warm hare
Feeling hardstuck at diamond 4. I have a general game plan, but find myself getting stuffed regularly in neutral whenever I think I'm in my effective range for normals. I feel comfortable with long range mixups and throw/jab range in general, but I often guess incorrectly at any range in between and get countered or punished when I'm trying to poke or whiff punish.
Any review and advice on core fundamentals to work on would be super helpful and appreciated
solemn lichen
if you could upload some matches where this happened or you don't know why you lost i can give some feedback
warm hare
I think these next two replays against Cammy are more representative of my gameplay. More mental clarity and trying to make guesses based on patterns
solemn lichen
Okay @warm hare i have some stuff for you to work on
Thanks for the replays!
I'll try and list from most important and urgent to not so urgent
1- work on your anti airs. Especially cross cut. Even if you can't DP be ready to jump back lk to catch them jumping over you. I think across all 4 videos i saw 1-2 DPs against many many jumps
2- improve your oki and corner control. Against cammy first march round 2 is a good example of what i mean. You get her cornered and start walking back and throwing fireballs letting her get out for free.
If they're in the corner you don't want to be further back than the game clock.
If you sit under the clock you can DP any jumps and counter DR/knuckle/di. if you walk in you can threaten StHP or crMK, and you can also sneak in a dash throw for example.
dont let them walk out of the corner like that. Akuma is strongest when theyre cornered, so take advantage of that
3- improve your combo routes. You have good light hit confirms and DRC confirms, but you're not doing as much damage as you can and not getting as good Oki as you can.
From lights end in M tatsu if they're standing or DP if not. Don't end in fireball, unless it's OD fireball.
From DRC you're doing DRC, stMP, StMK xx L tatsu DP. It's better to do something like crMK xx DRC xx stHP, stMK xx M tatsu if you're far from the corner, or H tatsu if that brings them to the corner. More damage and better wakeup pressure.
After m tatsu you can dash X2 and make them guess.
After H tatsu in the corner you whiff a StMK and make them guess
After you double dash you can:
A - go for a frametrap with 5MP, 2LP, 5LK.
If it hits do either H DP or M Tatsu depending if they're standing.
If they block you either end there or do a H Fireball at the end (but this can be DId)
B - Go for a tick throw with 5MP, throw
C - Go for a low string with crLP, crLK, crLP. If they hold back instead of down back you confirm into M tatsu and repeat
D - Throw
E - Backdash to shimmy.
If they fall for the shimmy, you can do 5HP xx 214 HP - P
After a throw midscreen you don't get very good pressure.
You have to Drive rush and manually time a throw, or an overrhead or any other medium, but this is vulnerable to OD DP
After a medium adamant it's also bad pressure.
You have to dash, then drive rush and manually time your options
Here's a corner drill for you to practice looping your offense
Set the bot to wakeup jab, wakeup throw and wakeup nothing.
Also set it to "block after first hit"
Do your combo ending in tatsu, whiff 5MK and do one of your options (ideally ending in H tatsu again).
If the bot wakes up blocking, don't end in H tatsu, but do a throw after the 5MP (or whatever button you chose)
Then do a dash and go back into the loop
You will need to practice because the timing for every button option,
Throw, 5mp, 2lp, 2lk are manually timed after either throw, dash or tatsu 5mk.
But that's the trade-off for getting the best mixup in the game
This is how you get them to the corner and keep them there until they guess right
4- you need better big punishes, you blocked Camny super and didn't do much
You could have done something like H adamant(without follow up) crHP xx H adamant with follow up.
Or H adamant, crHP xx l tatsu , H DP
Go into that Replay and do a takeover and see if you can find a combo that would kill without spending lvl 2.
warm hare
@solemn lichen Thanks for your time! Really appreciate all the actionable feedback. I'm going to work on this and follow up in this thread
warm hare
Combos and optimization aside, at some point I'd like to touch on midscreen neutral. At this rank if I'm patient and block everything, many opponents seem to blow themselves up with unsafe options. Wanting to learn how I can apply my own pressure and throw out my own buttons for the cases that my opponent plays safe tries to counter poke or whiff punish. Setups after knockdowns or jump-ins make more sense to me, but poking and whiff punishing in a true neutral state is something I'd like to improve on. Going to take a break for a bit and eventually come back with replays after some review
the sagat matchup is one where I run into this problem a lot. feeling like I'm usually outranged and can't get in for pressure with buttons unless its whiff punish or if I try to predict fireball/pokes with a jump-in or demon raid
Usually I just end up relying on playing the fireball war until they mess up, but that doesn't feel consistent or reliable since OD sagat fireball and lvl 1 feel like pretty strong options and I lose more drive gauge than I'm comfortable with to keep up
Thanks again!
solemn lichen
Yeah, playing neutral is hard.
You need to start getting used to knowing when you should challenge or not, as just blocking isn't feasible.
And no one has forever block strings, so learning more about that will help
You can start learning to poke with fHP and hit confirm into the target combo
Or StHP hit confirming into adamant.
And for counter poking crMP and StMK are pretty good with m adamant buffered
warm hare
So I'm starting to see that the point of these combos more or less is that they put me in a state of advantage where I can threaten throw or guaranteed natural plus frames or light strings into further mixups. Defaulting to light tatsu, dp got me a little extra damage, but not much else and I was missing out on the guaranteed mixups. Worst case scenario if I guess wrong on my Oki is I eat a raw super, DP, or we just go back to neutral but I'm still in their face.
Basically I'm prioritizing getting those guaranteed mixups and consequently spending less time overall trying to consistently play better neutral
Still getting used to learning when to take my turn vs respect the opponents in SF6 where so many normals are - on block. Coming from SFV where back and forth felt way more obvious to me since there were so many safe block strings
solemn lichen
Nice!
You got the spirit!
It's usually a trade-off of damage, corner carry and Oki.
Unless it's going to kill i prefer Oki.
But if it would bring them to the corner, then I'd do that.
So, if midscreen i get an in my thought process is:
If it's going to kill, l tatsu h dp.
If it's getting them to the corner, H tatsu
Otherwise m tatsu and repeat
And yes, they can guess right multiple times, but you need them to guess wrong once or twice to kill them, so take your Oki always.
Even being OD DPd or super isn't as bad in most situations.
warm hare
Other than or damage, does it make sense to cancel into light adamant instead of H DP on crouching opponents? +3 on hit and leaves you in throw range with a micro walk
solemn lichen
It does, for exactly this reason!
You trade damage for pressure
warm hare
Just broke into Master!
warm hare
Been playing for a while and found my new plateau at high 1300 MR. My options and pressure feel a lot more consistent, but I'm losing a lot of neutral through what feel like a lot of impatient moments. Whiff buttons or getting stuffed, and also getting stuck in block strings and not finding my options to get out. Having a bit more trouble finding specific things to work on other than unlearning bad habits through replays
I can't upload any videos at the moment, but here are some IDs from recent games
CFNM89PRA
JU4634JSR
3D368CPEQ
G58BKQNT8
if its helpful, here's my sfbuff https://sfbuff.site/fighters/1840465325/matchups
Also having trouble learning people's patterns quickly. Not much success against anyone who isn't repeating the same options.
thorny ruin
Also having trouble learning people's patterns quickly. Not much success against...
next time you're on dm me and ill help you
ornate sundial
just a couple things i've noted after watcxhing the above:
Bad drive meter management, you burn yourself out or shoot OD FB's from full screen.
You put yourself into the corner a lot and walk backwards
You're right, you whiff a lot of big buttons that are wayyyy out of range and get punished for it
Pressing a lot when your minus, i know above you said you find yourself in block strings a lot, best thing to do is go into replay straight after the match when you feel like it was a pure block string and look at the frame data, do replay takeover and find out what you can press in those situation.
I think in all 4 replays above i counted 2 maybe 3 anti airs, if you're going to play a FB game you need to improve this and change up your fireball patterns and distance, as it becomes easy to read and people just punish you for it
Yeah i feel like you don't really play neutral that much, you kinda just walk back and throw the odd fireball and try to skip neutral with demonflip dive kick or air fb etc... ST.LK is an insane button for Akuma in neutral and his F.HP, CR.MP, F.MK, CR.MK etc... is also really good, i didn't see you really use these in the above and instead kinda relied on ST.HK (Which is such a trap button for Akuma players and a bad habbit to rely on in neutral) and whiffing ST.HP
You give up corner pressure a lot when you do sometimes get them to the corner, you just walk back and throw fireballs and let them out for free. The corner is where Akuma is the strongest and you have to apply pressure on OKI. Such as Throw loops, Tick throws, ST.MP leaving you +1, charged FB leaving you +2 etc...
warm hare
Awesome, thank you for the detailed response. I'm definitely feeling myself get lazy with neutral and corner pressure after spending so much time on combo routing.
Seems pretty consistent with what I'm learning is a major weakness of mine— I play super passively, give up a lot of space, and don't take any space of my own. Most of my whiffed buttons are trying to catch someone walking in, not so much poking in my own effective range
Also haven't heard the tip for using stLK in neutral. I've mostly used it to check DR or dash
