SF4 Biweekly TACV 08: Rose

Despite her relatively useless Illusion Spark ultra, Rose’s ability to reflect projectiles makes her one of the most versatile combo characters in Street Fighter IV. Most of her combos tend to be short, but there’s always something uniquely interesting taking place.

All three regular versions of Rose’s Soul Reflect work on normal projectiles only. Nothing works on super fireballs, but EX Soul Reflect works on EX fireballs. However, its combo use is limited because Rose lacks sufficient juggle capability outside of her Aura Soul Spark super, which of course requires full meter. Absorbing any projectile with LP Soul Reflect raises the damage and stun output of her next Soul Spark or Aura Soul Spark by 5%, up to a maximum of 35%.

0:11 Rose absorbs seven of Seth’s Sonic Booms before the combo, to raise her base Aura Soul Spark damage from 300 to 407. Even though her LP Soul Spark would’ve done more damage than a reflected Sonic Boom, it would’ve used up the absorption bonus. Starting with a reflected LP Sonic Boom saves the 35% damage bonus for her super. Seth’s EX Tanden Engine pulls her closer while creating a meaty setup for both projectiles. She has to delay the Illusion Spark ultra slightly, to allow four hits of Aura Soul Spark to connect. The fifth hit must whiff because it would knock Seth down. This combo deals 659 damage and 50 stun.

0:25 Rose absorbs seven of Gouken’s Gohadokens before the combo to upgrade Aura Soul Spark damage. Gouken’s Gohadoken causes a free juggle state whenever it hits an airborne opponent. Rose’s HP Soul Reflect sends the fully charged LP Gohadoken diagonally upward, evading the second LP Gohadoken as Gouken cancels into LP Forbidden Shoryuken to cross the first one. Rose redirects the second one horizontally using MP Soul Reflect, then closes the gap with DF+MK and connects with F+HK since Gouken is in free juggle state. For whatever reason, F+HK is a knockdown attack so she gets to juggle with HP Aura Soul Spark. This combo causes 557 damage and 410 stun.

0:36 Rose absorbs seven of Sagat’s Tiger Shots before the combo to elevate Aura Soul Spark damage. Sagat’s LP High Tiger Shot and MK Low Tiger Shot never cross the same vertical space, so Rose’s MP Soul Reflect sends them both back without any collision issues. That last HP High Tiger Shot is trickier because it has to get past the LP High Tiger Shot. Fortunately, there’s a frame where you can trade with projectile specials and still have them come out. Surprisingly, this still provides a counterhit bonus, which may or may not have been necessary for the combo to work. Rose could’ve canceled the third MP Soul Reflect directly into HP Aura Soul Spark, but waiting looked cooler. Since the entire combo occurs at full screen distance, the corner is unnecessary. This combo inflicts 501 damage and 305 stun.

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0:45 Absorbing projectiles is unnecessary here since Rose never creates one herself. There’s not much to say about this combo other than it took forever. The final LP Gohadoken slipped through by the same principle as Sagat’s HP High Tiger Shot, but it requires very specific reflected LP Zanku Hadoken arrays. This combo is probably not fully optimized since there are countless timings to explore. There must be something extra she can add, but it won’t be much without meter. Akuma’s Zanku Hadoken recovery time is a huge obstacle.

1:01 No projectiles were absorbed before this combo to allow more hits before dizzying Seth. Rose can link HP Soul Spark immediately after an LP Soul Spark connects, with one-frame timing. Adding s.HK in the middle complicates matters because impact freeze delays the HP Soul Spark. Therefore this combo has to be spaced and timed such that the LP Soul Spark connects on the last frame of s.HK impact freeze, which also happens to be its last cancelable frame. Therefore the HP Soul Spark input has to be completed on that exact frame, in order for the game not to ignore it. Rose gets +6 frame advantage from HP Soul Spark and everything else is fairly straightforward. The combo ends with a post-KO DF+MK because i was trying to combo as many Soul Sparks as possible, which meant the last one would’ve ended the combo anyway. She’s unable to attack after point-blank range LP Soul Spark KO, so MP Soul Spark was used, which only combos after her c.HP and no other normals. Unfortunately, LP Soul Spark, dash forward, dash forward, HP Soul Spark, c.MP xx LP Soul Spark doesn’t work against dizzy Seth because he leans too far forward.

This is a tool-assisted combo video recorded with two ASCII PAD V Pro programmable controllers. Absolutely no cheats, hacks, or game-altering devices were used in the making of.

38 thoughts on “SF4 Biweekly TACV 08: Rose

  1. Maj Post author

    Yeah, this thing’s not getting done tonight. Maybe tomorrow? Sorry dudes and dudettes.

    In case anyone wants to hear the excuse, i had to exchange the older model PlayStation 3 i was using for a PS3 Slim. As it turns out, the USB ports on the Slim model don’t support two PSX controller converters plugged in at once. One of them works fine, the other won’t respond. Unplugging the working one makes the unresponsive one work. Plugging it back in does nothing. SRK didn’t have an exact answer so i lost two days trying to find a workaround.

    Want to know what did the trick? Plugging one (but not both) into a (Rock Band) powered USB hub. Because it’s fun to wrestle hopelessly against the silent tyranny of technology! Aggravating, soul-crushing fun. If what they say about stress is true, then i must’ve lost months of life expectancy trying to shut off SvCC’s background music – just so i could record one Ryu combo.

  2. Maj Post author

    Haha you mean “soul” as in Rose’s specials? Nah that was unintentional. Rose is becoming my second-favorite SF4 combo character after Dhalsim. But she’s … complicated.

    All in all, i get along fairly well with game engines. It’s the rest of technology that hates me.

  3. Bob Sagat

    God, I hate it when that happens. Things not working the way they’re supposed to makes me real angry real fast. And I’m actually a very patient guy.

  4. Maj Post author

    Bob Sagat: Me too. I couldn’t have gotten this far without patience. But there was a long period where it felt like that entire Evo2k9 Ryu project was on the verge of falling apart because of two or three minor technical difficulties. SvCC and SF1 were the most glaring issues at the time.

  5. Snoooootch

    I’m excited about this one. feel Rose is deprived of spacial spacials, and is forced to be more smartly used than anyone else. She’s like Feilong, except his moves are a bit more helpful. He’s got grate pokes, while Rose has tricky pokes. I wonder if you’re planning to make a Feilong TACV.

  6. Sh33p

    I can’t wait to see some Super TACVs in May, Dudley looks like he’ll have tons of tricks, judging by the fact that people have said that he can still juggle like crazy.

  7. Maj Post author

    Dammit: Sorry, she’s taking longer than expected but it should be finished tomorrow. Most of this stuff might not look too crazy at first glance, but she’s one of those characters where every combo you do gives you five more ideas five minutes after you think you’re done.

  8. Maj Post author

    Alright it should be up now, with the usual boring screenshots showing nothing happening. Check back this weekend for the customary full combo transcript, to see how many sentences i can cram into one “paragraph.”

    Does anybody else have way too much trouble balancing audio levels in combo videos? Seems like every single SF4 theme track plays at a different volume and then some of them are disruptively noisy while others never seem to get in the way.

    Hardware makes a world of difference too. The same video can sound great on a desktop with $25 speakers/subwoofer and sound absolutely terrible on a laptop. (Not to mention u2b never fails to make everything worse.)

  9. EasierToRun09

    I have to say Maj, I’ve always been a fan of your videos since I came across this site about a year ago… but the things you’ve done here with Rose are stunning! Having 4 fireballs reflected at once (Being on screen themselves from one character is impressive enough) was brilliant! Keep up the amazing work, hopefully you can continue your work for a long time!

  10. onreload

    Wow, I can’t get over the first combo on Seth, the 3 Tiger Shots on Sagat and the Gradius fireball setup on Akuma, really fantastic job…I can’t believe you took a move I figured useless and made ‘ol Rosie look like a viable projectile character again. With that weird timing I imagine everything had to be programmed like 10 frames earlier, and squeezing that 3rd reflect in vs. Sagat has to be really tight.

    Really cool stuff, only wish it had even more stuff in it, but that’s how I always feel! Hopefully this gets the ball rolling on “how many projectiles can we play with” etc. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if you made that the challenge, though it would be a hard one.

  11. Maj Post author

    Nah it’s a six-hit ultra so four fireballs plus ultra equals ten hits. The wrist wraparound part doesn’t do any damage so the life Akuma loses is from the fourth fireball connecting. You can hear the sound effect too. But yeah, if i’d done the ultra one frame sooner, the last Akuma fireball would’ve missed.

  12. Pasqual

    Impressed with the opening combo, I knew there was something she could do with Tanden Engine to reach the upper limit of her damage potential but had never fooled around with it. Do you have an exact damage total for that by any chance?

    Would’ve like to have seen something of her link capability but that sort of stuff isn’t as visually impressive as what was included.

  13. wilerson

    @Snoooootch

    Register in gravatar.com using the same e-mail address that you used in your SonicHurricane account. It works in most blogs, just comment using that e-mail address.

  14. onreload

    It’s only the one guy: Maj, and he waits ’til Monday to see which character people want, then it’s roughly two weeks (or more, as it’s hard to cram in) ’til the next one.

  15. underwing

    So I’ve been thinking of coming back to an old project of mine, a homebrew programmable controller, based on similar tech to the Cthulhu boards. I know a couple people who are looking for and failing to find ASCII PAD V Pro’s, so they’re bugging me to finish the project; I’ve got a working proof of concept, but I can’t decide on an input model — I could hook up buttons to it and have it take input from them (one frame at a time, then add delays between input changes and have it all on an LCD), or throw it over from a computer via a second cable, or any number of other options. Any ideas? I’m especially interested in your input, Maj (I may have just sent you an e-mail about it >.>).

    Standard disclaimer, I’d make all my designs publicly available and open source, so any input isn’t gonna get stolen and used on some ridiculous scheme or whatever (at least not by me).

  16. Maj Post author

    Transcript’s up so most questions should be answered, but please don’t hesitate to ask if anything else comes up.

    Pasqual: It’s not that Rose’s links aren’t visually impressive, because s.HK, c.LP -> c.LK, c.MP xx EX Soul Spiral looks really cool. It would’ve been nice to find a home for that puzzle piece, but the numbers never worked out. Not enough dizzy or not enough meter or both. She just doesn’t have a lot of options in terms of meter usage so a lot of her combos end up using only three bars of meter which just looks ugly to me.

    underwing: Sounds like a really cool idea sir. I got your e-mail so i’ll think about it and write back within the next day or two.

  17. underwing

    Awesome writeup as usual, man. Some insane nuance to the fireball play — I had been wondering about the way you got the traded “third” fireball to not collide, but the one-frame gap makes a fair amount of sense. Pretty crazy.

    And I look forward to your reply.

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