On Monday I got a friend request on Steam, completely out of the blue. After accepting I messaged them as I didn't recognise the name or tag. Turns out it was a guy from Shoryuken.com (SRK) who had seen my post and wanted to help teach me how to improve my game on street fighter!
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gladly accepted MDZ Tariikz's offer, and we spent a good hour and a half last night fighting each other with him giving me tips in between. We were mostly working on defense while looking a bit at getting me to zone more - as that is where Juri's strengths lie.
While I still have a long way to go, after I got home from my evening out I decided to play a few ranked matches and see how I got on. My blocking was still far from perfect, but I didn't do too badly. I very narrowly lost a game against a Ryu player, I solidly won the first round, second round went to him after I anti aired too late and we traded, and then second round came down to pixels of health left, I got the EX dive kick off to set up the Ultra to win... except I slightly miss timed the Ultra and it whiffed, so he finished me with a kick as I landed.
The next two games went much better, I had an interesting fight against a Sagat player. He was ranked higher than me in both BP and PP, but did little other than spamming Tiger Shots of various heights and speeds. A few well timed dive kick punishes won me the first round convincingly, and the second round I decided to spend some time practicing my absorbing fireballs with my own fireball store. Eventually got the timing down and was able to fire off 2 fireballs of my own for every one of his. Eventually he threw out a raw Ultra Fireball at me which I jumped, EX dive kick punished and this time I did get the Ultra combo to hit which finished him off.
Lastly I got a Mirror match against another Juri player. Was a little concerned when it started, he was over double my BP and was 4 times my PP. I have little experience playing against another Juri, and now I'm trying to play 'properly' it is hard to think what to do when you're both in theory going to be aiming for the same things. Which is why I wasn't overly happy with my performance on this one. He soon showed me that I wasn't going to win playing the zoning game, so my game ended up resorting back to dive kicks and jump ins. While not as random as before I started this journey, I was still trying to play somewhat smart - it was probably still far from ideal play. But Ultimately I think it was the randomness that came through for me, as I did win the second round and finished up the third round with another clutch EX dive kick to Ultra to win.
This last win especially gave me a butt load of points, and my Juri Ranked up to D+ so things are starting to look better. Unfortunately I didn't get the option to record the replays on any of the above fights, and I wasn't running game cam yet.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gladly accepted MDZ Tariikz's offer, and we spent a good hour and a half last night fighting each other with him giving me tips in between. We were mostly working on defense while looking a bit at getting me to zone more - as that is where Juri's strengths lie.
While I still have a long way to go, after I got home from my evening out I decided to play a few ranked matches and see how I got on. My blocking was still far from perfect, but I didn't do too badly. I very narrowly lost a game against a Ryu player, I solidly won the first round, second round went to him after I anti aired too late and we traded, and then second round came down to pixels of health left, I got the EX dive kick off to set up the Ultra to win... except I slightly miss timed the Ultra and it whiffed, so he finished me with a kick as I landed.
The next two games went much better, I had an interesting fight against a Sagat player. He was ranked higher than me in both BP and PP, but did little other than spamming Tiger Shots of various heights and speeds. A few well timed dive kick punishes won me the first round convincingly, and the second round I decided to spend some time practicing my absorbing fireballs with my own fireball store. Eventually got the timing down and was able to fire off 2 fireballs of my own for every one of his. Eventually he threw out a raw Ultra Fireball at me which I jumped, EX dive kick punished and this time I did get the Ultra combo to hit which finished him off.
Lastly I got a Mirror match against another Juri player. Was a little concerned when it started, he was over double my BP and was 4 times my PP. I have little experience playing against another Juri, and now I'm trying to play 'properly' it is hard to think what to do when you're both in theory going to be aiming for the same things. Which is why I wasn't overly happy with my performance on this one. He soon showed me that I wasn't going to win playing the zoning game, so my game ended up resorting back to dive kicks and jump ins. While not as random as before I started this journey, I was still trying to play somewhat smart - it was probably still far from ideal play. But Ultimately I think it was the randomness that came through for me, as I did win the second round and finished up the third round with another clutch EX dive kick to Ultra to win.
This last win especially gave me a butt load of points, and my Juri Ranked up to D+ so things are starting to look better. Unfortunately I didn't get the option to record the replays on any of the above fights, and I wasn't running game cam yet.