Abel a hard character to use for beginners?

abel
#1

Hi all. I don’t want to bog this forum down with posts from a beginner but I’m in need of some advice. I really never played any fighting game very much, and I’m trying to get into SSF4 now. I’ve been using Abel, having fun but I just can’t seem to get the hang of him. I feel like I’m constantly getting punished very hard while never really putting any pressure on and I don’t get many safe moves in. I either get rushed down and poked to death or people just keep jumping away and I can’t seem to rush them down.

Now I know Abel is a great character in the right hands…but is it just me? Or is Abel pretty hard for a beginner to use? I guess that’s my main question. I keep hearing that he’s really easy and all but I’m struggling really bad to get wins against people.

So yea, is Abel a hard character to use for beginners? or am I just bad and need to learn to play?

#2

He definitely is tough if you ask me. Gotta kinda know what your opponent is gonna do, how they react to pressure, how to punish accordingly… also he kinda requires practice for his combos. FADC c.hp is awkward, step kick to stand fierce is kinda awkward (whiffs on characters like honda), gets rushed down without meter… He’s fun but yeah if you show that you don’t have the execution for good punishes they can just walk all over you and jump for days.

#3

execution wise i don’t think there’s anything that tough for a basic abel besides the step-kick link and fadc to c.hp (as mentioned above).

abel was my first character and i think he is a pretty good character for beginners actually. without a great reversal option you actually have to learn to block/backdash. his moves aren’t safe and you’ll get punished if you just spam the same thing so it teaches you to learn your opponent’s patterns and act accordingly.

basically i dont think that he is one of the more difficult characters execution-wise and i think that by using him you learn a lot of the aspects of the game, more so than if you were to jump online and spam tiger shots with sagat. if you are asking what character to pick if you want to win and not get better, then it isn’t abel. if you are asking if abel is a good character for you to play as a beginner, then i would say yes.

#4

Yeah definitely. Back when i started playing him, i only got my ass handed by scrubs who were spamming jumping fierce/crouching fierce all the time and doing a throw here and there.
I’d say first of all, learn using the step kick frequently and vary your mixups after you do it. Try to bait Shoryus not just by standing next to em on wakeup, but also after a blocked crossup and always keep in mind when the scrub could dp you : D. If the other character has no viable wakeup options and no dp-like moves, try to keep up the pressure without getting predictable.

Another thing which was very important, at least for me, was getting pretty good at blocking. Because if you get rushed down and you just started playing sf, you can easily mess up the high/low crossup/no crossup predictions and eat a combo. Rarely use the Tornado throw as a wakeup. If you know he’s gonna bait it (what they often try), block it patiently and catch em with an EX TT when they are going for blockstrings as they are coming down. And don’t roll too much when it’s obvious since it can so easily be punished during startup or recovery unless you use the EX version. What i often like to do is stopping the change of direction after the first hit and then go for a TT or wait for a shoryu to punish (depending on the player), which works surprisingly often x D. Don’t spam the wheel kick, especially not from far away. The light kick version can be really good though (Cheesy tactic: Cancel a sweep into the light wheelkick. It’s NO combo i know, but the fast transition form low to high blocking often catches players the first time you use it at least. The EX wheelkick is great to get around fireballs of course.

When the opponent is too jump happy, learn to use your anti airs. I often find myself just sitting there blocking cause Abels anti-air options aren’t that great and I’m often too slow. But since most players tend to jump a lot against decent abels, just wait for it and then go for the crouching fierce (maybe crouching medium kick or light wheel kick) to catch em and maybe even follow up with another move (if you used the crouching fierce.

I’m certainly not a good player but I’ve been playing Abel for a while now and these are some hints i can give you that have worked for me and which helped me a lot.

#5

Was my first character for 4, and he took awhile. Much easier to start with a character who has a lot more solid of a gameplan, or if you want another grappler, Zangief.

Abel isn’t really that technical, he’s a few steps behind Viper, Ibuki, and Makoto, Gen, and Makoto who are all very technical, and settles a bit above the pack, but no excessively so. Almost like Super’s Chun-Li, but just requires good timing on throws and rolls vs. pokes.

You do need a good street fighter IQ to use him efficiently. I’d rather have one Abel who actually devotes hiomself to the idea of a “mixup master” then these droves of lazy turtling Abel’s who hardly roll or use pressure and just poke and wheel kick. He is very much in the rushdown aspect of characters like Dudley, with that roll being the best tool he has to turn the shift back to you.

Abel is a fun character, played him for awhile. If you don’t start out losing, then you’re not playing Abel, you’re just trying to use someone else with an old character’s mindset. He’s got an amazing amount of potential, use it all or don’t play him, and don’t worry about difficulty.

#6

Thanks for the replies. I actually got on today and did worse than I’ve ever done. I’m getting quite frustrated. I have almost 5000 BP but can’t break 1000 PP on XBL right now and it’s driving me mad. I’m the only person who seems to have that high BP but still has low PP.

I’ll just keep at it.

#7

Yeah man, definitely don’t give up. It takes time and you have to remember that everyone is working to improve their game too. I’ve been playing fighting games fanatically since sf2 and I still get beaten all the time, probably just as much as I win. Abel is a tough character cause he’s tricky but he has flow-chart type options so you have to keep switching it up and stay unpredictable. It’s not always easy to fool people enough times to win the match.

#8

SF4 was my first real fighting game and I picked Abel as my main. He definatly takes more work and effort than a shoto (ryu,ken) character and like people have said in this thread, you have to read your opponents and wait for them to leave an opening. In SF4 (old one) i picked up ryu for a bit and I found it so much easier to win matches against the same people, but the problem with ryu is that everybody uses him. When people see a good Abel they always get impressed. I get a lot of messages complementing my Abel (even though I suck), and thats because people hardly use him.

#9

I dont think abels tough for beginners, heck if youre a beginner, any character you use, youre gonna get pwned by a good/better player.

Its all bout learning/understanding how to use him, i dont see him as a hard for beginner character *like viper or gen or makoto maybe… Im not gonna say he’s easy too, anything is going to be hard for a beginner…

SF4 was my first FG that i took seriously and i started with abel, never switched to anyone else, and now im decent enough with him to compete at least at beginner-intermediate level :rofl:

Oh and practice x 9784561878.

I say play whoever you like playing, hard or not… learning to get good is the fun part imo.

#10

Learning to anti air, and anti cross up can be a bit hard at the start.

#11

Abel’s one of the easier characters to use imo, you just have to unlock the magical secrets of knowing how to block

#12

It can be tough, depending on your previous experience with fighting-games. But once you get it all down, oh how satisfying it is.

#13

I’m decent at blocking mixups and stuff but I have a hard time being offensive without getting punished hard. No spammable moves, lots of high risk stuff, etc. I’m slowly learning how to be aggressive without getting myself killed but I still have a hard time with people who turtle like Boxers and Guiles.

I’m seeing lots of improvements now thanks to these forums. I’ve come a long way from always whiffing sweeps and eating it bad.

#14

Abel can be very flashy when all his combos come out that hit hard and confusing the opponents.
However, he can play it another way. I met an Abel recently online, he is a bit different from all other Abel i have met. The user played him very effectively, means no wasted movement. Whatever input is for a purpose, to react what you do etc… So technically whatever he did caught me, used the Ultra superbly etc.

#15

I know exactly what you mean. I ran into an abel today, and the sheer elegance of his mixup made me look like a toddler struggling to walk next to an olympic sprinter. It just made me realize that I still have a huge airplane hangar full of room for improvement.

#16

I hate how easy it is to accidently supercancel with him.

Goddamn I have to slow down my rekkas so much with full meter.

#17

… What ? You ARE talking about Abel right ? You only need to input the QCF motion once for Abels 3 part CoD - the follow ups are done by holding forward and pressing punch… not by inputting another QCF+P like Fei Long

#18

Spoiler alert.

#19

Oh ok, I didn’t know you had to HOLD forward and press punch…this makes Abel much easier.

#20

In my opinion as a fellow beginner (I played a ton of SF2, and SF2 turbo…18 years ago, when I was 8, but I haven’t played any 2D fighters since until I started playing vanilla SF4 in january) the answer is maybe.

I think what it comes down to is natural playstyle. Abel doesn’t really play like other characters, to me anyhow.

Depending on your personal playstyle, this can make him very difficult for a beginner, or it can be the exact opposite.

When I started playing earlier this year, I struggled to find a main. Absolutely nobody felt natural. Sure, I could play most of the characters at a very basic level because of all the time I spent playing SF as a kid, but it felt completely forced and awkward. And then one day I played Abel, and it felt like putting on a glove. Almost as if he were somehow the character I had been wanting to play since I was a little kid without even knowing it.

So yeah, Abel felt easy for me…but at the same time, none of the other characters did. I say just play around with everybody until you find a character with a playstyle you feel a natural affinity for.

Or, if you’re dedicated to improving with Abel, but he doesn’t feel natural, that means you’re going to have to put time into understanding him. Watch videos of some of the better Abels, see how he’s supposed to be played, and as you try to mimic what you see you’ll begin to understand why that’s the way they play him.

My bad if that was overly rambling or incoherent, it’s late and I am freaking tired. Anyway, good luck man.