I’d have some degree of success against Zangief players who like to use st.forward to zone. It punishes that, but I would use very sparingly. Otherwise, I agree with Izuna, cr.forward is definitely your poke button of choice. At a distance, if you know they’re likely to stay still, go for the RH hien, since Zangief seems to have difficulty punishing. I would imagine he would use Ultra2, but I’ve yet to play a Zangief who could do that to great effect.
There’s no room for creativity here, just out poke the big hairy Russian guy. Don’t just slowly walk yourself back into corner, show that you’re willing to stand your ground and stub his toes. It’s a good idea to learn how to vortex properly against Zangief without eating a lariat, or an SPD if your timing is REALLY off. If you can back him off into the corner…great, but it’s not very likely to happen against a good Zangief. You’ll be doing most of your fighting at mid-screen.
Anybody have any tips for Deejay? I have difficulty finding a solid vortex that works effectively on him, and all my attempts at safe jump seem inconsistent at best, and at worse, I eat EX up kicks all day long. I don’t have any problems fighting Deejay while on my feet, since all he can really do is throw out max-outs and do slide. Most Deejays are keen to watch out for Ibuki’s slide, and they’ll punish with either his dread kicks, a cr.strong, or a slide at max range.
One useful thing against DeeJay is to abuse Command dash mixups to meaty cr.LKs. cr.LK usually lowers your hitbox enough to make any Jack Knife whiff, and the command dash would make him loose his back-charge.
His Up-kicks don’t require a back charge. They also have essentially the same frame-data as Yun’s Up-kicks, so if you use safe-jumps vs. Yun on him you should be fine. It’s a crap match-up for Ibuki, but it is definitely winnable. You have to make Dee-Jay reluctant to do a wake-up Reversal with a safe-jump or something, punish him as hard as you can (like a double Tsumuji Loop), and then start mixing up empty jumps into overheads, and throwing the Kunai when you think he’s sleeping.
Though you shouldn’t be worrying about Okizeme, knocking him down is the real hard part.
I’m terrible at safe-jumping Yun. I’m aware of a few setups, but I can’t do them after a neckbreaker…which is problematic for me. After NB I normally whiff a agemen, and jump with HP. Theoretically it should work, but my timing is always slightly late, so I end up getting hit by dragon kicks.
Just to control space. Not necessarily try to counter-poke anything specific.
I disagree with using cr.MK in its place because it puts you at a heightened risk of getting knocked down (cr.LK buffer EX gh) with not as much reward compared to cr.MP xx Neckbreaker.
If you have any doubt in your mind that you may or may not be able to antiair properly, just spend the meter and use EX dp. It’s not like you’re going to use it for anything else, and spending one bar is better than taking the risk of letting a grappler jump in.
Imo, don’t worry so much about giving up space. Yeah it’s generally bad, but you only need one untechable knockdown to get to the other side.
cr.MP = 22f
cr.MK = 20f
Does 2f make that much of a difference?
And are you sure cr.MK has more range?
Crouching lariat.
There is supposedly some sort of kunai vortex that can stuff his upkicks? But I’ve never found any solid proof of this so I never bothered trying.
You’re going to want to learn how to safe jump DeeJay. He has a 4f dp which sucks, but getting that safe jump and removing his down charge is invaluable to get rid of his reversal options besides super/ultra.
Tsumuji loops help a lot in this matchup if you can do it. DeeJay is double Tsumuji loopable, so you have a lot of room for a damaging punish. If you manage to hit a cr.HP, you can also do cr.HP xx jump kunai into double Tsumuji loop, which does a fuckton of stun. You can pretty much stun him on the next mix up if you do that.
I don’t have much experience with 2012 DeeJay, so I can’t comment on much else.
Hit/hurt-box ratio is much better for cr.Forward.
The better anti-airing ability makes all the difference in my opinion. Also I think cr.Strong can be counter-poked by far.st.Fierce and st.Strong, whereas cr.Forward will eat them clean.
You mean he can do a lariat on reaction to my hien? Or are you saying if he crouches, gets hit by hien, he’s able to lariat it? I haven’t seen a Gief do that yet, but I’ll keep that in mind from now on. Damnit, and I was really hoping I could pepper Zangief with some random damage and far-distance pressure from time to time
I’ve been able to stuff his upkicks a few times with a kunai, but the timing and spacing on it is very odd. I’ve also managed to do it with a jumping mk, but it also may have been that the Deejay screwed up his inputs. Either way, learning to safe-jump his reversals is far more reliable. I’ll get to work on that.
Lariat on reaction. HK Hien only has like 28f of startup, plus the obvious animation. In comparison, Chun’s HK Hazanshou is like 26f and most good players can reaction punish this if they’re looking for it.
As far as I’ve tried in the training room, cr.MP and cr.MK have the same distance. The only difference is that cr.MK has a very small hurtbox (triangular, basically ends at Ibuki’s toe) while cr.MP has more
A question for you guys. I’m engaged into the quest of mastering the shoto unblockable after a regular neckbreaker. However I fell like it’s totally random, I can’t get the exact space I have to walk forward and I feel like I’m random anyway. Any tips? Do you thinks it is possible to be consistent with it? This forward step just annoys me. At least, I have the EX neckbreaker timing right =)
Not every setup can be that easy!! TBH I usually have more success with Sako’s set up and the one I just described to you over the walk forward jump lk.
