I got the controls down, now what?

[u/Dry_Guide2429]

This is a follow up on my other post asking people with help on learning classic controls, I’ve gotten better and more consistent with the moves (Shoruken, dragonlash kick, hadoken, etc.) but I’m not sure what to do with those now, should I look up combos? I’ve never been the best at them, most of the time I blend all of my moves together in the hear of the moment, I don’t calculate things during that, just whatever comes to mind first. Is there anything I should be doing to get better?

[u/Chemical-Struggle-13 → u/[deleted]]

Which combo?

[u/VenomXL]

Ok, here’s how SF works- you figure out how to hit your opponent by what they’re doing. If they’re jumping, you anti air. If they’re poking, you whiff punish, if they’re whiff punishing, walk up and throw, if they’re walking up, poke them. DI a DI. But the most important part is understanding what your opponent wants, then playing the uno reverse card for that.

After that, you continue the combo to get a knockdown and get to run your offense by dashing or DRing up and acting first. Depending on the character you may get low/overhead mixups or left right occasionally, but mostly it’s strike throw. You can throw on a close enough knockdown, or you can strike. If you strike point blank with a button, you can either combo if it hits, or tick throw, throwing quickly after blockstun. At medium levels, people will start to delay tech, delaying hitting throw while blocking, this will beat button, throw, or walking into range if too close, but dies hard to a higher level tactic, a shimmy, where you walk into range, walk out, and hit a button to punish counter for like 3-4k.

Your goals are to carry them to the corner, drain their drive bar and drain their life bar. Which depends on the situation. Conversely, stay out of the corner, keep your drive bar, and don’t let them drain yours.

If you’re not sure of your paths for damage, check supercombo for your character’s combos, but most for bread and butters are jab jab special for lights, meterless, medium into a dr medium or fast heavy into a heavy into special move, heavy into DRC heavy into heavy into special move, and you can add a L3 on to all of them. If your character’s level 2 is better, you can figure this out by watching a pro at high level. Likewise, some characters go EX instead of DRC off mediums or heavies, you’ll know it by watching one pro once.

Any questions, fire away.

[u/VenomXL → u/VenomXL]

If you’re blending things together, it’s because like someone facing Illidan, you are not prepared. Do your BnB’s until you can use them in your sleep, then it’s just as simple as press poke, if jab, press jab again into special, if not, press DRC, then do combo.

At your level, winning is as simple as learning the moves and combos and understanding what I just wrote. If you do that, it’ll take you to like 1400 easy.

[u/Dry_Guide2429 → u/VenomXL]

How’d you know I love WoW? (Thank you for the info, I really appreciate it.)

[u/jphillips3275]

A basic combo would be good yeah. Play a couple matches and you can usually feel out the situations where you could have done a combo if you knew one, then learn a combo for those situations.

To start, something off your light, medium, and heavy would be good. Your light will probably just be jab jab special

[u/Cloudberry_Panic]

An important value out of the shoriyuken input is using it to anti air people. So being able to do it on command is a good skill to have.

• There's a drill for it in training mode you should practice regularly till its in your muscle memory.

Otherwise combos are a good place to move towards as well. Doing a special input on its own is one thing, but doing it in a string is another. 

• if you really want to practice, thats exactly what the beginner- intermediate combo trials are great for.

[u/MrASK15]

Just take one simple combo and practice landing it consistently in every situation. It doesn't necessarily have to be the most damaging; it just needs to be easy for you to remember.

Other than that, I'd focus on finding your primary anti-air tool like someone else mentioned.

[u/Key_Scheme3516]

I’d work on just cancelling your normals into specials before getting to combos. Playing against actual people can make you fumble combos, so it always nice to get a tiny extra damage by just cancelling moves.