Newbie here with a few questions

[G334316]

Hello. So, I started to learn (or trying to) this game, and my main issue are chaining normals and specials. I’m playing with Zangief and I can’t chain LK into EX Greenhand, even if my life depends on it. Where can I find some basic combos for Zangief? Maybe I need to adapt to which are the optimal combos.

Also, how to keep pressure with Zangief? I know I’m still not 100% consistent with inputing 360 piledrivers, but once I do, I know that you have time to do a quick Green Hand, to already be next to your opponent when he wakes up. The problem is, how do you continue from there? I’m playing against a lot of Ryus and everytime I try to do a crossup or a piledriver, I eat wake up shoryukens. And if I just stay there and block, I just get grabbed or he just ends up escaping backwards.

Another thing is how to antiair with the Lariats. Against Ryu, everytime I try to do a Lariat to anti-air his jump-in kick, it hits my head and he comboes from there. I tried crouching and waiting till the last second to do the lariat, but I still get blown out.

Overall, learning this game is a nice experience, even with all the rage you can get sometimes. I played a lot of MK (I know, I probably got all my fighting concepts wrong), and so far, this is more entertaining.

Very nice forum, any input will be appreciated!

[Komatik]

To understand where you’re going wrong it might be helpful to understand how combos work mechanically:

There’s two ways to combo moves into each other - cancels and links.

In a link, you let a move complete fully, it leaves the opponent in hitstun (a helpless state where they can’t do anything) for, say, 5 frames more than it takes you to recover. So if you can connect another move within those five frames, there’s nothing the opponent can do about it. It’s a combo. Link combos tend to require a lot of precision in this game - oftentimes you only have a single frame of time to connect the move as a combo. One example is Ryu’s cr.mp, cr.hk combo - the punch leaves you at +5, the sweep’s first active frame is the fifth. Possible, but hard.

The second way to combo is the cancel. As the name implies, you start a move, and if that move hits or is blocked, you can cancel it midway to do another move. A standard Ryu example is the cr.mk xx fireball cancel. It combos because you cancel away the recovery part of the kick, so the fireball comes out much faster than if you were trying to link it (given the kick is negative on block this is utterly impossible anyway)

Typically, normals can be canceled into special moves and supers and special moves can be cancelled into a focus attack (which then can be canceled into a dash. FADC = Focus Attack Dash Cancel).

Some normals have the property of being able to be canceled by not only into special moves, but also into other normals. This is typically a property of light punches and kicks, and is called chaining. Spam cr.lp, you notice the punches coming out at lightning speed and comboing with ease. You’re canceling the jabs as soon as they become active. Chains are easy and effective, but in SF4 they have one downside: If I chain two jabs together, I cannot cancel the second jab into a special move. The last jab of the series has to be linked.

So this does not work: cr.lp xx cr.lp xx cr.lp xx fireball. However, if you link the last jab: cr.lp xx cr.lp, cr.lp xx fireball, it works because the linked jab is special cancelable. The latter ends up looking like: “jabjab (wait) jab fireball” - the wait comes from jab #2 having to animate fully instead of having a part of its animation canceled.

[dang5hoot]

Thank you for explaining that so simply.

[G334316]

To understand where you’re going wrong it might be helpful to understand how combos work mechanically:

There’s two ways to combo moves into each other - cancels and links.

In a link, you let a move complete fully, it leaves the opponent in hitstun (a helpless state where they can’t do anything) for, say, 5 frames more than it takes you to recover. So if you can connect another move within those five frames, there’s nothing the opponent can do about it. It’s a combo. Link combos tend to require a lot of precision in this game - oftentimes you only have a single frame of time to connect the move as a combo. One example is Ryu’s cr.mp, cr.hk combo - the punch leaves you at +5, the sweep’s first active frame is the fifth. Possible, but hard.

The second way to combo is the cancel. As the name implies, you start a move, and if that move hits or is blocked, you can cancel it midway to do another move. A standard Ryu example is the cr.mk xx fireball cancel. It combos because you cancel away the recovery part of the kick, so the fireball comes out much faster than if you were trying to link it (given the kick is negative on block this is utterly impossible anyway)

Typically, normals can be canceled into special moves and supers and special moves can be cancelled into a focus attack (which then can be canceled into a dash. FADC = Focus Attack Dash Cancel).

Some normals have the property of being able to be canceled by not only into special moves, but also into other normals. This is typically a property of light punches and kicks, and is called chaining. Spam cr.lp, you notice the punches coming out at lightning speed and comboing with ease. You’re canceling the jabs as soon as they become active. Chains are easy and effective, but in SF4 they have one downside: If I chain two jabs together, I cannot cancel the second jab into a special move. The last jab of the series has to be linked.

So this does not work: cr.lp xx cr.lp xx cr.lp xx fireball. However, if you link the last jab: cr.lp xx cr.lp, cr.lp xx fireball, it works because the linked jab is special cancelable. The latter ends up looking like: “jabjab (wait) jab fireball” - the wait comes from jab #2 having to animate fully instead of having a part of its animation canceled.

Thanks for the warm input. Indeed good material. Where can I find any Zangief combo video to practice this stuff?

Also, since my post was pre- the last patch, I think I’ll need to revisit what are the best followups after SPD

[Greenwood]

Where can I find any Zangief combo video to practice this stuff?

I’m sure you can just search it in youtube. I don’t think he has too many combos but I think the trials actually give you a few simple, viable combos.

[JasonWalraven]

even tho the frame data is out of date, grab a copy of the Ultra SF4 bible from gamestop and it will help you a lot with Gief combos. Also youtube search “Weaponsleft Zangief” to see lots of excellent Gief play