Counter Picking List

I think ROG/Sagat is at least 50/50. The mistake I see many Sagats make is trying to zone ROG in the same fashion they zone everybody else.

http://games.t-akiba.net/sf2/diagrama.html

according to T Akiba

First off here’s what I think the names are in order listed for ST.

Ryu
Ken
Honda
Chun Li
Blanka
Zangief
Guile
Dhalsim
Hawk
Cammy
Fei Long
Deejay
Boxer
Claw
o.Sagat
Dic

moving on, according to T. Akiba’s Chart the worst matchups are as follows:

Ryu: Dhalsim (3:7)
Ken: Dhalsim (2:8)
Honda: Ryu, Ken, Guile, DJ (2:8)
Chun Li: THawk (3:7)
Blanka: DeeJay, Boxer, O.Sagat (2:8)
Zangief: Honda, Dhalsim, O.Sagat, Claw (2:8)
Guile: no counter character (worst matchups are sim, claw and sagat at 4:6)
Dhalsim: no counter character (worst matchups are chun, claw, boxer at 4:6)
Hawk: sagat (2:8), honda, sim, guile, cammy (3:7)
Cammy: Honda, Sim, Guile, O.Sagat, Boxer (3:7)
Fei Long: Honda, Sim, Guile, O.Sagat (3:7)
Deejay: no counter character (worst match is 4:6)
Boxer: Gief (3:7)
Claw: no counter character (worst matchup is honda at 4:6)
O.Sagat: no counter character (worst matchup is claw and sim at 4:6)
Dic: no counter character (most matchups are 4:6)

>Callmeanewb

What do those numbers mean? And I thought Honda countered Dic.

Thank you, it took this many posts to mention this counter match. This is one of the few matches where fei just completely dominates

Chun Li: THawk (3:7)

Uhh… someone wanna fill me in on this one?

Boxer: Gief (3:7)
this one needs some explaining too

Translated version of the T-Akiba charts, via Sobat Carnival. The numbers indicate the wins X-axis character (name on the left) should win in a set of 10.

http://www.sobatcarnival.com/data/diagrama/diagrama.html
http://www.sobatcarnival.com/data/diagramb/diagramb.html

I think some people might have been off by a column in their references. This should make things more clear to those less familiar with Hiragana and Kanji.

Please do keep in mind that these are the opinions of mid to high level Japanese ST players. While intermediate players might never see the match-up intricacies beyond who’s fireball reigns supreme, do trust that these guys have some idea what they’re talking about. I’m not telling you to trust blindly. Just please consider the source. Also, ST is an incredibly balanced game. Perhaps more so than any other fighting game ever made. No match-up in ST is absolutely insurmountable. Except maybe Honda vs. Akuma.

From what little I’ve seen, Boxer is predominantly a rushdown character. Once he gets within half-screen, he abuses most of the field because if he’s got mean reach, decent startup, and insane damage. The startup and damage are a big deal since he can throw stuff out liberally and come out ahead in trades.

But Zangeif can negate some of Boxer’s strengths since he too has decent pokes. The c.jab and lariat have good priority and come out fairly quick (with minimal motion inputs as opposed to a psychic DP attempt). The SPD (zero frame activation) is also wicked since Boxer needs to be close, and that seems to benefit Zangeif. In most match-ups, Zangeif has to work really hard just to close the distance and take advantage of the deadly SPD. In this match-up, Boxer does the work for him.

A big part of Geif’s game is the tick SPD. Most decent reversal moves in this game start to hit between frames 3 to 6. But even if a Boxer player can reliably reversal, the shoulder charge (AKA buffalo head butt) doesn’t hit until the 12th frame. Should Boxer pull a reversal and be invincible to the tick, he might not hit Geif. In such a case, Boxer might just get clubbed with something else on the recovery of the shoulder charge. Or Geif could tick into lariat (also zero frame startup with great hit box priorities) instead of SPD and beat the shoulder charge clean.

Gief is a classic counter to Rog, from CE onward. Not to say he wins easy, but he’s always had the lariat to stop rushes, and the high damage super-fast far s.jab to just throw out to hit Rog trying to rush punch/do stuff on the ground. Rog also never had an easy way to get out of ticks really until ST, and in ST the headbutt is easy to safe-jump against, which is free SPD or knockdown into another safe jump.

I have no experience with Chun Li though, so I’m curious about the Chun vs Hawk counter. Is it that she has a hard time getting out of the 360 loop?

As I stated, I think dude looked at the wrong column. Chun vs. Hawk is listed as 5:5. That’s why I posted the link to www.SobatCarnival.com featuring an Engrish version of the chart.

When reading the chart, keep in mind that a 6:4 match-up isn’t really a counter, and should be easily overcome by a disparity in execution and knowledge of the mechanics.

Is a 3:7 matchup considered a counter?

If you’ll note the second T-Akiba chart, he lists the number of strong vs. weak match-ups each character has. Basically, any match-up where a character is favored 7:3 or better is considered a good match-up, and 3:7 or worse a bad one.

As expected of the first chart, the greater the disparity, the better counter choice a character is. But at 7:3 (or even 8:2), superior tactics can mitigate the match-up obstacles. As NKI put it in the SRK ST Wiki:

The higher level of play, the more the player factors into the result, IMHO. Even at the intermediate level, I’ve seen outcomes dictated more by familiarity than match-ups. Old Sagat is favored 7:3 over Dee Jay, but I’ve seen novice match-ups between umbrellastyle (as Dee Jay) and Raishinken (as old Sagat) where the former simply knew what to do to close the gap and take advantage of Dee Jay’s superior normals.

So yes, 7:3 can be considered to be a counter. But counter picking doesn’t mean quite as much when it comes to higher levels of play. Regarding the NKI quote above in reference to Toutanki, remember that Toutanki and K took 3rd at X-Mania 7 (a dual T-Hawk team in a 3 man team tournament), and T-hawk is listed as one of the worst characters on the chart.

LOL WTF instant notification function doesnt work!!?!?. I thought noone was even interested since I recieved nothing.

At least its only 2 pages :sweat:

speaking from my own experience, my Dee Jay hasnt done well against T.Hawk. Most of T.Hawk’s moves seem to have a greater priority over Dee Jay’s.

oh the way I was using the ‘<’ and '>'
if you know maths, its means greater than or less than.
a>b = a is greater than b
a<b = a is less than b

Thanks for the links Doughboy thats useful. I have one from EGM, that I got way back in 1995 so it might be the offical one. I’ll scan it and post it later.

c.HK owns ROG when at a distance and SPD’s at close range

c.HK beats ROG’s dashing punches including his super and once he’s down you basically get a free SPD or another sweep because ROG can’t really do much against a safe jump

So Dee Jay’s worst match-ups according to that chart are Balrog(4:6), Dhalsim(3:7), and O.Sagat(3:7). Every other match-up he has is either fair or in his advantage. And Dee Jay is ranked number 6 in overall match-ups. So why is he considered mid-tier? And is there a place I can look at that gives match-up specifics? Cause I really want to see why those characters are considered bad matchups.

I thought only top 5 was considered top/high tier. After that it would be mid.

Theres Top, Upper, Mid, Lower, Bottom. Tier list looks somewhat like this(I’m simply going off memory):

Top:
O.Sagat
Dhalsim
Boxer
Claw

Upper:
Ryu
Chun
Dic

Mid:
Dee Jay
Guile
Ken

Lower:
Blanka
Fei Long
Honda

Bottom:
Zangief
T.Hawk
Cammy

Dee Jay has much better match-ups than anyone in his tier or in upper tier. I’m not saying he should automatically be placed in top tier, but at the least he should be considered upper tier.

EDIT:

Match-up ranking looks like this

1- Akuma
2- O.Sagat and Dhalsim
4- Claw
5- Boxer
6- Dee Jay

As you can see he is only one place below the top tier in terms of match-ups. So why is he considered mid?

That is weird. According to the match ups he should be #6 or #7.

I compared the match-up list in the Wiki to the one in the match-up grid, and their both fairly different.

Wiki:

Serious Advantage:
Honda

Advantage:
Blanka
Cammy
Fei-Long
T.Hawk
Zangief

Fair:
Chun-Li
Dictator
Guile
Ken
Ryu
Sagat

Disadvantage:
Boxer
Claw
Dhalsim

Serious Disadvantage:
None

Match-up Grid:

Serious Advantage:
Honda

Advantage:
Ken
Blanka
Zangief
T.Hawk
Cammy
Fei Long
Bison

Fair:
Ryu
Chun
Guile
Claw

Disadvantage:
Boxer
Dhalsim
O.Sagat

Serious Disadvantage:
None

Dee Jay is sometimes neglected simply because his sprite is ugly. If I were black, I’d be offended by his character design. But outside of the top tier (Dhalsim, O. Sagat, Boxer, Claw), the consensus is that Dee Jay resides near the top of what remains. Afrolegends is a top level American player, and his Dee Jay carried him into the top 8 at both Evo West and Evo Worlds just now.

However, one of the reason that Dee Jay isn’t quite as appreciated stateside is a lack of players. The field is more rich and diverse in the Japanese competitive fighting game scene. Other than Afrolegends, I can’t think of any other prominent American players who play Dee Jay. So the competitive scene can dictate how people view a character’s worth.

A parallel with MvC2 would be Iron Man. In the SoCal scene, he’s considered just shy of god tier. But in Seattle (where I currently reside), everyone plays a decent Cable, and Cable owns Iron Man. As a result, hardly anyone here knows the intricacies of how to play Iron Man at the highest level. So in the NW, Iron Man is not really a viable tournament character.

Also, you can’t really make cross references so liberally. It’s not as though the same group of people ranked Dee Jay 6th, then called him mid-tier. You referenced a high level Japanese viewpoint in T-Akiba’s chart, but it was NKI’s Wiki that listed Dee Jay as a mid-tier. It’s two conflicting viewpoints, not one source contradicting himself.

As for specific match-up details, T-Akiba does have a section of his site dedicated to individual characters. I’ve been trying to convince umbrellastyle to translate it and make it available on SobatCarnival.com, but I think he’s recently lost his passion for the site due to a lack of membership and activity on the boards there.

I wouldn’t call the lists in your post “fairly different.” Actually, those two lists line up for the most part. The top and bottom are very close, and that’s what counts.

there goes the reason

EDIT:
i think the reason why deejay is ranked mid tier even when he has really good match ups is because he doesn’t do too well against the top tiers compared to someone like chun and bison(terrorist) who are usually ranked higher than him.

chun goes even against balrog, and has an even or slight advantage vs sim. bison also fights vega, sim and o sagat better than deejay even though deejay does better overall vs the rest of the cast.

regarding the match up chart, i wonder how does o. chun do better vs bison than new chun.

as i mentioned in the o. chun thread, i think o. chun is much better vs vega (spaniard) than new chun. invincible semi-safe sbk on wakeup is much less risky than wake up upkicks, especially vs wall dives. the priority boost on her normals helps her fight vega air to air better. kick super is not so useful in this fight since vega since is hard to pin down. maybe this is the same reason why o chun is better vs bison?

also other matchups i dont get:

blanka vs bison 3/7 in blankas favor **
i always thought bison had the advantage in this fight. standing mk, hk beats nearly everything blanka has and blanka has a hard time dealing with and punishing the psycho crusher. i do know bison has a hard time getting out of blankas j.lk shenanigans so i’m guessing that he loses in this match because he doesnt have a decent anti air against blankas j.lk BS.
**
blanka vs ryu 3/7 in ryus favor:

dunno how blanka gets owned by ryu worse than he gets owned by honda. i’m guessing he has a hard time avoiding ryu’s fat ass fireballs from certain ranges.
**
o guile vs sim 1/9 in sims favor:**
i always thought o guile did better vs sim than new guile. reason being you can use standing lks while still charging for sonic boom and sonic booms being harder to stuff due to the sonic boom startup hitbox being different than new guiles.