Birdies range is too good, you have to fight him outside his st.mk range and react to chain grabs with DP whilst whiff punishing with cr.mp. Then on a KD you rush him hard, he has no reversals. EX bull horn is punishable with EX tatsu, a very important punish in the match, also his slide is punishable with Dp.
Don’t play footsie normals with him, he will win, use your fireball and close pressure. Just ignore the middle of the screen, you’ll get counter hit and randomed out.
Why try to DP his bull Revenger when you can just CC s.rh, Hp DP for 220 instead?
This I did not know! Great tip.
Against Laura fb must be scarce. They love to jump because Lauras ground game is so ass. So just always anticipate the jump and DP.
Also once she gets ex bar turn those fireballs from scarce to zero because once she connects one on you shes in and you’re fucked. So just be ready for that. Also most Laura players are rather tunnel visioned at this point and are looking for fb to ex bolt charge through… so start dashing and being more aggressive when you notice this.
Your pokes are better then hers… just outpoke her to death on the floor.
Don’t jump at her… she gets a free mixup off an anti air mp… its just not worth it. Only jump at her from a distance where she can’t AA you.
Laura may give you guys heaps of problems but shes really rather limited at mid range… she can’t really do anything untill shes in… thats why Nash and Chun feel like her worst MU.
Any tips against Alex? He seems like another fight not to throw fireballs on at all.
Even if a character has tools to get through fireballs, you still need to test the player to see if they can use them.
Important: Learn how to punish. Do NOT let him get away with free roundhouses or elbows or any other unsafe move. His only safe specials are EX Stomp which is +2 and EX Chop which is -2. Every other special is unsafe. Practice punishing in training. It is very important to grind your best possible punishes in training for every move. Consult the spreadsheet for the rest of his moves.
The other big thing I would say is learn his meaty setups. He has some meaty elbow and chop setups that can be tricky since he looks too far away to meaty but he isn’t.
Final tip… don’t push buttons after lariat. It looks unsafe but its +3.
Also you can throw his Parry when its fully charged in mid-flight. Its fun to do.
Against Alex you actually can throw fireballs. You have to because his pokes shit on yours. Don’t be afraid of his projectile invulnerable move; I have had times where my projectile collides with him as he starts it up so I am not sure if the move is projectile invulnerable on the first frame. EX version though definitely is.
I don’t know if his EX grab is a reversal. Not many Alex players I face try it. If they do then know that he has no wakeup options and you can shit on him with meaty St.MP and B.HK.
My strategy for this match is to space him out and react to how the player tries to deal with fireballs. I end combos in tatsu or EX hadoken for corner carry and the offensive momentum. Once In the corner I abuse a throw/ frame trap/ throw bait game and finish him with super if I have it.
Can you CC it if it whiffs?
This match-up is my idea of hell.
Any tips for when Birdie’s in VT?
Also (and this is a more general question I guess, I’m rather new to fighting games) what are my options on a KD? I know one of Ryu’s strengths is supposed to be his meaty oki and I know some setups, but Birdie players tend to block on wakeup from my experience. Do I condition them with nonstop throws until they stop blocking?
If your opponent is blocking (and not throw teching), throw as much as you can. You can’t have any qualms about throwing 5 or 6 times in a row if that is what your opponent is going to give you.
General Ryu Oki options:
Throw (Forward Throw)
Meaty (Axe Kick if possible, otherwise s.MP, cr.MP, cr.MK for me depending on range)
Block (If you anticipate Invincible move)
Neutral Jump (Relatively easy way to scout tenancies with lower risk, just need to be good with timing it)
Those options generally work best for me but you should predominately be doming Throw & Meaty. Especially if your opponent doesn’t have an invincible reversal on deck.
Any advice on the Bison MU? Played a friend last night in a set and got whooped, I feel like Ryu gets decimated in the neutral 
Really hard to contend with Bison’s st.mk/df.hp etc, and his dash gives me so much trouble. Fireball seems to work decently at ranges where Bison can’t react V Skill, but even so, that same range tends to be his st.mk and dash up range, really annoying since both own fireballs. I also found it hard to shimmy Bison as his throw range is just ugh. After df.hp I did tend to mash st.jab, take a jab trade and return to neutral, but even so, it’s a trade in Bison’s favor (corner push, grey life = I take more damage in trade) that he can continue to pressure me with. This MU feels slightly in Bison favor I think.
Some things that did seem to work for me; st.lk xx tatsu punish on badly spaced LK SK, j.lk seems really good because of it’s hitbox beating Bison’s AAs. Other than that, I struggled in the neutral a good bit.
You want to play just outside of df hp range, and get good at poking him when he dashes. From that distance he can’t react to fireballs.
Poking him out of the dash is the key to the match imo.
And don’t get jumped on or fucked by that devils reverse nonsense they like to use to close distance. Punish them for that shit and make them walk with his 1/2 meter per hour walkspeed.
His jump arc is still ass.
Alright, so I’m here to do my due diligence. I’m trying to play Ryu right now and I’m seriously sucking it up right now, badly. I’d like to say that the highest I’ve ever gotten was Silver, and that’s where I’m stuck. From all my experience, I’d like to lend a helping hand to the community, because I think that, collectively, we can start figuring some stuff out and bring Ryu back to the glory that he deserves. I’m going to start by giving out as much information about match-ups as I can and then give some general tips that have helped me to defeat some of the noobier players on CFN. Please note that I’m not not an expert Ryu player and a lot of the things that I might be mentioning may be incorrect/outdated. If so, please correct me, because that’s really all the hope that I (we) have right now.
Bison:
A very common thing that I’ve had a good amount of success with, is walking/dashing up to throw after a blocked DOUBLE KNEE PRESS. A gimicky thing that you can do, is to throw a fireball, and then execute a tatsu, and hit Bison right after he reflects your fireball and sends it back; though, watch your range.
Birdie:
Cammy:
DP is incredibly effective in this match-up due to the fact that the nature of her air-moveset will net you a successful counter.
Chun-Li:
There’s nothing more frustrating than Chun-Li’s wake-up EX SPINNING BIRD KICK, which can be baited out by blocking and then punishing with a CR.HK (sweep).
Once you start fighting gold-ranked players, you can pretty much kiss your chances of winning goodbye. The one strategy that I’ve found to be effective is staying right outside of her footsy range while throwing fireballs (I’ll cover more on throwing fireballs later). Every now and then when Chun-Li uses her fireball to buffer her footsy, try to parry both; it works, sometimes.
Dhalsim:
Just remember that your fireball game will beat his fireball game. Don’t let his lobbing fireballs frustrate you. Always be waiting for the TELEPORT. Just watch out for his SLIDE -> THROW game; be ready to tech. If you jump, just remember that he’ll slide under it the majority of the time.
F.A.N.G:
I haven’t really played this character too many times, but just know that it it comes down to poison vs. fireballs, fireballs have the edge. If you’re poisoned, the most important thing to do is just not to panic. Just be mindful that a lot of his moves may look/seem punishable when, in fact, they’re completely safe.
Karin:
I’m not sure what move is called, but there’s a move where she does her “double-kick”, you can block both hits and then interrupt her next stringed attack.
Ken:
I don’t really have enough data to make any comments about this match-up, but I feel that every Ryu player out there has some kind of idea how to play against a Ken.
Laura:
I haven’t found any specific strategies to use against her, but just know that her projectile disappears if you manage to hit her. Also, keep in mind that her footsy range/speed is deceptively powerful… Play it safe. She’s one of the few characters in the game that you can successful zone out with fireballs.
Nash:
Don’t throw fireballs; the one exception is that you may catch him when he does his jump-away kick. Learn to parry Nash’s moves. Have a box of tissues handy to wipe the constant flood of tears raining down onto your controller/fight pad. Nash is just one of those match-ups where he’s better than Ryu in almost every single way.
Necalli:
This is another one of those matches where you shouldn’t throw fireballs from a full screen away, because his charging attack will go straight through it and hit you. There’s really not much to be said of this match-up; I haven’t really played against too many Necalli players.
Rashid:
Whenever you see noob Rashid players constantly using F.MP (the “double chop” spinning backhand-like attack), you need to block and then interrupt their next attack.
I’ll be honest, any player that’s gold or above has completely wiped the floor with me; I’ll be lucky if I can deal even 15% damage to their heatlh bars. The divide between good Rashid players and bad Rashid players is huge; for this reason, it’s difficult for me to gather data.
R. Mika:
This is one of those match-ups where you can (to a certain degree) utilize fireballs to zone her out. There’s not really much in terms of specifics that I can give, but just know that her damage comes mostly from her set-ups from the PASSION ROPE THROW (F.MP); this move is simply blockable. When I play against R. Mika, I play defensively knowing that if I spend most of the match blocking, I won’t get “thrown against the ropes.” This opens you up to being command grabbed and thrown, but I’ll take that over the other scenario any day. If you’re playing against a nooby R. Mika, and you get command grabbed/thrown… Most likely, they’re going to try and catch you with a neutral-jumping attack upon wake-up, in which you just throw out a wake-up LP SHORYUKEN, and there ya go, things are almost back to equilibrium. I honestly don’t have any good tips/strategies against R. Mika, but at the very least, we can “ease the pain.”
Ryu:
This is a discussion for another time. It’s funny, because the Ryu/Ryu match-up is a completely different animal than fighting against any other character, because, let’s be honest, most of Ryu’s moves are useless/ineffective against other characters, but now they actually have use XD
Vega:
I’ve probably played against Vega about 10 times. The only thing I can say is that the “less aware” players love his CR.HK (slide); block and punish it. I honestly know close to nothing about Vega.
Zangief:
I suck at this match-up. I usually employ a fireball trap against this character. I mix-up the fireballs with jab, strong, and fierce to change up the velocities in hopes that Zangief gets frustrated/impatient and jumps at me; I always lie in wait to Fierce DP. Some opponents would rather use the V-SKILL to absorb fireballs than using the Lariat. If this is the case, you can time it so that your fireball hits him right as he exits his V-SKILL and you can effectively take away his “gray-life.” Your goal is to get Zangief on the defensive so that he starts blocking. Once that happens, you can dash-in to do your low-forward -> fireball combo, or do your grab. There were times where a CR.MP was sufficient to interrupt the F.MP -> SPD set-up.
General things to keep in mind when playing as Ryu:
Footsies:
Ryu’s footsies are just plain garbage. They’re slow and they lack range. The only success I’ve ever really had were the dash-in CR.MK -> HADOKEN and the retreating CR.HK (sweep) whiff punish. I haven’t done too much frame data study, but CR.MP seems to be the safest option for creating space after blocking an opponent’s combo. CR.MP should really only be followed up with a HADOKEN. Anything else, will most likely come up short, whiffing, and getting punished; if the opponent is close, then you may be in luck, but most good players will stay out of Ryu’s footsy range. A notable poke that can be used sparingly (when the opponent is super-duper close), is the standing MP, which can be linked into some nice combos, but the opportunity seems to be somewhat rare for me. Footsies are pretty much Ryu’s biggest weakness in SF5, and I feel that they’re seriously keeping Ryu out of some high-level play; he just can’t compete with other characters in this respect.
Fireballs:
Now that we’ve established that Ryu’s footsies are trash, we can now resort to zoning with fireballs. Nope, projectiles are vastly overrated in this game. Almost every character has some kind of anti-projectile mechanic. Hell, someone at Capcom decided that Bison should have no weaknesses, so they gave him a move that can reflect projectiles We’ve been brought up being taught that Ryu is a zoning character, but that doesn’t seem to be true in SF5 anymore; the fireball trap makes a come back, only now, the victim is no longer the opponent, it’s YOU (the one throwing the fireballs) The troubling thing is that every other character’s projectiles (Nash, Dhalsim, F.A.N.G, Chun-Li, Bison’s EX, even Laura, and etc.) seem to be more useful since they occupy a niche role.
Does this mean that fireballs should never be thrown anymore? Probably. The reason I say this is because fireballs aren’t just “ineffective,” they’re often just straight up detrimental with all the anti-fireball mechanics that other characters have; they just leave you to get punished most of the time.
If that’s the case, then what are fireballs for? The answer is that I really don’t know. BUT, I do have a theory… and that theory is that fireballs can still be used in the footsy game. This is where I think Ryu has potential, but I haven’t really done much testing. The theory is that you initiate footsies with your opponent, and you throw fireballs just outside of the opponent’s footsy range. When they get too close, you can push them out with CR.MP (after blocking their combo), and in some cases, you can halt their advance with the MK (standing version). The problem arises when the opponent decides to jump over your fireball (at this god-forsaken range) and punish the hell out of you. This means 2 things:
DON’T THROW MORE THAN 2 FIREBALLS IN A ROW. This is a little rule that I have for myself that I always follow. Period. Given the fact that I’m not an expert SF player or a pro by any means, I’m a certified dummy and this rule has helped me out a lot. Also, I don’t throw more than two in a row at any range. More often than not, you’ll probably only be throwing one at a time…
Your anti-air must be on point. In order for this to be the case, you’ll most likely have to abide by the above rule. If you’re stuck recovering from a fireball that your opponent jumps over at the “just-outside-of-footsy-range,” you can’t anti-air and you will be punished. And when you anti-air at this range, just be mindful that the Fierce DP may end up going past the opponent.
Lastly, let me stress the fact that this whole fireball-countering-footsy game is high risk/low reward. This is SF5 where attacks do boatloads of damage. At the higher levels of gameplay, if you let yourself get punished twice from doing this, you’re either dizzied or dead. The biggest problem is that this strategy requies a lot of patience and goes against the whole flow of SF5, where combos do 30-50% of your health and games are won/lost on a whim. You can hit the opponent with 4-5 fireballs (Which is more difficult than it sounds, and it also means that your fireball game is on point) and then the opponent will punish you once, and trade-off will work drastically in their favor.
That being said, I’ve beaten a few skilled Chun-Li players with this; only to end up being completely curb-stomped when they figure it out for the run-back.
Parries:
I haven’t found much use for parries. However, there is one thing that I’ve found them useful for: mix-up jump attacks. Parry the mix-up jumper and punish (though, it doesn’t work on wake-up) Unfortunately, the only reliable way that I’ve been able to punish parried attacks is with a grab.
Closing:
Ryu’s DP is most effective when executed from a crouching position; this is accomplished by holding the stick at the down-forward position (4/5 o’clock), and then just finishing it through with the fireball motion. Ryu’s play-style is frustrating; a unique approach has to be taken against every other character. I’m SF5 noob; I’m a silver player and I can’t get any further. The most frustrating thing for me is that there’s a divide at this stage in the rankings. This is the stage that sort of divides people who know what they’re doing, and those who don’t. As such, it’s maddening, because things that once worked on opponents, no longer work; those very tactics are the ONLY thing that have allowed me to get this far, and I may have to accept the fact that 90% of what I use is no longer viable. Ryu is just a frustrating character. He’s slow. His attacks have no range. The fireball seems to be useless in most situations. He just simply doesn’t have any strengths to take advantage of. It seems like Capcom modeled every character around being able to beat Ryu. Good players have made it very far using Ryu, so at least we know it’s possible. This post is a desperate reach-out to the community for some help and involvement.
Nobody gonna take the time to debunk or confirm your essay.
Don’t wanna take the piss on you, but it might make more sense to ask specific question or make a specific claim so that people can discuss it, because honestly I’d be sitting here for hours going into every detail.
@whasep well for starters you can beat dolphin dive with st.mp,dp and st.rh lol oh and yeah am high as hell and i don’t feel like reading everything lol good stuff thou much appreciated
@whasep Most of Ryu’s moves are not ineffective or useless against other characters, I don’t know where you’re getting that from. There’s a use for every option in practically every matchup. Even LP DP has come out as a way to punish parried light attacks when all other options are too slow, where beforehand LP DP seemed rather useless.
Mika’s drop kick move is easily punished by stuffing it with a normal (jab), hitting it with DP, back dashing to force a whiff, neutral jumping to punish, or using parry.
Cammy’s v-skill is easy to parry before hand, and you can also parry afterwards block if she doesn’t make a habit of following it up with a light attack. Any medium or heavy attack will be parried for free.
Ryu’s footsies aren’t trash, far from it.
Nash is not better than Ryu in every way, he has basically the worst defense in the game and he has to take some pretty substantial risks in the neutral.
Your writeup on his fireball game misses the mark. All hard counters to fireballs are baitable and punishable or exploitable. It’s no different than baiting a jump and punishing it accordingly. There have always been options to deal with fireballs, simply increasing the number of options doesn’t make fireballs weak, you can’t use all those options at the same time. This isn’t some cumulative strength we’re talking about here. Ryu is actually a very strong zoner. The key to his fireball game is his forward dash.
You need to get at least to mid/high gold before the matchups and players are actually real shit. I’m only at low level gold (5k LP) and still get bopped by mid/high gold because those guys are actually playing their character and the meta to its full potential. Recognize that what experience you have is very basic and feel free to offer your basic advice but try not to extrapolate too much from your limited experience.
Yes, you can st.HK it for the CC if timed right too.
If you have the reactions to use st.HK against dolphin dive then you should be neutral jumping and doing a full j.HP, st.HK, st.LP, st.LK xx Shoryu punish every time. There’s no reason not to.