Double post maybe but on iPhone. In Pieguys defence, SPD does not “go through” a fireball. As a comparison EX Condor Spire “goes through” fireballs. It’s being picky, but SPD grabs the character during the execution frames before the fireball comes out. Someone totally new to Hawk might read your post and think normal SPD has fireball invincibilty or something - only Hakans HK super as a grab has truefireball invincibility.
That’s probably not a good Seth, then.
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He has a fast-moving projectile that travels full-screen. This means he can really harass you.
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His anti-air options are better as they will likely lead to mixups.
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He punishes better than Sim.
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His ability to go off walls gives him better options for escaping corners.
That’s not even what I’m referring to. No match-up in this game is beyond 3-7 and t.hawk doesn’t lose to blanka point blank at all. T.hawk’s c.lp has no hitbox, his c.mp has an invincible tip like shoto c.mp and his s.mk/s.lk, c.mk all do very well against blanka. If you’re spamming laggy shit in front of blanka while he’s mashing c.fp or c.lk, don’t blame the character. Against hop shenanigans, just use c.lp, c.lp, s.lp, s.mk cause s.mp whiffs. Once you walk blanka to the corner and he tries to rainbow ball, use df+lp or c.hp to knock him out of it.
People who think blanka is any worse than 4-6 usually have problems blocking, teching and just plain walking forward. People who think any match-up is something dumb like 1-9 usually have no clue about a match-up at all.
After playing against a pretty decent bison yesterday (he beat fchamp in team tourney half a year back or so), I have a few things to add to the match-up.
-Reckless whiffing of s.hk is easily whiff punished by s.hp on reaction
-AA with FP TB or c.hp against all jump-ins except fierce. Fierce you gotta use EX TB or trade the FP TB
-Against non-safe jump cross-ups, use df.lp or c.hp to catch people rite above you so as an example, you should never get crossed up in corner by bison unless you’ve been knocked down w/ an unrecoverable move
-Against the neutral jump bait when you’re downed, use c.fp to beat or trade bison’s nj.hk
-Against passed through ex psycho crusher, s.hk is the only consistent option it seemed other than reversal lp TB
-When you’re knocked down by lk scissors, I believe ex psycho crosses up and fp psycho crusher does not
-Against Devil’s Reverse or headstomp, use nj.fp and when they’re coming down, use ex TB, fp TB (trades sometimes), c.hp, or df.lp if they’re rite above u the entire time and trying to fuck up your blocking by making the follow-up ambiguous. Against ex headstomp, you can usually backdash into free spd if the bison poorly spaced it
-s.mk stuffs lk scissors clean and whiffs quickly compared to s.hk or s.hp so use it unpredictably outside of the s.hk range. Do not attempt to use it rite after a scissors however cause it will trade the s.hk that mite follow it.
-Best range to be is rite at the farthest point an lk scissors kick can reach cause you can sweep, whiff punish, and get free spd’s if he whiffs the scissors
-To deal with backdashes, meaty sweep wake-ups and to deal with teleports, jump over and either choose cross-up splash or condor dive if you see the teleport much like you can punish akuma’s teleport with CD
In this match-up, you basically have to take your time. Poor defense leads to knockdowns and having to deal with a lot of cross-ups so approach slowly. If you get crossed-up and block, stay blocking crouched cause dictators who use s.lp/s.lk, c.mk xx lk scissors will catch you in pre-jump animation. Use ample amounts of s.mp, s.mk (i like this a lot now, not gonna lie), and s.hp to whiff punish and make him come to you. It is very difficult to make ex psycho safely spaced against t.hawk so usually reversal spd is best option against that
Fair enough and 100% right. What I love is the belief that matches are unwinnable. Blanka has really good anti grappler tools that’s all. What people don’t do enough is hit training, record the character that gives them trouble doing the loops or combos that hurt them and figuring out what they can and cannot do to not loose health or turn the tide. What lots of people do is just play bad match ups over and over, not learning or adapting, still making the same mistakes and then just think playing the match is pointless or futile. In training mode you get time to think and experiment and when it comes back to games, you find eventually you react in the right way to things without even thinking about it - that is waht levelling up is all about IMO.
Blankas 3-7 match-up for sure. So let me see if this is your game plan you have vs blanka. Don’t use any of your special moves don’t jump don’t use hp or hk anything and back him into the corner using footsies. Where as blanka can pretty much do there standard game vs you. I bet you can beat crappy blankas all day like this but you run into a real blanka who knows the match-up and the match is 3-7 at best. Also cs beats blanka non exball clean once you get to the active frames.
Gief vs Seth is 2-8 also gief vs makoto 8-2
It’s funny how people think you have to use specials to win match-ups when in reality, they’re just damage tools half the time or combo enders. The other really funny part is the best blanka in America, Hiro (altho he’s not playing blanka full time now), is a friend of mine who I’ve played with and against since vanilla release. This is the game plan against good blankas:
Footsies and AA
God, the whole 2-8 thing with gief vs seth is so overdone. No good zangief ever says the match-up is worse than 4-6. Crizzle bodies the living shit out of fchamp’s seth and I doubt vangief would have anything less than 4-6 against online tony.
@ Pieguy - I’ve updated our M.Bison section with your comments. Thanks!
[EDIT] - @ Pieguy, I think you’re referring now to personal match-ups versus general match-up. Crizzle, fchamp, vangief, and online tony probably played so many times together that they know each other’s personal strategies. General match-ups will depend on a bigger sample of players.
I do agree that folks shouldn’t depend on the match-up numbers to gauge a fight. You simply have to win regardless of your opponent so match-up numbers gain you nothing. That’s why I don’t like to publish these numbers but only the data on how to beat a match-up.
Suggestion: let’s stray away from match-up numbers and focus on the strategies.
Actually, I’m not. Zangief’s in America just don’t think or flat out suck a lot of the time and don’t know how to fight seth. It’s not worse than 4-6 cause if you get one headbutt, it’s basically over. It is ridiculously hard to keep gief out for the whole match and you only need to capitalize one mistake. Only crizzle and fchamp are good friends who play a lot. Online tony is socal, vangief san fran, crizzle/champ freemont, ca. All the good players in the scene play each other every so often so your point is kinda moot tho. Off the top of my head, I’m not even a top player and have fought ricky 5 times, fchamp twice, crizzle 3 times, vangief 3 or 4 times (tournament only).
I don’t speak about average players when I talk about match-ups. I talk about two players using their character to their greatest potential.
People have problems with blanka because they fear his random mix-up. Hop bullshit and ball spam mainly. They dislike blocking the ball cuz it chips like 15 dmg. Well 15 dmg is basically 2% of t.hawk’s life so who gives a shit rite? The other big problem is people don’t tech well so they try to use specials with invincibility or spammability to get in or defend. Against blanka, you can’t do that, you have to just walk and block with AA when he jumps.
A good thing to note about ssf4 blanka is that his hop has noticeably less recovery so u have to make sure to choose the fastest normal available to stop hop electricity or hop throw. So basically, use s.lp instead of c.lp cuz that 1 frame makes a huge difference.
If you play a character with shitty mobility like Honda, it teaches you to just walk forward slowly which is exactly how you have to approach blanka. The amount of times me and Hiro (best blanka probably still) will just take 2 steps and stop in a match-up while we’re on either side of the screen is nearly immeasurable. Nobody likes walking forward and losing defensive positioning but you have to. That’s the beauty of a non-charge character tho. You can just mash dp :devil:
I will freely admit I have a HUGE problem against Blanka. I rarely win this match at all, so I suppose I have a hard time believing it’s possible to win…I’ve figured out most of the other matchups for Hawk, but this matchup eats me alive. I don’t play a good Blanka, so I think that makes it even harder for me. Ah well…I stand corrected I suppose.
I dont think its 6-4 Pie. Matches I consider 6-4 are characters like Sagat, Ibuki, Bison, and MAYBE a good turtle rog/honda. Blanka Guile and Sim all feel like 7-3 though. I think the biggest problem people have with blanka is ball spam and that you literally cannot jump. cr.mp and slide are way too good as anti airs without charge and ex upball is even better. Walking forward w footisies (like you said) and not spiring is like the only thing you can really do it feels like.
I guess it just depends on how you rate the severity of 7-3. In vanilla, the only match-ups I saw as 7-3 were sagat vs honda/guile and maybe gief vs abel (seemed more like 6.5-3.5 tho). 7-3 seems a bit much tho considering blanka does average damage and grinds the match-up out rather than just straight destroying you. Even watching sushiya playing against a 15k blanka (t srai), he still got pretty close to winning by being spontaneous. Wasn’t just straight beat down or anything.
For T. Hawk vs. Bison, I would like to add to close distance with Bison with Condor Spire a bit more than Condor Dive; Bison can easily teleport in place to avoid the Condor Dive and punish with a grab or a combo.
See this video for clarification.
[media=youtube]ObRcI3TIKjc&playnext_from=TL&videos=tK4GCovbiEM"[/media]
[media=youtube]MY95-lxoLTw"[/media] of said fight…2nd fight in. I kninda of thought the Blanka guy was just playing with him personally.
I’m thinking of just being Hawk exclusive from now on and only using Fuerte in casuals/counterpicks.
@BlueBlazer - Just curious why you’re committing to T.Hawk. Not that this is a bad thing… Just curious.
@Pieguy, danmishima - Sushiya was spontaneous in the second round but it seemed srai learned how to punish the far screen CS. Blanka’s always been a hard match-up for Gief and translated similarly to Ted, imo.
@Everyone - Happy 4th of July!
I’ve just been wanting to dedicate myself to one character instead of 2 or 3. I can still play Fuerte since I know most advanced techniques/all of the matchups with him, I just will spend most time playing Hawk now.
If you’re right next (I mean really close) to Seth when he does U2, you can use U2 immediately to pass through the tornado and land on the other side of him, unless it’s in the corner.
Just dropping in to see if anything positive has been discovered for Hawk in the Blanka match… doesn’t look like much has changed. My 2 cents as a Blanka player, T.Hawk is probably my favorite matchup thus far, I can play like an idiot and still eek out wins. If T.Hawk starts playing really smart (and I have played long sessions with Vangief’s Hawk, although granted he has since dropped him), then I tighten up my game and turtle hard. Blanka has an answer for every single thing Hawk has, and in my experience it is extremely difficult for Hawk to push offense in this matchup when he is behind. Blanka never needs to jump in, and this is that magical matchup where all of Blanka’s balls are safe. I’ll definitely say this matchup is closer to 7-3, for sure, but I really look forward to what T.Hawk players can come up with in the future.
I wouldn’t expect any dramatic discoveries in the Blanka matchup.
dear heavens somebody help me with that Ryu Matchup!!! PLEEASSSEEEEE what do i do vs that man thats the only character i struggle with (outside of blanka)