Blanka's Electric Thunder Ultra Street Fighter 4

feralwolf72 posted December 5, 2014

One of Blanka's two iconic special moves. Blanka's Electric Thunder (electricity) is achieved by rapidly pressing a punch button. It can be done via mashings, sliding, or pianoing but the last button of your 5 punch button presses will be the version of electricity that comes out. It can be used for combos, hop/dash/ball mix ups, block pressure and sometimes build meter during the neutral game.

Although it is easy to access and hard to master, it may arguably be the best special move he has. It is safer to use (less recovery on hit and block). Blanka doesn't have high damage go to combos so you either get to hit and knockdown, or force them to block so you can throw and get the knockdown. Electricity does this perfectly.

LP and HP electricity will be the go to choice. The individual player will have to find out which version works best for them, but common electricity button inputs are:

HP elec piano or slide: (LP, MP, HP, LP, HP) and (LP, HP, MP, LP, HP)

If you look at both of those you will notice LP appears before HP in both sequences. A common combo with Blanka is LP, HP electricity. What that would look like on the screen is playing the neutral spacing normals, getting a jab through, walking forward a bit and hitting jab again into electricity. On hit or block, every thing is good.

LP elec piano or slide (MP, LP, HP, MP, LP)

This capitalizes off of a close MP through a deep jump in, dizzy, focus crumple, etc

LP elec piano or slide (LP, MP, HP, MP, LP)

This is good for purposely using jabs into electricity to use pressure. Personally I'm terrible at this, so I double tap LP, then press HP, MP, and double tap LP again.

OTHER NOTES ABOUT ELECTRICITY

Not a reversal, do not use on wake up new Blankas.

EX version does the most damage for combos and such, but is the better elec for punishing bad overheads and jump ins.

Can be super, focus cancelled out of. Elec to super is corner situational and weird. Focus pressure follow ups can be very useful though.

Although compared to other mash based moves it may pale in comparison, it is still one of Blanka's best tools. Expanding on your electricity usage will be a better pillar of Blanka play instead of relying on shenanigans and balls set ups.

Ragnaroid posted March 8, 2016

Ahh the classic mash move. Being a signature move for Blanka since Street Fighter II, Electric Thunder has a lot of usage and is one of the best special moves that he has. Newer players will try and use this as a wake-up attack, don't do this as the move can leave Blanka vulnerable. It's best usage is as a combo piece, but it can be used as an anti-air on players who attempt to get cross-ups on you though Backstep Roll and Vertical Roll work better in this regard. LP into Thunder provides a lot of pressure, allowing the Blanka player to force the opponent to block, which can then be followed-up with a throw, forcing a knockdown.