Based on what we’ve witnessed so far, it seems like SF4’s combo engine contains more arbitrary restrictions than universal rules. It might be a while before anyone understands it completely. If we work together, hopefully we can solve some of these mysteries.
Right off the bat, one of the most important rules in the game is that hitting an airborne opponent with any non-knockdown attack renders them completely invincible. Therefore Akuma can’t do anti-air s.HP xx HP DP like he’s been able to do in every appearance since Street Fighter Alpha. Juggling any non-knockdown attack has the same lockout effect too.
Landing a lvl2 or lvl3 Focus Attack against a grounded opponent puts them into crumple stun. They wobble on their feet (considered grounded) for a second and then fall over (considered airborne). During this period they can be thrown or even air thrown, because crumple stun doesn’t count as conventional hit stun. As with all Street Fighter games, it’s impossible to throw someone during conventional hit stun or knockdown reel.
The easiest way to judge the charge level of Focus Attacks is by counting the number of times the character flashes white. If they flash white once, the Focus Attack has reached lvl2. If they flash twice, the Focus Attack has reached lvl3. The second flash actually happens during the attack portion of a fully charged Focus Attack so there’s no way of delaying it or speeding it up.
Counterhits give ground attacks additional frame advantage, but they don’t create automatic juggle opportunities. For all intents and purposes, a counterhit Flash Kick has the same juggle behavior as a regular one. However, certain attacks gain extra properties on counterhit. For example, a counterhit lvl1 Focus Attack causes crumple stun whereas reguarly it does not. Also, the first hit of Ken’s HP Shoryuken becomes a knockdown on counterhit whereas regularly it doesn’t knock down until the second hit.
Certain attacks create juggle opportunities when they connect. For example, Gen’s Crane Style c.LK launches opponents into the air and allows Gen to juggle with any move he wants. Similarly, lvl2 and lvl3 Focus Attacks create juggle opportunities when they connect against an airborne opponent, unlike lvl1 Focus Attack which simply counts as a basic knockdown.
It turns out that most attacks which create juggle opportunities only do so if the opponent isn’t already in airborne hit stun. This explains why Abel can’t do one-hit c.HP over and over, Gen can’t do KKK-style c.LK over and over, Gouken can’t do EX Senkugoshoha over and over, etc.
Of course there are exceptions which seem to have no juggle limit, such as the first hit of Ryu’s j.MP but they’re fairly rare. Furthermore, Focus Attack crumple stun doesn’t count as conventional hit stun so you still get to use one-time juggle starters as the opponent falls over. In other words, Gen can do lvl3 Focus Attack, wait until the opponent falls over, hit them with KKK-style c.LK, and still jab them out of the air.
Also there are some strange conditional juggle lockouts in the game. For example we all know that Ryu can combo Shoryuken xx Shinkuu Hadoken, Metsu Hadoken but jchensor noticed that if the last hit of Ryu’s super hits a grounded opponent, the ultra (along with everything else he’s got) always whiffs. This works in reverse too. Once the last hit of Ryu’s ultra connects, you can’t get his super to juggle anymore either. This explains why you only get six or seven hits if you try LP super followed immediately by HP super from full screen away in Training Mode.
Perhaps the last hit of Ryu’s super/ultra has sweep knockdown, because they fall sort of the same way and i don’t remember ever seeing anyone juggle off a sweep in SF4. I’ve tried trading with sweeps and it still doesn’t seem to work.
The weirdest exception in the game might be the second hit of Ken’s HP Shoryuken. Normally if you FADC after the second hit, you don’t get a free juggle opportunity. On the other hand, if you FADC the first hit of anti-air or counterhit HP Shoryuken, you do get a free juggle.
However, if you land an anti-air or counterhit HP Shoryuken and allow the first two hits to connect before you FADC, you still get a free juggle opportunity. It’s almost as if the second hit of HP Shoryuken can’t create a juggle setup on its own, but it doesn’t use up the juggle setup created by the first hit either. What’s weirder yet, is you don’t get a free juggle opportunity from anti-air/counterhit HP Shoryuken (one hit) xx FADC, HP Shoryuken (one hit) FADC even though it looks like only the first hit of the first DP is connecting and only the second hit of the second DP is connecting. What gives?
Just to nitpick: Gen can do 2 reps of Crane style cr.LK, so
“Gen can do lvl3 Focus Attack, wait until the opponent falls over, hit them with KKK-style c.LK, and still jab them out of the air.”
He can do the c.LK and then jab the airborne opponent anyway. However, doing a Lvl. 3 Focus doesn’t give him anything more than 2 reps of cr.LK. Counter Hit doesn’t seem to do anything either…*Shrug*
If Gen uses KKK-c.LK to launch the opponent into the air, then juggles with another KKK-c.LK, he can’t do anything after. But if he uses lvl2/lvl3 Focus Attack to put the opponent into airborne state (as they’re falling over during crumple stun), he can hit them with KKK-c.LK and still juggle after.
The point was that the airborne state caused by crumple stun is special.
Also, the Training Mode stun counter maxes out at 9999. Dedication!
Oh I found that out already. Was bored.
Also, you’re still limiting yourself a bit there…after two c.LK, Gen can do either Super, or the Crane anti-air Ultra. I can’t get the Mantis Ultra to connect, but I’m no machine…and this is without the airborne state from crumple.
and yeah I’m sorry to derail you a bit, but I’m still on point with you about shit being arbitrary, because this seems that way. time to investigate, eh? I really hope you find some dope Gen combos anyway because he’s really really fun. In that video a dude shot on his phone, he shows how you can semi-infinite (or training-mode only infinite) with Hands xx FADC x N. I can do 2 or 3 reps by mashing it out on pad. I should look up the frame data on his EX Hands, ’cause they have serious hit stun but I can’t do anything with it.
edit: unless by “anything after” you mean not including supers or ultras, because in that case, yes. even after crumpling fully, nothing is possible after 2 c.LK from CraneGen
Yeah, juggling with Gen’s KKK-style super/ultra doesn’t prove anything because those connect even after 5+ hits of his upkick. They either have infinite juggle potential or very high juggle potential. Gen might not even have a way of determining that number.
One small addendum to the FA > throw combo. You can’t throw someone if you combo’d INTO your FA. So like if Guile does c.jab > c.jab > c.strong > SB > lvl2 FA, you won’t be able to throw them.
Are you sure about that? Because i don’t think Guile can combo lvl2 Focus Attack into air throw anyway. As far as i know, only Vega’s jump is fast enough to do that. Everyone else needs a lvl3 Focus Attack.
maybe i’m reading something wrong, but i dont see anything in gilley’s post that says air throw. i’m far from the expert, but if we’re talking grounded throws akuma can combo to gou hadou > lvl2 focus > ultra so throws work.
Dang, you’re right. Sorry, i just remembered talking to him about comboing air throws way back when and made a bad assumption.
At any rate, i got Vega’s counterhit LP Rolling Crystal Flash xx lvl2 Focus Attack xx dash forward, vertical jumping air throw to register as a 3-hit combo against Rufus. You have to make only the claw part of the rolling special to connect as a counterhit, which gives you barely enough time to charge up to lvl2.
Though i’d give my view on the mess, i doubt we’ll ever really get to the bottom of it, but we can try
The way i see it with Kens EX SRK being able to go on indeffinately is due to a type of stun a move creates that allows infite repetitions. At present if we were to discover these i”d hazard a guess to say that Moves that share this propperty are
first hit of Ryu’s j.MP & other iterations from shoto’s (& Seth)
Goukens Fireballs.
Kens EX Shoryuken (Second Hit, but possible first)
Chun Li’s Air Target first hit
Bisons Air target first hit.
Rufus’s j.HK first hit only.
Akumas Lk Tatsu
Last hit of Sakuras EX Tatsu
Last hit of Goukens EX Palm
Goukens Throw
Fei’s Chicken Wing
There may be more, probably are in fact
What we presume from this is that, if these moves are capable of hitting (they haven’t been overuled by other mechanics, say, to many aerial hits) then they add no limitations. The similarity in these moves is that they can never be done indeffinately, therefore they can’t be abused. They may have been created to allow characters links/combos that they would be incapable of doing had these things not had speciall mechanics.
Ryu can do a j.MP -> Shinkuu or Ultra & hit full. Now if the first hit had the same propperties as the second hit you would technically lose one hit of the Super/Ultra.
For example, Ryu’s EX Hadouken has two knockdown hits, due to this one of them hits the oponent in air, meaning the next move has to do two strike or more to combo (& will loseone hit of it’s monouvre) This idea can be tested with Akumas general combo of SRK -> Shaku.
LP SRK -> one Raising Hit
MP -> 2 Hits One Stun, One Rising
HP -> 3 Hits One Stun, two Rising
EX -> 3 Hits, All Rising
As for Shaku, i am guessing it has a property that allows it to hit someone on a second phase juggle-able state. (As in the person can take one aerial knockdown & the attack will still hit full)
So here’s the results
Assuming all the SRK’s hit full these are the reslts we get
LP SRK -> Shaku = Shaku hits 3 times
MP SRK -> Shaku = Shaku hits 3 times
HP SRK -> Shaku = Shaku hits twice
EX SRK -> Shaku = Shaku hits once
Now looking at this, going by the logic that, each knockdown attack in air restricts a character from doing another single knockdown strike (IE the next move must have multiple knockdown hits) we can predict that doing an EX Hadou with Ryu will make you lose one hit of his Ultra. On top of this, without actually testing the move we can predict that if Ryu did (for now we’re going to have to assume that the enemy falls to quickly to allow Super-> Ultra to combo) LK Tatsu -> Shinkuu Hadou -> Ultra that due to 5 knockdown hits we will subsequently lose 5 hits from the proceeding Ultra (Equalling 3 hits of the Ultra)
We also have to bear in mind that the hits have to be single move. So Fei’s Rekka, which is percieved by the game as three seperate moves cannot combo, however Balrogs Super, though it has 5 seperate comboing strikes is still a single move. so only with spacing, allowing the first strike to whiff entirely & starting the combo with the second strike will we see the combo initiate.Should you try to hit the first strike it will whiff, & the enemy will have fallen from the juggle before the second strike could be hit. However i do need o test this more to confirm it.
Hopefully that was understandable. What all this is intending is to explain the difference between when Ken does HP SRK -> Ultra & gets full ultra or half Ultra which also has the same effect if Ryu hits his HP SRK as an anti-air. So the only thing we can do is guage similairties.
My guess is, when Ken does Counterhit SRK it gains the propperties of it’s Aerial hit effect. now the only propperty i can guess is when it hits as air it becomes on of the infinite stun moves. I’m assuming moves have to alter properties when airborne as, if you where to do a HP SRK with Akuma hitting 3 times as an anti-air, technically the first hit should cause a reset.
So if we say the first hit is an infin hit when airborne i guess that would mean it could be done indeffinately when done as an anti air (Or counterhit) which i’ll test soon to be sure. The second hit however, i’m not sure… I think when it hits on the second phase of air combo (After one knockdown/juggling attack has been done) then it has unique propperties, (Such as also becomes an infinite property move.) this will allow the Ultra to hit as if it was the first hit of an air combo making it full.
Bit of a mindfuck, hope that made sense… I’d imagine it has plenty of flaws, hopefully it isn’t complete bollocks though.
Nice Read Maj
@Pokey86
Great info Pokey086 !!! Nice too
I understand better some things now
If i understand special moves which doesnt knockdow on hit can lead to a special state if they hit someone in the air.
And this special state allow to combo with any move as soon as the hitbox can reach the opponent.
Moves which seems lead to that are focus attack, First hit of Shoryuken of ken and probably others moves we have to discover
——–
About level 1 focus airborn, i’m sure it lead to juggle opportunity too.
I remember trying with viper because she has a good focus anti air.
I tried versus a slow jump of dhalsim in corner and i combo a level 1 with her ultra
Great information here, especially regarding Gen. :)