There was a nice hit-confirm into cr.mp xx hp CU in there somewhere
Enjoyed the empty jump EX zonk off the back throw
You won!
Negatives:
No anti-airs
Constantly throwing out raw special moves. The Makoto really should have picked up on this, calmed down and punished stuff on block.
No punishes on blocked EX hayate. cr.mk is not a punish, neither is cr.mp with the knife. cr.lk into hp criminal upper or mk ruffian if you want to push her away a bit further.
In round 2 you got the hit-confirm after she whiffed EX hayate, but then you jumped after 2 jabs. That was your opportunity to knock her down and give yourself a chance of winning the round.
Unsafe jump-ins. Her lp fukiage makes certain jump-ins unsafe that would be safe versus other characters. She also did you a favour by hitting you with one when you tried to cross her up and put yourself in the corner. Don’t put yourself in the corner versus Makoto! In fact don’t put yourself in the corner versus most characters…
If you catch someone with raw EX zonk in the corner make sure you follow-up with EX CU. That’s (virtually) free damage.
You won… but you were very lucky that the Makoto screwed up big time at the end. Looks like the EX CU came out instead of U2, but she didn’t pick up that’s what you were trying to do. Don’t get me wrong, once the EX CU whiffs right in front of her you might as well Ultra in case she makes the mistake, but the round should have ended with her just blocking and taking the chip from U2.
I think general advice would be to calm down a bit. You don’t need to be flying about all over the place, especially in this matchup. Makoto can do absolutely no damage to you from distance and Cody has the tools to punish her attempts to get in. Buffer normals into mk ruffian and you can catch forward dashes or raw hayates. Anti-air with b.mp and hk ruffian. When you knock her down take advantage of her poor wake-up options, especially when she has no meter. Get on Youtube and look up some simple option selects. I didn’t notice her using delayed wake-up, so all the old ones will still work. Remember that throwing out raw specials is just inviting her to punish you either by knocking you down and mixing you up, or by comboing into EX fukiage and putting you in a nasty reset situation. You will win more matches if you keep throwing stuff out because of Cody’s high damage/stun output, but the better players will quickly recognise this and punish you for it. I know it’s tempting when you see that counter-hit raw zonk damage, but you want to stay on your feet as much as possible. Sometimes you do have to take risks like the empty jump EX zonk, but at least that’s a situation where you have the initiative by default and it covers a variety of her options.
Need to stop jumping so much. Absolute worst habit I need to break.
Not sure what ideal knife punishes are. Is it cr. HP -> cr. LK -> CU? Right now I usually cr. MP or spam cr. LP 4 times. Love the knife but lots to learn.
In that match especially, my reflexes were awful. At least 3 separate times you’ll notice on jump-ins she gets counter hits because I’m too slow in reacting with b. MP for anti-air. Frustrating to watch.
Definitely need to look up option selects. Understand the concept, never incorporated into my game. Probably a very limiting factor in me getting better.
Haven’t played in almost 3 weeks because of moving - but once I get my setup back up and running, I’ll post another video or two. Thanks again!
Your ideal punish when blocking those hayates is just cr.lk xx hCU, both with and without the knife. You could possibly tack on a jab or two with the knife depending on how close she is, but sometimes it’s better to keep things simple. In terms of raw punishes with the knife, it really depends on how much time you have. cr.hp cr.lk xx hCU is good, although if you are close enough you can do cl.mk xx lCU cr.hp which I think is a bit more damage. On some characters (like Balrog, Seth, Cammy etc.) you can do crack kick > crack kick > cr.hp which is pretty satisfying, although obviously that requires a bit more frame advantage. If you do end up punishing with just jabs, do stand jab with the knife because the frame advantage on hit is much better and makes linking into cr.lk xx hCU a doddle.
At least you’re almost getting the anti-airs, which means it shouldn’t take much improvement to start hitting them consistently. It’s always a little harder against characters that can change their jump arcs like Makoto. Maybe try using EX CU on occasion to take advantage of the strike invincibility, or play around with Cody’s wide variety of other AA normals to see if you can find something that works for you.
Speaking of Cody’s AA normal, my rule of thumb is:
Far away, St. HK.
Close, B+MP
I pretty much never use HK Ruffian, and I know St. HP is a good AA as well, just can never figure out when to use it. It’s pretty much when you’re in-between St. HK and B+MP range, right? I usually cr. MK in that case (then again, I cr. MK a lot when I shouldn’t)
You should get in the habit of using HK Ruffian because the reward off landing it is huge: FADC to U1, FADC crack kick ex.criminal upper or a later frame juggle into MK ruffian kick for the meterless damage. Even if you do it a tad late and it trades you can sometimes follow up with a crack kick or a dash into MK ruffian. It’s really easy to land against floaty jumps like T Hawk, Guy, Elena, etc. It’s also useful against demon flips.
One of my favorite things to do with Cody is landing hk ruffian kicks against people prone to neutral jumping. In the corner it is a really good tool as the most obvious way to get out of the corner is bij jumping, so i stand at a range they cannot do crossups. It’s diffcult to use against characters with fast jump archs and downward angled jump in attacks though.
Tip: if Makoto is doing crMP buffers try using zonk or EX CU. crMP xx LP Hayate is a true block string, as is crMP xx EX Fukiage. However crMP xx MP Hayate is NOT a true block string and you can zonk even between them even with regular zonk. There is no risk when releasing a zonk after she buffers a move because if it’s a LP Hayate nothing comes out, if it’s a MP Hayate you zonk it.
Sometimes playing a character you are having trouble fighting is one way to learn their weaknesses, speeds, and ideal spaces better. For example, if you are having trouble with Gen, maybe try training up a Gen. See if you can get ~2000BP or so with him. It’s not a lot but it’ll give you a basic idea of some of his stuff.
The other way is to just try a whole new plan with your main. Sometimes don’t worry about winning, just try and practice something. Set a goal for yourself. Instead of winning at any cost, just say “I’m going to practice my whiff punishing and anti airing” or something like “I’m not going to do a jump-in for the next 10 matches unless it’s a safe jump or the opponent throws a fireball.” or “I’m just going to concentrate on recognizing and maximizing any counterhit.”
Stuff like that can help.
Going back and reviewing your matches where you’re really struggling to get anywhere can also help. See where your spacing failed, or watch the opponents inputs to try and understand their mindset at specific times. Maybe they are mashing throw tech during block strings and you just need to add a slightly longer delay to catch it.
That Guy player was awful. When you encounter players like that you should just calm down and let them hang themselves. Block the run > overhead kick standing and punish (it’s like -6 or something). Block the slide low and punish (it’s also very unsafe). Default to blocking low when you’re not moving forward because you can easily react to the flip kick. Apparently he didn’t know that you have to block jump-ins standing - you’d be better jumping with heavy kick because he kept ducking under medium kick and heavy punch.
As far as your play goes, you seemed way too pre-occupied with Zonk, either comboing into it or with raw EX. I don’t think I saw you use Criminal Upper once in the entire match, which is your bread and butter combo ender. At around 1:35 you woke up with EX Zonk (which is fine every now and then) which dodged his bizarre raw unsafe tatsu. You might have been able to punish him there, but assuming you couldn’t it was fine to block his failed slide punish. You then tried to punish the blocked slide with raw EX Zonk instead of a typical punish combo, which isn’t a good idea because the startup is so slow and will rarely punish anything on block except an uppercut/ultra/super. You got hit by an unsafe slide, which will happen now and again, but then he did a raw EX Hozanto on your wake-up which is also unsafe. You again tried to punish with EX Zonk, which won’t work in that situation (EX Hozanto is only -6), and luckily he got counter-hit for the round. So you did raw EX Zonk 3 times in the space of about 6 seconds, which to me says you are charging for it far too often. No matter which 2 buttons you charge with you are severely limiting yourself, so doing it with that kind of frequency is always going to be detrimental to your game. Against a player like this you shouldn’t even need to use it - the guy was gifting you punish opportunities every few seconds, so just settle for something simple like cr.lk xx hCU or cr.lp cr.lp cr.mp xx hCU as a punish and then wait for him to do something stupid again. If he calms down and realises what’s happening then that’s a different story, but he didn’t demonstrate much of any game awareness there at all.
I did a FT7 with coach steve last week against his Rolento and decided to save the matches and record them to look back at.
Things to note:
Missed a few big punishes. (U2 after blocked EX Patriot, not using slide to go under overhead, etc.)
Giving a few rounds away that I should have won
Not throwing enough rocks in neutral
stronger BnB punishes
sloppy OSes on his wakeup
I actually like these sets just for the fact I learned more in the match to go with what I already knew. Neutral is lots of rocks/hold rocks/fake rocks and patience walking forward (and picking and choosing your spots walking forward.) But once you pin him down, he really can’t do much against Cody since he has an answer for all his wakeups.
It did remind me to go back to training mode and work on the OS that beats most of his wakeup. (which ended up being cl.LK~MK ruffian for anything outside of EX wall jump. Which in that case cl.LK~far HK beat anything he came back with including pogo hop at the earliest input time.)
Careful if you’re going to edit a quotation. I didn’t type the text ‘Try cr.lk xx hCU as a punisher.’ anywhere in my post, even though I mentioned that particular combo.
Careful with punishing Guy’s EX Run - Slide as it’s possible to space it to be + on block actually. It has 13F active and is -9f on block. Regular Run - Slide is always punishable unless he FADCs it though.
blegh, took a slight hiatus in competing since December. And I think it’s actually helped me more than anything! Had to play Fuerte my first stream match!