General Notes:
-Overall, your risk/reward for offensive pressure paid off. You got punished for it sometimes but generally you gained more than you loss. That’s a great sign if you can incorporate other aspects of her gameplan. The big exception to this is Guile, which I’ll go into later
-Your adaptation is excellent. In almost every game the first round or two I thought to myself “Man, Vu needs to be doing <x> instead of <y>” and you picked up on it naturally. Given your overall success this doesn’t surprise me, but it’s good to see that it extends beyond marvel. Nicely done.
-I’d throw out Ultra 1 in neutral more often. You did it a few times which is great, but you also did it off forward throw several times. The recovery on forward throw means you can maybe get a high/low and one hit of the ultra but the rest is chip. As long as you’re past the halfway point of the stage, your opponent is forced to deal with U1 at some point. IMO its greatest strength is forcing behavior rather than a knockdown mixup. It can also be a get off me/forward moving tool if you need the space even if they don’t have to block it. Of course, still respect an opponent’s options to throwing it out in neutral (Hakan can likely slide punish at several ranges).
VS Hakan
-You ran away scared a bit too much. I know his footsies are better than they used to be in oil/that he starts the match oiled, but you gave him so much space that he had no problems re-oiling as needed.
-You never really established a ground game. He punished an unsafe hands early on and it deterred you from using it much else. I imagine since hands were out of the equation you were scared of his forward moving focus attack, which is understandable. But you still have options; EX hands is neutral on block (and gives great corner push), EX slide armor breaks, and Target combo has decent range and will armor break regular focus.
-Speaking of hands, I think you could’ve gotten a lot more utility out of them. Raw hands (whiff LP >> however you input L hands) from the right ranges will make contact on the first dagger (10 frames for the whiffed jab, 9 startup for hands. Not exactly “speedy” but still 1/3rd of a second and forces the opponent to react solely on the whiffed L) and push you out of his command throw range. Combine that with the fact that he went for a command throw after an unsafe daggers (even though you FADC’d it) makes me think you could’ve gotten him to go for a command throw on pretty much every range since he probably didn’t know the difference. Big punishes available if you get him to whiff a command throw.
VS Akuma
-You never lost a match so you didn’t get the chance, but I would’ve switched to U2. Lets you punish sweep and he showed how easily Akuma can get out of U1 stuff.
-Got punished for an unsafe hands range, then never got punished for it again since you spaced it properly. Nice
VS Fuerte
-I really like the shift from mixup to overall pressure after the first round. Fuerte players are less likely to block than most in my experience but they’re evasive. Nice job forcing him to block lp/mk/hands etc and punishing him for trying to move rather than giving him mixups he can evade.
-Small side note, Fuerte can never punish L hands. Doesn’t have a 3 framer at all.
-You got hit by every Q bomb except the first, so you never really got to deter him from it. As a reference, Q bomb punishes are as follows: slight walk forward Roundhouse (most damage beyond U2 or meter combos), Reversal Daggers (all 4 versions), U2, and Slide. Slide doesn’t work on a max range Q bomb though, and the EX slide never works because it has more startup.
-Dunno about U1 in this matchup because of his movement options. Last set I played with a Fuerte I used U2 which gave me some punish options. I could be wrong though
VS Guile
-Like Fuerte, Guile can never punish hands (except super, which is highly unlikely). Range doesn’t matter.
-As mentioned previously, focusing booms is a great way to combat this matchup. U1 forces behavior changes from guile, and even if you’re focusing >> back dashing Decapre can usually evade the corner via M scramble. Feel free to dance around the screen and leverage your superior mobility. Knuckledu isn’t stupid though and he plays Decapre himself; if you let yourself get cornered he may know the range to deter escape. That said, that range is feasible and you can always attempt to bait
-You did slide too much to try to punish booms. With Guile’s recovery it’s clearly a read and not a reaction. Sometimes it worked, many times it didn’t. Knuckledu knows this, and likely wasn’t deterred since he could tell he wasn’t being read.
-Knuckledu had a 100% success rate on flash kicks. That’s really bad; if you can’t deter him from Flash kicking then you’re at a serious disadvantage all across the board. Think of how many majors you’d win if nobody blocked Lariat!
-I would’ve used meter primarily for EX scramble. Decapre can alter EX cannon strike between flash kick and C HP ranges and still be safe (I think, would have to double check the frame data), which forces him to either take a risk or block. This is a great way to force the situation and get in. You only really did M feint into throw which he was looking for.
-Last round Du switched to rushdown and took you completely off guard. I don’t fault you on that; he repped defense the rest of the set and the change was dramatic. Still, if you had been able to react that (or even anticipate it which would’ve been amazing) you likely would’ve taken the set.
Hope this helps.