SSF4/AE - Reacting to Jump-Ins

Newbie Saikyo Dojo
#1

Something I’ve noticed since I’ve started playing is that- my reaction time seems to be equivalent to that of a slug. I’m totally free to jump-ins- it’s like my brain just stops or something and it’s a feat of strength just to block.

Sometimes I don’t know if I should be sticking something out or going for a special anti-air- they’re not appropriate in all situations, especially if you don’t play a character with an invincible AA (i.e. shoto)… The most insidious is when I get crossed up while I’m still upright.

Blocking seems like the safe thing to do, but you block a jump-in and woah frame advantage here comes the mixups! Focus absorb backdash has been working well, but it kind of just delays the inevitable.

When I do manage to successfully anti-air (say, with a normal) it’s more like a love-tap- the other guy takes a piddly amount of damage and isn’t really dissuaded from jumping at all. How can I discourage jumping without damage?

I’m focusing on Guy now, but I wanted to know the general principle (for all characters) when it comes to this sort of thing.

Is there any way to train for this, other than experience? Setting the recording dummy to jump in repeatedly just isn’t the same.

#2

First, record the dummy jump attacking at random intervals, that is, insert pauses of different lengths in between jumps. Then react to the jump ins with an attack. Don’t anticipate the jump, don’t hold your finger over your anti air button, instead rely solely on your reactions. This will improve your reactions and muscle memory.

A lot of anti airing is anticipation. You need to get used to devoting your mental energy to trying to anti air instead of playing footsies, which isn’t always easy to do. The only way to practice this is to just play.

Oh and lastly, make sure you are aware of all of your character’s anti airs. I know Guy has crouching medium punch but maybe he has others.

#3

If they are prone to recklessly jump in like that jump attack them with an early Air to air attack. If it hits you can often rejump as you land and cross them up as they land.

#4

No there’s no easy way to improve on that other than experience.

When you hear casters talk about godlike reactions, it’s just bullshit.
There’s no way you’re gonna anti-air fine with your natural reactions since we got the same as every other fucking mammal on the planet which is:
When attacked run, if cornered attack.

That’s the shit that leads you into blocking a jump in instead of anti-airing it and the same shit that let’s you press lots of buttons or jumping when you’re cornered.

When you’re able to sort that shit out and simplify stuff in your mind, it’s easier to auto pilot certain actions and looking out for stuff.
I’m bad at explaining stuff in English but this article is short and spot on:

http://kayin.pyoko.org/?p=2047

#5

When you see someone jumping forget about blocking, try to focus on anti-airing at all cost even if you miss and end up taking damage. It’s a habit you’ll take eventually, it’s how I got more consistent with AA Shoryukens.

#6

Pretty much. At first you feel a bit hesitant about AAing mostly because you fear how much damage you’d take if you fuck up your AA.

So forget winning for now, the only way to get rid of that fear, no matter how small or large is to atypically face them head on.

Then when you get comfortable, try play a actual match like you would normally but whenever you smell a jump in coming, prepare yourself mentally for that potential jump.

It’s much easier to AA scrubs since they’re very predictable about it or absolutely random. Hell they’re the first guys you should practice it on imo; they’re great AA practice.

Also food for thought;

Against better players that are very unpredictable with their jump ins, it takes a bit of mental fortitude to AA them consistently while maintaining the ground game. You go through a tough match, ground game is a bit in your opponent’s favor and you can’t get a good read on when he’d jump… so what if you choke up when you do see that jump in? Like instead of AA you chicken out and block instead half way? This situation isn’t uncommon even at high levels if you look closely, typically when a player is/or made nervous. This moment of hesitation can be magnified when you’re in a tournament setting especially.

So where am I getting at? AAing something on reaction can be easy enough, but when that feeling of nervousness comes to play, it becomes much much harder. So get as much experience as you can with AAing players of all skill levels and do your best to steel your nerves so that it won’t bite you in the ass later.

#7

Another tip is you only have to worry about performing an AA from certain ranges, often if they jump when they are in your face it is pointless to try and AA as the AA will whiff, too far it will also whiff. So there is a specific spot you only have to worry about doing an AA. If you control that spot with pokes and projectiles what option leaves them? A jump in and in those situations it is very easy to AA someone. Same for having someone in the corner, easiest way out for the opponent is to jump, so don’t stand too close then otherwise they’ll jump over you.

If you play Guy his cr.mp is amazing, his EX senpukyaku is fast and won’t get beaten often so another great way to stop people from anti airing. If you are fasst you can do his command air grab which is alot of damage and really puts a number mentally on the opponent if you show you have such reaction/read on them. Best way to do it is by tiger kneeing it, a qcf and ending it in upforward plus punch. If they jump close enough so that they’ll crossup do a (focus)dash under, or a cr.hk so you’ll slide away. He has other AA’s which are used when the opponent is jumping in from an even further range, his far hk and even his far lk.

#8

You aren’t keeping in mind the possibility of them jumping. Even if just a bit, you always have to keep in mind they have that option and when you see them jump towards you, you can react a lot quicker. If you know what to look out for then your reaction times will be much faster than if you have to just react to something you don’t expect.

Either that or your reaction times are just really really bad :smiley:

#9

Just always expect the jump in until you get better. Also, if you are already attacking, anti-airing with a normal probably won’t work. You will need to ex-hurricane with guy. Standing close and far roundhouse (heavy kick) are great for damage and crouch strong (medium punch)
is you no frills to the point “don’t jump at me” normal.

The point to an anti-air game is to force your opponent to stay on the ground. Two things to remember are: First, until your opponent takes enough damage from AAs, they will jump and second, the duration your opponent stays on the ground until the next jump depends on how solid your anti air game seems and how much risk your opponent is willing to take (people usually act different when they are about to lose).

Don’t forget that not every jump is free. If you do a laggy attack and they jump on you for full punish, that isn’t your fault for not anti-airing, the fault is doing something the opponent could jump on reaction or doing something predictable. The difference between getting jumped on and getting punished is huge and you have to recognize what is happening. Misunderstanding either for the other causes not only frustration, but halts your advancement as a player.

Finally,
you must make sure that you are not predictably easy to jump in on by simply baiting a reaction. You can get into attack range and fake with a jab or short. You can fake a shoulder by crouching into a standing jab or short. You can also, get into range to attack and do nothing. Stuff like that will make your opponent want to jump (and there are a lot more ways to do it too), if they don’t, you can continue with your game plan. If they do jump, since you were baiting the jump, you can anti-air it rather easily…

#10

Training room is your best friend here. If there is a character you are free to jump in’s to, set the dummy to jump in on you and spend 10 minutes anti airing it everyday, then go online and try to do it for real. Just don’t get upset when it doesn’t work fora while. There is a big mental difference to getting something to work in training room and getting the samething to work in a real match. The only way to get past that barrier is to mess it up countless times in a real match till it no longer bothers you to mess it up. It is the same for anything in this game you are trying to learn. I decided to learn to do damage like a big kid and learn some link combos. I would practice in training room, then go on line and mess up over and over. Go back to training room, back on line and mess up over and over. This went on for two weeks, then one day it just fell into place and the combo I was doing in training room just came out without me over thinking it[details=Spoiler]https://youtube.com/watch?v=UCcvdk9MBOY&feature=c4-overview&list=UUQdKlDFErctNMMnB8OHfkmg[/details]

#11

^

An example would be playing those reaction tests. No I don’t mean to use it as a example to improve your reactions, but when you play it the first time, it’s a minor measurement of your initial reaction. Then after a while, if it has a set rhythm to it, you tend to be able react a bit faster each time you retry it. Then after a while you can time it at a point where you get a score like .02 sec reactions; not possible otherwise.

So basically jump ins are like that reaction test. When you have a good idea of when they’d jump, you’ll be able to react a bit faster based on how good your read is. When you don’t have a good idea of when they’ll jump against better players, it’ll be harder to react.

If you KNOW they’ll jump like say you notice that a scrub really loves to jump after doing certain things your reaction time goes way up because you already know what to look for.

For the players that are difficult to read, try throwing baits at them and see if you can condition them to act a certain way.

#12

They jump, you DP.

It really is as simple as that. There’s around a whole half a second from when they leave the ground for you to do react and do something, even with DP-less characters like Guy.

#13

I dunno…

I just finished facing a Sakura (about two-three matches back and forth) who figured out I was weak to jump-ins and just started exploiting it with j. HP.

st. LP didn’t work, cr. MP didn’t work, cr. MK didn’t work, st. HK didn’t work, I didn’t always have meter for EX BSK, I could only hit EX KIO every once in a while… I was really in a tight spot.

(excuse the execution mistakes and the random slides- I panic easily…)

I managed to start using nj. HP as an AA, which got me thinking later on when I took it to the lab;

How legit is jump back, instant HP/HK as a technique? It feels like you are giving up space on the screen and putting yourself in the corner; at the same time, if worse comes to worse, you’ll get hit jumping, and just do a little flip in the air while they don’t get their big combo.

If I’m supposed to be reacting it sure doesn’t feel like it- felt like I won only when I preempted the jump.

And if the person suddenly stops jumping, they can just walk up to you and tap you for free… It’s really unnerving.

#14

does hk bushin senpukyaku still work as an anti air from a distance or was that just in SSF4?

#15

HK BSK is terrible.

http://i.imgur.com/auJGP47.png

That’s not an anti-air, that’s just garbage.

I think I might’ve hit it outside of corner combos once… by accident.

#16

Part of that’s Guy having relatively bad anti-airs (except for EX tatsu) and part of that’s Sakura’s j.HP being crazy good, even fantastic AA moves have trouble with it

Jump back instant HP/HK is a thing for some characters. Abel & Makoto in particular use jump back HP as an anti-air that’s for the most part safe if you mess it up. You do technically move backwards on the screen, but you’re not really pushing yourself into the corner, you both unless you land several in a row.

#17

Firstly, if a player doesn’t give a shit about your anti-airs and keeps jumping, I’d consider that a good thing… as long as you’re able to anti-air reliably.
I don’t really think you can discourage jumping without damage. The only way to discourage anything in street fighter is by punishing it.

You can’t really react to ALL jump-ins, at least not at first. Just start by trying to anticipate the jump in. If you think someone’s going to jump, don’t press any buttons, be mindful of your spacing and wait for the right moment. If he jumps in, you should be able to anti-air with whatever. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

If you can’t anti-air even while anticipating it, then just practice using all your anti-airs in training mode and get a feel for the timing and spacing required for each one. Eventually you won’t even need to think about the spacing and the timings, you’ll just do them.

#18

I am still complete garbage at this. I tried for a couple of days to just focus on anti-airing, and either people didn’t jump at me (…) or I resorted to just holding back.

But I did some experimenting, and (it sounds obvious but) I feel like spending some time with the CPU in practice mode loosens up my fingers and makes me more responsive. I guess it’s that if I mess up on an anti-air, I can just drop everything and look at my input history (no doing that in a real match!)

If anyone is interested, the characters I find jump the most are Gouken, Akuma, T. Hawk, and Sagat. (On “Hard” difficulty.) Gouken and Akuma really just demon flip a lot… Sagat is interesting, as he doesn’t jump as much, but he does it… more realistically? Usually at that uncomfortable range where you could be playing footsies…

Anyway, I find this is a little better than setting the training dummy to jump, as even though the CPU can get predictable, there’s still a little tiny bit of uncertainty.