Alex the Angry Ryu Player

Ryu (4.5) Ken (5.5) Ken is the aggressor in this matchup. Essentially, Ryu's job is to let Ken kill himself as he tries to break through Ryu's rock-solid defence and zoning game. Ken players tend to be quite impatient by nature and will often resort to taking bigger risks when frustrated by an effective fireball/dp defense. Zoning is Ryu's most effective tool here; his mission is to keep Ken  out . Ken's over-arching goal is to get inside Ryu's safe fireball distance and begin his step kick/kara throw mixup game. Once in, he has a serious advantage in the ensuing footsie battle and can often fluster players with kara throw mixups. Hence, Ryu needs to concentrate on mounting an effective zoning defence early in the round. Start off with a basic zoning game, throwing fireballs and remembering to dragon punch (dp) all of Ken's attempted jump-ins. If Ken gets close, cr.mk > hadouken is a very effective tool to keep him at bay. Applying these three ...

The presence of Ken on the character roster poses an interesting proposition to existing Ryu players. What if you could take Ryu and enhance his offensive capabilities in exchange for a slight nerf to his zoning game? Ken is a nasty little bastard at the best of times. He has formidable footsie options, an infuriating mixup game and huge combo potential while still retaining much of Ryu's zoning game. Yet the oft-heralded tier lists frequently place Ryu ahead of Ken. This is understandable; on paper, Ryu is superior to Ken. Conventional wisdom dictates that v2012 Ryu is superior due to the many buffs he received to restore his appeal as a character following AE (Ken, in comparison, was tuned with a number of nerfs). If we break down both characters across a number of categories (assuming each category is assigned equal weighting), we can start to paint a picture of the competitiveness of each character: Ryu vs. Ken Comparison Table (a green highligh...