SF4 - Ireland Online - Evaluation Tread

joconnell

I'd say guiles range beats most of akumas low kicks so the demon or focus are the best options.

Kirby

All are dead mate.

joconnell

here's a goodun - FA into rush down on the sweep - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVLzvqzG-w0 at around 2:13

bush

Anyone on here main balrog play on psn or live?. Need to work on this match with chun li.

DarkTalant

I main rog but my internet is a bit touch and go atm, but if you want a few games you can add me.
EDIT: I'm BalMachinShin on PSN

Azza

Yeah good games RopeDrink, you certainly improved your game, but not enough to beat my secret main Dan :rolleyes:

Anyways, still much work to be done on my games, my c.lk block strings are terrible, one mistake and I'm eating that c.lpx3,c.lkxx headbutt combo, which you must of got me with 200 times.

I hate Rog's c.lp, its got great range, comes out in 3 frames and is chainable and its seems to allow for an easy link into c.lk to set up headbutt/ultra combo. If only Rog was forced to have to link c.lp if only for a day :P
It also makes tick throwing the asshole really hard. Get any where close to him and its mashed out like a machine gun.

Also have to work on my bnb cross up but due to boxers hitbox its not reliable on him.

Need to punish mistakes harder more consistently. Make better use of dash to avoid your direct jump in's and FA your dashes more often.

Azza

RopeDrink wrote:

How seriously do you take Ryu, Azza?

Who is this Ryu you mention, I never heard of him, he from Mortal Kombat?

Cunny-Funt

I'd love a chance to improve my boxer match up, don't face many good balrogs. Or at least haven't in months. His ability to jab into ultra is something I suck balls at dealing with. I main ryu but I play a range of characters , I could play some guile too although my poor guile has seen better days.

Don't worry while I'm experienced , I'm not that good a player, still on the pad sure. So you won't have to worry about getting slaughtered if we play. I generally switch around characters anyway so if one is wreckin your head theres a chance you could be destroying my next one.

I don't get the boxer match up all too well, for example I can focus some of his punch specials yet others seem to break it and I've a hard time telling which is which, they all look very much the same. I don't play balrog at all as you can guess, maybe I should really learn him.

Creature

Cunny I play Balrog. Gimme a shout on GFWL sometime if you want a game. I'm NeptuneCAKE.

chopperbyrne

bush wrote: »

Anyone on here main balrog play on psn or live?. Need to work on this match with chun li.

I know someone who plays a pretty decent Balrog. I'll ask him to add you whenever I'm home next.

It'll save me from getting beaten by you repeatedly anyway

Kirby

I need work against boxers. I added you Rope. Name of HokemPokem.

Red350

RopeDrink wrote: »

Cunny just add me and we can fight sometime - Also been meaning to have a few sessions with Redman but hasn't been on anytime I logged on.

Yea I haven't been on too much lately, just a few casual games here and there. You can blame the League of Legends beta for that, it's damn addictive.

I'll be on a bit this weekend, so if you're online I'll give you a shout.

chopperbyrne

bush wrote: »

Anyone on here main balrog play on psn or live?. Need to work on this match with chun li.

How did the games with Futurespect go?

bush

chopperbyrne wrote: »

How did the games with Futurespect go?

Ye we played a few games last night. To be honest he needs to be more aggressive.

L31mr0d

I'm on most evenings if anyone wants a game. Think I've played most of the GFWL players on here.

Been trying to take my Akuma completely back to basics, working a lot more on my footsie, zoning game and the use of my normals (Akumas c.HP has to be one of the best AAs in the game, the amount of Vega's I've frustrated with it.)

I realized I jumped right into learning combos without first learning how to properly use simple things like dash, focus attacks, or even how to use anything but dive kick off a demon flip. Mixing in the hammer fist and throw completely changes the opponents options. I noticed after using the dive kick too frequently, that the opponent would always jump on reflex to meet me. Using the hammer fist to knock them out of the air forced them to stop this.

Also, if they continually turtle the demon flip, using the throw seems to stop this. The throw is also severely underused, haven't met many Akumas online that use it. It does more damage than a normal throw and is a great move to keep your opponent in the corner.

That being said, I have a really hard time still against Balrogs, Bisons and Blankas (all the B's :pac:). These matchups are so specific that they completely lock down most of my options.

I'm getting ok against Balrogs (thanks to Creature and Ropedrink, who seem to be better than most of the Balrogs I've met online), Bison is hit and miss, depending on if the player abuses the headstomp or psycho crusher, but Blanka, goddamn Blanka. I don't think I've won 1 game against even scrub Blankas.

If there are any Blankas on the PC I'd love the practice. My PC username is the same as my PSN one: leimrod

Sagat06

I'm a Blanka player on the PC, I'll hit you up the next time I'm on

GFWL - eireblanka

Azza

Lets break Blanka down.

Blanka Ball/Horizontal Ball
Spamming s.lp or c.lp should stuff Blanka Balls. Watch out for whiff Blanka balls into throws, beast slide.

His ex.Blanka Ball goes through fireballs. So be careful when throwing fireballs.
Full screen lp.fireballs will recover quick enough to allow you block ex.Blanka Balls and thus auto set up Akuma's Demon. This is apparently Akuma's recommended strategy, just teleport away and throw fireballs when he doesn't have meter or your know he doesn't have charge.

Its also armor breaking so FA dashs don't work great against Blanka.

Electricity
His electricity gives him great frame advantage on block starting from lp.mp.hp and ex versions the frame advantage is +5 +8 +10 +8. So you best bet to attempt to stuff his next move is either a throw, s.lk or c.lp which all have a 3 frame start up. You could also use hp.dp FADC into Red fireball for decent damage.

To beat out electricity use c.lk or c.mk from a little distance out. Electricity will stuff anything you do at point blank range so make sure you leave a gap. You have to space yourself to stuff electricity. You should be be able to set up a bnb combo for Akuma from this situation.

UpBall
Blanka's anti air has great priority. Your generally not going be jumping in unless you are sure Blanka does not have vertical charge. Be careful of feints where he could still have charge like forward hop or Blanka Ball recovery. Remember even after hitting or trading with him he still might have charge in certain siutations. Never jump in on Blanka when he is on the ground, ex.upball stuffs alot. Sometimes you can bait this move out of Blanka when he walking by whiff poking and this get it to whiff and punish it on recovery.

Rainbow Ball
The regular version of this move isn't so great, FA works well on it, if he rebounds off you and lands in front of you finish the FA for juicy damage and combo opportunity. If he attempts to land behind you after the rebound dash out of the FA. His Ex.Rainball is alot more dangerous as its controllable. There is several uses for this move, Blanka can use it to escape a corner.
Directly hit you with or cross you up or whiff and go for throw as it recovers insanely fast. You can stuff the move if your quick by hitting him out of the hop start up phase, your best bet is to usually assume its a cross up and block accordingly but Akuma can always simply teleport away. If you see it coming from full screen you can jump neutral/back and attempt to hit him as he recovers from the move with j.hk and this is a potential combo set up for Akuma.

Beast Slide
This move is actually slow to start up (10 frames) but its movement animation is very fast making it hard to react too. Blanka can use this move at mid screen to punish careless fireballs both the regular and air fireballs. Depending on the range preformed it can be quite unsafe on block and its also vulnerable to FA's. FA's is a good way of dealing with poke happy Blanka's.

Ultra
Blanka has only 1 ultra set up thats very difficult to preform and not very practical. Therefore he relies on mistakes from his opponent to land it. It does insane damage if he does land it though. So a lot of the time you will see him throw it out on wakeup to attempt to catch a meaty poke or throw attempt. You can frequently bait his ultra out if you got the health to block it and then counter ultra it. If you don't have the health to block it teleport out. The order for blocking it at close range is low, high, low. It does insane damage on block too, probably the most chip damage in the game. So if your low health Blanka loves to sit the ultra on you while your waking up from a knock down. All you can do in this case is try to teleport out if you haven't enough health left to block it.

Blanka's mix up game.
The asshole has lots and lots of shennigans to throw at you.
When standing you need to be alert to hop cross over into electricity/throw.
His jump is quite fast and combined with j.mk he has alot of pressure options off cross ups mix ups.
He will use lp/mp blanka ball to whiff throw.
Same with ex.rainball ball.
Watch out for ex.rainball crossups.
He can bait you to jump at him by foward hopping and then stuff you with upball.

He has even more pressure options when attacking you when you wake up. As well as j.mk cross up and cross hops you can added ambiguous rainbow and blanka ball cross ups to add to the confusion. And if he at mid screen distance be wary of Beat Slide which he can use to surprise you on wake up. He has an overhead attack. He can attempt to poke you, or throw you on wake up as well. As previously mentioned he can sit his ultra on you to try to chip damage kill you.

Thankfully for Akuma his teleport can get him out of all sorts of bother and he has a decent reversal move in his shoryuken. Best just to get away and zone him.

The main thing to be alert to his ex.blanka ball. Forget about air fireballs while he has meter and charge. And when he doesn't you will want to space your fireballs just right.

Akuma has these guaranteed demon setups.
Blocked close slide
Blocked far slide (Super only)
Blocked ball
Blocked up ball
Blocked rainbow ball (a reversal is too fast, wait a bit)
Blocked Super/Ultra (a reversal is too fast, wait a bit)

Summary
Yeah Blanka is very tricky, he gots off scot free when knocked down but applies insane pressure when he knocks you down. He has the best mix up in the game, above average health and alot of unique tricks and gimmicks. His pokes are decent. He isn't really a combo orientated character have only one or two practical combos. His downsides are he only has 1 ultra set up but it isn't really practical and alot his special moves are unsafe on block.
You need to know his tricks and how to punish his specials and bait alot of his moves.

D4RK ONION

You should do one of those for every character Azza! I was playing a very good Ryu last night in Championship mode and after I was beaten, (only barely, I'm still very new to honda ) I got a message asking me did I post on boards.ie... turns out it was meducation(sp?). Very good match.

bush

I disagree with blanka having the best mix ups in the game. In my opinion he is nowhere near the best. Zangief, akuma, abel, viper and el fuerte all have better mix ups. Even chun rufus and sakura and cammy do too come to think of it.

chopperbyrne

Sakura probably has the best mixups in the game. Fuerte is good too and his splash will trade with just about anything they try on wakeup, so he can be pretty safe.

bush

I think abel has the scariest mix ups cos they can lead to a tonne of damage whereas with blanka they lead to **** all damage.

Azza

Well in terms of options Blanka pretty has more options than anyone else and basically have access to every offense tool in the game bar command throws and the damage output is reasonable.

Zangief doesn't really have a mix up. Everyone knows what coming when he knocks you down, the cross splash of doom and unless your name is Akuma or Gen you will be playing a 50/50 guessing game where you guess right and your out guess wrong and your in for a world of pain and another round of guess that spd/larait. Of course its only 50/50 if its the corner though, you have other options to get out if not.

After that you can safely assume no matter what your doing or what the Zangief player is doing the Zangief player is buffering 4,000 spd's per second......the wanker!

C.Viper has not really that many options more than your average character, cross up's and cross up burn kicks (which isn't an overhead) and overhead attack. So really she has about the same amount of options as most of the cast with the exception of her Seimso and Kuncle. But the execution required for Viper is probably the highest in the game. And unlike Blanka who doesn't have to worry about mix up's at all on wake up Viper sucks on wakeup.

Akuma seems about the shoto standard on mix ups, just everything he does hurts like hell. He has his flip kick and angled dive kick but its not too problematic. His mix up game against waking opponents is about typical for a shoto. After that he just has a great zoning game with all his scuttery fireballs.

Elf Fuerte's mix up game is good, but getting it started is problematic, he has the odds even more in his favour than Gief in his mix up game on wake up but unlike Gief it doesn't do near as much damage meaning he needs to get his mix up going several times around and hope his opponent guess wrong 2-3 times on every knock down. His non wake up game will revolve around his dash moves and cancels, controllable wall jump and his anti air leg grab. But he requires a lot of correct guessing to use right.

Abels mix up's are good and highly damaging alright, he has a roll thats similar to Blanka's hop and an evil command throw, His Rekka's are utter scutter to get out of. During regular play constant rolling is confusing and your never sure witch way to block. He still dies horrible to Gief though and has no range game, crap wake up game and terrible anti air. The trick is to not let the flute get in anywhere near you.

Cammy, Sakura and Chun are no where near as close to having a good mix up game as Blanka. All cammy has is speed on her side when performing cross ups. I don't find Chuns jumping target combo too bad, or her loop kick on wake up. Overall I don't fear them on wake up too much.

bush

Your really over estimating blankas mix ups. You may aswell forget about his hop gimmicks, that doesnt work anymore and never really worked in the first place. Whats the worst that can happen with blanka? You get thrown or hit with electricity or a low damage combo.
You have to fool someone a lot to win with his gimmicks and everyone knows his gimmicks at this stage too. Most people just block everything now. Thats why you see everyone moaning in the blanka thread on srk that they are getting destroyed when they get to g1.
Even when I play with chun I can do way more damage with her mix ups. Hasan shu combos into ex legs which combos into a tonne of stuff in the corner. Blanka has nothing like that.

Creature

Yeah Abel is the king of mix ups IMO. Playing a good Abel is always stressful for me.

Azza

Sure people may have learned to deal with his mix up game but people will also learn to deal with everyone elses mix up games too.

Blanka's damage potential isn't that great alright, he has one solid 4 hit combo that does reasonable damage and it works off a direct jump in and cross up.
But I still think his mix up game is great. I think your confusing damage output potential with mix ups. I think what Blanka is missing outside his Ultra is a way of massively punishing someone for a mistake which the top tier characters do have.

Bison is in a very similar boat to Blanka, except he's mix up game is a lot worse and he is a lot more predictable. Like Blanka he doesn't have any great mistake punisher's and relies a lot on single hit moves and pokes. Bison does have decent direct jump in combo's and an okay cross up combo, but his main weakness is his terrible defense which is the polar opposite to Blanka. After that Bison has one safer special which he can use a lot but its far from bullet proof.

If you think the Blanka forms are whinny visit the Bison forums!!!

I agree other characters have better damage output potential off reversals and combo's but it doesn't mean they a better mix up. It just means mix up are a less solid strategy as the risk reward isn't in the attackers favour, he has to get his mix up to connect 2/3 times to match the damage output potential from certain characters. Similar issue to Bison.

Doctor DooM

If someone wants to do one of these with me and can record on PSN, let me know.

Azza

Wish I could record the matches between myself and Bush. Always interesting , always hard fought.

Last few time I have played him I was doing well against his Blanka and was hoping to keep the form going.

But tonight he switched to one of his secondaries Chun Li. Normally I don't have a problem with his Chun but tonight he had a new tactics for her.

He would either keep full screen away and use a fireball to bait me to jump over or slide at him and then I eat her horrible neutral jump hard kick and that would lead onto to a combo.
Any attempt to jump in was meet with ex.spinning bird kick.
Otherwise he follows the fireball in and either uses the fireball or a poke to get me into block stun and mix's up between jump in's, sweep or her spinning split kick move (which is an overhead). When I was knocked down I was getting pressured by ex.legs which really hurt and with a dash of air throw thrown in to her already powerful air game, I had no answers. I tried rushing in when Chun had no meter at start of round but that didn't work either.

So after beating me 6-0 he moved on to Rufus his other secondary.

Again I can normally deal with this. Rufus is pretty crappy on defense with out meter and has a hard time getting round Bison's roundhouse. So usually aim to zone him out with roundhouse and keep him from starting dive kick pressure. Worked in the first game but he got on top in the second and third games with dive kick pressure. PSN disconnect killed the third match when he was 2 rounds to 1 up. Came back and was able to zone him in the next 2 games. So technically speaking 2-1 to me.

Then came his Blanka. I was able to play how I did against the last few times, I have learned how to handle his feints, baits and pressure better over time and am able to avoid a lot of his traps. This match up keeps evolving between the two of us. I have started to work in some wake up pressure into the game by simply not attempting to meaty attack him every time and eat Ex.Upball for my trouble. He can't really risk throwing out anything more than feint specials as everything he has is vulnerable on block. So its really a question of who can capitalize on a mistake and then apply the better pressure. I think I beat his Blanka 5-3 or 6-3. So I'm happy enough that lately I have been winning more against his Blanka that a few months back.

Back to his Chun. It dawned on me that his tactics where similar to his Blanka Ball feint into neutral jump but I need different way around it. Game felt similar to Guile with his lockout. So I decided to turtle like a mofo. Devils Reverse over and over to build meter and not get starved of meter like in the first games against his Chun. Her fireball pressure is no where near as bad as Guiles so they where easy to avoid and I was able to deal with her jump in with neutral jump medium kick and I had more meter to escape on wake up if she did get a knock down. No more jump on Chun with meter and charge. Applied pressure more selectively and suddenly the matches where very even.
So I was able to win 5-4 I think before he had to go.

Overall always hard fought games but I always like playing Bush cause he always has something new up his sleeve in terms of tactics. Games have a high degree of adaptability with each player looking for holes in the other persons game plan.

bush

Azza wrote: »

Devils Reverse over and over

I cant tell ya how much that frustrated me :pac:
When you first started doing that I kept trying to attack but got nothing but more frustration. I said **** it if he wants to turtle I can turtle too. Devils reverse is such a dumb move used like that, all it does is stall matches. You can ultra that move but I couldnt even get ultra to come out at the end, nevermind land it. I was fairly tired at that stage, playing all night.

You definitely have the upper hand in the blanka match at the moment. I need to come up with something new. Its been going back and forth for months.
I havent really been using blanka lately. I could nearly say chun is my main now even if I dont win near as much with her.

Azza

Bush wrote:

When you first started doing that I kept trying to attack but got nothing but more frustration. I said **** it if he wants to turtle I can turtle too. Devils reverse is such a dumb move used like that, all it does is stall matches. You can ultra that move but I couldnt even get ultra to come out at the end, nevermind land it. I was fairly tired at that stage, playing all night.

I remember reading on shoryuken the recommended approach for the Chun match was hardcore turtling so I decided since nothing else was working to use it.

Its not actually a dumb move when I use it to turtle. Its hard to get in on and it builds meter and it did not just stall matches it helped change the outcome. I don't think you can ultra it if I land full screen away when using it to build meter.

Hate it that Bison has to turtle so much against a lot of the cast. He was orginally designed as an offensive character but he isn't in SF IV. He really should have better options for getting in on characters like Chun and Guile. Its retarded that I can be in the air long before either character but they can jump up much later and stuff me clean with one of there air normals or air throw. I want the old Devils Reverse back, the one where I don't know where its going.

blag

Azza wrote: »

I want the old Devils Reverse back, the one where I don't know where its going.

Ah yes,the super sf 2 devils reverse was a thing of beauty.The original and best!

I agree with you about the turteling though (as we've discussed many a time).It's silly ,but I do find the Chun match easier to handle when it's a good player when I turtle like hell.

Definately not my style but it has to be done sometimes,I've accepted grudgingly.