I discuss it in the video. Basically I played 3 matches in a row against a Ken player. As I lose, I start to lose my cool as I find myself being hit with setups that seem increasingly difficult to overcome. Rage quit at the end of the last match. Took an hour, then came back and now am looking for additional opinions as to how to approach this more in the future.
Alright, I found your video and watched it. I’ll just preface this post by adding that I do not have tournament experience with SF4, so if that renders my opinion worthless to you, then just skip over this post.
First off, I know Fuerte is seen as a “random” character, but that doesn’t mean you have to play him random. Constantly full-screen running and committing to splashes is a good way to get yourself knocked down, as you did many times in this video. All of your run attacks have a specific purpose, so use them to condition your opponent into acting accordingly. The Ken player was jumping back and forth over and over again because you weren’t stopping him. Run>stop>guac. Run>slide (trip guard) are great ways to blow up jumpers, but you have to position yourself correctly in order to be able to react to that. Also, don’t be afraid to crouch fierce a jump outside of sweep range, don’t let people jump all over you. Plus, tortilla has its invincibility back now, so that’s also a viable AA.
This Ken’s spacing wasn’t great. I don’t think I saw him use a step kick once (which is great against Elf) until the second game. Far.st.mp is a great counter poke to step kick. All he seemed to be doing to close distance was jumping (as discussed above) or using random tatsus. After you saw his tatsu strategy, you should’ve been baiting so you can crouch under and punish. Not saying the Ken player was bad, he seemed pretty decent.
He was blowing you up on wake-up for thee reasons:
- Elf’s wake-up sucks without meter.
- He was option selecting you.
- You never tried to block.
You kept backdashing on wake-up when this guy has tatsu and dp option selects to counter that. Just block on wake-up and try to dash/escape out of the kara-throw attempt that will come after.
Finally, your okizeme after knocking him down didn’t seem varied. I didn’t see you once meaty cr.rh, or overhead. Meaty cr.rh is especially great against players who like to forward dash to try and avoid splash (which he was doing a lot). You got some good reads on a few of his wake-up dps, but generally, until they show you that they’re willing to dp without meter, just assume they won’t and play your game. Also, I saw you use foward run>splash a lot. Use back run instead, it’s like 5 frames safer. Plus it’s less telegraphed as it’s no as a likely to give your offense away.
You don’t play the neutral game.
You don’t have a pressure game. You’re going in with a special at 3/4-fullscreen, sometimes without a reaction to what the other guy is doing.
Stay grounded, try not to jump so much, and punish his jumps. I didn’t see any AAs.
I’m going to drop some re-hashed TKD shit on you from like 08-09. Don’t just run right in with your mixup. Feel them out, figure out what they like to do when comfortable, and learn what they do when they are uncomfortable. You want to build your own momentum, but you should take it because you see it. Don’t grasp at straws by blindly rushing in.
Like Phyrgian stated, you don’t block on wakeup, he is blowing you up with OS’.
You had some good baits. But It seems like you’re doing your own thing. When it works out I’m sure it pays out big, but the same can be said of the counter-argument. Ken just did jumping back and forth. From fullscreen-3/4 you would run and do a tostada or fajita, and he just held upback and you lost.
I don’t see any run mixup, use his runcancels to your advantage.
No setups either.
Meterbuild. From 3/4 screen you can meterbuild without Ken touching you. You can even bait him.
Edit: The worst thing you can do is underestimate your opponent, or overestimate your own skill. You’ll never get better like that. If this Ken was patient enough to play you, you could have learned valuable knowledge from him firsthand about why you lost.
Try to figure out what he did right, as well as what you did wrong.
Fraudulent Edit Again: EX Run + Step kick = Free RSF. He also has retarded recovery on his fireball.
This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U1UBKoAiko