Firstly, I’m seeing quite a bit of execution errors from both parties, but let’s just blame lag for now. His Gouken was random. He does all this random stuff you just happen to fall prey to. I wouldn’t call him that great, but I’ll leave it there as it’s not the point of this post.
Secondly, you got the Focus-happy habit most people develop when they’re still new. I used to do it a lot, I still do it a lot today lol. It’s not to say you shouldn’t use it if it’s working wonders for you, but remember that if you’re up close and you do it, all it takes is two chained jabs to break it. Also, I don’t like the absent of footsie work during a neutral game. In video #2 at 2:30, you’re sitting back in the corner doing nothing. Could’ve been doing something like cr.lk or cr.mp xx fireball to push him out. Instead you opt for a focus which IMHO you got lucky on. I used to do this by habit, and it doesn’t work once you play people who can capitalize on it. Think about it for a minute. With your back up against the corner, what are you going to do if that focus gets blocked? You’re at a frame disadvantage and you can’t backdash to safety. Practice pushing people back with pokes, or find a good time to escape the corner with HK. flip.
Next, you need to better time those okizeme dive kicks. I notice you wait a little too long before deciding to get on top of them. From what I recall, you got DP’d once - if not twice. I can sorta tell that guy you played doesn’t primarily main Gouken (despite the 15k BP), but even he’s doing dive kick okizemes better than you.
Next, you’re having a fireball war with Ryu. You got a Denjin ready to be fired… but then you decide to jump in over his fireballs. I’m speaking specifically of the bit at 1:40. Why? You throwing fireballs is perfectly fine at full screen- specifically because Ryu has nothing he can punish that with (except super which he didn’t have at the time). He’s going to have to chuck fireballs because he’s low on health so he can’t afford to block anymore projectiles. People have a tendency to throw one fireball after another. It’s some weird phenomena kinda like how you can’t have just one potato chip - you just want more. But yeah, these scenarios are fairly common and that’s when you should anticipate another fireball, buffer the 2 x :qcf: input, and as soon as you see him throw it out, you hit :3k: and churn butter (by that I mean spin your joystick to make the Denjin eject at a higher velocity). As a general rule of thumb, do this against any projectile character (except Guile… because his recovery is ridiculously quick).
Next, here’s a neat thing you can do to stump people who opt for offense immediately after they block your focus. I see you dash in and immediately block low. That’s counter-productive. Dashing in means you’re in for the offense, but you go in and go defense. I play against someone who always goes for the offense after they block my focus and a nice thing you can do after dashing in is doing a low focus. If they’re not going to take the risky route of doing a reversal DP (save for 2 meters for FADC), this will teach them to second-guess that low attack, meaning you can then dash in and apply pressure. Of course you wouldn’t do this if your opponent often attempts to tech/throw you after dashing in.
Next, if you notice people got their max-range pokes in the back of their heads and they like to get you at said range, go for low kongos. When the dude was using Gouken, he was all over that sweep input every time you were just outside that range. Try it on occasion.
Next, 4:57: you neutral jump on wake up as a response to him previously landing a divekick and proceeding to throw you. That’s fine. However, when you jumped that time, he was already charging a focus. You could always Tatsu away if you’re alert enough, but you came down with a nj.HP (likely under the automated presumption he was going to whiff a throw). What you could’ve done to counter his focus attack was to do something invincible on the way down like EX tatsu or ultra. If you see it coming and you don’t do any jumping attack, just buffer it on your way down. If you’re good at timing it, air tatsu him on the way down. Either way, stay alert. Moments like these makes you feel dumb for not being so.
Next: 6:55: guy’s nearly dead, you landed a Denjin on him. Why didn’t you charge the fireball sooner? I would’ve done that, then dashed once to get into a better position:
-If he tried to kongo through the fireball, you would’ve blocked it.
-If he tried to jump over it, you got a handful of anti-airs you can use on him.
Let’s say you wanted to go for something more offensive. This is what you could do instead to deal a good amount of chip in situations where they wake up:
-
When you jumped over his fireball (which in all honesty you probably got lucky on), he blocked your j. HP, instead of risking getting reversaled by attempting a throw afterwards, I would’ve did cl.mk xx lp Palm, because he can’t reversal through that blockstring, and the palm dishes out a good amount of chip. That would’ve been enough to chip him out too. If it hadn’t, I would’ve went for it again after.
-
What I like to do (because it looks cool): After landing the Denjin, or maybe even a F.Throw, I time a fireball to hit them on their wakeup (forcing them to either block or do an invincible reversal to dodge - usually they opt for the former), do a Palm that will reach them (opt for MP if it can reach because it’s quicker), FADC that on hit or block, and then do cl.MK xx lp. Palm. I can get lazy and skip the cl.mk, but using it reduces the chance of getting reversaled in between palms. That’s chip received from a fireball and 2 palms. Sometimes I have to FADC the fireball instead because they’re too far, but usually these can get read more easily if done too often. The palm’s easily avoided by neutral jumping so this option is riskier.
Next, when you fight a Gouken (ironic statement inbound) and they’re charging a fireball, don’t just sit back. Walk up or something. If you’re close enough, just jump in/Gouken flip on him, because even his diagonal fireball won’t hit you at that point. It’s a free punish. That or just Denjin him…because charging fireballs is unsafe.
Next, I know it’s tempting but try to avoid full-screen flipping. It’s too easy to react to. Walk up instead to close the distance. It’s easy for people to fall back on moves that let you get in really fast like command dashes or demon flips, but they’re designed to have a flaw and that is being easily punishable if anticipated. This just comes with patience. Once you become more patient as a player, you won’t be doing unsafe flips as often.
Next, HK Tatsu ain’t the best AA Tatsu to go for. It’s possible you land it but it has to be so blatantly obvious to you that you can input it early to make up for its slow start up. Use EX for the safety insurance of invincible startup frames (and the “locking”) or use LK if you want to reserve meter, both LK and EX start up in 7 frames - the quickest it’ll get. Opt to FADC your tatsu on wakeup if you’re not 100% certain the reversal will hit. If it hits, you can juggle it with a sweep for a HKD or you can go for a reset, either or gives you some kind of positioning advantage. Worse-case scenario it gets blocked and you’re back to the neutral game again. Beats eating a big-damaging combo if you ask me.
8:20: Why HP Palm? You could’ve finished that match with EX Palm to Denjin. Better yet, when you got a denjin available and you land a stun, the first thing to train yourself to do is to immediately charge up a Denjin, because they won’t be able to block that one. Get yourself to remember that whenever you land a stun, fire a charged denjin. Also Denjin more when you land EX Palm and they’re low on life. Too many times I’ve seen you go for a st.HK juggle when you could’ve did something more damaging to finish the round.
Next, focusing a high Rufus dive kick is fine, but it won’t garner much success if they do it low. We can see you trying it numerous times and the focus takes too long to start up. Try deploying cr.mk instead. If they’re doing it point-blank, you can kick them before they even input the dive kick.
Cool trick: a nice and relatively easy combo to do if you land a stun on someone in the corner is a fully charged fireball, cr.hp xx EX Palm. It does slightly more damage than nj.HP, cl.HP xx EX Palm… (I just checked, 5 extra damage lol. I guess that’s up to you then to style on that person). If you want to style on someone in the corner, you can do: fully charged fireball, st.HK, super. For more style points, link a cr.mp xx super after st.HK.
9:30, no no! you’re looking to chip this guy. Get out of the automated habit of chain-jabbing when your jump-in gets blocked. Regardless of whether or not you hit or get blocked on the jump-in, you’re going to input lp. Palm (or whatever else does chip safely or does enough chip damage to make the risk worth taking) because at the end of the day, you want to chip this guy out. That should be the mentality you have if you’re going to get on the offense in these situations.
11:07: See here he’s getting reckless with Rufus. All those strings of normals he did on you may be safe on other characters, but don’t forget Gouken has a kongo with a 1-frame startup. Input it when you feel he’s sticking out one too many limbs to get him to back off, because like it or not, if I told you right now that you could’ve inputted kongo between all those normals, you’d sure feel compelled to do it, wouldn’t you?
11:30: So you threw him. What the hell are you standing there for?! No charged fireball? not even a safe jump? Why not a Denjin? He’s low on enough health that the threat of chip damage will be a concern to him. Charge a denjin and force him to block it on wakeup!
Biggest one, you’re much too frantic against this guy during your wakeup. A lot of times, I see you do EX Kongo and EX flip on nothing. 5:03 first vid, you wake up EX flip and he by luck neutral jumped and nailed you for it. You had the life lead and he didn’t even do anything. It was probably better if you had woke up and did nothing to see what he does for an okizeme. You got the basic punish down, but what the next step should be that I feel is worth working towards now is improving on reading your opponent. Amateur players tend to have some kind of pattern more easily deciphered so you can start there. Really try to pick up on their playing habits - how they play their offense (i.e. Are they using frame traps? When do they like to attempt a throw? Are they using safe jumps? Do they ever bait you into things? Are they whiff-punishing?) and how they play their defense (i.e. Are they reacting to certain moves you do? Are they picking up on your bag of tricks?) If you can figure out a solid gameplan where you have an answer to their answer to your options (no I did not type that too many times), you become a player who can really kick ass. Remember the fundamental of winning at fighting games is to be smarter than your opponent, not doing cool combos and simply “guessing right” by dumb luck.
