General Option Select Thread

#1

I originally wrote this for the Akuma section, but I thought some of the information in here can be useful to everyone. This was written with respect to Akuma so a lot of the examples deal with his option selects, but the general principles apply to just about everyone.

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So for the longest time players around here have been asking “What’s an option select”, “How do I perform it”, “Against ____ what OS should I use?”, and many similar questions. So since I won’t be able to do a video on it anytime soon thanks to technology and time constraints, I thought I would do the forum a favor and make a mega thread about OS.
Here is a quick FAQ on option selects before we get to the core.

What is an option select?

An option select is a series of overlapping inputs that can give you two different attacks depending on how your foe reacts. For instance on a jump in if you double tap HK while holding downback you will perform an option select sweep. If the jump in connects the sweep will not come out, but if the jump in attack whiffs then the sweep will come out.

How does an option select work?

Option selects have existed in street fighter since the beginning and nearly all of them come from the way hit stun works in this game. If you observe when you connect an attack, blocked or not, the game slows down for just a split second. This little slow down is what allows most OS to work. Some OS work on the principle that the game can lose inputs that were entered before the attack connected. Some OS work on the principle that the slowdown can change the timing needed to link attacks. In the end most option selects come back to using this slowdown to your advantage.
Now there are also some OS that work off slightly different principles, but these are not as common and were more prevalent in 3rd Strike than SF4.

**So what kind of option selects exist. **

There are 4 main types of option selects that are used on a regular basis. For the moment we will focus on the 3 types that people aren’t really familiar with.

1: Jump in Option Select

This is one of the most important option selects for players to learn because these are the option selects that will keep your opponent from escaping wake up pressure. These option selects are perform by using a jump attack and quickly performing the desired option select as you are landing your jumping attack. Practically EVERYTHING can be OSed off of a jump in. Ultras, Specials, Normals, etc. You name it you can OS it.

2: Chain Option Select

These option selects aren’t as critical to learn, but still something you should learn to help your offensive game. These option selects work off the chain properties of your light attacks. For any normal that can be chained into another normal you can perform a chain OS rather easily. This is done by performing the first attack in the chain normally, but on the second attack you press the second normal in addition to the normal you wish to option select to. For instance you can OS sweep off of your crouching jabs by inputting c.LP, c.LP+c.HK. If your opponent back dashes the first hit will whiff fast enough that the second attack will count as a link instead of a chain and since the HK button has priority over the LP button the sweep will come out. Conversely if the first jab lands the small pause in the game will make the second input come out too soon to be counted as a link so instead it counts as a chain. Since c.HK cannot be chained from c.LP the game will read the input as simply another jab. This by far is the easiest option select to learn and is useful for dash happy opponents. In general these types of OS are used to counter dashes, but they are usually limited in what you can OS off of.

3: Recovery Option Select

These are probably the most difficult to learn because the room for error is the lowest out of any option select and the price for screwing up is also the worst. That being said this option select allows you to OS any special off of several normal which gives you another level of freedom that chain OSes do not. As the name suggests this OS takes advantage of the recovery frames of your normals to create the option select. The way you perform these option selects is to perform your attack and input the command for the special move with slightly delayed timing. You are trying to time it so the input for the special move co-insides with the recovery frames your special attack. For instance one great option select for many match ups is the c.MP OS SRK. This is great against Vipers who love to burn kick through your block strings. You begin by using your c.MP and input the SRK motion shortly after. You are trying to time it so on hit you finish the SRK input AFTER the active frames of your attack and before you recover from the attack. If you hit it too soon you will cancel the MP into the SRK, but if you hit it too late you will link the attack. In Both situations the SRK comes out which isn’t a good thing. If you time it correctly however the SRK will only come out if the c.MP whiffs.

My random scruby friend said OS is so cheap and should be removed from the game, what do I tell him?

First tell him he sucks. Second option selects are not brainless and actually are quite the opposite. It is very rare to have an option select that beats everything and usually if they exist in a match up it is because the other character sucks. Half of learning option selects is know when you can apply them to a match because if you option select the wrong move you can end up getting punished for it. You need to be able to read your opponent to use the correct option select.

So now that we covered what OSes are let’s talk about some of the commands to do them.

Air OS

For Air option selects the general formula goes like this

(Air attack)—(Command for your OS)—(Hold DB plus the attack button for the OS command)

So for a simple specific example let’s look at Akuma’s option select for sweep off of a HK safe jump

j.:hk:, HOLD :db:+:hk:

The reason you hold the :db:+:hk: is this gives you a third OS that blocks if your opponent reversals. But suppose we are fighting a character like Bison who likes to EX Psyco and teleport on wake up. The sweep isn’t going to cut it. Instead we wish to OS a HK Tatsu to catch a Bison teleport and beat his Psyco crusher. The command would change to something more like this

j.:hk:, :d::db::b:, HOLD :db:+:hk:

Generally OSing special moves requires a little more practice than OSing normals. OSing sweep is incredibly easy since all you need to do is tap HK after your air attack. EVERY OSed special is performed in a similar manner. So for example OS fireball would be a quarter circle forward instead of back. A SRK would be the forward SRK motion. You can OS anything and everything off of a jump in so experiment with it. You might find an awesome OS to beat out that one move that has been driving you nuts.

Chain OS

The chain OS is unbelievably easy to do. The hardest part of learning it is simply working it into your muscle memory. It is usable in nearly every match up.
The general form for this OS is

(Chainable normal #1)—(Chainable normal #2)+(Option normal)

The most common OS from this family you will use is the sweep OS. So for Akuma the command will be

c.:lp:, c.:lp:+:hk:

If the first jab whiffs the sweep will come out on the second hit while if the first jab connects you will simply do two chained jabs which is an air tight block string. Another one that can be useful for OSing standing normals is a chain using s.:lk: instead of c.:lp:. The command for OSing standing HK would look like this

c.:lp:, s.:lk:+:hk:

This is also useful for catching back dashes especially against characters like Abel where you can get a full combo into sweep from it. The shorter the distance someone’s back dash takes them, the better this OS is. Nearly any normal can be OSed from a combination of these two.

While this series of OSes are incredibly useful, they tend to be limited to OSing normals. So in cases where you need to OS a special move on the ground you need to resort to the last series of OSes.

Recovery OS
We now get to the last and hardest OS to learn. Unlike the other OSes which have rather relaxed timing, this OS is very intensive on its timing. As such I tend not to use this one online because it is easy to screw up offline.
The general command for this family of OSes goes like this

(Normal), slight delay, (Special move input)

A specific example of this is c.MP OS MP.SRK which is useful for people abusing neutral jump and also for characters like Viper who try to burn kick through your strings. It also tends to be one of the easiest in this class of options.

c.:mp:, slight delay, :f::d::df:, :mp:

The key to this is just to practice in training mode. If you get the timing right the SRK will not come out when you hit your opponent. If you time it early then you will cancel the MP into the SRK, if you time it late you will link the MP into the SRK. You have to hit it right at the recovery of the MP. Both late and early are bad for your health. You can also do the HP version, but the damage you gain off of it kind of sucks.

You can technically do this off of any normal, but the faster the normal the harder it is to do. In addition slower normals are kind of pointless to do this with in most application.
This is the most versatile ground OS, but it carries the most risk.

Chain and Recovery Hybrids

Now there is also a hybrid of the chain and recovery OS that allows you to OS special moves. Here is an example.

c.:lp:, :dp: :df:+:lp:

This will option select an SRK from in series of jabs. This is a recovery OS, but since we option selected a move that uses the LP button guess what happens when the first jab is blocked? The second input is now on the recovery frames which means the second jab now counts as a chain instead of the input for the SRK. So it will come out as two jabs if blocked and will come out as a SRK if whiffed.

You can OS special moves off chain normals, but the moves you can OS to are again limited. The input for the OSed special has to have a chainable normal in the input. For Akuma this limits this to moves that have LK or LP in the input. This does allow for EX moves since you can use LP or LK as one of your buttons.

Akuma generally does not have too many uses for this style of OS, but other characters have a ton of uses for this. Yun for instance can OS Lunge off of his c.lk > s.lp chain to punish back dash attempts.

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#2

Designing OSes

(Soon to come)

#3

Something from the Akuma forums that reads like something that would have come from the overly obsessive Makoto forums.

ZING!

In all seriousness, good job. OSes are becoming more and more important in the FGC and there are simply not many real indepth explanations and tutorials on what an option select is, and how to utilize them and how to create them.

#4

Agree. when I first started trying to decode this information, it took a while to even fathom correctly.
This is really well said. about as quickly as it can be accurately discribed.

#5

Option selects are hard to understand at first, but once you understand them it is like “Oh crap that is a lot easier than I first thought”

#6

Nice post, dude. Do you know if there is some video tutorial for option selects? I generally traing in the training room and I’m alone, so it would be great if there is some tutorials that explain how to traing these OS being alone…

#7

Wow LoyalSol this is a great guide. I just spent a couple hours writing this 3000 word essay on option selects over on our New Zealand fighting game forums (standingfierce.com). I’ll paste it here anyway, though yours looks alot more professional.

OK I’m going to do this strictly from an SF4 perspective (a lot of it does apply to other games and once you get the concepts, you can work them out yourself for other games).
Just like with special moves, normals have different priorities. For instance with specials, if you do f,qcf+p with Ryu you will get a shoryuken rather than a hadouken, as the shoryuken has a higher priority. Change it to a double qcf and use all 3 punches, and depending on what meter you have the priority will go ultra 1<super<EX Shoryuken<Shoryuken.
Here’s the list of priorities (the further along the higher priority it has, meaning it will come out instead of a lower move if they both overlap):
(lp < lk < mp < mk < hp < hk) < special moves < EX moves < supers < ultras < throw < focus < taunt < gen’s stance change < chained moves [more on this later]. Just from looking at that, if I wanted to plink an ultra (say I have a hard link such as blankas c.mk to U1 or Sagat’s EX TU to U1) I couldn’t plink with any of the other buttons as the throw, focus or taunt would take priority over my ultra (though you could turn taunt off, or make sure you do a down motion at the end when using lk so your throw doesn’t come out or you could plink with the lowest priority back/select/start buttons).

One other quick thing to note from this is that you can use this to explain your kara priorities. As far as I know everything can be kara cancelled into something of higher priority in the first 1-3 frames (I’ve heard it’s up to 3, but I’ve never seen it confirmed). Normals can’t kara cancel into eachother and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a throw karaing into a focus or a taunt. I don’t think you can kara cancel in the air but I’ve never tested it. Also Akuma has a different kind of kara cancel, where any of his normals can cancel into raging demon (super or ultra 1) in their whole duration (startup, active, recovery) even on whiff. Also a few moves have a longer kara cancel time which seems to be the whole startup of that move (sagat f+lk/f+hk, viper far standing hp, honda d/f+hk and I think Yun’s s.mk) and as an extra gimmick, sagat’s f+lk can be cancelled into an EX focus on whiff.
Also if someone does a random ultra to you and you just started a jab or any normal, you can try and kara cancel it into an invincible move straight after the ultra flash to avoid you from being random ultra’d.

OK so now let’s get right into Option Selects. I’ll try to go over a few different types and explain how and why they work.

Option Select Throw Tech:
This is your basic OS that a lot of people don’t like, because it’s very effective for a defence and can even lead to your own offence. It is done by doing d/b+lp+lk. The crouching lk takes priority here, which is good for most characters, as most have a 3 or 4 frame startup (and all regular throws startup in 3 frames). You use this while on the defence against someone. Some like to mash it. Basically, when taking a blockstring, if your opponent walks up to you, you hit them with a crouching short; if they go to tick throw you, either you’ll stuff them if they delayed their throw too much or you’ll tech the throw without needing to react; and if they keep doing a true block string then you will continue to block because you are holding down/back. This OS is dangerous to mash against good players, who will frame trap you into big damage (cody can do ultra 2 and many other counter-hit combos, akuma gets a guaranteed hard knockdown, ken can get full ultra 1 off a counter hit shoryuken fadc).

**Buffered option selects: **
These are also very common; people will do them without knowing that they are actually an option select. This is where you stand out of range where your normal will whiff. Let’s use cammy’s c.mk as it’s a great example. Stand at a range where c.mk will whiff and buffer it into a spiral arrow. The spiral arrow will never come out when it whiffs because the c.mk would have to hit them to cancel into the spiral arrow. Now you would use this in a poke war or when expecting some sort of dash punch. So the only times your spiral arrow will come out are when you hit one of their limbs as a counterpoke/earlypoke and they obviously won’t be able to block. You must watch your spacing though, because if you make them block the c.mk then the spiral arrow will still come out. This has uses for many characters wanting to buffer into supers as a punish (fei long c.mp/c.mk, ryu c.mk or c.hp against a fullscreen dhalsim as seen in an old Daigo match I think against Arturo, gen c.mp, boxer far standing mk, chun li far standing mp, honda far standing hp, most characters can do it with supers). You could also try a very advanced one with viper being c.lk tk,qcf+3p (or change the motion a bit) which would super jump cancel a c.lk into ultra if it did hit.

**Jump in option selects: **
So basically you want to use these off of safe jumps on your opponents wake up (I’ll do a little explanation of how safe jumps work later on, based on frame data). You will safe jump whatever jump in you choose (so it hits them as meaty as you can), generally hp and hk are better because they have a lot more blockstun. What you want to be doing is timing a jump in and then inputting a move just after, for now let’s use Ryu’s EX shoryuken vs Rufus. There is a time where your character freezes for a while if they block your jump-in cause of the blockstun, but if your jump whiffed then you’ll recover as usual when you land. So just after you do the jumping roundhouse you will input a move and if they block your move nothing extra will come out. So in this Ryu vs Rufus example, Ryu will knock Rufus down then jump in with a safe j.hk and input the EX shoryuken just before landing. The EX shoryuken will only come out if Rufus uses a move with invincibility. If Rufus does nothing, then Ryu will hit him with j.hk and can hit confirm into a combo (and can end if with sweep and reset the situation); if Rufus blocks the j.hk, Ryu will still have frame advantage and can pressure him with a block string, tick throw, etc. Now Rufus only has 4 options that are invincible on startup (forcing the OS EX shoryuken to come out). These options are backdash (everyone has an invincible backdash for 6-8 frames), EX messiah kick (11 frame startup, so it is very easy to safe jump), super (not sure if it has any invincibility) and ultra 1/2. If Rufus does a backdash, Ryu’s EX shoryuken will reach him and hit him. If Rufus does an EX messiah kick, then Ryu’s EX shoryuken will beat it because it has a much longer invincibility. If Rufus does super/ultra, you won’t have fully landed yet so the buffered EX shoryuken won’t come out due to the super/ultra freeze, then Ryu can block and punish Rufus. In this case Rufus’ only option to get out of this is to block the jump-in (and then Ryu can start mixing in cross up tatsu instead). And he is still disadvantaged at this point because Ryu is in on him and has frame advantage. Against characters who only have an invincible backdash, then a simple option select sweep will beat them every time. Some characters are pretty screwed in situations like this. Akuma can safe palm OS ultra 1 against Abel which will beat both backdash and EX roll, while Akuma can also safe palm OS ultra 2 against balrog, which armor breaks all his EX dash punches or else the ultra 2 beats backdash, headbutt and TAP. The hard thing is, that the palm does free chip and if continuing to block, then akuma can get a free demon flip throw and you’re stuck in the same situation again. You can jump-in option select anything, be it a throw, super/ultra, dash, jump, you name it. The latter 2 can be very useful against teleport characters.

**Chained option selects: **
These are almost exclusively for punishing backdashes. As I showed in the priority list, chained moves (such as target combos, or normals which cancel into eachother which is called chaining) take the highest priority (they might actually be just behind throw on the list now that I think about it). This option select is a big part of Boxer’s game, since he has a very good chainable jab. Once again we are playing the wakeup game (although this applies whenever you are close to your opponent), but instead of jumping in boxer wants to time a jab that will them when they wake up and then slightly delay it and push c.lp+hk or some prefer c.hk~lp though it doesn’t matter if you time it right. If they block/stay neutral, then your 2 jabs will chain into eachother and you can do what you want, but if they backdash then the sweep will take priority over the jab since it will be whiffing rather than chaining cause the character was invincible. These can get more and more advanced. Akuma can do c.lk, s.lk+hk (since his c.lk chains into s.lk) which gives him far roundhouse into a full combo on some characters. Yun has the infamous c.lk to jab lunge punch. Then we have things like jab OS ultra if your jab is chainable. You would input lp, qcfqcf+3p and you would get an ultra on their backdash. Look at the winner’s final of Evo this year where Fuudo closed it out by scaring Poongko in to backdash by making him block a level 1 focus attack, then immediately he does his jab OS ultra 1 and wins the match. Just take note that chainable moves can still chain on whiff (which is why you can mash jab from far away), but the window finishes a lot earlier so you wanna make sure you put a delay in or else you’ll just get 2 jabs even if they backdash.

**Blocked option selects: **
I guess I’ll call it this as I don’t have a better name for it. This is for when you’re right next to your opponent. I’ll use an example from Sakura pro Skatan. He wanted to find a way to keep pressure on with Sakura after the opponent blocks his lk tatsu which is +0f on block. Sakura has a great 3 frame s.lk which is special cancellable. So after doing an lk tatsu, he can input s.lk xx qcb+hk (hk tatsu), mp shouoken. Since the s.lk has a 3 frame startup, at best it while trade with another 3 frame move. If they block then the lk cancels into hk tatsu (-2 on block iirc) but if they backdash, the hk tatsu cancel won’t come out, just like a buffered OS, but then since he inputs an mp shouoken after that, the mp shouoken will punish the backdash instead. You could do the same with a c.mk xx hadouken, super/ultra with Ryu if they have a slow enough backdash or if you wanted to punish say an akuma doing wake up teleport. If he blocks you get a low forward, fireball blockstring and if he teleports you get super/ultra as a punish. Same kind of concept as the chained OSes.

**Negative edge option selects: **
This is a very old school one made popular by John Choi iirc which is applicable for fireball characters. Negative edging only works with special/super/ultra moves which is where you hold down a button and then input the special and let go of the button and your special move will still come out. How is this applicable? Well whenever you negative edge a special and for some reason your special doesn’t come out (you might have missed the forward input) a normal won’t come out in its place. John Choi’s example goes to the classic Ryu vs Honda matchup (which this still works in SF4). You do this because you can only have 1 fireball on the screen at once. What would normally happen if you knocked Honda down and then wanted to chuck a fireball at him for chip when he gets up and then immediately throw another one, if he did a buttslam then he would go through your fireball and since you were already doing another one, you will get a standing fierce instead of a fireball since your previous fireball will still be travelling on screen, meaning his buttslam will hit you. But if you negative edge the second fireball, then you won’t get the standing fierce if he whiffs you’ll just stand there and then you can react and punish his buttslam with a shoryuken. Heck you could even buffer the shoryuken after the negative edge fireball as an option select if you’re too slow/lazy to react. This can work in fireball wars where instead of having to react if they threw a fireball to cancel yours out or jumped you could use a second negative edge fireball and then even option select another one in so even if the first one whiffed the next fireball will come out as soon as the first one disappears. This makes Sagat’s keepaway game much stronger and he could even throw low tiger shots as negative edges and buffer in high tiger shots. Ken can use this to kara his mp shoryuken with his f.mk. He normally can’t do this due to the focus having more priority so he’d get a kara focus attack instead, but if he negative edges the mp then he’ll only get a shoryuken and not a focus attack. He can even negative edge for a kara ultra which can apparently punish a half screen Sagat tiger shot, but good luck pulling that off.

Focus backdash/throw tech:
This one I’ve recently heard about but haven’t tested out yet. This is when a character such as Sagat gets in your face and you’re worried they’re going to do either a dragon punch or a throw on you. You don’t really want to OS tech the grab in fear of the invincible dragon punch so what you can do is mp+mk~lp+lk, backdash. You are plinking a tech into your focus attack. You want to time it to go between the throw and the tiger uppercut timing. So say he does throw, he will grab you before your focus attack comes out but then you are inputting a throw tech which should tech the throw. If he does tiger uppercut, then you focus it and then you backdash and punish. I’m not sure if the timing would go well after him doing a tiger uppercut fadc against your block, but I might try test it later on.

Those are all the types of option selects I can think of at this time. If you understand the engine then you can think of more ways to option select. I recommend at least being confident with the basic ones (jump in, chain, os tech) and just understanding what options they give you when you are doing them and when your opponent is doing them to you. You can’t just rely on option selects, as reactions are just as if not far more important. When someone focus backdashes your jump-in, then you need to react with something like a sweep or they’ll get out for free.

**Just some quick general SF4 frame data: **
So the fastest normals in the game are 3 frames in startup. Mostly jabs and shorts, Sakura is pretty lucky that even her s.hp has a 3 frame startup. Outside of T-Hawk and Zangief’s spd command grabs which are 2 frames and some counter moves which startup in 1 frame iirc, all specials startup in 3 frames or more. Zangief, T-Hawk and Hakan all have a 1 frame startup ultra 1 which has the startup frame before the ultra freeze (written as 1+0) meaning once the ultra freeze starts, if you aren’t airborne or invincible then you will be grabbed by the ultra, same thing with akuma/oni/E. Ryu’s super. Ibuki, Honda and Balrog all have 2 frame ultras (written as 1+1) which means you can jump out of them after the flash. Most supers/ultras are slow but some light supers do have 1/2 frame startups such as Gen’s crane, Sagat, Chun Li, Guile I think. When you jump, you have 3 frames of pre-jump (you’re on the ground but considered airborne straight away, meaning grabs will whiff, etc) which is even cancellable (say you jump just before Zangief starts his ultra) you look like you’re on the ground but you can actually escape cause you’re airborne, but instead of just jumping away you can cancel it into your own ultra to punish.
And more importantly for safe jumps and the like, when you land from a jump you have 4 landing frames. If you did an empty jump (pushed nothing) you can tech in all 4 of those frames (and I think cancel probably the last 2 into a special) and you can start blocking straight away on the first frame, but if you don’t empty jump (did a move during your jump) it’s exactly the same except you can’t block in the first 2 frames. This means if you want to safe jump someone, you can’t safe jump a 3 frame invincible move (Ryu’s, Ken’s, Akuma’s dragon punch) as they will be invincible on the last frame of yours before you land with your jump-in, then you won’t be able to block for the next 2 frames so they’ll hit you on their 3rd frame. Meaning you can only safe jump moves that are 4 frames or faster. Though you need to be frame perfect to safe jump a 4 frame invincible move such as blanka’s EX upball, Guile’s flash kick, Deejays EX upkicks, Yun/Yangs EX dp.

#8

big new post and ctrl+f didn’t find it, so i’ll just add a post and then read the newer posts - sorry if it was already covered.

delayed crouch techs are probably one of the most important OS in this game for dealing with those players you can’t get a read on (or just not thinking at all.) this was partially covered with the previous post i believe (Option Select Throw Tech) however delaying your crouch techs (from my admittedly limited understanding) is very important against better players. doing this is fairly simple by itself - you just need to do your crouch tech as late as you can. frame traps are usually looking to catch you abusing crouch tech or pressing buttons. using a properly delayed crouch tech will keep you safe from throws and many frame traps. of course, to beat this, your opponent can use frame traps with smaller or bigger gaps - you need to try to “know” when to go for a delayed crouch tech. some characters you might want to just risk the throw (like cody and evil ryu) and just block.

the other good use for delayed crouch techs is for blowing up button happy opponents. any time you score a knockdown, techable or not - wait a generous period of time for their reversal window then do the crouch tech. mashers are stopped dead with this - you will always block reversals, you will always tech their throws, and you will throw out a short if they do nothing at all. this works very well for every character in the game, although many characters will get better results than others would (and you probably shouldn’t try it against characters with command grabs too often.) most will use it simply to get some safe data on their opponent’s wake up habits, while others can use it to start relatively safe pressure - typically if your character’s cr.LK is chainable, fast, or has great frames on block. better players can recognize this and blow it up by doing numerous things - gets kind of broad here, since you have to take your character’s other OS, your character’s short frame data, their character’s dashes, their character’s normals, etc into account. but in the most general sense, this is beaten by delayed wake up options (ie non-reversal DP or a good back dash.)

i think it was missed, but you can do a standing tech os as well. just hold back and tech. same principles apply for the most part, except any low attacks blow this up quite easily.

really appreciate the more technical insight though Sol, been trying to come up with OS on my own and been having trouble with recovery option selects in particular. helps a lot!

#9

Just to offer an example for myself to see if I’m getting some of this:

If I’m Cody and I do a cr.HP and immediately do QCB HP is this an option select?

If I whiff the cr.HP the CU won’t come out, but if I hit/block the cr.HP the CU will?

#10

Yep. That was one style of OS I didn’t cover, but it is. I just didn’t cover it since most people understood those well enough anyways.

#11

You can kara cancel in the air if you use a special move. The earliest example I know of is kara cancelling Ken’s air tatsu into the EX version to change it’s trajectory. Akuma can also kara cancel his shakunetsu into other special moves but the only effect (that I know of) is that the move you cancel into retains the aura of the shakunetsu.

You can also use this to defend against ambiguous setups on wake up if you have a char with a DP.

eg. To defend against an early attack that his in front vs late attack that hits at the back, you can do (hold :p:) :f: :d: :b: (release :p:). If the attack hits in front, then the input will not result in a proper DP motion and nothing will come out so you’ll block. If the opponent goes for the delayed attack instead, then provided you entered the :f: before he crossed up and the and rest afterwards, an auto-corrected DP will come out. Because of the input timing leniency, you can also do (hold :p:) :f: :d: :b: (release :p:) :f: to increase the chances of blocking the x-up if you mistime the button release. You have to tweak the inputs and timing to deal with different characters/situations.

Another type of OS is the Trade OS, where you buffer one or more moves during the execution of another. The buffered move will only come out if the first attack is interrupted by a move that causes low hit-stun. In some cases you can buffer two moves, where the first move acts as a cancel, and the second acts as the Trade OS.

eg. With Ryu: st.hp :qcf: :p: :qcf: :3p:. If the st.hp connects it will be cancelled into fireball. If it’s interrupted by a move that causes relatively low hit-stun (eg. a jab), a reversal Ultra will come out.

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#12

Ah yeah thanks man. I use Sakura’s EX kara tatsu all the time to get out of the corner, ken as well. And you just reminded me of those old shaku ~ ex shoryuken videos back in vanilla so you had a firey EX srk lol. And thanks for the data on those negative edge OSes. I remembered hearing about them and wasn’t sure how exactly to apply them.

#13

There’s some great info in this thread, thanks LoyalSol/mason/ilitirit! But many of the OSes depend on the different recovery times between block/hit/whiff/trade. Is there any place to lookup these timings? The basic frame data makes it look like every move (including jumping attacks) always takes a fixed number of frames regardless of block/hit/whiff/trade.

For trade, I guess it might be easy to understand—the instant a move trades does the recovery of your move get cancelled into the hitstun usually caused by your opponent’s move? For all the other frame numbers, how do you figure those out?