Ryu and Sagat forums definately take her seriously. HAve another look. I didn’t really check out the first page of all the match ups topics but most of them have new versions like we do. They have all seen Sabre. They know! They know about the frolics!
Thanks to GGawaran, who has taken up half of my posts by request! Thanks guys, I try to do good on SRK and I kinda came up with this, my fault I didn’t think through on this. Rep GGawaran if you can, as he didn’t have to do this.
So far, we have no info on:
- Dhalsim
- Gouken
- Ken
- Seth
- Sakura
And a little more info may be needed on:
- Akuma
- Balrog
- C.Viper
- El Fuerte
- Rufus
- Ryu
Of course more opinions would be better. :tup:
Dhalsim - Baiting him into shooting yoga fire is key in my opinion. build up ex meter, play some footsies with him, and when your ready bait out the yoga fire, That move is quite possibly the worse fireball with our sakura fireball really close to the suck factor. Once you bait him into yoga fire, use EX Sakura Otoshi and then its kinda up to you once you get in his face. If you think he is going to teleport, dash (towards direction you think he is going to go) + hp shouken. jump up if you think he will throw, or cross up when he gets up, its your choice. But the key to this match up is zoning and getting in his face when you can.
Gouken - Empty jump is your friend, but it depends, zone with your s.rh and get a feel for what he is going to do, jump in a couple times, try for crossups and low game and see if he like to counter alot, if he does, empty jump and feint crouching may work to your advantage as it opens up pretty well when he attempts to counter.
Ken - You can’t let him get you with his poke game / block string game. Other then that, you have to find a way (whatever your play style allows) to get around that, then treat him as you would any other ryu, ken akuma character.
Seth - This kinda ties in with the same way you would deal with dhalsim, you just cant spam a pressure game as much as you can with seth since he has his dragon punch, so take into account that you will more then likely want to play him like you play against dhalsim, just alittle bit more cautious. his “sonic boom” is not terribly bad, but you can punish it with ex sakura otoshi.
Sakura - BAH, Mirror match with sakura is terrible, at least for me, I overthink all the things SHE CAN do, and it ends up hurting me haha. Setting up for crossup in this match up is one of the important aspects in my opinion.
Tell me what you guys think, or what I missed to make these matchups alittle bit easier. Ill post more on the other characters, but for me, the more setups you got for mixup with sakura is the winning factor against everyone. Ill be posting a vid up later with some setups that work pretty well corner and mid game.
Since I’ve been training some Sakura, and using your forums for advice, I’ll return some advice, as a Fuerte player:
- Don’t rely on zoning Fuerte, this means no to fireballs and jumping back with a normal out. I’ve seen this a million times, and it only bores the match and gives me the win. You’re just gonna jump yourself into the corner while the Fuerte “scares” you with run-stops and blocks. Then what are you gonna do? Ryu can hold his own back in the corner, and still gets a chunk of life gone in the process.
If you jump at him, he has Air throw, Guac kick, backrun punish, AA normal, and ultra. If a Fuerte was coolheaded enough to herd you to the corner, he’s cool enough to punish the hell out of you for trying to escape.
This jump tactic only works against scrub Elfs.
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Fireballs are yummy. I love focusing fireballs from run baits. You’re doing nothing more than feeding Fuerte’s devastating ultra–and when he ultras your slow fireball with a full life bar, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
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Focus is very very good, but don’t rely on it. It takes a Fuerte quite awhile to “download” a player, and understand what type of player they are, then adapt accordingly. If you focus my attack, I’ll look to bait it the next time. Every tostada press I would have done now becomes a fajita buster to break your focus and put you on the floor for wakeup games. So, look to use it, but don’t be confident if you catch a move once, it won’t be the same move next time.
And remember, your focus cancel has recovery frames for him to ultra…
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NEVER ever ever ever jump/crossup a waking Fuerte, you will lose the match, instantly. I’ve won maybe 75-80% of my shoto matches from wakeup cross ups. Being on the ground gives Fuerte enough time to look at the situation and see where you are without showing buffer for his ultra. I’ll buffer the entire time I’m on the ground… and if I see you jump, you’re landing on ultra.
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Fuerte is easier to srk bait than Ken… Unlike Ken’s scrubby wakeup srk, Elf uses his to escape. Count on it against scrubby Elfs. It may look fast and safe, but it’s far from if you know what you’re doing. The secret is taking ONE step back from Fuerte and waiting for his wake up. He’ll fall right next to you, and be open to punishment. You can also use this sneaky one space gap to bait other things, like ultra. If you know the Fuerte likes to look for wakeup ultras, just open the space, and jump back, he’ll come up short.
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A better Fuerte uses EX-Backrun to escape. So, while you’re messing around a space back, he’ll be ready to escape safely and reset the field (in his favor since he can’t handle pressure). Currently, SFIV made his ex-dash vulnerable to regular throws. If you see him pulling this, just wakeup throw him, Gief style. With a burned EX, and both wakeup moves stuffed, he only has 2 options left: tech and block. Course, the Sakura player wants this, so she can play mixup pressure.
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Put ground pressure on Elf. I know Sakura’s like starting their combos from jump-ins, but you need to learn the ground combos to be successful. This means cr.MK->Sho. Elf can’t out poke people, and knowing one of your pokes can cancel into heavy damage, it’ll be a situation to run away from and reset the field for elf. Even a lk tatsu has better safety connecting into her BnB than a jump-in.
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Lastly, don’t throw out anything that’s easily punished or focused. If you fuck up, you’re eatting something painful. Though RSF isn’t exactly easy on Sakura, you never know… even punish throw into wakeup games will soak up your life.
One last thing on wake up options, since Sakura kinda bites the bullet without easy reversals:
-Dash… use it, and use forward dash more with the skill of the Fuerte. Scrubby Elfs will land right on you or impact in your front, which makes forward dash ineffective, while better players will look for “safe” and “crossup” moves behind you, which are easy to escape with a forward dash.
You can play that 50/50 jump game, but I’d suggest dashing, it’s safer (especially when he has ultra).
So, in summary, you want to stay smart out there, and not panic or show pattern. Look to randomly focus or poke him to set up your BnBs. If you knock him down, look to take a sneaky step away to set up an opening for punish. And, again… stay the fuck out of the air!
Hope that helps… if anything, I’d like to see more Sakuras out there, even if I have to give advice.
^ Thanks dude! That’s great stuff :tup:
Hehe, we don’t really need a Sakura matchup as we know how she works 
Wake-up cross-ups are fun though since we need to block that or use up a stock to get away.
If I see them going for a reset the first thing I do is vertical jump, can gauge how they treat their resets from that and it evades quite a few options at the same time.
Maybe this will teach some of you to use the cross-under trick more often, vertical jumping is pretty easy to react to
Seth you need to neutralise his j.HP (stretchy arms), think j.MP and j.LK do the trick and a well timed c.HP perhaps. EX Otoshi removes his Sonic Boom zoning. Always ALWAYS tech get up after being knocked down by Firework Kicks, if you don’t then that sets up an easy Sonic Boom > teleport mix-up. Dive kicks are almost always followed by SPDs and expect an SPDs after a headstomp > dive kick “reset” in the corner. Also after an SPD they can dash forward and be in the right range for a cross-up but it’s quite ambiguous.
Thanks Aoi84! See guys!? He must have seen my post in the Dhalsim match ups page. I got a message in my inbox from a sim player but I haven’t read it yet. Tomorrow I will go around all the forums and bring back the news.
Here is what a Ryu player said after seeing my FA xx Taunt Ryu video:
I still strongly believe Sakura is the best counter pick for Ryu. It seems like most her moves are built to counter his, but of course this is all based on a well skilled Sakura player.
If a Seth is abusing J.hp, try to go for the trade with c.hp every time. sometimes (if not most) you will beat his j.hp outright, the other time you will trade with him, but he will be receiving more damage due to his low health.
IF Seth has Ultra, don’t do these two things:
Jump-in on him
Jump over a Sonic Boom.
dont try to bait his ultra by using air tatsu, all Seths will be waiting for you on the way down to execute their ultra.
Good man, don’t forget to put these in when you get a chance.
Be careful that they can also tele behind you if you’re far away and they know you’re gonna block the SB, which crosses you up and you get hit by the SB, and then long combo ensues.
It’s a non-issue if you’re standing since teleporting has recovery that’s easily “punished” just by jabbing. He can use the Sonic Boom as a partial shield to try to wall jump at you but you could probably meet him in the air with j.MP anyways.
To add to the list of things not to do when he has Ultra:
Focus Absorb Sonic Booms
Cancel Sonic Booms with Hadoukens or use Hadoukens at all
Jumping over Sonic Booms in any direction
The only way you’ll get in is by carefully walking forward but a really good Seth can still keep you at bay so might just want to bite the bullet and eat the Ultra at its weakest. EX Otoshi might get you in but again a really good Seth will see it and still catch you.
Oh yeah, don’t jump-in on him anyways unless he’s not very good at AA. Worst case scenario is you’ll get a LP SRK into Headstomp > Dive kick followed by the mix-up game afterwards.
My work is begun. Once I have finished retrieving all of the data on opinions about the Saku match up I will add colours and other glitz to make things easy to read. I’m basically bringing all the other forum knowledge here into one put pot so Joe-Oh-Ken and Ggwaren can pick the best stuff and compress it and add it here for a final edit.
Lol @ those of you who said nobody cares about the Sakura Match up. All we had to do was rush SRK Match up topics down with a question or two!
You can do an immediate air tatsu over seth’s SB and it’ll avoid the ultra leaving you right in his face with enough time to punish
Just to let you guys know I have finished the supporting topic now. Please let me know if you notice any inconsitencies or if you have any ideas for improved reading. Perhaps I could highlight keywords or something.
Anyway, Joe-oh-Ken and Ggaw you can use what you need from there.
forgot to mention… with vega (claw)… j.lk knocks him out… lulz at that super
thanks for the information, filtering through it. On the note of sakura match ups though, how the hell do you counter a honda thats spamming butt slam, i know its pretty much like fuertes slam, but more effective in my opinion since he hits you coming up and on the way down.
Butt-slams are all safe on block except for the HK version that puts him at -3, so don’t get suckered into trying to punish after blocking.
cr.HP can beat them on the way down, or you can FADC and run away, or you should be able to dash to avoid it and punish the whiff.
It’s one of those move like back-to-back shoryuken which becomes pretty invincible if there’s lag.
Yup c.HP right up his fat arse
I’ve been told recently that the regular Sumo Slams only hit once out of the possible two times (rising and falling) so if you block it on the way up it’s pretty much a free hit for you.