You are being too conservative, and it is possible your friend just knows your techniques and you are predictable to him. Brief history of myself: I played Gouken as a zoning runbot for a long time and enjoyed modest success. Only in the past few months have I grown tired of playing that way and now force myself out of my comfort zone to play much more aggressively. It has been overall a vast improvement in the way I feel about the way I’ve played, win or lose. I still huddle in crouch block too much but I catch myself and demand more from myself.
How does he react to your rushdown? How does he deal with divekick pressure and mixups? Adjust your game, adapt to his tactics. That is what Gouken does best…better than most. I’m not trying to come off as a dick but from your posts it sounds like you think you are losing because Cody can slide. That sounds like you are relying way too much on hadoukens and he has you scared to press buttons. Try playing one match, or round even, where you throw zero hadoukens. If you’re already losing to him, what’s it going to hurt? Have a video?
Cody has to take risks to get in. He’s not fast like Adon or overtooled like Akuma and Seth. He can: Jump in(unsafe), EX ruffian kick in(unsafe), slide(unsafe), focus dash(unsafe). Am I missing any?
About him sliding at a good range…that means YOU are at the wrong range. You have to put yourself where his options are unsafe. Don’t forget that you have your command divekick also (down + mk) which changes your jump arc and hits crouching Cody. Hit it low to combo with st.mk xx lp.palm or if he blocks try for a grab.
About ex zonk…block it or jump it. At worst, he wasted a bar.
I do try to play aggressively sometimes but I tend to be more successful if I’m conservative. In regards to how I’m losing…it’s mostly due to Cody’s mixups once I get knocked down. The majority of the damage I receive is just guessing wrong lol. I’ll definitely consider some of the stuff you mentioned the next time I play.
Ah, that’s the slide you were talking about! That explains the confusion. For sliding under fireballs, I would agree, if he’s good on reaction you aren’t going to have good punish for it most of the time. Capcom didn’t design Gouken to be the perfect zoner, only a good one.
That being said, most players (myself included) can only be ready to respond to one or two scenarios at any given time. If you’re giving him fireballs and that’s what he’s prepared for, you’re going to get beat. Do something different, sometimes just walking towards an opponent is the most confusing curve ball you can throw at someone, especially if you’ve been trying to zone them out the whole round. Or throw in the occasional DF grab, then switch it with a dive kick. As for Cody’s frame traps, your mp kongo beats a LOT of his frame trap moves, use and abuse!
As a Cody player, I can say that this is real good advice. I can say that with Kongo, don’t abuse it too much; we’ll eventually wise up and either tick throw, or if we feel we have a good read, bingo through it or LK Ruffian through it for an untechable knockdown (at least that’s what I’d do).
But yeah, mix up your options and keep Cody guessing. Once you get that knockdown, stay on him. Cody cries when he gets pressured himself. Just watch out for EX bingo (which as you know is kinda our only reversal option outside of Bad Spray).
Holy crap. ran into my first really good Cody today. That frametrap/tick throw game is BRUUUTAL. I don’t think there is one safe entrance to attack Cody. Just pray that I guess right then begin the pointless fireball throwing from scratch. The thing that gets me is the Bingo. Is that move completely safe? Wtf am I supposed to do after Cody does that? Do you guys just sit there and late tech the entire match? Cuz that’s what I do…
You have to be cerrtain of what beats what vs cody, and how back to stay while working in some kongos. I think when we see U1 loses to a few of Cody’s ex moves and BOTH ultras IIRC on reaction and those sakura-esque ranged poke-confirms, this turns into a hurry up and wait sitchy…
Avoid jumping into poke range with the intention of nudging your way into combo/sweep range, dont gflip throw unless baited properly.
If the match becomes stagnant, u most likely have meter at this point…allow a couple weak jump-ins to become countered or AA’ed in such a fashion that they chase the taste of blood , mindgames////…
BUT when they begin post hard-knock pursuit ex flip sweep>wake up shenanigans…or ex flip>asap kick cancel to make ex upper and other attacks whiff
This is an ebb and flow match, make him follow you while keeping him just outside effective ranges and try to set up that back dj.hk>sweep welcome mat.
Use gflip parry or dive kicks from far back early on to convince him he owns you in the air w armor break ruff kicks, wait for that pressure and just abandon him when applicable this adds to their sense of urgency at this point and makes them follow you all around the screen,
Like much of the cast dj.mk applied properly to his wake is your best friend…keep in mind faux and safe setups where applicable
vs standing Cody - dj.mp>air tatsu is great w varied setups as jump in mp opens up alot of his normals as he tries to react to our weirdest yet deceptive jumping normal, keep in mind dj.mp Os’es also faux and safe setups from here also.
breathe…hadoukennnnnn!!!
He is harder to stand toe to toe as both approach mid screen…
slide / walking fbs from far away to bait fadc’s and fdashes, buffered with mpalm , st hp, far hk are great built in counters when used behind these hadous…
took this advice under my hat and went back against the same Cody. Actually did really well this time. was able to zone him out much better. Became more aware of when I was putting myself at disadvantage and tried to be more calm and it seemed to really make a difference. On your point about letting him anti air a few times… your advice about the taste of blood is so true. I think that greediness, in some degree, dictates a lot of decisions for higher tier characters. they all just think they can win as soon as you get hit!
So I was doing pretty well, but the thing is, he started doing this thing where he’d mix up his frametrap to throw pressure with a neutral jump HP (the one where he balls both fists and comes overhead with it). That just destroyed me… I just gotta get faster on the CS.HK. I want to get to the point where if anyone is anyone NEAR the top of my head and I’m not knocked down its an instant CS.HK for them. Same thing was happening when he picked Adon for a few rounds… instead of throw he’d go for NJ.HK… shit is broken.
I did a set with a 17k Cody and went 8-6 and the matches were pretty hype. I’ll put it up later for any feedback.
The matches that he won, I really sucked at AA and missed some good opportunities but overall they were solid matches.
But boy was his poke game serious.
One thing he kept bringing the pain on, is what happens if your opponent predicts back grab and neutral jumps. Back grab has a lesser recovery than forward grab… so I should be forward throwing and going for counter hit more with frame traps up close.
Here it is, we are both taking it out and dishing it.
I really hate the kongo nerf. It’s been the biggest adjustment I’ve had to make, b/c I would just kongo neutral jumps. Along with bad Anti Air, I think I was late on some of my Air to Air exchanges. So those are the major things I’m going to focus on.
I missed a couple of safe jumps too… but that just boils down to execution.
You’ll see a lot of do’s and dont’s on both sides, and you’ll definitely see a solid Cody worth his salt.
Great matches. I think one of my main flaws is staying inside people’s areas of attack for too long. I noticed you will strategically retreat more than I do.
Yeah, it’s one of my good/bad flaws b/c I jump in waaaaaay too much when I don’t need to b/c I’m not that patient. I normally try to play in and out basing most of my pressure off of hard knock down. Looking at the fights I missed a lot of big damage combos and I could have used MP kongo A LOT as well as using HP hado for AA.
Not that I timed it that great, but some Cody’s will try to throw stones when you hado and if you catch them in a pattern you can EX Flip from the other side of the screen and punish them hard. As long as Gouken has meter, he can pretty much attack from anywhere on the screen, so it compliments his in and out game very well.
Cody is tough to zone b/c he can slide underneath your fireballs and still move forward. Historically, I never throw a bunch of hado’s at him b/c of that. So you’ll see me neutral randomly to make sure he isn’t trying Ruffian Kick too much to close the gap, as long as he doesn’t have meter to FADC afterwards it’s not too risky for Gouken in regards of risk reward. He misses and he can lose half his health. You can also get safe jump cross up / ambig. dj mk on Cody anytime you want after hard knock down and it’s nothing he can do about it offensively, unless he can Bingo > FADC to safety.
Most Cody’s are overly aggressive with jump ins and frame traps, I defended well at times and then there were other times where I just didn’t block and he hit confirmed the shit out of me every time.
I could have used d+mk to short jump a few times too, and I don’t think I used it at all, and I didn’t use my trademark Point Blank EX Flip set up at all.
Lastly… I got punished HARD for going for Back Throw too much… note to self… either forward throw or frame trap.
Really good matches IAM…lots of back and forth. I noticed you AA every single jump in lol. He was killing you with his neutral jumping though. I know the feeling…Goukens j.hp (the Hammerfist as I call it) beats EVERYTHING so its good for us to neutral jump. One of the few things we dont beat though is Cody’s j.hk because its angled downward and has a huge hitbox. Cody’s j.hp is really really good too. So after you block a lvl 1 focus from him, he dashes in and neutral jumps while you would throw. Then you yourself started neutral jumping but his j.hp was beating yours because you guys were face to face in the air. I think ours is better at a slight distance. Im rambling…excellent games.
I think I lost a lot of Air to Airs b/c he hit the button before me, you have to play a lot to have real good reactions in this game. My mind would be thinking hit em, and my hand would be on lunch break.
Played another good Cody and doing much better with predicting when he was going to go all out agro and started using sweep more when he would begin to walk in to range. Also realized that from about 1 character length away you can jump in with command divekick and it will beat his anti-air Ruffian Kick… but he can still use his standing MP anti-air…
Actually, I’m still having a lot of trouble with his neutral jumping in throw range. CS. HK doesn’t seem to reach him sometimes and doing a high kongo is an invitation for a beat down if he just does an empty neutral jump.
Lol but those are you’re only two options. I normally start off using cl.st.hk because it trains your opponent to believe that you’re actually going to hit them with something and they themselves try to attack. If you start off with kongo he’s probably gonna just empty neutral jump, cr.lk, tornado. But those are your only options when someone is above your head so its a guessing game. If neither of those are working consistently for you, I would switch to doing cr.lk to avoid any mid air attack and then you should be able to throw him or worst comes to comes, block. Either way, the worst that can happen in the cr.lk scenario is you block and be neutral.
EDIT: Also if he’s OS’ing the neutral jump it’ll be good for you because you’ll cr.lk, his attack will whiff and the OS will come out.
I play but not everyday… I’ll play 2 days and wont’ play for another 4 or 5. That’s not good enough. And I’ll only play in short stints.
I’m trying to get back to the point, to where I am playing daily, and it seems every time I come back I’m a little slow to reacting and my timing would be off. Doing Tatsus when I don’t want to… not waking up right… not anti airing… teching… too much cr. roundhouse… just a lot of dumb shit b/c I haven’t been playing.