Someone make a google doc yo
I can see the Blanka and Sim reasons, I never get to play decent ones so I’m unfamiliar with strong players and their gameplans.
Why so for the other 3? There is no way Rufus is a 5-5, even with 3 button teching if he hits you once and knocks you down you’re in a really bad spot, Rufus can make Upkicks whiff all day long so you’ve pretty much got to hold that shit on wake-up, and escaping once he’s in is tough. It always feels like an uphill battle of making sure Rufus doesn’t touch you once, I’ve never played a Rufus and felt I had a significant advantage, although a lot of Rufus players love to touch buttons and fall into frame traps, they also like to abuse the fuck out of Messiah and punish you for trying them.
Guy is just an offensive powerhouse, the flip cancels all aspects of zoning and he can react to a fireball with it and you won’t have a down-charge to stop it with. If you get put into the corner you’re in a very bad spot, and his run/stop pressure is real. Guy got a LOT better in Ultra. Not to mention because of DeeJay’s wide hitbox one of Guy’s biggest weaknesses(whiffing normals/links/chains) is completely gone in the MU. His st.mp is a fucking godlike offensive and reactive poke, and L.Sobat can’t get over it and he can catch pretty much all of your pokes with it into slide or EX shoulder. He beats you in footsies. St.mk/st.mp are all he needs to stop you, and cr.lk can even whiff punish a lot of stuff in EX shoulder yet again(that’s a 3f whiff punish…fdfgdjgdlk). I just never lose much to Guy, and put it as a 5.5. But I do feel you it’s a hard match but I’ve never had issues with it, I’d throw it into the 6-4 category if I got bodied by him a bunch…not many Guy’s around on PC.
Rolento is just…ergh. I can’t even judge if a Rolento is good or not, that’s just a personal gripe I have, I have trouble playing against him with all of my characters. I think it’s less about comparing the toolsets of each character and literally just a contest of how well you can guess what Rolento is going to do, and how random he feels that day. I fucking hate that character.
And everyone says they have issues with Dudley but if you don’t rely on fireballs and just use your buttons to stop him he’s pretty fucked. I honestly don’t think Dudley is that bad, it’s just another competition of never being hit into an EX MGB like every other rushdown powerhouse. But for neutral and Dudley getting in he has to work pretty hard to break through a solid defence, just don’t throw fireballs and walk into his ex duck and such. Like ALL of Dudley’s main pokes can just be whiff punished with st.hk, or if you’re charged up cr.mp into a Sobat, throw an FADC into the mix and you’re netting a nice 250+ combo. Fisch was saying how he hated it to me earlier, no idea why it just takes some adjustments. You can even beat that crazy hk jump in he has with st.hp, there’s literally nothing to be afraid of unless he’s right next to you, which is a hard place for him to be. You could probably refer me to FREEJ4Y vs Smug because they’ve played a couple times and Freejay gets bopped, but I’m basing it from my experiences online and I’m sure none of the Dudley’s I play are on that level, but Freejay does throw a lot of fireballs at a range where ducking can get under and have Dudley right in his face.
Blanka and Sim I’ll be completely honest I’m clueless on, I’ve never played decent ones. Sim on paper looks tough, I was gonna put them both in a 5-5 bracket because I didn’t know where to put them, but I can’t see Blanka being tough when I look at it on paper, we can punish Blanka ball can’t we?
Dj keeps rufus out well. I’ve never played one that had upkick-proof setups though. It never feels bad for me.
Guy runs a train on DJ and you basically said why.
Rolento is just a nutty character, but Dj has answers to all his gimmicks. DJ can zone him decently. I’ve just never been opened wide up by Rolento. All his shit is reactable.
Dudley beats DJ for sure. I’ve grinded this match more than any other in the game vs a very good dudley. Literally hundreds and hundreds of matches. Like you said you virtually have to abandon fireballs, but that’s literally his best tool. His normals aren’t good enough by themselves for keepout. So you have to use some fireballs but it’s always risky. You have to use them pretty close and have irregular timings. Good luck whiff punishing with st.hk that shit’s 11 frames. I very rarely use it. If you miss is your in recovery for 10 years. Whiff punish fierces with st.mp sobat fadc and gut punches with cr.mp sobat fadc. Slide goes under the fierces so that useful. But any time you get counterpoked or whiff punished it’s with some heavy normal and it just hurts way worse than anything you can do to him. The risk reward is heavily in Dudley’s favor in footsies. Also, good luck getting out of his pressure with DJ.
Sim and Blanka shit on DJ, I thought this was common knowledge. You have shit tools for getting in on Sim. Blanka just wins neutral so hard. You can’t fireball and his normals destroy ours. The EX upkick buff helped this match a ton since he can’t just meaty electricity all day for free, but it’s still awful.
Also your list is missing gouken and elena
No idea about Elena and Gouken is still sitting in my mind on where it stands, same with Blanka and Sim. Need to re-evaluate those and remove Blanka & Sim because they’re still unknown to me. Blanka online is a fucking rarity.
Dudley/Guy from my experiences have been fairly easy to fight against, but online experiences differ heavily. That’s just how my boat floats.
Blanka’s whiff setups now make ex upkicks and other upkicks whiff now though, so Deejay has to deal with ambiguous setups.
It’s definitely an overall boon, but I think that diference combined with Blanka’s buffs basically keep the match where it was.
I don’t think Ryu has to play a gimped game, he just can’t take the same approach he usually does. So what if other characters have access to the same advantages in the matchups with focus, empty jump, and neutral jump, that’s just how you deal with DJ’s neutral. DJ has a pretty committal footsies game. Slide and LK Sobat are his two best tools there along with st.mk as a poke. Everything that beats slide generally loses to LK Sobat and vis versa, it’s like a sweep range 50/50. Blocking a single LK Sobat puts him at -4, if you just have some damn patience you get all the mileage you want in the DJ neutral. Slide is +2 at best and it’s not easy to hit perfectly meaty (where it’s also slow as fuck with 21f until that last frame hits IIRC). One solid read on either of these options leads to big damage, and then DJ doesn’t exactly have an easy time getting inside. Where is your U1/EX Sobat/LK Sobat when you are forced to walk forward and get inside on Ryu? Oh, it’s fucking nowhere. GG, get zoned bitch. Ryu doesn’t have to play a “GIMPED” style, he just has to have a marginal amount of respect in the neutral which you aren’t used to seeing in a DJ matchup. That doesn’t make the matchup in our favor. What’s the big deal about EX Sobat and U1? If you treat DJ’s fireball game with respect you won’t get hit by them. Don’t throw a fireball if he has back charge. How is DJ going to get a L Slasher on screen uncontested when you can just match it with a Hado on reaction every time? How is he going to approach you with sub-par normals when he’s left without LK Sobat to cover cr.mk when he’s walking forward without back charge? Knee shot is easy to duff if you’re looking for it, and consider how few options DJ has on approach, it’s enough of a go-to tool that any solid player doesn’t have much to look for besides knee shot or some walk forward shenanigans which he can slap away with cr.mk once you lose charge.
As far as the grapplers are concerned, Hugo can clap his way through fireballs, and focus dash forward through them into grab up close. 37f total on DJ’s fireball is an easy focus dash grab, and his forward dash goes further than DJ’s for comparison. Hugo’s claps are fucking good. MP and HP have very little recovery with longer startup, LP has longer recovery with shorter startup. It’s easy to keep mixing them up to keep the pressure ambiguous, and they eat fireballs while building meter and moving Hugo forward. If you try and play a whiff punish/counter poke game against the claps, he just busts out the st.mp pimp slap that jacks you in the jaw from half screen. Once you’re knocked down the claps can be used to bait out shitty reversal attempts that you can’t FADC unless it’s garbage EX MGU. Once you whiff a reversal you’re toast. Getting the life lead back on a defense grappler as DJ is not easy. Oh did you try and knee shot to get inside? Let me grab that. Oh did you try and play footsies with me? Let me slap that bitch ass and remind you that your normals aren’t that great. This all goes without mentioning that DJ really gets dick all from whiff punishing compared to many of the cast who can buffer specials behind their attempts.
I just can’t see how you’re leaning on fireballs so hard. 37f total. Our fireball is 8f better than the average. We can still get jumped in on easily. Once they get inside that range that makes tossing a fireball risky it’s not easy to contest the space and push them back out, and all they really have to do to get in that range is walk forward block, focus dash forward, or empty jump. Once they occupy it they slowly push us to the corner because DJ doesn’t have too many choices outside of just backing that ass up to try and get a better fireball spacing. If you try and hold your ground you get beat in the footsies game. Abel, Honda, Zangief, Hugo, Hakan, even Thawk, I can’t think of a single character where I think to myself, “Oh good, I’m at footsie range, I’m really comfortable here and confident in my ability to keep them out with my excellent normals.” The second you stand up you give up down charge for upkicks, and if you maintain down charge you lose mobility and you have no good pokes outside of slide which generally gives up all your momentum and puts you back at a shitty spacing that you’ve been explicitly trying to avoid the entire match.
As far as Rose is concerned, I can see cr.mp getting some use, but it feels far more unsafe than checking her advance with st.lk which isn’t something that’s going to get whiff punished as consistently. Her buttons are pretty fast for the range they have, cr.mp just feels dangerous to toss out compared to st.lk. Though again, while I do admit yes, her buttons pretty much dominate ours, her pressure doesn’t really lead to that much. Her wakeup is still assy. You don’t need some fancy OS bullshit to try and cover all options, just get a read on a backdash (which is piss easy in that matchup) then do j.hk into a full combo and check her bitch ass on the backdash. I still think it’s in her favor obviously, but I don’t put it at 7-3, I can see it as 6-4.
On Sakura, I usually beat the Tatsu with walk forward cl.mp or st.hp. Her footsies aren’t the best and we can hang in the neutral there to force a jump and continue the keep out game. Your problem seems to stem 100% from your lack of confidence in the AA game based on what I’ve heard you say over Steam and posted on here. Just hit training mode and practice the AA game in the matchup some so you know what you’re dealing with.
Can’t see us beating Yang, I can see it at 5-5. I think he wins the ground game.
Elena isn’t too bad. Just block high when she is going into her jab string. LK Sobat gets some good mileage in this matchup. Reversal U2 on the low kick M or H special is free. Still annoying as fuck to fight though. I hate healing.
Rolento has a shitty wakeup. His mixup and pressure are great his footsies are alright but once you knock him on the ground you can abuse the shit out of him. Plus you can punish that god damn roll with reversal U2 for free. If they want to try and constantly roll away on wakeup I just toss a L Slasher early so they roll into it like a moron, or you can just throw them (does throw beat that back roll? because it seeems like it does)
I really think DJ is pretty good in Ultra as it stands now. His EX MGU needs its AE range back, his cl.hp needs to be removed from the game, but other than that he’s in a good spot. To me the significant majority of his matchups are 5-5 to 6-4 with a couple being 7-3 (Dhalsim, Guile, maybe others), but I don’t see any matchups in his favor outside of Dan. I’m perfectly fine with that spread. If you play the Guile and Dhalsim matchup with the proper patience of a fucking monk you can actually get some good pressure and damage in and then lame them out where they have trouble mounting an offense themselves. Getting in being so hard plus our poor damage on top of it really skews those defensive-standoff matches though. Maybe that’s why Rose seems to be 7-3 as well but personally I have an easier time laming her out, getting inside on her, abusing her wakeup, holding on in the neutral, and defending against her pressure than I do Guile/Dhalsim. I’d like to say I’ve not faced a good Rose yet but Wild Arms is pretty good, probably one of the best Rose’s I’m gonna face in awhile.
Wild Arms doesn’t play the DJ match correctly. He just does Rose stuff, which works because she can do whatever she wants in that match.
Just want to say I disagree nearly everything you said, but I’m not writing an essay on it lol.
Also I love how you say “I think DJ is pretty good in Ultra,” and then say “I don’t see any matchups in his favor outside Dan.” Funny how low DJ players’ expectations are for a character being in a good place lmao.
I double posted because my first one didn’t appear and then I saw that comments will appear after they are approved. What is this new tyrannical rule? Who is the overlord censoring srk?
New antispam setting. No censorship, just killing all spam. See also Post here if you get the “Your post needs to be verified/approved” message . You’re good to go.
lol that’s a fair response Buddha my shit gets away from me all day.
I don’t think 5-5/6-4 across the board is a bad character. That’s good enough. In a cast of 44 characters trying to buff him to improve a bad matchup can skew a fair matchup (or several) into his favor which is unnecessary. I’m not going to be salty about a balanced character and I don’t mind working for my wins.
Grapplers just need to have patience against DJ, he doesn’t have the excellent neutral game that Guile/Ryu have when it comes to contesting space in the footsies game. Going on the offensive against someone who has better footsies than you can can typically punish your jump in attempts is not easy. I could see Hugo/Honda being in DJ’s favor if you’re playing someone without any patience who makes your job piss easy. It’s really not that hard to walk forward and block and then just start pressing buttons to stuff DJ in a corner, certainly not hard enough to warrant saying that the M/U is in DJ’s favor.