let’s discuss some matchups. please, only people with offline experience that have played against good players. none of this “i played this and it worked online and the player seemed good.”
vs Chun-Li
3.5 : 6.5 (in my opinion)
i like SA1, for the obvious EX fireball limiting her poke spams and weakening her ground game a bit. i first see how good their chun is and what level they’re at. if they’re not as good, i’ll fish for far fierce parries from that distance. if i land the parry, low fierce xx EX joudan, roundhouse tatsu. without meter low forward into roundhouse tatsu works as well. first round i just counter poke with sweep, keep her meter building to a minimum with varying strengths of fireballs. standing forward smacks her out of her low forward, far standing roundhouse, and is overall good in this matchup. one thing that i feel is important about this matchups is that you get damage off of your knockdown, while still maintaining position if you have her cornered. when ryu has chun li cornered, he can do a lot of things with his spacing, fireballs/pokes, kara throw, and mixup. one thing that i learned not to do is fish for parries close to her, very very bad idea and if you guess wrong you’ll end up cornered from her super.
vs Chun-Li with meter: this is where you have to start playing more defensively, but still maintaining your ground with some offense when the opportunity comes. i find myself using UOH over her low pokes, still fireballing but from close range (careful for her jumps, use fierce fireballs), still using standing forward, and one more thing i do differently. i like to walk or dash around (when in a safe distance and not into the poke) with low short. low short goes under chun li’s standing roundhouse, and it disrupts some of her pokes when used to dash in. a lot of good, but not excellent chun players tend to f+roundhouse a lot, and if you dash in and low short you can go under it. remember that her f+roundhouse can be punished on whiff with a sweep (strict timing and risky if she has meter, think of it like trip guarding her). kara UOH can be put to use if your execution is good with it.
defense against her corner pressure: first off defense against her pressure. a good chun li will walk you into the corner, or walk up to you and kara throw or walk up with back fierce. if you see that you’ll need to start sticking things out and taking risks (all about what a bad matchup is, taking more risks than your opponent). you need to make them shift between moving in like that and walking back to try and counter poke or punish whiffs. so keep trying until you shake her off. if you’re already cornered, well, it’s a very bad situation obviously. here’s some things to look at. chun li wants to do 3-4 things when she has you cornered. she gets into max kara throw range, low forward meaty, kara throw, late low forward (to catch the bait of you teching throw), and UOH/back fierce.
-
block then super jump out. some chuns tend to kara throw later and you have time to block AND THEN super jump out. which will beat a meaty c.mk (block), late kara throw, and late c.mk (to catch low option select or punish bait)
-
super jump out right away. it loses to low forward or back fierce meaty, but it beats a late low forward and kara throw attempt.
-
block then UOH. it’s pretty safe, just remember to go to neutral really fast.
-
EX tatsu. it’s not safe at all vs back fierce. but it can go over her meaty low forward and counter her kara throw. the reason i like this over EX shoryu is because the EX shoryu doesn’t really hit when she’s at max kara throw range doing low forward.
when pressuring her: you wanna put the threat of her having to get out of the corner. she can block your strings all day if you haven’t put the threat of you’re gonna throw her ass to death. i’d say do it 2-3 times at first to soften her up a bit, and see what she does on t he 3rd or 4th time. on those times just back up to see if she tries to wall jump out or do something else. it’s a good option because you still have her cornered and you got to see what she is likely to do in that situation. when you keep her there you want to have a threat of EX fireballs too, and actually put the fear of that into her. here are your neutral corner mixups (which are all counter-able so just pick one)
-
UOH/kara UOH
-
walk back out of distance and fish for far fierce, or counter sweep her pokes
-
walk up and standing forward.
-
walk forward then back, then throw an EX fireball
-
walk up and down parry out of back fierce range, walk up and kara throw
-
walk back, dash up with throw, UOH, or close fierce.
note: after UOH i like to dash back to see what they did.
note2: dash up close fierce is only 1 frame longer than dash up throw. you can use something like dash up close fierce xx EX fireball, or just mix up after it.
ok well that’s all i can think of for now, feel free to add on to anything or discuss other matchups.
edit: if chun has no meter wake up parry, the risk/reward is definitely in your favor. if you wake up with parry she can’t really knock you down unless she tried to throw you, so go for it and get some damage.
this thread idea was stolen from ramza in the necro forums.
vs Ken
3:7 (in my opinion)
some people will look at the ratio i gave and go wtf? well it’s pretty bad, that bad. i’ll explain. in this matchup some people will say just have the better shoto skill or whatever, that stuff doesn’t work. he just has more and better options than you. you’re basically playing a mirror match in a disadvantage, in a sense. now there are differences, but they really don’t help ryu all that much. i don’t like this match up more than chun li because ken’s offense is a lot more threatening and his defense, in my opinion is a lot less easier to crack. so i’ll go into detail of why this isn’t so great for ryu, then where to try and land your hits and win the matchup. first off, pretty much all of ryu’s pokes can be reversal shippu’d. not many people reversal ryu’s standing forward, but believe it or not, it can be reversal’d on block or hit. a lot of things can be reversal’d by shippu on block. the obvious difference between ryu and ken is ryu’s EX fireball. some people will say to use that as an advantage, but that’s kind of discarded once ken is rushing you down for free and he can kara srk for heavy damage. ken has many opportunities to land damage while…well you might too but it’s not much of a threat. even if you do happen to have a super stocked and land it, it doesn’t do as much damage as it should for that longer-than-ken’s bar.
so with all that in mind, you’re gonna have to take a lot more risks. honestly you should feel pretty good if you win this matchup and your opponent is at the same skill level. anyways one more thing i just remembered is ryu’s punish combo. low fierce, EX joudan, roundhouse tatsu. you may find yourself parrying on wakeup more, or fishing for his standing roundhouses, which i don’t blame you for, you’ll need to take the risks to win while the ken player can go the safe route. personally, i like jumping in and dashing more. i only resort to footsies and EX fireballing his pokes and such if really has a solid defense game against jumps and dash ins or i’m just being too predictable. one thing to remember is not to get TOO into the footsie game with him, because you won’t get much out of it as he will. you land a max range low forward, your EX fireball won’t even connect. he lands a max range low forward, you eat a super. personally i sweep more than low forward to counter poke.
unlike in the other matchups he has a wakeup shoryu. kara throwing will come in handy since he can’t kara throw you and it’s pretty safe from EX shoryu. but don’t let the threat of shoryu slow down your offense, you’ll need to gain as much damage from knockdowns as you can. you may already know that it’s really hard to gain damage off of a neutral state. ken players who are eager to wake up parry or shoryu i like to jump over and mk crossup them and then start to mix up. it does a lot of good because a lot of experienced players know that they can take a few risks during the match and gain it back even if they do happen to fail.
a good mixup i think is throw and throw baiting, very underrated and underused. there’s not too much to say about this matchup as i thought there would be. any questions/comments/tips are welcomed.