Bronze Kimberly - need constructive criticism / feedback please

[wind kayak]

From the first video what i see that are not good:

1. You need to confirm bushin chain (either after a crouch/standing LP), never do it completely on block, it is very unsafe
2. When you hit with run, you should follow up with kick since it will combo. The grab can be a reset attempt but its not safe.
3. Never do random vagabond, it is always unsafe, it should be confirmed from a light if you use the light version.
4. Be careful with the slide, it is unsafe if you do it very close, even on hit!

There might be more but other than that, you have very solid anti airs with crouch HP!
I would suggest you to use more cr MP on oki, it can follow up to MP > HP > run slide or M vagabond
Also you have a very good poke move which is Standing MK. It goes far and you can cancel into run, which will combo on counter hit and otherwise is safe on block if you let the animation finish without hitting a button

[patent venture]

Thanks - some stuff to work on there 🙂 I think the first three hits of the bushin chain are -12 on block actually - I looked it up earlier. I just find it really difficult to confirm off lights.

[patent venture]

Had a 6-win streak that's got me up into Silver 1 just now - still finding it really difficult to "get in" and just to use the run sensibly but I'm getting more consistent with my heavy punish combo which is helping and have been trying to use the cr.MP st.MP > st.HP xx qcb.HK bnb a lot more. I'm also using lights a lot more but i'm find it difficult to hit confirm them (ie. two of them...) into something more damaging which I guess will be my next "thing" 😄

[wind kayak]

Next thing you need to incorporate would be raw drive rush which is very strong on Kimberly

You can also fish with St MK and buffer a DRC

[patent venture]

Yes I was looking through some silver / gold replays and note that people do that a lot and it seems to work.

[patent venture]

Ok, so I've lost a decent number of sets in a row just now and I'm at a loss - nothing seems to work, I block they throw, I throw they strike, I strike, they DI / invicible DP / whatever. I feel like I'm literally 2 seconds behind the play at all times. I feel like I'm going backwards at this point and it's very depressing as I'm investing a fair bit of time into this and am getting precisely nowhere.

Is there anyone out there who actually plays Kimberly at any kind of level that can give me some concrete things to do / plans for how to approach this game (?) as literally all I have right now is a half decent AA (which often trades due to cr.HP being stubby as hell and me being nowhere near fast enough to qcb.K as a better counter) and a reasonable whiffed SRK punish which I execute most of the time (although interestingly looking at these replays that was pretty crap too). Especially when someone "turtles" and refuses to come forward I have literally no idea what to do. If I try to approach them I get countered / thrown / DI'd / whatever (see Chun game below for an example...).

https://youtu.be/VN4tDUBr_Ag

Looking at these replays myself - the first (JP) is terrible - I think I've only fought him once or twice (at Iron level) and I have literally no idea what to do. I know most if not all of his moves are slow but that command grab and combo into super that did 50% of my health in one go are total BS as are those full screen projectiles. Aside from that, meh, there's loads of places I can see where he was doing super unsafe stuff that I didn't punish but in the fight it's difficult to spot those when you don't know what you're looking for.

Second, against Chun - again, I really have no idea what she does that can be safely punished and once she started sitting back waiting for me I was out of ideas and just reverted to type.

Third against Cammy - I felt like I was swimming through treacle here - couldn't react to anything and the fact that modern get to mash out auto combos followed by super with their face doesn't help either (I know... "git gud scrub"). I don't generally have that much of an issue with Cammy but I've no idea what's going on today but I'm not able to react to anything - everything is simply too fast.

The last against Kimberly was just horrible. I know the bushin target combo is unsafe btw but I kinda didn't care at this point. Again, I'm simply too slow to react against these fast characters and seemed to guess wrong every single time in this match.

I'm actually at a loss to take any positives at all from any of these replays which makes it worse. Note that the losses per-se are not what's annoying me the most. I expect to lose a decent amount of matches down here in Silver as I'm not good enough to be at this level - I basically got here with a 7 game streak against truly terrible players where I simply had to AA repeatedly to win.

[wind kayak]

When you have oki, you are defaulting to only 2 things: throw or bushin TC
You should try to meaty and actually confirm it.
You cant confirm directly into bushin TC like you do.
I would recommend you to go to training, to put guard to random and try to do 2 crouch jabs.
If the first hits, you can confirm it into the TC / light vagabond / tatsu

A second thing you can try to meaty is cr MP. If it hits, then you can confirm into cr MP > st MP > st HP > run slide

If they block then you either keep pressing/walk forward and throw (but be careful because your buttons are minus, only attempt that if you notice that they keep turtling), or else you just block and concede your turn

Maybe @lunar river has better advice for you they are a very good Kimberly player and coach

[patent venture]

Nice - thanks for that. I’ll look into that cr.mp combo as I’ve not come across that variant before. I really struggle with any kind of combo off lights - that actually is the kind of thing I’m actually practicing but getting it to work in a match is another matter!

[patent venture]

Had a horrifically bad day yesterday - was incredibly salty as I was on a major loss streak and not really sure why - lost over 500 lp. I think tiredness and just bad reactions as a result was the culprit. Come on this morning and put a 10-win streak together in ranked to go from low Silver 2 to Gold 1. This is my first character in Gold so I'm pretty pleased. Even better, my 10th match in that streak to rank up was against Juri who I have an absolute NIGHTMARE against generally.

Question: is Gold any different really to Silver or is it more of the same right up into Platinum as the ranking is all over the place at the moment?

Question: the main kind of character I'm having issues with is still people that "turtle" and simply react to stuff you do either with jab or DI (as my reactions to that are still horrible). This game-style seemed quite prevelant at Silver level. I'm way better when the other person is coming forward and actually trying to contest. How do you go about beating the turtles? Is it simply a matter of getting in there, throwing / trying to mix it up a bit or is there some strategy to beating this gamestyle?

[patent venture]

Ok - so here is a link to my last 3 matches. They are all (barely!) wins as I'm still on a streak but I feel like I'm still playing pretty horribly. Could someone please take a look and give me some more constructive criticism? Is there anything I'm actually doing well here? These two (Juri and DeeJay) are in my top-3 horrible matchups but I can see that DeeJay especially was mashing a LOT of buttons in this match. I did keep getting the teleport instead of tatsu which was annoying also (!) - I didn't mean to teleport 3 times in a row 😄

I do note that there were a number of times I could have punished with a proper combo but settled for a sweep or throw which is pretty rubbish. I can get proper punishes out in training and casual matches but when it comes to ranked I'm still a mess and feel like I'm being rushed the whole time. I think I did manage to get something that looks a bit like a punish out a couple of times but it's annoying when Kimberly barely does any damage to leave a lot of it on the table so to speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZx0_SChujg

Further question - at what point do people generally start trying to integrate a "DP" style AA into their game? For Kimberly this would be her tatsu (ie. qcb.HK). I've managed to get it out in matches a few times today but I really have to just concentrate on just that.

[wind kayak]

If suggest you to ask in #sf_coaching to take a look cause it seems they are not so much active here