So, I’ve played Street fighter since I was a little kid and was always a Ryu/Ken/Akuma ect player.
But! I got bored and wanted to try a new character and fell in love with Balrog and been trying so hard to learn how to be a good Balrog player, but I can’t really seem to grasp the concept of him, I still play him as I would play Ryu.
So yeah, my question is, what should I practice with him? Should I wait for the other player to slip up, or be aggressive myself, what kind of combos/punishes should I practice ect?
Balrog is a lot like Ryu in that he has a lot of tools. I think as a Ryu player it would be best to play him like Ryu for the time being. You have to transition to Balrog in a manner of speaking. For example you’ve been in a lot of general situations with Ryu and you know Ryu’s solution to those problems, but you have to figure out those solutions with Balrog. Take for example: Cross-ups on your wakeup, as Ryu you could probably do the wiggle lp.dp to trade and/or beat outright those cross-ups, but as Balrog that option doesn’t really work, so you have to block and/or FADC backdash which doesn’t work against the smart players. You can also use cl.hp, cr.hp or cl/st.mp from neutral.
Learn his tools, start from the basics, i think you have to master his normals first and understand the concept of a safe dash punch (which is almost that it’s never safe, but can be significantly hard to punish). Just play, if your’e an online player, get to or try to get to 5000 BP with Balrog and you’ll have more specific questions that are easier to answer versus, “What should I do with this character”.