As the title implies. Destin, I’m lookin at you to handle this one. Also of course, Heartnana-san mo mitte iru, tetsudatte kudasai.
I run away and throw fireballs from just inside the weakest/furthest range and use standing rh when I can after he lariats through them. The timing and spacing might be tricky, I just “feel” when it’s going to connect… If he jumps over them, I start mixing them up with the medium and fully charged to fuck with his timing, then air tatsu (hk while rising seem’s to give the furthest distance) to switch sides if I’m getting close to a corner. I always pick training stage and I try not to let the red center line get out of sight. Of course I do this for 3/4s of the round, then make one mistake, he gets his grubby hands on me and he’s in the lead again, but whatever… Throw in a combo when they’re expecting you to keep up the runaway fireball spam and you’ve caught him off guard.
That’s my basic strategy against gief and it makes me not feel helpless against him if nothing else which seems to make fights against gief go a lot better. I don’t feel like I’m in a hopeless situation so things tend to work out better.
Good idea.
The first post should start with “FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, IT’S ALTERNATE COLOR 10!!!”
Yeah, really 
I don’t think I can really say anything that hasn’t been said about facing against Zangief, but…try to bait the Lariat if you can for a sweep and keep your distance, and wait for him to make a mistake (whiff a PD or something). Personally, I like to get in close against a Zangief every now and then, and show some aggression. Now, I’m not saying this will work against good players, but in my experience…it has worked more times than it has failed.
I think most Zangief players just figure, “Okay, this person is using Sakura. He’s going to keep his distance for the whole match because he knows my throws hurt”, so when you jump in and perform a combo or throw them, they’re like, “What the hell? Is he out of his mind?! He should know how bad Zangief can hurt Sakura!” and it throws off their game a little because it’s a little risky (and unpredictable) doing something like that with Sakura going against Zangief, lol. Most would advise against aggression though (for a good reason), but it’s just part of my style, so I like to do it every now and then when I play against him. Either way, once you get the hang of it, he’s the last of your worries, honestly.
Now I’m having more of an issue with Balrog. Compared to him, Zangief seems like child’s play at this point :razzy: (not to say there aren’t good Zangief players, but this is just from personal experience)
Against zangief, step 1 is standing roundhouse. You will use this as your general poke to keep him from walking in on you.
Footsies is rough though, because he has stand mp. You can try to play games then with crouch mk buffer dp. If he catches on to this, he can switch up his pokes to beat that, and you have to go back to stand RH. This dynamic will be the majority of the match, and it is not in your favor, but them the breaks.
If he tries to jump, you have 3 anti airs, standing fierce, crouching fierce, and jab shouken.
The whole thing is basically a range thing, in theory, crouching fierce beats out almost everything he has, but then he can empty jump spd, because it does not have great horizontal range. If he empty jumps close, stand fierce is good, and also beats out many of his air moves. If he jumps far at all, jab dp seems fairly solid, but needs more testing.
So now zangief cannot move forwards well, so what else could he do? Well, some giefs will build meter with KKK lariat. This has a magic few recovery frames where his hitbox extends, and it is punishable. Go into training mode, and you will be able to find it and hopefully hit it.
If they are using PPP lariat, it means you can fierce shouken them every time. You can try to space out sweeps or crouching mk, but if they are moving backwards, its can be tough.
All banishing flats (green hands) are punishable on block and hit. So make sure you punish them. Sakura’s punish isn’t bad, so make him hurt for trying that ex one. Hopefully he will try it less. If they have 75% meter, you may want to neutral jump now and then, as they can EX green hand FADC for safety or pressure.
Thats the gist of it, its a boring matchup that sakura loses for what seems like braindead reasons, but at least if the opponent isn’t willing to play footsies, you should be able to get by.
A couple tips general tips.
-If he tries a splash crossup, ex shouken often gets you out. Keep trying this until he makes you stop. Its a good get out of jail free card.
-If you can’t do you link combos, gief is not a good character to practice on, just do the dumbed down versions with ex shouken.
-I don’t even attempt to mix gief up. I am not going to stun him, and I risk an ex spinning piledrive/lariat mixup every time I try to mix him up. Lucky for gief, those moves don’t care which side I am on. This mixup is not good for sakura.
Get out of the corner with air ex hk.
Maybe I’ve just been playing bad Gief players, but I have excellent success with charge fireballs against him. All of his moves for getting past projectiles require precise timing, and if he doesn’t know when you’re going to release the FB, he’s kind of screwed. Make sure you’re out of green hand and jump-in range and start charging an FB. If he messes up and jumps or green hands, nail him with the FB. If he lariats, release the FB and get ready to either do another one, or crash into his lariat with a high priority move or simple good timing.
That’s just one part of a strategy against Gief, but it works for me.
Btw, what is a “splash” or “splash crossup”, exactly?
The “splash” is the bodysplash. While jumping towards (and possibly away), down + fierce. The splash cross-up is just… the splash cross-up, usually to tick into an SPD.
rog is a pretty solid matchup, there’s nothing really specific about it that you can do. just watch out for headbutt, any EX dash punches, poke well, do your combos.
if anything it’s a 4.5-5.5 match against sakura just because of the lifebar advantage.
The problem with the charge is that if he waits for a specific amount of time, he can time a jump (all characters can) that both hit you and avoid the fireball. Also, if he see’s the charge, he can walk into ex green hand range, or lariat back and build meter if he doesn’t have ex hand yet. I would much rather fight gief when he does not have ex hand meter.
That’s why I said “make sure you’re out of jump-in range”. Good point about walking into ex hand range though. Basically it’s not a tactic that you can abuse over and over, but if you mix it in with other longer-range tactics it seems to be useful.
I wish i could help, but i lost most of my matches vs gief also.
Rog is hard too…I usually jump straight up a lot, hoping he’ll punch into my j.HK as I’m falling.
I asked this in another thread, but I too am having trouble versus Balrog. I find I have no answer to stop his dash punches… Stand HP does beat a regular version, but you have to commit to it early and if you mistime it, they can dash punch you on recovery. Also if they go for an EX version, they will ride the Stand HP anyway, rendering it useless…
Also in terms of general anti-airs, what does Sakura really have?
- Crouch HP
- Close HP
- Close HK
- Focus Attack
- Dash Under / Away.
- Jump straight up MK.
- Air-to air Jump HP.
Does she have anything other than this? Shotos can give you a tough time with their jump-ins as often they can jump in such a way as to avoid your crouching HP. You can dash out of trouble, but it’s not the ideal answer… Ideally you want to discourage the enemy from jumping.
Oh one more important question… After your opponent blocks your Lv2 FA and you dash cancel, at what advantage or disadvantage are you at? It’s probably my timing, but some characters seem to be able to get their pokes out before I can after a dash, particularly Chun Li.
Sak is really good at creating pressure, so I would really like to know if I am safe to stick out a cr.LP after a LV2 FA (like Sagat and Akuma), or if I am at a disadvantage.
Sak has the same dash as ryu, therefore the same post focus options, I believe this is around +1 for level 2. You have the right idea for her anti airs, far HP isn’t bad either. Shotos aren’t too tough to anti air though, work on your timing?
Crouch mk buffer dp for rog, or punish the dash straights! Look up that frame data, but for starters, jab straight is often punishable with stand lk into ex tastu. For the rest, get creative!
Finally beat a gief on ranked:
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4959/sdc10174.jpg
sigh
He won the first two rounds, but I did a lot of throw baiting. j.HK into jump straight up, he whiffs the throw, I j.HK into combo. s.HK from long range. Overheads randomly. Air Tatsu beats most of giefs stuff in the air, too.
Overall, I worked way harder than he did, and he still won two rounds. I kinda got used to him tho, and was able to take the match thankfully (kinda i guess… ^_^’)
Some of Balrog’s dash punches are FA-able; I never bothered to find out exactly which ones, but if someone did and wanted to post it here (and by here I mean in the matchups thread), that’d be sweeeeet 
b,df+K and b,df+[P] are the only armor breaks he has.
b,df+K is that weird uppercut he got in SF4, b,df+[P] is the overhead.
and all special moves done as a reversal are armor beraks.
Turn punch is also armor break I believe.
How do you beat a rolling whore Abel?
It’s sad I’m playing a CPU that won’t stop rolling when I’m trying to get a damn poke on that bitch.