Ive gotten hate mail for loosing 2 matches in a row. I was gief vs an Akuma. I was told i just got pp’ed on. wtf!?
I don’t know how else to explain what level I’m playing at. I could upload a shot of my record if that helps?
Today I played about 14 matches with a guy who used fei long. Well, first match he used ryu, so it was a mirror match. He would cross me up and that’s how he won. I was actually a little mad about that.
The fei long vs my Ryu matches were all very close. And I mean between 20% and 1% health for both at the end of each round, with him winning 11 to my 3. The matches I won were when I would jump in (and he wouldn’t dragon kick) and I’d lay down a combo/chain/mix up.
The matches where I lost I would be playing very defensively. I baited his dragon kick out of wake up a few times by doing a FA then dashing back.
One thing I noticed was he’d get a lot of damage on me from a crouching punch etc mix up. I think this is where my game is lacking. I have trouble defending those sometimes and executing when its’ my turn to punish.
I find that he’ll link together normals so that I’m left trying to block but can’t.
Anyway, that was my progress tonight. I sent him a message after saying good games and asking what I could improve on. He didn’t reply.
p.s
forgot to add, I hate vega’s. I played 3 of them in the last few days and they all destroyed me. Staying away them spaming that flying shit.
Playing against better players is ALWAYS a better alternative to playing story or practicing against AI IMO. It’s been a more effective method for improvement for me.
if you’re keeping it tight but losing consistently, then you’re missing an extremely crucial aspect to the game, and that’s closing a round. you spaz out and get desperate to get that last little bit of health off of him so you get sloppy, then once he’s made a good enough comeback you make a foolish gamble to just take the pressure off yourself.
you need to be able to keep your wits about you under both pressure and the lack thereof or you’re never going to beat anybody good.
if you’re keeping it tight but losing consistently, then you’re missing an extremely crucial aspect to the game, and that’s closing a round. you spaz out and get desperate to get that last little bit of health off of him so you get sloppy, then once he’s made a good enough comeback you make a foolish gamble to just take the pressure off yourself.
you need to be able to keep your wits about you under both pressure and the lack thereof or you’re never going to beat anybody good.
FA dash back is only a good bait like, once, then they’ll just jump or look for ways to punish your dash back. you have to commit to the punch once in a while (and then follow up with a pain combo) or you won’t get the panic reaction you’re looking for. other ways of baiting their reversal are making them react to things you did before. if you try and throw him on wakeup all the time, he’ll start trying to tech. if you meaty him out of those techs, then he’ll start doing reversals and THEN you can start trying to bait the reversal.
Forget everything else: here’s your problem, “The matches I won were when I would jump in (and he wouldn’t dragon kick) and I’d lay down a combo/chain/mix up.”
Jumping in on someone should be regarded as an art, it has to be unexpected and used in such a way in which your opponent has very little time to react to it. Mostly, you should be sticking to the ground and only jumping to avoid attacks and only jump towards safe areas to avoid said attack. Essentially, you need to work on fundamentals of fighting games. Do you feel that you often do things without having any sort of plan? When you jump, why did you just jump? When you mix up, why did you choose one attack over another? When you punish things with a throw, why did you do so?
For instance: “I jumped in on him because I was able to sweep him. I know my character’s jump angle well enough to drop myself directly on top of his wake up, making my attack ambiguous as to which side I will end up on, greatly reducing the chances of successfully blocking.” or “I chose to overhead him to finish the round because I haven’t done so once and I had conditioned him to not expect it.” or “I chose to back throw him instead of combo’ing his mistake because a back throw would put him in the corner, I would rather have my opponent cornered and open up multitudes of damage opportunities rather than punishing that one mistake with one combo, I would gain more damage from this decision than I would have just tacking on an extra 180-200 damage to the initial punish.”
You have to play in such a way that you’re constantly thinking about what’s going, you need to be aware of the meta-game at hand. Try to look for patterns in your opponent and capitalize on his own predictability–simultaneously, be unpredictable yourself. I once sealed a game with 3 consecutive flash kicks on my opponent’s wake up, he was thoroughly mind fucked because for the past ~3 sets of games I had almost never touched his wake up beyond tossing a sonic boom his way, doing something THAT unsafe THAT many times in a row was a drastic alteration to my previous cautious, only slightly aggressive playstyle. This opened up a lot of opportunities in later matches, as he now feared a totally random flash kick on his wake-up if he dared press a button or tried to back dash.
You can add me if you’re in midwest and I’ll give you some pointers.
Find some poeple to run player matches with and ask for advice afterwards. Or go to your local gatherings if you have any and do the same thing. Once you learn basic combos the best way to improve is to play play play. After that you can work on your execution a little more.
I just played randomness777 online( not sure who he is on here) and had some fun. Lost twice but it was a fun match. I played a bunch of ranked matches as well against people in the 1600-2600 and lose by very little. I need to learn these bread and butter combos. One thing that’s a big help is baiting dp’s from wake-ups. It’s surprising how many people do them carelessly.
find good players, my game got much better when i started playing with legit people.
find people around you, if no one is around look on the leaderboards and add some of the top guys, tell them you want to practice.
Playing and learning more each day. I’m taking a round from 2600bp players and coming so so close to winning the second round. When I play lower players or slightly above me, I just haev to remind myself mid match to play with a focused mind. W.W.D.U.D
I think one of the best tips I can give to a fellow starting player (I have around an average of 150 bp points) is to try and relax and not worry about losing. When I am a relaxed player I can get my combos out with 80%, keep myself well defended and hardly make very risky and dumb decisions that result in me throwing a match. But I do have trouble closing a game sometimes (like m0ng00se) talked about because I’m either trying to get some fancy win out or I’m just worried about making a dumb decision and throwing the match (which I wind up doing).
I think you just need to play more. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
training mode will simply never make you good enough to play. its only good to refine your skills there, but if you dont have any (as in you just started) then youre best bet is to jump play against people until you start winning. if you get ideas that you want to try, then go into training mode and refine them.
Seems like your answering your own question but I see one of the problems you have already. Your impatent. Just because your both sitting back not making a move does’nt mean your obligated to take the risk. I use to play like this, getting impatant and start chasing the player, this usually ends up with me taking a ton of cheap shots before I can get my next hit in. This is essentially YOU playing THEIR game. DON’T. Be patient, you don’t always have to be on the offensive, it’s a delicate balance. Many characters in the game have nasty wake up attacks that can punish you no matter how much you put the pressure on, you need to know when to back down just as much as put the pressure on.
As for specific advice it’s difficult to give without playing you or seeing videos, experience beats everything but you also have to take care not to develop bad habits (frequent jump ins). Don’t look at those Ryu Combo vids yet, instead look at tournament matches. Your fortunate to be a Ryu player, Daigo the SFIV World Champion mains Ryu so look up his videos and see how he plays but pay more attention on how he zones his opponents and approaches them and defends againts them, don’t just look at his combos because combos is a tool and is actually second to playing this game. For the most part just keep playing the game, your not gonna become a master overnight.
Good advice. I actually think zoning is what I’m best at. Defending mix-ups I have a bit of trouble with sometimes.
I played today with the intent to just focus on defending better. Not winning, just blocking high and low etc. And some how I beat a 2156bp player 
I was only 627bp. Haha sucker.
He was bison and he was headstoping like carzy. He’s get the first hit then follow up and I’d punish with a dp. He just never learned and kept doing it. It was great.
I know, I was asking OP what he does when he gets up close, and what combos hes uses in what situations or if he just mashes jab and dp at the same time, trying to find out how much help was needed. I guess I worded that wrong.
A good way to improve, is to get your ass kicked by someone better IMO.
You start learning where you’re going wrong because it becomes clear as day when you’re playing.
When I’m close I don’t mash dp’s. I’m doing lp, lp, throw or c.lp, c.lp, dp. Also using j.hp into c.mk into tatsu or c.mk into hado.
I’ve noticed in videos people use j.lk a lot. Does it have better priority over j.mk or j.hk?