I’m a new generation fan of fighting games. For the past month I’ve started to playing SSFIV:AE and have really enjoyed it.
I choose to play Sagat because it’s the character I use to see my father play on Arcade Cabinets back when SF2 was popular, and also I wanted to learn the game with a character that punishes users that make mistakes often or mashes.
I’m a “silent” fan of SRK.com and this forum as there is a ton of great expert advice which I’ve been trying to make sense of and use in my training sessions. Although, like many others I’ve still yet to make things just “click” and find that rhythm.
I feel like I need something more to progress. Or possibly, I’m trying to work on too much at once and am not sure what I need to focus on the most. Not knowing which I thought I should try posting and see if asking questions may get me there.
Overall, I’m just looking for any advice for a rookie to stick with. I have a tournament at London Gaming Con this weekend (run by Neo Empire) to participate in and feel unconfident especially since I have no experience in playing offline other than the CPU.
Couple of questions that I can think of:
[LIST]
[]How do you punish people that love to use slides? e.g. Rose, Blanka, Deejay, Cody.
[]The most common way I try to use Ultra1 is to use it as an Anit-Air, as the only way I can currently pull it off reliably is that or after EX TU. However, does this work on all characters?
[*]Turtles. I’ve met players where once they have a life lead on characters such as Dictator, Claw, and Blanka they’ll just at full screen, hold down back and either use full screen attacks which I can block, or just sit ther. Then I seem to worry about the time left and do something risky to get closer and end up getting punished in the proccess. Although Sagat is a character who generally wants to keep opponents at full screen and throw tiger shots, what do you do to approach or pull people out of this?
[/LIST]
There’s loads more I could ask, but I’ll start with those three. If anyone would like me to upload videos of myself, I can try that also. Any help is appreciated.
If they become predictable with slides, focus. If the slide hits with the tip, you often won’t be able to punish. Depends on the char and slide depth. Super is your fastest punish, then c.lp into whatever.
U1 most common setups involves TU FADC, but you can also land it after antiair f.HK, focus crumple, raw punish… I’d say Sagat has it easy.
zoning is not only keeping your opponent fullscreen away. Better think of it as pushing him back towards the corner. If you have to break up a turtle, you have to somehow get upclose to apply mixup (throw/overhead/neutral jump…).
St.mk can move your hurt box back and punish the opponent if you have good spacing, this works quite well on Ibuki and Dhalsim especially. You can also try neutral jumping with mk against slides, which you can combo into cr. jab xx TS/TK/TU. The EX works on everyone as an AA (as far as I know), but i think it might whiff on Honda and Seth if you are doing it grounded, someone can correct me on that.
For turtles, you can try a couple of things. You can up your FB game, low, high, fast, slow, usually they will eventually hang themselves and jump forward, just be ready for it and punish. Otherwise you have to get in dirty with cr.lk into TK blockstrings, overhead etc etc. Just try not to get yourself at a massive health difference. If your comfortable zoning, just zone, if the clock beats you, well shit happens. You’ll face a lot of time outs against characters like Guile.
Slides usually have a bad recovery.
If u know for sure, tiger uppercut. BOOM!!
Theyll think twice.
Or bait out the slide and try to reverse with a light into tiger shot or tiger uppercut. (depending on the tight range)
If u wanna be a true alpha, u capitalize on punishment hard.
If u have meter, punish the slide with light, tiger shot, FADC, then whatever u want for maximum damage.
Ultra 1
Practice reaction
During wake up, they do something unreasonable… Ultra 1
Tiger shot… They do something. Ultra 1.
They jump high… Ultra 1.
They do a shitty focus attack… Ultra 1.
Then ure ready for FADC ultra1.
(Almost same shit but safe and waste 2 ex meters. But why use it when u can do raw damage ultra for simple situation.
Back to basics)
Turtling
Hahah, 2 can play.
U can do the same and chip the bitch with tiger shot.
They can’t turtle forever.
It’s ur poker face call when theyre willing to do something from turtling.
Get a tiger tattoo, and embrace ur battle scars.
Any thug with dragon tattoo must die…
Ryu, fight him alot. Crouching tiger, hidden dragon.
Its a good fundamental tiger and dragon fight.
Tiger eats dragon. If not, ure doing something wrong.
Peace
Edit:
Never tried that, usually I use st.mk against low pokes like ken’s cr.mk.
I’ll try it against blanka’s annoying slide.
Actually, I think Blanka may be one of the only one’s it doesn’t work on, not 100%, try it in training, I can’t get to the game for a while. Good blanka’s will hit with the tip, and you can’t focus as it’ll whiff because of Blanka being the annoying little green bastard that he is. Your better off with just low TS.
St-mk in the Ibuki match is a must, it stuffs so much of her bullshit, you just have to watch for the neckbreaker. Good ibuki’s rarely use that though.
Thank you all for your replies, I lol’d at bboysanstorm’s reply xD.
I’ve only had one chance to play since posting but I tried to do some solid work in training mode measuring all of Sagats normals and specials against Heavy, Medium and Small characters. I’ve learnt to only use TU as an AA from 2 cubes away, and TK from 3.
Playing online I’ve had a chance to play against some Blankas, and the slide can be pretty annoying still. It’s really quick. Although playing more “carefully” on Sagat is getting my ass kicked a lot more. Just climbing that learning curve xD. God this game has so much depth.
I got my brand new Qanba Q4RAF stick delivered today so I’m looking forward to using that over my Madcatz SE stick.
I’m going to try working on corner pressure next. Any tips?
Sorry for the late reply - The Qanba stick is absolutely fantastic. I’ve yet to have any major issues, and have felt a noticeable difference in my execution coming from the Madcatz SE stick.
**Start Button - **I have never accidently pushed this button, even though it’s near the other input buttons.
**Multi-Console - **Works perfectly for me on PS3 and Xbox 360; I’ve yet to use it on PC but I doubt I’ll have any issues with it. The only thing you must remember to do is to switch it to correct console BEFORE plugging it in.
**Felt Bottom - **Holds in place very well, never slips or slides on my lap.
**General wear and tear **- Nearly 8 months later and my stick still looks as good as it did when I bought it. No scratches or dents at all. The buttons are still as responsive.
However, rarely (and I mean rarely) I have had my game unintentionally pause whilst practing combos in UMVC3. I’m not sure what caused it, but I feel it may have happened when I was pressing other buttons. It could be an early sign of wear and tear, but since it’s only happened once and that it was a few months ago, I’m not overly concerned.
