :D… That be disaster. I wouldn’t recommend it at all against Gouki. His mix-up game is nasty and you’re only going to catch a good Gouki w/ a tic karakusa setup. You gotta be extremely crafty. And one thing to remember: The entire half of the screen is yours. Your opponent will know that and they’ll stay right around that area under the clock. I try to lure people w/ a whiff c.mp and hold hayate for a bit just to see what they’ll do. If they throw out something like c.mk or c.hk (be very wary when dashing in after lp or lk) I’ll dash and catch them sleepy. If I’m lucky, they’ll still be in HPxxSA2 range.
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I can’t figure out far and close anti-airs with 3S Makoto. From playing a few hours with her: cr.MK seems pretty crappy as an AA, and st.LP’s effective only at a specific angle, not covering her head. st.MP seems good, but it’s slow and doesn’t cover high enough. st.MK seems to be her best bet at mid-range, but that doesn’t cover the closer and farther ranges. cr.HK doesn’t seem to have much priority to stop mid-screen neutral jumps.
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What are good LP Hayate follow-ups? The only consistent one I’ve found is another cr.LK xx LP Hayate, not exactly the best gamble. f+MP maybe? UOH?
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It’s hard for me to deal with pokes in this game compared to AE. I feel like dashing into backthrow is her only consistent option of getting through, and it’s just a matter of timing it so you whiff punish or surprise them. cr.MK and st.MP seem really good, as well as f+MP, but what can Makoto do against cr.MKs/cr.HKs outside of whiff punishing with cr.HP?
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I find it exceedingly hard to attack after blocked jump-ins with anything other than cr.LK. The opponents I play, newbies to 3S like me, like to mash throw a lot when I attack, and outside of just straight up guessing cr.LK xx LP Hayate or doing immediate IA EX Tsurugi or UOH, I don’t know how to stop it.
Hello! I’m not an experienced Makoto player by far, but I’ll try to answer from my take on her game play:
1.) Some times, the best thing to do is to block. The normals are good if they are jumping in from far away enough for you to react. St. mp is good if you get it out early enough. If they parry it, you can react and do an ex fukiage.
If they are right over your head, the best thing to do is to just block. But if you’re fast enough, you can do a light fukiage. You can also dash under the jump (if you react in time). Once you start to read their jumps, challenge them air to air with j. hk.
I assume they are doing neutral jumps post hayate? You can ex fukiage, super jump cancel jump high punch/kick.
2.) What makes lp hayate follow-ups different from other hayate follow-ups? Try karakusa. Or pay attention to how they block, and do the standard high-low mix up.
3.) If you’re whiff punishing or counter poking, use her cr.mp, it cancels into hayate.
Shoto sweeps (my assumption b/c you didn’t specify the character) can get really annoying. You can try to bait them to whiff by walking in and out of the range, but Makoto’s walk speed is very slow. It gets more annoying when they sweep on reaction to dashes. I found blocking then dash in and grab to be quite successful. After they accepted that they are going to get dash-in grabbed, you can dash in and karakusa.
4.) What do you jump in with? Who are your opponents’ characters? You can try to space a j. mk far enough so that after the attack you’ll land outside their grab range. Then you can punish their whiffed grab.
After a couple of cr.lk into hayate, try cr.lk and then karakusa. It’s not a combo, but I doubt they’ll be mashing grabs after a couple of successful cr.lk -> lp hayates. Or you can use the ultimate technique–pull a Dirty Sanchez: jump over them and SAI or II them as they grab. It delivers the ultimate mind fuck.
I hope my advice is helpful.
1)It really depends what you are trying to AA. IMO her best arguably safest AA is neutral or jump back rh. It has a great hit box, if parried leaves you quite a bit away from your opponent and if beat you generally just get reset out of the air unless you get hit by something that juggles.
Other AA are cr rh, st fwd, parry karakusa, dash under to avoid or to mixup, reg and ex fuki, karakusa (as empty jump AA), jab, strong, cr fwd, and fp.
2)karakusa, hayate (hits high and if you catch them jumping you can juggle with another fp hayate, cr short hayate (hits low) you can also subsute a ex orochi for the hayate for a quick overhead that is safe on block although not a true block string. From there you can also fish for parry/block dash back and try to bait something and punish with cr strong hayate/etc. You can also n jump rh, dash forward karakusa/something, instant air ex tsurugi, st strong is not bad either as it can catch people jumping away and you can either dash forward behind it or follow it up with cr strong looking for confirm into hayate which is an un-jump-able block string.
3)Whiff punishing with cr strong buffered into fp hayate or raw hayate for mixup or dash in throw/karakusa/tick into karakusa behind whiff pokes. Alot of sweeps are free hayate on block. Her sweep while pretty good has less range then cr strong and your mixup options post hayate in 3s are much better then they are in sf4.
4)If they are just mashing throw post jump-in you can either instant air ex tsurugi, dash back confirm whiff throw and punish with cr strong hayate (st fp x hayate/whatever can also work on some characters/spacing). Or just space your jump-in’s so you land outside of throw range or do them deeper for more frame advantage
Thanks for the replies.
I don’t know about all that 
AE Makoto gets a Tsurugi that combos, Blockakusa, Hitakusa, kara-EX Karakusa, st.LK xx Hayate Canceled into mix-ups, kara-throw, st.MP xx EX Oroshi, cr.LK xx EX Hayate that’s safe-ish on block and combos into huge damage on hit, dash forward Fukikusa (OS Karakusa if they backdash or stay still, Fukiage if you dash past them because they jumped), st.HK to beat lows, f+LP to beat any normal or throw they put out, and delayed crouch tech into Fukiage AA to catch those who might reversal or throw or jump. All in all she’s pretty damn solid in AE/2012 after a hit Hayate. Now, SSF4 Makoto, she had much less she could do, and I’d agree with you there, but truthfully I’m still trying to catch a handle on Makoto’s post-Hayate game in this one.
It SEEMS to me that if your opponent presses buttons, all you can really do is IA EX Tsurugi, UOH, which doesn’t do much (AFAIK, I guess it DOES with SA1) or cr.LK xx LP Hayate in this game to stop them consistently, and that’s really risky. That, or some form of delayed OS Karakusa parry to catch crouching attacks … dunno. That’s fine, cr.LK xx LP Hayate beats most things here, but it’s just so damn risky, coming from AE Makoto where you don’t have to take such risks to beat attacks it’s kinda foreign to me to put so much on the line for such little damage.
Anyway, I digress. Another question: what’s the better follow-up in the corner after SA2, JC MK Tsurugi: HP Hayate, cr.HK or HP Hayate, HP Hayate? Or some other best ender?
3s and sf4 mak are similar but also quite different.
Think of options post hayate that are not karakusa as options you can use once you have them afraid of karakusa.
The only buttons that have any chance of beating a well timed karakusa are jabs and shorts. All of which can be parred down just like most quick hitting specials and unless they cancel that jab or short super/special cancelling into an un-throwable move it is free karakusa on parry (think of parry karakusa as pretty much the equivalent of ex karakusa in sf4). Short or forward karakusa after parrying a short/jab is best as it will grab them even if they mash the chain.
Karakusa in 3s is a much bigger part of her game and quite a bit better (more range and 20 or so frames less recovery then in sf4).
Best ender depends on what you want
most damage: is mk tsurugi, hayate, ex orochi although it cost the most meter and is generally only used for the kill
as for the other two I believe cr rh does alitle more stun and resets while double hayate knocks down (btw you should slightly charge the second one to get a little more damage/stun out of it. Charging a hayate even slightly changes its juggle valve so never charge the first one)
Im trying to learn 3s and am picking up Makoto as my main, as I love her character design.(Don’t know how I didn’t see this earlier in SF4) Anyway I just wanted to know if learning her trials will give me a good understanding of links? Would I become a better player by mastering her 5 trials,(Even if they aren’t feasible in game) or are they not worth going through?
not worth going through. the only link you need to learn is hayate into seichusen.
Hayate->Seichusen
st.MP->Seichusen
cr.MK->Seichusen
These are three of Makoto’s most important links, especially after you instill the fear of Karakusa into the opponent. Learn them, master them, confirm them.
Thanks. I had been practicing trial 3 which does include the hayate–seichusen link(j.HK, MP, LKxxhayate–seichusen) would the combo still be useful or should I just solely work on the hayate–seichusen link?
As long as you can get the Hayate->Seichusen link down. It wouldn’t hurt to learn the MP->LK link to Hayate(extra bit of damage probably), but it’d probably be better for you to practice her simple links first. She does so much damage and stun off of very simple combos, so the only links you need to know are those that connect into SA1.
I keep getting two hayates when trying to do the Hayate–SA1 link. Is it a motion problem or because I’m linking too early and if so where do I link? I’ve been using the normal and piano key method and I still usually end up with 2 hayates either way, with some connecting for the total 6 hit combo or it doesn’t and I only land 5 hits.
You might be doing it too early if just one Hayate comes out. Try to input the Super somewhere around when she brings her fist back after the Hayate. The piano method works well here, just keep at it while trying to figure out the timing.
Hey guys,
I have a couple of questions. I see most players use karakusa >> hp -> lp hayate >> SAI. What’s the advantage of this over karakusa >> hp -> hp hayate >> SAI? I see in training mode that they both do the same damage, and hp hayate gives me more time to pump the double quarter circle, so I use the hp hayate version. What is the advantage of these two moves over karakusa >> hp xx SAI? I’m using the hayate link into SAI over hp xx SAI because it gives me time to do the double qcf accurately.
Another problem I’m having is doing the kara karakusa consistently. I’m doing the half circle back as down-forward, down, down-back, back as a shortcut. I’m double tapping, but it seems to only work when I mash on the round house lol.
Lastly, any tips on doing links like mp >> lk -> lp hayate and lp >> lk -> hayate? When I double tap it seems like I miss the cancel to hayate because the double tap takes too long. Also, the double tap link seems inconsistent, do I start the double tap early?
Thanks for the help!
Sincerely,
Cong
IIRC when you charge the Hayate for a bit, you get a slightly bigger window to link SA1. I remember reading this a few times in the past, but am unsure if it’s true. Personally I always go, Fierce-> slightly charged Strong Hayate-> SA1. I’m much more consistent with this than using Fierce Hayate.
I can’t really answer your other questions, my kara-Karakusa is most likely more inconsistent than yours. I also don’t double tap so I can only say that Jab-> Jab-> Short-> Hayate is still a weird timing for me. Strong->Short->Hayate on the other hand is just rhythm and the timing feels like the same link that the twins have.
karakusa->fpx charged hayate-> sa1 does more stun then without the charge. as for whether to charge hayate or even hayate at when combo’ing into sa1 all is up to you. I generally only do it if I need that little extra damage or stun.
as for kara-kara you can strum the kicks for it although you are probably hitting the kicks to early. Try not to press them till you reach back
as for the s strong short link do not press short till you start to see the strong retract.
jab short chain is all feel, hard to discribe… slower then s. jab x2 chain with timing similar to a link.
What’s the input for 100% stun again? I’m mainly an SA1 player since I can’t really do s.HPxxSA2 consistently on both sides yet.
I realize you asked for 100% combos, but there are plenty with jumps ins. So I’m going to list the double Fukiages that I can think of off the top of my head. Note: Characters with longer stun bars don’t get stunned using these off of a Karakusa (unless they have some stun accumulated, or you skip the Karakusa and instead combo with a jump in RH/ Fierce).
Fukiage-> Dash Fukiage, timing is different for each: Alex, Hugo and Necro (at least)
Fukiage-> Kara (st.Short) Fukiage: Elena, Q and Chun-li (Late first Fukiage)
Kara (st.RH) Fukiage-> Dash Fukiage: Alex, Akuma, Dudley, Elena, Hugo, Ken, Makoto, Necro, Remy, Ryu, Sean, Twelve, Urien, Yang and Yun (Gill too…)
Kara (cr.RH OR st.RH) Fukiage-> Dash Kara (cr.RH) Fukiage: Ibuki (spacing/super strength specific) and Oro
There are other variations like double cr.RH Kara Fukiage on Shotos (others as well but this is just an example). Only “useful” if you accidentally kara while crouching… then realize it, then are able to hit the second cr.RH Kara Fukiage… Or other second chances that are dependent on missing the kara during the Fukiage and hitting a dash cr.RH Kara Fukiage (Yun, Yang and Urien).
Some combos require double Jab Fukiages, others can have the first replaced with Strong. Jab gives you more time to dash as it recovers faster, but also comes out quicker, so you’ll need to get the timings down as several characters have unique timings because they bounce higher/lower.