SSBU/Ken/Strategy

Neutral
Ken wants to play grounded footsies focused on bait and punish. Ken should play right at the edge of the opponent’s burst range to then bait the opponent to approach and react to their approach with the appropriate attack to counter them. This includes aerials and shoryuken to counter fullhops, HUTilt, roundhouse kick, and LFTilt to counter shorthops, and the use of Ken’s fast walk and back dash to make grounded approaches or careless jump-ins whiff. This sets up Ken’s positional pressure. Positional pressure is the pressure Ken puts on the opponent just by being in their burst range or in control of center stage. Properly applying positional pressure will make the opponent fear Ken and his ability to pump out lots of damage and early kills. This will in turn make them act rashly in an attempt to take back control of the game. This is where Ken will punish the opponent’s attempts for control and push his oppressive advantage state. To call out the opponent Ken is able to use his jump-in aerials or dash in tilts. When the opponent plays defensive, Ken has a few tools to quickly advance towards the opponent as well. For example, he can use bair, tatsu, pivot Light FTilt, or dashwalk Light DTilt to whiff punish options that are considered safe. Ken does not want to play at long range. To move into mid range it is best to use a slow hadoken hover then run in behind it. Ken does not really have a good gameplan for platforms in neutral. He has the standard falling UAir into short hop UAir. If he can jump onto the platforms he can do fullhop UAir then potentially keep up the shield pressure with tilts but isn’t exactly safe. He can also special cancel the UAir into medium shoryuken to catch OOS options. Outside of pressure, Ken does not want to be on platforms due to his platform drop animation being 3 frames slower than the rest of the cast. Platforms can help with advantage state as they lead to ladder combos and more deadlier tech chases.

On Shield
If Ken hits a shield he is able to apply shield pressure with the use of his fast tilts and special cancels into his block strings or frame traps. Ken should prioritize trying to catch the opponent trying to escape pressure. Only once the opponent is conditioned to hold shield should he go for shield breaks, in which he can get very easily. Shield break block strings and frame traps can be found here: Made by Lernonad: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zYikwiHCF-ZjJDPY9d1lxCYYzDW8XlFWJjefsT56XHU/edit?usp=sharing Ken can also go for tick throws to gain stage control. This is done by hitting the opponent’s shield then grabbing them.

Out of Shield
Out of Shield Ken has a frame 5 heavy Up B for an easy, strong punish, frame 9 USmash that can be auto-turned by delaying it at least one frame for a slower but safer punish, frame 9 NAir and frame 10 UAir jump callouts, frame 13 shield release auto-turn light DTilt which is good against close range, unsafe attacks, frame 14 auto-turn light UTilt which is good against opponents who tend to jump after hitting an attack on shield, and frame 16 auto-turn DSmash which is good against opponents who try to space tilts on shield. Ken can also jump to try and land an aerial to try and call out defense after the opponent’s pressure.

Out of Parry
Out of parry Ken can do whatever he wants. Ken can use light tilts against safe moves on parry, light FTilt or DSmash against spaced attacks on parry. If Ken gets a proper parry punish, he can get a full combo off.

Disadvantage
On hit Ken has frame 1 heavy armor with Focus Attack, but it gets beat by multihits. Ken has a frame 3 air dodge. When being juggled Ken can use B-reverse Focus Attack to change momentum then dash cancel to change momentum again. When launched off stage Ken has Focus and hado to stall his recovery and Focus can be used to help get Ken out of being edge guarded or to get him closer to the ledge. If Ken is launched far off stage, tatsu can be used to help Ken model shift away from the blast zone, but it should not be used to go to the ledge because of its slow speed and very high end lag. Ken’s shoryuken does not snap to ledge but He has 3 different versions that go different heights to help with that. Shoryuken can be used to shark the ledge but it can be two-framed and it will trigger counters. Using input shoryuken can prevent being 2-framed because of the arm intangibility. And if the opponent ever goes off stage to try and counter Ken’s up B, Ken can use UAir to trigger the counter then special cancel into shoryuken to then use its intangibility to go through the actual attack. Below is a list of counters that Ken and Ryu’s shoryuken go through. Although it is inferring to when done on the ground, it also applies to when done in the air. Made by Lernonad: