Really? The only thing that gives me trouble with Ken is his goddamn knee bash loop… Ken’s are usually pretty predictable. Most of them will spam jab DP’s, and those are easily punishable. Hurricane kicks, even if they hit you, are not safe for Ken. A fierce hurricane kick will hit you 3-4 times, but it pushes you away so far after the 3rd hit that you can knock him out of it with a Cr. Fierce.
It is a pretty bad matchup for Ken though. 6-4 in Rog’s favor.
Unless his tatsu hits point blank cause it will combo on rog 4 times and leave him ken safe. Boxer is one of the few characters in the game that a point blank hk tatsu is reliable.
Yeah, but smarter Ken players don’t spam jab SRK using it only to cover small openings they might leave. They also know how to distance Boxer as far as possible and use fireballs to keep him at bay. Add brain dead knee bash loops on top of that and I have a very hard time against decent Ken players.
Well I shouldn’t say they “spam” jab DP’s, but a lot of them will do jab DP’s in pairs. That makes it VERY easy to get the timing down and punish the 2nd DP as it is coming down. If you fall victim to a fireball trap, don’t jump through the FB’s with fierce headbutt, that moves you too close to Ken, leaving you wide open for a Cr. roundhouse. Instead, use jab headbutt. It still goes thru the FB, keeps you far enough back from Ken, and you are still charging back, so you are free to let loose with a dashing low.
Jab headbutt doesn’t work against certain fireball setups. If Boxer is out cr. roundhouse range, he’s most likely still within st. roundhouse range. And not all Ken players even DP in pairs : (.
Superman is immune to bullets.
Superman is vulnerable to kryptonite.
Which one is he running into more often being carried by bad guys?
One of the criteria for being a top character, is to have good matchups vs. other top characters.
So if you’re gonna have a bad matchup, have it against characters that either aren’t gonna show up to the tourney or who won’t survive the brackets.
Sure, in a counterpick tourney someone can bring him in, but that’s already Game 2, which means you can easily counterpick Gief in Game 3 ftw.
Case in point, Tougeki 2008 Super Street Fighter IIX 2 on 2 Tournament.
It’s in the later rounds, and only higher tier characters are left: Claw, Boxer, Dhalsim, Ryu, Chun Li, Dictator, Guile.
Does Boxer have to worry about someone playing Zangief? No.
Does Dhalsim have to worry about someone playing Claw? [media=youtube]LFGvmMEkqas#t=4m06s"]Yes and [URL=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JASvCt_kD6M”[/media].
Does Guile have to worry about someone playing Claw? [media=youtube]J7Q7VQv6sgM&feature=related#t=2m59s"[/media].
Does Dictator have to worry about Ryu? [media=youtube]JASvCt_kD6M#t=6m47s"[/media].
Does Dictator have to worry about Chun Li? [media=youtube]j6FW9alRTps&feature=related#t=2m14s"[/media].
If you want to be like that, Boxer is 5-5 with both Chun Li and Sim. It’s not a given that he will win any of those matches. Boxer isn’t broken. He is just top tier. People that bitch about characters being broken are just a bunch of babies. Learn the matchup, and you can beat Boxer. He is not invincible.
I don’t think we have enough data to be conclusive. (at least I don’t)
Not enough high level tournament finishes.
Not enough balls-to-the-all stress testing play by top players in the world.
If HDR were THE game, and it was having the same type of intsenive study/play that SF4 is having, then I think we’d know what characters (if any) were dominating the field in competitive play, and by how much.
"Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible."
Players that fiend for winning are often attracted to playing the characters that can get them the wins.
We see this in games at a scrub level, and we see this in games at a top player level.
If we had more high level tourneys, and those tourneys had lots of top players in them, and the players in them had incentive to win, then I think we would see a clear indication of the top tournament characters (and the magnitude of their advantage) start to reveal itself.
From the few tournaments that have taken place, it would seem that Ryu and Boxer are on the radar for top tier. (we are talking Akuma banned tourneys)
But a lot of the top play styles were simply ST players using hack translations from ST playbooks with surface level HDR adjustments, and I don’t think this speaks to the differences in HDR.
In addition, it’s unclear if top players used characters in tournaments for their power or because that character appealed to them on a personal/familiarity level.
Oh well, he plays like Muteki in that last round. Just dominant.