Viability of Oni's Poke and fireball game in ultra

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
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This thread is really to question the viability of his poking game, if you are aiming to rush down I don’t see a good reason to pick oni over a similar character such as evil ryu with the same hp, faster walk speed and higher damage combos.After dropping AE for some time and coming back to Ultra new again I question how the random buffs to oni (and nerfs) may have changed the way he can be played. Disclaimer I’m pretty noob with oni and rather poor at the game in general but hope to improve looking towards swapping to oni from gouken originally. I question how viable a patient poking style with oni that utilizes his high combo damage mostly for punishes. Compared to ryu in terms of normal’s hes rather unsafe on his normals and has relatively long start up moves. Also long range focus attacks seam to crush his single hit pokes. I’m aware he’s been seen as a high risk character but he seams to have changes made to shift him to safer play. Also for consistency and nooby play, he never has to worry about far or close attacks, it’s really appealing.

While his fireball game doesn’t look the best of the cast, his normal fireball is about on par with kens in terms of frames and his light electric fire ball has really fast recovery (4 frames short of sonic boom recovery) losing 2 recovery frames despite its rather long start up. His focus attack range was buffed for the footsie wars, 11 frame start up step kick, sweep buff and most importantly safe reversal options with 2 meters to cancel dp now. forward heavy punch and kick haven’t changed but still get decent range and if only forward lk did more damage but its fast. Air dashes also offer great mobility and can be canceled into tatsu.

Is oni just not safe enough to on his normals / lack the poking normal damage to compete with other zoning based characters to play this style, my experience only stretches form the laggy universe of online play with no tournament nor competitive play. If it’s not worth the time to play him patiently is gouken worth going back to after his buffs or would someone like poison offer better options for this play style. Thanks for any advise you can give and my apologies for any in inaccuracies or misconceptions in the post.

Edit - Typos

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read the oni q&a thread 8th and 9th pages to see what i think onis poke game is like, we got a lot of ppl that think onis normals are insufficient for this version. then read the dealing with onis punishability thread for some match up specifics i might add more later if the thread starter wants more.

btw his dp fadc back isnt safe. point blank fadc back he is 4 mini boxes away and -8, he can be full ultra or super punished by err body in the game(his backdash is bad). if not ultra or super then most chars have a normal that can reach and punish. unlike other shotos with longer horizontal range to their dp(they can cancel out from farther) and with better backdashes(they travel farther) onis is pretty vertical so your gonna have to throw it super close.

his electric fireball recovery being buffed is moot, its wasnt the recovery that got you punished it was the startup that made it super easy to jump on reaction, though it made good anti air ex dp bait if you could space the light one out. the range you wanna throw it from is pretty much the same as before 3/4 to full screen.

his air dash can be ultrad or superd on reaction because of the recovery frames on landing. if the opponent knows the matchup once he sees you air dashing hell start anti airing it with light dp or something and you can get ultrad. the air dash tatsu has to be timed extremely late to hit crouching or small hitbox opponents, though this timing gets blown up by reversal dps. to beat the reversal dp you wanna do it early, however this timing wiffs if the opponent just crouch blocks or low profiles, leaving you -10 on landing or something stupid like that. i think its punishable on block too. his air dash does offer a good air to air where his air normal normally wouldnt cut it, and if you have super stocked you have some air dominance. it can also screw over anti air ultras like hakkans u2. overall a gimick with limited uses.

his far normals are good in the matchups where you can punish with them, as far as poking goes they are major focus bait(you can cancel super off of them if you have it). oni in general is abused by ppl with good focuses in the midrange(actually he gets abused in the midrange in general) because his crouch med kick into fireball can be focused for a crumple(both after the mk and after the fireball because the hit stun on the mk is bad), and he doesnt have a good midrange focus breaker.

most matchups devolve into oni trying to focus forward in on the opponents normals to get close and trying to punish unsafely spaced specials. there are some matchups where oni is actually allowed to press buttons to stuff out the opponents pokes but there arent that many. youll be doing a lot of walk up block, walk up block, walk up block.

-edit
to answer your last question, it depends on your connection and how laggy your games are. to play oni patiently and solid you NEEEED to have your character specific punishes down. most of these punishes are rather tight, and due to the hitstun on his cancellable moves being shit, youd better have a good connection to cancel off one of his normals during footsies into a fadc combo. because onis playstyle revolves around punishing big with meter, you get like 1-2 chances a round maybe to do your damage, if the lag spiked during the combo or you just plain cant punish due to lag, your gonna hate this guy. if your connection is good and you play only good green bars your good to go.

if your connections is shaky, go to a character that doesnt need meter and combos to win. charge characters with their great normals and pretty easy combos thrive in the online environment. characters that control space with their normals do excellent, rose and fei come to mind, if you wanna play patient. in fact when i dont feel like having to deal with the online shenanigans of dp mashers and jump back jump forward bullshitters i switch to rose or guile or fei, i might not know the matchups as well as with oni and get wrecked by ppl that do, but at least i dont get scrubbed out by stupid online shit.

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Please will this thread reignite? I need help in regards to this too :frowning:

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imo the buff to the startup frames on his f.mk make oni’s game a lot similar to cody’s in that he is now a counter-hit setup character.

First you want to establish that you are willing to throw fireballs (1 or 2).
Second, stop throwing fireballs and now let them know that you can not be jumped in on by cr.hp, st.hp, f.hk, st.mk, and uppercut punishes to deal with various jump-in ranges.

Now this is where Oni’s game lies in ultra. Once you have them scared to jump and frustrated enough to be walking in on you, you want them to begin respecting st.mk and st.hk to punish
dash-ins, step kicks, walk-in throws, and especially focus attacks so that then once you finally get to this point (~30 seconds+ into the round usually) you can now look for your
counter-hit f.mk and lk.demon slash setups by spacing them out properly using f.lk ----> the counterhit combos that you can connect after these normals deal a huge amount of damage physically
as well as psychologically, I like to follow up with cr.lp->cr.hp->lk.slash or hk.slash because they are fast and it keeps the pressure on (I like to steer away from the big, extended combos as much as possible in order to keep them panicking/scared of throws)

with all that in mind, expect to be very frustrated while you learn each and every specific character match up and how and when to use these normals, each cast member requires a different approach using the same-ish formula, some you just can simply not press a button (rose, dictator, claw) and you have to maul the hell out of them once you get in and hope you guess right every time

hope this helps

-Nick Tanella

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AWESOME STUFF!

Hasn’t he always been a CH kinda character? That’s how I have been using him anyway…

May I ask for Ken advice? I’m truly having trouble keeping him out with that stupid walk speed buff and the step kick bs…

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Thanks for that f.MK counter hit advice, I haven’t used oni regularly since v2012 and didn’t know that. I just added it into my game today and it’s awesome! Exactly what I needed to create offense in the mid range game. I follow it up with f.LP MP (target combo 1) xx LK slash. Which can be a block string or a FADC into big damage. I love it!