Questions pressuring people after an oki or knockdown.

[crimsonstardust]

So I noticed recently at a local session I was at, I had a really bad tendency to sort of not take advantage of the oki/knock down I would get in the corner, I found myself respecting my opponents wake up fairly too often and often found myself loosing my positioning. I realized part of it was that I keep respecting wake up reversals and more often than not I wouldn't see it happen.

So when you get people down and you don't have a safe jump ready just what should you be doing to make people respect your pressure? I'm looking for more general advise rather than character or game specifcs cause this tends to be a problem I have in a lot of fighting games.

[TD]

a good way to gain strategy on this subject in general is to watch the top players for any given character in most fighting games. they more likely than not know when they are advantageous or not, and what sort of combo enders will set them up for safe and/or strong oki pressure.

 

this is more of a intermediate subject, as alot of game's true oki situations are not too braindead or obvious, and sometimes requires certain situations and combos the person seeking knowledge must be familiar with.

[Airk]

Well, there are a few characters whose reversals you can 'bait' with a meaty 5A/2A (depending on your character);  The classic example is Jin's 623C - it starts up slowly enough that if you do a meaty 2A, and he blocks on wakeup, he'll block your 2A and you can do pressure, and if he does 623C, you'll recover from your 2A in time to block the DP and punish.  This works on a few other reversals (it works on Litchi's DP, but the timing is tricky depending on the exact stats of your jabs).

 

Also, it's important to remember that in general you'll lose less getting hit by a reversal than your opponent will for you baiting one, so get up there and attack them on their wakeup to force them to use that DP!

[crimsonstardust]

So more or less in this case the best offence makes for a good defense? I guess that's kind of the opposite of what I do cause I tend to play more defensively, I'll have to stop playing so afraid probably then.   

[mAc Chaos]

Every character has a personal space that they have an advantage in depending on the situation. In neutral, for instance, you have a radius around your character where they have a sweet spot for all their moves, and as long as you maintain this sweet spot you can dominate the opponent. Your job is to hold on to that like it's a piece of territory and make the other player fight tooth and nail to gain any ground. If you don't you're just letting them get in for free.

It's the same for oki. When you knock someone down, they're at a solid disadvantage and are supposed to have to fight their way back out of a hole to get on even ground with you again. If you don't take advantage of that you're just letting them escape without breaking a sweat. Once you knock them down, it should be blood in the water, go-in-for-the-kill time.