ST Cammy - Strategies?

Classic Fighting Games Other Games
1

I’ve been playing SSF2T for a while now, but not really on a professional level. I thought I might share some of the strategies and tricks I’d come up with, as well as questions I have, and see if any of you might have some suggestions to make, or just general comments.

My game revolves largely around pokes with the down forward, standing forward, and cannon drills (the latter for block damage, to force action, and as rarely as possible). If I have to jump in, I almost always use her jumping strong, which seems to snuff a lot of attacks; still, I try to keep to the ground as much as possible.

Against a hangdful of characters, she has a painfully easy dizzy crossup: crossover strong, standing fierce, thrust kick/cannon drill. This seems to work against Blanka, Honda, T.Hawk, and Gief…maybe others, but those are all I’m sure of. Blanka you can cross over with the jumping roundhouse, but only if he crouches for some reason. It looks really nifty, but it’s not really useful.

Wherever possible I try to chain standing strongs/fierces into a downforward -> cannon drill. The former leaves you at perfect range if you jumped in or somesuch, and the latter if you’re deep enough for the close fierce to come out. Icidentally, either chain will dizzy off of a crossup short, but won’t combo after a non-crossup jump-in.

Against characters that can’t reach after a thrust kick, her jumping strong, standing strong, thrust kick/cball jump change up seems pretty lethal. I substitute a fierce for the second strong a lot of times, as it masks the cannonball jump better, but it stops the thrust kick from connecting on a lot of characters. Annoying, but them’s the breaks. Another change up I use is a bit more complicated. I’ll often try to get them to wake up into a turn knuckle, which gets followed by a down forward -> cannon drill most of the time. Since this doesn’t actually link, it’s possible for people to counter it; and if they start getting greedy with the shoryukens, that when the cball jump comes out to catch them on their way down. When they’re not waking up into a turn knuckle, I’ll often use the slide that comes from the end of an unfulfilled cannonball jump, or else go for the crossover dizzy and pray.

A risky, but fun change up I’ll occasionally throw out, is jumping strong -> standing fierce -> jab turn knuckle. If your enemy knows how to counter it, it’s pretty useless, but the funky collision on the jab turn knuckle makes a lot of counters whiff. Most players will see their chance, and then be left gawking as the sweep/pile driver/whatever passses right through cammy and they’re smacked by the turn knuckle. If they’re well trained enough, they may just sit there and take the double dose of chip damage. Risky still; if they wait a little longer, instead of reacting immediately to the openening, it’s much easier to counter, and of course uppercut-style moves beat it most of the time.

So… away with the questions:

  1. The cannonball jump. We all know you can tech out of it by pressing kick with the stick in neutral. Is there any practical use for this? I tried, for a while, to bounce thrust kicks out of it, but she seems to take several frames to recover from it, which is really inconvenient.

  2. Sometimes, she does a stomp on their face; sometimes, she grabs and flips them. They have different recovery times, and leave the enemy at different distances. Any idea how to control this?

  3. Honda. Is there any hope?

  4. I can’t seem to get the roundhouse cannon drill to combo properly; it seems to work differently with different characters and at different distances. On a lot of characters, it seems like it won’t combo if I’m too close, but will if I’m farther away, which strikes me as strange. Not too terribly important, as I almost never use anything but the short cannon drill, but strange none the less. Any ideas as to what’s up? Is it just me? =)

That’s pretty much it. Suggestions/thoughts/comments?

Also, Mazaka, I read some of your Cammy commentaries in some older threads. In particular, if you have any advice to offer, I’d love to hear it =)

2

You’re joining a pretty small club of people if you’re taking up Cammy in ST :slight_smile:

Poking:
You can actually poke with standing fierce, CVS2 style. The far version comes out fairly quickly, and it can snuff a lot of attacks, and even if it doesn’t it’ll often trade in your favor. You can use that to advance to get in range of low forward.

Low strong will often beat attacks that low forward trades or won’t stop, but you have to be a little closer for it to work. If you find yourself trading with an attack, try switching to low strong.

Standing strong has some pretty specialized used. You can actually use it from a distance to snuff Bison’s scissor kicks and Balrog’s rushes. You’ve got to be very careful with them though, because if you guess wrong, it puts you in a bad position.

Close standing strong is also GREAT anti air. If somebody jumps in from around mid-screen, walk forward, hit standing strong.

Be careful if you’re going to poke with cannon drills. If you get your distance off just a little bit, you can get punished pretty easily. Don’t link the short one off of low forward either, as you can usually be punished either between the hits, or afterwards.

Jumping In:
For those characters without a good wakeup move, you can also use jump roundhouse to jump in from far away as they’re rising . For the most part though, strong and short are your good jumpins. Like you said, you’re usually better off on the ground using her good normals and fast walking speed.

If you land a crossup short, you’re in good shape. Crossup short -> standing strong -> standing fierce -> cannon drill will dizzy just about all of the characters you can connect it on (Dhalsim, Guile, Sagat, Blanka, Zangief, T.Thawk, etc)

I don’t advocate using the spinning knuckle in any way, shape or form :slight_smile: Seriously though, the only practical application I’ve seen of it is using it as a meaty attack after knocking somebody down. The only other time I do them is when I screw up the motion and get it instead of a hooligan. Occasionally I’ll use it to go through a fireball, but when I say ocassionally, I mean like once every 3 matches.

You can also try meaty low strong -> standing fierce -> cannon drill. If you’ve hit them a few times before landing this, it’ll dizzy, and makes reversals a bit riskier for your opponent.

On to the answers:

  1. You can use it to go over full screen fireballs. This move will clear any fireball except Sagat’s high tiger shot (which no Sagat worth his eyepatch is going to throw vs Cammy), and it builds a little bit of meter to boot.

  2. It depends on where you grab them in the trajectory of your jump. On the way up, she does the neckbreaker, on the way down, she does the roll and throw.

  3. Pick shoto :stuck_out_tongue: This is a brutal matchup for Cammy. You can try to out turtle him, and remember that if you see Honda walk forward, you can jump in on him fairly safely. Try and bait a headbutt if you can, which you can jump back and punish.

  4. The Roundhouse cannon drill combos vs certain characters (Bison for example) after a low forward or strong. I almost never use it though, as against those characters, I’m not in a position where that would do any good!

Hope that helped some

3

For question #1)

Sometimes after a knockdown or something, i’ll do early jab hooligan. But cancel it midair and land at about sweep range when they’ve recovered. Then pop 'em with the super/DP when they try to hit me! :slight_smile:

Stupid little trick, but it’s funny.

I’ve got a question. It seems that s.MP, d.MK, cannon drill doesn’t work on DJ. He can always block the drill for some reason. Any suggestions?

4

What knockdown are you doing that gives you enough time to do that? I wouldn’t think the jab hooligan is fast enough to allow that, but then again, I’ve never tried it.

Actually, it’s worse than that. He can low forward you out of the cannon drill. Are you doing the short or the forward cannon drill? I’m not sure it matters, but you could try a different one to see if that helps.

Assuming you’re doing the meaty standing strong, you can try meaty low strong -> low strong -> cannon drill instead. I think that will actually combo vs DJ, but it’s harder to time the meaty low strong.

5

After, say, the face plant grab from the hooligan, or thrust kicking them out of midair, you usually have enough time to do that slide kick. I use it sometimes to force people to wake up into it, as you seem to be able to chain it with a low strike/cannon drill if they block, and it’s a persistent action. Kinda hard to get the spacing right, though; too deep, or too late, and you get punked.

You’re right about that DJ thing, Drag; it doesn’t seem to work. You can still chain her down roundhouse off of a standing strong/close fierce/close forward against him, but it’s not the same because A) it doesn’t dizzy and B) it doesn’t do chip damage. The only good news is that I don’t think he can hit her out of the cannon drill during that chain, just block it, so I believe they’re still safe to do. And that *&&) down forward of his is a real pain. Who else has a freaking down forward kick that knocks you down?!

Masaka, I’m having trouble pulling off the crouching strong, standing fierce -> cannon drill chain you mentioned. I always seem to connect with the edge of her fist (and it combos fine), so I can’t cancel the fierce. Is there a reason to prefer it over close standind fierce, down forward -> cannon drill, which also chains, and which I find easier to do? Or are they pretty much equivalent?

About the spin knuckle: it has a couple of uses…I obviously use it more than you do, even though I’ll be the first to grant that it’s not all that useful. Its two boons are the strange collision on the jab one, and the persistence of the attack part, which lets you use it as a wake-up move (sometimes). Against Balrog, for instance, you can use it to dodge and punish his low sweeping rush punch, or trade in your favor with his super. You can also go straight through things like blanka’s ball roll, his slide, and his super, and of course if you have to dodge a fireball and can’t jump - what else are you going to do? I don’t recall off the top of my head, but I think you can use it to do the same to Dee Jay’s super, and I know you can dodge Ryu’s with it.

You were definitely right about her standing fierce: it doesn’t beat as many things as the standing forward does, but it has decent range, and trades in your favor with LOTS of stuff. I also didn’t know the standing strong could be used to snuff the scissor kick, which is really cool. I appreciate the help and insight you’ve offered so far; keep it coming! =)

6

Hmm, who were you trying it against? It doesn’t work vs. everybody, for example, Chun. Also, did you mean close standing strong above? Meaty standing fierce, low foward, cannon drill doesn’t combo vs. a lot of the cast.

Really though, they’re the same. I do different combos so I’m not always giving the same look to my opponents, and of course, some combos don’t work on some characters.

Starting from low strong also gives me some options though. From low strong, I can go to either low forward or stand fierce, and from there, either hooligan or cannon drill. You can also link meaty low strong to another low strong and link that to a cannon drill.

While a lot of that is true in theory, in practice, the move just isn’t very good. Keep in mind that they can actually throw you between when she spins around and when the move actually connects, which has happened to me several times. A blocked Blanka ball can be countered by a roundhouse cannon drill.

The same applies to using it to go through fireballs. If you weren’t able to jump, it’s doubtful you’d be able to do the spinning knuckle on reaction quick enough to go through it, and in the cases where you are, they can still punish you.

I never thought about using it to go over Balrog’s low rushes though. The only problem there though is, again, they can just throw you before the move actually connects. And most of the time, Balrog isn’t going to be rushing at you from half a screen or more away, and there just isn’t enough time to react and do it (at least for these old eyes :slight_smile: )

A new toy I’ve been working on is crossing up with fierce as somebody is getting up. It’s hard to time, and the spacing for the crossup varies by character, but it’s REALLY ambiguous; moreso than her short. If you land it, you can continue on to standing strong, low forward, cannon drill for an almost guaranteed dizzy.

If you don’t cross them up with the fierce, you can’t do the full combo though. Just do standing strong (maybe fierce too, I didn’t try that), cannon drill or thrust kick instead.

What makes this handy is that the fierce crosses up characters like Bison and the Shotos who does get crossed up by short very well. It also gives more blockstun than strong, giving you more time to get on the ground to continue your combos and pressure.

7

Shouldn’t just crossup fierce, close standing fierce -> thrust kick dizzy? May be an effective alternative to the cannon drill chains, and the thrust kick is usually safer when blocked…

The trick with the spin knuckle, at least as I see it, is that your timing has to be very specific for it be useful. You’re absolutely right about people throwing you out of it; that’s happened to me more than once. The key is to time it so that when they get their opportunity to attack (with an uppercut, or a throw, or whatever), you’re in the middle of the two-hit attack part of the move. It’s very hard to throw through, or to zero frame an uppercut against, as during that time its effectively one constant attack, and the slightest slip-up means death. If you’re really good (me, I can only pull it off by dumb luck), you should be able to time it so that they wake up into the second hit, just after the first one whiffs. Then you can link it with the downforward -> cannon drill for a reasonably safe 2 chip damage wakeup that knocks down if it’s not blocked, and change up with the hooligan. I wonder if, having pulled off the wake-up into second hit thing, the standing fierce would connect…?

8

It’s much harder to recognize if the s.HP connects or not, and NOT perform the DP. Against character that can’t punish it if blocked, well then, whatever. But if I do s.MP, d.MK, I have all the time in the world to see if it hits so I can do the cannon drill or not.

Here’s a combo you probably won’t use. Meaty d.MK, d.MK, drill/super. Only bonus is that it starts low unlike MP. wee.

I used to think this combo was good anti-air VS T.Hawk. That is, until I realized that Blanka taught Hawk how to do his j.HP swipe, indian style.