if I had useful information, i probably wouldn’t get pooped on all the time. Plus, I play this character completely wrong anyways. I guess I could write up something about gief, since that’s the only thing i’m actually good at fighting in this game. Only for you, though.
edit: i’m such a nice person
abel v. gief: 5-5
Look at how edgy I am. I honestly feel this way though, and i’ll play for almost any amount of money against anyone who thinks they have a gief that can make me feel otherwise.
I used to hate this matchup too, and who wouldn’t after driving 3 hours to norcal every tournament only to get pooped on by Vance without taking a round. What all this failure taught was, simply put, that this matchup has to be played only using half of your character. What I mean by this is that the offensive portion of Abel is pretty much nullified in this matchup if you want to have any hope of winning consistently. The risk you take in applying knockdown pressure is so great that one bad read from you can lose you the match if you get knocked down for it. No amount of reward makes that ok.
That said, Abel shits on Gief on the ground. Stand outside of jab spd range and stay there. If he walks back, you walk forward. If he walks forward, you walk back. From there, it’s simply a matter of seeing what he does, and punishing correctly. Not only do abel’s normals straight up beat gief’s when properly used, he can’t even compete with damage output in footsies. Consider this: if both players are standing outside of jab spd range, gief’s reward for counter poking you is a st. strong with no follow up, since he’s too far. Your reward for a correct guess should be a normal (cr. fwd, cr. strong, cr. fierce, etc) canceled into a bnb. sub 100 damage vs like 250? Sure sounds tough for abel! Below I make a list of normals and how you should use them!
stand jab: sucks. Use it like a shoto would as a pretend fireball, and thats about it.
stand strong: Mostly people turn to this move to counter poke gief, and it’s not a bad place to start. Good range, beats most everything once its active, but you don’t get any follow up afterwards. It does extra damage if you snort derisively whenever you counter hit someone with it.
stand fierce: The best! Once this move is active, it will shit on every button gief can press, and it’s hitbox is shifted back, making it surprisingly hard to counter poke. Don’t use it too often, or you’ll become addicted to how satisfying it is to hit this move.
stand short: Abel players crutch on this in footsies, too bad it sucks ass in this matchup. St. short moves your hitbox forward, allowing gief to get his bnb on you at ranges he normally shouldn’t. It’s decent for testing his knowledge, but it’s surprisingly one of the riskiest things you can throw out. 40 damage is not worth putting yourself into his mixup, no matter how shitty post-greenhand is for him now.
stand forward: Useful for once! It’s decent against really far jumpins, and it poops on neutral jumps if gief does them from afar.
stand roundhouse: To be honest, this is mostly a move I use for being a dick, but it’s actually useable in this fight. Watch them whiff a strong, then press it and marvel at your ability to get counter hits for no reason. This only works if you stare at your opponent when you do it, though.
cr. jab: see stand jab.
cr. strong: good, but I only really like it for stopping gief’s trying to low forward in on me, or if i’m a real badass and can react to gief’s st. shorts. For everything else, low forward does a better job.
cr. fierce: nerfed, but still useful for anti-air. Also good as a counter poke if you’re super ballsy and want to go for that extra “fuck you” factor. Being super ballsy is also a very good way to get shit on in this fight.
low short: I have won rounds by dashing across the screen and low shorting 4 times. That’s about all I can say.
low forward: The best normal in the game. It counter pokes everything gief can hit you with into a full combo. Use it every time gief tries to st. roundhouse in on you for BIG DAMAGE. Beats or trades with all jumpins with almost no timing. It’s a bit laggy, so you can’t just press the button all day, but you shouldn’t need me to tell you that. An interesting little thing i’ve found is that, if you’re just within grab range and throw it out, your hitbox will be moved back far enough to dodge it. I’ve even hit gief out of it before. Not a very good idea to crutch on this, but it’s gotten me out of some tight spaces before.
sweep: Read reply to HFX for longwinded garbage, here’s the simple shit: really good, outranges step kick by just enough to troll people trying to bait it out, also forces them to watch their feet, making them either walk further back or crouch. Don’t whiff this though, or you’re going to get pooped on.
step kick: This move is what makes this matchup even in my mind. Once you’re able to properly space yourself so that he can’t just walk up and throw you, he has no choice but to walk forward. Step kick shits on walking forward with extreme prejudice. Good gief’s will catch on and use their walking forward as bait to greenhand you, but the simple fact that gief has to do that just to have a chance of getting in should make you understand just how strong this shit is. If you’re not just throwing it out like an idiot, he has to burn meter to use his most unsafe attack…just to get past the wall your normals creates. It’s also guaranteed whenever you block a sweep from gief.
All of this theory bullshit requres that you be on point. If you’re using your normals like I taught you, gief is going to have to use his laggy shit to try and catch you sleeping. When that happens, whether it be st. rh, low forward, or sweep, you have to be ready to punish that shit every single time. Not doing so is letting him in for free, and you’ve got no one to blame but yourself if that happens.
Next is jumping. Gief should not be jumping in. If he is jumping in successfully, you have only yourself to blame. Press low forward. If low forward will whiff, walk forward and press low forward. If you didn’t at least trade, then you failed somewhere between steps 1 and 2. Cr. fierce and falling sky are both also good options, but they lack the brain dead simplicity of low forward. Gief also shouldn’t be neutral jumping either. If he does that, walk forward and stand forward him, marveling at the sudden usefulness of a move that you previously didn’t know existed. It beat his neutral jump shit clean, including the headbutts, if you do it properly. Plus you get style points for using such a stupid looking kick.
More questionable advice:
If I have any respect for the gief player i’m up against, I pretty much don’t use any form of offense, except for maybe following up on a blocked step kick. While it is true that abel can potentially shut down gief’s wakeup options and get good damage for doing so, the risk of giving gief an opening to knock you down just isn’t worth it. If you have any faith in what i’ve already said, then trust in your normals and don’t give them any chance for a comeback. Play like that one knockdown is going to kill you because, a lot of the time, it will.
So what to do on knockdown? If you’re near the corner, switch sides with him. If he’s closer to the corner, push his corpse further in with dashes and jump out as he’s getting up. If you’re already in a good position, build meter and wait. All of these are ways to deepen the lead your knockdown created, without any potential for being countered by your opponent.
I can’t think of anything else that’s useful to say about this match, so I guess this is it unless someone has a question that I haven’t successfully answered. Hope it helps.
I do good vs American Giefs…but Cantona…dude is scary