Ryu Q&A Thread

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Havent got the game yet. I loved ryu in SF3. Does he have denjin setups like he used to?

I’ve got a few questions:

I’ve been pottering about in Training Mode with Ryu, and in between doing some combo practice and testing, I decided to try out that Crush Counter Sweep into Guard Crush thingy. I’m doing it like this:

Cr. HK at max/far range (Crush Counter) xx V Trigger -> Whiffed St. MP -> Charge Hadouken, Release -> Guard Crush

Anyway, I’ve been testing a few responses that the opponent can do on wake-up to fight back against the Charged Hadouken. Some characters like Ryu, Ken, and Gief don’t need meter to punish, but some characters like Chun-Li and Vega seem to. R. Mika and Laura seem to need a full super to punish it. Dhalsim can just teleport away like nothing happened. Anyway, here are my questions:

1. Is it possible to V-Reversal a Charged Hadouken or Denjin Hadouken? I don’t think it is. I think the last hit, the one that causes Guard Crush, cannot be broken out of. Because it ends the state of being in blockstun, I suppose.

2. Has anyone done any thorough testing of this set-up? Because I don’t trust myself to be too thorough, I’ve probably made a fair few mistakes and oversights in my testing (poor meaty fireball timing, may have missed out on testing certain reversal options, etc.).

3. Once the opponent is Guard Crushed, what is the best damage follow-up? Bear in mind that Ryu won’t necessarily be point-blank. I think F + HP into Heavy DP is good, it’s easy to do and it does 134 damage (the Guard Crush state scales any follow-up attacks down to 60%).

If anyone’s interested, here’s my list so far of what seem like consistent reversal options in this situation. Basically, it’s just a list of characters who have projectile-invincible reversals to a certain degree. Might be useful in the four match-ups at the bottom, as those characters will take some extra guaranteed damage off a CC Sweep if they don’t have a full meter. But take it with a grain of salt because, I’ll admit, I’m not a terribly methodical person. If there’s any false info in here or I’ve missed something out, please tell me:

Spoiler

Characters who can use meterless Reversals:

Ryu (MP/EX Shoryuken, Super may trade)
Ken (MP/EX Shoryuken, Super)
Cammy (MK/HK/EX Cannon Spike, EX Hooligan Combination, Super)
Necalli (HP/EX Raging Light, Super)
Zangief (Double Lariat, V Trigger, Super. Super will whiff if Ryu does Cr. HK at max range, then walks back a short distance after V Trigger activation. Double Lariat will still clip Ryu’s hurtbox. Don’t try doing this shit against Gief, basically)
Dhalsim (All versions of Yoga Teleport, Super)

Characters who have to use EX Reversals:

Chun-Li (EX Spinning Bird Kick, Super)
Vega (EX Rolling Crystal Flash, Super)
Rashid (EX Spinning Mixer, Super. Need to move Super forward or it won’t hit)
Karin (EX Ressenha, Super)
Bison (EX Devil’s Reverse, Super)
F.A.N.G. (EX Nihankyaku, Super)

Characters who can only use Reversal Super:

R. Mika (Super)
Laura (Super)
Nash (Super)
Birdie (Super)

Anyway, I’mma stop obsessing over this for now, time to practice other stuff.

I’m confused about what Ryu’s strengths are.

Did anyone create a Ryu facebook group already?

is cr.MKxxHado punishable?

If your opponent has a 6-7 frame button that can reach then yes I punish with ryu sweep if they don’t space it correctly
Also free super punish regardless of spacing
EX hado is safe

Depends on spacing. All the hadokens are -7 on block, which is very punishable if you them point blank or point blank with a single normal. You have to space them out. Something as simple as st. MP, cr. MK, fireball will put you out of range of any of her normals. And if she actually throws something out, you can whiff punish it. Always pay attention to it because if you’re facing good/decent opponents, they will be doing the same to your fireball spacing.

Fireball in conjunction with a 16 frame forward dash and good anti-air.
Making usually safe specials unsafe with parry for a bnb to the face.
Good movement speed and damage.

You can basically play footsies with him and get good damage and corner carry for your troubles.

When you guys anti air DP are you able to do it while “Dancing” on stick? I am trying to work on this right now and I am struggling to get anti air DPs but whenever I sit at a spot they come out cleanly.
Is this normal? Is there anything I can do to make it easier for me to hit while I’m dancing?

In general what should be our game plan as far as improving as Ryu mains? This is the first SF game I’m trying to take seriously and genuinely want to know what to do to improve. I’m already trying to get involved in my local scene. I just switched to stick, so I guess practicing specials in training mode is a good idea. I’ve been watching as many SFV tutorials as possible. I’m doing decent online at around 600 LP but I struggle against the good players. I don’t have access to frame data nor what any idea what I should be doing with it. I have a few combos that I know and generally I try to poke with normals I think fit the situation but sometimes I get rekt for it.

I know the game is new but I’m sure there’s a few go to resources Ryu mains should be sticking by right now. I think V-Trigger Denjin Super set-ups are really good on opponents wake-up as they pretty much have to block, in which case they eat whatever is Ryu’s most damaging meterless combo.

@FGC_Oni

I am a beginner like you so I can only share what I’ve learned so far. First thing I did was try to improve my anti air game. I set the dummy to do random jumps and tried to get comfortable with his MP DP, cr.HP, jab, and b.HK. His MP DP is good at medium range but he struggles up close unless your timing and normal choice is impeccable. Due to me struggling with this at close range I try to stay at my comfortable DP range or directly in their face to avoid having to deal with it… it’s just something that I am gonna have to work on long term.

Second is to work on effective combos. I won’t post any here but you can find a complete list in the combo thread. It will take some time to get used to which combo to choose. Combos with DP finisher are the best but have very short range, whiffing a dp is catastrophic in this game so you gotta know your ranges. MK tatsu combos are second best but those whiff on crouchers. Fireball combos are the easiest and have most range but can sometimes not combo if they are at the tip of your cr.MK range or if you didn’t cancel fast enough. Although his super is extremely good, I tend to just finish my combos with EX tatsu until I get more comfortable with the character, those work on crouching and standing opponents and will link from any cancellable normal even the absolute tip of cr.MK. The damage is less than a dp finisher but still quite good.

I found that having put in some time with the 2 things above is enough to beat super bronze opponents. Most players just dump nonstop and whiff heavy normals. Just DP the jumps, counterpoke their whiffed cr.HK, and try to get your damage in when you can. This should give you a good baseline to work on.

As far as general gameplan and observations from my limited noob experience:

  • I try to look for good Ryu footage and it seems that the most successful Ryu players are very aggressive and try to take advantage of his very fast forward dash and backdash. Constantly pressuring the opponent and baiting a whiff with his fast backdash.
  • I found that long range fireballs are pretty bad in most matchups. Almost every opponent will have 1-3 ways to easily deal with it. So I train myself to not rely on it from afar and use it a close range footsie tool instead, or of course as a combo/blockstring finisher. There are some exceptions to this like Zangief, which can’t do much about your fireballs without V-trigger, this is only of Ryus only good matchups.
  • You will find that his normal range can leave a lot to be desired, this can make it tough in some matchups like Karin and Chun who have much better buttons. It’s tough for a beginner to try to play the footsie game in those matcups, so try your best to stay agressive and frametrap/throw.
  • Ryu has nice frametraps with st.jab into st.MP, cr.MP into cr.MP is also quite nice.
  • He seems to have pretty nice meaty setups that cover slow and fast wakeup. Unfortunately I can’t post any here because I am still working on those.

This is all I can think of for now. Ryu is a fundamentals character and it will take experience (or talent) to be effective (I have neither)

Good luck I hope it helps.

The basic Ryu gameplan is largely unchanged other than the zoning aspect.

He rewards solid fundamentals and his specials really illustrate that.

Anti air (DP) - You need to get this part down. Ryu has always been about capitalizing on mistakes. You need to punish every jump possible.

Corner Control (Tatsu) - Get them in the corner and pressure. Tatsu has great corner carry. When they panic and jump DP.

Footsies (normals and fireball) - This is where his gameplay seems different to me. You arent going to be zoning full screen with fireballs. Now you use them like a long range poke. Just outside the range of you opponents normals. At this range they are super hard to react to so people will try a hard read and jump… then you DP. If not keep playing footsies. Using cr.mp, st.mk and st.lk. His fast dash makes his throw game very scary.

Make sure your hit confirms and combos are on point. Ryu hits hard so make sure every jump in or frame trap counts.

I’m not using parry to much yet but am slowly looking to add it to my game.

I also agree with someone above who mentioned denjin wake-up setups. I think this will be a very important part of his game. And ex denjin fireball can crush guard almost 20 frames quicker than the non ex version. I want to see how viable. Sweep, VTC, denjin or ex denjin guard crush into combo really is.

Also dont sleep on his target combo. You can VTC after the roundrouse, link a light tatsu then link super apparently. Gonna play around with that and denjin set ups in training tonight.

I don’t really expect to see Denjin Crushing being a large aspect to his gameplan, mainly because Denjin Crush seems to apply a rather heavy scale to your followup. Probably if you land a Crush Counter cr.HK xx V-Cancel and that last hit or two will close the round.

So far, at mid-screen I use any CC cr.HK I land as an opportunity to mash forward dash like a manic to get them in that damn corner ASAP, and I try not to fish cr.HK outside of guaranteed punishes when I’ve got them there. Once they’re cornered any big whiff or block that would grant a CC, you likely should be able to land anything for so much more than what a Denjin Crush will grant you.

Yeah you might be right here.

I tried it a little last night.

By the time the guard was broken scaling was down to either 50 or 60% already.

Might be some utility in closing a round but not enough raw damage.

How are you guys utilizing air tatsu.

Just realized i dont use it at all at the moment.

Normal air tatsu is near useless for me. If you want to use it air to ground or crossup like in SF4 it simply isn’t good enough. The hitbox is very particular and it will whiff most of the time on grounded opponents. You can use it as a followup after air to air j.MP but even then it whiffs most times. Only times it combos reliably from j.MP is if you are well above the opponent, which should rarely happen.

The air EX tatsu is much better as a j.MP followup, seems to combo easily after it and does a nice chunk of damage to boot. I will be trying to utilize it more in my game.

Airborne Tatsumaki cannot hit opponents in a crossup fashion unless it’s EX.

Ok.

One gimmicky use of air tatsu is to follow in a near full screen (but not full) fireball.

Apparently it will catch Bisons who are using v-skill to counter fireballs back at us clean.

Hk version it looks like

Not sure whether this goes here or in the combo thread, let me know:

So what’s the best followup after Cr.HP xx Trigger? is it step forward a bit then Cr.HP and continue or are more people doing Cr.HP xx Trigger, St.HK, St.LK xx