Picking your Ultras

 So usually when your just casually gaming and playing Street Fighter with your friends for fun, when you get the choice to pick your ultra, usually it's either the one that does the most damage or looks the coolest. Honestly I did this a lot. I would pick Ryu ultra 2 rather than ultra 1. Obviously ultra two is almost useless. In this post I will be talking about the importance of picking your ultras in certain match-ups. Now this becomes VERY character specific but I'll try my best.

Fireball Specific Ultras: When facing a opponent that has a fireball, these are usually the ultras to pick. These ultras are meant to shutdown their fireball game. They either have invincibility at the start up or throughout the whole ultra. This means that you will go directly through the fireball. Now ones that only have it on start up then that means you'll have to be quite close to your opponent and have fast reactions. That's another thing with these types of ultras, you need fast reactions. If you react too slow to the fireball, they might have already recovered from the fireball or the invincibility frames could be gone so you'll get hit by these ultras. As I said before, these are meant to shutdown fireball heavy characters such as Sagat and Ryu. Now as for other characters like Ken and Seth, these characters do have fireballs but they don't heavily rely on it, so choosing these ultras would be quite hard. For example,  If I were to be playing a Ken and I was Chun-li, choosing my ultra would be a crucial decision. Do I choose ultra one in hopes that he will think that Ken is a fireball-ey character (which he really isn't) so I can counter him, or do I choose ultra two knowing that Ken isn't really fireball reliant so I can get free damage? This also goes along with knowing the PLAYER that you are facing.

Anti-Air Ultras: I think the name explains itself. These are meant to shut down characters that have a move that makes them move toward you in the air (eg. Fei Long's chicken wing, Akuma's demon flip). Usually any move that invloves moving closer to you is used as a tool to "get in" on your opponent, such as Fei Long's chicken wing. On a stream that Crosscounter streamed pre-evo, Laugh was playing exhibition matches with Gootecks. I saw Gootecks pick Fei Long and as soon as he did that, Laugh went back and picked ultra two. Now right then I thought to myself, why ultra two? In only a couple of seconds, I was shown why he had picked that ultra. As soon as Gootecks chicken wing'd to get in, Laugh reacted and did ultra two. The ultra connected and went into animation. My mind was blown when I saw that. I'm not sure how far this applies for certain moves but I'm pretty sure that with the right reactions and ultra, you could stop quite a lot of moves.

Counter Ultras:
I'm pretty sure most of you know what this kind of ultra is and what does. They literally counter almost any move that you opponent will throw at you. The only thing that will stuff the counter is any move that breaks armor (BUT not moves that attain armor breaking properties when used as a reversal) or a projectile. Not sure if that made sense or not but moving on. These you'll want to use on mix-up heavy characters, or if you always seem to block with your face (like me). Most characters that you'd use this on are C.Viper, Akuma, and maybe even Ibuki (risk is getting cut by the kunai). Once you've executed it, it will for sure leave a mark in your opponent because later on they won't know whether or not you'll do it again or not. So once in a while, buffer it just to fake them out.

"Match Pace" Ultras: There arent very many of these ultras, but they can help you get out of sticky situations or help you regain or keep a lead that you need. Now this is character specific like always so I will go into to the characters since there are really only two of them. First off is Juri's Fung Shui Engine. Incase you don't know this allows Juri to chain normals that usually would not be chainable. This ultra is meant to rush them down after a knock down. This ultra actually is like a win-win situation. Once you activate, your opponent will be forced to block because of the fact that if he were to attack you, then you would regain more ultra meter and you would simply be able to activate again. However, this isnt always the case. If you were really low on life, then your opponent will just take you out, so be carefull when you activate it. Next up is Rose's "Soul Satellite". Her ultra is sort of wierd in my opinion but it still works. If you need you to sit on a lead or just trying to gain some life back you might want to activate. All I know activating out of desperation is not the best idea at times. Her ultra isn't the type to just activate it because you need to catch up (besides it doesn't even do that much damage), but more to sit on a lead or escape a sticky situation. That's all I know about Rose's ultra.

I think these are really the only ones that need to be REALLY specified on tactics for them but if you think I'm missing one then go ahead a tell me!

-Dive Kick Edition