Well I simply meant the match-up and strength ratings disregard the level of execution needed to be good doesn’t mean anything on paper. But this is thread is about why the community thinks so, which means he’s right.
I think Dudley has the easiest combos in the game and even his 1 frames aren’t that difficult. They seem to flow quite easily. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s timing just makes sense to me.
Being good with a char is more than combo knowledge…
- Character knowledge.
- Reaction time.
- Combo consistency and variation.
- Adjusting.
- Fatigue caused by mastering 2 and 3, and applying it to 4 during a match.
Because Dudley pulls from a high variety of comboes based on range/counter hit/character/meter/mixup, you’re constantly having to adjust on the fly. This is taxing on anyone, and even if it’s instinctual, the amount of 1-frames is enough to make a player exhausted in a tournament.
Yes, you can win against top players occasionally, but you’re depending on them fucking up, PLUS you have to work harder than them to win. Inconsistency is why Dudley 2012 is low tier. Smug wins a lot of his games cause people don’t know the matchup. Try getting a sparring partner on your level, and see him body you after he learns dudleys weaknesses.
dudley’s problem is that he can’t play fundamental footsies in a street fighter game.
his normals have terrible low hit boxes, and either very limited horizontal range or slow startup / recovery.
it’s almost impossible to whiff punish normals on reaction. (i’m not talking about slow stuff like whiff recka or whiff dash punch)
one of the few characters that have trouble whiff punishing ryu cr.rh with a normal (ex duck upper and u1 are pretty good for this though)
let’s not even get into shoto cr.mk (with reaction tatsu to kill your focus)
so he is forced to play a game of guess when the other person will poke, then press a button first so that it counter hits that poke.
this is not so bad if they use high pokes that you can st.rh buffer, but good luck doing this vs something like cr.mk.
what compounds this problem is that dudley cr.mk and cr.rh are super easy to whiff punish and both unsafe on block.
actually, every decent range normal he has is easy to whiff punish. f.mp is probably your best bet but even this forces you to be inside their sweep range.
his secondary problem is that he has no reliable reversal safe mixup vs most of the characters in the game because he doesn’t have a jumping cross up.
this means the majority of the time, you will always have to guess if they will reversal dp, reversal ultra, wake up throw, back dash, fa back dash, wake up jab, etc.
he has no option that forces them to block on wake up like most characters do in vortex fighter 4.
you can kill them quickly if you guess right, but coupled with how hard it is to win in neutral game because of his first problem… everyone knows how frustrating this can be.
finally, dudley has really good pressure once he gets in.
unfortunately, he doesn’t actually have that many good solutions to people just using 4 button fa back dash during your pressure.
anyone with a good back dash can kind of get away for free the majority of the time.
you can’t even os because they are using a focus. can’t throw cause it will be teched. doing an armor break will end your pressure at frame disadvantage, etc.
and once they escape, the situation is bad again because dudley sucks at neutral game
what this adds up to is that dudley can be explosive character but he can’t really do much unless the other person makes mistakes.
this unfortunately means he will always be a really inconsistent character that wins on guesses and punishing unless they buff his neutral game.
seriously, actually sit down and teach people the dudley match up and see how difficult it becomes.
4 button backdash is impossible if you have 2 bars now, which is a bit of a stealth buff to dudders…