Went back to analyze some of my matches and check out the weaknesses in my basic game. It just occurred to me why MP and HP Palm is better than Shoryuken. Basically we have 4 Normals + EX tatsu that take care of all jump ins. Once you figure out exactly the right move to use to counter any jump in (Cr.HP, S.HP, C.MK, CS.HK) Jump in’s are no longer a problem. But on one condition, never throw a fireball predictably within jump in range. If this part of your game is solid you only really have to worry about focus dash through.
That’s where MP and HP Palm suddenly becomes a great move. Once you’re looking for those focus dashes, and focus holders outside of range practically no one can get in. The only things you have to look for now are moves that go through fireballs, so knowing those ranges are super important. But with sweep and all the anti-airs its still difficult to get in on Gouken if he is constantly respacing himself into relatively safe fireball distance.
I know this is super simple stuff but it sort of didn’t occur to me how to play with this basic strategy. I was focusing more on predictive fireballs and hardly ever Palm’d focus attacks.
don’t forget the fake fireball (crouch then standing far mp) when dealing with a character with a good anti-fireball. fake fireball to buffered lk.tatsu, kongo, palm, or even just nj can rock their worlds.
Very good point. lol just reread what I wrote and realize I sound like a complete noob. I honestly think though that THE most important thing to have as a Gouken is patience. I’m still definitely lacking in that category.
I’ve been saying for a while that spacing is the most important thing for Gouken players to learn. You can’t learn spacing without patience. You are starting to see into the matrix. Now, and this is very important, don’t do what I did for two years and just work on your zone game which is what you are referring to. Get comfortable zoning and get use to the messages sent to you about spamming and running away, but please dedicate a session or two a week to strictly working on your close game. If you don’t you will plateau and get very frustrated. If you do, your metagame will be much better and you will grow as a whole player rather than a specialist of sorts.
Thats where I suck. I stop using fireballs weh nI’m up against a character that can get around fireballs easily, like Fei focus dashing through for example. I mean, I can, but it gets focused through so I can’t keep them away. But that means I walk myself back in the corner so I don’t know what to do. Last night I was playing a dudley at a tourney and got destroyed because he dashed under my fireballs and like that he got in.
So are you guys suggesting the idea of keeping away by moving back all the time? Then wouldn’t it be predictable when I make a move to escape the corner?
Been playing Gouken for about a month now… stuck at about 1500PP and 4200BP. I’ve tried to get as much out of this whole character section as possible, but there’s a lot of outdated crap to sift through to get to the good info… which is also scattered and hidden all over this place.
Anyway, here’s my first volley of questions.
Most importantly, what’s gouken’s best/fastest punish on a blocked unsafe move (first for something right in your face) like bison’s sweep, or cammy’s arrow, hakan’s slide etc… (and then with some space, like enough that you can’t get backthrow) like bison’s hk scissors, gouken’s palm, sakura’s tatsu, balrog’s turn punch, etc. I feel like there’s a bunch of unsafe shit I don’t get to punish because I can’t find something fast enough? TL;DR What is the go to punish after blocked unsafe move?
If you get hp.kongo on crossup, will the super always wiff to the front instead of auto correcting to the crossup side? This happened to me at least once.
And what do you do about people that spam focus on demon flip?
first, up close… if you have 6 frames, just go into cr.hp x ex.palm. at 5 frames, go to st.cl.mp to whatever. At 4 or 3, you’ll probably want st.cl.mk to lp.palm, or a forward throw to wakeup pressure. At further distances… well… then it gets down to taste. at 6+ frames, sweep to wakeup pressure. less than that, and you’ll have to make some trade offs. If they are standing, then cr.lk to tatsu is good, but make sure you don’t miss that timing or you are going roflcopter and will receive a max punish of your own cr.mp to fireball isn’t a safe blockstring, but most people won’t try to do anything. cr.mp x flip can be used sparingly to try to get them to make a poor decision. cr.lk to dash forward to throw is surprisingly effective. Instant Air Tatsu can be good to catch backdashers and other random crap, but if they block it, enjoy your punish.
i don’t bother with that cancel when it’s even close to looking like it might be a crossup. Not that I have 4 bars very often to begin with, considering how good his ex moves are.
you want to flip throw a focus that’s in range, flip counter if you are on the front side to try to recover before they let go the focus, and late flip kick if you think you might be able to overshoot the focus. the flip slide will of course be punished, unless your flip was a reversal, in which case the slide gains armor break.
my best advice would be to read the frame data of the opponents. that’s what i do (even though i don’t read them all, i’ll read the opponent at the time) and then you go to the lab and practice it, balrog there’s alot of stuff to punish, all the armor break moves can be punish (the overhead by cr lp or cr mk to ex tatsu, the other armor break with cr mk to ex tatsu, and the sweep one with cr roundhouse) and cammy too,
the last one i’ll suggest doing counter or ex tatsu (easier said than done, because i always forget lol)
What do you guys think of St.LK as a poke/ interuption move? I’ve been using it a lot lately to just stuff certain normals and specials after a block string. Is there a better option that hits in the same area?
When do you find yourself using Cr.HP as a poke? I rarely seen it use by pros but I find it fares well in some match ups (Cammy, Sagat, Gen) and hits in a particular area that can annoy other poke heavy characters like Chun.
One more question. Regarding Denjin, has anyone found a reliable 3 frame or 4 frame safejump after an EX palm > denjin shot? I typically will do 2 LK gouken flips and try to manually delay the second one to land on them or cross them up, but its not reliable and I get punished pretty frequently. Is there any good ambiguous setups etc. you guys go to?
I apologize, I dont even use st.lk so I’ll let someone else answer that for you buddy. I never use cr.hp as a poke because its start up slow and has bad recovery. F.st.hp has a waaaay better hitbox and stuffs almost everything in the game at tip. And I mean everything. Unless its something invincible its getting stuffed. Only things it trades with is Oni’s f.st.hp and Fei’s rekkas, literally everything else gets beat.
if is far lk, it can stuff fei’s rekka really well, and i mean reaaaaaaaally well, and it will trade or win against ryu’s and shotos crouch mk and close lk i barely use it, but sometimes i’ll stuff throws after a focus dash because it seems that his body goes back a little bit, but i’m not sure
f.st.lk is a great tool to keep space and it works wonders vs Oni’s palm swipe. It’s quick, it can start a sweep frame trap, it has better range and hitbox than it looks like, it blows up focus fishing, leads into a dash in grab pretty well…
Just does weak damage, no combo into xyz, and little hit stun. Other than that, it’s a good standing tool at close range.
Our favorite boy in blue, Proud Strawberry has been using Close standing MK as an anti-cross up and anti-air pretty frequently in recent matches. Actually he uses S.MK a lot more in general now I’ve noticed. Example at 0:13:
How many of you guys use this? Does it behave sort of like a Shoryuken since it’s only 3 frames? What are the risks of using it and what’s an example of a time you should NEVER use it?
I’ve used st mk before, not as much because im not usually in the lab but it works surprisingly well, i’ll try it in a few when i get online and probably lab it up maybe. I need to be on everybody else’s level.
I only saw him use it once. But no I never thought of using cl mk, cuz people don’t usually jump in at me at that range. At said range, I normally use cr.mk. and if it’s an anti-cross up, I use cl.hk, since it starts up in 4 frames, so it’s fairly quick.
Can anyone think of a justified reason why characters would fall out of tatsu? Like can you imagine the conversation that went on where they said “Let’s make this happen sometimes.” Did the developers think that Gouken’s zoning was too good to give him a reliable damage dealer? Anyone familiar with why they choose to gimp certain moves? I just really have a hard time understanding some of the decisions they made with Gouken. Still love the bastard.
I don’t see anything confusing about it. His first kick reaches out really far, and the 2nd and third don’t. So if you space it just the right way, the first kick reaches, and then he whiffs the rest.
There are also times when back throw/ex palm (corner) to tatsu has some juggling moments where a few kicks whiff and that’s just due to the timing of when you execute the tatsu.
When each kick connects, it sends the character up a fixed amount of distance. They set it like this so that each kick should hit every time… under only one condition while they were playtesting. Chances are, they only tested that under one condition of back throw to tatsu or just raw tatsu even. What wasn’t considered was the variance in timing when getting tatsu off back throw for instance. If they only set the mechanics and numbers based off timing the tatsu when your foot is dead-smack in the center of their body, then you’ll get different results if you kicked them late or early. Most noticeable change is if you do the tatsu really early. Because you kick them up so early on, they get juggled from a higher starting point, which probably means the 2nd kick is going to go under them resulting in a whiff.
