I’m sure this stuff is very basic–stuff I’d know if I had the fundamentals of Ryu down–but here are some situations I haven’t figured out how to deal with. I lose to everyone right now, but in some situations I at least have an idea what to try for. Not in these. I’d really appreciate either guidance, or being directed to things to read. (I’ve been busily working my way through the general guides and materials here on the forum, don’t worry.)
Situations in which I don’t know what to do:
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[] C. Viper uses her Seismic Hammer over and over at long range with good timing. (Using my own ranged attack still gets me hit, defending accomplishes nothing, hurricane kick sometimes works, but not always…)
[] Akuma launches Wrath of the Raging Demon. Even against poor players where I know it’s coming I can’t figure out how not to get hit by this.
[*] Grapplers in general. I can often land a bunch of blows, but the grapples do a ton of damage, and I’m not sure how to handle myself so as to avoid them or defend against them. Nothing I’m trying seems to work.
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Each version of seismic hammer only works at very specific ranges. To avoid them you can jump, focus attack, shoryuken, or tatsu. Usually doing neutral jump is the safest option since viper can cancel the seismo and punish the other options. But try to be unpredictable, fighting viper involves a lot of guessing and being random. Ryu 's combos are very damaging and he has more health so if you guess correctly more times than her you will win.
Akuma’s ultra 1 is a command grab so you can’t block it. The easiest punish for it is to jump out of the way and then do a combo. So if akuma does it right in your face you can do jump back, cr mk tatsu.
Against grapple characters your main strategy should be to stay out of range of their command grabs. If a grapple character gets close to you then you should try to get away from him. You can avoid command grabs by being air born so try jumping away from him. You can also neutral jump it and punish a whiff command grab as you land with a big combo but the risk with that is that a neutral jump is easier to anti air. You can also try doing a dragon punch but that is obviously a big risk if they block it.
You need to learn the basic gameplan of throwing fireballs, not throwing fireballs and punishing jump-ins with an uppercut, cr.hp or far st.hk if you want to beat grapplers.
It’s also important to learn true blockstrings against grapplers, since if you leave gaps in your strings, they are just gonna 360 your ass repeatedly.
Also if you’ve got a read on them trying to grab you, everything that makes Ryu airborne makes him invulnerable to command grabs (ex Tatsu/jumping/backdashing).