not sure about abel gief being 5-5 imo. sure its not as hopeless as we used to think wayyy back then(plus with breathless things might become 5-5 dependin on factors like life lead, meters, skill of player etc), but it still favors gief imo 6-4 maybe?
gief has more options and can do more damage after getting a knockdown than abel. he just needs that one knockdown to start his shenanigans to which your advice was:
“If you get stuck in Lariat/Grab stuff, use REVERSAL TT to get out, or just do nothing and ultra. Don’t make yourself guess.” <---- 5-5? You forgot to mention whiffing TT/Ultra gets punished super hard and good gief will anticipate that and put those in their mixups equations…
I disagree with “dont make urself guess”, i believe guessing plays a part in this game too, be it an educated guess or simply random but settling for reversal TT all the time? not sure its good advice… though maybe if you be more specific.
See I do all of these things Nick T I know the Gief match up very well.
How can you not make yourself guess you’re forced to guess against Gief the same was characters have to guess against us. The problem is if you guess wrong with that TT then you eat a neutral jump headbutt get knocked down AND your stun bar is over 50%. I don’t think you’ve played good enough Giefs if you think the match up is that simple.
Gief doesn’t even have to jump at you they can walk you to the corner and even if you have good footsies inevitably you’ll get pushed to the corner from the combination of st.mp, sweep and st.lk
Gief may be free on wake up but the risk reward compared to other characters when it comes to wake up options is RIDICULOUS. TT on wakeup beats all Gief can do other than back dash and neutral jump in theory this sounds like good odds but the fact is neutral jump headbutt combo into Giefs mix up is NOT where you want to be.
The difference in this match up, up close is that when we get a knock down Gief can more easily escape but when we get knocked down 2-3 right guesses for Gief and its a wrap his mix up game is undoubtedly better than ours.
Mid range he has better pokes than ours hands down I’m not saying we don’t have things like you said st.lk, st.mp and the occasional f.mk are good BUT he can still walk us into the corner with his superior pokes
Long range neither of us are good
I don’t see how this match up can be 5-5 sure the new ultra helps it means Gief has to show more respect but Gief has more tools and more options to beat us in this match up.
Breathless is overly good for an ultra. Seems insane to say this in a game that has ultras like Ryu’s and Rufus’ U1’s, but that’s my initial impression. I’ll see how I feel about it after I learn to avoid it better. I’ve had a little luck baiting it out a couple of times but not as much luck punishing it as I recall. That’s the main issue I have at the moment. It doesn’t seem to be very punishable on whiff when activated close enough to me. I either jump forward over Abel and he zooms across the screen, or I eat it. Either way I stand to lose half my health, and Abel stands to lose his ultra bar, but even in that worst case scenario Abel gets out of pressure.
Breathless didn’t really do much worth talking about during ECT and there was like 10 Abels there. Most of them just went to Soulless like usual. Whereas Rufus’ U2 got use all over the place and connected all over the place. Even if u can’t punish it for whiffing unless the Abel is totally better than you there’s nothing to worry about. He loses his Ultra and goes back to being Ultraless Abel. Which is must less scary than dealing with a U1 Abel with 2 meters and an Ultra. That’s the whole point of the ultra. It’s just a “I got a good read on you” ultra. Typical online players will get creamed by it but high level play it requires a ton more work to use because it’s so easy to bait and not take damage from. Pretty much all of the use I’ve seen of Breathless in tournaments has gone with it either just flat out not connecting or actually connecting but in a situation where the Abel player was already getting thrashed. Then the next round he doesn’t get a chance to use it at all. It’s just too based on gimmicks and not enough on real setups. Unless its start up/revesal properties really help him in a certain matchup like vs. Honda people are just trying to use it to okey dokey people who are afraid of it when they shouldn’t be.
I’ll wait till I see an Abel player solely run Breathless at a tournament and do well before I put it in some high regard. Definitely the most overrated new ultra in the game IMO. More real setups, less relying on chance.
Why do u need to jump vs. Abel any ways? Only scrubs jump vs. Abel. Half the characters in the game still kill his footsies and the other half can still contend against him without jumping. That’s why I call Breathless the scrub killer because that’s all it does. Forces people to stop jumping and learn how easy it is to contend with Abel if u just stay on the ground. The only time u should even think about jumping vs. Abel is to stop a TT attempt at close range. Which with Breathless you’re probably better off jumping forward to save yourself from getting ultrad.
Depending on your character u don’t have to jump to avoid Tornado throw and even then once u get used to the Abel player’s patterns jumping forward out of his TT will get you out of a lot of problems. It’s easy to catch on to when the average Abel is going to TT you. It’s too risky due to the huge recovery frames for them to spam. Stop being afraid of Abel and you’ll stop being afraid of Breathless. Breathless against most players online is just used as an extra crutch against people who can’t fight Abel because they don’t know how to escape TT so in effect they won’t know how to escape a 500 damage TT that goes 3/4’s of the screen. Technically it’s not even as good as a 500 damage TT cuz as long as u don’t press a button when he starts it up u 7 frames to react to it after the flash. Plenty more frames to react if he holds onto the ultra.
The jist is up your footsie and ground game and you won’t have to worry about TT too much. If u don’t let Abel get in u won’t have to worry about TT. Abel is good at showing you how free your ground game is so big up. Time to level up the scrub status.
Honestly, if it was THAT good, we would have heard about it by now. Maybe someone will find some great set-ups with it, but even then it does seem pretty blown out of proportion.
So you play as Vega and don’t use any of your footsies? Vega got buffed up good to not have to worry about Abel that hard anymore. You kill Abel’s footsies. Vega doesn’t need to jump ever. Stop jumping. You anti air Abel pretty free too.
nah… Vega still has to be very worried about Abel. Now that his mask isn’t quite as big of a deal he can take a little more punishment but everything that stacked the matchup so much in Abel’s favor hasn’t changed.
It’s easy to just say, oh, just don’t jump, and if you do and you’re within Abel’s TT range, jump forward. However, it’s not always the case. Even smart, good players are guilty. It’s not that easy to just stop jumping considering Abel has a pretty damn good command grab and jumping forward is dangerous if the Abel player DOESN’T go for the command grab. Also, it’s possible to tell when someone is going to jump since they usually hold up/upback/upforward (rarely do they try and actually time their jump) and just continue the block string/combo/bait the jump and AA it.
It’s not as clear as water when you say “good players” don’t need to worry about TT if they have good footsies. It’s easy for them to catch on to TT? Well, whatever they do to “counter” it whether it’s a reversal or just plain zoning you out, it should work out both ways: Abel can also catch on to whatever they’re doing and switch it up.
I didn’t even mention breathless, this is just basic footsie knowledge I guess.
btw guys, empty jumps are not 100% punishable (few characters are exceptions, and i’m not talking about moves that change their jump trajectory like ryu’s ex tatsu, as that does avoid U2, but i’m talking about something else), but I’ll assume many of you knew that.
I didn’t know that. I’ve only faced U2 Abel twice so far, both times as Vega, and my empty jumps were caught by it even if I held up upon landing as I remember.
I say it’s not 100% punishable, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get out of. You can cancel your landing frames into a special, but timing is somewhat strict.
I think that the problem with U2 is that it’s too strong for an Ultra which can be landed is so many different ways and shuts down what they can do to such a large extent. Like Seth’s U1 does stupidly low damage but shuts down options. It’s a fair trade, even more so with Seth’s health. Now, look at Breathless, it does high ultra damage, and is such an easy land.
IMO, they either need to make the start up more, decrease the range, or simply the damage. The Super Armour is fine.
True but I still say jumping forward is your best bet as a Claw player against Abel starting up Breathless on your wake up or anything else. U have to deal with it so if u are going to get caught with something it’s better than 500 damage or however much damage the ultra does. Neutral jumping is your best option against TT’s as long as he doesn’t have Breathless built up. I was mostly talking about jumping forward after you saw the ultra flash if he’s close to you considering you didn’t press any buttons. Not jumping forward in anticipation. You don’t really need to do that since the ultra is 7 frames start up any way.
When u get let Abel get close there isn’t much u can do except block and then neutral jump or backdash when u believe a TT is coming unless you’re using a character like C.Viper that has like 3 reversals that work against TT on top of all of that other stuff. Though she still loses the fight either way because Abel’s pay off is huge if he lands a TT and Viper is completely free on wake up since all of her reversals are 7 frames or 17 frames start up and can be OS’d or just plain avoided easily. Just stomp on her once u knock her down until she wins.
If you’re going to take something from Breathless then at least jump forward after the ultra flashes so whatever u get hit by isn’t a crazy damage ultra. If Abel starts up Breathless from far away as long as you’re on the ground and didn’t press a button u can PPP flip away and well whatever Abel hits you with after that isn’t a big damage Ultra.
Funny thing about the ultra so far IMO is that cancelling it has more applications than actually even using it to grab people outside of reversing blocked specials.
Please tell me about all of these easy lands for Breathless that don’t involve just badgering an ignorant or scrub player. Sure the 7 or 8 frame start up allows him to punish things on block he normally couldn’t but that’s fine. People will just stop using those specials when he has ultra stocked. Then back to hoping people to press buttons? El Fuerte’s is better for that because of the 3 frame start up that’ll grab anything u do that isn’t a jab already in recovery. If Breathless was a 7 frame start up version of Gief’s Ultra 1 everyone would consider it garbage. Though because he can fly half way across the screen and hold it and it has one hit of armor u guys go nuts? Come on. There was a lot cheaper stuff in other fighting games (even in Vanilla SFIV) than this and u want a tone down? All of that is required for the ultra to even be competitive and being able to cancel it is IMO the one thing saving it from Ultra 1 totally overshadowing it. It’s not going to put Abel in S tier by himself (his ultra 1 still does a better job of putting him anything close to that) and it doesn’t need to be toned.
Maybe you should play against U2 a bit more often before you start to make bold claims and compare it to Ryu’s and Rufus’s ultras? How come everybody feels like they’re an expert after “having played against it once or twice” now?
I don’t think Vega ever has to be scared of U2 if Abel just randomly throws it out. He gets out for free with various wall dives (based on where you are on screen). If you’re doing a lot of jumping, there are tons and tons of ultras in the game that will hit you for free every single time using the exact same timing that Abel would have to use to AA you with Breathless.
The fact of the matter is (and this isn’t just directed at DHEvil, but more everyone) that Abel’s U2 isn’t nearly as good as it might seem. You have Abel players telling you that, since they’ve played hundreds of matches trying to find ways to make it work, and have had limited success. Just because it worked on you the first (and second, and maybe third) time doesn’t mean it’s really that good.