Now I see that you just have different gauges for matchups. I would consider Sagat/Gief 8-2 (don’t know about in USF4) and I would also consider Guile/Bison 8-2 (at least in 2012, don’t know if it has changed in Ultra).
I have a question? How does Rolento mash the roll in between any type block string, it has no invincibility. Plus with Dudley strong pressure game and Dudley being so plus on so much up his up close normals, how is that possible?
he means PPP back flip that happens before he rolls forward. i wouldnt mash it like that tho. if you mashed it vs a jab or something, dudley could react and walk up stand rh party starter and catch your rcovery
no way dudley rolento is 7-3 tho. its hard to anti air him, but his normals are still really short ranged. you just cant try to rely on grounded st.mp. more evasion, more air to air. 6-4 at worst. 7-3 is stuff like yun.
a few notes about rolento
about the roll. you can try to stuff it pre-emptively, but the answer to that is for rolento to do a version that ends further out and then whiff punish the attempted button you stuck out with his own button. if your solution is to just block and punish, rolento always has the option to space it so he stops in front of you. its pretty legit because of how fast he’s moving towards you
what happens as a defender vs someone using the ball smartly, is that you end up second guessing the spacing, and you block and either dont have a punish ready or it screws with your reaction time because youre trying to tech a throw/mashing jab in anticipation of the whiff
the best anti ball tech i can think of is to have your punish ready and either delay stand throw or delay crouch tech. delay stand throw is a tad riskier because of the whiff throw animation if he did a shorter version of ball, but stand blocking the ball makes him land closer giving an easier punish if he does make contact
about his footsies. im figuring out his footsie game is pretty decent if youre mixing in his command movement options, in addition to not standing in one spot trying to rely on stand mp against characters that beat it or trade favorably. low jab is a pretty dominant button for space control. 4 frames, great range. i imagine the hitbox is hilarious as well.
yeah i know its only a jab, but you mix it up naked with instant stinger, and instant ex stinger. if they jump out of it you recover in time to anti air. if they focus dash forward they are at negative frames. just jabbing or whatever is pretty risky because its a simple hit confirm into either ultra if you miss time the button and the knife hits. the real weakness is inv moves or armored stuff to interrupt
so they block the stinger and you mix up following it with stand fierce to push them out further, or dashing in to follow it with pressure. if it hit and you dashed forward youre at least +6
in addition to all that you have enough range on the rest of your buttons to whiff punish pretty much anything
Just tested in training mode. Instant j.HP seems to punish everything on block. Also df.HK punishes some things on block. On hit j.HP punishes most attempts to stick out a medium or heavy normal. He has to stick out a light normal to stop it.
DP also works just fine if you predict which way he is going to bounce. j.HP seems more consistent if you don’t want to guess, but if you choose to guess you can get a decent amount of damage.
Edit: I was able to time MP Fukage to tag forward and backward bounce after blocking the pogo if he presses a button. HP tags him if he doesn’t press a button on the back hop.
oh, i forgot to mention this in the previous post, but the pogo has legit applications as well. if you dont anti air his initial jump, you can time the pogo bounce late enough that its indistinguishable from empty low/throw.
the pogo cant hit anything if you press d+mk at the last moment. like it wont hit extended hurtboxes or anything. it’ll just push rolento to a spot where the space occupancy boxes dont overlap
that takes away the normal gimmick indicator of blocking or getting hit by the pogo that tells you to jump and press a button or anti air
i cant think of a way around it that doesnt involve anti airing his initial jump that isnt a guess. maybe delay crouch tech wih AA normal that beats his jump hp?
Yea the Pogo can be useful still. When I’ve messed around with Rolento I found it was great on wake up for faking empty jumps. It’s just the current way most Rolentos are using it is gimmicky as hell.
when you use it late its low invincible or something as well. you know the situation where as a shoto you throw a fireball and they jump into sweep or low forward range and you trip guard them or make them block? well pogo just goes thru the extended limb. full whiff
i think its magic because eternal couldnt tell me why
Nope, I wasn’t.
There’s no point debating - Oni has low damage apparently. Laughable. Maybe the dude has some slight problems but it’s not damage.
When people are posting things like -
About a character than can hit confirm from several buttons and force people into 50/50’s - I’m out of idea’s, because yeah, that’s THE FUCKING GAME. What do you want +5 on everything and free combo’s. Try playing Sagat for 5 minutes and come back and complain to me about damage. Anyway, I remembered why I stopped posting in this one, because everyone’s character sucks.
Nah, my character is godlike 
My playstyle with Rolento has to be one of the most annoying ever. I abuse THE HELL out of cr.jab, that shit surprisingly beat a whole bunch of moved that you wouldn’t expect.
Outside of jab range I mix it up between mk overhead, st.hp, cr.mk, cr.mp, st.mk to try and control the space and hopefully get some damage in.
Right outside of st.mk, where st.mp aa is usually a bad idea, I just ia stinger for meter and try to intelligently use qcb rolls in order to make getting close as hard as I possibly can.
Also, I try to never end my combos in normal pc if I have meter, since the frame advantage afterward is so bad.
I think this is because the hitbox/hurtbox does not immediately become active; however, the bounce effect will almost always happen no matter how late in the jump it is input.
the hurtbox is there. it gets hit by anything that isnt on the floor. chuns sweep is high enough to knock him out of it. its just off the ground or something. i think it uses trick landings hitbox/hurtbox instead of pogo when done late like that. it just lets you steer because you activated it with d+mk
Hmm I would test and look at the game files, but I don’t have my console available at the moment. If it hasn’t been conclusively figured out by monday, I’ll look into it.
I never stated that oni has low damage. I just pointed out that his damage
is what people point at when they say oni is fine, but his you don’t land those combos on anyone that knows the matchup. how hard is it to defend against frame traps?
Well you say that, but Dieminion just got opened up like a million times by Sanford just now in a tourney by frame traps. Didn’t look like his best night, but still.
Not everyone has a kara throw option, much less an extremely good kara throw.
Oni’s problems:
Fireballs are mediocre bordering on bad. He has the normals to back them up though, but they still aren’t good.
Forward walk speed is meh. Not awful but not good, his over all walk speed is good and helps him frame trap and play footsies but his ability to actually get IN is hampered by his mediocre bordering on bad forward walk speed. You can kara dash with F+MK plinked to focus but no one does this. It does however increase the dash frame count quite a bit just like every other kara focus dash (Cody/Ken/ect)
Focus attack is only average, even after the buff. It’s got a fantastic hitbox it just only has average reach.
What he gets after a throw is mediocre. He can easily land them though. His forward throw gives great corner carry but that’s it. Back throw is an unsafe cross up or not situation, viable but carries a solid risk to it.
Backdash is average. Probably 2nd best out of the shotos after Evil Ryu but nothing noteworthy overall.
Low profiling moves with crMK leaves Oni somewhat vulnerable as the crMK has a slightly above average total frame count. It’s as viable as many other low profiling moves, but not GOOD like some. Evil Ryu has a similar problem but E Ryu is even worse at low profiling with crMK. Even regular Ryu is 2F faster total than Oni’s 23F crMK. However, there are plenty of characters whose low profiles leave them vulnerable if the move they avoided has a fast recovery. Cody crMK is 26F but moves him slightly forward. Guy crMK is 23F but low profiles longer than Oni’s. Sim’s LK slide is 22F. Generally speaking, the decent low profiles top out at around 21-22F. Oni could have 1-2F shaved off the recovery of crMK IMO.
Oni lacks a solid way to avoid fireballs at mid to close range. (A problem he shares with all shotos generally speaking.) this gives him trouble vs chars like Guile.
Hardly any real training mode explorers play him, it took 2 years almost before someone discovered his MK Tatsu could be FADC’d to combo to some stuff he couldn’t combo to otherwise.
He needs solid fundamentals and he has to do it by making use of his very wide range of tools to really shine and show how strong he is rather than simply relying on 3-4 moves in most matchups like you can with some other strong footsie characters (Rose with far HK/clsMK/slide can get really far just with those. Fei with Rekkas and crHP/crLK/crLP/crMP can also easily compete at mid level, ect.) you can’t get by with just F+HP and B+MP xx HP like a lot of Oni’s want to. His tools are strong but he doesn’t have any real “this covers everything I want to do” option like some characters. Closest he has to that is B+MP and that has short range, or F+LK which is only 50 damage.
Then there is the whole “new SF character” stigma that weakens his popularity. Generally speaking, if you go look at competition the number of people who play characters introduced in the SF4 series is relatively low with the occasional spike in popularity that quickly dies off.
Viper - Was super popular in 2011 but overall? Not that often seen in competition.
El Fuerte - Never been terribly popular.
Juri - Never been terribly popular, STILL rarely seen outside of Japan even in USF4 which is her strongest version.
Hakan - Lol, GL finding even 1 Hakan at most majors.
Rufus - By far the most popular new SF character in the series in terms of people who play him. Likely HEAVILY due to the fact he was so strong in Vanilla, and the fact two of the best players in the USA rep him (Ricky Ortiz and Justin Wong.) You take out Ricky and Justin and he is actually not THAT often seen at majors. Still more popular than anyone else but not as popular as characters like Sakura, Ibuki, Honda, Ken, ect who you see decently often on streams.
Abel - Popular in 2010 now all but vanished.
Gouken - Probably the 2nd most popular new character after Rufus. However how many Gouken players can you remember seeing on streams? Take out Velociraptor and it’s pretty scarce, occasionally you might see 1 you’ve never heard of before but overall? Not that big.
Seth - Another pretty rare character to see outside of the 1-2 top players who rep him.
Decapre - Falling in popularity already now that the “new char smell” has begun to fade. There STILL hasn’t been anyone who has put in enough time to crack top 100 on the japanese arcade BP scores. Even Hugo is on there. And technically she isn’t even NEW since she was introduced in Alpha and her move set is based heavily on Cammy.
Lastly, and probably most importantly. Why play Oni when Evil Ryu is more straight forward and overall better? Oni has a lot going for him, but Evil Ryu has more players (meaning more tech), is a lot more simple to understand since he shares so much with Ryu, and is overall better.
Nothing in here takes away from Oni’s strengths:
Great practical meterless and metered damage (don’t look at the damage tier lists, those are all impractical. Oni’s practical damage is top 3 with things like crLK - crLP - B+MP xx HP - HK Tatsu vs standing opponents or crLK - crLP - B+MP - LK Slash vs crouching easily being some of the best meterless hit confirms. B+MP xx sHP in neutral as a buffer. sLK Tatsu as a buffer in neutral. Above average jump in damage (FJHP at 110) crMP - crHP. And having extremely good 2 bar combos with LK Slash FADC.
Great anti airs (probably top 3 in the game)
Great mid range pokes for controlling space/whiff punishing, ESPECIALLY F+LK which other than being only 50 damage is easily one of the best normals in the entire game with it’s amazing hit box/hurtbox. sMK controls good space and anti airs. sHP has a fantastic hitbox. B+MP has a fantastic hitbox and is a true block string to LK Slash which is only -2F on block. Oni beats or goes even with a number of characters who have some great pokes (Cody, Vega, Balrog, Gen, Makoto, Gouken for instance.) Generally only losing to characters who specialize in long reaching footsies often not having the damage conversions from footsies Oni has (Chun, Bison, Adon) Oni can even hold his own in the footsie game against arguably the best footsie character in the entire game: Fei Long. It’s a pretty close match up, usually Fei wins if Oni relies too much on F+HP/sweep or tries to go for an unsafe MK/HK Slash mixup. However if Oni sticks to his safer pokes it’s pretty even in the mid range game.
Great frame traps (not Sakura/Cammy good but solid) backed up by a fantastic kara throw and the ground pound to fight stand throw attempts.
Two viable ultras that are able to be comboed into and are versatile.
Viable reset options.
Good corner carry.
Good options for corner pressuring.
Able to escape the corner.
Ability to alter jump arcs in multiple ways (Dashes, Tatsus, Dash Tatsus, Ultra1, Super)
Great air 2 airs
Great jump ins.
He’s got quite a lot going for him.
Wao switched to Evil Ryu, I think it says something.
That Evil Ryu is better?
Standard FGC logic
X thing is better than Y thing.
Y thing is now terrible.
Where did I say that Oni is terrible? I’m saying Evil Ryu is a better character than Oni, hence why Wao switched.
Genjin is terrible because of Red Focus duh!
You didn’t, but everyone else has basically made the statement now.
“The character I play sucks so much now that high profile player XYZ has dropped them.”
How often you seen this in the last few weeks? Getting irritated because generally speaking now, when someone says something like
They usually are saying it as an argument about how weak a character is as the character this player played before is no longer viable. Rather than just saying the truth, that Evil Ryu is the current bandwagon character because he is good but also because everyone else is playing him. It’s pretty much a fact of human psychology that popularity will often times breed popularity.
“Everyone plays/buys/listens to/watches this thing so I have to play/buy/listen to/watch this thing to find out why. There must be something there.”