Hello guys. I wanted to post this in the Critique thread but hasn’t been very active lately, so I was hoping to get some quick critique here if possible. I began playing SF4 February this year, (I know, I’m very late). So far I’ve accumulated around 250 hours of playtime, which really isn’t much. Since I started playing, I’ve been having an extremely difficult time managing to get any victories at all. So I have 3 brief matches I wanted to share, and was hoping to get criticism on what I need to work on and what I’m doing wrong. Thank you very much. (I’m the Evil Ryu player)
Saw the first match on stream today.
You basically just let him jump in for days and let him do what he wants. When he pushes himself out of range with his blockstrings, contest him with a button when he moves forward again and watch for the jump.
You basically held down back all the time and never got to bring your own offense.
That dude is pretty good though so I wouldnt feel too bad.
Yeah, he is a very good player. I didn’t expect to win that match at all, but I felt like I literally couldn’t move. Every time he jumped in, I was unable to anti-air because I guess I don’t have the reactions for it. I don’t really know how to improve that. And every time I tried to hit him, he would just land counter-hits on me. And I couldn’t escape his block-strings either…None of my normals seem to reach him when he pushed me out of range with his blockstrings. I kept trying low-forward but it just won’t reach.
When he’s in your face pressing buttons you have to be very careful about pressing buttons back. 95% of the time this means just block until he is out of range. When you have a better understanding of the frame data, you can begin to challenge more.
Anti-airing is not only about reactions but also anticipation. He jumped after basically every pressure string, so even if you have poor reactions you should have anticipated it.
Learn when you, your opponent or neither is at an advantage/disadvantage.
You not anticipating his jump might be a symptom of you not particularly caring what the opponent does. Like, you’re only thinking about what you want to do without considering what the opponent gives you.
Match 2:
At about 8 seconds in I’d classify the Ibuki as a nut. I’ve already seen two slides and a jump and I’d assume that this is pretty much the extent of his footsie game. At that point my strategy would be to just block and anti air, letting him hang himself.
Match 3:
Pretty much the same as match 2 but slightly less nutty. It’s quite quickly apparent that his neutral game is air approaches and sweeps.
I think the clearest thing to notice is the lack of anti airs. It took me ages to realise that I have to be constantly looking out and anticipating when he is going to jump and throwing fireballs in a pattern which in turn can make him jump if he anticipates wrong.
I played many matches literally just focusing on pressing down fierce whenever I saw them jump. Of course I would still try and win but that’s what most of my attention was focused on. After a while it became easier to recognise patterns in people’s jumps and overall helped my reaction times. From there I worked on trying to DP every jump in instead of down fierce and built up the reaction time the same way. Once you have focused on that aspect of the game enough it seems to come a lot more natural as you play.
Though now I play Guile so it’s a swift FK which is easier to react with to be honest.
I’m not the greatest of players but that’s just what I saw most was no anti airs and often that can change the entire outcome of a game. If people don’t have jumping in on you to rely on, it can break them. I’ve had enough people message me that I’m playing cheap and lame because I am simply just punching them for jumping in on me and for some reason they don’t stop.
You’re right. I have a bad habit of pressing buttons during my opponents blockstrings because I am trying to either crouch-tech, or I’m trying to land a counter-hit on them. But it doesn’t work very well. The majority of the time I just get counter-hit and then I eat a ton of damage. So I’m not sure what the best response is to a blockstring honestly. I guess I’ll try just blocking from now on and not mashing anything, like you said. Although, how can I use framedata to my advantage for blockstrings? I’m not really well versed on framedata. I’ve researched it a little bit, but it’s pretty intimidating. Hopefully I’ll grasp it eventually.
And yeah, I should have anticipated the jump ins better. I think in that particular match, I was just nervous because the match was being livestreamed and I knew the opponent I was fighting was a very skilled and popular player, so yeah… It kinda messed me up I feel. But I will definitely work on that. If I do anti-air, should I only stick with Medium DP? Since it has the most invincibility?
Also, lol. Ya I totally had no idea what the hell I was doing during the Ibuki match. I don’t have any knowledge in that matchup at all. But I can see now that I did miss a few good opportunities to anti-air, and that I didn’t block very well which could have prevented me from taking a lot of damage.
Um, when I began playing in February I started with Ryu, and I played him for a few months and then transitioned over to Evil Ryu. I hate normal Ryu. Lol.
You can check and see which normals give frame advantage, and how many start up frames your normals have. It’s a bit much information to take in at first, but generally you only need to know that a normal is plus something, negative something or neutral on block, not the exact value. If you concentrate on one character at a time you’ll learn it in no time. Crouch teching is fine, but you’re doing it too rapidly, slow it down a bit. And if he’s at a range where you can react to him walking there’s no point to crouch teching.
Yeah, MP shoryu is the best option due to it’s invincibility. A more advanced tactic you can use once in a while is late LP shoryu, and try to go for the trade, which will net you a juggle follow up. I’m not sure what exactly Evil Ryu can follow up with but plain Ryu can follow up with ultra 1 and ex fireball at least. If you’re not confident with your reactions it’s fine to use cr.HP, and far HK (Evil Ryus is the same as Ryus right?) at further ranges, to get you more comfortable with the idea of anti airing.
I have very little Ibuki matchup experience so I can’t give you any advice on how to escape the vortex unfortunately.
