Character Match-Ups A-K
Match-Ups! Will be revised more later
Honda is not beyond repair in this game his normals and specials all do so much damage, try hitting someone with a couple j.HP or headbutts and the game takes a sudden 180. He also has great mixups on wakeup. He can trade with pretty much anyone and still come out on top in the end. All it takes is a little patience. If you want to jump in and kick then trip ryu and ken are more your type.
He does struggle with crossups, but only if they are done perfectly. Otherwise, a well time FA, j.HP, headbutt, ochio, buttslam or even super or ultra can spell disaster for a crossup scrub.
He does struggle a little with fireballs but again only if someone amazing is doing them. If you close the distance with FA and neutral jump + forwardHP rather than jumping straight into anti-airs you will find you have a lot of tools at your disposal.
Plus, there is nothing like imagining what the guy on the other side of the match looks like when he got beaten by a beastly fatso like honda.
Abel:
[details=Spoiler] 6/4 Abel. Lookin for someone are ya? Have you tried talkin to the cops?
- Roll>>Tornado throw is a popular scrub tactic. Unfortunately tornado>ochio, so you either have to throw him mid-roll, or if you KNOW he is going for it, jump up and hit him as he is whiffing it on the way down.
- HP and MP headbutt are punishable by rekka combo on block, all headbutts lose to ultra (so dont do one when hes standing there buffering down, forward, down, forward), and I BELIEVE that HP headbutt is punishable by ultra on block (but someone plz confirm)
- Rekka combo (the 3 hit mixup thing) is punishable by ex-headbutt after you block the 2nd hit, and by ultra if you block the 3rd.
- Careful about blocking down on wakeup, Abels flip kick is an overhead, and a meaty one will get you a lot of the time. Note that any headbutt can beat the flip kick once its started, but the headbutt is damn slow and a meaty flip will catch you unless you do EX-HB.
- You can meaty abel to death on wakeup because he doesnt have any good reversals. All he can do is roll. Once you train him to roll, then watch for it and punish accordingly.
- Dont abuse nj.HP too much here, if he clips you with the end of his elbow (cr.HP) youre eating ultra
- If you want to know what you SHOULDNT do vs. Abel, search youtube for Mr.SNK vs. Juicebox Abel [/details]
Akuma:
[details=Spoiler] 5/5 You’ve got a great fighting stance! Low center of gravity is the way to go!
- Akumas super and ultra lose out to headbutt or any jumping attack which you can do on reaction.
- You can FA the second hit of his Fw :hk: for some nice damage since Honda is a shorter character.[/details]
Balrog Boxer:
[details=Spoiler] 5/5 Between your hooks and your counters, color me impressed! *** I want to say 6/4 because of HHS abuse.***
- BLOCK LOW and then WAIT FOR THE OVERHEAD. Overheads have visually discernible animations due to their pursuit property so you can see that shit coming for days. Just keep reminding yourself block low, watch for overhead. Otherwise you’ll get swept with rh and dash lower over and over.
- Overhead and Dash Swing Blow are armor breakers along with tap. Overhead is 120 dmg, dash swing blow is 100 (weak shit) and tap is (don’t fuck with it).
- This fight is all about life leads and patience. You have life lead, he comes to you. You don’t have life lead, you go to him.
- How you fight rog depends on range. Three ranges to be at, c.lp range, s.hk/chop range and outside of his jab dash punch range. I personally hate c.lp range cause I can’t tech throws like japs can.
- Do not jump into balrog with down charge. If he’s crouched down, do not jump at all within half a screens range from him cause fp headbutt has retarded horizontal range.
- Jab dash punch’s startup is probably close to the limit of human reaction time. If you’re a really sharp person, you can use s.lp to stuff every dash punch clean. Soon as you see him move, you’re pressing the s.lp and getting the counter-hit. But problems with this are ex moves and tap.
- Tap has to be punished with s.fp. Soon as you see him do the turn around, press s.fp and you’re guaranteed the counter-hit due to chop’s ridiculously long active frame window
- Whiff punish balrogs dash punches with s.fp. Constantly weave in and out of jab dash punch range and get ready to punish the ones that don’t hit you (watch Ii Desu Ketsu Bat vs Aojiru Guile).
- Blocked overheads should be always punished with Oicho
- On ex rush uppers you duck, late os tech
- You can cr.:lp: him out of his Normal Dash Punches.
- You can also throw him out of his Dash Punches if timed right
- He can punish :mp: and :hp: Torpedo with :lp: Dash punch and can punish your :lp: Torpedo with his Super
- Try and bait out Dash punches when your up close with a :lp: Torpedo then punish
- After a knock down feel free to Jump in on Boxer, his only option to get out is Ex-Dash punch and if you cross him up he has to block it due to his headbutt starting in 13 frames
End Story: Get meter and a life lead and kiss the round good-bye. This works for the Boxer and Honda player.
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Blanka:
[details=Spoiler] (6/4 Honda) Talk about your way out moves! Show me that again, will ya?
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C.Viper:
[details=Spoiler] (6/4 Honda) Talk about weird fighting styles, you got gadgets up the whazoo, doncha?
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Cammy:
[details=Spoiler] (7/3 Honda) You’re one skinny chick! You might wanna look into eating more than once a week
6-4 Honda
After EVO, I thought everybody would stop sleeping on Cammys potential, but it seems like people still underrate her. I dont know why though. Maybe its because they havent played a good Cammy? Well, Ive definitely played against a good Cammy, arguably as good if not better than Sanfords Cammy (although Sanford deserves the respect he gets), and I gotta say, shes one dangerous bitch. The reason shes so dangerous isnt so much about her damage, but more because of her mix-up. Shes like Sakura, but better, and with much safer options.
Cannon Spike: Cammys form of SRK, its invincible (full body) for long enough that you just dont mess. It beats all headbutts pretty clean except for early EX Headbutt and it does a shitload of damage. Also, it has very good push away that makes it unpunishable by a lot of the cast, but not Honda. On block you can usually squeeze in a fp headbutt for a good chunk of life.
Spiral Arrow: Cammys form of blanka ball or headbutt, but it hits low and is highly unsafe on block usually. However, if she hits you with the tip of her foot, shes perfectly safe and can often retaliate or block. It is cancelable on the first hit so Cammys can purposely throw an unsafe arrow and then FADC it into throw or Cannon Spike. It beats all headbutts clean except for the startup of ex headbutt which has full body invulnerability for a few frames. EX goes through fireballs, useless info for Honda match-up.
Spin Knuckle: it sucks
Hooligan Combo: This shit is weird. Its an airborne attack that throws you on contact if youre standing or if you jump. It can be ducked, but not when youre waking up? WTF?!? Apparently, when you wake-up, youre forced to stand so yeah, I still dont know what to do against it if youre waking up w/o meter. Maybe lk splash? If you do have meter, ex headbutt it when its close or you can probably c.mp/c.lp it. If she chooses to, Cammy can also come out of hooligan with a low slide attack. Again, hits LOW and cannot be fast recovered. If she hits you with a meaty slide thats blocked, its safe. If she hits you with it in corner, she gets a free cannon spike (dumb bitch). Ton of mix-up after she hits you with this since you cant mash and get up quickly.
Cannon Strike: Cammys dive kick, this shit takes a ton of work to use but has retarded amounts of mix-up. Because Honda has such a slow jab and short, this thing is hell to deal with because it forces you to guess the tech and can be done tiger kneed to punish tech attempts. This is why I hate the up-close game with Cammy. In general, if you can ex headbutt or lk splash to avoid guessing the tech, Id do it cause if you dont, Cammy can do tiger kneed cannon strike, ex cannon strike, ultra or tiger kneed cannon strike, s.fp xx cannon spike, fadc cannon spike (350 dmg, WTF!)
Things to watch for:
-Cammys jump in of choice is roundhouse. Its a really odd looking jump-in where she spreads her legs (aaahhh yeahhh, no j/k) and kicks you with a really horizontal hitbox. I have ridiculous amounts of trouble AAing this with chop but it can be done if you stick the chop out pretty early. Problem is she can bait chops with cannon strike. After a jump-in roundhouse that connects, she can do throw mix-up or c.lk, c.lp, c.lk xx spiral arrow. Ill explain why eating spiral arrow sucks really badly, shortly.
-Cammys cross-up is j.lk and honestly, it sucks against people with good reversals. Honda however has really shitty cross-up reversals, which is all bad. After a connected or blocked j.lk from Cammy, she can do nothing and bait your lk splash, she can c.lk, c.lp, c.lk xx SA you, she can tick throw you, or she can tiger knee cannon strike to bait your tech. In general, you dont want to get crossed up. Burn meter or FA dash to avoid having to guess. You want to play the mid screen battle against cammy and make her come to you.
OKI options that make Cammy annoying:
-If you just got hit with a Spiral Arrow and got knocked down, sucks for you. Right after getting spiral arrowed, cammy can jump up for a tiger kneed cannon strike that is completely ambiguous to block and looks ridiculously odd. If she spaced it right, you completely cant tell if you will in fact get crossed up and honestly, unless you training mode and test it for yourself, youre pretty much at the mercy of the Cammy player. If you ex headbutt, you get hit in the ass, but at least youre airborne so that she cant do any follow-ups.
-If you get forward thrown, this again, sucks for you. Because you cant fast recovery, just like you cant fast recovery after eating hooligan slide, you now have to deal with another ambiguous cross-up. This cross-up is so ambiguous, most Cammy players cannot even tell which side theyre attacking from. They just tiger knee cannon strike next to you and stick out the meaty and hit confirm to low forward xx SA. Dumb right? Well at least with this OKI setup, you can usually lk splash to trade for some damage if you have charge. If you dont do this, youll probably eat a good 230ish damage combo and once again, have to deal with the ambiguous tiger kneed cannon strike.
Important Notes about this match-up:
-The only way I beat Californias best Cammy, VasAznIon is by jumping around (but not into). I keep her boxed out with nj.fp, jump back roundhouse, headbutts. I burn meter to avoid OKI situations and dont splash much cause Cammy has a ridiculously good FA and dash (both ways, front and back).
-Spiral Arrow/Ultra punishes FP headbutt only so you can do a mp headbutt which looks like fp headbutt, followed by an ex headbutt for a free counter-hit bait. Cammys SUPER punishes ALL headbutts. Shit is lightning fast.
-Cannon Strike might seem like it has a ton of hitstun and blockstun, but in reality, it has very little block stun. You can backdash sometimes and then jump away to escape but watch for the spiral arrow punishes.
-Her throw range is bad (.75). After c.lk, c.lp she usually has to inch forward a hair before she can throw you so keep that in mind.
-If she ever walks up to you with 2 meters and ultra, shes probably baiting a tech so that she can spike, fadc, ultra you . It does respectable dmg, probably 300-400 depending on meter. I prefer eating the throw rather than guessing the spike, fadc.
-Punish blocked spiral arrows with oicho instead of headbutt due to better startup
-If you are at max screen range, occasionally whiff an oicho to make her come to you, but realize that she can cover ground retardedly fast with hooligan and hk spiral arrow.
Heres some videos, not the Honda match-up unfortunately, where you can see a few oki setups in action. Watch for the mix-up following spiral arrows, throws and hooligans. Shits nasty. VasAznIon (Allen) has a lot of new setups that most of America bit off of so expect more annoying shit after WestCoastWarzone.
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[media=youtube]wIGpUUWuxW4[/media] (chois too good. Damn fireballs)
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Chun-li
[details=Spoiler] (6/4 Chun) You may be fast, but your kicks feel like mosquito bites to me
- Don’t headbutt when she has ultra meter unless you know she has no charge or it’s in combo. She can punish all headbutts, even :lp: and ex on block.
- S.:hp:, c.:lp: and s.:hk: all trade with her sweep which leaves u knocked down but it’s a worthy trade
- Do not walk into her s.:hk:, it’s difficult as fuck to see and kicks Honda in the face for free
- Tech as many throws as you can. Don’t panic, she hits like a little girl but has a pretty good throw range. I’ve seen Akimo tech 8 throws from a chun in a single round.
- Do not jump fireballs that have been out for a significant amount of time. She will jumping fierce you as air to air every time. If you have to jump a fireball, do it from nearly full screen or right as its leaving her hands. If you jumped it when it’s leaving her hands and you’re far away from her, stick out j.:hk: early. When you’re jumping it as the fireballs leaving her hands and your close, use j.:mp:, j.:lk: or j.:lp: (I prefer mp but :lk: and :lp: have weird ass hit boxes that she can’t AA correctly).
- Use a decent amount of focus attacks outside her jab range but inside her sweep range. Sweep is hard to counter-hit but easy to hit with level 2 FA. She has a lot of counter-hittable normal spamming so don’t be afraid to take risks.
- Watch for overhead flips
- Do not try to anti-cross up j.lk, only command cross-up done not deep.
- If you get hit by 2 c.:lp: x n, s.:hp: combos, stop attacking and let the stun clear
- Challenge her wake-up cause it sucks. If you have meter, do a late ex head butt and it’ll beat wake-up EX SBK and back dashes. Stand out of her throw range when doing this so you don’t have to deal with wake-up throw. Worst case scenario is she jumps and you burned meter or she blocked and you burned a meter. Best case scenario is you counter-hit her ass for 200 dmg. After you train her to block or jump on wake-up, use s.:hp:/cl.:mp: (meaty), c.:lp: xx :hp: hhs, :hk: or oicho (meaty). You can also bait out ex sbk and block it, then punish with fp headbutt or ultra (-18 on block).
- Don’t whiff shit against Chun unless it’s max range chop that can’t get whiff punished with sweep
- If she doesn’t come to you and isn’t throwing kikokens, whiff oicho for meter
- Chop is really good AA against chun cause it’s a 175 dmg counter-hit that she almost never beats clean (hard to time against j.:hp: though)
- Honda can auto-correct Headbutt/Ultra Chun Li’s OH flip kick
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Dan
[details=Spoiler] (6/4 Honda) You can’t just talk the talk, man. One of these days, you gotta learn how to fight.
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Dhalsim
[details=Spoiler] (6/4 Sim) Fire breathing? Levitation? Is this a fight or a magic show?
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Playing against Dhalsim is all about mixing it up and taking calculated risks. Playing textbook simply won’t work because dhalsim is designed to keep people out indefinitely and has an answer to every defensive situation. Before you can beat Dhalsim, you have to understand how sim keeps you out.
Anti Air:
S.rh: Far S.rh is sim’s 3/4 of 1/2 screen distance anti-air. He uses it on reaction to keep you out after jumpin ga fireball that’s at half screen. Why did you get hit by it? You jumped from not full screen against a fireball while dhalsim was not in recovery. To avoid this, don’t jump fireballs while dhalsim is free to position himself and is not in yoga fire recovery. "i dunno if you caught this pie, but if a sim is trying to anti air you with a far rh, you can beat it by hitting rh right around the peak of your jump. a better option even yet is mp around the peak of your jump. it will beat the rh, and if you see him go up for an air to air and you hit it early enough, it stuffs it as well.
not that i would endorse getting in the habit of jumping at sim in the first place, but if you choose to jump from a distance, you have a few options. not like close jumps, where he can shut you out if he chooses the correct option " -HNIC Mike
Air to Air Strong: jumping strong functions simliary to s.rh. Keeps you out for jumping fireballs 1/2 screen to close range. How to avoid it? Don’t jump the fireball while sim is free to move and punish. Just walk.
S.rh: the infamous knee, dhalsim uses the knee when you jump in on him predictably from close range. You jumped in while he was barely coming out of the recovery which is fine, but you did it from a bad range if you got AA cleaned. When you jump in on sim while he’s coming out of the recovery of a fireball, you have to jump at two specific ranges. Range 1 is max range j.rh. You stick the roundhouse out early with the intent to trade (125 dmg vs 98ish) and trade or contact sim with the tip of your foot. Any other distance will lead to knee hitting your thigh resulting in a perfect AA. The other range to jump in on sim is from close range, almost the brink of crossing up. You make sure to use j.mp and and time it so that your hand clips dhalsims head while your hand is at the bottom of your character. See akimo vs sabin for j.mp correctly.
S.mp: the raise your hand anti air cleanly beats splash coming down, prevents crossup attempts and AA’s incorrectly timed j.mp. Getting around s.mp is difficult but possible through randoming the timing of splashes. Also, it does pitiful dmg and you’re now much closer to sim, which is where you wanna be.
AA slide: A very weird AA to predict, it’s effective at dealing with Honda’s far j.rh. Fortunately for honda, it puts sim rite next to you and at a fairly close frame advantage. Almost all sims will do either instant jump back fierce overhead or mash the fuck out of throw. To deal with this, make sure you have a back charge and get ready to tech. If he does the overhead, block high and punish the blocked overhead with fp headbutt/ex headbutt/ultra (yes!). If he throws and you tech, get ready to headbutt (ex) any teleport attempts or to punish any jump back overheads once again, but you’ll probably need ex since it’s going to be about max range.
Things to keep in mind:
When you’re watching for teleports (when dhalsim you cornered or he’s cornered), you have three punishment options. lk splash, s.fp or lp headbutt. Akimo likes to lp headbutt but I have a tendency to get oichos cause I hold down a lot. You do this like you’d do anti-crossup headbutts, press the lp late after he’s switched sides. For s.fp, make sure you’re doing it after sim’s switched sides otherwise you just stuck out a laggy fierce in the wrong direction. S.lk imo is the best option because you got a knockdown with decent oki and he took a good amount of dmg. Ex splash has even better oki but I personally like to save meter for ex headbutts.
FA does have applications in this match-up but people often overuse it. If you don’t successfully FA a limb, you didn’t gain much ground cause honda has the chode of all dashes (cept gief). Also, he got a free fierce on you cause he caught you in FA’s recovery. So, be careful with the FA usage.
LK/MK/HK splash does lose to late instant overhead so be careful with the splash usage. EX splash beats overhead easily and sets up fantastic oki.
OKI (situation when he’s getting up):
When you get a successful knockdown on dhalsim, you just gave yourself a big opportunity for some huge damage. Every headbutt you hit on sim is more than 15% of his life meaning you don’t have to guess much in order to kill him. When he’s getting up, he has 4 options.
- do nothing but block
- jump-back (vertical jump is suicidal for sim)
- teleport
- back dash
When you play a sim, you’ll usually figure out what type of options he usually turns to. Some sims like to spend a shitload of time in the air which I find dumb while others like to abuse teleports. Very few take the upclose fighting approach and fish for a knockdown before they attempt to retreat.
When fighting sims, I rely on 3 options.
First, I like to use meaties. One I use constantly is meaty xx fp headbutt. If you guessed a jump, a wake-up throw or a backdash, you usually have enough time to punish either of these three options. c.lk, c.lk xx fp headbutt is imo, the best meaty option because you can punish the teleport on reaction pretty easily. If he didn’t teleport, it’s a hit confirm, although difficult. Another meaty option is s.mp, s.hk. It’s a 180 dmg meaty option that punishes jumps and backdashes but not teleports because s.mp takes forever to whiff. Another meaty option is meaty lp headbutt. Punishes throw, backdash and jumps provided you time it right and do it point blank.
Second OKI option is to meaty oicho. You do this if you think he won’t jump but honestly, almost all sims jump. If you’ve trained them by meatying them a few times, you can usually squeeze in an oicho or two (use fp) before they’re afraid again and being to jump or teleport.
Third OKI option is to lk splash. LK splash on wake-up jumpers is a knockdown provided you do it early enough, can crossup, is unpunishable for sim and does decent dmg if it actually hits. Problem is, they can teleport this and possibly backdash it if you’re not right next to them. They could probably FA, backdash as well, but this is punishable by a s.hk. I honestly dislike this option tho cause splash has terrible follow-up if they block it. It’s just another guess but this time, you’re doing the hard guesses since you’re -2 on block.
Fourth OKI option that isn’t really an option, but more of a guess and act of desperation. Late meaty ultra. I’ve caught good sim’s before doing late meaty ultras as its a punish to teleport and backdash. I actually knocked a good sim out of a fairly large win streak before with this option recently at SVGL (norcals best arcade) because it’s just so random and rewards huge damage for relatively little risk (sim hits for shit). Ways to set this up is to be mid-screen and not corner and having meatied the sim a few times or wake-up oichio’d him. They instinctively want to teleport and when they do, bam, big dmg. Another way to set this up is to have a sim cornered. When you’re out of s.hk range and have a sim cornered, they naturally want to get out, so they have a tendency to teleport. If you can set up a telegraphed teleport (you wait for him to throw a fireball and walk forward since he wants to get behind you), you can flip the ultra like you do an anti-crossup headbutt, but with your ultra. I forgot where I saw this done, maybe it was akimo.
Other interesting things to note about this match-up are s.lk beats far fierce/crouching fierce from sim, but it’s a guess. S.fp (chop) beats instant overhead (hard to time), ULTRA PUNISHES POINT BLANK YOGA CATASTROPHE. If a sim is ever stupid enough to desperately throw out a yoga catastrophe, mash ultra and just smoke him in the face with it. Sim is in quite a bit of recovery after he throws the ultra so make him pay (25 frame recovery).
Sim’s slides are all pretty negative, although hitting you with the tip of the slide is considerably safer. You can usually get away with a reversal ex headbutt or reversal oicho to thwart his throw attempts.
Sim has no true block strings. If he’s looking to push you with with db+fp, s.lk, s.lk, just reversal ex headbutt for some counter-hit dmg. On block nothing links with sim so don’t play into his tricks.
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