The mid-range, what to do?

bypostman

New poster here, hey guys. Pretty new to SF4:AE, and fighting games in general, and only recently started playing online (and getting wrecked).
Anyways, I main Oni, and I'm finding trouble on what I'm supposed to do at midrange.
I'm cool with dodging fireballs and throwing them at max range, and to some extent trying to block and punish or throw close up.
But around the middle range I don't really know what I'm doing. Read about footsies and all, but once in game and at midrange, it goes like this.
-I walk up and c. mk + fireball.
-We both sit there, occasionally throwing out jabs or c. mk + fireball until we get pushed out of range
-Repeat.
Eventually somebody snaps, walks up to a throw or jumps in, but until then, it's static.

I'm just wondering if that's the way the game is played, or I should be looking for something, I dunno.

OMG its a duck

Well what else is there to do? You could use tools you haven't been using, like you could do f+HP if they're focusing a lot, or a fireball a little outside of sweep range, but just playing footsies, jumping if you think they're gonna fireball, walking up and throwing if they're gonna let you, is sorta just how the game goes until you get a knockdown and can start your pressure.

But there's a lot that goes into getting that one hit, probably a lot more than you're using. Try just replaying a situation in training mode of you and your opponent in a stalemate, figure out what his pattern was, and what you could have done to beat it. Then hopefully next time you see it, or a situation like it, you'll know how to break it.

ilitirit

bypostman, post: 7822617, member: 82401 wrote:

Eventually somebody snaps, walks up to a throw or jumps in, but until then, it's static.

That's more-or-less the point.

It doesn't always have to seem so static though - you could always just do something completely random like just holding forward, or throwing relentless fireballs, or jumping back to reset the situation (you will lose spacing though). A big part of it is also reading opponent's habits. If you know they're buffering a hadouken after cr.mk, then walk into range, block the cr.mk and then focus dash through the fireball and punish. Or just make the cr.mk whiff and then punish it. Or if you don't believe in their AA ability, jump over the and go for a mixup - either regular jump attack, tatsu, teleport or combination of the latter. I'm not too familiar with Oni's options though.

omfg

you could make that mid-range not exist. retreat (ex. focus attack+backstep or back jump), advance (ex. dash forward throw out some jabs)

bypostman

Fair enough. I guess I'm just getting used to the idea that matches (that aren't going to be one-sided) won't just be constantly rushdown or fireball wars.

GordonsBeard

Oh man, mid-range is like THE PLACE that Street Fighter happens. Unfortunately you've kind of laid out exactly what you do. If nobody is at the disadvantage you both wiggle and poke and just wait for the other person to make that mistake, or to get impatient.

Oni should just poke with the fireballs until you can get a hard knockdown, then start that oki madness. I'm not sure what Oni's "attack plan" really is though, he seems to have good damage output but he doesn't really excel at close range like some other characters (Evil Ryu) can do.