How to defeat a turtling player?

#1

Hi, i don’t consider my self a complete noob, i can do a lot of moves and have finished 6 trials in SSFIV (Ryu, Ken, Sakura, T. Hawk, Hakan, Cody), but even though i can do a lot of different combos (Ryu is my main), i find myself having a really hard time beating turtling players, sometimes it’s nearly impossible to get near them and when i do get near them, if i by any chance mess up my combo or if they tech my grab then we are back to square one.

What is the best way to beat these type of players??

#2

Get a life lead.

Let them turtle.

#3

Dude, Ryu is your main. Throw fireballs.

#4

Analyze what they do that keeps you out, and analyze what they tend to do once you do get in. I am a turtle by nature, and the main thing that gets me riled up is when my opponent gets a life lead, and proceeds to turtle right back. Score some damage, and force them to go on the offensive.

But yeah, throw a shitton of fireballs with Ryu.

#5

fire balling is what i usually do, i try to get a life lead by having my opponent block the fire balls, but i like rushing by nature XD. also, is jump hp the best way to air counter?? because another problem i have is that i usually lose out when me and my opponent air kick at the same time, i saw a tutorial and it said to use hp instead, is that really better?

#6

You should be DP’ing them out of the air, not trying to jump up and hit them.

#7

Be as scrubby as possible: Throw out a bunch of Hadoukens, and if they decide to approach you, Shoryuken. It will keep their health lower than yours and it will keep them away.

#8

not very effective. the better turtlers will simply jump hadouken, which will frustrate a person who’s not used to dealing with turtlers even further. whichever person here said to gain a life lead was right on the money. they didn’t list a method though

when you fight turtlers, you need to find a way to get past all their bullshit and hurt them. play on auto-pilot for a second (decide on a way to approach and attack them before-hand) and take a moment to see what they do on reflex, that’ll help you understand how to get in better. don’t try to launch a full assault or anything, just try to understand why they respond with what they use. don’t worry about getting hurt from doing this, cause you’ll hurt them far more after you understand their defense.

don’t bother trying to counter what they do defensively unless it’s blatant offense. instead, try and force them to do any movement that is either detrimental to the opponent or beneficial to neither of you. example of detrimental to opponent would be if you’re spamming hadouken and they start spamming ex fireballs and you just jump them, example of beneficial to neither would be if you throw a hadouken and they do a vertical jump. anyway, if you can force either to happen, you can get in. if you can get in, turtling becomes nothing but a precautionary measure until they change it up

#9

You really ought to say what characters you’re having problems with in particular. They don’t all turtle quite the same and you don’t always do the same things to get through it.

#10

not to discredit what you’re saying cause it is important, but different players have different turtle styles, even if they’re using the same char

#11

One thing you might want to ask yourself is whether or not getting in is the problem in the first place. A lot of newer players’ perceived turtling comes from not mixing things up whatsoever. Assuming you get to the other player it shouldn’t be that hard to take damage from them.

I think one problem a lot of people have with the game is that they’re stumbled as to why their cross up mk, jab, jab, jab loops aren’t working, and why their throw always gets teched after one tick. Another thing is that players will learn a few combos in training mode and just expect to be able to land them without having to think about setups. “Goddamn: Fierce Punch, LK Tatsu, Fierce DP, I know how to do it but they only block! Let’s try another random focus, and if that doesn’t work I’ll do a risky jumpin” The truth is, most of your damage probably isn’t going to come from big Juicy punishes, but from all of those seemingly insignificant things you do, like opting for a delayed crouch mk instead of walking forward and throwing (counter hit their tech attempt), and alternating the spacing of your crossups, or using overheads (in other words being ambiguous). Once you have 2 bars of metre, your opponent has to basically guess between FADC Ultra and throw. Just food for thought.

If getting in is actually the problem though, you’re just going to have to work on counter poking, baiting, and depending on the character, sitting on the life lead.

#12

Guile, personally, gives me a hard time. I usually play with Balrog (boxer) and sometimes fei long. He is deceptively simple looking while he is sitting there. “okay i know not to jump”. I move in and sonic booms are coming my way at random. He eventually builds up enough to get some EX ones out too. I start to get angry and move in because i have been doin somewhat safe rush punches to build some super meter. It was close but I eventually lost. I hate how gay he looks just sitting there throwing sonic booms. But thats their game plan. Make you pissed and start eating outta their hands. When you get so pissed its so hard to stay focused. I suppose maybe some patience would help out.

#13

Just want to throw this out there, but maybe you might want to consider maining another character that’s more suitable for rushdown. There are quite a few in this game.

#14

EX Dash Punch to get close…

#15

I lost a ton of bp using el fuerte (main) due to turtling. If anyone would like to get some exhibition practice on xbl let me kno I’m always down. I need to work on my ground game with him anyway. I like to mess with people too much and lose to the most basic of players. Everyone expects the air game. Or if there are any willing fuerte experts who have some knowledge to drop that’s fine too. Just lemme kno.

#16

Take the advice of the previous posters, as well as pherai’s down below me
I’ll add on my measly two cents by telling you to mix up your offense. If they tech your throw, go for an overhead instead. I’ve heard that overheads are quite useless in SF4 in general, but they’re effective for me to get someone on defense disoriented for a couple of seconds.

#17

  1. You have to pick the right opportunities to rushdown your opponent. If you are desperate for creating momentum then you’ll get eaten alive.

  2. You shouldn’t press buttons unless you know your move will achieve what its supposed to, whether thats hit them, or push them further into the corner.

If you are just a slave to the idea of RUSH THAT SHIT DOWN, you’re going to give the turtle what he wants, which is make a mistake that they can punish. Sometimes you need to know when to back off.

#18

My point here though, is if he’s having problems with Dhalsim, people telling him to throw more fireballs isn’t going to help him a lot.

This is really good advice.

#19

Turtle back and wait for him to get impatient…
it will happen eventually when the time bar or the chip damage start making them rush!!
patience is your friend…

#20

You have to go into zone wars with them, get a life lead, then TAUNT!