So I'm still new to SFV and the problem I'm running into the most with combos with most characters, especially starting with air attacks, is I get pushed to far to continue the combo. But when I preview it, the character cpu never gets pushed too far back. I really can't see what I'm doing wrong.

You are likely either pressing the button too late so the attack doesn't connect until you've been pushed too far away, or you haven't jumped deep enough into the character. Combos starting with jumps you want to attack very late in the jump arc and hit inside of the enemy character as deep as you can. Both to land closer to them and to make the following combo that little bit easier.

There are a lot of things Street Fighter (and other fighting games) don't tell you. Say for example the trial tells you to press HP and then MP in a combo. It might help to actually press forward+HP, forward+MP just to make the buttons connect.

If I have spent a very large amount of hours on the SFV trials but I have finished all of them. If you have problems with some of them in particular don't hesitate to ask. Either here or in our FGC General thread.

Generally speaking if I find I'm getting pushed too far I try to land the jump-in on the top of their head. Another thing to consider is of you aren't pushing the follow up attacks quickly enough, the opponent will move out of range for all of them to connect. Every frame you delay your attack after landing is another frame the opponent sliders farther away from you.

When I started off in challenge mode I wasn't able to do the first trial for any character except Cammy, which is the character I've been playing - and even with Cammy I couldn't get past Challenge 2. My tip for anyone who hits the same wall that I did (and understands the frustration of finding literally zero other people in the world when googling and trying to figure out what they're doing wrong) is to do the moves faster. Trust me. The combos will seem frame perfect in your brain until you get them down. If you think it's physically impossible for you to pull of the moves any faster, keep at it. It is possible. Your brain and hand/thumb just can't do it yet.

As soon as it clicked however, I burned through challenge 1-9 for Mika. Zero problems. No hitches. Until challenge 10.

I've now spent about 2 hours over two days trying to do Mika's 10th challenge. I can do the first few moves in my sleep at this point, but the final move just doesn't work. At first it was execution errors (my thumb can do a fireball at this point, but a double backwards fireball? gg.) but I finally got that down.

But now I'm in a position where I no longer understand what I'm doing wrong.

Basically: When I get to the last move, it will either whiff because the heavy punch puts me too far away from Ryu OR...I nail it but the move times out/grays out because I didn't do it fast enough. I'm at a loss. Save me, bomb-kun, you're my only hope!

@xymox: First thing is if you do it in the corner, it's way easier because you don't have to move after the LK. Secondly, I'm testing it right now and as far as I can tell there is no range where HP will hit but canceling into super will whiff. My best guess is that you aren't actually canceling the HP into super but are completing the super input after the HP has fully recovered? To be clear, for this combo to work the instant the HP hits the opponent, Mika should immediately go into the super animation. I would recommend just practicing canceling the HP into Super and making sure that it combos. Normally her super hits 3 times so if you successfully cancel it from HP you should get 4 hits. Once you get that timing down I imagine it will click for you.

Timing in street fighter is hard, much harder than any fighting game ive ever played. What mkx really taught me is there is a thing i think called frame buffer(maybe something else) where you can hold a button down before you do the move and it completes when you release.

I have gotten 9 out of 10 for both ken and ryu but i just cant for the life of me reliably get the last one. Canceling regular supermoves into the ex moves while doing those long combos is real hard for me. I kinda wish they just had stuff about when to do anti airs or effective range of normals rather than these drawn out combos. I do think im getting this one better than i got 4 though.

I couldn't finish the trials in SFIV (except for Hakan for some reason and it still took forever) but I have been able to do them all in V without much issue. It sounds like you might just be pushing the button too late if they're getting too far away. It might help to check out some youtube videos where it actually shows the persons hands doing it so you can get a better idea of the speed, timing, etc...

Something that really helped me complete a lot of them is listening to the *Dink* noise when things land. When you view the demonstration in challenge mode pay very close attention to the noise generated per hit. It will allow you to get the timing right and also generate some more precise button pressing rather than mashing. I normally run the demo a couple times and get the *dink* da *dink* *dink* pattern in my head then start attempting the challenge. I think the *dinks* are only generated in challenge mode. It might be the same noise when someone completes a V-Reversal but they used it for hit confirms.

Also, like @starvinggamer pointed out... Practicing specific sections over and over is pretty important.

@starvinggamer: Thanks duder. The thing I was doing wrong was that I wasn't "canceling into super" but waiting for the HP to recover before doing the motion. I just hopped into regular training mode and tried only that last part of challenge and after a few tries managed to get it to 4 hits... So I see what I have to do now. The timing is pretty specific, so I'll need to practice it before I'll be able to pull it off, but man. Awesome.

Also the corner thing is a pretty good tip. Pushing Ryu into the left corner specifically changes the double backwards fireball motion into a double forwards fireball motion which is way easier for me at least.

Edit: Nailed it. Thanks again.

What you're describing there is 'negative edge'. Buffering is generally referring to pressing a button during a frame window that stores that button press and then automatically performs that buttons action as soon as it possibly can when the frame window ends. For example in SFV the game has a 2 frame buffer window for inputs so if your playing Ryu and you hit someone with a medium punch and then you press medium punch again in the 2 frame buffer window that punch will automatically come out as soon as possible. It essentially makes linking attacks together for combos more lenient. SFIV didn't have a buffer window which led to the infamous frame perfect button presses required for certain combos.

Without having played MKX (so I might be terribly wrong) I think it refers to buffering slightly different and more similar to how SF does target combos which is more akin to cancel frames than buffer frames.

Congrats, Karin challenge 6 awaits! I expect a celebratory post.

@xymox: Praise the sun!