Yeah I feel this sentiment…I picked up SF4 in general a couple months ago because I love Poison and wanted to play her, but she feels so counter-intuitive and honestly, unfinished. She feels like she was made by the devil from Bedazzled; she has all these cool tools that looked great in pre-launch gameplay videos, but none of them actually work the way they should.
Anyone have any tips on how to deal with being pressured? I feel like every time I press a button to try and mount an offense of my own it either gets beat or it just barely whiffs.
Alright, does this beautiful and gorgeous woman have any reliable ways to anti-air? Might be me being really bad and rusty, but her cr. hp gets beat out a lot, and her dp is free to empty jumps and has terrible range.
She feels like a footsie/turtle character, but if people can jump in for free, that will make it a lot harder to keep them out than it needs to be. Might just me being spoiled by having had access to b+mp, tiger uppercut and mp shoryu throughout my entire sf career, lol.
Also, is her qcb+k a good, reliable anti-fireball tool? I haven’t had much success with it, but that again might be because I am rusty (and bad to begin with). Her jumpin sort of sucks I think. Feels floaty and slow, and her air normals aren’t that amazing either (despite her air hp looking like it’s got a bigass beefy hitbox). Her crossup isn’t that great either, so I don’t think jumping with her is the best idea unfortunately… She;s gonna have a lot of trouble against people who out-turtle her 
What do you guys think?
It’s hard really. Poison is pretty easy to pressure up close because of her normals weren’t designed to fight up in the clinch. And especially in the corner she’s fucked. Her teleport only takes her closer there too. You have to dictate the space with zoning and pushing the opponent into the corner or zoning for meter so you can get in and start the pressure.
The twins and bison have really shown me that. Especially bison because on top of his scissor kicks pressure he can ex psycho crusher out of her hp fb pressure free.
All of her AA normals- cr. HP, st. MP, st. HK- have tight timing. Done too late, they’ll trade or get beaten out. Done too early, they’ll whiff. (Some have suggested she might need an active frames buff or something.)
With KBG, you’ll want to use either LK or EX. LK, because you can trade into WoL or Ultra 1; and EX, because it’s EX (it more often than not connects fully).
You have to take things on a case-by-case basis; there isn’t really a braindead way to respond to a jump-in, no. C’est la vie.
Yes. You have to do it early, like a tatsu, or Adon’s MK Jaguar Kick… Instead of going for a combo, just mash kick for the followup; LMT works well for getting in, as one little clip on their extended hurtbox leads to good damage and a setup.
EX version is projectile invincible from frame 1. You have to do it relatively close, but it definitely has its uses.
Use j. HK. Works a lot better, despite what it looks like.
Her forward jump is a little slow, but that just means that you need to make better reads.
Rather than a footsie/turtle character, I think she’s… average. You have to switch between getting in or staying out depending on the matchup or the opponent.
Ryu does average better, but he doesn’t have her LMT “divekick” pressure, or her AE pressure in the corner.
Akuma does average better, but you can’t make mistakes.
It’s a tradeoff.
She’s a zoner but the zoning opens up the rest of her game. She’s not a Guile style zoner.
The most important things to learn with Poison imo are
-
Master your fireballs. They have different speeds and they’re useful to make your opponent do things. After cr.mk or cr.mp throw out different versions. They may not blockstring but they can’t jump without getting antiaired due to her recovery. If they sit there you can walk up and overhead or cr.mk into another fireball or rekkas on hit. Watch their habits. Do they try to jump everything? Vary up the version so they land on it and you can follow up with LMT or walk forward hk. Do they deal with them by focusing? Do it in a range where you can followup with love me tender or st.hp regardless of their dash. Speaking of
-
Learn to use LMT. This move is awesome. You can hit them if they fall on a fireball. You can fireball them in neutral and do this to start getting your frametrap on. You can blow up their throw tech/crouch tech attempts. EX is what you need to turn seemingly bad matchups like Sagat who can outfireball you into good/managable ones. Stop them from focusing your fireballs or your st.hp. It’s a lot like Jaguar kick except you can follow it up with a knockdown which is great because
-
Her fireball oki is pretty damn good. You can hp AE them after most things. LMT, Both throws, AA cr.hp. It’s pretty great. Varying meaties or even just letting it fly over their head and grabbing them when they expect to block the fireball set you back up for another fireball. You can walk up overhead, cr.mk to more fireballs/rekka, wait for the stun to wear off and throw, get them to reversal by waiting for the blockstun for the throw just to have you block, lmt their cr.tech or regular throw tech attempt. It’s practically a fireball based vortex albeit not as crazy and the left/right safejump into 3 minute long knockdown blockstrings you probably associate with vortex. It’s probably the main reason you can’t hold her AE like in cross Tekken.
-
Learn your anti-airs. Cr.hp is pretty great. It can get beat out but I believe most things that beat it will lose to an earlier st.mp or walk back hk. Late mk KBG can work but I typically don’t trust it. EX is a bit more reliable in a pinch but it’s still risky. Cr.hp is low enough that if they want to have active frames to hit it they’ll have to wait on their button. That lets you dictate their button timing to some extent and while it’s a tricky antiair game getting the cr.hp anti-air lets you do the fireballs. Either hp cancel or lp afterwards to throw them off. If they try crossup in neutral shut that shit down with cl.hk xx hp ae.
-
KBG. Learn it. It fails a lot aa yeah. Sometimes it messes up on limbs. But this is the other thing besides fireballs that opens up the rest of her game. You may get your shit rocked sometimes but they have to know that you’re willing to do it. It can make their oki/pressure easier to anticipate because they’re bound to do crossups to make it whiff on your wakeup. Even if they don’t you can scare them from hitting buttons meaty which is great because it lets you make it harder for them to punish or option select your backflip. Light can even trade into aa rekkas. That’s a pretty damn good trade. lol
-
Corner pressure. Basically the same as the fireball oki I mentioned but because AE moves you forward and they have nowhere to go this can be nightmarish. cr.mk xx hp ae walk up and do it again, hit them with the overhead. cr.lk cs.mk fireball, shorts into throw. shorts into lmt. Watch what their expecting and use it to open them up. This is probably the most important thing outside mastering your fireball offensively.
You can’t play her like a shoto exactly. She doesn’t have the walkspeed and buttons for the typical cr.mk xx fireball game they have but you have fireball recovery on your side. Her j.hk I find it pretty great and j.lp is useful if you really need to air to air quickly. j.lk isn’t great but landing it means you can start pressuring them as long as you watch out for those guys who mash reversal if you’re within a city block of them. I’m going to be honest I haven’t really practiced or tried lmt over fireballs much. I know you can but I’m not sure how reliable it is. I just use a meter for that cause you’ll likely build it back with your followups. Stick with it for a while. I felt she was damn near useless at first but by the time I was rounding 1000 bp I was used to using her tools to dealing with people. You’ll get better at identifying situations and knowing what to apply.
Are you sure? (Am I doing it right?)
Theoretically, for three bars, you have;
DP FADC cr. HP 190 damage
LMT cr. LP, cr. LP, st. MK xx EX WoL j. HP 279 damage
Overhead/cr. LK BnB ending in MP WoL 214-244 damage
so around 700 damage if you were to hit everything. But there’s a lot of breaking points, it seems.
Just saying…the second part of her rekka whiffs on crouching ryu.
Unless you need to hit a combo into ultra, the benefits of the hard knockdown from flip kick follow up out weigh the +3 on hit
Poisons f+mp has such a good hit box and active frames that it works well against blanka balls and guys elbow drop. And jump in attacks. Doesn’t hurt throwing it out after a hp fb to move forward if anything
Do we know any safe jumps?
she gets a 5 frame safejump after a sweep, just hold uf and it’ll land as a safejump. Maybe it even works against 4frame, but I only tested it on Poison. I’ve also read somewhere on the forums about a safejump after Whip of Love, dash up, neutral jump very late hk. This one also worked against Poison’s Kissed by a Goddess. delayed wakeup fucks this over, unfortunately.
I also tested some jumping normals against cr. hp to see if it was a timing thing or if it just gets beat out by a lot of really good jump-in attacks. Against Gief’s jump mk, it didn’t trade even once in training mode, so I’m guessing my complaining about it beating cr. hp clean must’ve been because I was way too late that match. Same thing for jumping hp, but that did trade at certain angles and if Gief does it really late, it can trade/beat cr. hp. It’s not the very best anti-air, but I think it’ll be enough to stop braindead jumping.
Played some more matches online today, and I did a lot better and I’m starting to really enjoy playing Poison. Her corner pressure is very good against these people who don’t know a thing about her, lol.
I have yet to be in a fireball fight where I wasn’t in full control. Thanks for the safejump set ups by the way.
I find my self playing midrange the whole game and blowing it up in footsies. Some matchups can be tedious, like rose.
I seem to never use the qcbk.
Her flip kick is the best part as it is safe, leads to a hard knockdown into pressure Nd corner carry. Even if u do not use the ex for +2 on block. Regular is still only -1 and free follow up jabs on 4 frame or slower jab chars
So I got some tech, I’m sure most people know this stuff. But here goes.
After Ex Rekka if you do a very late attack you can land and get a meaty HP fireball, from there you can do whatever you need to. The caveat is that it loses to reversals.
When you are antiairing with c.HP you should cancel into MP or HP fireball for a meaty set up as well. You can dash forward and do something like crouch fierce xx rekkas.
If you throw a mp or hp fireball and they jump in and get hit by it, you can hit confirm into ex fireball. If you are close enough you can do something like crouch fierce xx qcb kick for a meaty set up. You can also sweep for an untechable knockdown or of course hit with rekkas if you don’t do the ex fireball.
Oh forgot to mention. if you anti air with a c.HP xx HP/MP fireball you can do f+HP for a guile esque set up. You are far enough away that they either have to block the setup or reversal and whiff you.
All known. You should also do LMT after the air fireball. It’s more damage, no meter and a hkd setting you up for more meaty HP fireballs. A lot of her best stuff is meaty fireball and setting it up in various ways.
How far can you hit confirm into that? Also if the fireball whiffs like say the jump over it if you fuck up your ex fireball timing you’ll get a normal, so I guess it depends on the situation. You can hit confirm an ex from like half screen. Do you just buffer for the qcb K or what?
Something like that. You’re going to have to be aware that they’re going to fall on it. Then you just do it. You get used to it pretty quick. If you REALLY want to be safe feel free to keep going for the ex fireball but getting lmt or rekka tends to be way more reward for way less resources. I suggest taking it to training mode. It’s really worth learning. Learning you could do that and getting some meaty fireball mixup stuff down jumped my Poison level considerably.
Has anyone been able to make use of her U2?
In what situations are you guys using her flip kick? I’ve mainly been trying to catch back dashers with it and occasionally at mid range to try and anticipate a low forward from shotos and such but otherwise I don’t really know when to be using it.
Hmm are you hitting it as meaty as possible? It may be the move just has too much recovery to be used as a pseudo-safe jump, in that case, but you can still use it for the plus frames if they block. Then again, why not just use HP AE in that situation since you can block afterwards and still get the + frames lol