Red, I think where people are going with this is that it’s not just that you don’t know Ibuki, it’s that you don’t know the game. Not necessarily how to do quarter circles or combos, but that you don’t know when to block, how to read your opponent, or how each character should be played. That’s definitely not a bad thing since we all have to start somewhere, but at the moment your Ibuki really only amounts to gimmicks and guesses with little regard to the person you’re playing against. I recommend starting with an easier, basic character like Ryu or Bison and learning the fundamentals of the game. Then, once you’re done, come back to Ibuki and you’ll notice an immediate difference in how to play her. Before you say “I’m only interested in playing Ibuki,” that’s a close-minded sentiment and if you actually, truly want to get better with her, you’ll learn the game that she’s in, first.
So it’s easier to learn the basics with a different character, basically. How does playing Ryu help me become better at the game versus playing Ibuki? I’m not trying to be sarcastic at all, I am really curious. Perhaps this might help me better understand what I am missing in the first place.
Ok since I am still unable to record/post vids, and everytime I get onto live I forget Izuna’s tag, I will give a general overview of what I have noticed about my tendencies, and you guys can just give me ideas on how to correct it. First of all, I have a pretty solid idea of how the vortex works, but am unable to do it safely. What I mean by that is I am able to pull it off (it is the only way i can win. catching some unblocking nonreversal mashing kid in it is how i have gotten all of my wins) but I am unable to do so 100% of the time, and I also have issues timing the jump so that I am just out of range of any wakeing DP’s. Secondly I, have noticed that I cannot win versus honda, Guile, Ken and Bison. I assume that means I am too impatient agains Honda and Guile, and that my defense is ttrash against Ken and Bison. On defense I have troublr judging when to us b+mp or s.HK or air throw for anti air, and I have a lot (read damn near all…) of my guards magiclly broken by Akuma and Dan DP’s. By that I mean I will knock them down, walk up on them to bait the SRK, and then block(actually visibly be blocking) and still get eat full damage plus knockdown. I also have no clue how to deal with runaway tactics, and have lost matches after being hit by one jab. That is all I can think of for now, and as soon as I can get some vids up I will do so. Thank you in advance for any help you guys can give.
I personally never (not always) follow the rule, “Use the basic character to understand the game.” In the beggining, my cousin told me that, but of course I didn’t listen, and straight up used Ibuki.
Here’s what I did when I started out:
-Do trial/challenge mode first to understand my character’s moves, and basic combos.
-Played some endless, and played a few matches. If I’m losing, I ask what I’m doing wrong. (Play endless more then rank, you will learn alot more.)
-Watched alot of Japanese players playing Ibuki… (Acqua, iyo, buktooth, etc.)
-Grab a friend who’s patient, and teach you how to work on the basic game: blocking/cross-up blocking, grabbing, focus attacking, etc. (I did this with my cousin for many matches, until I started to get used to it. It’s natural.)
-Later when you start using Ibuki’s normal attacks, you will eventually realize that when you’re punishing someone, sweeping doesn’t do that much damage. Eventually, you might start off by connecting her attacks, and THEN do the sweep. Then you’ll understand more.
Since both of you seem to be struggling, I could offer some help, both redsunit and worstibukiever. (Btw if you added Izuna, that’s good. Cuz I mostly learn from him alot, lol.)
Xbox gamer tag: RedCaliburn
PSN: FlyingMario
Ryu is a far more basic character than Ibuki is. His execution requirements are fairly, relatively, low, compared to Ibuki. And just his gameplay is far simpler than Ibuki. With him, your antiair is reduced to just dp, your poke is reduced to cr.MK and/or fireball, and your basic pressure game is safe jump into cr.LP , cr.LP and then dp if hit, or throw/frame trap with cr.MP or cr.MK if blocked. On the other hand, Ibuki has at least 5 viable antiair options, all of which must be considered when your opponent jumps at you, as well having to judge spacing. Her pokes are not as spammable as Ryu’s cr.MK, in the sense that they usually get stuffed and are much slower. And her pressure game revolves around knowing all of her mixups and utilizing it to her full potential. ie: it’s not enough that you can safe jump your opponent, you need to be able to vortex if possible, and stay on your opponent as long as possible. With Ryu, the best he can do is LP chain into cr.HK for another safe jump setup. But this is no where as scary (or damaging) as a setup like Ibuki’s vortex or her SJC mixups. Another comparison would be punish situations. With Ryu it’s
- If I have enough time -> sps xx dp
- I don’t have enough time -> st.HP xx dp
With Ibuki you have to judge your following mixup:
- Should I end with a neckbreaker?
- Should I SJC mixup?
- Should I go for stun?
And judging your options depends on how well you’ve been reading your opponent, how many times you’ve done the mixup, who your opponent is, and at what point it is in the game. If you’ve neckbreakered into vortex several times, or if your opponent is nearly impossible to vortex (eg: Gouken) that may or may not be the ideal mixup setup for this situation. If your opponent has high a stun rating (eg: Chun), you may not want to go for stun mixups. On the other hand, if you’ve been counting your stun and are pretty close to stunning your opponent, maybe a stun mixup would be the better option. But then again you have to read your opponent, because they may realize they’re close to stun and are buffering a reversal as an all-or-nothing tactic.
Ibuki’s mixups are a lot more complicated than just vortex/damage/stun, but this is generally how they’re categorized.
But enough of that. If you really want to learn the game with Ibuki then that’s fine. It’ll just be, a little harder, probably.
Onto your replays:
Well at least your blocking is considerably better. But you still get hit with obvious jump ins because you’re not blocking high, and you get hit with obvious low hitting combo starters (ie: cr.LK) because you sometimes don’t block low after a jumpin. You saw this a lot in your match vs Cody.
You should try reacting to your opponent now. If your opponent is jumping at you and you’re not knocked down, you can almost always antiair him. There’s no reason to block in this case unless he jumped at you while you were doing a slow recovering move (eg: cr.HK). Familiarizing yourself with the situations where you can or cannot antiair will help a lot.
Next thing is fireball spamming Akuma. The last two rounds you picked up the general idea by avoiding the fireballs by sliding under them. Slide is just one option to deal with projectiles. Remember that you can EX neckbreaker through, U2 through, neutral jump them, or just FA them.
Besides zoning/spacing reacting, you should learn some of Ibuki’s combos so that you can get used to punishing stuff, really hard. If Akuma whiffs a dp, that’s a free TC4 xx neckbreaker. Not a sweep or a throw. It’s okay for now that you softly punish things, as it’ll prolong the game and put more emphasis on you blocking everything, but eventually you’ll need to learn combos. Eventually the end goal is to be able to recognize punish/free combo situations and go through Ibuki’s entire list of punish options within a split second. For example if you see a whiffed dp, you should immediately think “ok I can walk up TC4, walk up TC6 xx SJC for mixups, walk up cl.st.HK xx SJC for mixups and stun, etc.”
Caliburn thanks for the advice I’m going to add you on PSN.
Mingo, ok, I think I’ll still focus mainly on blocking but I’ll start trying to react as well. Thanks for all the helpful advice, and if you have room in your friends list I would like to add you on PSN too
I know EX neckbreaker can go through projectiles, but I’m trying to break my habit of using the neckbreaker all the time so I’m just trying to avoid using. Last night I tried to rely more on her command dash instead of neckbreaker to close the distance between me and my opponent.
I also played with Ryu for a bit last night, and I definitely understand what you mean when you said his play is much simpler, I just didn’t enjoy playing with Ryu very much, so I think I will try to learn with Ibuki, even though it might be a little harder.
Thanks for the tips on the punishing too. I appreciate all the advice Mingo.
Go ahead and add me but I don’t exactly have a ps3 available. It’s at home with my bro. At best I’d be able to play you on weekends when I visit home.
Also you can remove lilyaw2010 if you added that before; my friend moved out and took his ps3 back 
FoodySan is a god! (French Ryu)
Another, video. Another Akuma. I tried this time to focus more on reaction, and punishment, while still trying to block most of his moves. I think I might be trying to branch out to quickly. I won, but it was sloppy. I think I should probably just continue to focus on blocking for the time being.
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Oh, and both the Super and Ultra were on reaction at the end of round 2. 
Try not to use slide as a punish. It’s very punishable even on hit. And if you’re doing to use it to move around “safely”, try to do so sparingly. Against good players, they will be moving back and forth, making it very difficult to land it at max range (its only safe range).
At 0:41 and 0:45 you walk up after a sweep or knockdown and block. This is the kind of wake up pressure situation that you need to get accustomed to. First of all, you should have your bases covered. On Akuma’s wakeup (or any character’s wakeup for that matter) he can:
- dp or other invincible reversal
- normal (eg: cr.LK)
- throw, or option select back throw
- backdash or other escape move (jump/teleport)
- good ol’ blocking
What I’m getting at specifically is that you should not just simply stand point blank if you’re trying to bait something. On Akuma’s wakeup, if you’re right next to him and block, he can dp FADC, start his own block string with cr.LK, or throw you. If he does an escape move you may be able to react to it, though you’ll probably have to anticipate it. And if he blocks, you’re both at neutral. You can, though, option select late crouch tech to cover the first 3 situations. If he dp’s, you’ll block. If he cr.LK, you’ll block. If he throws, you’ll tech. At the very least you should do crouch tech if you’re baiting something on his wakeup and standing right next to him.
Lastly, if you walk back and forth outside his throw range or his cr.LK range, you can put much more pressure on your opponent. At the very last second you can possibly walk up and throw or walk up and start a meaty combo, or etc. Or if you just stay at his range, you’ll make all of his options whiff and easily punishable. Instead of “hey I can just dp FADC on wakeup and be safe” or whatever, now they have to think “hey my dp might whiff and I’ll eat a giant combo, maybe I should just block.”
Here’s an example of Alex Valle doing this kind of wakeup pressure at WCW: Justin.tv - iplaywinner - WEST COAST WARZONE 3 at 0:11
Commentator: “I mean he did have two meters and the ultra so he had to respect that.”
I see what your saying. Alright. I’ll have to start adding that thought process into my wake-up game. I know that I can’t jump pressure shotos because of ther dp’s, so I do kind of struggle with how to pressure them on wake up outside focus cancel baiting, or just standing there and block.
Ok 2 things. First much thanks to Izuna for taking the time to literally beat some kind of sense into my Ibuki. Second, after this rather brutal(and humbling) training session I have realized a few things. Mainly that I am worse than I thought I was not due to a complete lack of understanding of the charater (that is a part of it) but due to a massive lack of execution. Minor things I noticed during this beat down were that while it is bad, my defense isn’t as bad as I thought. And my timing on the vortex needs a MASSIVE amount of work. Looks like i am going back into training mode a spending hours on end in there. Again. just so you guys can add your advice to that which was already given to me by Izuna, I would like to ask that Izuna post our very last match in that session. I feel that would give those that weren’t there a better idea of where I am. Oh btw Izuna the ending to that Seth replay I showed you… The flip was a complete accident, the super after the accidentily baited/whiffed ex srk howver, was not.
Well technically you can pressure every character on their wakeup, thanks to vortexes and safejumps. And with Akuma, iirc there’s an unblockable… but anyways that’s advanced stuff. You’re right, for now you should just stick to basic, solid pressure games. If you learn her advanced mixups now, you’ll most likely rely on it too much like many other Ibukis.
Oh if only I saw this sooner, I don’t I might have the replay there still. Anyway, I think your Ibuki has a lot of potential. I’ve played a lot of players, and the ones to begin using Reversals all the time are the ones that take a long time to get any better, or don’t get better at all.
You on the other hand, you don’t do this, so I think you’ll learn faster than the others. =)
That Execution error in that Seth was probably the coolest thing I’ve seen with Ibuki in a long time. Error or not, it might be a great way to put mashers in their place! lol
Sorry, I ended up playing a lot against RedCaliburn so the replay isn’t there anymore. Remind me next time!
Hey Izuna, it would be awesome if you would do the same with me as you did worstibukiever. 
It’d be cool if you had Xbox LIVE.
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Also posting here. FoodySan rox.
Oh, it says you have PSN too. Oh well.
I might be on PSN today, not 100% sure. But I watched a few of your vids, and this is all I have to say:
“Attack when necessary, block when necessary.” Because I noticed that you started to get a little too defensive. (This is technically my style.) The advice I got from Mingo told me that it’s not (always) good to have the opponent in your face.
I do have videos of myself from playing ‘newbie’ to slighty above average(?). You can check em out, and maybe you might learn somthing. (Note: Check the dates the replays were saved on for accurate playstyle of my Ibuki.)
Hey Red sent you a friend requesi this morning. As soon as I get some batteries I would love to get smacked around by both you and Izuna whenever you 2 are up for it. I am a firm beliver in learning from getting your ass handed to you on a sliver platter. With an apple garnish in your mouth even… BTW any tips for SJC’ing the s.lp > s.mp(2hits) > c.hk >s.hk TC into the command dash? I have only pulled it of maybe twice, and was so surprised that I actually managed to do it that i wasted the opening it would have provided and ended up getting trounced.