Dive kick is still an option for Gief as long as it’s not MEATY dive kick. It is very risky, but you can make Gief guess on wakeup. Either throw, jump, or dive kick. Throw on Gief wake up will beat lariat. The timing is strict. Dive kick beats the throws and option select tech. Jump back on Gief wakeup to gather up some “data” on what he’ll do and use that to your advantage.
Well, there is a safe way to dive kick vs. gief on wakeup and sometimes its actually useful to know the spacing of it since it completely stuffs lariats. I find its a great way to setup a comeback since if you tested it out earlier in the match and observed their followup to it (from my experience the poor giefs either do another lariat or a grab, the better giefs will go for neutral jump to dodge the messiah), you can either whip out the messiah or j.rh and turn it into big damage.
Also doing the safe dive kick and jumping back afterwards only loses to something crazy like jump forward from gief.
And about green hand punishes, a lot of the time I find that back throw is the most useful punish since it can completely reset the spacing.
^ is the safe dive kick a late dive kick or is it at the peak of his jump?
sometimes if i land a dive kick on gief i like to go for his lk to hk target combo just for the knock down
What is the safe dive kick on Gief?
I can’t remember what post it was about Condor dive and s.HP, but it’s worth noting s.HP on starting frames will get beaten; it does however beat Dive when the fist is about fully extended. Close s.HP will beat it out, if for some reason the other player does a Dive right next to Rufus. As an alternative for those with less than sharp timing, block then punish with c.HP.
As for dive kicking Zangief, I really don’t agree with the idea of doing it at all. If it’s messed up, Rufus will be feeling some pain the following morning. Risk shouldn’t have much of a place in a Zangief matchup.
Anything Rufus can do after a blocked scissor kick from Dictator? Other than EX messiah of course.
^If it’s a lk scissor kick or spaced properly, then no.
Never EX messiah after a block scissor kick. Doesn’t work IRL.
So Dictator can simply cr.lk cr.lk into scissor kick like there is no tomorrow?
That’s his general gameplan… get you to corner and then scissor pressure.
Anyone have any thoughts on the Guy matchup? Dive kick pressure seems really good when he doesn’t have meter. And having to go after him is also a pain sometimes cuz he seems to be all over the place at times.
Definitely rush him down but be careful of EX tatsu. Punish any slides that are less than max range with c.lp xx ex tornado. Bushin flip elbow sucks and only combos on CH so feel free to try and get an ex messiah in there if he’s not baiting much. cp.mp also beats Bushin flip elbow clean. His command normal jumping elbow (down +mp) is pretty good and many will try to reset into that so look out for that and be ready to AA. If he likes to do run stop pressure, be careful because Guy’s target combo xx run stop is safe. I would also avoid making big jumps. Bushin flip grab has ridiculous range. Keep it low and tight.
Yeah, Guy is one of those characters that your ground game actually destroys imo. Your sweep is better, your lights are better and if he’s not being careful your dive kicks are a bit much for him to handle. That being said, Guy has a great safejump OS game with ex tatsu and some solid pressure if they’re strong with the run stop. Basically, the way I see it is, since you have the stronger ground game and his jump/flip is easy to react to with well spaced j.rh or ex snakes and his mixup game isn’t actually very strong compared to a lot of other characters, we definitely have the advantage. Oh yeah, I forgot that he also dishes out poor damage with each mixup as the only way you’re getting hit by a combo is if you forget to block a crossup :S If only his high low game led to more than just… nothing.
ive been having a lil trouble with gen. now i know this isn’t a match up that im gonna see often but i would like to know how to handle it when i do. i guess im having trouble with his cross ups and how to properly punish him
I dunno if this’ll help… but this is one of those matchups where I feel going in with 0 respect for the character actually pays off (its my mindset vs. sim/vega). What I mean by this is that I’m not afraid to make poorer risk/reward decisions to get me right on top of them, because I feel that Gen has almost no clear cut solutions to true rushdown play.
You can’t really punish crossups and you shouldn’t even be trying to imo, just block and wait because Gen’s offense isn’t very strong. Poor Gen players like to do crossup into c.lk which is a free punish with whatever you want or the better players will try to mix up throws/neutral jump/a block string after the crossup. Just be patient and look for an opportunity to get back the momentum especially since its so hard for Gen to ever set up an offense vs. Rufus. Also, since Gen has so few options, keeping an eye on your meter is probably more important than looking at his when you’re blocking crossups. Gen players seem to me to be so scared of EX Messiah that after you block a crossup with any meter, you can expect a neutral jump most of the time. j.rh into ex snakes to show him what he should actually be afraid of when you have meter 
If they have a solid AA game (which you should still be able to mixup with dive kick timings) just show them that you have just as strong of an AA game and get in his face on the ground. Rufus walking forward = scariest thing for a gen player. Don’t c.hp in this matchup, if the Gen guesses right with his extremely short jump arc he can punish you nicely. Ground game should just be lights/sweeps and throws. I’m not even sure what his OS tech option is to beat out dive kick pressure, but if he does something of the sort remember you have s.lk, delay s.hp to smoke it.
need some good strategies against Gouken seems to give me fits.
What is gouken doing to give you trouble? And use U2.
just fire ball pressure and I usually fake falcon kick and grab on wake up but other then that not sure what is good for a wake up against gouken. Always scared of Dive Kick getting countered. My strategy typically is Focus fire balls try to get in CHP and wait for them to make a mistake. If I catch then with a lot of horizontal fireballs ill try and time a falcon kick or JHP. I always use ultra 2 but until I get my ultra I eat a lot of chip damage trying to get in close and once i get a knock down I’m not really sure what is a good pressure tactic for wake up.
Well, you can’t be afraid of counter on wakeup, simple as that. You should be mixing up all kinds of divekicks and whiff dive kicks into grabs/c.lk (since high counter will get eaten by this and you can get more damage than you could off of just throwing) and just doing meaty c.lk or ‘meaty’ throw or meaty dive kick paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaause. Just mix it up to throw off their counter game. You can’t be scared of something so much so as to remove options from your game entirely, because that’s losing you the match already. The risk/reward ratio is still in your favour, even though eating a counter will screw up your positioning.
If you ever bait out a counter remember to punish hard with well timed s.hp hp GT or c.mk into it. Dive kick whiff throw only does so much damage, but if you punish him with the combo you were going for anyways even though he countered, he’s going to second guess doing it. As soon as he’s second guessing the very thing that’s making you second guess your ability to pressure him, you’re winning.
Re: Gouken: Throwing in a meaty Tornado on his wakeup occasionally will kill any counter or throw attempt, and if he blocks he still gets a good chunk of chip damage while being pushed towards the corner.
St. HP also beats Guy’s bushin flip if no meter is available.