I’ve watched tutorials, I do exactly what they say, only Ryu still counters. I can’t even beat the CPU version of him.
He spams fireballs (duh, thats what he does) but when I either Focus or Tele through them, he meets me with a Dragon Punch I can’t block because my stick is in the forward position to do the Focus or Tele (akuma player). If I jump over them to close the gap, he punishes with another DP.
Seriously, WTF. I’m doing what the guides tell me, and it’s not working.
Firstly, people here generally don’t give advice on how to beat the CPU. Secondly, you should mention what character you are using.
You can focus through a fireball and then block if your spacing is correct. You don’t have to hold the stick forward once the animation has started. You can also try neutral jumping over the fireballs and then just walking forward. This will force them to adjust their spacing if performed at the correct range, or they’ll have to throw a risky fireball. You can also try performing a jump-in attack that hits from max range. Basically you put some distance between yourself and him, and then jump forward. If he doesn’t throw a fireball, you don’t press a button. If he does, you press. Some characters with far reaching jumping attacks (eg. Cammy) can only be anti-aired if they press a button in the air. If you do an empty jump from “magic jump” distance, the opponent’s anti-air will whiff.
You can also just try walking forward and block while trying to read their fireball patterns. Make them think you have no intention of doing anything besides blocking and walking forward and then do a focus dash, super, ultra on reaction (or even jump if you’re feeling risky). Don’t be afraid of taking chip damage.
Finally, if you’re playing a character that also has a fireball, just match their fireball with one of yours. Build a “fake” fireball rhythm and then punish when they get too comfortable.
Ah OK I read that wrong (thought you meant when you face Ryu or Akuma).
In either case you don’t have to hold forward after the animation for a focus dash or teleport starts up. If you still get punished it’s because you didn’t use the move correctly eg. at the wrong distance.
Teleport doesnt work, too much recovery.
Focus Dash and jump both work, if he punishes you with a dp, you are doing it wrong (you are either too slow or you jump too late) it’s that easy (sounds hard, but thats how it is).
A close blocked hadoken is -6, so if timed perfectly you can punish him with a sweep or a cr.mk canceled into fireball.
Any average online player should be able to beat a Ryu CPU on the hardest difficulty with any character. You just need to play more.
the computer version of Ryu is a bit different than what people do online. Just watch your spacing when jumping over fire balls to stay out of DP range. you have to have patience and wait for the right opportunity. I main Fei Long, so a lot of the time I have to figure out different ways to get around the fireball spam.
I’ve been trying the tips you’ve suggested for days, and it’s not working at all.
Sagat is also starting to get extremely annoying, since he can throw them high and low.
Basically, all of the strats you’ve mentioned are EASILY negated if the fireball thrower is aware of those tactics and has good timing.
EX focusing through one is suicide, because he’ll have already thrown another one that then takes your temporary life + the fireball damage.
Pretty close to quitting this game due to fireball spammers, people keep talking about ways to get around it, any good player will vortex you with them if even 1 connects because of his timing.
The second you wake up, fireball… the second you land, fireball, the second you EX through a fireball, FIREBALL.
Try throwing an EX fireball through his fireball? He dodges it and then… oh yeah, you guessed it FIREBALLS.
Here’s two basic old-school tactics that most people seem to forget about:
Walk up and block. Block fireballs on reaction. Keep doing it until you establish a pattern to the fireball game. At some point, he’ll either hesitate to throw one because he’ll expect a jump which lets you gain some ground, or he’ll keeping on spamming fireballs to keep you at a distance. Both are good things.
Neutral jump. It’s an effective move because it leaves you safe, while preventing you from getting pushed back. This is especially good against slow fireballs due to the fact that you can only have 1 fireball at a time on screen. So if they throw a jab fireball and you neutral jump it, they have to wait until the fireball disappears off screen before they can throw another one, which gives you about 1 or 2 seconds where you’re able to walk up and become a threat.
Patience. Learn how to be patient early on, and it’ll help you throughout all of your matches with any character you play. If you have to block 10 fireballs before you’re in a position where you can do damage, then do so.
Be aware that at certain ranges, you can easily react to a fireball with a jump attack and punish them. Most likely, the guy throwing fireballs will know what this range is as well. Learn what that range is and pay attention to how your opponent reacts at that point.
Everything Ryu does has a counter. Ryu has a counter to everything you do.
There are specific ranges and timings where fireballs can be focused for combos. If he’s uppercutting you out of it, you’re doing it wrong. Seriously, you’re Akuma, you have a fireball too. And an air fireball, and a fireball that goes through his. If you hate fireballs, just chuck then back at Ryu.
If you can’t block after focusing through a fireball, you need to dash through faster.
Fireballs are good. You can’t make them not good. But you can kill someone for throwing them.
Akuma’s sweep beats fireballs out of startup. If you’re in sweep range it’s not safe for him to chuck plasma. You’re probably focusing too much on directly countering the fireballs and becoming absurdly predictable yourself. Ground footsie will make your game less predictable and make the times you decide to jump or focus a fireball have a higher rate of success.
You can hit Ryu’s hands with a level 2 focus crumple through a fireball from pretty far away.
Always mix up your options. Sometimes blocking a fireball occasionally stops you from falling into traps.
Watch Zhi’s Gen versus Daigo’s Ryu (I think they played in Singapore). Daigo plays a fireball heavy Ryu. But Zhi takes his time and eventually gets in there.
Akuma complaining about Sagat is really silly. Watch Ryan Hart versus Infiltration from final round grand finals. Sagat can’t do ANYTHING without taking big risks (cr.hk, far hk, walk up throw, jump in, air fireball). And then Akuma gets to walk all over him on offense, while Sagat just wants him to stop being a huge jerk for just three seconds.
I’m trying to apply what you guys are saying, I just still can’t get past the spammers. 1 fireball I can deal with, someone throwing them with perfect timing repeatedly… No way.
I’ve tried going into training and using the Record to make Ryu just spam them at me…I spend 90% of the time on my back.
I can apply these techniques to get through single ones, but like I said, I end up getting punished for it.
Edit: Maybe you guys aren’t quite grasping my newbness… I’m only up to challenge 16 for Akuma, and my consistency sucks. Half the combos I took 100x tries to do in Challenge, I could never repeat in a battle scenario. I’m slowly getting better… But I’m an inconsistent gamer as a whole, I either do REALLY good, or REALLY bad. I actually almost beat an A+ Zangeif by just Teleporting away from him all match, was hilarious.
Execution wise, as a classical pianist/cellist by career… I’m sure I can get the muscle memory down with time. For instance his Ultra/Super come out as second nature already. My B&B is almost second nature (L tatsu/DP and if applicable, FADC the DP into Fireball). I’m still struggling on timing for the vortex… I often get blocked when they wake up.
Your ability to do combos and trial challenges isn’t even remotely an indication of your skill in fighting games. Think about it. How often do you actually get to land combos during a match? Depending on your character and the matchup, this might vary between 5-30% of the match? So don’t focus on combos. They’re not doing anything for you. Focus on the fundamentals of being mindful of your spacing, your ability to counter jump attacks, defense, how to attack safely, etc.
Now that we got that out of the way. Identify why you keep eating fireballs. If you’re getting caught by fireballs in training mode, where you KNOW when the fireball is coming your way, there’s no way you’re going to deal with it against your live opponents. When do you get hit by fireballs? WHY do you get hit by fireballs? Let’s start with what you’re doing wrong and specifically describe the scenario. From there we can make progress.
I don’t have a capture card or anything, so videos would be hard.
I’ve been trying to focus more on defense and spacing, letting them make the first move… It’s helping immensely. My style of play with Akuma is I essentially kite them back and forth across the screen, waiting for them to make a mistake and I usually punish with a DP or B&B. The sad part is pretty much everyone knows how to avoid his ultra, and it can’t be combod into if I’m correct.
The spammers are still giving me trouble, my goal is to punish them for it a couple times so they are afraid to keep spamming. I’ve been neutral jumping the first fireball, then demon flipping over the 2nd, and it’s been working somewhat well.
Grab any camcorder or phone with recording capability and film that. Lots of phones nowadays have this capability, if not, one of your rich ass friends probably has one.
Kiting is a term that only works on dumb AI-opponents with poor pathing functions. Not really something that applies to actual people. Avoid relying on your ultra, focus on the fundamentals for now. Later on, you can start incorporting better combos and flashy punishes, but they’re beyond you at this point in time.
It’s a popular term in MMOs in general, just never heard it used in PvP. People are actually capable of stopping and coming up with counter-strategies, whereas kiting traditionally means to lead a npc in a drawn out path while you or someone else drops damage on it. Anyways.
The reason this doesn’t really apply in fighting games is that there’s a corner. In most cases, putting your back against the corner is usually a bad thing since you’re no longer able space as easily and it makes you an easier target.
Anyways, hard to specifically give you help without any footage to go off of. We can offer general advice all day long, but if you want us to go into detail, we’ll need footage of some kind.
Agreed, except for the punishing fireballs on reaction part, it’s impossible, at least it is for Ryu’s due to low recovery and the time it takes to jump-in on him.
As for the topic, you play freaking Akuma and he has 6 billion fireball options lol, use them!
Seriously, at max range, use your Shakunetsu (red fireballs), and you can very much keep up with Ryu’s fireball game upclose with Akuma’s regular fireballs. Air fireball works wonders as well, you can pressure him with instant ex air fireballs and Ryu pretty much has to EX DP through if he wants to punish it which isn’t very easy to do on reaction.