I’m newish to Street Fighter and fighting games in general, but I’m doing my best to learn properly how to play. I’ve got a decent understanding of pokes/footsies, anti-airs, and I can land most combos from a training mode perspective (I know landing in a match requires time and experience). My biggest confusion as of late is how to properly apply pressure to my opponent. I feel like I play way too passive, and when my reactions are good I win due to pure footsies and anti-airs. However, when I score a knockdown I feel like most things I try are beaten and I’m either right back in the neutral game or I’m punished for trying to do something to my opponent on their wake-up. This results in me back dashing and using long range pokes to try and catch something and forcing another neutral situation where I’m hoping to win on sole footsies. My understanding is that this should be one of the more advantageous times in the match for me to be aggressive. I know each character has a different Okezemi game, but I just want to make sure I understand the general idea. Right now I believe these are my options:
[list]
[] Throw mix-ups
[] Neutral jump
[] Cross-Up
[] Meaty attack
[] Bait something and block
[] Safe Jump
[/list]
I do fairly well with throw mix-ups. But the rest of my options never seem to net me the large positive gains that I see from watching others play/stream. I feel like I’m missing something fundamental (or maybe it’s all timing). I’m trying my best not to become a jumping/cross-up mashing player so I do try a lot of meaty attacks/throws/baits. I rarely if ever try a cross up because I dont want that to become my go to option that I just do over and over. I have no idea how to properly perform a safe jump or what in general makes a jump safe. The thing that confuses me the most is sometimes when I go for a throw I’m beaten for example by a Ken player hitting a button. I feel like throw should beat most anything unless they have a 3 frame normal (I dont think Ken does?). Also a lot of the time by meaty attacks never result in anything but forcing them to block. My biggest frustration is that I lose a lot to things that I feel like I should be able to beat from the opponents wake-up game. For example, if the opponent neutral jumps even my meaty attacks and throws seem to miss, and I’ve had people wake-up sweep or wake-up jab and beat my option. I know that if I was doing my okezemi correctly I should get damage from these scenarios instead of no damage or taking damage.
My expectation is that I need to work on frame traps and timing so that I can hopefully catch buttons better and translate that into damage. Should I use cross-ups more? I’m not really concerned with immediate gains, I want to train my brain and muscle memory to do smart things even if it means I must spend my time training/losing before I see the results.
Thanks for any help.
