2013 SSF4 A.E. Zangief Change list

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
61

Dee Jay isn’t a bad matchup, it’s a 6-4 simply because Dee Jay’s normals can’t do jack shit to you, he has a fireball? sweet, but once you go through a fireball and he’s in a range where he needs to push you out with his normals it becomes hell for Dee Jay. Rose has this problem where her best option to make space corners her in the process, and once she’s in the corner she’s dead unless you fuck up, it’s a match where you need to be patient and then it will be in Gief’s favor.

Fei Long beats Gief, but it’s a 5.5-4.5 (maybe 6-4), his cr.HP is godly and you can’t really jump at him, yeah, but once you get the lifelead there’s not much Fei can do in order to open you up as long as you stay calm and react to his stuff. Akuma? I forgot about him, and it’s a bad matchup, but it’s not the same as it was thanks to the st.HK nerf, it is one of Gief’s worst matchups though. Honda isn’t one of his worst? I’d love to see which Honda players you’re playing because that matchup is absolutely horrible, there’s no reliable way to get in on a downback Honda, his pokes hit like a truck and getting over neutral jump HP is much more easier said than done, I’m surprised that you don’t think that matchup is absolute hell. Not worse than Akuma, but bad, like 6.5-3.5 bad.

Cammy’s oki is hell for everyone, it’s still 5.5-4.5 on her favor, you can’t do nothing to it? you can try focus backdash, backdash, ex SPD and blocking, you’re going to have to make some risky reads (especially if you have meter), but it’s not even a really bad matchup. T.Hawk and Hakan beat Gief, yeah, but Hawk has even more issues than Gief getting in a lot of characters and Hakan has that one big gaping hole where he needs to oil up in order to be a decent character.

If you think Gief is this bad where he loses to everyone, drop him, because really, why would you main a character with 4 good matchups and 35 horrible matchups?

And please, don’t get in absolute bitch mode and call me a retard for disagreeing with you.

He does, but Guile isn’t that bad (if the best Gief in the world took out the best Guile in the world at the 25th Anniversary, I don’t think it’s unwinnable), Akuma is bad though, not as bad as it was as I said above, but really bad.

Dee Jay I explained above, Ibuki has no reliable way to anti air you, her kunais can only do so much to keep you out, her vortex is good against Gief because of his big hurtbox but most of Gief’s options to stop it give Gief a knockdown or big damage in the process, and Ibuki can only do safe tsujuki strings to try and open you up since the air is taken by crouch lariat and doing hail mary neckbreakers is absolutely retarded to do against this character. Chun-Li and Juri are bad, but they are not as bad as they used to be, there’s a reason for why Ricky Ortiz never counterpicks Gief with Chun anymore, it’s not as unwinnable as it was on Super, cornering Chun is a reliable way to get the round victory and Gief has legitimate ways to get in on her now by using cr.lp OS EX GH and, like Rose, her best way to get away gets her close to the corner. I’m not saying it’s a matchup in Gief’s favor (not by any stretch), but it’s not worse than a 6-4 in my opinion. Juri can keep Gief out and she has some hellish ways to make you doubt you were ever good at this game, but I feel that being patient and whiffing lariats to get meter while focusing some fireballs makes this matchup be complete hell, once you have one EX Green Hand she has to stop throwing fireballs, and her normals really aren’t up to the task of keeping Gief out for long, you can’t jump easily on her, but she has no way to stop you in the ground. 6-4 (in Juri’s favor) in my opinion.

Dudley, Yang and Dan and arguably Guy are 7-3’s, those characters have a ton of holes (maybe more than Gief), yeah, and the rest are indeed 6-4, but outside of Seth, Sagat, Dhalsim and Akuma he doesn’t get beat worse than 6-4. It’s hell that 3 of those characters are tournament regular while the matchups where we destroy are nowhere to be seen, but such is life as a Gief player.

Don’t take me wrong guys, I do believe Gief has some big holes, but those holes are a part of what makes Gief him, I don’t want to play a braindead character who has more than one way to keep people out, more than one way to get in on everyone and more damage than everyone.

62

I don’t know what game your playing but either you play trash players all the time or are just clueless. In high level play Gief struggles with the majority of the cast it seems and you’re saying that he only “flat out loses to Sim, Sagat, Seth, and Honda?” Then you say that Guy may be 7-3? You sound like one of those sports analysts on tv that have never played the game yet think they know more simply because they can read a stat sheet.

Anyway, all those tweener mu’s that some think are 5-5 or 6-4 Gief are only gonna get worse after this update imo. Do you really see them improving Gief at all? They’ve made him worse every time so I just don’t see it happening, especially anything significant like making ex.gh kd again.

63

“He only flat out loses to” translates to “he really is hopeless against”, I already changed Honda for Akuma from that list. He may lose some matchups, but he’s not even close to hopeless against most characters in the game like this thread is making it out to be. And for the record, I’ve never believed Guy is a 7-3 matchup in Gief’s favor, I put it in there because I’ve read that many times over the year I’ve taken this game seriously. I do play, I go out to tournaments and I try to support my community, I have played Mexico’s best (which I understand may not say much, but it’s what I have being mexican) and done nicely against them, I wouldn’t say I’m a top Gief player, but I also don’t believe I’m shit, and I disagree with this line of thinking that Gief 35 horrible matchups and 4 good matchups.

I don’t know, I don’t understand how someone would stick with a character if the character in question gets trashed by more than half of the cast.

64

You’re a retard because you’re WRONG, that’s all there is to it. Dee Jay’s normals can’t do shit to Gief? I guess you conveniently forgot about his roundhouse slide and far st.HP/HK that he can use to keep you out all day or the fact that he can escape any sort of jump-in pressure with j.LK (which beats lariat by the way) or EX upkicks. Even if he didn’t have those normals it wouldn’t matter because he still has more than enough tools to keep you out consistently and win. He has arguably better tools for keeping you out than Guile does which is already a bad matchup. He doesn’t need to “push you out with his normals” as he has other means of escape, and if he even lets you get into such a range then he’s probably a bad DJ player and likely a bad example for you to base the matchup on. Rose isn’t necessarily dead in the corner as she still has Ultra 2, Soul Throw and a variety of normals to punish your jump-ins with, and simply staying on the ground is also a risky proposition since she can outrun you, tick throw you with slide, or combo into EX spiral to push you back out. She still has many options in the corner which leads me to believe that you only play bad players and base your entire matchup knowledge on those, thus you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about like I said before.

I can easily refute the rest of your ignorant matchup asssessments but I’ve already made my point. We use Gief because he caters the most to our individual playstyles. Most of us main grapplers in every game, and sadly he is still the best grappler in the game, which just shows how far they’ve fallen.

65

Like I said, I don’t know much about Dee Jay, but what I do know is that his slide is a problem if he knows the perfect spacing. Also, I find that it’s easy for him to push Gief out with the light version of his “HEY!” forward kick special (don’t know what it’s called). It’s safe on block, knocks down, puts Gief a decent distance away and is pretty fast. I’m sure I need to play the MU more to get it down, but from the times I’ve played competent Dee Jay’s, it feels only slightly easier than Guile, which is still kinda bad, IMO.

j.LP beats n.j.FP. And you just have to be inexplicably patient, only throwing out st.LK and st.MP where you know you can’t get tagged with jabxxHands. But I agree, that MU is ass.

I don’t think he has that many horrible matchups, but honestly there only about 4 or 5 matchups, more or less, that he convincingly wins.

Ibuki’s st.FP beats Zangief’s jump ins pretty cleanly. It’s even difficult to empty jump it because it has a nice hitbox. She also has a DP and a few other normals. She’s by no means hurting for an AA vs. Gief. She has safe blockstrings that chip and push Gief back really far. With her super jump, she can’t really be cornered. Kunai is damn good for keepaway, and she vortexes Gief better than almost all of the cast. The OS’s destroy him and the guess is less than 50-50 because you have to guess left/right and high/low. For all intents and purposes, if she knocks Gief down, he dies. And that’s not very hard because her st.LK (the knee, I think it’s st.LK) is decent in footsies and buffers into her rekka, which is a mixup itself. That matchup is Ibuki’s to lose.

Chun isn’t as bad as Super, but it’s still very, very hard. I hate to keep name dropping cause it sounds like I’m trying to be important but I have probably the best Chuns in the U.S. in my region (BrolyLegs, Nashfan, Toi) and play them often. That MU is ass, dude. I think Juri is worse, though. She has the second fastest fireball in the game behind Guile, and it’s very difficult to react to. She can throw the non-EX with just about as much liberty as Guile, the difference being that she can fire at 3 directions/heights. EX GH doesn’t make much of a difference. And she definitely has ways to stop Gief on the ground. Her cr.MK is one of the best in the game. f.RH has great range, is safe and pushes Gief out considerably. She can throw out light pinwheels fairly liberally to check Gief if he’s pressing a lot of buttons. And her dive kick gets her out of the corner nearly for free. Once again, the Juri match is one that she has to lose through carelessness and mental hiccups. Unless I’ve been missing something, there’s no reliable way to mount an offense against that character.

I don’t really know about this. The Dudley matchup is pretty bad, and I hear Yang is, but I don’t know much about it. I think Guy may be a little closer to 6-4, maybe 6.5/3.5. And Dan absolutely does not lose that badly. He actually has a pretty good vortex on Gief and is one of the few characters that can jump at him reliably.

66

I do believe MachoRhombus’s matchup experience is based on fighting noobs.
No doubt about that.

67

Meh, I honestly don’t give a shit anymore. I should have never came in to this thread and expect to reason with someone who believes Ultra 2’s input needs to be easier, that it needs to have a bigger grab box and be able to grab everything and seriously believes that shit wouldn’t cripple a ton of characters when Gief has the lifelead.

I still believe what I said, but I just don’t give a shit anymore about explaining myself.

68

Quite the contrary, we believe it WILL cripple them. That’s the whole fucking point, and the reason we’re asking for it to begin with. Have you even played this game before?

Tons of characters in the game have completely retarded ultras where you’re guaranteed to be hit by them if you so much as jump. How is that NOT crippling? You might say, “oh just don’t jump then”, which would prove to me that you don’t know shit about Zangief, because his movement options are already limited enough WITH the ability to jump. You’d be hard pressed to find the matchups in the game where an Ultra DOESN’T cripple an opposing character, especially with peoples’ tendencies to counterpick with Ultras. It’s how they’re meant to be used.

I don’t know why I’m trying to reason with an idiot who believes “OUR CHARACTER SHOULD HAVE AN INEFFECTIVE ULTRA FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON”.

69

Honestly, not grabbing everything feels more like a bug than a gameplay mechanic. They gave it to him (and buffed it) so that he could catch aerial moves, jumps and backdashes, especially after EX GH. It certainly seems like U2 whiffing on some EX DPs was an oversight on the devs. I can’t imagine it was intentional, especially when it helps his worst matchups. Same with it whiffing on some backdashes. There’s no logic to it at all. What we’re asking for is how it should have been (and how the devs likely intended) in the first place.

70

It seems that you just don’t understand how making something grab absolutely everything that jumps on simple reaction (not even buffering a 720 and ending the motion when you see the jump, but with qcb x 2) would absolutely destroy some matchups where Gief already wins but not help us very much in matches where we already get raped. How many times does Sagat jump at you? Sim? Seth does it sometimes I guess, and Akuma too. But most matches where Gief loses are against characters who already don’t have to jump too much. Grab buff but with the same motion? alright, that helps us to grab escape options after Gief already got in, easier to do ultra + grab buffs in order to catch jump-ins easily? that shit will make Gief’s advantaged matches complete hell for the oposition.

Gief’s ultra isn’t ineffective, there are some things Aquasilk may say that I disagree, but he’s right about many more, and one of those is that U2 is really good as it is. You’re not asking to make it barely effective, you’re asking to make it absolutely retarded.

71

Ultra 2 is currently a very effective ultra and if you don’t understand why you should be playing a different character 4 years into this games life. I think some slight buffs to make it more viable in some very specific instances would be cool, not necessary, but it’d be really nice.

As for a lot of the matchup advice posted above me, do both of us a favor and switch characters asap.

72

omg…this is too good

http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2011/2/10/050a51ef-9fa9-435a-80cb-13f9b9de0bbf.jpg

73

The problem with Ultra 2 is that it doesn’t come out when you need it. Multiple times when you see a perfect opportunity to land the U2 it simply doesn’t come out and you get EX RBG instead, literally the exact opposite of what you want. And I still don’t see the problem with it being easier to do, because many characters have Ultras that force you to stay on the ground, I mean for fuck’s sake even T. Hawk has one and it doesn’t “break” him even though his playstyle is generally the same. The examples you give are poor and do little to dissuade me because Akuma and Seth both jump quite a lot and Sim’s ability to teleport make landing a U2 tricky despite his floatiness. Even Sagat comes at you with j.RH sometimes, or he whiffs a tiger uppercut, which is perfect U2 fodder. Also you’re making the mistake of thinking that matchups will stay the same except for Zangief’s buffs when in fact everyone is receiving buffs and nerfs which is likely to be even more problematic for Gief. I’ll give you that buffing the grab box might be a bridge too far (MAYBE, I’d still like to have it) but I definitely think it needs an easier input and the ability to grab even invincible stuff out of the air.

74

you guys know way more about zangief than I do lol

75

No get out of jail cards for you…

Anyone read Ultra David’s suggestions?

76

Damn.

Forgot to add one extra buff to the capcom utility forum:

EXGH = +3 on hit.

Turns every EXGH into an Ultra 2 gamble against Sagat, Cammy and Fei Long.

Plus helps with option selects against jump and back dash, by starting cr.lp or cr.lk 2 frames earlier.

77

Damn.

Forgot to add:

Make HPGH -2 on hit.

As it has limited combo-ability, only combos from cl.mp and cl.mk.
Serves as your Ultra 1 gamble.
And is an ACE in the sagat matchup vs far st.hk

Face it, this move never sees the light of day, unless you get a crumple back dash.

78

The main thing on my mind is EX GH. Landing a move that you spent meter on leads to little reward as it’s 50-50 whether you can follow it up or the opponent will pull some reversal. It needs knockdown back.

It makes match-ups where you work like hell to get in (Sagat) feel futile because as soon as that’s over, they can go straight back to turtling.

79

I want reversal U2 so bad. Tired to be forced to expose myself with jump frames to land this ultra even on good reads all Gief can do against meaty and late jump ins is lariat, what a reward…

80

Hi guys, I checked at capcom unity the sugestions for gief and I found a some interesting ideas. Now, the biggest problem is regarding Ex Green Hand - everybody seems to have a different idea about how to fix it.
I will post here some options and I’m interested in hearing your oppinions which one do you think is the best.

Ex Green Hand

It’s not very likely that Capcom will just return it the way it was in Super , and many people think it would be too strong, so I found some alternatives:

  • Alternative 1: Ex Gh gives a soft kd. That prevents being able to cross up after, but gief can still do a meaty ground attack. This rewards Zangief players more for finishing combos/having good footsies, without having to dice roll with an even situation.
    Improves GH, but still a softer version than super.

  • Alternative 2: Ex Gh gives a kd, but only in certain situations - if it is hitconfirmed.
    Argument:

Spoiler

My idea is that we give EXGH its hard knockdown from vanilla and super, but only in certain situations. Put simply, EXGH will knockdown, if its hitconfirmed. As a combo ender, EXGH will knockdown. As a hitconfirm from jab or short, it will knockdown. However, when EXGH is used by itself to go around a fireball, it will not knockdown. The risk of buffing giefs EXGH, which im sure capcom is very aware of, is that fireballs against gief will become very high risk again. Which goes against the whole point of gief being a grappler, he should have trouble getting around fireballs. EXGH as it is does do a good amount of damage, and it does close the gap, which are good benefits of the work it took to land that EXGH. so we dont need to buff the anti fireball EXGH. What we should buff however, is the hit confirmed EXGH, and this is why. Like I said before it will raise the skillcap of playing gief. Knockdown on hitconfirmed EXGHs will greatly reward the player who focuses on the neutral footsie game and benefit him for outplaying his opponent.

  • Alternative 3: ex gh gives kd, but start up increased to 14 frames, thus removing the possibility of knockdown in combos.
    -This makes Green Hands anti fireball abilities dangerous, as well as retains zangiefs strong counter poke game with CH jabs and shorts into EX but after a knockdown: landing a cross up doesn’t combo back into the knockdown.

  • Alternative 4: Ex gh doesn’t kd, but becomes +3 on hit, armor breaks and is a single hit.

So, what do you think, which variant would be the best ?