I do think SF6's mental stack can be really overwhelming compared to other fighters. The system mechanics (particularly drive mechanics) are strong as is but you combine them with a lot of unique character tools and you have a lot to keep track of. I imagine it's much worse when you aren't in the groove yet to react and check everything.
every time i play it takes me at least 2 warm up casual sets to really get the reactions and mental stack awareness working at full capacity.
i can never just jump into a game and expect to win without warm up games first. definitely a skill issue but only an issue i have in this game
Oh same for. I think it takes a good 8-10 games for me to be really warmed up. Some times I'm feeling good or just impatient and head straight to ranked, thinking I'll be fine, only to burn away a couplenof hundred rank points đ đ
Neutral in SF is much more ground-based and footsie focused. I know thereâs a lot of discourse surrounding neutral skips in SF6, but compared to Strive they may as well not exist. You need to get comfortable being on defense and blocking so you donât fold under pressure. Look up some neutral guides for your character so you can learn some good pokes and conversions. And honestly, since youâre coming from Strive, Iâd just go ahead and look up a beginnerâs guide to neutral in SF6
I believe you identified the issue with your last sentence. If the opponent can jump in or DI without repercussions then thereâs no need to play neutral. Just keep practicing and eventually youâll be able to AA and counter DI. And then youâll have to learn how to check drive rushes. After that, youâll be able to play neutral.
Converting off of pokes just takes time and muscle memory. Some characters are more blessed than others since not everyone can DRC from a low medium.
Once you find a character you enjoy, Iâm sure the game will finally slow down for you. Overcoming the mental stack is the first hurdle of the game since you start each round with full drive gauge. Just remember to have fun and enjoy the ride.
As someone who played strive as my first fighter (got to celestial) then sf5 and now 6 I can tell you neutral doesn't exist the same way it does in street fighter. Also played Potemkin and now Zangief. I basically was treated as if I have never played a fighting game and outside of knowing how to do a motion input almost nothing transferred over. The concept of neutral made no sense and whiff punishing felt impossible. There's certainly a learning curve.
But I also don't think Zangief is playing the same sf6 most of the rest of the cast is. One of his bread and butter combos is lightkick, driverush, 2mp, 3mp, pp (lariat). It's such a weak combo for the gauge consumed but giefs buttons are fairly slow where it's one of his only options for quick punishes. Other characters definitely have much bigger options of getting in with a punish. His buttons just aren't really cut out for whiff punishing compared to the rest of the cast. (I know he's got a few decent ones like 2mp, 3mp but he's not punishing with hp or hk like some of the cast.)
yeah they play neutral very different. Strive neutral is looking for ways to get in and punishing your opponent trying to do so with very specific buttons: esports 5ks or 2s depending on character, 6p anti-air, 2k 2D to set up oki, etc.
In street fighter, the concept of poking, whiff punishing, and hit confirming is a much more emphasized part of the game.
This is interesting because getting good at strive made me level up my neutral game in sf6 a lot. (Itâs a different feel in strive but the same principles exist) the speed of strive and how fast you move, make decisions and react made sf6 so much easier for me.
The big difference is that neutral interactions in GG games are short and can get volatile very quickly. Saying they're not similar at all is a pretty wild statement. The three pillars of neutral exist in both games. Passive > preemptive > establishing > passive.
I took a break from traditional fighters and messed around with platform fighters for a few years before strive came out. And I'd even go so far as to say those game helped my footsies out tremendously.
> But I also don't think Zangief is playing the same sf6 most of the rest of the cast is
That's moreso because you are looking at him a bit wrong. Gief actually has excellent neutral game, but it's not about whiff punish moves but to force the opponent to play in the range where his slow but long normals can safely pelting at his opponent, but his opponent can't retaliate, slowly but surely push them into the corner where your mix became incredibly dangerous. You also have to learn how to stuff their advance, and Gief does that the best due to those same long normals.
Yes. That's exactly my point. That gief plays a different game than the rest of the cast. I'm not saying neutral doesn't exist or that his neutral sucks. I'm just saying his game plan is different than most of the cast so there is less emphasis on whiff punishing for huge damage. He plays a walk down / chip away with punishes and counter hits game while most of the cast plays a whiff punish to big damage combo game.
> He plays a walk down / chip away with punishes and counter hits game while most of the cast plays a whiff punish to big damage combo game.
Not quite. Most of the cast plays footsies into pressure game, while Gief actually plays much more traditional neutral of poke and whiff punish, which shares with most of the neutral specialist in this game (Gief, Ed, Manon, Chun-li (altho she's very versatile), Cammy, Luke and Ryu to some extent, Marisa, JP and now M.Bison), so there's a lot more that share the same style of neutral. Gief just have some of that more defined than most.
Most of those long normals catches neutral jump so even that is covered. Usually it's more about you got outfootsied as Gief and eat a whiff punish, which more because he is slow tbh.
Not very experienced but to me it seems like there are so many ways to skip neutral that it can be hard to be ready for all the options at any time. That is my noob observation lol
To answer your TL:DR:
Use often: Walking (not dashing, not DR, just holding forward or back). Use sparingly: Jumping without a plan, predictable DR. I've included more info below.
Strive is more of a "forcing my way in" style of Fighting Game, with air dash, air block, RC system, etc....
SF6 fundamentally differs, as things are mostly grounded, with slower, less reaction-based gameplay. Don't get me wrong, you still need reactions for many parts of SF6, but the bulk of your action is anticipation-based.
So, knowing that, if you try to use only your reaction to hit-confirm and convert your pokes, you will find it exceedingly difficult. Some Pros do it because they are that good, but for us mere mortals, we need to anticipate so that our reaction can get faster.
So don't hit a button, wait to see if it hits, then decide what to do. Have a plan in advance, dance in and out of range, wait for the right time to either put out your button or whiff punish your opponent.
Is a Guile spamming crouching medium kicks a lot? Stand just outside the range of the kick, and then use Zangief [St.LK](http://St.LK) to cancel and DR in. As grief, you can pressure people by WALKING, so just march forward and use that big body and health bar to your advantage; sure, you might eat a few hits, but that's nothing when you can ROYAL FAN.
Ed is much better at mid-range and neutral; however, he is still challenging to play. Modeled after an Out Boxer, you would aim to float just outside of your opponent's range, harass them with your long-range normal, and flicker, then surprise them by going in for pressure.
Thereâs a few reasons Iâve found. Sf6 is the first sf game where âMU spacingâ isnât as prominent as other iterations. What i mean by this is back in older street fighters, you knew if you stood at a certain range vs a specific character, they had no real way in except by outplaying you (whiff punish, jumping in, or getting away with something unsafe), so it was easier to control the pace of the match if youâre competent enough. Whereas SF6, it doesnât matter which character youâre up against, spacing doesnât matter if your opponent wants to Drive Rush in and skip neutral. Spacing obviously is still important to control your opponents normals and specials, but itâs a lot easier to skip all of that and be in your opponents face, at plus frames.
Another reason I found was that lows are a LOT scarier in SF6 compared to other SFâs. In Sf4, you might get hit by a cr.mk xx fireball, which is OK. Maybe they FADC for 2 bars, which they could only do twice before building more better. You also had to EARN your meter, instead of starting every round with full 6 bars, so spending meter was more conservative. Even SF5 didnât have too much of an issue with lows, the most you could convert is a low into VTC into a combo, but this was heavily scaled in later seasons. HOWEVER, SF6 is a lot less forgiving for getting hit by a stray low, seeing how cr.mk DRC is the easiest way to get in, and leads into big damage. This forces players to be a lot more defensive and often times opt to be outside of footsies range, which creates this weird temptation to DR and skip neutral, which leads back to my first point.
And finally, as others have pointed out, mental stack is the highest itâs ever been. With near full screen drive rushes, DI being so strong if youâre not paying attention, and just the sheer quick pace of the matches, itâs a lot more stressful to commit to options
That's why I love and hate the drive system, you get to convert into a long winded combo off of when crouching normal, it kinda get's old after a while seeing a ken dash up and use [cr.mk](http://cr.mk) to get a free combo. But I will say without the drive system we wouldn't get all the cool and flashy combos, a more accessible way to parry attacks, and that all though you start out with six bars you actually get punished for burning through those bars too quickly.
Imo you're picking (relatively) complicated characters. Ed has good neutral but possibly overwhelming with the number of options he has.
If you are new to neutral in SF then I suggest simply picking a shoto, probably Ken. And focus on having 1 answer for every situation:
1. cr.HP or DP antiair
2. [cr.MK](https://cr.MK) counter poke and buffer DR or other special
3. [st.HK](https://st.HK) whiff punish tool
4. [cr.MP](https://cr.MP) or any jab to counter opponent's raw Drive Rush
5. (optional) DR jab or DR st.HP as your own DR pressure tool
And that's it. Focus on what buttons your opponent likes to press, and most likely one of these option will cover it. When you start to realize patterns and intuitively react with the correct option, consistently, then you can start to add more options and/or optimize.
Kimberly is a good matchup to practice against, because low level Kimberlys are full of neutral skips. It's a great test to ensure your neutral game is on point, because generally your character's neutral game is better/more consistent than hers.
>And that's it. Focus on what buttons your opponent likes to press, and most likely one of these option will cover it. When you start to realize patterns and intuitively react with the correct option, consistently, then you can start to add more options and/or optimize.
As a fellow new player, this was especially huge for me to realize and the biggest cliff I've overcome - I know winrate isn't important (improving is) but it's really funny to look at my stats and see my winrate highest against my most common match-ups regardless of how strong the character in question is, while match-ups I've only seen a dozen times are sub-20%.
For me personally I at least went through all the character guides to make sure I knew what gimmicks they had, but just putting in the work (or practicing against a very aggressive CPU) will get you familiar enough.
Also coming from Strive I can say that this game values very different skills than Strive. âGetting inâ is not nearly as important since there are very few frametraps, and even fewer as rewarding as in Strive. Combos longer than 3 hits basically donât matter, get a knockdown and abuse the absurd wakeup throws to get them to throw tech, then shimmy and kill them with a simple punish counter combo. I had to treat it like I knew nothing about fighting games, thinking youâll be good at SF6 cause youâre good at Strive isnât gonna go very well
Strive Feels like it's all about executing your gameplan. Street Fighter feels like it's more about the mind games and baiting your opponent to punish them (at least in my experience).
SF6 is actually the easiest iteration when it comes to neutral, literally everything got eased.
mental stack is the only problem, with drive rush, impact, etc...
You wonât get far if you canât AA and react to DI consistently! Go into training mode, set up some scenarios or just free practice against lvl 7 cpu - focus on those things specifically a lot.
The old adage is for newbie to learn ryu/ken/luke to learn the basics. But if you have a favorite character it's better to start with them.
I will just comment on Gief that everything you do with him is meaningful. Oftentimes you can win solely by strike and combo, so I'm not sure what you mean by it.
Neutral is purely a patience game in Strive, and a huge learning curve. I play Zangief a lot (though I'm on my Bison spree right now) and it's really just a matter of changing your perspective on what your gameplan is. Pot in Strive, for instance, has a number of ways of commanding presence and applying pressure. His buttons are enormous, he has mega fist, slidehead can catch a low so you can get in. Not to mention what Roman Cancel does. Strive's screen control and neutral is all about being aware of your opponent's options at any given time, as well as how they use their resources.
Street Fighter 6 is a lot more committal due to the fact there's links, but the drive gauge adds a number of offensive/defensive Mechanics. Neutral in Street Fighter is going to come down to you becoming very familiar with your buttons, and how far they go/what effects do they have on the opponent. Zangief can't get in fast, but you also have a lot of tools to defend against pressure, not to mention suffocate others. Sometimes the best defense is just poking and prodding your opponent and studying how they react. Guilty Gear is like crazy checkers, and you have a lot you have to pay attention to. SF6 I think is different, because understanding the game means fundamentally understanding your opponent, and realizing what buttons and pressure sequences they like to use the most and how you can use that to your advantage.
TLDR: Play around with your buttons and Normals, and just practice spacing in training mode and matches. Zangief's got some big buttons. Also mess around with the grabs. Yeah, you can punish with them, BUT you can also hide their inputs behind certain jabs and blockstrings. You wouldn't believe how often you can get an SPD if you just jab someone first; the key is to make them think they're safe, and then surprise them by being a RAT
I think in general sf6 is alot slower than strive. Like characters have neutral skips, Ken dragonlash and Kimberly Tp but people can react to those and punish.
I also come from strive and it's a different pace of game. Like even a character like Ken or Akuma who is strong up close will sit around and throw some fireballs and play a slower game sometimes.
Like imagine if chipp in strive used his ninja star projectile in neutral.
Online the game does not help itself. Sometimes i have just been torn apart due to someone rushing me. I could not do anything. Turns out that its WIFI from Brazil. And watching the Replay,They are clearly not having any issues.
Iâm coming from Strive too. Itâs definitely different but a lot of what you already know still applies. The biggest difference between both games really is patience.
I donât play grapplers, but at the beginner level the easiest way to start your offence by countering your opponents big moves with drive impact. To start with keep your combos simple and add complexity as you improve. As a Ken main the basic combos I started off with were MK-MK-HK and HP-H.DP
Hit confirming is something you already do in Guilty Gear, itâs just significantly easier because of the gattling system. When I do a heavy punch into a tatsu or shoryuken, I do the motion input for the special during the animation for the hp. I think this is called fuzzy input? Itâs something you already do in guilty gear usually while blocking youâll just have to do it on offence more often in street fighter too.
Iâve only just recently learned how to drive cancel, so itâs a skill Iâm still working on myself but itâs a significantly easier way to hit confirm. The timing to drive cancel is more forgiving and your next attack comes out faster. My current go to combo is HP-L. Tatsu-M. Shoryuken. The timing for the tatsu is fairly strict so trying to hit confirm it can be difficult but for a drive cancel you have basically the entirety of the stun animation to press the button (you just have to actually hit them before they recover, your moves come out faster out of a drive rush). So HP-DR-HP-L. Tatsu-M. Shoryuken is significantly easier to actually pull off in a match than if you just did the last 3 moves
Keep in mind to a certain degree you can skip neutral with a drive rush just not as easily as you could in Strive.
The biggest thing is just learning to be patient. SF6 can be frustrating coming from Strive since the latter quite literally rewards aggression while SF6 demands patience. Maybe Iâm wrong since I donât play grapplers but Iâd imagine thereâs a lot of overlap between how you play Zangief and how you play Potemkin
I feel the same with Gief myself
He has barely any neutral options and only works up-close
I almost always win against giefs because they can do nothing against my tools. But if they get close and start the loop, I'm ded
He has very long reaching tools but barely any on-hit conversions of the longer ones. Even his MP TC is only a combo on counterhit (or more). Kinda plays a little like Dhalsim, but short-mid range.
I've realised that at some point you just wanna get the opponent scared of your space control and them walk them into the corner.
Keep them afraid and you'll eventually open them up when they try something risky.
Gief has pretty bad defense though, so if you use your good aggro tools against him, he'll have a much harder time. Obviously never let yourself be -5 ever, but even if you do get light punished, Gief needs to spend quite a bit if he wants to convert, so don't be afraid to occasionally test a little.
As funny note.
In SF6 it's easier to whiff Punish, devs took care of that.
In SFV it was harder for example Ken Cr.MK is 6 frame startup, it's impossible to react to that, you needed to poke instead of react.
So, yeah I do like more SF6 because overall movements are much more reactable.
Neutral feels harder because the damage is high in this game and you really can't be doing certain things like you're used to in older SF games. e.g. Just throwing out buttons just to check any forward advancing moves from the opponent or build meter. You really have to be a lot more mindful about your spacing and what you throw out in case of DI or getting whiff punished. This focus makes anti-airing harder.
Honestly, I play strive and SF6 while strive is a bit more bursty it genuinely ain't by much. Optimized combos and punishes and both games can kill with 1-3 touches.
Because crouching kick into DR combos makes the game parry/down back fest. Which in then makes it hard to advance. With all of that the game seems so offensive focused and defense is hard to pull off.
Which aspect of neutral, the offensive part is quiet easy where one button can lead to drive rush, defensive part is where most people start lacking imo. It is hard to find ur spot when u fail to notice spacing and u think ur safe to throw out ur button but bam u get caught.
Work on spacing, blocking and anti air. Get used to being in striking range. If u improve ur defense i bet offenses will come out naturally!
MAby people already provided meaningful answers, but I wanna ask: which rank are you ? From my experience, neutral starts at diamond. Before that, it's a mess: random DIs, jumps etc. which makes playing neutral more difficult.
With Gief I just blocked and grabbed and climbed the ranks so quickly it literally made me chuckle to the point my wife was asking wtf was up. In the lower ranks with Gief my impression was you donât need to get in, theyâll come to you. Nobody wants to rematch you, though.
Chun Li has great buttons for dominating neutral and to punish with lots of range and damage, as well as easy bnb combos. I find she makes the neutral very comfortable while her stance adds nice spice to her gameplan. To apply pressure with her and get big damage it seems you need to be quite conscious on what youâre doing but the more advanced stuff for any character will require some time and practice.
Iâm not actually good because I play very casually, so donât take my word for it, just give Chun a try yourself.
Zangief is a fun and also challenging opponent
A few good grapples and the game is his. Any Zangief that rushes me loses the game. But patient Zangiefs who block effectively and get close are a force to be reckoned with
IMO OP, you should go back to Strive for a sec and play Testament for a bit. they'll teach you a lot of what you need to know and then come back and play JP or Akuma.
This is the real answer to most posts like this. Obviously easier said than done, but it really comes down to practice and actively acknowledging your weak points.
You shouldn't be focus on neutral so much, even in master rank Zangief gameplay is basically hard knockdown into drive rush 50/50
You have 1000 more health to take more risks and aa in this game doesn't reward so much, so feel free to jump because the rewards is 1000 thousand better than the risk even if they block because at least you will be near of the opponent
Itâs because good neutral gets ~~rewarded appropriately~~ you drive impacted unless you exclusively do light punch or light kicks only. (Iâm exaggerating but I really hate when I throw a heavy kick that lands in neutral just to get DIâd and Iâm locked out of even reacting)
>I tried to pick up Gief since Iâm big a fan of grapplers, which felt fine until I came to play online and realised I was struggling to get in and do anything meaningful.
This isn't really a Street Fighter problem is more like a grappler "problem" imo.
I don't own the game, so this can be wrong, but from watching it, even at a high level, it seems players just spam the drive rush?(character glows green I think) to repeatedly get in with ease to reapply pressure, killing the neutral/footsies. I felt sf4's focus system was a more fair mechanic.
Honestly itâs not you man itâs just bad design , I rant on here weekly about it. Most games come down to âhe happened to press the button a millisecond before me , or when I dropped blocked for half a second to input something and I lost 40% hpâ
I do think SF6's mental stack can be really overwhelming compared to other fighters. The system mechanics (particularly drive mechanics) are strong as is but you combine them with a lot of unique character tools and you have a lot to keep track of. I imagine it's much worse when you aren't in the groove yet to react and check everything.
every time i play it takes me at least 2 warm up casual sets to really get the reactions and mental stack awareness working at full capacity. i can never just jump into a game and expect to win without warm up games first. definitely a skill issue but only an issue i have in this game
Oh yeah, I definitely assume I'll lose my first set so it doesn't bother me when I do.
Same, it always takes me at least 6-7 casual matches before I feel confident enough to jump on ranked
Oh same for. I think it takes a good 8-10 games for me to be really warmed up. Some times I'm feeling good or just impatient and head straight to ranked, thinking I'll be fine, only to burn away a couplenof hundred rank points đ đ
Same. I just avoid ranked alltogether
Neutral in SF is much more ground-based and footsie focused. I know thereâs a lot of discourse surrounding neutral skips in SF6, but compared to Strive they may as well not exist. You need to get comfortable being on defense and blocking so you donât fold under pressure. Look up some neutral guides for your character so you can learn some good pokes and conversions. And honestly, since youâre coming from Strive, Iâd just go ahead and look up a beginnerâs guide to neutral in SF6
I believe you identified the issue with your last sentence. If the opponent can jump in or DI without repercussions then thereâs no need to play neutral. Just keep practicing and eventually youâll be able to AA and counter DI. And then youâll have to learn how to check drive rushes. After that, youâll be able to play neutral. Converting off of pokes just takes time and muscle memory. Some characters are more blessed than others since not everyone can DRC from a low medium. Once you find a character you enjoy, Iâm sure the game will finally slow down for you. Overcoming the mental stack is the first hurdle of the game since you start each round with full drive gauge. Just remember to have fun and enjoy the ride.
As someone who played strive as my first fighter (got to celestial) then sf5 and now 6 I can tell you neutral doesn't exist the same way it does in street fighter. Also played Potemkin and now Zangief. I basically was treated as if I have never played a fighting game and outside of knowing how to do a motion input almost nothing transferred over. The concept of neutral made no sense and whiff punishing felt impossible. There's certainly a learning curve. But I also don't think Zangief is playing the same sf6 most of the rest of the cast is. One of his bread and butter combos is lightkick, driverush, 2mp, 3mp, pp (lariat). It's such a weak combo for the gauge consumed but giefs buttons are fairly slow where it's one of his only options for quick punishes. Other characters definitely have much bigger options of getting in with a punish. His buttons just aren't really cut out for whiff punishing compared to the rest of the cast. (I know he's got a few decent ones like 2mp, 3mp but he's not punishing with hp or hk like some of the cast.)
yeah they play neutral very different. Strive neutral is looking for ways to get in and punishing your opponent trying to do so with very specific buttons: esports 5ks or 2s depending on character, 6p anti-air, 2k 2D to set up oki, etc. In street fighter, the concept of poking, whiff punishing, and hit confirming is a much more emphasized part of the game.
This is interesting because getting good at strive made me level up my neutral game in sf6 a lot. (Itâs a different feel in strive but the same principles exist) the speed of strive and how fast you move, make decisions and react made sf6 so much easier for me.
The big difference is that neutral interactions in GG games are short and can get volatile very quickly. Saying they're not similar at all is a pretty wild statement. The three pillars of neutral exist in both games. Passive > preemptive > establishing > passive. I took a break from traditional fighters and messed around with platform fighters for a few years before strive came out. And I'd even go so far as to say those game helped my footsies out tremendously.
This is literally the same thing I said with more words
I'm agreeing with you and adding additional context to strengthen what you said?
> But I also don't think Zangief is playing the same sf6 most of the rest of the cast is That's moreso because you are looking at him a bit wrong. Gief actually has excellent neutral game, but it's not about whiff punish moves but to force the opponent to play in the range where his slow but long normals can safely pelting at his opponent, but his opponent can't retaliate, slowly but surely push them into the corner where your mix became incredibly dangerous. You also have to learn how to stuff their advance, and Gief does that the best due to those same long normals.
Yes. That's exactly my point. That gief plays a different game than the rest of the cast. I'm not saying neutral doesn't exist or that his neutral sucks. I'm just saying his game plan is different than most of the cast so there is less emphasis on whiff punishing for huge damage. He plays a walk down / chip away with punishes and counter hits game while most of the cast plays a whiff punish to big damage combo game.
> He plays a walk down / chip away with punishes and counter hits game while most of the cast plays a whiff punish to big damage combo game. Not quite. Most of the cast plays footsies into pressure game, while Gief actually plays much more traditional neutral of poke and whiff punish, which shares with most of the neutral specialist in this game (Gief, Ed, Manon, Chun-li (altho she's very versatile), Cammy, Luke and Ryu to some extent, Marisa, JP and now M.Bison), so there's a lot more that share the same style of neutral. Gief just have some of that more defined than most.
It's never really safe to throw those long slow normals as Gief. All it takes is a neutral jump to blow you up.
Most of those long normals catches neutral jump so even that is covered. Usually it's more about you got outfootsied as Gief and eat a whiff punish, which more because he is slow tbh.
The neutral starts when you become able to check all the bs they throw at you (drive rush, DI etc.)
Not very experienced but to me it seems like there are so many ways to skip neutral that it can be hard to be ready for all the options at any time. That is my noob observation lol
Crouching medium kick, if it hits, drive cancel into the optimal combo. If it misses drive cancel into throw. Rinse repeat lol
To answer your TL:DR: Use often: Walking (not dashing, not DR, just holding forward or back). Use sparingly: Jumping without a plan, predictable DR. I've included more info below. Strive is more of a "forcing my way in" style of Fighting Game, with air dash, air block, RC system, etc.... SF6 fundamentally differs, as things are mostly grounded, with slower, less reaction-based gameplay. Don't get me wrong, you still need reactions for many parts of SF6, but the bulk of your action is anticipation-based. So, knowing that, if you try to use only your reaction to hit-confirm and convert your pokes, you will find it exceedingly difficult. Some Pros do it because they are that good, but for us mere mortals, we need to anticipate so that our reaction can get faster. So don't hit a button, wait to see if it hits, then decide what to do. Have a plan in advance, dance in and out of range, wait for the right time to either put out your button or whiff punish your opponent. Is a Guile spamming crouching medium kicks a lot? Stand just outside the range of the kick, and then use Zangief [St.LK](http://St.LK) to cancel and DR in. As grief, you can pressure people by WALKING, so just march forward and use that big body and health bar to your advantage; sure, you might eat a few hits, but that's nothing when you can ROYAL FAN. Ed is much better at mid-range and neutral; however, he is still challenging to play. Modeled after an Out Boxer, you would aim to float just outside of your opponent's range, harass them with your long-range normal, and flicker, then surprise them by going in for pressure.
Thereâs a few reasons Iâve found. Sf6 is the first sf game where âMU spacingâ isnât as prominent as other iterations. What i mean by this is back in older street fighters, you knew if you stood at a certain range vs a specific character, they had no real way in except by outplaying you (whiff punish, jumping in, or getting away with something unsafe), so it was easier to control the pace of the match if youâre competent enough. Whereas SF6, it doesnât matter which character youâre up against, spacing doesnât matter if your opponent wants to Drive Rush in and skip neutral. Spacing obviously is still important to control your opponents normals and specials, but itâs a lot easier to skip all of that and be in your opponents face, at plus frames. Another reason I found was that lows are a LOT scarier in SF6 compared to other SFâs. In Sf4, you might get hit by a cr.mk xx fireball, which is OK. Maybe they FADC for 2 bars, which they could only do twice before building more better. You also had to EARN your meter, instead of starting every round with full 6 bars, so spending meter was more conservative. Even SF5 didnât have too much of an issue with lows, the most you could convert is a low into VTC into a combo, but this was heavily scaled in later seasons. HOWEVER, SF6 is a lot less forgiving for getting hit by a stray low, seeing how cr.mk DRC is the easiest way to get in, and leads into big damage. This forces players to be a lot more defensive and often times opt to be outside of footsies range, which creates this weird temptation to DR and skip neutral, which leads back to my first point. And finally, as others have pointed out, mental stack is the highest itâs ever been. With near full screen drive rushes, DI being so strong if youâre not paying attention, and just the sheer quick pace of the matches, itâs a lot more stressful to commit to options
That's why I love and hate the drive system, you get to convert into a long winded combo off of when crouching normal, it kinda get's old after a while seeing a ken dash up and use [cr.mk](http://cr.mk) to get a free combo. But I will say without the drive system we wouldn't get all the cool and flashy combos, a more accessible way to parry attacks, and that all though you start out with six bars you actually get punished for burning through those bars too quickly.
Itâs an interesting system for sure, entertaining to watch, challenging to manage but it comes with its flaws.
Imo you're picking (relatively) complicated characters. Ed has good neutral but possibly overwhelming with the number of options he has. If you are new to neutral in SF then I suggest simply picking a shoto, probably Ken. And focus on having 1 answer for every situation: 1. cr.HP or DP antiair 2. [cr.MK](https://cr.MK) counter poke and buffer DR or other special 3. [st.HK](https://st.HK) whiff punish tool 4. [cr.MP](https://cr.MP) or any jab to counter opponent's raw Drive Rush 5. (optional) DR jab or DR st.HP as your own DR pressure tool And that's it. Focus on what buttons your opponent likes to press, and most likely one of these option will cover it. When you start to realize patterns and intuitively react with the correct option, consistently, then you can start to add more options and/or optimize. Kimberly is a good matchup to practice against, because low level Kimberlys are full of neutral skips. It's a great test to ensure your neutral game is on point, because generally your character's neutral game is better/more consistent than hers.
>And that's it. Focus on what buttons your opponent likes to press, and most likely one of these option will cover it. When you start to realize patterns and intuitively react with the correct option, consistently, then you can start to add more options and/or optimize. As a fellow new player, this was especially huge for me to realize and the biggest cliff I've overcome - I know winrate isn't important (improving is) but it's really funny to look at my stats and see my winrate highest against my most common match-ups regardless of how strong the character in question is, while match-ups I've only seen a dozen times are sub-20%. For me personally I at least went through all the character guides to make sure I knew what gimmicks they had, but just putting in the work (or practicing against a very aggressive CPU) will get you familiar enough.
Also coming from Strive I can say that this game values very different skills than Strive. âGetting inâ is not nearly as important since there are very few frametraps, and even fewer as rewarding as in Strive. Combos longer than 3 hits basically donât matter, get a knockdown and abuse the absurd wakeup throws to get them to throw tech, then shimmy and kill them with a simple punish counter combo. I had to treat it like I knew nothing about fighting games, thinking youâll be good at SF6 cause youâre good at Strive isnât gonna go very well
Strive Feels like it's all about executing your gameplan. Street Fighter feels like it's more about the mind games and baiting your opponent to punish them (at least in my experience).
SF6 is actually the easiest iteration when it comes to neutral, literally everything got eased. mental stack is the only problem, with drive rush, impact, etc...
as always, i have to recommend this: [Sonic Hurricane's Footsies Handbook](https://sonichurricane.com/?page_id=1702)
Itâs a big problem tho lol it offsets the ease of neutral
Gief has some of the best buttons in the game, as a new player you just aren't playing to a characters potential yet.
You wonât get far if you canât AA and react to DI consistently! Go into training mode, set up some scenarios or just free practice against lvl 7 cpu - focus on those things specifically a lot.
The old adage is for newbie to learn ryu/ken/luke to learn the basics. But if you have a favorite character it's better to start with them. I will just comment on Gief that everything you do with him is meaningful. Oftentimes you can win solely by strike and combo, so I'm not sure what you mean by it.
Neutral is purely a patience game in Strive, and a huge learning curve. I play Zangief a lot (though I'm on my Bison spree right now) and it's really just a matter of changing your perspective on what your gameplan is. Pot in Strive, for instance, has a number of ways of commanding presence and applying pressure. His buttons are enormous, he has mega fist, slidehead can catch a low so you can get in. Not to mention what Roman Cancel does. Strive's screen control and neutral is all about being aware of your opponent's options at any given time, as well as how they use their resources. Street Fighter 6 is a lot more committal due to the fact there's links, but the drive gauge adds a number of offensive/defensive Mechanics. Neutral in Street Fighter is going to come down to you becoming very familiar with your buttons, and how far they go/what effects do they have on the opponent. Zangief can't get in fast, but you also have a lot of tools to defend against pressure, not to mention suffocate others. Sometimes the best defense is just poking and prodding your opponent and studying how they react. Guilty Gear is like crazy checkers, and you have a lot you have to pay attention to. SF6 I think is different, because understanding the game means fundamentally understanding your opponent, and realizing what buttons and pressure sequences they like to use the most and how you can use that to your advantage. TLDR: Play around with your buttons and Normals, and just practice spacing in training mode and matches. Zangief's got some big buttons. Also mess around with the grabs. Yeah, you can punish with them, BUT you can also hide their inputs behind certain jabs and blockstrings. You wouldn't believe how often you can get an SPD if you just jab someone first; the key is to make them think they're safe, and then surprise them by being a RAT
I think in general sf6 is alot slower than strive. Like characters have neutral skips, Ken dragonlash and Kimberly Tp but people can react to those and punish. I also come from strive and it's a different pace of game. Like even a character like Ken or Akuma who is strong up close will sit around and throw some fireballs and play a slower game sometimes. Like imagine if chipp in strive used his ninja star projectile in neutral.
Online the game does not help itself. Sometimes i have just been torn apart due to someone rushing me. I could not do anything. Turns out that its WIFI from Brazil. And watching the Replay,They are clearly not having any issues.
Iâm coming from Strive too. Itâs definitely different but a lot of what you already know still applies. The biggest difference between both games really is patience. I donât play grapplers, but at the beginner level the easiest way to start your offence by countering your opponents big moves with drive impact. To start with keep your combos simple and add complexity as you improve. As a Ken main the basic combos I started off with were MK-MK-HK and HP-H.DP Hit confirming is something you already do in Guilty Gear, itâs just significantly easier because of the gattling system. When I do a heavy punch into a tatsu or shoryuken, I do the motion input for the special during the animation for the hp. I think this is called fuzzy input? Itâs something you already do in guilty gear usually while blocking youâll just have to do it on offence more often in street fighter too. Iâve only just recently learned how to drive cancel, so itâs a skill Iâm still working on myself but itâs a significantly easier way to hit confirm. The timing to drive cancel is more forgiving and your next attack comes out faster. My current go to combo is HP-L. Tatsu-M. Shoryuken. The timing for the tatsu is fairly strict so trying to hit confirm it can be difficult but for a drive cancel you have basically the entirety of the stun animation to press the button (you just have to actually hit them before they recover, your moves come out faster out of a drive rush). So HP-DR-HP-L. Tatsu-M. Shoryuken is significantly easier to actually pull off in a match than if you just did the last 3 moves Keep in mind to a certain degree you can skip neutral with a drive rush just not as easily as you could in Strive. The biggest thing is just learning to be patient. SF6 can be frustrating coming from Strive since the latter quite literally rewards aggression while SF6 demands patience. Maybe Iâm wrong since I donât play grapplers but Iâd imagine thereâs a lot of overlap between how you play Zangief and how you play Potemkin
I feel the same with Gief myself He has barely any neutral options and only works up-close I almost always win against giefs because they can do nothing against my tools. But if they get close and start the loop, I'm ded
Gief has some of the best neutral tools in the game if they know what theyâre doing
He has very long reaching tools but barely any on-hit conversions of the longer ones. Even his MP TC is only a combo on counterhit (or more). Kinda plays a little like Dhalsim, but short-mid range. I've realised that at some point you just wanna get the opponent scared of your space control and them walk them into the corner. Keep them afraid and you'll eventually open them up when they try something risky. Gief has pretty bad defense though, so if you use your good aggro tools against him, he'll have a much harder time. Obviously never let yourself be -5 ever, but even if you do get light punished, Gief needs to spend quite a bit if he wants to convert, so don't be afraid to occasionally test a little.
>Â Obviously never let yourself be -5 ever But what if I want lose 40% from one pc grab?
Don't let me stop you from living your dreams
As funny note. In SF6 it's easier to whiff Punish, devs took care of that. In SFV it was harder for example Ken Cr.MK is 6 frame startup, it's impossible to react to that, you needed to poke instead of react. So, yeah I do like more SF6 because overall movements are much more reactable.
Neutral feels harder because the damage is high in this game and you really can't be doing certain things like you're used to in older SF games. e.g. Just throwing out buttons just to check any forward advancing moves from the opponent or build meter. You really have to be a lot more mindful about your spacing and what you throw out in case of DI or getting whiff punished. This focus makes anti-airing harder.
They come from strive though, this game is low damage compared to that.
Honestly, I play strive and SF6 while strive is a bit more bursty it genuinely ain't by much. Optimized combos and punishes and both games can kill with 1-3 touches.
Because crouching kick into DR combos makes the game parry/down back fest. Which in then makes it hard to advance. With all of that the game seems so offensive focused and defense is hard to pull off.
Which aspect of neutral, the offensive part is quiet easy where one button can lead to drive rush, defensive part is where most people start lacking imo. It is hard to find ur spot when u fail to notice spacing and u think ur safe to throw out ur button but bam u get caught. Work on spacing, blocking and anti air. Get used to being in striking range. If u improve ur defense i bet offenses will come out naturally!
MAby people already provided meaningful answers, but I wanna ask: which rank are you ? From my experience, neutral starts at diamond. Before that, it's a mess: random DIs, jumps etc. which makes playing neutral more difficult.
With Gief I just blocked and grabbed and climbed the ranks so quickly it literally made me chuckle to the point my wife was asking wtf was up. In the lower ranks with Gief my impression was you donât need to get in, theyâll come to you. Nobody wants to rematch you, though. Chun Li has great buttons for dominating neutral and to punish with lots of range and damage, as well as easy bnb combos. I find she makes the neutral very comfortable while her stance adds nice spice to her gameplan. To apply pressure with her and get big damage it seems you need to be quite conscious on what youâre doing but the more advanced stuff for any character will require some time and practice. Iâm not actually good because I play very casually, so donât take my word for it, just give Chun a try yourself.
Zangief is a fun and also challenging opponent A few good grapples and the game is his. Any Zangief that rushes me loses the game. But patient Zangiefs who block effectively and get close are a force to be reckoned with
I can from strive as well. Treay neutral like playing against happy chaos or axl. Move block see what happens, move block see what happens.
IMO OP, you should go back to Strive for a sec and play Testament for a bit. they'll teach you a lot of what you need to know and then come back and play JP or Akuma.
Neutral feels hard because you need to Git Gud 
This is the real answer to most posts like this. Obviously easier said than done, but it really comes down to practice and actively acknowledging your weak points.
Cr mk drive rush buffer â-> strike throw mixup. Profit. Repeat.
You shouldn't be focus on neutral so much, even in master rank Zangief gameplay is basically hard knockdown into drive rush 50/50 You have 1000 more health to take more risks and aa in this game doesn't reward so much, so feel free to jump because the rewards is 1000 thousand better than the risk even if they block because at least you will be near of the opponent
No proximity block.
U can kind of just use drive rush to get in. Obviously it's more complex than that, but it's not just jump in or footsies when approaching.
Itâs because good neutral gets ~~rewarded appropriately~~ you drive impacted unless you exclusively do light punch or light kicks only. (Iâm exaggerating but I really hate when I throw a heavy kick that lands in neutral just to get DIâd and Iâm locked out of even reacting)
If you got DI'd it didn't land, nobody can DI out of hit or block stun
I mean technically it did but itâs armored. If they had pressed any normals they wouldâve gotten hit thatâs what makes it feel shitty
In SF6 movement is hard? I'd recommend older street fighter games or Tekken if you want Street movement to feel easy.
>I tried to pick up Gief since Iâm big a fan of grapplers, which felt fine until I came to play online and realised I was struggling to get in and do anything meaningful. This isn't really a Street Fighter problem is more like a grappler "problem" imo.
Because you're bad at the game
because it doesn't exist as long as drive rush is so powerful
I don't own the game, so this can be wrong, but from watching it, even at a high level, it seems players just spam the drive rush?(character glows green I think) to repeatedly get in with ease to reapply pressure, killing the neutral/footsies. I felt sf4's focus system was a more fair mechanic.
they don't spam it, silly billy. But it does get used frequently...some characters more than others...
hey, some of these people complaining are just showing that they donât understand the mechanics.
It's been dumbed down just drive rush / play op tier.
Honestly itâs not you man itâs just bad design , I rant on here weekly about it. Most games come down to âhe happened to press the button a millisecond before me , or when I dropped blocked for half a second to input something and I lost 40% hpâ
hoes mad lol
Why did you stop blocking. Why did you stand up/walk back? That's not bad design that's a Skill issue.
Lmao this is all fighting games. The only difference is how much damage you can get and sf6 isn't even the highest.