- rep for you. I’m starting to get really excited about playing Rufus!
np man, im trying my best to post what I learn, but if you have questions, they’d be much easier to answer!
we gotta all lvl up this time around, cant let the japanese get too ahead of us =)
Kesh, can you give me some tips on how to deal with Blanka please? Vertical Roll can snuff out Dive Kicks and Blanka’s jumps are fast and dangerous because Rufus’ anti-airs don’t work very well against him.
Sure.
First, stay away from the air, we can’t do much, save the dive kicks for when hes knocked down so that he starts charging like an idiot, while hes doing that, either continue with the dive kick (worst case scenario it trades, best case he doesn’t go for anything and you get a hit, so follow up with cr. lk tornado or whatever is good at the time, normal case is he doesnt go for an anti air and he blocks (good blankas will), try your luck to tick throw him but an ADD blanka will have electricity out)
this is a not so fun match for rufus, we cant throw out our combos like crazy, you need to sit back, wait for him to do something (i can see this in my head, I need to confirm it) but if he throws out a canon ball on block, an EX messiah kick should get him. unfortunately his cr. hp as well as his other good pokes will get owned. my best advice is to not play cowboy, not try and hit all those cool combos, and just hit him as it goes on…i’ve found that against sims and blankas, patience will ultimately win you the match. wait for blanka to jump, hit him with j hk, delay for an ultra or ex dp his face off.
also note that the st. lk, st hk chain won’t always work =( blanka is the dumb.
everytime I play a blanka here, the person is usually not good (except mizoteru, in which case I was patient and just saw him poke, then i poked, which worked nicely) or I just got impatient and decided to hell with it, dive kick dive kick die leave with a sad face.
I guess that doesn’t help much, but seriously…patience does pay off
Thanks Kesh, good stuff.
I play patient against Blanka too, but I was hoping there were some tricks so that you can rush him down, but you have confirmed that you have to wait for the opportunity rather than being able to get in fast.
As CFAY points out, you can punish Blanka Ball by taking one step forward and then using crouching HP. EX Messiah Kick works too, but I like to keep the EX bar so that if I get knocked down it gives me an option after Blanka does his cross-up mindgames. I find that even though Blanka can often avoid getting hit (Blanka’s hop is invulnerable to the Messiah Kick on startup), it at least gets Rufus out of trouble.
Oh one more thing. My friend plays Blanka and we haven’t yet worked out a good punishment combo that knocks down. What do Japanese Blanka players do after lets say a missed Dragon Punch?
there is a string into electricity, might be like cr. lk, cr. lk, cr. lp electricity.
i dont know why blanka players go for the canonball, a knock down to blanka should be b&b
If you’re interested, check out my work-in-progress Rufus guide over at Neo Empire:
http://www.neoempire.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4137
It would be cool if the Rufus players could have a look at it and let me know if there is anything inaccurate on there.
looks really great, and the gifs makes it even easier to understand, good job, Rufus is proud :tup:
oh, i dont know the properties of fwd. + HP, but if its like Yuns…it should be able to hit with both hands right?
oh and maybe you could add some pressure strings, like the ones involving a Dive Kick. Good job btw
rufus seems ridiculously good. too good…
yo GG, good shit on that, I will find some time and post my comments, I like it so far, but it could be beefier
I’d like to work with you and some how make a flow chart for Rufus, I think most characters can use one.
Something like this
Dive in -> cr. lk -(combo’d? if dive in + cr.lk = 2 hits)> lp mwt -(super? yes)>qcfx2 p
Dive in -> cr. lk (not combo’d did it to high)> [block string] cr.lk, cr.lk, cr.lp, st. lp
ehh not sure if you get the idea, I’ll try and work on one.
yeah, its exactly like yuns, now to find a nice air reset so it can be useful…
Thanks. As I say it’s work in progress, there is loads more to do, but hey you have to start somewhere right! Hopefully after some time it will be a lot more complete.
Anyway Kesh could you answer another question for me please? I have seen a new combo performed by some Japanese players:
It’s at about 13 seconds. Rufus does Dive Kick, Stand Strong, Close MP xx HP Tornado - I think. I tried this combo today but had no luck. Do you need to link the standing short to close medium punch? Is this the most damaging combo Rufus can do?
If you can shed any light, that would be cool.
Okay so I went to FFA and played prob ~30 games today. At first I stank hard but I think that i’m pretty decent now. only problems i had were with one gief (i was throwing out stupid laggy moves), a super turtle guile (is there and air to air move that beats his mk/hk whichever?), and an akuma whom when i played, i forgot that fierce MWT went through fireballs. But anyway, a couple problems that I had that maybe some of you can help me with. I can not for my life connect hp, hpMWT. I just can’t, maybe 1/10. What is the timing on it? Is it quick like c.lk, lpMWT? or is there some delay? O and I don’t think that ever did my dive kicks combo into cl.HP. I was always thrown out.
Things i’ve figured out while playing:
st.HP is a very very very good aa, as long as they are not jumping in deep.
towards+HP seems to have very good priority, but unlike yun’s he does not take a huge step foward so it has limited range.
c.HP is very good at stuffing, but i quite frankly have to say it sucks. It is horribly laggy. If you throw that and they jump, its a free jump in combo, for any character. That is how i lost to the gief. Even though one of the best tactics against gief is to not get in his face and poke with c.HP, if he jumps thats a free j.Hp, lk, 360/banishingflat/whatever.
Fireballs seem relatively easy to deal with. See one coming, ex messiah kick over it for an easy knockdown. If no ex, wait late and dive kick over it or hpMWT through it. Akumas air fireballs are different. The trajectory is so strange on the light one, i swear its like its at a 25 degree angle instead of a 45 degree one.
Air to air j.HP works very well, and beats out alot of stuff. Didn’t get the chance to try it on guile.
Dive kicking on wakeup is strange. You have to time it just right or else you can get DP’d out of it. The wierdest part about it is even though the divekick has horrible priority, it seems to trade with everything non-ex.
I’ve found that the best way to play Rufus is to get in close and bug the shit out of them. But don’t force your way in, let it come to you, this is the beauty of rufus. Almost everytime i closed the gap on someone it was because i patiently waited for them to screw up. Ken fire ball then jump in? j.HK to ex SSN to put his ass in the corner and take a good chunk of his life away. Did I mention how easy it is to get by a fireball?
I have no problems performing j.HP, exMessiah kick (lk followup), fa-dashcancel… But after that i can never get the revenge out. Might just be the happ sticks but it seems that a exMWT comes out every time i try to do revenge. I do get it sometimes (and it feels so good), but most of the time it just wont work, so until they get new sticks (or i get a custom one to plug in?) I think i’m just gonna try to link exSSN after these reset-like moves.
O and if you do dive kick, c.lk, lpMWT, and it is blocked, throw and ex messiah kick. I swear it works…every…time.
Character strats:
Ken- played alot of these today. Not too tough of a match. Does get hairy if they are crossing you up and throwing block strings all day, but nothing one knockdown wont fix. His shoryuken doesn’t have alot of horizontal range, so if you dive kick not too close, it should be an easy bait. Towards+MK works if your both crouched close to each other, and since most of Rufus’ moves hit more than once, I rarely encounter someone trying to FA me.
Ryu: pretty much the same as ken
Guile: so annoying if the person has any idea what they are doing. I swear this character is THE turtle character in this game. This one and akuma. I’ll write more about guile when i win alot of matches. But since i won roughly 50% of my guile matches, I will say that c.HP isn’t good against him, because hes always charging (blocking), and ex messiah kick floats right over the booms. Don’t be too anxious about your dive kicks, cause flash kicks will stuff them like nothing.
Gief: when i played gief i turtled till i got a knockdown. I threw out many c.HPs which worked until they figured out what was going on. If they jump in HP (not j. down HP) you should hp as fast as you can, cause after a certain point in falling, their jump in actually beats your aa. Ex messiah through banishing flat. If your far and he starts spinning, hit him with a c.HP, its safe. If he’s close though, I have no idea what to do.
Blanka: I’d like to think this is a pretty even match. Play with a general strategy of waiting for a knockdown and going in for the kill after that. Normal stuff works (hp aa, c.hp poke). Blanka’s jumps are quick, which is good and bad. I like it because it gives them less reaction time so that i can jump up hk, exSSN and get some good damage in.
More after I come back from FFA tomorrow .
Remember that as soon as you do HP xx HP Tornado to hold towards after pressing punch for the Tornado. I had the same problem until I realised that’s what you had to do.
Timing is just like Ryu’s Fierce xx Fierce Dragon, so I think that’s all you are doing wrong.
I think the problem is, it isn’t stand strong, but f. lk 
very good pressure string, doing f.lk, f.lk (all on block) walk up throw gets almost everyone!
Man, why did I put stand strong :S.
OK, so you use Towards + LK, and then you link it it to Close MP, or is it another Target Combo?
Its not even the holding towards part, its getting the hpMWT to come out at all. Whenever it comes out i remember to hold towards, but it just doesn’t come out. I’ll post up some rufus vids after I come back from the arcade today, maybe you guys can dissect them and help me with my gameplay, even though the game juuuust came out.
Edit: another thing I wanted to ask, are any of the messiah kick followups safe on block? or if they block it is the best thing to just not push nething (if you know they are used to blocking the overhead on reaction).
o and http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=NxjX661cnTY for more of that fun lk,mp,MWT. Hey is that a HP mwt? it sure looks like it, rite around the end of the second round. But i dont think it has to be towards+lk does it? otherwise it would have been mentioned as a special normal.
Surprisingly enough, I don’t use that combo often, I will try to and tell you my findings.
Eh, and I meant st. lk, you don’t need to press f.!
Its not too bad, I used to have trouble with it too, just keep practicing, you’ll get the weird ‘timing’ down in no time.
and the best thing to do on block depends on character, ken/sagat/ryu can shoryu after they block everything up to the follow up, even if you do a overhead or low, they can shoryu out 
sometimes against people like dictator/blanka, I like to throw out an ex messiah, watch them block it, then throw out another instead of the follow up, it catches most people off guard, or delaying as much as i can then pressing lk followup.
Ya I haven’t thrown out ex messiah into ex messiah before xD. But i’ll try it. What do you do against guile who booms, and if you jump he jumps up and air to air hk you? This was one thing I had a major problem with.
Thanks again for this. I hope that you can add alot of things from this thread. Another combo that I saw in an Ino match that i tested and works is j.mk, lk, mp, c.mp, ex MWT. Good combo to learn if you feel that you cant confirm with just lk, mp. Also good because its a nice long poke string which at any time you can either throw a towards+mk, walk up throw, or start another dive kick. I really like rufus’ high/low/throw mixup. I think that is my favorite part about playing him. His towards+mk doesn’t have that much distance, and i’m not sure how safe it is on block.
Another thing I found is that after a block string that ends in a MWT, if you jump back and immediatly j.HP, it seems to catch the taller characters in the head (spam on gief for unlimited fun).
new stuff about MP. This move is good. Like really good. super good priority. If you time this rite you can actually beat a blanka ball! Although it doesnt have much reach, if you know something is coming and you know you can beat it, throw it out, quick dirty and gooooood.
Tonight i’m gonna test the waters with the priority of c.MP and how difficult it is to hit confirm it into ex.MWT. Hopefully it will be along the same timing as 3s makoto’s c.mp-hayate.
Is there anyone out there that knows anything good about normally unused moves? I’ve never really thrown out a Hk, and was wondering about its properties (i heard that it can combo into towards+Hp, into SOS, but only in the corner, can someone confirm this?)
And one other thing I was wondering about was good air to air moves, both jumping straight up, and towards. This is mostly to deal with people who throw a fb and then zone you by jumping in (guile, shotos, sagat).
Thats all, thanks in advanced for any answers (kesh! im lookin at you! xD)