Are there any strategies for finding the timing of attacks for character trials

street-fighter-ivsuper-street-fighter-iv

Having recently switched to fightstick about a year ago I thought it would help with the timing and execution of combos but I'm still having issues with timing and staying persistent for trials. My main and the character I have been playing with for years is Ryu and I figure he is going to be the easiest for me to jump into for trials, but after completing about half of them I am just stuck.

So aside from the tip of always doing combos in the corner, any other advice on the timing or any other training I should maybe do before trying (and failing) the trials? Right now I spend time in training just doing fireballs and what not to get more familiar with the fightstick and playing random matches online. I also play through hardest difficulty arcade to kind of get in the groove.

I asked a somewhat similar question a couple years ago but now the situation has changed, and if the answer is really just keep at it and just mash it till it works then I do apologize for asking. But if there is a proven practice method for getting the timing for the trials or combo's in general advice would be grand.

Also, this kind of feels like it could start a discussion so to keep the question open please just provide links to either forums that talk about this or video's that help, along side any personal advice. I am aware though this is kind of a gray question though so no hard feelings if it gets closed.

Thanks again.

Best Answer

I can only answer from my experience of playing on the PC, some of this may or may not apply.

  1. The timing of everything in SF is based on frames rather than actual elapsed time. If you are on the PC like me, the first thing you'll want to do is to make sure that vsync is on and that you are getting a steady frame rate of 60 fps. If your frame rate fluxuates, it will become extremely hard to land any difficult combos with any degree of precision.

  2. I've found that while getting the timing down (to build up muscle memory), it helps a lot to look for specific animation motions rather than trying to sense the time. Specific example: for Fei Long's bread and butter Rekkukyaku - standing fierce - Shienrenkyaku combo, it was extremely difficult to get the combo down until I started watching Fei Long's legs during the Rekk recovery. I eventually learned that at the exact moment when his legs crossed after the attack was the moment I should be hitting the fierce to continue the chain. After a few times of watching that to get the timing down, it became much easier to do.

  3. For linking, you may want to practice them outside of really long chains in order to get a feel for them.

  4. There is a technique called plinking that can lengthen the number of frames to link your combos but the only way you can get this down is by pure habit and muscle memory. Plinking doesn't really apply for trials as the extra buttons will consider the chain lost, but it should be used in actual matches.

  5. Finally, when in an actual fight you have to decide ahead of time the combo you are planning to use should your initial hit succeed. There is really no time to decide you want to work in a FADC into the combo once you've started.

Here is an example for plinking:

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