So what you’re saying is that aside from hard, risky reads (even though I probably have other moves I could use if I had these reads, like sweeping a backdash) and from gimmicks its not a good idea to ever slash during block strings?
you can do it during block strings, you just have to ask yourself:are you in a position to make a read off a blocked slash? are you up on life, does the opponent have ultra or super stocked to punish you if you try anything post slash? are you near the corner or do you have some specific set up you want to land pertaining to the match up? off a blocked slash if the opponent presses something you can try to stomp in and if you have a set up off stomp and if the opponent doesnt delay wake up you can capitalize. if you throw their jab or something off of a blocked slash do you want to set something up off the med slash in meaty throw or med punch? against characters with bad wake up(meterless ibuki, dudley, cody, zang, t hawk) getting a stomp or throw into a meaty setup can be worth while.
this assumes you have a read on what your opponent is actually pressing post blocked slash, have you conditioned them enough to do waht you want them to do? or does the opponents character have some universal option that blows up anything you do outside of just blocking(sagat and ken med dp im looking at you) and so youd rather end the block string in a fireball?
I don’t really understand. Oni doesn’t get much off his normals, but they all tend to have a range where they completely dominate. Toward light kick is absurdly fast, has a hitbox that dominates all low pokes, and does good damage for a light poke. Standing light kick has 5 active frames for some reason, and is another really good “stop pressing buttons” button. He’s got extremely long-ranged pokes, and yeah they are slow and can be predictively stuffed, but you’re not taking much damage from that if it happens, and they tend to hit hard compared to whatever they might try to stuff it with. He’s got a genuinely great mid-range poking fireball, and reliable high damage anti-air options to back the threat of fireball up. You can do weird things like stomps, or his situational normals like medium kick or hard kick.
On top of all this, he’s got some great mobility options. His forward walk speed is genuinely bad, but his backwards walking speed is great, it’s the same as Akuma’s! As long as you’re walking backwards, you have the same asshole whiff-causing, zangief-aggravating factor as Akuma. And his forward walk speed being bad is mitigated by the fact that he has so many long range normals that carry him forward, along with being a fireball character who is totally comfortable with just getting the fuck out of there. And then there’s all that air dash bullshit.
Looking at Ultra, I feel like he really fared better than most of the other shotos, despite the nerfs that came with the buffs. He went from the only shoto without a safe wake-up option to being in the same situation as all the other shotos. His strengths, as a shoto, are really good for Ultra’s metagame, with a focus on converting mistakes into big damage, normals and specials that are particularly good at defending the air against dive kicks and burn kicks, and he’s got a number of practical uses for red focus. His mix-ups and game plan also aren’t really effected much by delayed wake up, while having really strong 3 frame DP’s means he can easily break or threaten to break and punish set-ups with DWU. Ultra is the most meter focused version of SF4 yet, and Oni is extremely good at both building and spending meter.
Like, I haven’t been playing Oni for very long, I’ve only recently picked up the character for Ultra after admiring high level Oni play for a long time, so maybe ya’ll are right. But I when I’ve read guides or forum thread to try to pick up the character, it feels like people really focus on his weaknesses, and I feel like he’s a really badly underdeveloped and misunderstood character, perhaps even by many of the people that play him.
If you disagree I’d be happy to hear why, I’m just trying to learn the character better.
I feel like ive already stated why oni is a bad character. his short range normals are good, but for footsy purposes you have to be very precise to get anything off of them, you will most likely be cancelling tatsu off of his cancelable normals if you want damage, but if the opponent was blocking prepared to be punished. if your cancelling slashes off your normals during footsies you might get DP or thrown out because they arent true block strings (anything off stand light kick, stand med kick first hit). the pay off for his footsy game is pretty bad based off straight normals. characters with better midrange normals wreck oni(charge characters in general and chun and rose). his fireball game is really really bad, the recovery on his fireballs is absurd, the startup is bad and they dont even travel full screen so your forced to throw them at a range that ppl can jump in on you.
your right his anti airs are good but he doesnt get anything off of them, at most he gets a meaty fireball, long range normal, or dash up meaty throw normal or stomp mix up. which arent as good as certain characters right left low high mix ups off anti airs. he doesnt get ultra off his anti air dp which i think is retarded and further weakens his fireball zoning game.
speaking of his dp he still isnt as good as the other shotos. his dp can only be cancellable 2nd hit on hit into ultra or stomp, his 1st hit doesnt launch and causes a knockdown, akuma can combo off his 1st hit of his dp (dp crouch jab stand fierce into whatever) ryu and evil ryu can launch into whatever. his dp fadc on block is -8 about a box away from the opponent. he gets full animation ultra punished and super punished by the majority of the cast, the timing isnt even that strict on the punish just mash out reversal and youll get it. if you dont have super or ultra most characters have a normal less then 8 frames that reaches and can be red focus cancelled into crumple. this is thanks to his shit back dash. ryu, akuma evil ryu arent punishable like oni on their dp fadc back because they have better backdashes. the only thing they buffed about his dp is that now the 2nd hit launches higher and actually gives you time to get the ultra input out.
his backward walk speed is a non factor in footsys generally because his normals that you want to be able to wiff punish with dont have the range to catch anything. his longer range normals dont have the start up time to catch anything either. akuma gets tons of mileage off his backward walk speed because he has a 6 frame sweep that is long range and leads into his vortex, and a stand roundhouse that starts up fast and has tons of range and leads into his highest damaging combos.
his airdash bullshit is just that, its bullshit. the only time its useful is when you have super for air super. other then that youll bait out maybe 1-2 dps a match if your lucky, and then youll land in time to be able to punish with forward hp once. when the opponent catches on hell start doing light/med dps that blow up your air dashes or just follow you and punish you on reaction. his airdash tatsus are slow and are incredibly hard to time to hit crouching and small characters. did i mention dps blow up air dash tatsu that are done with the timing required to hit crouching characters? if you do a airdash tatsu with a timing that will hit a dp out, youll wiff on the crouching character and get punished.
his long range normals are good until your opponent figures out that they are crazy focus bait and focus crumples you for free. consequently oni doesnt have a good fast mid range focus breaker to stop this, so prepare to be abused by ppl with good focuses and good backdashes. or sometimes you might just get reaction ultrad because they are so slow.
speaking of focus, his focus is really bad, it takes forever to charge up and it leaves you -2 at lvl one dash in. if you lvl one dashed backward, again your -8 and can be punished by everyone. so during footsy battles once your opponent realizes this prepare to be swept or dp everytime you focus backdash too close.
theres other things like his mixups being bad and unsafe and that his safe mixups are to meaty or not meaty or kara throw on knockdown. both of which ken and evil ryu do better then oni and they have better options on knockdown. ryu can do the same but he has the option of doing his free safejump setups off sweep or throw if he chooses.
the oni resource online are pretty bad, but i attribute that to there not being much to oni he doesnt have many mixups to play with. his mixups he does have are low payoff and unsafe. his safe mixups are easy to see once you know the matchup. the rest of the tech or knowledge about oni comes from match up knowledge that is heavily spacing and timing variable and is often too much trouble to write about in a forum setting.
Feels like Oni mostly got all the wrong buffs and a bunch of unnecessary nerfs. -_-
I’m sorry but this just reads like whining. You’re telling me a million things about what Oni isn’t. There is so much over the top complaining here.
You are saying shit that is factually untrue. His focus doesn’t take “forever” to charge up, it takes exactly the same as 90% of the cast. You are -2 at level 1 dash in, just like 90% of the cast: there are like maybe 2 or 3 characters that are actually at advantage after a blocked level 1, because being at advantage after level 1 is retarded. The startup on his fireballs is not “bad”, it’s actually pretty good, it’s faster than Ken, Akuma, or Gouken’s, which means, consequently, that it combos off longer ranges, which means you can get combos off FADCing fireballs at longer ranges, and forward dash is longer than all those characters which means you can better combos off at longer ranges than most shotos at those max ranges.
He doesn’t usually get huge damage off mid range footsies just like 90% of the cast. “He doesn’t have a good mid-range focus breaker” compared to who? His armor-breaking tatsu starts up in 5 frames, so he’s in a way better boat than most other characters. You talk about his “shit backdash” compared to Ryu and Ken, but that’s not true, his backdash is exactly the same as Ryu and Ken’s, it’s a stock shoto backdash.
Your comparison to Ryu, as if Ryu has better mix-ups or offensive options is absurd. I play Ryu and you are kidding yourself if you think he has anything remotely like Oni offensively. Those “free safejump set-ups” get blown up by delayed wake up, and are super unthreatening. Oni’s frame traps are an order of magnitude more effective. There’s a reason Ryu players often don’t even press after a knockdown, even after a “guaranteed” safe jump like a sweep.
Based on what I’m reading, you wouldn’t be satisfied with Oni unless his focus attack was better than everyone else’s, he had normals that beat Chun Li but no charging limitations, he got great damage off max-range footsies for some reason, that his footsies broke armor for some reason, his fireball was better than Sagat’s, his air dashes were as good as C. Viper burn kicks, and his uppercuts were safe on FADC. He apparently should zone and control space like a shoto and have mix-ups like Yun. And his backdash has to be really good for some reason, even though he has a invincible, 3 frame DP.
Come on, get real.
alright, you ask me for my opinion on the character and now your getting shitty about it w/e your cool.
1st point, your telling me the amount of time it takes oni to get to level 2 focus compared to the rest of the cast is the same? cmon. theres a reason why you dont see top onis using his focus to pressure ppl offensively like evil ryu and dudley(both rush down chars) can.
2nd.alot of chars arent -2 after fadc level 1 dash in some are less -1 0 or more. for the type of character oni is it would help to be less. thats ok maybe his focus and overall character mechanics arent meant for blank focusing.
3rd your not gonna come out on top if you try to match button for button in the midrange with most ppl. the damage isnt there, the range is there depending on what button but then the startup is too slow. ok so maybe he isnt supposed to have god buttons because he isnt a charge character.
4th what good does having a fireball that can combo from long distances matter when the normals that your cancelling off have so little hitstun that it makes the combo drop randomly. does it change the fact that the recovery is bad, the fireballs are slow, and that you are forced to throw them at optimal jump in range because they dont reach full screen? he doesnt even have good punishes for when the opponent jumps in. so his fireball game is what? you cant zone with it and you cant use it in blockstrings cuz youll get crumpled.
5th in the old game safe jump set ups actually mattered, being able to get safejumps off forward throw and sweep(which you can combo into) were huge. dont act that you as a ryu player didnt have unblockables on all of the cast midscreen off forward throw or sweep(yeah i saw that vid) something oni didnt have. but now that delayed wakeup is here i guess that makes my point moot until you get characters that have setups that bypass delayed wakeup or rely on soft knockdown(akuma you do both of these things). onis frame traps are better then ryus in that after a 3rd button press he has 1 maybe 2 more things he can press to catch someone, but against ppl that know the matchup in general they dont press buttons because oni doesnt get anything off of his throws(omg another super obvious meaty setup so good).
6.why shouldnt oni be safe on dp fadc back? isnt that what his dp nerfs are based on? have you gone in the lab with ryu ken akuma and evil ryu to see how safe they are? the frame data on the wiki doesnt show the distance traveled for onis back dash. guess what i have, oni is about 4 mini boxes away after dp fadc back point blank. guess how much ryu is? about 9 and half. ive tested and most of the cast can full ultra or super punish because oni is so fucking close after his fadc back.i have yet to test in depth with ryu and the rest of the shotos, but from what little i have tested, you cant in general full ultra punish ryu on blocked fadc hes too far. the distance difference is even greater when you factor in how much horizontal range the other shotos have on their dp to hit, oni is forced to dp super close because his dp has no range to it. wasn’t onis dps nerfed because his “new safe wake up option” of being able to dp fadc safely? so now im left with being -5 point blank or -8 four mini squares away. omg so safe plz nerf my dp more.
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are you seriously gonna use tatsus to start breaking ppl blank focusing in front of you? in that case onis tatsu is still bad because its slow and at least if ken and ryu get theirs blocked your forced into a stupid 50/50 oni is so negative on block your gonna get punished. dudley has his duck straights or uppers, yun has his rush punch, rose has soul spiral, honda has headbutt, ibuki got slide etc. the point is a lot of the cast have good punishes for ppl blank focus back dash spamming at med to long range. oni doesnt which is why ppl can freely focus your long range normals without much to fear.
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i didnt say i wanted every buff imaginable, your putting words into my mouth. id be satisfied if they took away onis gimmick slashes and stomps and made him a better at medium range so he could get in more reliably. i dont unerstand why they nerfed his dp if his options after fadc on block are terrible. i think his shoto counterparts can zone better then oni because their fireballs actually reach full screen, and they have better mixups. if they made his zoning game bad then fine make his medium range counterpoke game good, give his medium range normals the startup and range they need to whiff punish ppl so he can get in. i think his health nerf was unjustified given how oni plays and how little damage he does with no meter, if his unsafe air dashes and stomps and cross up slashes are reasons for nerfing his health, then characters with better safer mixups should be health nerfed too? if they left his normals and fireballs and specials the same and gave him a better backdash that would be awesome, it would fix his dp fadc problems, it would give him a safer option during the opponents wake up(his meaty setups all leave him point blank next to the opponent) so he wouldnt have to deal with wake up throw or dp 50/50(something a lot of characters depending on meaty pressure can do), it would let him not get wrecked during focus battles.
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so what did you want to hear when you asked why i and the rest of the community think oni is a bad character? im supposed to point out the stuff oni is? ok then hes a easy execution, combo heavy punish character with good short range normals and bad but cancellable mid range normals, and long but slow far normals. he has a hard time getting past the midrange where others dont, and getting in and staying in is hard. his options are unsafe and based off hard reads. there you now know what you could’ve read anywhere else or seen on youtube, i just decided to go more in depth on why i think oni has problems, point out things that i didn’t see being pointed out on the forums because ppl are too lazy to post, and you get all shitty about it.
If you want to make a point calm down a bit more. Getting all pissed at someone over the Internet rarely helps your case.
Though i agree with getting pissed on the internet doesn’t help, i have to agree boxinstevefox. Id be pissed too if my favorite character had so many things wrong with him and then got even more nerfed then what was promised… oh wait; Oni is my favorite character. So yeah I’m angry too haha.
a lil off topic, but it would seem theres a ton of bugs in USF4 that have been found, so hopefully crapcom can get their shit together, analyze the hit boxes, hurt boxes, bugs, buffs, and nerfs again and reevaluate. It’d be dope if this early release was just a test to see how the characters do with the buffs they were set and also to find all the bugs associated with it. Like a preliminary release. Then maybe we could see another buff/nerf list in august. Thats what I’m hoping for. Otherwise, me and oni got an even tougher road ahead of us than what we had in SSF4AE2012.
So (look at my sig), I don’t really check SFIV threads. However wanted to see how the downtrodden Oni players are reacting to the screw job that is Ultra SFIV.
Sanford Kelly and Wao were the players that put Oni on the map so to speak , how ironic is it that they have both dropped the character? Sanford Kelly switched his main from Sagat to Oni last year, however he has went back to Sagat in Ultra (who himself was also nerfed). He says Oni can’t even cut it as an alt in Ultra.
Wao after the console changes, said “Ultra Oni has no future”. His Oni BP for the arcades has been the exact same for the past month, indicating he hasn’t touched the character. He has been spotted playing Evil Ryu though.
The tier pyramid put up by Daigo, Kazunoko, Bonschan, Tokido, Momochi, and Itabashi lists Oni as C tier. (Sagat is C+, Evil Ryu is AA tier). If u guys want to enter tournaments or whatever, I suggest you switch to Evil Ryu. Not only will you dramatically increase your chances for success, it is an easy transition. Furthermore you show that you don’t support Capcom’s crap balance job.
As far as how Oni fares compared to other shotos, he isn’t the worse. There is still Dan. I think Gouken has surpassed him (he was worse in AE 2012). Ryu, Ken, Evil Ryu, Sagat, Akuma, Sakura were better in AE 2012 and are better in Ultra.
To me, and I’m sure some of the other Oni mains on here will agree, it isn’t about going for the best character in game. Its about going with whats fun and exciting. I mained yoshi back in Smash bros melee (ahhh that good ol’ days) BECAUSE he was low tier, and when i won it felt great. I even got to the point where i beat one of the best yoshi’s in the west. Point is, its not all about winning. Oni isn’t un-playable to me right now. He’s BECOMING un-playable because of the drawbacks that have been increasingly put on him, but that just gives me all the more incentive to get better with him. OMH still hasn’t put him down from what i can tell, and thats too bad that sanford put him down. Really liked the offensive pressure he had. Wao, just… never really cared for his. Anyways yeah thats my $0.02
bboyskely is right, its not about being the best char, oni has too much tools and too easy an execution wise for that to be realistic. When I picked him up day 1 i had a feeling he was gonna be hard to win with. In ae onis deal was that he has all the tools to compete and even beat everybody, you just gotta try harder to get your wins which I was fine with. But now that ultra is out it feels like every one got something substantial to bring them up while the stuff that oni got didnt matter at all, so oni stayed the same and every one got better which makes him worse.
the stuff that I wanted or expected out of ultra
-better offense, give oni better normals so he doesn’t have to be so conservative in the midrange. Right now its walk forward block, walk forward block…or just a bunch of stupid focus forward guessing. to offset this i thought they would nerf onis dp and defense.
-give oni better defense. A better backdash, a fadc that could he combod or followed up with 1st hit. better zoning tools like a fireball that went full screen, a light dp that has the fuckin full body invincibility that it shouldve had instead of just lower body. to balance this I thought they would nerf his offense damage and make his normals worse(haha)
-if your not gonna give oni better defense or offense, something that makes at least some of his bad match ups worse or good match ups better, give him more combo options. A lot of characters got new properties on their moves that give them new combo options to make combos possible from farther out or from different buttons or hae diff finishers or juggles. As it is right now oni still plays exactly the same as the last year and a half. its fuckin boring to play him lately. the same shit he did last year he can do this year just with red focus punishes if im feeling really lazy and dont wanna risk dropping a punish combo online. this is why i think a lot of ppl will drop him eventually. playing vs the rest of the cast isnt fun cuz its fucking hard every time, and we didnt get any new tools to develop tech with so why play this fucker?
Well you’re wrong.
You said his fireballs, a major part of his game, started up slow. They don’t. They’re fast. That’s important. They recover 2 frames slower than Ryu. Yeah, they’re not Ryu’s fireballs, because if Oni had Ryu’s fireball game that would be completely retarded. He gets more off his fireball cancels then most characters. He’s guaranteed corner carry heavy tatsu if he hit-confirms into a fireball FADC. That sure is hell is not nothing.
No, they’re better than Ryu’s because they have great range, great frame advantage, and can be easily linked on reaction for huge damage. They’re better because he has a bunch of different block stun timings, because his kara throw is better, because back medium punch is extremely good, because he has a good suite of special options like fireballs, slashes, and stomps that can be spaced to be safe, and because he can convert into huge damage.
My point is that his tatsu isn’t “slow”, and few characters have any easy answer one size fits all solution to long range focusing, and that’s okay because long range fishing for focus out of range is pretty awful and opens you up to all sorts of abuse, regardless of character.
But “the rest of the community” doesn’t think Oni is a bad character. I’ve heard people say he’s great, I’ve heard people say he’s bad. I think he’s pretty obviously mid-tier, with decent match ups against strong characters. I’ve heard high-profile FG people say the same, I’ve heard people say he’s worse, I’ve heard people say he’s really good.
I mean I just read this shit and it makes no sense, and I’m sorry if I’m being rude, but it feels like ya’ll are delusional about what other characters get. “How little damage he does with no meter”?? And it feels like you guys are obsessed with “proving” that your character is the worst. Why would you focus on meterless damage on a character whose whole schtick is his ability to convert meter into damage?
Like what would you think if you went into the rufus subforum, and all you read were posts by people complaining about how hard it is to get in, and how rufus has too few offensive options. Or how e. ryu’s hit-confirm combos without meter aren’t very good, so he must be bad. And yet I read all this shit about how Oni’s frame traps aren’t any good, how his suite of command normals are not perfect, how his average fireball is unusable for unknown reasons, how his average walkspeed is too slow, and his average focus is actually bad.
You sound like you’ve talked up every other character into giants and your own character into a shrimp. You take the good things for granted, and treat the bad things like they’re crippling.
I’ve no character loyalty, if you really think that Oni is that bad then switch, obviously. If I thought Oni was that bad I sure as hell wouldn’t be playing him.
ok. well agree to disagree. put the time in and play oni as your main for as long as I have(day 1) or just 6 months and come back to this topic and tell us your findings. we are gonna think differently no matter how many times we argue. BUT if you read into my posts closely youll see ive told you a lot of what you need to know to pick up oni, what to do, what not to do, whats real and whats not. the rest is matchup specific stuff that i mightve posted in another topic somewhere and a bunch of unblockables and safe jumps you can choose to learn or not, if you feel that you can deal with the 50/50 dwu.
What do you guys feel Oni’s primary mixups are?
So it looks like sanford DIDNT drop oni, since he used him in EVO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvQmTP-onAU
Big props to sanford, fei long is one of those characters i have serious trouble with because of his high tier offensive pressure.
Oni’s hk tatsu is -1 on block if they stand, just like Akuma’s. Ryu’s is -2.
Oni has great options against focus, he has s.hk and s.mk.
His focus is good now. It’s not Elena’s or Seth’s, but it’s useful.
Oni is -1 IF he gets the last possible hit (the sixth) of his tatsu blocked. meaning that you would have had to have been 3/4 to full screen away from me and focus back dashed and blocked the last hit. that kind of scenario only happens if i try to be stupid and tatsu through a fireball. if any of the other 5 possible hits are blocked you are -13.
i knew when i read this that every time i chased down a focus with a tatsu and tried to uppercut or throw on block that i couldnt have fucked it up that badly all the time.
-edit to expand on this, if you take a look at the ryu akuma ken and evil ryu frame datas they all have just one value for their tatsu on block. only oni seems to have the bracketed [-1] and value along with the -13. why is this? its because the other shotos have a property on their tatsu that forces you to block all hits up until the last hit of the tatsu regardless of which hit you ended up blocking. this is why they only have 1 frame value for their blocked tatsu. only with oni does his tatsu not force you to block each hit your only forced to block 2 and whatever hits that come after wiff regardless of whether your standing or crouching. have fun chasing focuses with tatsus and being -13 with hk or -22(WTF) on mk on block if you fucked it up.
his stand mk and stand hk only breaks focuses at the close range. this is because the hitboxes of the 1st hit of each move is tiny, you gotta be standing just outside of half a box of me throwing it out for the 1st hit to connect. if i got a hard read on someone focusing that close to me then i could have just stand lk into tatsu, or light slashed or walk up kara grab. outside of that range the 2nd hit of both these moves get focused free and you get crumpled.
his focus is average now instead of being terrible, ill give you that.
“In terms of tiers, he’s still roughly at the same place as where he was at, in the middle tiers, or maybe amongst the better characters in mid-tier. But of course, I’ve only played about 400 matches with him, so these are just my tentative thoughts on him; I’m still experimenting.” - wao