There is truth to all sides of the Sagat story. Sagat is not omnipotent, but he is undoubtedly extremely powerful, and it while it takes loads of work to master him (as with any other character), it doesn’t take that much to be competent with him, relatively speaking. You would need to put in much more work IMO to play at the same level using a character like Viper, for example. He has got the benefits of relative ease of use and high strength, to the point of being unbalanced.
This is illustrated by the adage “tiers only matter at high level”. The implication of this is that differences in character balance are only realized at very high level of play. (eg. If character X has a 1 pixel range advantage over character Y using a particular move, it is more likely that high level players would use this to their advantage than others). So theoretically, if everyone played at the same level of skill, unbalanced characters with an advantage would tend to rise to the top over long periods of time (note: not once-off tournaments). In a balanced game, the (dis)advantages should be slight. In other words, winning or losing should depend 99.5% on skill and 0.5% on balance - arbitrary percentages to illustrate a point.
However, let’s look take a look at Sagat. These are recent character appearance stats from the top 20 players in Japan.
Sagat appears more than 3 times more often than any other character. 35% of the top 20 belongs to him. That is not a “slight” balancing issue. So yeah, people who main Sagat, you do have very good points about the effort that goes into mastering a character, but don’t ignore reality.
As for Blanka, I have yet to run into a skillful one. I main him myself (maybe that’s why I know how to handle most of them) and most people who lose to him do so because they keep falling for the same tricks. When I pick up Ryu, Guile, or even Rose I run circles around 90% of the Blankas online. Ex-Balls and slides will only get you so far…
Just dig down to your “Player Data” and look at where it shows you how often you pick each character… you should be able to use the shoulder buttons to scroll through a few different filters.
Ryu players do have it a lot easier than others. Thats why I dont even touch him in this game and this is coming from someone that as always played Ryu. Everyone and their mother plays Ryu. Its annoying, there are 24 other characters on the roster. Heck, I get happy when I play a Seth player, he might be OP but at least its not the mundane shit over and over again.
If your whole gameplan is walk back, projectile, anti air if they jump, repeat…my mind disengages…even winning against fools like that is boring as hell.
Blanka, Guile, Ryu, Sagat, yes, this is directed at you.
(And NO, I do not main guile anymore, and NO even when I did, I used him aggressively, not turtley).
That’s still happening to me. I’ve fought one Viper and it was over in like 45 seconds. I was literally going “WTF just happened” in my head for the next 10 minutes.
Gen was ez to catch onto since even the decent ones I fought only have one effective combo. But his short jumps and cross-ups alone took me a good 6 fights to get used to.
Yeah, I hate it too. This is Street FIGHTER… Let’s get the fans into it at least. And what’s up with this cr.lp bullshit. I wasn’t aware I was playing Virtua Fighter. I’m just saying, an angry 300 pound Mike Tyson parody has no use for a fucking jab. Haymaker, Haymker, HAYMAKER!!! The era of the turbo controller has arrived once again. Let’s hope KOF 12 allow a little less jab spam, and a little more heads up fighting. Just a little bit.
1. Sagat
2. Blanka (possibly tie between Sagat)
3. Zangief
4. Ryu
5. Akuma
I find it funny that these players have two bar connections most of the time and the top two characters in particular would benefit from lag because of their already spammable moves.
The top two make up about 75% of my fights. There are 3 Gen players that I know of, anything else is barely worth mentioning.
Remove either his fireball or his tiger uppercut. He really doesn’t need both. He has roundhouse and ultra along with tiger knee, which should be used more often. Bam! Balanced Sagat.
And to balance Ryu, swap Ken and Ryu’s ultras. Ken is now balanced for free.
Took me all of 3 minutes to come up with that. Capcom, are you listening?
