Hawk/Blanka is probably the worst mu in the game…Claw is definitely one of his worst mu’s as well but you do have some options against him. If you’re playing a really good Blanka it can feel like you can’t do shit sometimes. Blanka is much worse imo.
You can’t exactly do much when waking up and Hakan does that one move that flies at you and spin you on the ground towards the wall can you?
I mean, I crouch when I wake up and still get caught. I’ve noticed Hakan likes to do it when I don’t have EX to counter with Tomahawk Buster.
I think it’s a throw so if you can time it right MP TB will work.
I don’t even think Blanka is that bad in the first place. I don’t know why everyone says it’s the worst matchup in the game when if you play it right you can handle it…you just need to be really patient. Even if you’re patient against Vega you can’t really much. Unsafe normals get punished on block by c.mp, your normals will always lose against his. He gets free pressure because when Cosmic Heel is spaced properly it’s unpunishable and then when he’s in his range > yours. And since a good claw will hit confirm off every c.mp/c.mk you get knocked down fast when he has meter. Once you’re knocked down it’s over. You get vortexed all day from the off the wall grab since T.Hawk is huge and plus there’s the 50/50 of the meaty ex walldive which is incredibly hard to block. There’s nothing you can do except get a lucky knockdown and even if you get that, it’s still tough to vortex him because if he blocks your mix-up he can do double backflip which can get tagged but it’s tough to get another knockdown that created good pressure off of it. If you mix him up once he gets ultra and gets out for free/you lose at least 30% if you don’t safe jump it.
Blanka and Vega are equal…
Blanka beats T.Hawk on Hit Box Data 3-7
Vega beat T.Hawk on Frame Data 3-7
The only reason why I like fighting Vega more than Blanka is because atleast when you knockdown Vega, youre not in a mixup.
Technically on wakeup your hitbox will still stand up for a brief frame even when holding down, only way around it is mashing a special with invincible frames or basically have to mash a crouching normal attack. Unless your awesome and can hit the normal on the exact frame you finish waking up which prevents your hitbox from standing.
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s.HP at round start beats Ken’s step kick, didn’t see that in the OP.
Holy shit why is nobody complaining about Dee Jay? I just played a FT3 with a fellow and I was so clueless…
I don’t know if I already asked that, but is there a good way to stop Bison from spamming me into the corner with his lp lk lk xx scissors blabla? It pushes him just outside of a range where I can punish and st. MK seems to be 50/50 eat the combo or stop it.
I can’t get over Rufus divekick pressure and I have no idea how to stop Cody from spamming st. HK. It beats Jab, st. HK, cr. mk doesn’t reach him…
As far as Dee Jay goes, I think that fight is a nightmare for Hawk. I don’t have much experience with it but it seems like one of his worst mu’s.
Gen seems to be just as ridiculous.
I have the feeling there is a lot of characters Hawk cannot fight just because if their design.
I remember seeing Juicebox’s Cody beat Valle’s Hawk 7-0 at Revelations last year (casuals obviously). Cody is a hard matchup.
5-5. Footsie battle is pretty even, if you get a knockdown you win.
Teach me how to play this matchup…
One thing I can tell you is he often gets me with his ex-upkicks when I try to splash. Can I safejump it?
What pokes are best against him? How do you approach him? How do you deal with his aerial attacks?
I play both Hawk and Gen and can give you some good info on this matchup.
Right off the bat from my own experience, I strongly believe that this matchup is a 5 - 5 for Hawk. The reason why I believe this matchup is even is because Hawk is able to rival Gen’s footsies and can actually hold his own in the poking game too (C.MK is really good in this matchup).
Gen is a very fragile character. He only has 900 health/stun and not only that his reversal options are very risky to use. His best reversal is the EX Gekiro (Floating Waterfall Kicks). The move is not FADCable, lacks horizontal hitbox range and has extremely slow recovery on block or on whiff. He’s very free if you’re in his face or if you got him on knockdown.
One of the MOST important things to be aware of in this matchup, is to ALWAYS monitor Gen’s meter. Gen is most threatening when he has meter (Especially a full super meter) because his punishing game is literally 3X as deadly. With his Zanei (Mantis Super), the move is a full screen punish with really fast traveling speed. It will punish every blocked Condor Dive or whiffed Condor Spires on reaction. With his Jyakoha (Crane Super), it is extremely unsafe to jump within 80% of the screen that Gen occupies. If you are airborne within that 80% Gen can just use Jyakoha to catch you and there’s literally nothing you can do about it. Gen has so many ways to combo into his Super, more so then any other character in the game. He can combo into his Supers from literally half of his normal moves as well as most of his Specials, not to mention that he can can also combo into Ultra from a Super Move as well. His FADC combos are powerful too. You can easily get over 360+ damage for some of his more powerful FADC combos.
Gen is a formidable threat without meter, but he is REALLY threatening once he has it. Just something to keep in mind.
Thanks man. I guess this matchup isn’t that hard and my problem is I am not playing Gen players enough to get used to that character.
His Gekiro kicks are really tricky though, I happen to get hit a lot on the second kick once I go for the punish after I blocked him (weird hitbox because T. Hawk is so huge?) and like I said earlier I have my splash beat by his ex-kicks very often.
Gonna try out pmode to find a good punish, my all purpose st. cl. MP xx Buster is no good for this.
I used to main Hawk, so I have a soft spot for him, so I’ll let you guys know that you can EX SPD and U1 Honda’s EX headbutt using the correct timing. I haven’t done it with Hawk yet, but I’ve done it with Guy and Hakan. For a demonstration, you might try Hakan’s slide-press, c.lk, empty jump over, EX rocket. I did it with Guy’s U2 as well. If you use Hakan’s U1 and beat it, you’ll see that Honda is in a diagonal EX headbutt animation stage, so that’ll tell you when you can get it in. Obviously, doesn’t work on non invincible throws, because you get hit out of it. But, with a slight delay on your EX and U1, you can get him out of EX headbutt. Fun fact, if nothing else. Enjoy.
(If you’re wondering, this worked in Vanilla, too. Not sure if this has been discovered, but I’ve heard repeatedly that EX headbutt is throw invincible. Half truth!)
how do you freaking beat blanka? i think im a decent t-hawk player soon to be B+ but i lose to lower grade blankas all the time.
does anyone one have some insight on this matchup? anything would be good
also i cant really put my finger on is making this matchup so hard, i know i have no great response to his back-forward punch special move but its more than that
This is definitely a tough matchup. Avoid jumping in on them (up balls, eletricity, etc…)… and inch forward and crouch block. Wait for them to make a mistake. poke and and trade hits with him… if you get a knock down, blankas like to do stuff on wake up, so maybe use that to your advantage. After gaining a life lead, just turtle… I don’t beat decent blankas by all means, but this might be a decent approach.
A better approach would be to disconnect as soon as you see your opponent pick Blanka so you don’t have to deal with that retarded character. This fight isn’t even worth playing online with even the slightest bit of lag which there always is.