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Strategy Smoke vs the rushdown

arydious

Noob
SO I have been playing the game for a little while now, and after switching characters countless amounts of times i decided to main as Smoke. I have done well against my group with the help of all the information posted on this site.

I am still have trouble dealing with rush down people So far Raiden and Subzero have been my mortal enemies. Subzero only if they are non stop all over me, if its a defensive one i seem to do well with. As for raiden I wish he would just die, my friend plays him with only one strategy, which for the life of my i can't get around he does torpedo non stop, he will teleport behind me and either grab me, torpedo if i try to jump or if get a stupid 4 hit combo off that does 25 % damage. If he shoots a lightning bolt i can generally parry it with shake, but then it goes back to neutral ground which seems to give him the advantage cause the torpedo is so ridiculously fast, and seems to overpower most things, so I am unable to capatilize on punishing him from wake up, I normally block him and then he gets a teleport off and pulls the above stuff off. Raiden is my biggest problem

I understand this could be 95% mental block against these characters but any advise would be really helpful. There is also johnny cage and Kano who can do damage but i can prevail against them more often then not.

Thanks in advance!
 
I Main Reptile and against Raiden players i always bait out a teleport because of my SlowForceBalls, than i punish the Teleport immidiatly with my ElbowDash, and than i can begin the Pressure,

Against Sub-Zero you should stay at midscreen and when he throws ice-ball at you shake it, and watch out for the Wake-up Slide, if you block one of those you can easily punish it with 40% Combo, than immidiatly after the combo do TeleportPunchWhiff into Sweep/Grab/B23Smokebomb.
 

redeyes

Button Masher
Smoke has a great set of anti rushdown moves. If they knock you down wake up with smoke away or smoke toward (ex verisons) or EX shake which will allow you to drop on top of them if they do any attack that is not unblock able or a low.
 

G4S KT

Gaming4Satan Founder
The way to beat rushdown with Smoke is to avoid it. If you find yourself with someone up in your face ex shake them or poke out and escape or d4 them into the b2 trap. Otherwise, Smoke's normals are too slow to break rushdown pressure.

As far as Raiden goes, it seems like a matchup thing. You have to be quick on block against superman but you can't hold it. If you're blocking Raiden can teleport safely, otherwise teleport can be punished.

Unless this is online you're talking about, in which case Raiden is lag tier and there is no strategy against him.
 

arydious

Noob
The way to beat rushdown with Smoke is to avoid it. If you find yourself with someone up in your face ex shake them or poke out and escape or d4 them into the b2 trap. Otherwise, Smoke's normals are too slow to break rushdown pressure.

As far as Raiden goes, it seems like a matchup thing. You have to be quick on block against superman but you can't hold it. If you're blocking Raiden can teleport safely, otherwise teleport can be punished.

Unless this is online you're talking about, in which case Raiden is lag tier and there is no strategy against him.
Yeah i wanted to break something when i played a raiden online, here i was 9 wins in ranked and just needed one more for my damn trophy and i fight a stupid raiden. I generally stick to offline play alone so ill have just have to learn how to bait and read better against raiden i guess.
 
Vs raiden online, the entire match is basically a coin flip every second. Normally you can react, but online you can't block a superman on reaction or poke out of a teleport from neutral, so you basically have to guess which sucks.

Sub is doable though. Although smoke can't do chip damage, you can build a ton of meter by teleporting away and forcing him to block smoke bombs.

If the sub is bad, he'll jump around and/or slide from fullscreen or at the tip of slide distance. If he jumps, nail him with a TP to oki. Even online it should be possible to block a full screen slide, but if you can't do it just block low as soon as he gets into range. Any whiffed slide can be punished with a smoke bomb, btw.

If the sub player isn't bad, he'll know/realize that he has to block dash in (ice blasts are futile and are otherwise his only full screen option). Like many smoke matchups, you need to capitalize on this by pre-empting blockdashes. It's tricky and takes some getting used to, but if you space properly, you can catch the opponent blockdashing in by throwing out smoke's long range moves. Sweep's range is deceptively long. I've nailed a ton of block dashing subs by making them dash into my sweep. B+2 has absolutely absurd range (fun fact, it can hit from starting position). If you can teach them to crouch while blockdashing with sweeps, this is your golden ticket to enormous damage.

Don't jump in on sub when he's blockdashing in. He can catch you with an ice clone. If you mess up and do jump in as he's blockdashing, you can whiff an air TP to avoid the ice clone and not get punished (clone has a lot of lag), but you'll be right next to him which is undesirable.

That's how you deal with a sub trying to get in. If you mess up, D+1 is faster than almost all of sub's normals. Again, this is useful in pretty much every matchup, but you can D+1 once or twice to put sub in a range where his normals will whiff but yours will hit. D+1, D+4, to sweep or B+2 is a good way to force the sub back. Watch up for a jump in though.

On wakeup, TP beats sub's meaties in pretty much every situation, but of course watch out for blocks. You might be able to sneak in a smoke away to escape if he like's doing F+4 a lot (it's really slow).

On oki, if you whiff a TP, I'm pretty sure that his slide will beat your meaties with its invincibility and speed. However, if you whiff a tp and go for a cross up jump punch, his ice clone won't come out (too close) and his slide will whiff. You either force him to block a jump punch to mixup or get him to whiff a slide which gives you a smoke bomb combo. He might be able to dash or poke out of it, but usually you can't against smoke's oki so most players don't even try.

You can also go for whacky teleport/enhanced teleport crossup shenanigans, but you don't really need to.


Honestly, I don't think this matchup is that bad. It's probably a 5/5. There are other rushdown characters who give smoke significantly more trouble.
 

arydious

Noob
thanks apocalips, thats all very informative. I have actually been very successful against sub and raiden lately using the smoke away or towards, I never really used them before, stupid me. This definitely will help out more thanks!