Help a newbie: how does the wake-up game work?

[SlackMasterC]

This is a part of the game I still don't understand. Can somebody walk me through what my choices are when I'm waking up? Does the attacking player have to mis-time a meaty attack, or do I have an invulnerable option? If a perfectly-timed attack and a perfectly-timed reversal collide, what happens? I'm trying to mix up backdashing, blocking, and shoryukens out of knockdowns, but in some matches I just can't get off the ground. Any advice? Guides?

TIA

[yum]

You can do many things as a matter of fact. Anything you do on wakeup becomes a reversal, and gets the property of breaking armour (so the opponent cannot focus absorb on your wakeup). However, if you do a reversal, make sure it has invincibility, otherwise any attack coming from the opponent will stuff it. Every character has at least one invincible special move. Also supers and ultras almost always have invincibility. Use the frame data to see each character's options. Other than a reversal, you can throw/tech, block or backdash. Backdashes have some invincibility, that's why they are used sometimes. The option you take depends on your pure predictions aka reads. Guess what you're opponent might be doing on wakeup. Moves with invincibility beat everything, but if the opponent reads it and blocks, you'll face punish.

[Tuhnu]

When you're knocked down and are waking up, your options are as follows:

-Technical, also known as "teching". This is when you either press down or any 2 buttons (lp+lk, mp+hp etc.) to either get up quicker or do a delayed wakeup (delayed wakeup only happens if you got knocked down by a 'hard knockdown', for example a c.hk). This is used to throw off the opponent's timing on your wakeup.

-Block. Self explanatory; you simply try to block any incoming pressure. This is generally your safest option since after any meaties or other pressure you're again in the neutral game.

-Dashing. Dashing is also a generally good option. Backdashing will get you out of a lot of things but if your opponent reads your backdash or uses an option select (don't worry about these yet), they can catch you out of it. Dashing forward can also be a viable option in some cases, for example if your opponent is jumping on you on your wakeup and you think you can dash under them before they land.

-Reversal. Doing any special move as you're getting up will make it a reversal (and give it armor breaking, meaning it'll blow up focus attacks and armored moves such as Abel's EX change of direction). These can be risky because you can get punished hard if your opponent was expecting it. Note that some moves such as a shoryuken can be made safe by using FADC (focus attack dash cancel; press focus just as the move connects and cancel the focus attack with a dash immediately).

Whether or not your reversal is invincible depends entirely on your character. Ryu's shoryuken for example is a good example of an invincible reversal while Sakura and Juri don't have any invincible moves outside of their EX moves.


-Throw. If you're expecting your opponent to try and throw you when you get up, you can attempt to counter that by doing a throw yourself. Again, note that if they are out of range for your throw to connect, it's punishable. You can also do this by "crouch teching" but you probably shouldn't worry about that just yet.

-Normal attacks. If you're feeling bold, you can also wake up by poking your opponent with your normals. This will always lose to meaties and many special moves or even their normals depending on the timing.

As for a perfect meaty vs reversal, it really depends. If they stick a meaty out and you do an invincible reversal, you will win. If they do a meaty and you do a reversal that is not invincible, they will most likely win or it will trade, meaning both of you get hit.

Blocking and backdashing are your best options to be honest. Always try to see what your opponent likes to do on your wakeup and consider all these options when looking for ways to counter their pressure.

[n00bdragon]

You have a number of options based on what you think your opponent will do. The wakeup game is essentially your opponent using the fact that your options are limited to trick you into making bad choices, often by appearing to do one thing and then actually doing another. The idea is to figure out what they are actually planning to do. Some people are more transparent than others and you can go as deep down that rabbit hole as you care to.

CROSS UPS
One of the most common things you'll have to deal with on wakeup is an ambiguous crossup. The opponent will jump so you have plenty of time to realize you need to block high, the trick is which side to block on. The opponent knows you will be largely stationary as you get up and so he can usually angle his jump just right so that he looks like he can hit you in either the back or the front. You'll need to correctly guess which side they are actually coming on or eat another combo.

MEATY ATTACKS
Opponents will also use many meaty attacks on your wakeup. A meaty attack is one that they start up prior to you fully waking up and which is active during your first awoken frame. This can hit you out of throws, sloppily executed DPs, and even many ultras or supers which lack invincibility. To make matters worse they will also often use moves with very long active frames, meaning that hitting on the later active frames can make a normally unsafe move extremely safe to positive. To counter this type of move you can either get better at performing DPs so they go off on frame 1 of your wakeup, or you can block and try to weather out the storm. Backdashing will avoid the first hit but given that your opponent is already nearly done with an attack they can recover and chase you down most of the time and thus is not recommended.

THROWS
If you get to blocking too much on wakeup though you may start to find a new problem: the opponent just throws you instead of attacking normally. If you suspect a throw, just hold up. Your prejump frames are invincible to throws so it will get you out and lead to a nice punish on your part.

NEUTRAL JUMPS
Sometimes the opponent jumps over you to perform a crossup. Sometimes right when you think they are going to perform a meaty attack or a throw they'll just fake you out and perform a neutral jump instead, hitting you out of your punish as they come down. As you wakeup it often pays to wait a split second and see if they try something. Work on your anti-air attacks that hit directly above you.

BLOCKING
All of the above can be defeated more or less with a dragon punch, and this is why you shouldn't use it all the time. Get too happy with the dragon punch and your opponent will simply do nothing but block as you wakeup, letting you hang yourself with your own rope and then punish accordingly.

Try to get inside your opponent's head and figure out what they are thinking about you.

[SlackMasterC]

Thanks for the info, guys! It sounds like what I need to work on is the timing. I was pretty sure backdashing and Ryu's MP shoryuken both had some invincibility on startup, but another player online was kind enough to show me, today, that I don't know how to escape from sweeps as well as I thought.

So, if my shoryuken has full invincibility for the first 5 frames, does that mean that if I time it just right, I can go from 'invincible because I'm on the floor' straight into those 5 invincible frames without being vulnerable in between? Is that also true of backdashing?

[yum]

Originally posted by SlackMasterC:

Thanks for the info, guys! It sounds like what I need to work on is the timing. I was pretty sure backdashing and Ryu's MP shoryuken both had some invincibility on startup, but another player online was kind enough to show me, today, that I don't know how to escape from sweeps as well as I thought.

So, if my shoryuken has full invincibility for the first 5 frames, does that mean that if I time it just right, I can go from 'invincible because I'm on the floor' straight into those 5 invincible frames without being vulnerable in between? Is that also true of backdashing?

Yes, you will be invincible as long as the reversal's invincibility lasts.

[GlamorousShirley]

Your Choices:
Block
Jump back
Jump
Jump forward
Backdash
Throw
DP
Mash

You need to get an idea of how you're opponents approach you at every knockdown and act accordingly.