I just picked up Seth and my GOD is he epic. I watched online tony’s tutorial, but for some reason, the mix ups he said that worked, oddly enough dont work when I try them in training mode. Like the light sonic boom into teleport or wall bounce mix up dont work when I try it. I dont know if he got patched so that his mixups are harder. But I need to know if my inputs are just too slow, or are their better mixups, because even his toe stomp bounces him too high for the cross up or block to work. I use dan as my training dummy so I assume it depends on what hit box the opponent has, but that brings me to my next question
What are his awful matchups, because I have been getting raped by Juri, and T Hawk, so its either the way im playing, or they have the tools to stop seth
The light sonic boom teleport mix up without a fadc only works if they don’t quick stand (AKA most useful setup after an Ultra 1 punish). In order to have more consistency with the mixup with your opponent quick standing, you have to fadc out of the light sonic boom then proceed to either teleport or just run forward to do a different punish. Some examples are below:
-One sonic boom fadc I find that works well is running right behind the sonic boom and then spacing the jumping round house so that it looks like you are going to cross them up, but you don’t. It confuses the hell out of some people and its usually a huge damage for free. If they are in the corner, you can choose to instant overhead headstomp them instead, and then come down with light kick so that you land infront of them for another fake cross up.
-Another fadc punish is more of a read, you can once again dash behind the sonic boom, and since alot of people’s instinct is to jump forward over the sonic boom when they see the fadc coming, you just dragon punch them out of the air. Use the light dp so that you can follow up with headstomps and a reset.
As far as bad matchups go, on paper seth doesn’t necessarily have a whole lot of bad matchups, but the issue is, there is only a very select few that can play him as intended on paper. And what I mean by that is making the perfect decisions consistently. This character lacks alot of core fundamentals ( terrible walk speed, and not great normals and pokes) so you have to make alot of guesses if you want to see the big damage against good players. The problem is if you guess wrong, be prepared to take a ton of damage. I would say some of the more difficult match ups include cammy, juri, bison, sakura, and maybe some others. In general I find that characters with safe punish and safe pressure tools are the ones that can cause seth to struggle because it can make it hard to actually find that opening to get a great punish in.
To be great with this character I feel you have to master 1 of two things or even both. You either A. have to master understanding your opponent in a very short amount of time. For example collecting as much data on how he moves and plays and how he responds to you during the first round, so that you can on the fly adjust your play to pick him apart completely. Or B. you must master the art of molding your opponent into doing what you want them to do. When Poongko was first on the scene, he had this mastered as his opponents were just flat out scared to press a button against him, so he could literally have his way with them and proceed to do whatever he felt like doing.
I see Poongko doing this alot, after the hard knock down, he would double dive kick, is that only effective against charge characters? And are there any better mixups without using meter? I understand Seth can be a meter whore at times. Also when is it safe to Dp? I like to give opponents respect and not dp on wake up a good portion of the time. But other then Tanden engine into crouching fierce, I dont know when to use it.
I guess I could use it after Ive already used an SPD multiple times and they are ready to neutral jump and punish it?
Dive kick as well as the jumping round house are both good tools to keep a vortex going against any character. To have great dive kick pressure you have to be aware of your spacing. What you probably have noticed is when a dive kick hits high (around the head region of the character) there is no hit stun afterwards. What this basically means if they are allowed to either counter attack you or even dash out. The opposite happens when you space the dive kick to hit mid (chest to waist region), where there is a hit stun present, and that then leads into a combo or small block string.
Now knowing and understanding your spacing of the dive kick and recognizing where it is going to hit is what is going to allow you to do an intelligent mixup or vortex. Starting with the dive kick hitting high, most players at the low to mid level will not know they are out of a block or hit stun, and will continue to sit there, you can capitalize on this and go for a SPD right after the high hitting dive kick. Try this on a training dummy set to auto block. Hit high with the dive kick and go into SPD and you will see that it works. When you try this with the a dive kick that hits mid, you will see the SPD whiffs every time. This is why you need to understand your spacing. You have got to recongize that if your dive kick hits high, go for the SPD afterwards, if it hits mid, go for a crouching lp hit confirm linked into standing Hp into 100 ripping feet. If they are blocking there are a wide range of options such as 1 to 3 crouching shorts kicks into SPD, or tanden engine resets, or etc. I could go on forever.
Keep in mind that you need to understand your opponent as well. I as a seth player can see when another seth is hitting me high and know they will go for spd right afterwards, so I am able to hit them with a counter dp for free every time. So test your opponent to see what he does after a high dive kick so you can better pick the right option such as high dive kick, then wait and bait out a counter dp.
Play around with jumping round house too as with perfect spacing and super delayed release of it, you can make it seem like you are going to cross up, but you don’t and land in front for a good damashing punish.
As far as Dps go, when you have two meters, its virtually always safe to dp because you can cancel all 3 forms of it. For the medium and heavy dp, if you cancel after the 2nd hit, you are minus 3 frames on block, so that will effect your mix up options. When to use the dp to me depends on play style. Some people are wreckless with them and just throw them out to be throwing them, others are more calculated with them and try to blow up crouch teching and back jumps. Its just something you got to play around with. I would say if you are going to go the more guessing route with the dp instead of a punish route, u should always make sure you have two meters.
Bison (Dictator or Boxer) is no where near a bad match up for Seth. T Hawk is virtually free so you just need to work on your fundamentals. Juri can keep Seth out but she’s toast if he gets in.
DP is never 100% safe because Seth is always negative when he FADCs.
You can not see what a good Seth player is going to do off an SPD (j.HK can be substituted for j.HP which will not cross up, dive kick can technically cross up, attacks can be done just early enough to whiff when it looks like they’re going to hit into SPD, empty jump into low, empty jump into DP, empty jump into another SPD, empty jump into backwards teleport, true block string into tick throw, empty jump normal throw, etc. etc.) and it can be damn hard to see where Seth is going to end up after a reset off stomps, DK.
If Seth hits you with a (really) high dive kick he doesn’t have to dedicate to SPD (which is basically a gimmick…good one though) and mashing DP in a Seth mirror in that situation is literally a free stun (200 stun SPD -> anything -> DP whiff -> LP Tanden into cst.HK, cst.HP combo for probably dead Seth.)
For that matter, there is virtually no reason to hit a dive kick high on someone if they’re knocked down. More often than not, that will make it more vulnerable to reversals and you will get much worse options if they block successfully.
Feels like I’ve said a billion things about DK now, but Seth’s DK is still + even on a blocked high DK. It’s just not enough for a true block string. Probably.
[SIZE=4]Seth can’t do a “vortex” against everyone without getting safe jumps down. If you can’t do that, you either pick another character or start empty jumping more often.[/SIZE]You can LP Boom ~ P teleport behind most characters after Hyakuretsukyaku if they quick stand. It is not safe though and you have to do it immediately after Hyakuretsukyaku (timing on this is very difficult as Seth is +1 with a perfect teleport alone.)
You can do this in the middle of a projectile war too, but it’s risky as hell. Less so if the opponent doesn’t have a fireball and is just downbacking fullscreen.
Don’t use LP DP against characters with decent jumping attacks, it’ll lose.
Chances are you’re doing the motions or buttons too slow. Instant head stomps need to be done very quickly. These are not safe and should be done sparingly, but most people won’t learn how to punish them until they’ve sat down and figured out what to do.
Speaking of stomps, you may be doing these too early now that the active frames are nowhere to be found. To do headstomp->j.HK or w/e off a jump in, you have to do the stomp extremely late or you will whiff. Furthermore, stomp combos are character exclusive (check combo thread.)
probably more stuff i should correct but kiku will be around eventually and my KO pills are kicking in
I know that if fighting a shoto, even though his shoryu is negative on block, if the first hit has Fadc’d then it will be negative 2 frames, and if a shoryu happy shoto player decides to try the Dp, since every shoto has a 3 frame startup on DP,you can get another Dp in. Possibly even cr. lps. Also regarding safe jumps, if you use the light sonic boom (just figured this out) and space it right, fadc and empty jump and follow up with cr. lk and combo from their. Providing a nice high low mix up which goes virtually unused because the timing and spacing is specific. A nice substitute is sonic boom, fadc into teleport with kicks, putting seth right in front of your opponent, and you can either high low, or in the corner you can head stomp and do the either the cross up or the fake cross up. my inputs are still slow, so sometimes I cant do this nearly as well as it sounds but I have seen it done, and tried it a little bit on some friends.
Although his Dp is unsafe some of the time, if there is an Fadc, its better on the first hit then the second, and if you use the second hit just back dash and probably go for a Dive kick set up.
I have been practicing and I only use the dive kick on the head when they are already standing, but on wake up I aim for the waist hoping it will meaty and if they block I expect them to wait for a block string so you can either do another dive kick and depending on the character it can whiff, and the opponent might whiff a shoryu or some other move after exiting block stun.
But I have another question, when it is good to use tanden engine. A lot of people dont use it for God knows what reason? So what makes it such a bad move? I know its generally invincible to projectiles most of the time so why is it not so used? If he has the tools shouldnt he use it?
its not a bad move but a great one. its one of the ways for seth to get in. cancel it from pokes, like cr.mk, up close its also nice to cancel tanden from cl.hp, cr.mp, or doing chain and then pause and cancel the next jab for example. so you can catch people pressing buttons and punish them real hard. after that you can mix it up with doing nothing after this normals and reacting to opponents jumps, or catching his reversal mash. seths walkspeed does not allow him to play advanced footsies, but tanden helps you ignore footsies and just do your shit and mix people up lol.
It’s a free jump in/ultra combo if you get read or the opponent reacts to it. Best time to use it is when the opponent doesn’t expect it lol.
What about the ryu matchup, I know it’s 4-6 Seth’s favor but I have friends who play ryu multiple ways so as far as what to look for should I be worried about the dp on my dive kicks, or should I give the dp pressure with the fadc dp?
When they are knocked down, dive kicks cannot be DPed reliably if you are doing them properly alongside j.HK (exception: Sagat, but safe jumping him is easy and you can do fake cross ups with other moves that avoid the DP.) You should not be using dive kicks to approach that often against characters with good DPs like Ryu outside of maneuvering through fireballs and getting just outside of their DP range (again, exception: Sagat, cuz you’ll get fucked up.) While Seth’s DK recovers like a normal jumping attack, 12f of start up is a lot for a DK. Enough to react to with a move like Ryu’s DP.