"Stop Being a Freebuki!" (Advanced Play Thread)

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
321

Choosing where you want the Kunai to land is all down to feeling and practice.

You have two choices after an untechable knockdown:

  1. When You Jump
  2. When You Throw The Kunai

The later you throw your Kunai, to closer it gets to landing as a cross-up; the later you jump, this is also the case.
You should be able to delay your jump and Kunai until very late, to the point when it looks like you don’t have any time to ~ the problem with delaying your Kunai is that the more you do, the more unsafe on block you’ll be.

Perhaps I’ll upload a video of the different options, but in a match I can choose where it lands 'cause I’ve been using it so much. There are 5 different timing I use, and I just shuffle between them.

  • Throw Kunai at Jump peak (no cross-up)
  • Throw Kunai at delayed Jump peak (no cross-up)*
  • Throw delayed Kunai with Jump (cross-up)*
  • Throw delayed Kunai with SJ (cross-up)**
  • Throw Kunai after jumping right before wake up (punish crouch-tech/non-reversal wake-up)
  • = depends on opponent, timing is different 'cause characters get up at different times (Cody gets up slowly, Adon gets up fast)
    ** = Super Jumping changes jumping angle.

Anyway, this is all theory. You gotta keep practicing until you get a feel for it. Bare in mind doing so online will give you the wrong timing due to lag. Vortexing works extremely well online, but don’t expect it to be as effective without the lag.

EDIT: ah yeah, you gotta remember that the Kunai has to already be there when the opponent wakes up, otherwise any old reversal would get them out of it (including a bastard auto-corrected Ultra). The Kunai should hit like a meaty would ~ in most cases anyway.

322

Just a small upload I did on youtube, thought it might help for some people:

[media=youtube]GNfuCjJoL5U[/media]

It’s the replay of a match playing as ibuki, this is the last round with a good vortex example i think ^^ ( i hope)

323

We can’t forget the importance of not using the kunai during the vortex. Don’t forget that people are really learning how to block the meaty kunai so don’t be afraid to experiment with other setups. Empty tsujijoe, meaty, overhead, throw, jumping hard kick, cr. Lk, and using your super jump to set up whiff punishes. By combining all of these things your will always be on his toes.

That is all;)

324

Not just that Kunai is actually dirt easy to get out of if you know it is coming. FA Dash on wake up beats the Kunai every single time and there is nothing you can do after the fact. So you have to work some other attacks into your vortex or else you will have no wake up pressure.

325

I partially agree with you, but to “never” do something is always stupid. Online i try to read the opponent first in the first round, and i play really predictable. Once I figure out their problem (trying to reversal too much, can’t block well, dragonpunch spammer, blocks everything) the adapting and mixing up can begin. I understand your point but why mix up that much and just ignoring a move? punish their focus two times and they’ll think twice about focussing your attempt at vortex.

326

my computer is really pissing me off. ie keeps crashing and i keep losing shit…

anywho heres some dope shit in an abbreviated form:

corpse kicking:

ibuki can move waking up opponents after they’ve been knocked down by wiffing a cr.mk or cr.mp over there fallen body.

she can do this after any of her untechs that will allow her to be close enough while the opponent is still floored. primary ones are after neutral throw and after neckbreaker.

the notation goes like this:

neutral throw>immediate wiffed cr.mk> immediate j.lk crossup against fat characters.

(without the wiffed cr.mk they would be too close to ibuki and her j.lk would wiff. there are other things to this if you try it out in training mode. hint, record against rufus and then try blocking)

ok so that setup is kinda cool in that no one knows about it and its a legitimate mixup when mixed up with NON CROSSUP instant kunai after the wiffed corpse kick. but its still not great.

the one with neckbreaker is better, it goes like this:

neckbreaker>immediate mk cd>wiffed cr.mk

there a million things ibuki can do after the wiffed cr.mk. but the main ones are:

immediate poke, like st.mk or cr.mp
walk backwards
F+mk
hk cd

this setup is designed to bait out and heavily punish srks from the ground. normally its hard for ibuki to do this cause her walk speed is so slow that once inside of dp range she cant walk back out… so her opponent can do a dp and fadc it everytime… which means that ibuki always has to respect the dp cause she cant really punish it well.

but thats why the corpse kick here is so good, it allows ibuki to be in that perfect range/timing where she can either poke with a meaty OR walk backwards and make any dp wiff, and thus be non cancelable and thus be much more dangerous for the dp’er to do. and if they do wiff a dp they get hurt hard if ibuuki is on point with cr.mp sjc u2, which is easy as hell.

if they backdash the hk cd will own it, if they reversal dp’d versus the hk cd it will auto correct and they will dash cancel in the wrong direction and waste 2 meters for only 100 damage.

if they low poked cause they thought ibuki was going to be standing, walking backwards, they will get hit by F+mk, if they uppercut F+mk it will be a pathetic airborn hit unless its ryu doing his jab srk, ultra.

if they sit there blocking ibuki gets a free poke or walk up delayed poke to beat a crouchtech attempt. basically this gives ibuki a legit grounded okizeme game versus srk’rs. its not a go to but it will probably come in handy as a new mixup to throw in once the others get older or more commonplace.

ok so thats it for now. theres more but im tired. i will update this post instead of making a new one. about all of ibukis TRUE vortex options… this is something i just put together in my head and its been working great against my local friends so far, although im still in huge need of learning the metagame of when to go for which mixup.

-dime

327

Good shit Dime, creative. I need to training mode more to see what I can find.

328

^^^thx man.

well i decided to just make another post, fuck it.

anywho my vortex got a whole lot better once i started to do/realize 2 things:

  1. not going for kunai so much.

  2. ibukis vortex can be VERY closely related to akumas. they both have there ups and downsides to each other. akumas locksdown better whereas i personally believe that ibukis is easier and has better combos. i learned how to do my new vortex from watching tokidos akuma.

ibukis vortex relates to akumas so well because the primary mixups that akuma does in his vortex almost all have a counter part in ibukis game with a couple of exceptions:

tokido has 4 primary mixups that he uses along with a bunch of tricks. i will only be talking about the primary ones because those are the ones that ive seen him have the most success with ie they actually hit the most, also these are after akumas sweep as a starter:

  1. hk demponflip wiff palm>BNB. this works because it goes to the other side of the opponent and confuses there blocking… this is the one that i see that seems to hit the most, but it is easy to get out of if its expected, still its very powerful.

ibukis counterpart to this is superjump>wiffed hk>BNB

me personally i believe that ibukis is better here because ibukis bnb has more range than akumas, which can be an annoying factor to deal with, plus ibukis knocksdown versus the entire cast and can basically be done again and again.

2.mk demonflip>divekick. this doesnt actually hit alot of opponents that much from what ive seen, however it is a great vortex option because it can beat alot of reversals and its needs to be blocked regularly whereas option 1 discussed up top needs to be blocked in the opposite direction, plus both demonflips from both options start at rthe same time making it alot harder for the opponent to distinguish which one is occurring, a good mixup with just these 2 options.

ibukis counterpart is of course her superjump kunai, the thing is though that you want to NOT do the crossup kunai version, but to still land on the opposite side of the opponent so that its safer to reversals and still sets up for her version of option 1 by being blocked regularly.

  1. hurricane crossup. this is just a basic crossup. ibukis counterpart is her superjump j.lk crossup. its very ambiguous and depending on range can hit in front or behind the opponent. overall i think ibuki wins big here versus akuma cause her option does more damage and is alot easier to setup… truly ambiguos hurricanes have to be spaced and timed almost perfectly and are very hard to do, whereas ibukis crossups are just as hard to eyeball but are alot more forgiving on execution and spacing.

  2. demonflip wiffed palm>cr.lk starter. this doesnt crossup the opponent its meant as a high low mixup between palm and and cr.lk.

ibukis counteraprt is just a normal jump that can be timed to safe jump or not. sometimes going for jumping fp as a high starter and sometimes going for an empty jump cr.lk as a low starter. very good if ibuki can perfect safejump timing, but with all of her other options she basically doesnt even have to safejump with it mst of the time as the opponent isnt going to know whats going on because of all the other options.

so those are the MAIN mixups that ibuki has in her vortex as i see them. once again they are… knockdown, then:

  1. sj towards, wiffed hk, bnb of her choice.
  2. sj kunai
  3. j.lk crossup from a superjump or non super jump
  4. safejump hp/hk.

i didnt get too in depth here, because writing a completely thorough vortex guide for either character would take a couple pages, YES there are alot more different mixups to do and whatnot for both characters, also ibuki doesnt really have an equivalent to demonflip palm nor akumas demonflip throw… but i honestly dont think she needs them, though they would be nice to have.

so get into training mode and comeup with your own timing devices for these things and have at it, also ive actually stopped kunaiing on wakeup s much as i used to, i used to do it on every knockdown from tsumuji or breaker… noww im only kunaiing in general about one in 4 or 5 times. perhaps you guys will find that ratio better as well.

-dime

329

The most important thing about Akuma’s vortex is his untechable grab. Ibuki doesn’t have that. Because she doesn’t have it, blocking is the correct answer to most of her options, and Ibuki’s vortex isn’t exactly very difficult to see.

I love throwing HP Kunai’s though, shakes up Gouken/Juri so much.

330

a properly run ibuki vortex is near IMPOSSIBLE to see.

i didnt list all of the options. just the basic ones to get people started.

-dime

331

I’m talking about the Kunai only; it’s all down to timing 'cause Ibuki can’t choose where the Kunai lands apart from changing where and when she throws it.

If someone knows how to change whether or not it becomes a cross-up, they can most certainly block it. Past that, she’s like any other character. In that sense she has the same problem as El Fuerte, but it’s not that bad 'cause she’s decent with frame-traps/chip/rush-down.

I think her Command Dash is very intimidating, the ultimate bait move if you ask me. Oh yeah, whiffing the Kunai nearer to the ground is one of the few times I Ultra on wake-up. Beautiful comebacks, just stay blocking and look for reversals if they have EX or something, baiting meter/punish is very awesome.

332

ibukis kunai is a mixup. vortex is all mixups. ibukis vortex is still near impossible to eyeball consistently.

-dime

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(Not jumping after a knockdown is to not use her Vortex; outside of the Kunai, she’s just like every other character, so in this case Vortex refers to her Kunai. I guess this is somewhat subjective, I might even be completely wrong.)

----

You can tell what side it will hit by determining when Ibuki throws it, “looking” where it’ll land is the wrong way to block it. Late Kunai are hard to determine, but are very unsafe. I think Justin Wong used this function; I only use it after F.throws. The point is, no top player is “guessing” where the Kunai lands.

Off-topic: I’ve this bad habit which is using cr.LP to time what side I want the Kunai to land. When playing so many games locally my opponent just memorizes what it means. Her Kunai is almost certainly get them if they switch to a character with a different wake-up though!

334

i was wondering, in case you do some kunai mixup (let say against dictator, after NB), and he tries to TP. can you Option select something like lp, OS mp with NB, hp etc
to sum it up, any way to OS between continue her TC and NB to catch TPs?

335

^^^ you can os his tp with safe jump command dash>bnb.

you have to use different os’s against his different reversals… its a pain, but doable.

os cd beta reversal teleport and ex stomp as well as gives ibuki a chance to punish ex dr (if he flies away hit him with neckbreaker on the way down, he has a long recovery, if he comes down on top of ibuki, AA him. its ALOT easier said than done. if he reversals with ex psycho it hits os cd. so just use os sweep instead to maybe catch a backdash or to block ex psycho and then punish psycho with non reversal u2 on the other side.

yeah, its a real pain… but its why the matchup is as bad as it is.

-dime

336

Very good stuff here Dime. Your past few posts have been quite helpful.

I have been redoing my Ibuki game from scratch and came up with quite a few new things to add to her repertoire. As you know I have been doing alot of work off of my tsumiji game and experimented with it for a while when I was playing (although I haven’t played for three months). At the very least I can say that the best tsumijis that you are going to want to use the most are lk and mk tsumiji and NOT the hk tsumiji which I originally started out with due to its easiness in timing to kunai vortex with.

I won’t post anything until AE changes come out though since some things might change like hitboxes which can affect my current strategies, and I need quite some time to test them out anyways since these are all new things from what I can gather. Since her lk and mk is going to be faster some of my strategies will get significantly stronger due to ease of comboing and frame trapping.

337

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I think this is a really big issue for Ibuki.

I would say there are two options that Akuma has that Ibuki lacks a good counter part to. The demon flip palm and demon flip grab. While Ibuki lacks a dive kick, her Kunai gives her similar functionality.

The lack of an armor breaking move IMO is her biggest downfall because people are starting to find if Ibuki jumps to just FA Dash on wake up and there is nothing she can do about it. The closest thing to an armor breaker is empty jump Radia. While it works against general FA it doesn’t have applications against characters with armored moves like Fuerete, Guy, Balrog, Abel, etc. The palm is probably Akuma’s greatest vortex tool because it is the tool that trains you opponent to block or else suffer the consequences. From there it sets up all of Akuma’s other antics. Ibuki’s vortex I am finding is rather easy to get out of as it stands now because there is no fear of an armor breaker. I have seriously begun to do this against all Ibuki’s I face and so far not a single one has been able to stop it. The only mix ups I have to worry about are command dash mix ups.

[media=youtube]zjWARUtEwEc[/media]

This is an example of what I am talking about. Notice how when ever Claky when for air mix ups Tokido just FA dashed out of it.

I have come to believe the best vortex is to have one option that dominates and have your opponent scared out of their minds of that option. At that point they start thinking and stop reacting which opens up other “weaker” mix ups.

So I would challenge people to find a way around this problem that can’t be identified easily. If we find that option then Ibuki’s vortex will be far scarier than it is now.

338

I hear you LS. But it’s hard for me to comprehend because simply switching sides has done me very well against focus. I still haven’t had anyone able to dash and block like tokido did in the vid, besides that that kynai wasn’t super low. Almost all my kunais are blocked at the ankles. But even though tokido got away with it twice that’s the only time he did it. He just tp’d out every other time. Also ibuki has hush hush empty jump strays that are totally ambiguous as to which side she lands on. All in all my opponents don’t focus out on me cause it usually gets them fucked over. But like I said I feel you, when focusing out does work, it’s annoying as hell.

If it comes to pass that focus is near an end all beater for ibukis vortex, that’s the day I quit playing her.

-dime

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In [media=youtube]ira3hXVI5Js"[/media] video even Iyo isn’t doing anything which will leave him too deep to be able to catch focus against Tokido. Either that or he’s trying to bait tp.

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@loyalsol
one possible option if they start FDing is to do an air chain combo (j.lk,j.mk). i haven’t really found any players online to try this myself, (since none of them online are able to FD out of my kunai) but it’s a theory