"Not fat enough? We can fix that!" Rufus Match-up Thread

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
761

Hi Rufus players, I main Vega and generally post on the Vega forum…but have huge problems against the big guy, it’s a difficult match up and a rare one for me. I have recently got into the grand final of the capcom-unity ps3 tournament and the semi-final of the eventhubs premier team-tournament and am up against the same high-level Rufus in both matches…

Would anyone like to spar against a reasonably decent Vega? My GP is 38,000 on XBL and 15,000 on Psn and my GT and ID are under my name. Ps: We’ll be fighting tomorrow so it’s a matter of ASAP! Thanks in advance guys…

PPS: This appears to be the most popular Rufus thread, so I’m just posting this request on this one thread only. Please moderators, don’t censure me for spamming!!!

762

This place got really inactive.

Let’s talk about how fighting Sagat still sucks ass and how to beat him.

763

I like the cut of your jib. Walk forward~crouch block. The ultimate KARA. It’s like an option select, you kara cancel walking in to down/back! It blocks tiger knee and high tiger shots go OVER you. GDLK.

If you connect a s.hp xx hp tornado, and hold u/f, j.hp becomes a safe jump because tiger uppercut is slow. You can hit a whiffed s.hk with s.hp.

If he does j.mp elbow drop, that’s a free EX messiah as it just sucks them in for all the hits.

Is the normal crossup worth using on him?

764

Lol @ kara.

Interesting about the j.HP becoming a safe jump after HP Tornado. Are you saying that if he tries to tiger uppercut you’ll just end up blocking?

I’ll have fun trying to time a s.hp from a s.hk. Does this include both close and far s.HPs? Up close, sounds like you’d have to go from a crouching position to immediate s.HP. Oh, and s.HP is really good against stopping cross-ups if they jump from up close.

j.mp elbow drop = free and full EX Messiah? :pray: I’ve been trying to find a better way to punish it. I haven’t tried EX Snake Strike so I’ve just been cr.mp it each time.

Normal cross up as in dive kick? I wouldn’t say its worthless. If you try to dive kick deep on wake up I believe you Sagat can still TU. Worse is that you’ll probably trade = kick in the gut to Ultra. I don’t dive kick too much on wake-up anymore unless it’s in the corner where I can get a meaty dive kick cross-up on the back of their ankles.

Kinda’ guilty of using dive kick (top of the head) to EX Messiah. It’s a bit random, but it beats TU happy Sagat’s and they normally end up eating the whole thing.

Let’s see… do I know any trixies?

During a tiger knee assault mid-screen if they misjudge a tiger knee and whiff, I try to punish with cr.mp or cr.lp to EX GT. cr.mk tends to whiff and comes out slower so it’s much harder to punish with. I can’t think of a better way to punish whiffed tiger knees since the frame of opportunity is very slim and anything remotely taking longer than a crouching jab will net on a free reversal TU. Basically, I try to stay right outside of mk tiger knee range. This puts you in kara mk tiger knee range, but yea, what can you do.

765

More trixies.

lk messiah kick wins against Sagat’s that try to begin linking cr.shorts on Rufus wake-up. it’s one of his best reversal options without bar and on block you fall into the whole guessing game routine.

Just more of advice rather, but never try to “time” a jump in by casually jumping over fireballs and than randomly trying to jump in as a guess. It’s never worth the risk. Instead, I think it’s important that Rufus does a lot of empty triangle jumps to bait anti-airs and make it harder for Sagat to predict a jump-in.

HUGE: If you jump-in and Sagat is not in tiger shot motion aka ready to TU you to hell DO NOT press anything. Take the hit clean rather than trading.

If you see a FA happy Sagat use HP Galatic Tornado to push through. Just don’t throw this move out as an auto-approach through fireballs since s.RH will eat it cleanly most of the time. Being predictable with this equals good Sagat’s ULTRA’ing you clean through it.

When being tiger knee’d to death in the corner idk what to do but block. Sagat’s usually put Rufus in this situation Round 1 while he has no bar to messiah. The best thing I could do was predict a tiger knee, retreating jump into the corner to j.HP. Definitely not safe since if u get hit by a tiger knee up there, it combos into ultra or another tiger knee. Other than that it’s good to just hold down and back, try to oversee overheads, and take it like a man.

Edit: More stuff.

After a forward grab dashing twice and jumping forward usually puts you in perfect position for j.MK cross-up. However, you can get tricky here and purposely make the j.MK whiff and go straight into a grab upon landing, redive kick (to escape a Sagat grab attept), or c.lk (followed by chain ending with EX GT).

If Marn or any other pro Rufus’ are looking at this, I hope you can throw in some advice for fighting Sagat. A Rufus breaking out of the Sagat barrier is gdlk.

766

I’ll give you a taste of how to stop Sagat with Rufus:

When he does the corner TK trap, block the TK’s last hit standing, then instant-divekick over the next poke.

767

scoops

768

I do like the normal crossup quite a bit on Sagat as well as some other characters. It’s a really underused tool and I find many players aren’t used to the way it looks, allowing it to be a bit deceptive. Landing it is also a free s.HP xx HP Tornado, completely worth it.

I haven’t tested it yet but I’d imagine if you connect the j.mk cross up you can also connect the target combo? Anyone that can confirm this?

769

A meaty j.mk cross-up connects into everything including target combo, s.hp, and even cr.mk.

I’ve been using j.mk a lot recently and I’ve discovered a lot of interesting things.

1.) Sagat/Ryu can totally auto-correct SRK this if you get predictable with it so be careful.

2.) j.mk cross-up WHIFF is extremely ambigious. I’ve seen a few japanese Rufus’ do this. You can easily go into instant dive kick options, grab, and low short. It’s good to do this once or twice if your opponent has a habit of blocking cross up j.mk.

I mean, that’s about it, but adding j.mk cross-up and whiff into your arsenal only adds to the Rufus dive kick pressure game.

Does anyone have a list on who gets hit by j.MK cross-up? If I can remember correctly it hits Sagat, Balrog, Abel, and I think Bison. I think it also whiffs Ryu.

Forgot to mention. This does hit a few characters CROUCHING.

770

Okay. Just tested the j.mk cross-up on a few major characters.

Character Standing Crouching
Sagat Yes Yes
Ryu No Yes
Balrog Yes Yes
Akuma No Yes
Zangief Yes Yes
Dictator Yes* Yes
Viper Yes* Yes
Abel Yes Yes

  • = Very difficult to do in regular standing animation.

So basically so far, this whiffs on Ryu and Akuma and hits everyone else mentioned above. It is extremely difficult to hit Viper and Dictator for some reason. Maybe it’s because of their rocking animation or their height; I’m not sure. Regardless, from a forward throw double dash j.mk setup it becomes much easier.

All of the j.mk’s are meaty altho you can place a non-meaty j.mk on Sagat if you do it too early due to his height.

This hits all the characters mentioned above crouching. High possibility it hits everyone crouching.

771

I’m nearly positive it works on Gouken as well. I’ll try it when I get back from work.

772

What should I be doing against Seth? What’s Rufus’ game plan in this match?

773

Against Seth I play similar to dhalsim. I play patient and wait for the player to get over aggressive. Seth’s fireballs have awful recovery, so if u can get to about 3/4 or closer and bait a fireball you’re in good shape. Also, many Seth’s that I play online love to do his wall jump, which is a free EX SS if you can see it coming. If the seth player is doing a block string on you, at the first sign of dropping the string, back dash. Good seth players will try and lull u into a false block string and try and land a SPD. After the back dash you have a few options to punish, depending on where you are on the screen I’d go for a sweep. This way I got seth on the ground and i can begin the dive kick mixups. Land one combo on seth and almost half his life is gone. My game plan: Be patient and dont be afraid to use meter because it deals a ton of damage.

774

That all is pretty sound advice. A few extra things - you have a lot more health than Seth, so being random can definitely be advantageous. Also, his j. hp, st. hp are relatively important to him keeping Rufus away. Far lk or far lp can beat his st. hp, and j. hp, or j. mp (it has almost twice as many active frames as j. hp) can beat him in the air. You may have some success with snake striking his j. hp too. If he isn’t using his j. hp/st. hp to keep you out, the match should be easy, since guessing games are insanely in your favor. Don’t let him get stuns from stupidity or getting too aggressive. Just build meter if he is trying to lame you out.

Also, never forget the value of dive kick when Seth is trying to set up an ultra - you can bait him with neutral jumps, or forward jumps if he throws a slow sonic boom, then divekick into the boom, knocking you down and making his ultra whiff.

775

Thanks for the Seth advice guys.

776

Do you guys think its really worth it doing target combo against some characters like kirisuto does? Other jap rufus players doesnt usually go for it it unless they go for an ultra, but watching his videos and reading that he beats Mago i might start using it a bit more =p But I was wondering if people starts to block it we will be losing damage that we need badly againt some chars (sagat for example)

Still practicing the dive kick cross up so it becames really worth it btw

777

rufus’s worse matchups including my personal matchups i dislike would now look like this;

1)Sagat
2)Blanka
3)Zangief
4)Ryu
5)Balrog
6)Honda/Bison

Blanka: since st.lk - st.hp - tornado whiffes, u gotta use st.mp instead of st.hp, this is imo one of rufuses best weapons vs. blanka >_> crossuing him up isnt a good idea, if you’re gonna attack on his wakeup do meaty jump in HP istead of some divekick. ofc, do crossup divekicks sometimes to get a combo, but at times you’ll probably eat a revearsal blanka-ball. some other small things to know is that u can punish balls with cr.hp but that wont happen to much… tornados also beats balls. vs. his electricity do cr.mk(link ex-tornado)… does anyone else know any good tactics etc? more like GAMEPLAY wise, gotta get alot more confident at the matchup.

Sagat: except for the usuall, messiah over fireballs etc, a good tactic i found is that you stand in a good tigerknee range (sagats favour) so he can do safe tigerknees vs. you… the best is so you stand in MK-tigerknee range, so whenever he burse out a tigerknee, stuff it when he’s about to land with a cr.mp… since you’re quite close to him in that range, and he cant to tigerknees, you put him in a good pressure… st.hp and cr.mp also beats his st.hk. on his knockdown, go for the meaty divekick/launcher tactic and mix it up good!

Zangief: Sure is a rufus counter but not the hardest, nowai. you got alot of stuff vs. Zangief actually. in a little closer range st.mp is a good poke, st.hp even better. then sweep works now and then. a little bit further away you can use st.mk and as anti air, you got a solid st.hp, less solid cr.mp and ofc, one of the best! ex-snakeStrike. this is not hard to get on gief since gief jumps slow, and this do alot of damage. you would really make him afraid of jumping. you can also anti-air with ultra now and then.

vs. lariat mostly use cr.mk and link it to ex-tornado or hp-tornado. when you’re standing up and could punish lariat from a little bit further away, you can either just st.hp it or st.lp it linking to ex-tornado. f+hp (palm attack) has a sick priority, you can palm a lariat and he’ll fly to the other side of the screen, very good sometimes, it’ll even win vs. most of his pokes, becarefull using it tho, since it has a slow startup. solo ex-tornodos is good now and then also, could take him offguard, suck him right in and do some damage.
cr.hp dont abuse it, is slow and he can get free jumpins sometimes. also learn to time to punish a short/long lariat with a cr.hp. he do a different sound when lariat with kick and punch, learn to know exactly when to HP him after he’s done. also, dont be afraid to sometimes attack him on his wakeup! you can sometimes go for the meaty divekick/launcher tactic here aswell

Honda: dont really got any tricks that way, but tornado beats headbut lol… anyone got any good advice for this matchup? honda is quite Strong in sfiv.

778

rufus is god

779

It’s definitely a good idea, because rufus has the best meaty options because of his dive kick. Once Sagat is down it is really tough for him to get away from Rufus. I haven’t started using this tactic, since most of the sagats i play against are scrubs and i can afford to drop a couple combos here and there. But the recent tourney I played in I lost a fairly close set to a really good Sagat, and I should’ve approached the match-up differently.

**Honda:**Dive kick the shit out of honda. walk forward, if he headbutts block. If he does a HP headbutt, block it standing and u get a free EX tornado, timing isnt too strict. One you get a knockdown, just cross up, meaty dive kick all day. Honda has no reliable ways of getting out. Once honda gets meter, he will probably try to EX butt slam out, cross-up dive kick stuffs it clean. Also, if he does a regular butt slam always focus attack. However, make sure you start the focus attack early enough so that it doesnt get reversed by the butt slam (reversals break glass). If you get crossed up by the butt slam just back dash and you’re safe.

Main goal against honda, and the other charge characters you listed, for me at least, is to use dive kicks to cross them up when they are on the ground. If you cross them up it causes them to lose their back-charge and limits their wake-up options. Also, a tactic i always use when I’m 3/4 to 1/2 screen distance from characters is doing really short dive kicks so the opponent can’t really know for sure if I’m going to jump, and at the same time I’m gaining ground. Sometimes I can bait out a blanka ball or EX headbutt, which dive kick can stuff if you hit them in the back.

780

after focusing the normal buttstomps frm honda, what would u recommend me to go for;

level 2 focus or throw or punish ?

i seem to get clipped from a 2nd buttstomp
dunno if it’s the lag online