How to deal with scrubs!

You meet lots of scrubs online that are irritating to play against. So how do you deal with them? Playing against average players to a higher level have different strategies and tactics than those of lower levels, AKA Scrubs.

I am writing this for a friend who had a rough time with scrubs when he tried to play with a new character.

First I will show you what characters scrubs mostly use.
*Ryu, Ken, Blanka, Zangief, Sagat, Akuma*
The ones that they rarely choose.
*Cammy, Guile*
And from the new characters.
*Adon, Juri*

Before discussing character match up against scrubs let me explain what scrubs mostly do....

SHORYUUUUUUUUKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!

Well, we get different types of scrubs, but I will come back to that later, one thing they all have in common, the spam.

Usually scrubs have no patience. They have to use the only moves they know, which most of the time is the shoryuken. Now as I said above, some tactics will not work against scrubs, those tactics are the overheads. overhead attacks will NEVER work on a scrub, overhead usually takes more time than other normals. and since scrubs have no patience whatsoever, you will see an EX-Shoryuken Struck up your... face. Never use an overhead against a scrub.

Mix-up tech throw wont work as well, the same reason as the above, they will spam special up your face. Try your best not to mess up your combo, 1 miss and you will eat a shoryuken. If in doubt, stick to B&B moves.

Since they mash all the time, you can take that to your advantage. After a block string, stop attack and just stay guarding, you will see a shoryuken coming. punish it. Keep doing that, scrubs never learn, if they do, they wont be called scrubs.

A very lovely way to bait scrubs is the back dash. After a special that puts both players almost in the same recovery time, try to backdash, you will see your opponent flying in air with fire on their arms but with no opponents in air with them. put your evil laugh on, and PUNISH.

I would say the worst type of scrubs is the one that knows how to throw, this person will be almost random to you. You won't be able to anticipate their next move. For this type of people, you might wanna practice on Option Selecting. I wrote a previous post about OS if you wanna check it out. Basically if you are in doubt, guard down and press jab + short, if they try to throw, you will tech it. Else if they shoryuken, you will stay down guarding.

Now for the most annoying type of scrubs, is the type that does not know that there is a forward or up direction, they just jump backwards, the whole game they're on air. throwing hadoukens or kunais, land do a projectile, then repeat. This type is hard to hit because of their backward jump, they have some form of defense that you can't approach them, so you have to figure a way to hit them. If you get close enough to them, they will sweep. for me playing viper, I try to seismo their ground as soon as they land, and its working pretty well. If you have more health than them, then just don't bother following them, let them fly in their own world in the end of the TV corner. Taunt or do whatever. Since this type jumps a lot, you can almost anticipate any jump coming in, so you can counter with a jumping fierce or jumping roundhouse depending on your character. Careful though if they have an anti-air they will mash it instead. *Sometimes*.

Moving to character specific, I'd say "Ryu, Ken, Akuma and Sagat" are in the same category. The shoryuken spammers. Mostly ken is the most notorious for being a shoryuken spammer. Just bait these shoryukens and you're fine. careful on an ex-srk Ultra I can pop out and you'd eat it if you wont time your punishment correctly. I know I ate it once when I tried to do Fuerte's RSF. For Ryu, his tatsumaki might be spammed, your anti-air normal is ftw here, when he's just above you, use it. For Akuma, he's going to jump a lot. so you can use that to your advantage. You can try to anticipate an air hadouken and dash underneath to punish. Akuma's ultra one can pop out just like a shoryuken. though some scrubs will make it so obvious that they will use the ultra. As for Sagat, thank god he got nurfed, a lucky scrub ex-srk eats 1/3 your bar. The same goes to him as ken's, though tiger knee might pop up instead. and from far, fire balls.

Scrub Zangief is not to be feared! the Lariat spammer! a very easy way to break that. jump upwards and hit with a normal that has priority over Zangief's lariat. I wrote a post about the upward jump, check it out. Zangief's green hand is very punishable, even on hit. so use it to your advantage. A scruby gief wont know mix ups, so you wont have to worry about a random grab.

Scrub Blanka is a pain. Some characters can't punish his ball on block, so it might be a bit difficult. but for some character, like fuerte can run -> slide to punish his blocked ball. Jumping ins on Blanka might not work as they tend to use his electricity. Though sometimes a jump in would break it if you time it correctly.
Blanka's ball can be interrupted by a jab or strong just before he hits you. so you can try that. Blanka's other ball where he goes up and lands on you can be Focus Attacked. So when you see that coming, start charging your Focus Attack and once he land release it. Then punish as desired.

as for Cammy, her srk has insane priority. you will see it a lot, try to anticipate it and punish. her screw move is punishable on block, but try to act fast because mostly a srk will come out after it. Lastly her move where she spins in the air to grab you can be dashed under to avoid it.

I haven't seen many scrubs who would pick guile, but I found someone and he's was so annoying, I wrote about him in my last post. seezar, just jumps backward and sonic boom, if you get close, he would sweep.
For guile, his sweep hits twice, you can try and punish between his two kicks. Mainly for charge characters, you can try and change positions from left to right or right to left to screw your opponent's charging.

for the new characters, Juri is annoying, her air move where she slides on you breaks your FA! I think it's too nooby friendly. You can just block and punish if they do the whole animation. Her legs fan move has too many hits so you can't FA that. usually Juri gonna pick Ultra II, so you can bait that out of them when they get it.

finally for Adon, they will spam his wall dive kick followed by his srk. You can actually punish his wall dive as he's getting to you, or you can wait for them to srk afterwards and punish.

Some other characters scrubs might pick are Balrog (Boxer), they will spam headbutt. If you anticipate it you can hit low followed by any special, headbutt can be easily broken by a low hit. Or you can just wait for it then punish but the punishing window is short.
Vega (Clas), they will keep spamming wall jumps, Focus Attack it and punish accordingly.

If you want to get better you should play against good players. but sometimes only scrubs are available online at a given time. So, yeah..
Enjoy.

Haters, Part II

I finally finished my projects last week and entered 3 different competitions with these projects. Won IEEE 1st place in "Made in UAE" category, Won IEEE 2nd place in "Common Design" category, and Won 2nd place and Best Idea in "ESREC'2010". It was a week full of awards ^_^!

So now that I'm done from these stuff, I finally entered the online world of SSFIV! I liked the lobby system and how you can spectate matches. But one thing I did not like... THIS MAKES HATERS EVEN HATE MORE! lol.

I'm so gonna sound arrogant in this post. So guys bare with me on this one.

Back in the days, when you beat someone up badly, they would have the idea that their big bro or their pro friend would come and kick my ass later on. But now that SSFIV supports multiple player. This guy watches his beloved ones die and suffer in pain by the same hands that took away his life. Suddenly you see your mail box being spammed by hate mail. lately I've became to a realization. IGNORE THESE MESSAGES. they're too annoying to reply. Don't even bother opening them. That's what I started to do.

around 4 days ago, I joined this room that was almost full, I finally get my turn and I kept my position at top for around 25 matches. one of the players namely "seezar" is a scruby Guile, "Sonic boom, Sweep, Jump Backwards, Sweep, Repeat". I'm not sure if he knows that Guile has another special move. Anyways, I win this guy like with 4 perfects, until now everything is going smooth, then my friend joins this lobby, we had a very close game, he won eventually. So I see a message from seezar, it was like this "You NOOB! you spammer!, this guy won you with effort!!" and something like that. Well, if playing viper and using her FFF/SJFADC/SJC-Seismo is being noobish, then I guess I am a Noob.

Next round when I reached on top again it was against my friend also, so when the round started, this seezar guy started spamming empty messages to me hoping that I would lose. Well, I did not lose, so, let him burn more! I blocked this guy afterwards.

Next day, I join a game, I find the same guy in the lobby, my guess is this time he's with his friends in the lobby, suddenly a random guy that i never met sends me a message saying "Fight like a man", I thought probably this seezar told his friends that I dont play like a man? >.>, well whatever, I beat everyone in the room and leave. I started then to get swamped by message, so I blocked them all.

Later I join another room, I got kicked instantly. I send the host "Trable-Boss" a message asking him if he was afraid? he said he aint afraid of kids that post videos of their matches on youtube. So I thought maybe he does not want to have losing vids of him on youtube? but the "kid" part was funny, I ask him how old are you?, he replies with something that has totally nothing about answering. He starts saying dont you have school to go to and homeworks to do? I cracked a bit, asked him again, ok how old are you?, again he does not answer, instead he kept swamping me with curses and hatred. Then one friend of mine tells me that he's a high school kid. So I leave him be and left.

I again join another room to get kicked instantly. What's happening. A friend told me this is the tax of being famous~ lol. And just moments ago, I join a room with low level players and started winning them. I leave to go eat lunch, I come back to find at least 20 messages of the same people inviting me back to the room, namely "hadif001" and "night-madness", so night tells me my bro will kick your ass, come to the room. Well, if his bro is any good, I would accept a good match, the problem is I could not join the room again, not sure why, kept trying, restarting but with no hope. So I decided to just ditch the game. So both of them kept saying I chickened out, I already joined another room while they were swamping me with mail. So I could not reply them. And while I was playing in the other room, I realized that I dont really have to answer these mails and that its just a waste of time and energy.

I dont understand some people. Just because they lose they start hating. Some people would use that to improve and become better, which what all people should do. But just hating on is stupid. you lose because you don't practice enough. You should at least respect the effort put on training by the other player when you lose constantly. Then you should ask yourself why do you keep losing and work on improving yourself.

I've played around 500 matches up to now in SSFIV, and I got a win rate of 83% So to all of you haters who think that I am some 'noob' , stop hating and get better instead.