Match-up Discussion Stryker Matchup Discussion Thread

[ZeroEffect]

5-5 vs Mileena

While Stryker does deal with zoning well, I just don't see how this could be even the way things stand now. Mil seems to own the midscreen match which is mostly where this fight will take place. D4 really keeps him in check. Especially if he tries to roll on anticipation of a sai. (Sais thrown at mid-range would be unreactable) Mileena's counter zoning gives her combos and/or safe jumps, while Stryker's gives him damage and full screen position. Granted, Mileena can't roll on reaction to gunshot, but the risk/reward for attempting zoning still has to favor Mil.

And unless there's something I've been missing, Mileena seems to be better off in close against him as well. The biggest annoyance in this matchup as Mileena is that she almost has to throw away iAS from her moveset. I'm also not sure exactly how hard Stryker punishes things like roll and telekick/EN telekick, but I don't think it's enough to completely even out the matchup.

So what keeps this from being 6/4 Mileena?

 

[Marcus Vinicius]

I have to agree... Mileena have much option to beat us. Her roll, is better than Stryker´s one, also low/mid game is faster. At least, she is easier to punish.
6-4... good i think.

 

[Venth]

5-5 vs Baraka
5-5 vs Cyber Sub-Zero
2-8 vs Cyrax
4-6 vs Ermac
3-7 vs Freddy Krueger
4-6 vs Jade
5-5 vs Jax
4-6 vs Johnny Cage
2-8 vs Kabal
5-5 vs Kano
5-5 vs Kenshi
5-5 vs Kitana
3-7 vs Kung Lao
4-6 vs Liu Kang
5-5 vs Mileena
5-5 vs Nightwolf
4-6 vs Noob Saibot
4-6 vs Quan Chi
4-6 vs Raiden
5-5 vs Rain
3-7 vs Reptile
5-5 vs Scorpion
3-7 vs Sektor
5-5 vs Shang Tsung
6-4 vs Sheeva
3-7 vs Sindel
5-5 vs Skarlet
2-8 vs Smoke
5-5 vs Sonya Blade
5-5 vs Sub-Zero

My list is based on -my- ability with stryker vs many opponents, all online. Ive spent a lot of time on stryker, he was the 2nd toon i got mastery on in the nekropolis which means nothing but effort was put in.

If the player is about my skill level or better is how I chose the matchups, Beating some crappy KL means nothing.

In my experience, in general, characters which have low/high projectile mixups. You guys have discussed a lot of characters, the ones I want nothing to do with are Jade, KL, LK, Sindel, Kabal, Cyrax are the ones who are the most difficult to beat.

The other 3 that give me fits are Smoke, Sector, and one I havent seen mentioned much, reptile.

The link with all these characters is that they force you to jump. If these characters get an early lead when played by a good respectable player they can keep me at bay by mixing up their projectiles. Cant low block all day when theres a lot of distance between you and they start rolling the low projectiles until you jump. When you gotta move forward eventually you have to jump or get chip damaged while they build meter. The good players know this and will be prepared to punish and start all over. If there was ever a toon you dont want to have to jump with its stryker.

Sector and Smoke are a nightmare. For Sektor with the up missle and forward missle combined with flamethrower, the good players can just mix those 3 up and keep me away. the missles hit too hard and the straight one knocks you down. Jumping them is hard and if you get within roll distance they will mix in flamethrower or telepunch and punish hard if the telepunch hits.

Smoke, for whatever reason ive been facing a ton of smokes lately and theres this one tactic Ive been running into where they go full screen and keep walking backwards even when they cant go anymore so as soon as you move they move back with you. Then they mix in smoke bombs or when backpedaling when they see you even -flinch- they do shake. back them up all the way? teleport over and go the other way. when they have a lead, what can you do? Stryker can only beat shake in close and its so hard to get to smoke if they want to stay away. and if smoke does catch you with some offense he has that juggle combo thats going to set you back, if that happens a couple of times its over. (Im talking about myself here).

And no one mentions reptile much but i have problems here because you cant roll under slow/fast ball and they are hard to jump over. If one hits you and eventually they get one in, I get popped up into that 30% ish combo. Also, some use the tactic of slow ball and walking along with it if you decide to jump they are waiting to punish you. if you block, they trap you by doing other moves just as the slow ball arrives.

Also if I remember right but dont see him much have a problem to some extent with Quan Chi because I think his projectile is the one you cant roll under. He can teleport and its very easy to land a quick hit and trance.

Im probably not as good as some of you doing your scoring but I cant for the life of me see how you can consistently punish low projectiles with stryker unless they are 2-3 dashes away or closer and you anticipate it. if youre not in range of them to hit after jumping a projectile you havent accomplished much with stryker.

 

[Marcus Vinicius]

Guys... good news... I have been playing lately with good Mileenas, and I think I have a good trick. At least, this is working well.
Face Mileena in 2 "phases".
1 - Just punishing and counter-zoning. If it´s needed to attack close. Try just a Jump Kick. She owns at "CQC". This part is to make her afraid to teleport and roll (punish teleport sometimes, with just a single D4 and step back, because the aerial sai delay her fall, crashing our main trick). I normally try to punish with 4 and Roll Toss (18%).

2 - Zoning. She´s already afraid to teleport and roll, will do less, but will. So, caution with much zoning.

Venth, i can help you against. Lol, most of my friends play Reptile online, i have much experience against them . The first hint is gold. You will never do a X-ray in Reptile. You MUST, use Enhanced Roll Toss to go throug the slow/fast balls. And another good one, don´t be so afraid of get in a "zoning war". The Ball, slow one, at full screen lose to pistol because you can defend it, the pistol recover faster. And if it is the fast one, He won´t be able to combo in, because the pistol´s hit, prevent him to launch another, and if lauch, time to EN roll. When he aproaches, just get ready to do some gun cancels (specially if he has X-ray).
A good one here, is use EN Roll Toss as waking up attack. Has good invencibilty, denying the acid balls. Of course, don´t use so far from him.

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Yeah, jump kick pretty much destroys her D4. You can get 18% every time she tries that. Roll Toss eats Sais for breakfest.

And gun cancel into stance block is great to bait and punish her teleport/ball roll as well as conditioning Mileena not to counter zone too much. Meaning if you play smart and how the matchup is supposed to be played, then you can actually zone Mileena out without fearing her counter-zone tools while she constantly has to guess and struggles to make a comeback without putting her ass on the line.

All she has left is her footsies, which are great of course. But Stryker's pokes aren't bad either. 5-5 sounds about right to me. Still an annoying matchup based mostly on mind games, counter set ups and footsies.

 

[Marcus Vinicius]

I think the worst matchup is against Noob. I never see a good trick that works on him. Keep him close with reset is also very hard. And far... ¬¬... impossible to deal with, even EN Roll Toss, don´t do a great job. At least the ones i played for last agaist noob, i think the dash block is the most effective, the problem is when you TRY to advance, ow crap. The instant I release the block button, shadow hits.. %@#%#@. Yet, i think dash block most effective against him.

 

[Vulcan Hades]

You're right. It's an extremely difficult matchup. But not unwinnable.

That match requires a lot of patience. You dash block and take chip damage but shadow tackles push you back a little so it's hard to gain ground and get close to Noob.

And when you're around jump distance or closer, the last thing you want to do is jump because that's what they want. Around here they start throwing random upknee (which has an absolutely ridiculous hitbox. it hits in front, on top and behind him). So there's no point trying to cross-him up.

The most frustrating is that when Noob whiffs an Upknee, he seems completely invulnerable to gun shots. So you can't even punish him for making a mistake.

The most effective tool I have found vs Noob is Stryker's sweep, baton sweep and standing 3. They all work very well at mid-range vs his upknee.

The rest is just being patient and making good reads on straight clones to try and punish them with EN roll toss or JK combos. Or trying to bait his teleport/straight clones with gun cancels. It's a gamble, but the payoff is bigger for Stryker than it is for Noob if you guess right so it's definitely worth trying sometimes.

 

[Marcus Vinicius]

You have a good trick agaisnt Raiden to?
I Normally try to stay on corner, so teleport becomes useless, and more punishable.
That cursed teleport, If do not grad, he does torpedo. This... teleport mind game is... :S... efective.

 

[RamenO]

After playing with Skarlet a fair bit, I don't think this matchup is against Stryker at all. I haven't faced a Skarlet that blew me away yet, but she actually doesn't have the options from range to compete with Stryker. As I said in the Skarlet forums, you can trade projectiles with her all day. Her initial kunai only does 3% and the second does 4% but isn't a true combo, so you can trade with the first which throws you out of recovery and block the second(for 1% chip). This is about the only projectile where gunshot trades are in Stryker's favor, nevermind grenades or Roll Toss. Skarlet suffers from the same thing Jax and Stryker do when canceling kunai on dash, and that is she can't block. If she's trying kunai canceling, she's free to roll toss all day.

Her teleport is also ass. You can walk forward and dodge it, no joke or exaggeration. Just slightly hold forward when you see her teleporting and it'll whiff completely for a full punish because of how unsafe that move is. The only thing you'll honestly need to worry about in this matchup is being upclose and if your opponent knows how to abuse the up/downslash glitch after slide. Even then if you block her initial string and she tries a Red Dash after to begin the followup, you can EN Roll Toss or EN Baton Sweep to eat the hit and get her off.

I'd say at worse this is a 5-5 Stryker, best is a 6-4 for him. I would disagree with Vulcan's numbers on that, and no way would it be 3-7 like D_Matt had it on the first page.

I still don't see how Mileena is even with Stryker. Her D4 will beat out any and all of Stryker's moves, including wake up Roll Tosses and his godly standing 4. Honestly, a Mileena could probably beat you with just D4 and it would be entirely up to Stryker to FJK(which is a gamble. The answer to countering a move should never be to jump in on her) or burn meter on EN Roll or Baton. I'm definitely having trouble seeing this matchup as even.

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Cool, I didn't know you could completely avoid Skarlet's teleport by walking forward. That's good to know. So how do you punish it? Do you have time to B3,2 or B2,F2?

Mileena has no come back potential and I don't see how someone can lose to D4 alone. Truth is she has to take huge risks to even get damage and can't build meter at all from far away because Stryker can roll toss her Sais. Also, it's way too tempting for her to teleport kick or ball roll when she sees Stryker take his gun out so she can easily be baited and punished for it. Then once you conditioned her to respect gun cancel, you can start zoning and she will be scared to teleport. Mileena can't safely counter zone Stryker, the chances to eat a combo are too big. So you eliminate her ability to build meter and her ability to counter-zone. So what does she have left? Not much. Just footsies.

And if she keeps burning meter on EN teleport and can't build any meter, that means she won't have a lot of breakers. Also, Baton Sweep murders her wake up.

 

[RamenO]

Skarlet's teleport is -13 on hit/whiff I believe from reading the Skarlet forums, so your punishment options are 11xxRoll Toss/Gunshot, standing 4, or trying for a grab if you're not sure if you can do anything in time. I'd honestly just go with the standing 4, though. Gets her the hell away, and no gambling with timing/execution. But yeah, Skarlet really is just hype I feel, regarding how high she is being tiered. She can get sick damage, but that usually requires either A). ridiculous execution and/or the inclusion of the glitch(which may or may not be patched out), B). use of meter or C). a specific situation/starting string. She really isn't as good as people are making her out to be, especially if you consider upcoming nerfs/fixes that have been rumored. Some may definitely have trouble versus her(Sub Zero), but Stryker actually fairs well in my opinion.

The point of this isn't just you can walk out of it. It's actually applicable to Gunshot cancel baiting. This means it's ridiculously easy to bait and punish if read right. Pull Gun out, she does teleport, you dash cancel out of it, standing 4 her in the face. Like I also said, you can trade grenade/gunshot with her all day. Just remember to hold block to only receive the 1% chip from the second kunai. Hell, even if the second kunai hits it's a 7% vs. 9%(if grenade was used) trade. And once again, it isn't even necessary to aim for trading with her. She can't block if she's kunai canceling like Stryker & Jax. Just Roll Toss her.

Like I said, I haven't faced a Skarlet that really put me on edge, but just from looking at how many ways Stryker can shut down some of her options, bait a lot of her unsafe specials, and control the pace leads me to believe this isn't as bad as people would think(especially with the 3-7 someone posted earlier).

 

[PoliceBrutality]

oh wow you literally walk away from it lol. that's going to get patch lol

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Freddy is also overrated in my opinion. Sure, he can do big damage and has some good projectiles. But his defense is really crappy. He's basically a Kabal without nomad dash and instant air fireballs.

I've punished his teleports on reaction with Roll Toss numerous times. Gun cancel baits his projectiles really easily. And once you're in you can murder him with frame traps and cross-over jump punches and he'll just stand there like an idiot and won't be able to do anything about it. Stryker just outpokes him to death.

Once they nerf his damage and remove the projectile glitch it's probably going to be an even matchup imo. 4-6 at worst.

 

[RamenO]

So with the changes to Stryker (the big one worth mentioning in Roll Toss), how do you guys figure his matchups will change?

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Kabal and Freddy got winnable.

Cyrax, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang and Ermac are probably a little closer to 5-5 now. They all have lost some advantage they had. They need to respect Stryker's zoning when he has meter.

KL got easier but still a bad matchup. Probably more close to 4-6 than 3-7.

Raiden is still bad for Stryker.

Reptile got kind of easier because he can't hide behind force balls anymore. But at the same time he got buffed so it's hard to say.

Noob got way harder though.

 

[Marcus Vinicius]

Dear god, one more good new... Playing against a good raiden this night... I niver figured out that Neutral jumping punch were so efective against his teleport.
And when he figured that this won´t work he´ll start fighting like a normal guy. lol. So... the good time for zoning. Beware the flying move, of course.

 

[Kweli]

How do you deal with characters that can teleport quicker than gunshot/grenade.. ie, smoke, raiden, sektor (although Sek is sometimes catchable)

Smoke specifically can teleport all day without my gun hitting him

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Smoke's teleport is a problem. Because of that move alone, you can't rely on your gun in this match. Even gun canceling is too slow compared to his teleport. So just like vs Mileena you first have to condition him to think you will never use gun shot. That's when you'll be able to start zoning and thus bait his teleports or shake. The only time you should go for a gun cancel is when you have enough frame advantage.

imo you gotta be more aggressive vs Smoke. If you rushdown Smoke, he suddenly loses his advantage over Stryker (counter-zoning). Plus Stryker outpokes him up close. Stryker actually has great normals and strings for pressure. He can't lock down people like Johnny Cage but he has an underrated offense.

Remember, Roll Toss beats shake and smoke bomb. Baton Sweep beats EN shake.



Other ninja teleporters are much slower than Smoke. Vs Scorpion, Ermac and Rain you can gun cancel into D1/D4 or gun stance block.

 

[Kweli]

Im having serious problems with this new breed of cyrax that constantly throws bombs and nets (Close bomb, followed by medium bomb and net...)
... I cant jump b/c I get netted... Until PS3 gets update I cant EX roll through nets...

What to do... what to do...?

 

[PoliceBrutality]

Im having serious problems with this new breed of cyrax that constantly throws bombs and nets (Close bomb, followed by medium bomb and net...)
... I cant jump b/c I get netted... Until PS3 gets update I cant EX roll through nets...

What to do... what to do...?

at full screen I try to keep them in check with gunshot so cyrax dont set me up with the bomb into net. you can dash forward to avoid the bombs too. that will give you a chance to block the upcoming net. The other thing is that you have to try to figure out the opponent's pattern. Every cyrax players like to throw bombs before doing the net. if they get outzoned by gunshot, they teleport (get your D1 or standing 4 ready when they do). In my experience, once they do a bomb I usually do gunshot to prevent the net or another bomb and still have time to jump the bomb that is on the screen.

I have problem with cyrax that masters using the net as AA and mixing up 21 or 12 into command grab GRRRHHH!!!!

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Im having serious problems with this new breed of cyrax that constantly throws bombs and nets (Close bomb, followed by medium bomb and net...)
... I cant jump b/c I get netted... Until PS3 gets update I cant EX roll through nets...

What to do... what to do...?

You can jump. You're just not jumping at the right time.

If you jump too soon you get netted. But if you wait for the net you can jump over it easily and the bombs won't touch you. Or you can dash and block the net, then jump or move again to avoid the bombs.

Also, if your opponent is ALWAYS throwing 2 bombs before a net, he should be pretty easy to outzone. Just spam gun shot when you see that first bomb and he won't be able to get a second bomb or net out. Stop spamming gun as soon as Cyrax blocks your shots, otherwise you'll trade with net and you don't want to do that.

Post patch Cyrax gets a little easier because you can EN Roll through far nets but also because Roll Toss is fast enough to punish bombs on reaction at midscreen and maybe even from far away.

 

[Gamma]

What is the best way to approach Raiden post-patch?

 

[J-Katz]

I'm having huge problems with smokes. Teleport catches me off-guard all the time, I can't gun cancel, grenades seem not effective against him and I have a hard time approaching without getting a smokeball in my face. Any tips?



Also, what are the best pop-ups/combo openers when facing against rush down/aggresive characters like kung loa and johnny cage. I can't seem to find an opener, which results me in not doing any combos in a match whatsoever...


Unrelevant:
I'm also new to these boards lol.. Main: Kano - Stryker.

 

[PoliceBrutality]

I'm having huge problems with smokes. Teleport catches me off-guard all the time, I can't gun cancel, grenades seem not effective against him and I have a hard time approaching without getting a smokeball in my face. Any tips?



Also, what are the best pop-ups/combo openers when facing against rush down/aggresive characters like kung loa and johnny cage. I can't seem to find an opener, which results me in not doing any combos in a match whatsoever...


Unrelevant:
I'm also new to these boards lol.. Main: Kano - Stryker.

Welcome to the board man. Nice to have another cop added to the brute force ;-)

Now to answer your question about smoke, first thing, forget that you have a gun and grenades. Remember that smoke is a counter zoner. Gun, grenades are useless against him. You going to have to approach this match up by countering a counter zoner. Learn the opponents pattern. Does he just stand full screen and spam smokebomb (ball whatever you call it)? Does he rush you down a lot, and try some instant teleport shananigans? Does he punish your gun and grenades with teleport on reaction? I must admit that smoke is also a PITA (pain in the ass) for me, well a really good one. My approach to this match up is to learn this combo for teleport punish:

- During ball animation (teleport on block)
1. 1xxgunshot~ Standing 3 (reset)
2. 1 xx Gunshot ~ 1xx baton sweep (to get maximum advantage after the untechable knockdown)
3. 1 xx Gunshot ~ 4 xx roll toss
4. 1 xx gunshot ~ 1 xx Roll Toss (more damage and send opponent full screen). Since you cant zone him maybe you shouldnt use that one unless you are trying to close the round.

Things to know:
- D1 and baton sweep beat shake.
- EN Baton sweep beat EN shake ( cant remember if regular baton beats EN shake)
- Smoke does not have a low combo starter. You can block high all day. Smoke players with often do low pokes so they can get the overhead into smoke bomb setup.
- Roll toss is a lot faster now. So when time right, you should be able to beat smoke bombs. Dont forget EN Roll toss is faster and has armor during the full animation.

About KL and Cage, I still struggle against both of them, mainly KL. For cage, I try to zone the hell out of him. Make him waste a bar to get close to me and of course I have to waste a bar to get him the hell off of me. Basic KL gives me problem so im not even gonna mention experience ones lol. Maybe someone else can comment on cage and KL

 

[STRYKER]

I have yet to find a way to beat Sindel. She is a pain in the ass to fight especially a good zoning Sendel.