Ah, reached rank B with Dan, this is up there with when I received my ph.d.!
ps, my xbox name is froggy4646
Congratulations! But be careful, B rank is where a lot of people start to fall off. Don’t get discouraged if you do, sticking with things is the only way to surpass adversity!
cool story bro…
/thread
Im begging hit that adversity, Im D+ (2 days of playing SSF4, 15 matches) and im 15 and 0. I really suck bad right now and every one I have faced is even worse.
The only reason Im winning is simply because you cant really un learn playing smart, my execution is shit and I miss too many punishes, but in general I can rely on the stupidity of my opponents to hand me a win simply because of doing things like baiting them out to do reversals or Ultras on wake up and crap like that and them just being flat out predictable.
Isn’t there some sort of championship mode in SSF4? Ranked always had ass players in SF4 too.
There’s no Championship Mode, no. You can try to search for “More skilled” players and see if that helps. I tend to find most of my opponents are at least C+ ranked, and while some of them are indeed horrendous, I can get good games out of most of them.
I finally lost a few and realized I need to learn how to fight the new characters, most notably Ibuki, Juri, Adon.
Adversity will come. For sure. I always played random on vanilla, but started by focusing on dhalsim on super. Once I hit B with him, I moved onto Dan after seeing some great vids with Stripfighter’s Dan. It’s interesting, as Dhalism has some really tough matchups (juri, abel) but can overpower some other characters. As for Dan, I really only have consistent problems with Gief & T. Hawk, since their throws shut down his dankyus so hard, which are the heart of my attack style. Other than that, I find it very tough to get in on charge characters that do a hard turtle and have solid attacks off of charge (guile, honda, blanka) or runaway styles (vega). My style relies on spacing, predicting safe jump ins, reactive ex uppercuts, and mainly outguessing the opponent after dankyu rush-down mixups. The mix ups, for me at least, are really where the heart of my game lies. I have full time job so i can only play SSF4 every now and then, but it’s perfect since you can always get a few games in if you got a few minutes. But, I don’t have the time to practice enough to get consistent with FA cancels to supers, etc.
If you are hitting easy opponents, I really recommend practicing jump in strings to dankyu mixups as they will serve you well later on. For example, jumping mk, cr lp, cr lp, st lk, cr mk xx dankyu. From the mk or hk dankyu, you have 5 main options. Throw, uppercut, dash back, jump up (good if you anticipate a throw), and block, although once in a blue moon you can follow with super. From lk dankyu, you can cr mp xx to dankyu to start the fun again. Mix in occasional run ins to throws, FA, etc, and you got your opponent hopefully confused, which seems to increase the chances that they become predictable (tending to go for one or two counters). Hopefully, they start focusing more on what they think they can do vs trying to figure out what you are doing.
Get HP xx hk dankyuu as your basic goto combo. Standing mk is a good interupt (can stuff fireball attempts and things like Dudley’s rushing punchings). Jumping lk dankyuu is awesome. Learn to hit ex dankyuu following moves such as sweeps, etc.
I’ve been using Dan for about the last month with a week off so this is what i’ve distilled from forumns, a few vids, and online play so you can take it with a grain a salt. But, because of the dankyu mixups, he is for me one of the most satisfying characters to rush down with.
Yeah I suggest setting it to search for “more skilled” as it’s a double whammy in your favour since you’ll fight better people and therefore should have more fun than fighting random scrubs and you get more points if you win (and lose less if you lose) 
We all know what options we have after Dankuu Kyaku (not Dankyu :P), at least I should hope we do. Also I don’t see the point of those little poke strings after jump-ins, you should be aiming to combo directly into a Dankuu of some sort or in special occasions linking a s.MP into a KRK FADC > Haoh. MK/HK Dankuu mix-up is not in your favour, you’re at -2 on block and really blocking is not something you want to be doing after it either, ideally you want to be pushing in with LK Dankuu since the mix-up is much more in your favour.
I find the poke strings good for three reasons. Mainly, to get them used to blocking so I can cut one into a throw. Second, just some additional variety to keep the pressure up and keep them guessing. Finally, on some strings, they can mash a dp out of it. If i see that, I try to stop the string next time right before and counter the move.
hehe b bison is the only chr i can keep in the 4k range
b sagat for me really fell because i hate using fireballs and thats like all he does
im going to work on blanka and dan because i find im pretty good with those chrs too. my c+ dan is like stopped at 3k tho hehe