Wake up options against Ibuki?
Honestly, Ibuki is the character I’ve played against the most and that experience teaches you that blocking is the only option here, the problem that arises is when and which direction to block as she tends to use tricky vortex pressure with and without delayed wake-up.
So in essence make sure you don’t get floored against Ibuki because Makoto doesn’t really have any tools in that situation.
I recently had some time to sit down with a Rolento player and figure out the match up. The one thing to remember about fighting Rolento is that once he gets knocked down, you win. He has absolutely nothing on wake up outside of EX Ball with invincibility (also Ultras, but hey, welcome to Comeback Fighter IV!), so you can abuse meaty set ups all day. Even then, his non-EX balls are giant hurtboxes that can be stuffed on reaction before they hit you.
As far as Rolento’s pressure goes, his pogo stick and roll > overhead can be stuffed with cr.MK, blocked non-EX roll > overhead is something like -8 or -10 and easily punishable with a full EX Fuki combo, Rolento’s second rekka is -6 so super easy f.LP > EX Fuki punish, and my favorite part: j.HP trades in your favor or outright beats Rolento’s s.MP, his best (only?) anti air option, which means if he’s standing still because you’ve shut down all of his pressure and he can’t figure out what to do, free jump ins all damn day.
That being said that doesn’t mean Rolento can’t shenanigan with the best of them with tricky cross ups and dirty resets, so your blocking and tech throw game still has to be on point. Just gotta recognize which toys they like to play with the most, then take those toys away from them to get inside their head and limit their options.
How would I shut down rufus’s divekicks? Long, Mid and Close range. If there’s anyone who played rufus before, gimme a holla please. and I need some help with Balrog as well
Are you still in the UK Quaka? If you wanna add me on XBL we can practise the Rufus match?
From what I remember, at a distance you wanna use st. lk > st. mk + hayate cancel, jump back HP, and f. mp to keep out his long range dive kicks. Jump back jab is surprisingly good too, but if he’s on the ball he can chase you down with all sorts of nastiness. Close up, f.lp (the 3 frame one) can disrupt some dive kick pressure and crouch tech + cr.mk if he’s not diving from low enough.
For Balrog, you can beat out his dash punches from a distance with st.mp - hayate or cr.HK. If he’s pressuring you up close, try blockakusa (st.lk into command grab) or kara-ex grab. Neutral jump really helps too. Mix up regular attacks on the way down with axe kicks to mess up his anti air game.
So I need help with the following. Sorry, this might take a while:
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[] Akuma far standing roundhouse (two hits). This gets in for free pretty much. How do you guys deal with it?
[] Blanka hop gimmicks. I’ve never really understood what’s happening. Is he hit invincible or what?
[] On block, Decapre’s EX Divekick & Daggers. Can we punish them? What’s the best thing damage wise? Does anyone have any recommended set ups for her wake up that dodge that uppercut?
[] Do we have any better way of chasing down focus-backdashers like Rose & Chun other than doing a raw hayate on their wakeup?
[/list]
I think I can kind of help with 3
LP Daggers are -3, you can f.LP into ex fuki, mp and hp are -5 and -7, st.MP and st.HP to punish them. Ex one is 0 at block, so be carefull
Even with LP Daggers being -3, that’s a 1 frame punish that can’t be input spammed during block stun like a SRK. If you’re fairly certain you’ve got the timing down to punish it reliably, then by all means go for it, otherwise it might not be worth attempting due the fact that canceling into a blocked EX Fukiage is incredibly dangerous. Think of how badly that Decapre would be mindfucked if you were able to punish LP Daggers every single time, though. They love throwing that out as safe pressure and taking that away from them might put them on tilt pretty fast.
In regards to EX Divekick, are you talking about her Spiral Arrow or Cannon Strike out of Scramble? Either way, I jumped over to the Decapre forums and found these handy dandy charts they made for themselves showing all the frame advantages for both Cannon Strike and Spiral Arrow based on where they land on block. The fun part will be actively recognizing the different heights she lands at in the middle of a live match and then reacting appropriately.
For the Cannon Strike chart, it’s frame advantage for both hit and block based on whether she used MK Scramble or HK Scramble. EX Cannon Strike has the same frame advantage on both hit and block, hence only the one number.
For the Spiral Arrow chart, it’s only frame advantage on block since on hit it causes a knockdown.
Also take note that these values might vary slightly due to the fact that Makoto is shorter than Ken. It’s something that’ll probably need to be tested, but these charts are still a good place to start.


Nope, you can just spam jab to punish.
Balrog is all about fundamentals and good focus / jumps on predictions against dash punches and laggy normals. Neutral jump > HK axekick is a good tool to bait and beat some timing on dash punch.
Against Viper, on your wake up, it can be really tough, no options are totally safe, but Makoto totally owns Viper when viper is on the ground. Meaty crMK beats all her options ( EX Seismo, HP TK, LK burnkick ). You just have to be good at the timing.
Ibuki is difficult. Don’t try Fukiage, their setups usually beat it all the time unless very obvious delay. wake up fadc backdash can be okay against her, but the timing is kinda strict and sometimes you dash the wrong side and she can punish you for it. Just try to not get knockdown at all cost. We don’t dominate her on the ground that much, since her crMP is insane, but yhe damage convertion we have is miles ahead of Ibuki’s.
Also, crouch tech with HK, beats her overhead ( yeah it’s that slow for crHK to work )
I’ve been having a bit of trouble with the Honda match up recently. I’ve been figuring it out more and more but I wanted to get people’s opinions on dealing with him in the air. Neutral jumping is fine as cr.hk does a decent job of beating that out from distance. Its that stupid hand chop move he has on a jump forward. The problem is that because its so active and covers such a large up and down distance in that time he can vary the pressing of the button which screws with my anti-air timing. its beat out st.mk and cr.mk with me at points due to the varied timing of the button press. I had contemplated lp.DP but at the distance this honda jumps in at me if he empty jumps my DP would whiff and it would be hundred hands city for me. mp.DP is probably a better option for guaranteeing a hit but if I am even slightly late I eat a full jump in combo. Meterless as well Honda can do about 350 damage on Makoto as he can end the hands combo by doing a normal into HP headbutt.
Should I just be focusing the jump in then back dashing to reset the situation or should I try and challenge it every time? How does everyone else deal with the jump in. Videos will be uploaded onto youtube soon so Ill try and post these up when I can.
Honda’s jMP is a huge issue. Not sure what to do either about it. grounded anti air aren’t effective against it.
Focus backdashing doesn’t work too great because the crLP > hands will catch the grounded recovery of it.
Focus absorb the jMP hit and release never worked for me, his crLP just hit too son to get the counterhit needed.
I haven’t tried jHP against it, maybe that could work decent.
The key against Honda so far for me has always been to be the one pressuring and avoiding his offence.
February 13, 2015, Night of the Fucking Dictator.
Okay can we talk about Dictator for a bit? They’re just everywhere tonight, seen more than Ken and Evil Ryu combined, and that’s saying something. Did Max start playing Dictator? Why the hell is everyone suddenly playing this character?
As such, Devil’s Reverse is the bane of my goddamn existence. Superior air-to-air priority, safe from everything, recovers instantly on the ground, can do 7 bajillion moves out of it or just fly backwards like an asshole. It’s too far to hit with EX Hayate, beats Fukiage. In addition to that he has 1-button footsies, free crouch tech/Scissor Kick pressure that are built in focus breakers, 2 invulnerable reversals (albeit with meter), half screen slide, and a teleport to boot. I’m just so pissed off with this damn match up. Why the fuck is everything he does so safe?
Deliver me from my pain
(Or give me match up advise, please)
not going to go to far into it cause I’m tired and haven’t really put time into her since canada cup. if i see just a raw devils i neutral or f.jump mp. stuffs the reverse if he doesn’t cancel it early mp hits. if he does you usually land to safety. if he just uses it as a means to build meter from far it is punishable with at the very least ex hayate/u2. take it to the training room with these options in mind. in term of footsies keep yourself just outside of st.hk range. this either forces him to do one of 3/4 things. kill his charge in favor of ground to hit a mk/hk(both whiff punishable with hp) or jump. he’ll hold his ground to keep charge giving you freedom of movement and priority of normals(cr.mp,mp,hk all beat raw scissors with proper timing and are good answers to his based normals). back off to hold charge and reset the situation which again gives makoto the advantage. on his pressure remember he doesn’t have an overhead and if he gets a throw in it leads to nothing. tech only if he is in range. on that note if he does a scissor kick he isn’t +. he gets to agressive he can get a hk or mp to the face. in terms of our offense once you get a knockdown corpse hop him to kill charge and mp os his wake up. without meter he has very few or no safe options(safest probably being block). if he has meter he can ex reverse but its not safe. os fuki should catch him but if not forward jump mp stuffs him clean. try to stay out of the air on this one. his hk does well against tsurugi.
To add to Kaiten’s post:
When Bison attempts a headstomp do not fukiage it, it may be a devil’s reverse in disguise and the recovery from a fukiage is long enough for Bison to follow up on. A better option is to either focus or dash backward/forward and punish. Also if you know Bison will teleport and where to you can punish with U2: @ 1:36 . I’ve also heard that Bison’s do not like getting hit directly on top of their heads as they can’t anti-air it, so you could also go for the jump toward HP if you are not afraid of the HK.
Hey BigMcLargeHuge, you whipped my butt in a mirror match recently
Fukiage may lose to the knife, but it’s better to lose while airborne (MP,HP Fukiage airborne 1-2/3f) and get flung out of vortex for 40 damage, than eat the combo. One time seen Fukiage beat the knife, may have been Ibuki’s mistake. Had read this tip somewhere and it’s worked out for me since. Ibuki is a pain and a half… good luck!
No way, really? What was your name on Steam?
Now that you mention it, I’m seeing a lot more Makotos lately. I used to hate mirror matches but for some reason the Makoto mirror match has become the most fun match up in the game. She’s unique in a sense that all the things Makoto is weak against she also has as tools against herself. It’s possibly the most honest match up in the game!
My handle is corazonazulxx
There have been more Makotos that’s true. I just lose my sh*t in a mirror matches for some reason, human instinct factors in not to kill myself, and I think I empty grabbed you twice. The Makotos in furry costumes are better because they actually make me a little angry (joke, don’t want to start a costume war)
Here is an unflattering clip today versus an Ibuki where I’m using the MP Fukiage in attempt to escape kunai. It ends up converting, which I’m still getting used to- lol. I figure it’s worth trying most of the time, because if it works once they tend to give it all up
sweet, so mp fukiage actually hits! I’ve been using lp fuki and been hitting only kunai but not ibuki, she lands and continues to destroy me.
Holy wow, that’s a great find. I’m going to try that out and see how much mileage I can get out of it. Stopping the Ibuki vortex should weed out the Day-1 autopilots from the legit Ibukis at any rate.
I went to my Battle Log to see if our matches were still there. They were not. Scrolling through my Battle Log revealed that I had fought 4 other Makotos since our matches though, where not even a month ago I’d see another Makoto once maybe every other week.