I’m sorry but this is not good advice. If you block a cross-rush or launcher you should punish with a full combo not a silly knockdown.
You can use a standing medium or heavy right into manual launcher and that will be a better punish than just a sweep.
Yeah about that,
I see too many players do a raw mp+mk only to eat a full 400 damage combo. Sure, sometimes you have no choice to stay alive, but ideally you want to switch characters using the tag cancel, cross-rush/Launcher or a Cross-Assault/Cross-Art.
Any normal attack can be tag canceled on hit or on block. So you can just AA/air to air tag or poke tag. It doesn’t have to be a special move/reversal/alpha counter. The important thing is to get your low health character out.
This is a good point. One of the reasons Poongko does so well is he rarely just tags out, he usually tag cancels during a blockstring and keeps it going with the incoming character.
Definitely going to be looking through this thread a lot. I’m one of the “dies with a full health character” because I’ll get on a good roll, make one mistake, then spend the rest of the round trying to safe tag out unsuccessfully, lol.
Yeah, some grey health is tradeable early on. People may not notice but when your health is at the 100% to 85% mark, the grey health is significantly less than compared to around 50% mark if you were hit by the same combos. I find it okay, if presented with the situation, to start a good launch combo and just re-raw-launch back for some damage at the cost of no meter but just a little bit of possible grey health.
What I’m referring to is the second launcher after the initial one that causes the opponent to be unjuggable. It presents a non-quick recovery state so you can setup midpoint pressure or plan out future tech roll pressure.
Timeouts is an issue that should probably have it’s own thread because I think it is very interesting. When is the last time a fighting game appeared where the clock actually mattered?
I think it is a great thing. It adds a layer of fear to the match. A layer of depth; added stratgey. At first the clock kind of bugged me. But, the game was so fun to play that I stopped caring, and tried to look at the game on it’s own and not compare it to other fighters. I accepted the fact that timeouts are a part of sfxt.
My point is essentially to use it and not fear it. A win is a win. Right? RIGHT? Or did I forget something… this is SRK right? The best fighting game forum on the internet? The place where they tell scrubs to suck it up and people come for information? A hardcore fighting game site, where players care about winning and not costumes and things you’d see posted on Unity.
If that is the case, then what’s wrong with timeouts? The other guy just couldn’t beat you. That is his problem not yours. His offense wasn’t good enough to beat you. You Win.
Matches in this game can end in 15-20 secs. In the blink of an eye. The offense is there… but are you willing to cross the line (I had to), and use it? Is your offense good enough? Conversely, we can play the side of the defender or keepaway character. Guile, Akuma, Raven and others come to mind. These characters are gonna try to keep you out and whittle you down. The timer makes these characters relevant in a whole new way. I like being able to put up a wall so solid that people die trying to get through. The clock pressures people to make decisions. Even a turtle/lame/Defensive character matchup is now more exciting. How much blood is the offense willing to lose to get it?
The clock speeds all this up but without making an entire playstyle obsolete. Defensive style vs Offensive style as always been the hallmark of an excellent fighting game. Without both styles in a game, it can become stale over time. This game really allows you to play it how you want, and the clock is a part of that.
Right right. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. Cross Rush combos can seem like they’re unpunishable because of the distance it leaves your character. Because of the amount of negative frames incurred from the blocked cross rush you’ll be able to punish it with slower moves or more further reaching moves that you normally couldn’t. I’m not saying CROSS RUSH? LOL SWEEP. Rather, know that they can be punished for it.
Such is the case with Guile’s Low Forward > Stand Roundhouse chain that everybody loves. It’s very difficult to punish because of the distance but a lot of supers have the reach to do so (Ryu and Sagat come to mind). The only bargain there is if it’s worth it to use the meter. Cammy’s chain that ends with far stand roundhouse I know I can punish with Sagat Kara Uppercut on block. Just some examples…
The problem isn’t so much the maximum punishes yet, it’s that people aren’t attempting to punish them at all. This contributes to the notion that the game is defensive and thus time overs occur and blah blah blah etc
On the subject of low health management and raw taging willingly to eat damage… I’m sort of standing on the fence. Personally I would rather find a way to get my team member out safely AND do some damage at the same time but decisions like these are so dependent on the situation. This is one of the things I think makes the game exciting actually. Do I have meter? What are that characters options? What does my opponent suspect and what are his intentions? There’s surely a yomi factor within it.
I’ll make some adjustments to the first post tomorrow. Thanks for all the input. Keep it up!
I do not believe time outs really is an “issue” in this game. You can most definitely clear someone’s health way earlier. Look at the Shadaloo Showdown matches and how many time outs versus knock outs there were. You can’t make this shit up. You can go offensive just as freely as you can sit back and do nothing for 80 seconds and time someone out. And this is without gems enabled. With gems enabled? Free, especially when given the right team and right setups to initiate 20% to 30% damage gems.
They purposely made it run on the same clock as SF4 along with two health bars, balanced the game around boost gems that includes damage reduction and have specialty gems that add more health.
Time outs are very much a viable method of winning. Most people complaining about time outs one way or another probably lost due to the inability to act enough during a match or they got out paced in health management.
I mean right now, I am just being more conscious about how much grey health I can recover before it’s OK to tag cancel a combo or use launcher in my combos again to keep things fresh. There’s no more use one char until he’s low and then tag out and refresh the situation. It’s all part of the meta gameplay.
It’s time people approach this game for how it’s designed.
Man, when I wake up I’m actually gonna read through the thread and add stuff if it hasn’t been said already. Good shit though. It’s great to see topics that aren’t full of crybabies and people who didn’t even play the game longer than the first week.
Thank you god, I have been trying to make this point. I love the fact that SF4 brought a new generation of SFers to the genre, and I am happy they are here. But many of them have not put the effort into to learn the basic fundamentals of SF that have been around for 20+ years.
I agree with this concept whole-heartedly, however there will come a time when Hugo players realize that they can block (UNHEARD OF RIGHT). As mentioned earlier chain combos incur more negative frames to your character so you can potential be punished depending on the frames. I realize that Hugo’s normals are pretty slow but even with that considered he can still potentially punish blocked chain combos. An even better option would be a normal like Sagat’s standing short which hits twice AND give frame advantage. In addition Hugo’s Lariat option also loses to throw.
His answer for that would be EX-Moonsault Press but the meter usage is hurtful and you can punish him hard with a jump on wake-up.
Example @ 1:52 below
Spoiler
[media=youtube]zpl-GAWPx6U[/media]
His other solution would be to EX-Back Breaker there which again costs meter and in that situation would have been a guess. Both options he could potentially be punished for heavily.
I will continue to hold that Hugo is great but absolutely needs meter to be a solid character. Hugo gimmicks won’t last much longer.
I know Gems are banned, but I just wanted to point out that re-launch combos are a great way to set-up gem activations. There are gems that activate when you launch, and when your partner launches, so you can set up a non-quick rise knockdown with your point character coming back in with freshly activated gems.
Again, I know they are banned, but if that ever gets worked out, I can see relaunch combos becoming even more common.
Yep. I play with gems as much as I can and I frequently sacrifice a ton of recoverable life to get simultaneous 20% stat boosts. For me it’s definitely worth it.
When playing with gems, I need to actively start thinking more about my actual set up and working with it. I generally made most of my sets passive to work with my playstyle - as in, they’re not something I actively try to activate and I don’t necessarily have to plan around them.
Yeah. Gems can make the difference between winning and losing online, even just boost gems. Not game breaking in any way, but if you do them right it can only be beneficial. In terms of offense, I feel Onslaught gems are better than power gems in most instances. If they go off during long combos you essentially build infinite meter for that period, and for all teams it only takes three combos at most with meter to kill Hugo.
Speed gems are often neglected, but incredibly important to some characters. Take Bob for example. If you are able to stack Speed gems on him he can combo two jumping heavy attacks together, and it also makes his crossup game nearly impossible to react to. Sure they only last 10 or 15 seconds, but if the extra speed can get you one, maybe two combos you may not have gotten otherwise, that is incredibly helpful.
I said before in another thread about speed gems being incredibly useful… People find Ken’s air tatsu hard to block as it is, try blocking it when he falls 20% or even 40% faster, it’s a nightmare. My Ken’s gems are always 2 20% speed boosts and 1 40% meter boost. Once the speed boosts are activated it’s basically free damage because as you said jumping mix ups are extremely difficult to block.
I also said in another thread my gameplan changes drastically with gems equipped, and that strategic variation is something I really enjoy, and I feel is sadly overlooked by a lot of players especially in tournaments due to the fact ‘gems are banned.’
Not to mention gems can make “joke” characters surprisingly viable. Movement gems on Bob make him what we on his forum call “X-Factor Bob,” female characters/Akuma lose health disadvantages, King does so much absurd damage with power gems or builds enough meter with meter gems to put most enemies away after one post-launch combo and a correct guess on wakeup.
Just to be clear: speed gems only alter movement speed, correct? It doesn’t change frame data… BUT, it does affect jump speed, dash speed, etc., amirite?
So, would they have an effect on say, Julia’s EX PC since it’s technically coming from a dash cancel? I’m thinking no, but figured it’d be worth it to ask.
Complaining about time outs, low damage, low defense or crappy walk/dash/jump speed.
Solution:
Learn how to construct a useful gem loadout and think about how to manipulate gem activations to your advatage. Consider the scenarios your character has trouble in and design the loadout so that all gems activate as close to the same time as possible for maximum effect. Experiment with different speed advantages 10%/20%/30% etc and see which ones work best for you, speed gems can make okizeme more effective by altering how you approach, opening the doors for new safe jumps and option selects in situstions that your character couldn’t use before.