what exactly is giving you trouble vs Gief?
his hairy chest D:
I don’t know anything about gief in this game, and it seems his lariat is really strong again.
I really just need to know what things can I punish and how. is green hand safe for him?
I’m actually finding Hugo vs. Asuka to be slightly in Asuka’s favor. His normals are all slow enough to where you can counter them on reaction, forward st.lk usually beats the body splash cleanly and leads to extra damage, nj.hp on reaction to his charge is a really strong and really easy punish, and his gigantic hitbox makes the already hard to read j.hp crossups even harder. Maybe the Hugos I fight just don’t know the matchup, but it feels like if my reactions are on the ball then there’s nothing Hugo can do. Zangief is similar, though his lariats cause some problems.
The character that REALLY shuts me down right now is Law. I cannot come up with a single anti-Law strategy other than to tag Juri in.
I think hands down, Gief is Asuka’s worst matchup, Gief or Guile (but I haven’t played against a good Guile yet)
none of the green hands are safe (aside from LP one on hit [-2])
Lariat is gay as shit in this game, it completely beats lows/mids, its pretty much safe [-4], pushes you back far enough from allowing a punish but still leaving you in range for his s.MP to connect… plus on CH or trade he can combo s.Mp>s.MP~s.HK and its pretty much half-life…
Not to mention that his s.MP kills Asuka’s neutral game, counter is good and all but if he decides to running bear you eat 200 damage…
Its a very stupid matchup so far, my main sparing partner mains Gief and the only good things in this MU are cross-up j.HP beating Lariats 90% of the time; meaning he has no answer for cross ups, and that sweep throw beats the armored BS (sorta obvious i guess but still lol), you can also Cancan through the armored moves but it has to be quick.
wait what
are you sure about the lariat being beat by j.hp
like i’ve heard that lariat has no hitbox behind so that makes sense to me that we should hit him out of it
but if he crouches waits for the cross up then lariats are you still winning?
i fought a gief that had that had the timing down or was just getting lucky but needless to say i stopped jumping at him ever since then
maybe i just have the worst timing for it 
his lariat has a hitbox in the back but its very small compared to the front one, if you have the range of the j.HP down -try to hit with the fist/max range- and you’ll smack it pretty much everytime.
I play this matchup everyday for around 30-40 matches minimum so I’m 100% sure that you can beat it pretty much everytime, we’ll test it tomorrow just to be 100% sure though.
Asuka vs Marduk is pissing me off. It’s not that bad if I have the life lead, but if marduk has it I feel like I can’t do shit. At least a lot of his stuff is counterable on reaction…
I spent a lot of time in training today. First thing I wanted to mention was that something odd happened to me in a match. I canceled a blocked long-range standing strong into regular hopkicks and Rolento alpha-countered the standing strong. The hopkicks beat the alpha counter and I got a full combo.
So I went to test it and it works a bit over half the time? It depends on when Rolento activates the counter and when your cancel happens, but it seems like the combination of slow startup and low hitbox on his EX patriot circle allows hopkicks to avoid the invincible portion of the move.
It’s a safer way to bait that particular alpha counter than canceling a normal into your counter or EX hopkicks, although it doesn’t work 100% of the time. Decent thing to know, at any rate.
I suspect this would also work (more reliably) against Rolento’s regular EX patriot circle.
It doesn’t really beat any other alpha counters, although there were some other character-specific results:
- Makes Raven’s alpha counter (looks like high/low shadow clones) whiff past you 100% of the time. He has a long recovery, so you’re safe.
- Makes Bison’s alpha counter (looks like ex psycho crusher) whiff through you 95% of the time. You’re safe afterwards.
- Only takes 1 hit from Ryu’s alpha counter (looks like EX hurricane) which does 40 damage instead of 105.
- Sometimes trades with Juri’s alpha counter. Not really worth it.
Since Asuka’s counter doesn’t work against Bison and Raven’s airborne alpha counters, and EX hopkicks will whiff, regular hopkicks would be the best way to bait it out against those characters.
Vs. Gief Lariat
Spent quite a bit of time testing out various grounded options against Gief’s reversals.
First, listing how the reversals work:
Punch lariat: Mid/upper body invincibility until frame 6. Can hit crouchers on frame 5, then the rest of the hits can be ducked (easy punish.)
Kick lariat: Lower body invincibility until the third hit. The first two hits can be ducked. First hit on frame 11, 3rd hit (the one that matters) on frame 31. Only -4 if the third hit is blocked.
EX SPD: 6f startup, 6f strike invulnerability.
EX 360+K: 2f grab if close, running bear grab if far. Has 1 hit of armor.
Super: Active frame 1. 1 hit armor.
Backdash: 23f duration (why?)
So, the first thing is that meaty grabs will beat all of his reversals except super and backdash. That includes regular grabs and sweep throw (loses to crouching unless EX.) Grabs are good against him, especially on wakeup.
But because grabs have slow startup in this game, reversals can catch you if you try a tick throw. So you do have some good options for offense that open him up to grabs.
When timed correctly, Asuka’s f+LK also beats every Gief reversal except super and backdash. It hits low enough on the first active frame to beat punch lariat, and then hits higher quickly enough to beat kick lariat. It’s also airborne by the time EX SPD comes out, and you’ll be too far to get grabbed by EX 360+K. The obvious drawback is that point-blank f+LK is unsafe if he just blocks, but it could be worthwhile in the case where you just know a reversal is coming.
Asuka’s far standing short and low forward are good safe options if the Gief likes to do reversal lariats out of blockstrings. Both of them beat punch lariat, and make kick lariat whiff. In the case of standing short, you should recover fast enough to be safe against kick lariat, since you’re at a distance. In the case of low forward, your low profile dodges the hits and you have time to land standing jab afterwards into a full punish. If you want, you can do an option select to punish the kick lariat here (and maybe a backdash.) But these moves will lose to EX SPD.
Asuka’s close standing short is a different move from the far version and I could have sworn I had a setup where it would beat both punch and kick lariats without having to worry about whiffs, but I wasn’t able to recreate it.
Against grab reversals, aside from jumps, Asuka’s f+LK, f+HK, and hopkicks have airborne frames. f+HK is the safest, but it’s not airborne until frame 14, so it’s only useful against grab reversals on wakeup. Hopkicks is airborne on frame 6, although it is punishable by reversal jab SPD (risk-reward in your favor overall, but still a risk.)
You can also punish grab reversals with various things after backdashing. EX SPD has 54 total frames (2 active, 47 recovery) and Asuka’s backdash is 26f, so you have at minimum a 23f window to punish after the backdash, if you didn’t backdash until the first active frame of EX SPD. If you charge cancel a normal into backdash in anticipation of a reversal, the punish couldn’t be easier.
Gief’s backdash is actually good in this game and probably his best reversal. Mixup primarily between throws and standing short chains with an option select vs. backdash/kick lariat, while keeping mindful of EX SPD/super is probably the best way to approach his wakeup from the ground.
[LEFT]Some info on Hugo from my 30 mins of experience with him in training mode.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Ex SPD can be thrown on wakeup, Ex Backbreaker will make the throw whiff but you’re within st.hk xx upkicks range to punish when you whiff throw. If he for some reason does wakeup nj.d+hp, you can recover from your throw in time and do ex falling rain.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Vs Hugo’s lariet, when you see him flex his muscles, do cr.mk, cr.mk will make it whiff, Asuka will hit the armour, you can punish with st.lp afterwards, you can also buffer the cr.mk into super or ex upkicks,[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Vs his cr.lk at max range, I found cr.mp to be a good counterpoke vs it at a certain range, alas you can only buffer cr.mp into ex exo at this range since upkicks and super will just whiff at this range. Cr.hp is also pretty good for this and even if you trade, you get a combo off it since cr.hp crumples (don’t abuse it too much though since it’s horrific recovery on whiff)[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Against his st.mp, Asuka’s st.mp and st.hk works well at max range.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Vs his st.lp/cr.lp, I found her cr.mk to be actually useful here, she ducks under the jab and hits Hugo, you’d have to be quite close though, if he’s walking and pressing st.lp (-4 on block) you can just cr.mk under it. , st.mp outside his cr.lp’s range stuffs it but you can only buffer ex exo again since upkicks, super, etc will whiff. Vs his st.lp, st.hk at max range is pretty good vs it. St.mp also can work but I found st.hk to be more reliable but a bit risky since it has a lenghty startup, don’t bother buffering anything from st.hk’s max range, nothing will connect.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]vs his cr.mp, st.mp and st.hk are again pretty good against it, cr.hp at it’s max range is pretty useful vs Hugo’s cr.mp. (don’t forget to dash combo after the crumple)[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Cr.lk Cr.mk chain is -9 on block (I’m pretty sure), point blank Asuka doesn’t have a punish for this, but she can do ex leg sweep to catch him in the 1f gap. Outside point blank range, don’t attempt it, the pushback is too far.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]For his body splash, I found cr.mp to be a good AA and f+lk as well, although if he’s doing body splash crossing you up constantly, then it would be risky to try using her normal AAs here, just use her ex falling rain in this scenerio.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]Against his clap pressure, don’t press a button, he has too much advantage, if you want to get out, backdash or mash ex upkicks.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]St.hk hits Hugo on crouching.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]The rest is just down to reading your opponent’s patterns.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]I’ll try and do Kazuya over the weekend[/LEFT]
More on Zangief.
Whoever said you could beat lariat with crossup jump fierce, I’m extremely skeptical. Any half-decent Zangief waits to do lariat until late in your jump. So if you’re jumping from close range in an attempt to dodge the “behind” hitbox of lariat, he’s just going to wait to lariat, and then by the time he activates it you’re in “front” of him. You eat the beefy frontward portion of autocorrect lariat.
That’s my experience from recording Asuka jumping at various angles, I didn’t find anything that directly beats a properly-timed lariat.
However you can safe-jump it. It starts up in 5f so it’s probably a 2f window if it’s like SF4, I don’t remember the details for trip guard in this game. Asuka’s sweep knockdown gives you only a few frames before you have to jump to get the safe-jump. You also have to guess whether they’re going to roll, but fortunately an opponent has to decide to roll very quickly after Asuka’s sweep and they can’t react to your jump either.
You might be able to do a minor crossup mixup based on distance of the sweep and movement before the safejump.
It also seems generally harder to do a reversal properly after a roll. The “reversal” message never pops up so I suspect you don’t get the usual leniency, reversal specials would be a 1f window like everything else.
The knockdown time after sweep is roughly in the 43-44 frame range, although that’s not exact.
Both of Asuka’s throws have longer knockdown times, similar/identical to each other. Wouldn’t be surprised if you could set up a safejump using whiffed moves.
If Gief tries to lariat your safe-jump you get an easy punish, but safejumps are beaten by EX 360+K. Varying the timing slightly, or doing an empty jump -> backdash/neutral jump would beat the EX grabs.
Since people were talking about Gief’s standing strong vs. Asuka, it does seem difficult to beat directly at its ideal range. You can use low forward to duck under it, although you have to be really close for that to actually hit. Standing jab can hit it at a specific range (buffer EX exo?) At further ranges f+LK, standing strong, standing roundhouse, and standing fierce can beat it directly.
It doesn’t have many active frames compared to startup/recovery so while it’s difficult to whiff punish, it can be an opening to use a forward-moving normal like b+MP, f+MK, or f+MP.
yeah, that has been my experience too a late crouching lariat is no fun for us
i thought it was just me but if you’re also experiencing it too then it’s an issue for her. sadly
That’s not an Asuka-specific issue by any means. Crossups just don’t work against him unless they’re safejumps (which you can still do.)
In this game grounded mixup is probably going to have a higher success rate than jumps anyway because of the whole “guess your roll” thing.
derp… k i stand corrected, he can definitely delay the Lariat and can at least a trade :sad:
I got hit by that countless times today to see if it works or not.
Bleh, just came from NCR and wanna talk about some match up specifics.
1st problem:
Raven - MM’d Raven/Hugo and the only thing I did with Asuka was build meter so I can get Chun in for that matchup (more comfortable letting Asuka take Hugo). However, playing that matchup just felt extremely hopeless for Asuka it seemed. You can stop jab pressure with counters, but getting in is one big other thing.
2nd problem:
Zangief - I got blown up at NCR losers finals against Gief/Hugo. Hugo again I was fine against but what lost me the match was when Asuka was forced to fight Zangief so Chun can recover (she’s the workforce against big bodies…). I had no trouble anti-airing him and he was forced to respect me and resort to a ground game after I c.MK’d AA’d into Upkicks into BnB combo. Its just when I got conditioned to the ground game, thats when things got extremely hairy with max ranged SPDs.
A LOT of low shorts where whiffed buffered into s.MP mainly because after the grounded game was forced, he saw my entry was b.MP strings. So I should’ve thought about this during the match, but any character who buffers a standing chain is liable to get hit by Sweep Throws. And since you’re + after b.MP strings CADC fwd, I’m assuming throws beat out all his reversal options? But get tagged by normals?
And would you guys pressure Gief on wakeup? I never really did in fear of taking so much unneccessary damage due to the Gief/Hugo pairing. I probably lost since I didn’t pressure him as well, and probably df.HK/f.HK would’ve been a good wakeup move against Gief now I think about it, but the amount of respect I had for this guy made me backdash a lot instead of pressing the issue.
I forget who asked about OS but I did a little bit of testing with it.
As usual, success of OS depends on how meaty you can make the hit, so it’s more effective on wakeup than in a blockstring or something. And getting a meaty hit with short recovery is a little harder in this game, but there are still ways to make it work with safe jumps and meaty light attacks.
You’ll have to guess “roll or not” to get a safejump. But the falling rain -> hold :uf: setup is a decent way to discourage your opponent from rolling so that you can consistently get a meaty attack.
With a safe jump you can OS anything with 4f startup or slower.
For grounded OS, Asuka’s crouching jab has the least recovery of her normals, so it’s probably the best to meaty with. If you hit on the last active frame you have 1+7 recovery so your OS will come out on frame 9. However, it seems that you can still cancel the crouching jab at this point, which is weird. So the ideal situation would be to press MP around frame 1 before doing the input for your OS at frame 9 or so.
Safe jump OS would be effective against more characters due to coming out faster, but against other characters with extremely slow startup on reversals (Rufus) you might want a more delayed OS. The move you OS with depends on the reversals you’re against, depending on the matchup you might want counter, EX hopkicks, EX falling rain, a backdash/jump, or something else.
As for specific examples, I didn’t get too far into it but I did mess with some things.
Crouching jab OS hopkicks will catch most backdashes in the game if you do it fast enough. I haven’t done comprehensive testing, but the only backdashes I’ve found to avoid it so far are Chun and Asuka. These backdashes travel back far enough during their early frames that they avoid the first hit of hopkicks and are able to block the second hit.
Crouching jab OS EX hopkicks can also work against some reversals with 9f startup or slower. Didn’t do comprehensive testing, but it seemed most effective against Ogre. Beats all his reversals, except EX Owl’s Hunt which whiffs next to you with Asuka at +3.
Breakdown of Ogre’s reversals:
LP/MP Ancient Power (srk+P): counters with 4f startup. Beaten by meaty low jab.
HP/EX Ancient Power (srk+P): invincible attacks with 10f startup and a projectile hitbox. Crouching jab has recovered by frame 9, so EX hopkicks comes out and beats them. If you were doing a safejump and just blocked them, reversal hopkicks is an easy punish, among other things (-16.)
EX Waning Moon (qcb+P): Armored hit/grab with 10f/21f startup. Beaten by chained normals or by crouching (-22.)
EX Owl’s Hunt (srk+K): Avoids the attack, and EX hopkicks comes out and whiffs, but Ogre whiffs his attack next to Asuka and recovers 3f later than her.
Super/Cross Arts should be blockable on reaction, since low jab has recovered by frame 9.
So Ogre has a weakness against meaty attacks worse than Gouken. As such, safe jumps and meaty setups are probably the best options against him. Just make sure you don’t miss the timing to beat his regular counters, and watch to punish srk+K.
R-D, your contributions is astonishing lol
vs Jin:
he got a almost 100% safe aa that covers close to 50% screen and at best trades with Asuka’s air attacks.
he got helluva lot longer pokes that beats close to, if not all off Asukas normals and that can combo into around 350 with as much effort as eating an orange.
Asuka’s cr.hp is a good choice to interupt his pokes, but if you get a counter hit with cr.hp at max distance he will be to far away to land a good follow up without whiffing.
Your best bet in this matchup is AR to net a knockdown and close the distance.
Play vs a Jin daily (friend) and i can’t stand this bloody character… ugh!
i’ll take your word for it because i don’t have as much experience as you do but i find it hard to believe you can’t follow up after the crumple. going to have to look more into that
i do think a patient jin is difficult i like to kind of wait for him to do something i can react to but if they don’t do anything i have to start taking risks which is no good
just played a sagat and dhalsim team.
My god Asuka has (for me) A LOT of trouble getting close with there AA and Tool they have to keep you away.
But How are you guys finding that match up?