Yeah, that’s the kind of Cody I fear. Did you try being completely unpredictable and aggressive? Harass his wake up…hard? Dash a lot, throw a lot of lp palm randomly at max range and stop comboing into fireball…combo into flip or palm instead. Grab him and air grab him. It sounds like he wanted you to try to zone him and you gave him what he wanted. The problem is going on offense is rough because on neutral ground he wins with his normals and specials, he blows up kongo fishing with zonk, and his anti-airs are good vs Gouken because of his high ruffian kick that breaks armor on reversal and his back + st. mp(?) actually kicks the shit out of jump ins.
I think you have to really pay attention to when he’s using that focus and that zonk and work off that. His level one focus on hit and block both leave him at a disadvantage (-21) but I’m not sure how much of that is canceled by his dash. I believe zonk is only upper body invincible (ex is fully invincible) and it’s -8 I believe, but the pushback makes it hard to do anything to. Trying to go toe to toe without that knowledge is going to get you an L.
Played a very solid Cody and was able to beat him pretty handily by abusing dash-in grabs on his Focus spamming and just generally running away constantly with HK tatsu whenever he closed the distance. I was able to read his counter hit setups pretty well too and beat him with MP-Parry and Sweep. He didn’t mix in grabs off 1 or 2 jabs like he should have tho and didn’t use NJ-HP to beat throw tech either.
My only real problem was that I could not stop his jump in’s in the slightest. I would always realize about 5 frames too late that he’d jumped. I feel like he’s on you in about 20 frames with that brutal HK, which is around the limit of my reaction time. If I could bait his jump-ins with sweep or backdash I was able to punish with HP-parry or EX-tatsu but if he just jumped in the middle of a string or from a far distance I couldn’t do anything. How do you guys deal with it?
Do you have a video to show what he’s doing? Chances are if it’s not meaty then Gouken should have a few ways to avoid it.
If he’s doing jab jab, jump > cross you up… then you can…
-walk under him and hk or throw him but they can sometimes tech depending on how early they hit the button
-jump back mp (buffer air tatsu if you want) (this move is very under-rated. as it has a 4 frame start up and crazy hit box)
-block it
-kongo him every now and then (only after you’ve tagged him a few times, to make sure he won’t empty jump)
and then there are a few unconventional things you can do to avoid it as well like walking under him and whiffing cr. lk to lower your hit box to make him miss and something else that I won’t stress until after the update the nerf stick is still out there, so I’ll be shhhhhhh on that one
Thanks that’s helpful. He was just doing it in footsie range, neutral game. It’s just that the HK was hitting so fast I couldn’t react to it with EX tatsu or HP parry as much as I tried. It’s like right at the limit my brain can compute to anti-air, so I would just opt to always block.
I think jump back MP buffered tatsu would be an amazing response to that actually as it’s the least amount of button input. Obviously I would rather go with anti-air normals if possible but HK beats all of them. I wish there weren’t jumping normals that just beat out every anti-air normal…but I guess that would leave us without our ridiculous disjointed hitbox on divekick :-p
When it comes to Cody bring the wrath of the shoto gods upon him especially when he has no meter!
Learn to footsie Cody and use c.fp for AA and train the Cody player that he can’t jump in
this match to me is about who ever gets the knock down gets the advantage, it goes both ways not just in Cody’s favor especially when you have a shin sho ready.
I have a lot of trouble with this match-up. I feel like when Cody is on top of me, there’s not really a way out.
I also feel like if he has meter, I don’t really have any options he can’t get around on reaction or at worst, a “soft” prediction. His Focus Attack is the stuff of nightmares.
I’m still trying to figure it out, but one thing that helps a bit is staggering your fireballs. Fire one, and then charge one, so if he tries to slide under or focus through:
it hits a slide!
you have time to see the focus and FADC after throwing the fireball
I also really like doing cancellable normals into Kongoshin against any character who has an annoying focus attack like Cody, or against players that try to abuse Gouken’s mid-range focus problem in general. For cody specifically, stand short into kongo will be really solid in Ultra!
I have a lot of trouble with this match-up. I feel like when Cody is on top of me, there’s not really a way out.
***This is what I meant when I said who ever gets the knock down gets the advantage and may win the match…
I also feel like if he has meter, I don’t really have any options he can’t get around on reaction or at worst, a “soft” prediction. His Focus Attack is the stuff of nightmares.
***When he has meter stop throwing fireballs for zoning and starting using fireballs for footsie ground game only…
I’m still trying to figure it out, but one thing that helps a bit is staggering your fireballs. Fire one, and then charge one, so if he tries to slide under or focus through:
it hits a slide!
you have time to see the focus and FADC after throwing the fireball
***Maybe good to use once but this is too much risk in my opinion.
I also really like doing cancellable normals into Kongoshin against any character who has an annoying focus attack like Cody, or against players that try to abuse Gouken’s mid-range focus problem in general. For cody specifically, stand short into kongo will be really solid in Ultra!
***Due to the delay wake up in Ultra I think this match will be harder for Gouken…
Ultra: U1 is the best in this match as cody hates throws and has high stun bar.
**Attacking: **
Grabbing is very strong against cody. tick throw him with cr. lp and st. mp.
Push him to the corner, as soon as you can. Once he starts attacking, he can easily push you back, so having some room behind will help defending too.
you can out-footsie him. cr. lk is the key. he has very little moves that beat it.
— cr. hp breats his st. hk.
— st. hp beats his st. mk.
— cr. hk beats most of his crouch pokes
if you demon flip grab him on wake up or on resets, you have time to AA him in case he up jumps to avoid it.
after forward throw, there’s a 50/50 mix up with dash immediate ex flip late dive kick and a dash delayed ex divekick (first crosses up, second hits in front)
he sucks on wake up so OS everything with ex tatsu and it will beat his ex bingo(zonk knuckle)
Defending:
on wake up, mix up: blocking(best option), backdashing vs throws, stand tech vs throws, ex counter os throw escape
ex counter one in 3 pokes when out of grab range.
everytime you do a counter, OS throw escape
after his f+mp, he has frame advantage, but the best poke for him will be st. lp(as he doesn’t have frames on anything else at that range in case you block). beat it with st. lk.
all his ruffian kicks are highly punishable on block(full cr. hp combo), except for well timed lk slide. throw that one.
ex bingo is punishable with full combo. normal ones are too but might be pushed too far if he charges them all the way
ex criminal upper is punishable with u1.
don’t tech throws if he has 4 bars. he will ex bingo any button presses and hit you with a 700 hundred stun combo. next hit you’re dead.
don’t stand much when he’s in range for ex slide
he can ex slide your fb’s on reaction when he has ex slide
he can U2 your fbs when in range.
Denjin beats ex bingo, as the invincibility outlasts it(13 frames of invincibility roughly).
the best poke is st. lp as it gives frames. if he does cr. lk and you block it, it doesn’t give him frames, so he won’t be able to follow up with anything before you hit him. this is what I wrote
Ehhh. It’s really hard to tell if he just has better ground control now with better normals or if the lag is throwing me off, but he’s smothering me and every damn thing I’m trying to do to stay in front or control my space is just countered. I think zonk and his anti air kick that breaks armor have really gotten into my head, never mind his criminal upper being damn near impossible to punish for Gouken because Gouken needs to be right next to somebody to use his fastest normals. His cr.lp and cr.lk require different kongos, lead to criminal upper which is free chip at least plus he could just throw out ex zonk or whatever so kongo kind of sucks in this match. IDK. I just try to stay offensive but then I end up jumping too much. If I close distance to pressure him on the ground, more often than not I’m the one running into pressure.
I play against a Cody for literally hours a day. In AE it felt awful, in Ultra it seems a little better.
Cody has to be zoned. His anti airs are too good, and jumping in is really hard. Once he has meter he can react to fireballs if he expects them with a full screen slide, so zoning him isn’t easy either. He’s almost a grappler without an actual command grab. If he has no meter, you can spam fireballs and anti-air him to your heart’s content until he’s in his focus attack range. Do not use fireballs or sweep much in Cody’s focus range. Also, know that he can quickly dash in and focus from just outside of his focus range if he predicts a fireball.
You can’t be afraid to play footsies with him. Low normals like crouching strong and short are pretty good at keeping cody out, with low short in particular stuffing zonk knuckle if he gets cute with it too much. Another amazing normal, especially as of Ultra, is standing light kick. You can get tons of mileage against Cody by mixing s.lk buffered to EX Tatsu or light palm with your fireball game. Buffering far standing short to light palm is safe against Cody and if it doesn’t hit, you just get a standing jab instead. Dance around at just outside his poke/focus range with c.lk, s.lk buffered to palm/ex tatsu, and the occasional fireball so he knows that you aren’t afraid to throw one. If he slides in anticipation of a fireball, your light normals will stuff it and you get free damage.
You can use light demon flip up close to pressure in the middle of your strings sometimes. It’s very good at making Bingo whiff. Cancelling your normal strings into light demon flip a couple of times can really make him think twice about whether or not he wants to release those punch buttons. Note he can still anti air those and it will hurt, so don’t go using it too often, but used sporadically it can be a real headache for Cody.
Do:
Play footsies with light kicks (crouching and standing) and buffer standing ones into light palms.
Bait slides with s.MP.
Parry mid, or EX Parry if you must parry, but have care, as everything he has breaks armor or something.
Fireball at good ranges when he doesn’t have meter.
Punish light criminal upper with crouching jab->EX Tatsu if you’re in range, Super if you have the meter.
Occasionally use light demon flip in pressure strings (to grab or divekick).
Bait zonk by interrupting your own pressure strings to block.
Occasionally backdash at the beginning of round 2
Use fthrow->dash forward->delayed EX Divekick cross-up setup for normal wakeup. You can choose not to delay it, if he’s wise to this setup. The delay will make it beat DWU!! Very ambiguous and meaty, very strong.
Don’t:
Sweep in his focus range.
Charge fireballs for oki on his wake-up or almost ever
Throw out too many fireballs when he has meter.
Hit buttons while blocking and especially don’t crouch tech. 3 frame normals still get beaten by almost anything from Cody. Eat the throw and move on with your life, lol.
Use faux-setups. You will get hit by Ruffian->crack kick->EX Criminal Upper and it will hurt.
The lp criminal upper has been made -4 in USFIV, so the st.lp xx tatsu punish wil not work, in AE it was 1 frame punish, not even worth it to try imo as the risk reward is way skewed in Cody his favour unless you plink with back. For the rest some good stuff.
the nerf stick is still out there, so I’ll be shhhhhhh on that one