Chun Li Combo
Oswald Lemus
The first combo may be easier to start with as you don't have to start charging during a standing move. That being said, 5MP 2MP is a very important link to learn. Both combos end with MK Spinning Bird Kick, which provides Chun with good okizeme and corner carry.
How do you actually do that second combo? Spinning Bird Kick will not have time to charge if you only hold down when you press 2MP. What you actually need to do is to is hold [2] right after 5MP is pressed. Doing that, you will discover it's actually pretty lenient.
Pressuring with crouching normals has the strong benefit of naturally building charge for Spinning Bird Kick. If you hold [2] throughout the entire light chain, it becomes very easy to do the SBK on a confirm as you simply press 8LK on the third light if any of the previous ones connected.
Chun Li doesn't get knockdowns consistently if she doesn't have charge. If you can confirm fast enough and recognize the distance, she can end with Tenshokyaku instead of Lightning Kicks for a knockdown. Try to confirm into 5LK whenever possible, as it is her only light normal that combos into 236MK. 236MK is more consistent as an ender as it moves Chun Li forwards (as well as doing more damage).
Lightning Legs hits at least thrice, which can blow through Drive Impact armor if timed correctly. This is usually a happy accident, but the resulting counter-hit gives Chun a combo. She'll have to pick her follow-up carefully though, as distance is very important. Learning how to buffer charge specials from standing normals will go a long way when it comes to consistently converting this counter-hit into damage.
Not as likely to happen as a Punish Counter, but good to know regardless. 5LP is the most consistent option after 214LK, but requires a buffered SBK to get a knockdown which can be difficult. 2MK is a lot more consistent after 214MK due to its reach.
Using a Drive Rush from a parry and the already extended hitstun from a Punish Counter lets Chun significantly frontload her damage by comboing into HK Hazanshu. This combo is only realistic as a DP punish, as she needs at least 17 frames for the Drive Rush 4HP to connect. This combo can also be extended somewhat easily with OD SBK.
Each version of SBK offers about the same okizeme, where they differ is in corner carry and damage output. HK SBK is the hardest to combo into by far, with only 2HP being able to combo into it consistently without requiring a counter-hit or punish counter beforehand.
LK and MK Legs are enders that should be avoided if possible. However, there are certain times where Chun has no charge and Tenshokyaku is out of range where this is her only option. Conversely, HK Legs needs a cancelable heavy button or a punish counter to be comboed into, but in exchange allows for a juggle afterwards.
HK legs and OD SBK both launch opponents for a combo. HK legs typically requires a punish counter medium normal or Drive to set up a 4HP to combo into it. OD SBK requires charge and 2 Drive, but the charge requirement is somewhat lessened by Serenity Stream. Their juggle routes can be thought of in a similar way, but OD SBK typically gives Chun more options.
The main difference between 236HK and [2]8KK is that [2]8KK allows for a juggle after 236LK in the corner (and into lvl3 anywhere), making it a highly economical damage extension. 236HK typically needs the corner to juggle into anything that isn't a super. 236HK 236LK and [2]8KK 236MK both set up safe jumps. OD SBK can link into 236236K (and so can 236HK if juggled into) but it leads to less damage and corner carry than canceling into 236236K from 236KK.
An important thing to remember is that juggling into 214214K instead of canceling into it leads to much more damage if the combo was less than 5 hits. Any more then that and scaling is low enough for the cancel penalty to not matter.
Standard launcher combo. Very important to learn as not only does it deal good damage, it also routes into a safejump and Chun can link a lvl1 or lvl3 super upon landing. In order to get a safejump here, the magic number is +45.
The main difference between Serenity Stream HK and Hyouko-Sen is the j.MP(1) rejump Chun can get before continuing the combo as normal. This not only gives her a smidge more damage and corner carry, but also opens up some additional routing options. This must be performed right off the ground to only get the first hit.
Any combo ending in her launchers or a juggled 236K is a solid safe jump opportunity for Chun-Li, so you can force the opponent to eat a jump-in normal on wakeup AND land in time to block any invincible reversals. Excellent for applying pressuring when opponent is in Burnout, but watch out for wakeup DI and command grabs.
OD Kikoken is +5 on hit at close range and heavily spacing sensitive, even if the links themselves aren't all that difficult. However, they're very good for extending combos wherever possible as Chun gets much more on grounded hits than she does from juggles. It's also very helpful when converting from Serenity Stream as she doesn't have to worry about charging.
Chun wants to keep her opponents grounded as long as possible if she wants to dump meter after something like a DI stun or DP punish. Her juggle options, while strong, are generally more limited than her grounded combo options.
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A former high-kicking ICPO agent, Chun-Li looks after Li-Fen, a victim of the Black Moon Incident. With Shadaloo sundered, she now runs Kung Fu classes and has become a well-loved member of the local community.
Chun-Li is a tried and true footsies character, with great emphasis on having many options to control space and punish her opponents in neutral. She has a little bit of everything when it comes to her general tools, but for the most part they're tailored toward whiff punishes and space control.
With the highest backward walk speed in the game and one of the highest forward walks, Chun is at a clear advantage when spacing out of an opponent's range ambiguously. Her poking normals compliment this grounded speed; with 2MK, 4/6MP, and 5HP being some standouts that can easily give a ton of mileage in neutral. To top it all off, she has Kikoken, a highly versatile fireball that can be used as an extended poke, confirm, or approach tool depending on the situation.
Thanks to her new Serenity Stance and Punish Counters, Chun gets great rewards off of whiff punishes in neutral without any meter required. It also can bolster her oki in the right scenarios, giving her high/low/throw mix that is very hard to see if she can manage to set it up properly. Drive Rush also helps to create stance frame traps that make an opponent unsure of when to press, while you can end in Kikoken to make the string safe. She also has a unique stance launcher that is a valuable combo tool, netting reliable safe jump setups, corner carry, and super confirms.
Perhaps the most glaring flaw with Chun is her offense, as her true mix tends to require an advantageous knockdown to be unmashable (which she can struggle to get resourceless) and she notably lacks the ability to throw loop. This removes a key layer of offense from her gameplan and can urge her to retreat back to mid-range poking once a throw is landed. She has some simple frame traps in the form of 5MP > 5LP, but this is far from her specialty compared to the rest of the cast. Another weak part of her offense is jump-ins: Chun's jump is floatier than other characters, and her air buttons are far more geared towards hitting air-to-air than air-to-ground. She has an anti-air baiting tool in the form of Air Lightning Legs, but this is a gimmicky option that whiffs on crouchers and is usually punishable. She may have to resort to using Hazanshu as a read on fireballs, which simply isn't as advantageous as a jump-in even if it gives good reward on a Punish Counter. If you like to jump in neutral a lot, Chun is probably not the pick.
All in all, Chun-Li is a rewarding character to master that can still be accessible simply by how strongly she rewards fundamentals. She doesn't sacrifice versatility for her strengths, and her many options let her both play unpredictably and have answers to any situation. If you want a character that can do a lot in the right hands and thrives on punishing opponents' habits, Chun-Li is a great pick.
How many frames a move remains active (can hurt opponents) for. For projectiles with a maximum active period, a value may be listed in [brackets], but this number is not factored into the move's total frame count.
Attack damage on hit. Multi-hit moves may have the damage listed for individual hits as X,Y (or sometimes X*Y). Sometimes a move's damage changes depending on which active frame connects, or on cinematic vs. non-cinematic hits; in this case, multiple values may be listed, and it will be clarified in the move description.
Refers to the frame advantage when canceling a normal, command normal, or Target Combo into Drive Rush on hit or block (abbreviated as DRC for Drive Rush Cancel). This is calculated at the moment a follow-up attack can be input, not at the moment the character can block or perform movement options. An attack that with DRC +8 on Hit can link into an 8-frame attack, and DRC +4 on Block can create a true blockstring into a 4-frame attack.
Note that any DRC on Block worse than +4 cannot form a true blockstring, allowing the opponent to interrupt with an invincible reversal. Most light normals are slightly negative after a DRC on block, meaning the opponent can mash their fastest normal to guarantee a counter-hit (though this requires fast reactions). The attacking character could punish this with Light > DRC into an immediate invincible attack, but this would be an incredibly expensive and high-risk gambit.