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JLM

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JLM

JLM

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Many many thanks to Nate for his assistance with my illiterate Xbox nightmare. Such lovely, lovely people in this thread. :wub:

So I'm going to the EHU tournament tomorrow, though Poison will be reserved for casuals unless I happen to play someone who is also using one of the new characters in tournament. May have to borrow a stick as mine is still not behaving as I want it to. It's not unplayable, but the bottom left corner of the gate feels a bit stiff/sticky and it is just enough of a hindrance to make me think about it when I'm playing and play worse as a result. What's more annoying is that I've clearly been changing my inputs to compensate for it, because when I use a stick that isn't faulty I end up getting extra dashes and jumps because I'm putting too much force on my qcb/fadc motions. These equipment problems have the worst possible timing.

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Goemon

Goemon

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Anyone feel this game wasn't ready to come out? Feels very rough around the edges to me.

I'm seeing a lot of slow down especially on ultras of the new characters.

Weird collision issues (Elena feels broken!)

Minging 'waiting for' mid fights online

AI on overdrive for countering moves (even more than normal)

Edition select missing moves - I noticed Ryu still has a 1 hit DP with is SFIV incarnation and Makoto has her 3f f+LP in SSFIV which I'm pretty sure she didn't get until AE

And of course all the missing content like new trials etc.

I'm really starting the think they forced this out the door because they said it would be there for evo which is only a matter of weeks away.

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Lyrical Donut

Lyrical Donut

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Yeah, I've seen the 'waiting' message plenty on both 360 and PS3 versions of Ultra. Never used to see it before unless I was playing against someone with red bars. Had a horribly treacly set against a friend on PSN the other night, it used to be fine. Noticed the Ultra slowdown with Decapre too.

Nate needs to get back on the phone to Combofiend.

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Qazimod

Qazimod

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Just updated some of my details on plop's spreadsheet; the information's going to look pretty bad on the SFIV tab for a while (until people make amendments after Ultra dabblings), but anyone who wants to find people to add should still have a look :)

clicky

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ah

ah

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GGs scott, nice to see you online :-)

Here is the JLM day one poison guide I was talking about:

Yeah, Poison's hit confirms aren't too bad.

Here is my Day 0 Guide to Poison. This is based on my time spent playing the character, the change lists and my relentless deovuring of any and all Poison gameplay footage I've found:


Easy punishes:

Meterless: Cr. fierce xx rekka rekka rekka

One bar: Cr. fierce xx EX rekka rekka rekka ender - > Whatever you like. Jump cancel, ultra juggle, DP juggle. If you get a free punish and have a bar it is never a bad call to do EX rekka as it leads to literally all of Poison's best things. Corner carries, leads to a mix up or leads to her most damaging one bar options.
.
Combos:
Meterless:

Cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing medium kick xx rekka rekka rekka
Cr. short - > standing short - > standing medium kick xx rekka rekka rekka

One bar:

Cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing medium kick xx EX rekka rekka rekka ender - > Ultra 1
Cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing medium kick xx EX rekka rekka rekka ender - > jump cancel - > normal attack into reset.

Two bars:

Cr. short - > stand short - > standing medium kicj -> xx rekka rekka - > FADC - > cr. jab - > standing medium kick xx rekka rekka rekka

Three bars:

Cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing medium kick xx EX rekka rekka rekka ender - > EX DP
Cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing medium kick xx rekka rekka - > Red focus crumple - > Anything you want.

Bread and butter strategy:

Control space, play footsies, zone a little, but if an opportunity for a corner carry or EX rekka arises, take it, take the corner and then never let the opponent out. Midscreen knockdowns and trying to set up vortex/shenanigans are not Poison's strength, and I don't think she excels at outright zoning either even though she has enough tools to make a decent stab of it. The corner, on the other hand, is where she shines as she can lock the opponent down with fireballs, then harass them with normals and mix them up with overheads, lows and grabs. She has a Gootecks shimmy of sorts where you fake the throw and then walk back and do cr. mk xxrekkas. Fierce fireball is +10 (!!) on block, so the pressure she gets in the corner off that is ridiculous. Unless the match up specifically requires you to keep the opponent out, your primary goal should always, always be getting the opponent cornered.

Essential buttons:

Cr. fierce. Anti-air. Bit like Sakura's but works better if you do it a touch earlier. If you do this it's less likely to trade and you cancel it into a meaty fireball for them to block when they land.
Standing medium punch is her other main anti-air. This is an exceptionally good button and is her best anti-air when the timing/spacing isn't right for cr. fierce. It's a bit like Chun's standing medium kick but it seems to have both a better hitbox and more active frames.

In the neutral you can do standing medium kick (Urien's from 3S basically) and buffer in rekkas in case the opponent walks into it. You can do this with cr. mk as well.
Cr. mp is like Sakura's with added range thanks to the whip. Again this can be cancelled into rekkas.

Cr. jab will be essential now that it's three frames. Her best panic/get off me normal at close range, and can be easily confirmed into standing medium kick xx rekkas.

General musings:

Her final changes are outstandingly good, aside from the removal of sweep cancels. At Hypespotting we noted that Rekka rekka FADC didn't lead to anything good, but she has a 3 frame crouching jab now that makes for nice extensions. Also at hypespotting her rekkas couldn't be cancelled on block and were ridiculously unsafe. You can FADC both the first and second hits on block in the final build. Heavy fireball being +10 on hit and +7 on block is excellent too, as mentioned above.

She seems like a solid middle tier character to me. Strong neutral game and footsies, though this is hampered by an abysmal walk speed. Offensively she has exceptional corner pressure but limited mix up potential in the mid screen as she has poor options in terms of cross ups or other ambiguous set ups. She has good resets and chip set ups everywhere on screen, but nothing that leads to monster damage. Her damage has been buffed if you want to spend meter, but she still has to hit the opponent quite a few times to win. Also her DP is weak and she's a bit like Chun where you have to make sure to press all the right situational buttons at the right times or your anti-air will fail and you will eat rushdown. I think she is vulnerable to mauling but will be useful if she can dictate the pace and control the screen well.

Oh, and her Super seems pretty rubbish, though I have no idea about the start up speed or if the different strengths do different things. Seemed terrible at Hypespotting, and it seems to me that EX rekka, EX fireball and EX DP are much better uses for her meter. I also have very limited knowledge of Ultra 2. Again, not sure of the range/speed/utility of it so it's hard to say anything useful. Ultra 1 is easy to land and does OK damage though.

As I probably made clear in my Hypespotting write up, she is the new character I will be using the most and I will try my very hardest to make sure she's a viable tournament character for me.

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Spuck

Spuck

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Too tired to do a proper writeup, but went to my first proper offline SF tournament today. Went with Fei as I've had almost no time with Ultra to try anyone new.

Went 2 -2 overall and pretty pleased with the way I played. Got to meet JLM and the guys from SFO who are all absolutely lovely blokes.

Witnessed the most amazingly epic Hugo- Fuerte match, which lets face it you don't see every day. The big lumbering oaf is ridiculous in the best possible ways.

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Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo

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Catching people's backdashes with Hugo's Ultra 2 might be the best thing ever, I almost wish I could be in the room with them to see their faces when it happens. I managed to land it on a Dhalsim player after option selecting it off a meaty clap. I still ended up losing the match because Dhalsim, but it felt good in a petty sort of way. Like when you stop someone perfecting you by landing a spiteful cr.lp right before you get knocked out.

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Plopboy

Plopboy

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Played a bit of ranked earlier (why I bother is beyond me) and had a through hard beating at the hands of some high ranked Decapre's and Rolento's. They just seem to be able to apply a lot of pressure and the fact I'm a bit pants.

I did manage to do legs into U2 with Chun which was nice but still haven't manged a win with her yet. Doing slightly better with Elf, but Hugo can be a nightmare with his anti air but I did mange a win against one of them, but overall left with much saltyness.

Then I got a quick game in this evening, I was going to see if anybody online fancied a few games but multiplayer Mario Kart was calling so I just had one against a Decapre who I don't think had played Elf before. Interestingly I managed to jab her out of her busy hands and unsporting took her for a trip on splash mountain and once again I like the game. I'm such a scrub :)

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JLM

JLM

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Plop, post another Chun video soon so I can go all Jellum on it. :)

Very enjoyable day out at the EHU tourney today. Met lots of cool new people, saw the softer side of Gunslinga, did terribly in tournament, met Spuckuk who is just as affable a chap as you would expect of a rllmuk SF4 thread regular and I had a man rage quit on me in casuals. Full write up to follow. Also I will be getting in touch with you amazingly kind folks who talked about maybe helping with my stick crisis. Everyone in here is the best.

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JLM

JLM

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Oh man, so aside from my write up, I need to say things about Elena. I've fought lots of terrible terrible Elenas already, but SFO Brylarke and Sprint from Manchester are attempting to play her correctly and they are easily the top two I've fought so far.

Stuff:

- Her jump is so bad it's good. I anti-air too early every time, and if she neutral jumps and doesn't press a button she can whiff all of your anti-airs. Plus she has buttons like Rufus' jump fierce where she can reach you but you can't reach her.

- Her hitboxes and hurtboxes make little or no sense. I don't know when I can grab her, I don't know if I've hit her crouching or standing, I don't know if the combo I'm attempting is easier or harder or impossible. She is a freak and she is literally the only character who can play footsies and alter her spacing by STANDING STILL. Freak.

- Healing is goooodliiiiiiiike. As long as you're not greedy and are ready to cancel it at the right time, it almost always has the potential to win you a round. I've had rounds where myself and Ant were both on 20% life with 25 seconds left. He'll land a forward throw and just take a little bit of healing and that is the round completely transformed. It's not a scramble situation, it's not about who has more clutch, she now has a lifelead that matters and the onus is all on me. I think healing is better than damage in so many instances. I think she's a really strong candidate for Wubble too, as it doesn't take 100% of full ultra healing to make that difference, and to have that as well as a one bar Brave Dance set up is pretty terrific.

- It took me til day 5 and an actual tournament to finally realise that her low jab is just a low jab. It looks like a crouching light kick because she, y'know, kicks you, but it is not a low at all. That was a huge breakthrough in the match up and one that I will have to keep reminding myself of over the coming months. It breaks all the rules of the game to stand up when a character is literally crouched as low as she can go and is kicking you in the shins, but this is the world we live in now guys. Her actual low short has shorter range, is not chainable and is also quite a tricky link to confirm into damage. Basically, as Brylarke explained, she has ranges where she can overhead and ranges where she presents a legit thread going low, and those ranges do not necessarily overlap. It's not about reacting to EX mallet smash (a near impossible task) but more about knowing when she's so close that EX mallet smash isn't even a thing any more and she can only go low. Until then you can high block as long as they're not going nuts with the breakdancing move or random slides. I will figure this alien character out soon and I'm grateful that our scene in the north has two fairly competent Elena mains already.

- Spin scythe FADC teleport is lovely. I love characters with teleport mix ups. Spin Scythe as a move is a funny one though. It does good damage and stun but it un-combos on some characters but not always and it is very dependent on standing/crouching/spacing etc. I definitely feel what Goemon (I think it was Goemon?) said about the game having some rough around the edge stuff.

- EX Rhino Horn has the best fireball invincibility of all. Sprint was fighting a Sagat at max Rhino Horn distance. He did it just as a tiger shot was about to hit him and went through it. So the Sagat player, reacting to forward movement, threw a second tiger shot and got it out just before she could stop him. She managed to pass through the second tiger shot as well and hit his recovery. So it seems to be projectile invincible both immediately and forever. I guess the fact that he jump will actually be a bit rubbish when people figure it out and is beyond useless against the likes of Guile means she needs strong anti-fireball tools, but having that as well as the amazing slide is quite an impressive set of tools.

- HER HITBOXES AND HURTBOXES MAKE LITTLE OR NO SENSE. Cannot stress this enough. I have seen her crouch under Oni's towards + MK step kick. The one that hits at waist height. Yeah, that one, low profiled it without pressing a button. She gets under Dudley's stand fierce for free as well. Nuts. So she's really low but also deceptively wide but also has deceptive amounts of pushback. What the actual fuck.

- Having a special move overhead, an EX special move overhead, two command overheads and a NEUTRAL JUMP TARGET COMBO is insane. So that's six different overhead hits that all come at different speeds. It's too bleedin' right that her low short isn't very good!

Please observe SFO Brylarke's little compilation of day 1-ish Elena heal scams and a couple of nice little combos:

The absolute robbery against Zabuza is my favourite one. Obviously the times where he just does it raw in the mid-screen are week one only, but off a forward throw, a crumble, a red focus crumple or her super she can easily get back enough life to turn the round on its head.

This all makes it sound like I lost to Elena in tournament today. I didn't, (I lost to something much worse :(), I'm just compiling notes on all the new faces like I did with Poison and I learned a LOT about that crazy lanky Kenyan lady today.

Oh, and Brylarke's Elena stick is great. He has white buttons but they have coloured borders around them. These colours match the colours Elena has on her bracelets, but each strength of button also matches that button's relevant colour when you have input display turned on. I love the attention to detail. A beautiful stick mod is high up on my list of "frivolous expenditures next time I have some disposable income" list, but a lag-free monitor and a repair job on my current stick are obviously ahead of it. Mowatman at the tournament today (and who I've played many many times in ranked) has an excellent stick too. Clear buttons, and a pink plexi artwork with Native American tribal-esque patterns all over it in white. When he sat down to play me and proclaimed "yes, they have the best Hawk colour!" I realised that it is not only a T. Hawk stick, but specifically a pink Hawk stick. What a guy!

Lastly, in response to this:

Today I found out that Hugos EX backbreaker can catch Fuerte out of his overhead...

Some Hugo stuff:

I played Cody against a Hugo. He jumped, I went for roundhouse ruffian kick but was really really sloppy and got EX by mistake. He did empty jump backbreaker and it caught EX Ruffian kick. That tiny moment where Cody leaves the floor before going into the slide. He grabbed that. Hugo really is quite a mess, but certainly a loveable one. We were talking today about how the attempts to make him work belie a pretty terrible character design. We compared him to Seth. Seth is too strong a character, so they gave him low health to compensate for all his overpowered tools. Hugo is too weak a character, so they gave him overpowered tools to try and make up for it. Armour on a normal attack, infinite armour on his lariat, a full screen super that punishes everything and leads to 60% damage, an anti-air grab ultra that covers about 60% of the screen, an anti-air grab special that grabs everything, that meatsquasher restand combo nonsense. He has all of these stupid things that no character should have, but you don't begrudge him any of it because he is so, so rubbish. When it works, though, my goodness when it works:

He gets lucky at the end because I believe Guile could punish that super with whatever he wants only Dieminion didn't know when the blockstun ended and missed his EX flash kick input. The air ultra was still a good choice though, as after the failed punish it would beat an attempted chip flash kick, and Dieminion would have to have bigger balls than carlito to not crack and go for said chip flash kick when a mashed SPD would kill him. I think Guile might not actually be as horrific for him as you'd think it would be. The main reason is that Guile can't hit the top right of the screen as consistently as a Juri, a Gouken or a Chun, so Hugo is actually able to walk and block and edge Guile to the corner. If it's about the horizontal game as it mostly is against Guile, Hugo has enough life to inch his way into standing strong range and make life quite difficult. Hugo's limited mobility is still a problem and I think it is tough, but at least in this instance his height doesn't make it *that* much harder than it would be for any other grappler. That first round, though, that round is money. Clap combos make me so very happy, and that little reset into ultra throw to clinch the round is the best. That's the thing that will make or break any Hugo player really. There are match ups where he will get in, get a punish opportunity or achieve corner pressure literally one single time. It it happens, he needs to win the round. Not just take a life lead but actually win the round there and then without ever letting them go. Against a character like Gouken, if Hugo has spent life getting in and then Gouken gets away one time the round is done. Whilst that can be true for Gief and Hawk as well, with Hugo it is more profound than ever. What's great is that he has the power to do it, but many of the cast also have the power to never give him a chance. It can boil down to 10 seconds of all or 99 seconds of nothing and, to me, it makes him a really exciting character to root for. Don't ever change big H. I also think with his replays, like Smuggles' Dudley, the ones with the comically short running time will always, *always* be well worth watching

I think Hugo's viability as a tournament character will depend on the popularity of his horror match up characters once this game has had some time to bed in. It also seems pretty obvious that anyone maining Hugo will need at the very least a pocket character or two because I believe there is simply no way to beat a Juri or Gouken (just two examples!) who doesn't make any massive unforced errors in judgment.

Here is one of those short Hugo replays to which I refer:

Ibuki comprehensively flattened inside 97 seconds or your pizza is free. Also, I know it's the xbox live special, but what kind of mad man do you have to be to throw out a random neckbreaker against Hugo? Alucard's punishes make me cry manly tears of joy. Fitzcarraldo, you should seriously watch all of Alucard's replays. He is finding all the right buttons and figuring out the match ups and generally being fucking excellent. The man is an utter beast and should be all the early inspiration the discouraged Hugo army needs to keep plugging away.

Probably best not to watch my T. Hawk performance against him here though:

SFO Savant is the man responsible for the single word of commentary in that clip.

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