Pretty much. It allows you to focus on frames you would normally be vulnerable.
Tested it on a decent Ryu and is pretty situational but is good as a safe jump.
It catches a lot of people off guard too.
i think its like, a manipulation of how the game skips the first few frames of things, like when you get hit out of the air and do reversal snakestrike, rufus never touches the ground.
what are peoples’ worst rufus habits?
- predictable dive kicking
- dive kicking into charging focus, when I see it before I press df+k
- dive kicking into predictable/patterned ‘psychic dps’
- not mixing it up between high and low
- I fall into the trap of doing consistently doing dive kick, st.LK, st.LK, then triangle dive kick, st.LK, st.LK, cr.LP xx EX tornado; this is just a tic but obv symptomatic of not high/low mixing up
- not throwing enough off dive kicks
- too high dive kicks against chars with dps
- being impatient and chasing opp. with dive kicks across the screen <-- eating many reversals
best/worst habit:
-ES messiah kick…lol i have gotten out of so many ultras/super/blockstrings/mixups b/c of it. and my yomi is good enough that i’ll hit people out of things i can predict, but its only a matter of time before everyone and their mother knows how to punish blocked ex.messiah kick
oh yeah that’s another one
- random ex messiah from too far away :(((((
I have started to play c.viper now too. she is one sick lady. seismo, sjc, burning kicks is too fruity
Good habit: Random HP Tornados. Stuffs pokes, Blanka crap, Headbutts, Sean kicks and fireballs.
Bad habit: Shitty divekicks that are too high, not MK rolling out of cross ups and really poorly timed c.hp’s. Oh, and not jab tornadoing FA’s
One of the things that piss me off about Ryu is that if I go into him for J.HP an he does a DP, and we ended up trading hits hes still available to catch you in a ultra rofl its happened so many times.
Anyways, been watching a few high level gameplay on sf4 with ZAK (UK) & also Poongko (Korea), there the only 2 players Ive ever seen that actually use the “Focus” system consistently in there play. Weather it hits/crumples or still keeps the opponent on block, its even good to catch them in there recovery time.
Ive only seen people FA fireballs at most same going for my self.
Poongko - [media=youtube]y-fu5vuEtrY[/media]
^^^ Does anyone use FA as much as this guy?
I use focus quite a bit, although I’m nowhere near poongkos level.
you can use it to bait armour breaking moves against players who like to bust them out on reaction. which is risky, but I’d say worth it if it gets them second guessing themselves.
the focus definitely works great against a bunch of things e.g. rog dash punches, people who never do empty jump-ins, bla bla bla. it’s not something you can abuse, though… you really have to be focused on your opponents tendencies.
here’s an idea I had against reversal happy shotos that I haven’t tested. sometimes against those guys I’ll do a little cr.lp / cr.lk block string and then sit there and just block. maybe charging a focus attack is a better idea than just blocking?
I thought, hell, sometimes they’ll whiff a throw tech / option select, sometimes they’ll do a shoryuken, sometimes they’ll do nothing… all these situations seem pretty favourable. you either get a free combo or release the focus and keep putting pressure on them.
of course it’d be easy to counter by them just walking up and throwing or doing a hurricane kick or something, but it doesn’t seem like a bad thing to mix in there every so often.
all i do is focus ;]
my problem is a lack of focus 
same, need to work that into my gameplay.
Also does anyone go for this mixup:
Dive Kick xx St.LK xx St.HP xx Fierce Galactic Tornado (FADC), Cr.MK xx EX Galactic Tornado, (ULTRA).
^^ That’s worked for me a bunch of times
After FADC you could add in another;
-Throw
or even reset the whole combo again.
Obviously it’s not a full combo but just want to know does anyone ever cancel there Galactic Tornado for a mix up?
I’d only do tht if it’d win me the round, that’s a lot of meter to burn in one go
I always like to have at least one messiah stocked, cos ruf is a different char with one of those good to go
lol there is 1 bar left from it.
That’s only taking away 3 bars and a Ultra, and plus its at least 50 or 60% of there health gone.
worst habit… doing cr fp when opponent has just left the ground…
oh shi-! my bad, sorry kritz
I’ll be trying this, minus the link. I’m very far from having any reliable link combos right now. Very far.
See cozeny the mixup works lol.
I feel like a douche asking this but I must be missing something. I was trying the rufus challenge mode & got to east lvl3. It starts with FP>Fierce tornado. I can’t get this to connect. The fierce pushes him away & the tornado dosent get the first hit. How is this done? I’ve watched the video & I have done alot of the challenges I just can’t for the life of me figure this out. I’ve tried canceling super fast & waiting for a link but neither seem to get it for me.
just hold forward after you do the fireball motion.
qc(f) + hp
(f) = hold forward
Good Games NB2.
Albeit a little laggy it was tons of fun.
You Rufus and Chun are beasty. Hope to play you again soon.