Hammer Kick



Hammer Kick is one of Ibuki's Unique Attacks in the Street Fighter III', Street Fighter IV' and in Street Fighter X Tekken

Description
Ibuki jumps into the air and performs a relatively slow bicycle kick. She ends the sequence by landing on her feet.

In the Street Fighter V series this was replaced with Kobekudaki. A similarly visually and performing attack with arguably less effectiveness.

Tactics
Hammerkick by itself is not an effective overhead, as it is rather slow it will be blocked by players with reasonable reactions. This overhead makes up with this shortcoming with it's relatively strong utility.

Hammer Kick is capable of avoiding attacks. Unlike it's SFV successor it can also avoid mediums and some highs (as well as lows and other overheads) at the apex of it's height before going down for the hit. It also has near instant arial frames which can make it a good wake up option against Grabs and Throws as well as Command Grabs. Timed well, this overhead can be used to avoid some wake up reversals or purposely take an air reset to punish the opponent when they come down. Lastly when comparing Hammer Kick to Kobekudaki, Hammer Kick leaves a much more favorable spacing for continuing combos.

An added bonus is that in SFIV this attack is +2 on block, leaving Ibuki able to continue pressure if it is blocked. In SFXT more care has to be used since it is -4 on block. Thus punishable.

Target Combo 7 has a similar relationship Kobekudaki has with Sasanaki in that the Target Combo version end with a similar looking overhead that does not combo from the original hit. Like Sasanaki the TC7 version of Hammer Kick will have even better frame data on block and hit than the base version (+4 on block on X Tekken)