Red Focus?

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

I’ve dusted off the ol stick and started playing a little USFIV. I’ve watch the capcom changes videos to get a general feel for the chararter changes, and feel like things are pretty cool.

Sorry for the slew of questions. I am not necessarily looking for direct answers, but these are things I have been thinking about.

I have looked for the past day or so on Red Focus tactics. I can’t find anything very clear on when or why to use it. So far I read/seen:

Red Focus has same throw/Armor breaking properties as regular focus.
Red Focus can absorb many hits.
Red Focus takes 2 Bars.

In general, can someone explain to me, or point me in the direction of the rest of the mechanics of Red focus?
Why use “straight” Red Focus instead of Regular Focus (other than absorbing multiple hits).

I also saw some RFADC’s into Ultra in some videos, but I couldn’t get it to work right in training.
What is different properties between FADC vs RFADC, in terms of startup, hits, follow up properties etc?

And of course, has anyone been able to find a good RFADC combo yet for Cody?

2

Level 1 of red focus cancel causes crumple. The most obvious use for it would be playing footsies and buffering in a lp criminal upper from a c.lk. then you just red focus it into ultra. You can only red focus cancel something that is normally focus cancellable.

3

Buffering c.lk into lp CU is not a good idea in footsies in general. But from the point of view of red focus, if you’re not at close range the first hit of the CU won’t connect very often and the first hit is the only focus cancellable hit.

Ways you can use it:

  • Interrupting opponents strings that end in multi-hitting non-armour breaking moves. Cody himself provides an example of this - if you do c.lp c.lp c.lk xx lCU (or similar) then your opponent can red focus between c.lk and lCU and absorb all the hits (building ultra meter in the process) before crumpling you.
  • Hit confirming into Ultra versus crouching opponent. Cody can’t hit-confirm into U1 off jab in AE2012 without four bars of meter, but now you can red focus cancel the first hit of CU into a crumple and then do whatever you want.
  • Cody has some heavy normals that are focus cancellable but not special cancellable (cl.hk, hp knife and c.hp knife), so red focus cancel opens up some combo possibilities there too.
  • Raw red focus lv3 is 210 damage, so you can use that as a punish starter if your opponent whiffs something drastic (like Gouken’s EX tatsu)
4

FYI, Red Focus takes 3 bars

5

Red focus cancel is 3 bars - raw red focus is only 2.

6

It’s probably not worth it to start a punish with raw red focus as you can get more damage off of just a lvl3 focus and just fadc to add more damage.

7

Spend 5 mins in training and see for yourself…

8

in footsies you can counter poke or whiff punish with cr.HP os Red Focus. You get so much hit stop off of red focus that you have enough time to react with a dash and combo.

9

cr. LP works too.

10

um…raw lvl3 red focus hurts O_o. Why wouldn’t you spend 2 bars to start a regular focus punish with red focus?

11

The difference in damage between level 3 red focus and level 3 normal focus is not worth the 2 meters.

12

Still haven’t spent any time on this in training mode eh?..

13

For someone who hasn’t played ultra yet, can you elaborate on the differences?

14

Yeah I have. Not worth it. Also, the only time you are ever landing a raw level 3 red focus is on a stunned opponent. Any video of ultra cody stunning an opponent, they never do raw red focus.

15

Well, you didn’t check very thoroughly then. There are plenty of moves with long recovery that you can punish on whiff or block with lv3 focus. And if you want optimal damage you shouldn’t be using lv3 focus on a stunned opponent at all - nj.hp is significantly better. Don’t assume everything high level Cody players do is optimal - besides, the game is so new you can’t expect people to have completely adjusted their gameplay for the new mechanics.

Here are a variety of combos to demonstrate the point, all using two bars:

Dmg/Stn

368/490 - lv3 focus cr.hp xx hRK FADC mRK
387/540 - lv3 focus cl.hp cr.mp xx hRK FADC mRK
392/590 - lv3 focus cl.hp cr.mp xx hRK FADC ZK (Zonk charged off cl.hp)
399/560 - lv3 focus t.mp cl.mp cr.hp xx hRK FADC mRK
403/641 - lv3 focus cl.hp cr.mp xx hCU FADC cl.lp cl.mp cr.hp xx hCU
414/628 - lv3 focus exBS cr.hp xx exCU
417/635 - lv3 focus cr.hp xx lCU FADC cl.lp cl.mp cr.hp xx hCU

402/514 - lv3 red focus cr.hp xx hCU
428/562 - lv3 red focus cl.hp cr.mp xx hCU
447/580 - lv3 red focus t.mp cl.mp cr.hp xx hCU

I haven’t checked it yet, but I suspect lv3 red focus will also give you higher damage output for 3 bar and 4 bar combos. It’s all because of the fact that the initial hit does so much damage before subsequent hits are scaled.