that “point” was more usefull info than ur last post
Just out of curiosity…can you can do dive kick lk hp to tornado to ERF to the whole combo again?? What’s the damage and stun??
EX red focus crumples at level 1, and level 1 ex focus combos from GT, so in theory yes you can get a crumple from EX red focus after the tornado. I haven’t been watching the Japanese footage so don’t know if anyone’s been doing it or not, sorry (or if anyone even still picks Rufus in Japan!). That’s a lot of messiah kicks to throw away, though, so probably only attractive as a way to end the round if you already burned your ultra?
That’s great…I’m looking forward to doing it in practice mode with unlimited meter to step up my execution
Hey all.
So I’ve been trying out Rufus lately and decided to come around this thread. I have just a general Dive Kick question.
Is the dive kick for the most part safe on block? As in, is there any height that I shouldn’t be doing it because its unsafe on block and can be punished?
Ive been trying it out online at different heights and angles, it seems at times when they block my dive kick I get jabbed when I land and try to pressure.
I’m really just checking to see if it’s me and my block strings suck or if I’m actually doing it from an unsafe height.
For instance I know with Cammy dive kick you have to aim for around the shoulders or lower to make it safe. Is there any rule of thumb like that for Rufus?
So I have one, being a relatively new Rufus player. When I first started playing, I got his dive kick pressure down relatively well on casuals, small tournaments, against friends, etc. Now some of them have begun to use standing lights as Anti-Airs to stop the kicks. Bison is the best example I can think of, St LK beats dive kick 8/10. Any tips or tricks to get over situations like this? I’ve tried just letting him use it, baiting him, but it’s like whoooo, I baited a st LK, now what? XD
I’m not good, and I don’t have much Bison experience, but here’s my advice until someone better comes along: If you mean on their wakeup, you can alter your divekick timing (either really fast to stuff the anti-air button or slightly slower to come down during its recovery - experiment in training mode), or throw them. If you mean during neutral play, sometimes you just can’t really divekick, and you need to get into a better position. Against some anti-airs you can do an early dive to bait it into whiffing, then punish with cr.jab xx EX tornado. Against others you just have to not dive from certain places.
Try and aim for the shins or lower, ankles is preferred.
I would say your problem probably lies in the context of when you are divekicking. Generally when playing rufus, ESPECIALLY while playing the bison matchup, you want to play as lame as possible until you score a knockdown and go in from there. This being said you still want to be aggressive with space control by walking forward as much as you can (do the classic sf walk back and forth dance) so that you push him as close to the corner as you can. Rufus does much better against characters once they’ve been knocked down, all he needs is 1 clean hit to turn an entire game around.
If you are divekicking straight into bison’s face as your main avenue of attack then chances are you are going to end up eating a lot of st.hk, j.fr, and as in your case, st.lk. The way to combat this would be to alter your approach. Try going for some sweeps to knock him down and then cross him up or some rolls to get in his face before you divekick. This being said some immediate solutions to the problem would be switching between grabs and divekicks. Seeing how they react to a blocked divekick is key, if they are hitting s.lk a lot and they block a divekick go for a st.lk take a step and throw (since divekick is +7 on block your lk should connect or be blocked if your divekick hit at a low enough point on their hitbox). If you find that after a blocked divekick they throw try opting directly into another divekick, an option that will stuff their throw and lead to a combo + knockdown for you. Also if they’re bison and they hit st.lk after you divekick as bisons often do another divekick will beat it super clean. If they are mashing reversals such as dp wait a second. If they reversal jab xx ex galactic tornado or some other punish and if they just do nothing either go for a throw or divekick it up again. Against a bison reversal like ex psycho crusha an answer would be jump back fierce or to block to ex move and punish with cr.hp.
What ive said is obviously stuff you probably already know but sometimes it helps to see rufus’s options clearly stated out. One of the most essential parts of rufus’s game is figuring out how they will respond to divekicks and reading into these responses to destroy your opponent (obviously much easier said than done…) . This is much harder if you are simply going for straight to the face divekicks, which can be answered with things like st.lk. Just remember that Rufus can take his time getting momentum started, and that if you get a knockdown before you start getting in their face really hard then you will be in better shape. The people you want to divekick straight up are the ones who are whiffing normals at a range where you will hit them as they are recovering (such as ryu’s who accidentally sweep or cr.mk as you are just out of range). Lastly, if you are using divekicking them as a direct avenue of attack remember that delaying divekicks even slightly can work wonders.
where does Rufus get most of his damage from? I mean i’m not really tht good landing divekick 2 s.lk’s into hp into hp gt so i was wondering wht’s the heart of winning with him consistently off mix-up’s off of pressure off of wht how does he win his matches?
Rufus’ main game is to:
- Find a way to be standing right next to his opponent so that he’s in a position to mix up between divekick and throw (maybe also frame traps against certain three-button crouch techs).
- Find a way to land a knockdown and mix up the opponent with ambiguous divekicks.
If he connects a hit from either situation, he uses it to lead into damage from two main things:
- That combo you can’t do yet, which you need to learn if you’re going to win games as Rufus
- Landing his ultra in as many rounds as possible
He occasionally gets big damage by landing air-to-air j.HK into EX snake strike, or by FADCing a reversal messiah kick into ultra, etc, but those aren’t things you want to rely on for your damage. It’s not what you want to hear, but I think if you want to play Rufus and you can’t do that BnB then you need to either resign yourself to losing or just sit down and grind out that combo in training mode for a couple of days until you can do it 9 times out of 10.
So I am wondering if anyone else on here has had Rufus’ u1 drop after a few hits on an a2a jHK. It doesn’t happen often but it never happened to me before ultra and in the 2 weeks its been out it has happened 3 times
is there a fb group or this forum is dead and no one really plays rufus?
I think it’s a combination of very few people playing Rufus and the character having a fairly straightforward game plan. There are a few people who post here when someone asks a question and they know the answer, though. Then of course there are also plenty of people who post once to say that the forum is dead 
ledtallica, I’ve seen that happen before USF4 if you mistime the ultra so the first couple of hits whiff before they fall into it.
haha fair enough. ive posted here before couple of years ago but I forgot my pass. anyway, when you say Rufus should frame trap certain 3 button crouch techs which ones you think? I assume against guy and makoto I can delay the dive dive kick but against Guile crouch fierce I have to frame trap?
Abel is a good example (not that Rufus has a hard time against Abel anyway) - his three button tech with cr.HP stays out a long time but is 8 frame startup, so you can frame trap it fairly well and not have to deal with its good hitbox. Juri is another one you don’t really want to double-divekick against too much because her st.HP thing (I think? the one that looks like a somersault) is amazing against double divekicks. Against Guile I don’t have a lot of experience of doing much more than either get in and wreak havoc or get completely shut down, so I don’t really know if frame traps are particularly good against him compared to instant dives. I think you have to read what buttons he’s pressing because he has a few reasonable anti-divekick buttons. It might just be that I’m not as good as the Guiles I fight, though, or that they don’t know how to defend against Rufus!
for guile u can focus if u notice hes teching with crouch sthp, it have a lot of recovery.
Ok guys. after playing long sets with him the past week im wondering a couple of things. How do you deal with constant focus in neutral and during my pressure? Also how do I deal with constant up backs during pressure? I assume there has to be something better than making the read with j.HK
what are rufus’ 3 most frequently used frame traps?
what’s his go-to punish after blocking ryu’s sweep and dudley’s EX MGB?
His frametrap game is not incredibly strong but it exists. I’d say st.lk to st.hp is his truest frametrap and its pretty good. Far st.hk to cr.jab may be a frametrap? Probably would safer to just call it a counterhit setup, same with his other setup which is st.mp to cr.jab (which is good for stuffing option selects).
I usually punish ex mgb with cr.jab into ex tornado, and for blocking ryu sweep range im not sure, im not sure that its punishable by rufus really. Id usually follow up after it by just blocking or going for a dive kick, maybe try jab ex tornado, dont think you have the range though. Hope this helps!