I don’t want to claim anyone is #1 this early in the release. Especially with new characters. The way I generally notice second generation games play out is in 3 phases.
People don’t have a clue how to play their new characters and as a result the new characters get beat by the old ones.
People learn how to play the new characters, but now others don’t know the match ups against those new characters so the newer characters have an advantage since they know how the old ones work.
Everyone catches up and learns how the match ups go. The game levels out to its final tiers baring some major discovery.
I use U2 vs Dudley cause it gives me free teleports (if he does MGP you just cancel your teleport into ultra). I played in a big tournament yesterday managed to almost beat the Gief player who won the whole thing. I landed a teleport into U2 on one of his green hands and then I paused and lost that game… Then it came to the last round of the last game and I was in the corner with about 100hp and he had about a pixel, I was too scared to safe teleport out cause I’m still not too used to using U2 so I woke up with DP, left him with 0 health then he killed me with his 360+k move…
But then in the loser’s bracket I got completely destroyed by a guy who decided to pick Juri for fun and I was completely lost. I somehow wasn’t able to punish the mixups on the pinwheel kick and he’d nail me in the corner and with U1 he would pressure me heaps. He could dive kick over a fireball on reaction or else do that stupid teleport move.
I think it’s real hard to AA demon a Juri, you gotta have awesome reactions so I think U2 is probably a better bet in that match. It combos (you just gotta practice them) and it works off cross up tatsu and I haven’t tested it but I assume it’s a safer punish on dive kicks, by teleporting back slightly and then cancelling.
For me atm the only viable matchups for U2 are: Dudley, Zangief, Juri, Rufus, Akuma (depends on their style, if they’re more rushdown than you, if you teleport out and they demon your U2 should hit them), Hakan I guess, maybe a few others.
What I’ve been recently testing was using it as a better punish (weaker as well) than U1. Since you can combo it off a 4 frame c.mp (compared to 6 frame U1 + range) you should be able to punish anything that is at least -4 that c.mp will reach.
I was referring to Kasumi Gake. We must be careful with its overhead because she can start a combo…The cr.mk also can dodge the normal overhead but we must be very near of her…I recommend to use ST.LP to punish it and cr.mk to punish kasumi gake. Try to do it on training mode :).
Yeah!!!..I was thinking about this. Maybe it works on feilong too…If He does Rekkas.
Lately I’ve been having trouble against Guile. I can’t figure out whether in this match I should play rushdown or zone/turtle. I feel like Guile can still somewhat keep up even with my shakunetsu and if he has the lead, turtling isn’t really gonna play too well. His pokes seem to beat out mine as well.
If you can, give a detailed reason why a certain playstyle would be more beneficial in Akuma vs. Guile. Thanks for the replies.
Anyone else feel the Abel match up is a LOT harder now? A slightly slower st.hk hurts, and the vortex isn’t as effective due to OS demon flip throw being gone. Abel has a better falling sky(ex) that anti airs well and a faster sweep. I’d say this fight is 5/5 now.
Crossups and safe jumps are your best friends against Guile.
Also, try to get the life lead against Guile early, then start turtling/running away to start a fireball war. Once Guile gets a life lead, he WANTS you to come at him, if that’s the case, stay patient and don’t get in at him during a fireball war. Wait til the Guile poorly spaces a Sonicboom or you can ex demon flip if you think he’s going to shoot a sonic boom.
Guile players are hard to beat. One thing you should try is turtle. A good Guile will use a lot of sonic booms, so just out fireball him, and use a lot of the three-hit fireballs to negate his super fast EX sonic boom. They have good pokes and a great anti-air, so going in after him is hard. I use a lot of fireballs and chip damage to start to force him in to me. He really can’t, or shouldn’t, out fireball you. If he tires to out fireball you and becomes predictable, you should have enough EX meter to EX demon flip in for a BNB. So look for that.
If he jumps in, SRK. If he sonic booms and follows that in, teleport out. And one thing I LOVE about Guile is his two-hit sweep. If you are fast enough, and can predict it (they usually love using it), you can c.lp > BNB, SRK, or Ultra after the first hit to get your damage.
Quick question, which version of machine gun blow is punishable on block? Im away from the game and I havnt been able to see which ones are. I have caught some casuals after a mgb on block, but for the life of me I cant remember which version was being thrown at me.
l/m/h/ex -2/-4/-5/-8 I think. I don’t think you can punish a far mp version, cause your only punishes for that are f.mp and cr.mp. You can low forward a heavy one.
abel is still in akumas favor… it might just take a little for some to get used to not throwing out his throw willy nilly… you basically are throwing it out now only if you REALLY feel like it will be landing… it hurts the match-up along with the abel buffs and so its not like a 6-4 or 6.5-3.5 match-up anymore… but its still in akuma’s favor. You can still rock him on wake-up because throwing still beats basically everything in the match-up on wake-up… you just have to know if they are going to be backdashing a lot… which just means if you expect a backdash… palm instead. Really it just means the match-up is closer and you can no longer just spam the throw and react to win (which is a good thing honestly). You still have very good combo-able pokes and you can still teleport out of every mix-up chance he has… as long as you are teleporting the MOMENT you block a move you basically have a akuma favored match since you really shouldn’t be getting hit with c.mp/f.mk too often and abel only gets so much using up his meter for EX CoD (especially if he is using it to EX roll on wake-up). Other than the obvious loop, the biggest change to me I think since I also play abel is the fact that 1: most akuma players are stupid (lol) and so ultra 2 is still working on them because they aren’t playing safe enough. And 2: EX FS is now a VERY VERY good anti-air and will beat demon flips easily now which means all those akumas that take flight on abel because he had problems AA-ing demon flip are going to be crying.
as for machinegun blow… is it really -8 for EX? For whatever reason I thought his non-EX were all -2 (guess it was just his lp) and that his EX was like -4 or -5 or so… I’ve been punishing with SRK…lol. Knowing that I’m going to be using c.mp or c.mk from now on. But basically its SRK punish if you block a far screen normal version and I guess if those # are right… then c.mp combo an EX version
as for guile… cross-tatsu, safepalms, and good footsies. Guile is definitely harder with that faster charge and better normals, but his flash kick still has some hitbox problems with dive kicks and cross tatsus is basically untouchable by guile if you time/space it correctly. I use cross-tatsu SOOOO much in this match-up… just don’t miss. The match is a all about footsies though and not randomly rushing down. Bait out those flash kicks and make sure you punish HARD. I don’t think it was really 7-3 akuma in the last game really but in this one its feeling to be about 5-5 MAYBE slight advantage akuma. Guile really has rocketed upwards.
I am starting to think Rose’s match up against Akuma is becoming my worst match up. Her normals were always annoying even in Vanilla because they were safe (apart from mashing) and had a longer range than Akuma, but at least if you got a knock down you could mix her up after that.
Now thanks to her new Ultra this match up is quickly giving me headaches. At half Ultra meter it is damn near impossible to put on good pressure. You can try to safe jump and bait the Ultra, but then you are back to square 1 of feeling out matched on the normals.
You know I was just about to post this same thing. Rose Is really good now is SSF4. I know one thing that bothers me the most is when Rose players do Soul Spiral and if blocked they can mix up either neutral jump or back dash (it’s crazy how godly her backdash is). It’s extremely annoying because its hard to punish her consistently doing so. Lately I’ve been thinking about approaching her the way I would do the Ryu match up in Vanilla SF4 (playing safe, zoning, vortex and winning the battle through attrition) . Don’t know if this helps but I bascially:
Get her into a fireball war (if she reflects or does fireballs back I df throw)
After the know down (with no ultra) Vortex.
And if she uses Soul Spiral to get in port out to reset the match
When she finally does get ultra and uses it, I just try to play keep away, zone and look for opportunities for the Rose player to be too aggressive and make mistakes
Not sure if this will help or not but it’s something. Anyone else have anything to add?
I have taken what i needed from this thread and im starting the Super akuma match up thread which shall be stickied soon enough and i will have this deleted so yea take ur questions there please.