About Boxer, I don’t really think any of Honda’s changes helped him in that matchup, and in fact I think the nerf on hands hurt him. Rog got a bit worse, but safe headbutt and tick throws didn’t really figure into his matchup with Honda in the first place. Basically, I thought Honda went even or 5.5-4.5 v Boxer in ST, and I think the matchup got a little harder in Remix because it’s now harder to advance with hands.
Also, I thought Ken was like 3-7 before and it got considerably better, and I thought Chun was like 4-6 before and got easier, so that’s where my rankings come from. I’ve been doing pretty well against fireball characters generally so far.
I’ve found that jab headbutt is usually more useful when you’re already in footsy range
Yeah, I’ve done well mostly as well, but I know my Chun has smashed Hondas that are better players then I am, so the matchup is still in favor of Chun.
I thought it was 8-2 before not 6-4.
Cammy, 8-2 I can buy, though thinking it will end up 7-3.
I think a good Ken has it easier against Honda now due to the better DPs. Yeah, it’s a lot easier against scrub Ken, but good Kens know better then to do stupid FBs at the wrong spacing.
Against Boxer, his cr.strong beat the HHS in old ST, so nerfing the HHS doesn’t really hurt him, as it was already nerfed in ST. What helps is his super connecting more reliably, and Boxer’s nerfs hurt him in the matchup (grab, headbutt, super damage) more then Honda’s nerfs hurt Honda.
I played a lot over the weekend against very good Shotos and Guiles (DGV and Brian, to name a couple). The jab headbutt doesn’t really help as much as most of you think, if the Shoto player is good and knows what they are doing they can punish it every time easily. DGV even had the spacing on the jumping short down to where his cr.roundouse would hit it clean :(. I’d say the Shotos are still at least 4-6 if not 3-7. Honda has more options but the Shoto player can counter them all if they are patient. Guile can punish the jab headbutt even easier but the jumping short is very handy in that match-up.
Against Dhalsim the jab headbutt through fireballs is punishable by cr.fierce from anywhere on the screen. It is usefull from closer range but good Sims don’t throw many fireballs from there. Honda’s jumping short loses clean to Sim’s cr.fierce as well. The new improved Super is really good against Sim, though. I’d say it is still 5-5.
I think the Sagat match is in Honda’s favor now, slightly. The jab HB hits Sagat’s arms from very long ranges, with the fierce HB against low tigers it can be hard to keep Honda out. As someone else said, if you just spam HBs you’ll get rocked by Sagat’s big damage combos, but that’s the same for any match-up. O.Sagat was even for Honda in ST, I’d say it’s 6-4 now (I did play against good Sagats, KJ out the 17th was one, before anyone says anything, LOL).
How do you beat a Sagat that jumps back with RH all day? The occasional fast low tiger shot to make you block and lose the lead? If he refuses to engage and turtles up, the match comes down to luck, and if you guess wrong, you lose 80% of your life to a dizzy then follow-up combo. I hate this matchup more than any other if the Sagat plays extremely defensively. He won’t make many mistakes because he’s not doing anything but jumping up and down outside of butt smash range.
Not sure if you can react to it that quickly, considering he only throws like 2 a round (i.e., every 99 seconds). He’s jumping back RH 80% of the time. Sometimes he’ll crouch in defensive crouch to throw off the pattern. Once you fall asleep, out comes one tiger shot to take the lead. Because of his stupidly easy dizzy combo, Sagat’s comeback potential is very high, whereas Honda’s options seem very limited in a turtling race. Chun Li can do the same thing. If your opponent runs and makes you come to them, Honda has limited options against a fast or powerful character who spends the majority of the round jumping back in the air.
Pretty sure the jumping back RH can be supered, and you can time a headbutt in there if your spacing is right, use strong headbutt to get in the right spacing.
…which is exactly why I claimed in the original STHD thread long long long ago that Honda should have been completely reworked so that he was better offensively and weaker defensively. Unfortunately, the changes to Honda in this game never reflected that, and Honda is just as weak offensively as he was before, and not much weaker if at all on the defensive side.
Try Jumping Strong against a Sagat jumping back in the corner. Or Jumping Jab. It might come out fast enough and far enough to catch him on his way up, but I’m not sure, since Sagat’s leg is so long. Also, the best way may be to get to the space right outside of his Jump Roundhouse and go for a Roundhouse Butt slam right when he starts on his way down from the Jump. If my theory is right, you should be able to go through his Jump Roundhouse on the way up. Of course, if the Sagat has great reaction, he may be able to DP you anyhow. If that’s the case, maybe try a Forward Butt Slam to try and hit him on the way up.
These are all theories of course. I’d have to actually try them out in a real match to see how it works.
Just do jumping forward, roundhouse, or fierce from max or fairly far distance and hit him out of his jumping roundhouse on his way down. You can use neutral fierce and guide yourself so that you stay in the air and hit him on his way down, even. It can definitely also be supered, and to make sure you deal as much damage as possible, mash on jab while super’s going on so that if the super trades with jumping roundhouse you’ll get jab slaps for a nice juggle (yes, jab slaps juggles off super; strong and fierce might as well, but I haven’t actually seen it work for them yet). Also, crouching strong beats or trades with Sagat’s jumping toward roundhouse at the right distance.
Vs sagat EARLY jumping fierce will hit clean or trade in his favor everytime vs Sagat jumping RH in the corner… and I mean early like as in the second you leave the ground. The jumping jab is great as an anti air to air as well vs almost all characters!
I’ve played only a couple of Sagats online. That match-up doesn’t feel too bad. I can tell when I’m playing a good Sagat if he doesn’t spam random tiger shots from the other side of the screen. My theory is build meter as quickly as possible and store it. Most good Sagats I played became very defense when I had a super in stock allowing me to get in closer to do mix-up combos and/or his command throw. Oh, and his back rh seems to be pretty good as a long distance knock down attack.
What I want to know is what are some good pressure moves after a fierce or rh grab? I usually use a jump-in down mid-kick to cross them up and from there either do a cr. lk to mid or high butt or his command throw. Depending on the match-up I might do the strong HHS, but I usually don’t do it that much just because I’ve been reversaled from it. Another question I have is are there any other good command throw setups Honda has besides the one I mentioned?
yes after the Fgrab when he hugs you! do the Boxer trick where you walk underneath him then do a Low RH, it’ll look really weird and will crosshim up and more than likely he will not be able to reverse this or block this. its great when they are in the corner b/c it will put you in the corner after wards which is where you want to be when fighting a non FB character like Claw. You must be in the corner vs claw or your dead. cr lk into splash or headbutt is great also.
Is there any point in using strong HHS now that fierce HHS is easier to pull off?
Is it just me or is jumping LK a really good counter to Dee Jay’s RH sweep? Can you time it so that it cleanly hits or does it just trade hits?
I’m addicted to crouching strong. Am I right in thinking that this is one of his better medium range pokes?
Which characters should I be using jumping strong againt? Right now I use it all the time vs. Vega and Chun Li as an anti-air.
Keep in mind that I didn’t play much ST. The last SF game I really played was SSF2 on Xband. I really miss his old standing fierce and I wish you could steer his jab slaps like in SSF2. otherwise, he seems solid and is better against fireball characters than before.
Man, Honda’s super is totally the same when blocked as it was in ST. You can be hit between hits, I already knew about that, but today a Boxer player punished the second hit with a non-reversal super like he could do in ST. That sucks!
Crouching strong is definitely a good poke, useful especially to shut down Guile’s and DeeJay’s pokes and projectiles in footsies, as are crouching forward kick and crouching jab. Jumping strong is fine if you can get it out, but honestly it shouldn’t be working all the time against Chun and Claw. But while it works, hey, it works. Against Claw it and jumping jab are really more useful to beat walldives.
By the way, I realized I was wrong about crouching strong beating Sagat’s jumping toward roundhouse. That was ST O Honda’s crouching strong that beat O Sagat’s, not N Honda’s, and R Honda’s doesn’t do it either; for all I know, having basically zero experience against N Sagat, maybe N Sagat’s and R Sagat’s jumping roundhouse has a better hitbox than O Sagat’s anyway. This was one of several reasons I preferred O Honda v O Sagat.
Unless you are better than those guys in general (not as good, better), you are not going to beat them with Honda, sorry (not often enough that it will matter, anyway). They are world class turtles (and I don’t mean that derisively – it’s just a fact). They have excellent reflexes and they know how to control their opponent’s spacing. Most importantly, they have limitless patience (the mark of a great turtle).
I’ve been going probably 4-6 against Brian and other top Guiles with Honda so far. It’s a much more even fight than it was in ST, although Guile still probably wins it.
I’ll be online playing With Honda on Xbox this thursday morning at about 9am-12ish EST at my friends house if there are any takers not sure what my friends user name is though so i’m not sure what name i’ll be playing under…Never played on the Xbox before.
Thanks to the RH FK, he definitely maintains the upper hand.
Guile got a big anti-air range boost. Honda has to jump in from further away than ever before.
Honda can’t simply bulldog his way in by canceling the SBs with j.HB, because Guile can walk up and s.Frc. (Brian did it to me once, that was enough to give me pause.)
He can’t rely on hands when he’s close, either, because they trade with or get beat outright by low strong.
The fat man still has the standard advances of sumo splash and up.Frc, but jumping in (which has always been the best means of closing the gap) is significantly riskier, now.
This fight was 6-4 Guile before, now it’s 7-3, at least.
Against Guile from fullscreen, a very underrated strategy is to simply walk forward and block the booms.
Guile’s sonic booms have very little pushback compared to many other projectiles, and he can’t rapid-fire them as fast as a qcf character, so it’s actually not too difficult to get into mid-range. No need for buttslams or jab headbutts or floating punch shenanigans, just man up and walk forward. Then from mid-range the real fight begins.
I’d have to actually try them out in a real match to see how it works.