You can punish his normal condor dive on block, if they’re neutral jumping, you can shouken AA it. If they neutral jump, don’t fireball, try and shouken it.
His cr.hk is -7 on block, so you can cr.mk xx shouken if they do close to you.
His spires are unsafe on block, but ex is -3 which is a 1f punish with her st.lp, not sure if it’s worth attempting it.
Your aim in this matchup is to zone T.Hawk, you dont’ want to let him in, use st.hk, hadoken, shouken AAs and be wary about the space between you 2, don’t want to put yourself in the corner too early.
T hawk is an incredibly easy matchup for sakura. He can only punish your fireballs if he’s pretty close. Just chuck plasma and dp his attempts to jump closer / condor dive. Also, non ex condor dives are punishable on block by a hp dp. Unlike gief, it’s a lot safer to try to mix hawk up (no lariat), and his normals are much more easily punished. Just play patiently and and punish his mistakes.
On your own knockdown, that’s just a guessing game you have to take when Hawk is up close, he can just meaty you isntead of tomahawk, less riskier for him.
If you mean pressuring him on his wakeup, you can pressure him for free when he has no meter and no U1 stocked
If you have trouble with getting thrown you can simplify a bit, just don’t leave gaps by attempting links if you’re not feeling confident in them, Sometimes I’ll just cancel straight to shou for the knockdown instead of extending combos. Get the lead, then lame him out.
Yeah once you have the life lead, there’s no reason why hawk should be able to touch you. I’ve won matches solely with anti air dps. 70 or so damage at a time. It’s tedious but he has no safe ways to get in if you’re on point with your anti airs, which is easy against the big man.
Having a boatload of trouble with Vega myself, it feels like all of his footsies tools best mine and are safe on block, and he can j.hp for free with claw on. How should I be approaching him?
Vega can be quite annoying, I wouldn’t advise air tatsuing on him as Vega can do lk scarlet terror into hk scarlet terror (If they know this)
When you get on Vega, just don’t let him go. Make every combo count. His normals are pretty damn hard to beat, when he does his claw dive thing and attacks you with it, just focus dash cl.hp/cr.hp, (good Vegas won’t do this anyway, they’ll use it as a way to escape from Sakura)
Fireballs are useful vs Vega, treat them as pokes. If they’re jumping on you with j.hp, block it out, at least you’re a bit closer to him than before.
I don’t really have a lot of exp vs Vega, as we lack one in Ireland.
Focus dash works against bad Vegas who do the wall dive move. Good Vegas will grab you out of your focus every time. It’s better to go air to air with j. Mp. But also, as fergus said, good Vegas aren’t going to just throw that move out there.
The meaty walldive grab (fuzzy guard) is a fucking pain in the ass. I don’t really know how to deal with it. What seemed to be the case however was that if he gets the fuzzy guard timing, you can cr. Hp him (by doing a crouching normal on the first waking frame you avoid beong standing on your first waking frame, so it gets you out of fuzzy guard setups). However, if he does it ever so slightly earlier, the slash will come out in time to stuff your hp. So it’s kind of a dumb guessing game: if it’s timed for a fuzzy guard scoop, anti air it; if it’s not, block or focus dash.
Again I don’t know for sure how it works but that’s how it seemed to me the last time I played a vega who could do it.
Anyone has tips to deal with Juri? Mostly:
a) How do i get arround her fuhajin zoning? It feels like its harder to jump on her than it is on Guile.
b) There are ranges where pinwheels and dive kicks are safe on block? Is she still negative on those ranges?
c) Any way to stuff her dives if i know its coming?
I have a mate who plays Juri alot so I kinda know this matchup
a) Jone with fireball and if she does any fire ball except for the up one Punish with ex otoshi
b) Only light and ex pinwheels are safe and even then from certain distance pretty sure you can punish with cr.mk xx h.shou/ex.tatsu or sweep
c) I think you can anti air them with cr.hp but that trades alot also if she doesn’t follow on wih full kicks its safe
A) You just have to be patient, focus through fireballs, be wary when she has meter as she can ex fireball to break focus, remember, when you’re upclose, you can really mess her up with a well timed meaty tatsu on her wakeup and her ex pinwheel will trade with your tatsu blockstrings allowing for trade combos.
B) IIRC, lk pinwheel is only safe when you crouch block it (I could be wrong on this), but all the other versions are pretty unsafe, just ex is a bit awkward to punish with the pushback but it still should be an easy cr.mk xx hp shouken. Divekick is always negative, the only time she’s safe if she tiger knees her lk divekick to hit your feet, apart from that, she’s unsafe.
C) I would just block the divekick and then punish it on block rather than trying to AA it.
I’d like to add to this.
First, focus dashing throw her fuhajins is punishable. she can punish ur dash with cr.mk, or another charge fuhajin.
She has a hard time antiairing crossups, but this shouldnt be your winning tactic anyway although good to know. Her jump back HK and jump MP are great preemtive antiairs though.
If you do LK tatsu on her wakeup a bit later than meaty it will beat everything, and ex pinwheel goes under sakura. I do a setup after x3 otoshi midscreen > dash > whiff cr.jab > Lk tatsu.
When using cr.hp or st.hp xx tatsu for frame traps, always buffer LP shouoken during tatsu as an OS if she did EX pinwheel it trades with st.hp and lp shouoken comes out and combos.
All pinwheel’s are punishable with reversal LP shouoken if blocked crouching.
Yeah anti airing divekicks is tough, block and punish. She can still do a gimmick where shes minus on block and then mashes EX pinwheel, i hate that.
Been playing a lot of chuns lately and keep getting pwned by her pokes and especially her sweep, any idea on how to deal with that, its pretty hard to get in cause she can airto air pretty well too.
Also how exactly do you do the setup after forward throw vs her ex spinning bird kick, it seems from the description that you can beat it clean somehow, but all i can do is trade as best
Also with regards to fergus’ question, I think I have the most trouble vs charge characters, akuma, zangief
