Picking up Sakura as a main after maining Ryu, similarities and differences, things to keep in mind?

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

I read up a bit on the combo thread as well as more details on her movelist.

Initially thought about picking her up because me and my friend random’ed today on a FT5 and Sakura just kind of feels nice to play (so far).

What are the main focuses of playing a good Sakura? I know what frame traps and option selects are but never really learned properly what they are and how to incorporate them (still a pretty basic Ryu player too).

Also wanting to know if there’s anything from Ryu that’s applicable with Sakura or if I shouldn’t ever try to cr. mk xx hado lol.

Was practicing LK xx L. Shunpu, Cr. HP xx EX. Shunpu, Otoshi/Ultra in training mode and stuff. Execution won’t be too big of a hill for me.

More worried about her blockstrings and combos. Do they for the most part all come off of a single LK or LP? I was never good at hit confirming as Ryu either, might be more of an issue with fundamentals but yeah.

Would be appreciated for any help =3

2

Having a good defense as she has a bad backdash & bad wakeup, being able to anti air most of the time, knowing when to bait and when to apply pressure, good execution not dropping combos, good spacing, poking with cr.mk, st.lk, st.hk, cr.mp etc, frametraps and knowledge of her char specific mixups/setups which probably wont be as important once USF4 comes out.

You can use the spacing of Ryu’s cr.mk and cr.hk for the most part with Sakura but cr.mk xx hadouken isnt really something you wanna do with Sakura instead you are looking to counterpoke/whiff punish with cr.mk xx dp.

Btw you should probably post in the Sakura Q&A thread next time.