F.A.N.G. General Thread: Nothing up the Sleeve

Street Fighter V F.A.N.G
1328

MP sotoja can be linked after standing mk, leads to an ambiguous jumpin that you can make crossup or not.

Fang doesnt need a special cancel combo off of jabs. He already has one: low jab to upballs is actually a combo (and u r at -6, lols). But he does the same dmg with link lp~lp~lk.
lp~lp~lk is actually a great combo that does decent dmg, sets up perfect spacing, and hits in most situations.

All fang needs is a slight dmg buff…and if you are really really adventurous, give st. hk+2 on block. Otherwise, character is fine. He has bad matchups, thats life. Nothing balance wise will really make fangs hard matchups easier (lookin at you cammy), so player skill just has to compensate. Luckily, fang does have all the tools needed to deal with his problems…its just really hard, requires patience, etc.

IE: when I lose matchups, its almost always my fault. I got baited to throw at the wrong place, I mis-spaced my crab kicks and got punished, etc. When fang is played well, he can beat anyone (except cammy, fuk that match! lol just kiddin…nm…fuk)

1329

I remember a while ago when I wanted poison to do twice as much damage, now I just want a decent sized boost and +2 on st.hk. That would be huuuuge. It would make FANG vs characters with 3 frame jabs a fair fight every time. It feels like I’m handicapped a little while fighting half the cast.

1330

The st.hk change seems like a must. I just pray that my opponent doesn’t know the match up while using a 3 frame jab character. I agree with a slight poison damage buff, but even then I don’t think that would be enough to compensate for how bad his v-trigger is.

1331

I can’t help but to wonder if he only appears to be mid TIER, because of the lack of match-up knowledge. Fang certainly doesn’t suck, but I always feel like I’m playing an uphill battle.

1332

Yeah, it’s a very different battle whether your opponent knows the match up or not. I’d be happy with 20 more damage on poison (I still think my list above is reasonable actually, except for maybe the cr.MK change).

Still, he has some clear strengths too whether they know the match up or not. Lots of frame traps, good anti airs, long range normals, zoning game, very high stun output, etc. Even without the tricks (which he has a surplus of, and many of them aren’t one-time tricks either), he’s got a good bit going for him.

His only downside is the weak damage and weakish defensive options. That’s pretty punishing in a game like SF V, but despite that he holds up okay.

1333

Guys does anyone knows the frame data for one hit Sotoja? Are we at an advantage ?
Also how negative is Sotoja on block if we space it to hit on the last active frames ?

1334

How this guy is the least played character I’ll never understand.

The absolute amount of fun I have maining this character is unreal. Never would I have thought from being an Abel main on SF4 I’d be playing F.A.N.G.

Shoutouts to all my fellow F.A.N.G players and especially @Rhyllis for giving my plenty of footage to study.

1335

Oh its pretty easy to explain actually. People,especially online,dont like and dont know how to block.They need their reversals. Its not a coincidence that the 5 most played characters are the ones with a meterless reversal and nash. Couple that with the fact that fang needs a large amount of labbing which is a no-no for most people,the fact that hes very technical,charge,not even close to top tier and that he cant really jump at people and you get the point.

He is extremely fun to play though i totally agree with that

1336

Aloha!

Post evo update: i got out of pools in losers. Lost in winners to 801 steiders cammy, played strider again in losers finals, i won 2-0 (winners was 0-2). There was a controller malfunction, but we agreed to a compromise and somehow my fang beat cammy. Just imagine a fang doing everything righr v a cammy (avoiding divekicks, smart pressure, avoiding and punishing reversals etc).

In round 2 pools i did well but lost to filipinoman chun. I did ok but walked into too many reversals.

Much congrats to 801strider, and i hope everyone who went to evo had a great time.

1337

I really wish his st. HK is airborne or crush lows.

1338

Hey all, FANG player here. I like this wishlist. My main problem with FANG is nobody is afraid of poison. I don’t know how to solve this though. Maybe have V-Skill poison, special move poison, and V-Trigger poison all independently stack. Or increase poison damage overall.

Coward Crouch hitbox could use some tweaking, and become throw invincible.

I’d like his ex Sotoja to either have a better hit/hurt box, or be a little more invincible. I’m amazed at the amount of moves that can easily stuff it.

More of his normals need to be special cancelable with more specials. Why you can’t can’t cancel cMP into MP Sotoja boggles my mind.

1339

Does FANG have a really short throw range or something ? I swear I whiff throws a lot even if they are right next to me, I saw some of Xian’s matches and even he whiff some throws that look like it should connect :frowning:

1340

Been thinking about some FANG changes recently so dropping in with some thoughts.
Looks like some have been mentioned already, which is good to see.

Firstly I don’t think he should have a damage increase. I think we need ways for the poison to work better and I agree that people don’t fear being poisoned

Also I’m not suggesting all of these, they’re just some thoughts, any combination would be good. Some are likely too powerful but would like to see something worked out if they could possibly work.

Suggestion 1 (already mentioned)
Poison kills any grey life
Reason: Any pressure you apply will lead to damage on the opponent if they’re poisoned. I don’t think this is too powerful as the opponent has to be poisoned and you have to be applying blocked pressure.

Suggestion 2
Poison stalls grey life
Reason: Similar to above, when poisoned any grey damage the opponent received stays until they become un-poisoned. This heightens pressure to not be poisoned as grey life can stack if pressure is maintained.

Suggestion 3
Heavy Nishikyu poisons the opponent even when blocked
Reason: Probably too powerful but hear me out…I feel FANG is a zoner. He wants to fight at distance unless he has you on the ropes and wants to dodge any toe to toe confrontation. For this reason I feel he should be at his strongest at full screen, yet consistently I’m the loser of a fireball battle against the likes of Ryu and Nash. I feel Like I should always be winning this battle, and it should be them that comes to me because of lost life and not the other way around. Getting poisoned even blocking the poison balls instantly puts them in a losing situation and it’s on them to start to move in to counteract the poison.

Suggestion 4 (already mentioned)
Poison stacks
Simple, each time you hit them with a poison attack the poison becomes stronger (up to 3 times) this would make people think twice about getting poisoned and feel more inclined to open themselves up if they’re stacked with poison

Suggestion 5
As mentioned…Give him something off light attacks
Reason: I literally think he is the only character in the game that can’t confirm off a light attack, even when using meter. This is ridiculous as it allows people to abuse negative moves as the punish is so minimal. At least give him ex lunge from a light attack.

Suggestion 6
Make is V-Reversal faster/travel further or make it a hit.
Reason. When any grappler has you in the corner it’s nigh on impossible to escape with v-reversal. You literally dance past them and all the have to do is mash command grab and you’re done.

Suggestion 7
Make Nirenko slower, but make an overhead
Reason: It feels like it should be an overhead move. It’s super telegraphed as he stretches so far. Just think it would be good to have this mixup.

Suggestion 8 – New V-Trigger!
When v-trigger is activated cancelable normals can be cancelled into Senpukuga
Reason: I’m not saying for 1 second it should be a constant block string but allowing him to do this will give players an opportunity to maintain pressure for a short period with his best frame trapping move. Maybe it could be limited to number of uses like Urien’s ageis as opposed to a time limit. I would consider this pressure to be similar to Chun-Li’s v-trigger

1341

For suggestion 2, Poison actually already works this way. The opponent cannot recover any gray health because they’re constantly taking poison damage. It’s one of the reasons Poison isn’t absolutely awful right now in my opinion (still not strong enough though).

As for suggestion 5, he IS able to super off lights at least. It would be nice if we could combo into EX Sotoja (or something) off lights, but maybe too much. I wouldn’t mind if they buffed other aspects of FANG as I’m used to this weakness of his now.

Some of your other suggestions I agree with, like V-Reversal being a bit better. I’m very interested to see what he’ll get next year for balance changes. No Dee Jay treatment please!

1342

Technically he has st.LP>st.MK>MP Sotoja, but st.MK 1st hit is so short that it whiffs all the time. They should increase its range (slightly longer than st.LP).

I agree with this one. You can V-reversal Cammy’s divekick and still get punished by spiral arrow. This is preposterous.

I would add

  • Increase the juggle properties of his moves. EX Ryobenda and anti-air Nishikyu put opponents in juggle state, but his only juggle attacks (Coward crouch kick and Sotoja) are too slow to hit. St.HP should hit juggled opponents.
1343

Sh!t, of course poison stalls grey life :facepalm: wasn’t thinking properly there…I was just thinking FANG has some nice strings that lead to decent grey life and wouldn’t it be good to have a better chance at taking it without having to relentlessly rush down

Okay, so how about cancellable normals can be cancelled into Nishodoku?
This would allow you to perform a block string and then finish on a potential poison to the opponent so their grey life can’t build.

Changing his 2 hit damage ratios to be weighted bit more to the first attack is an interesting idea. But I was against just giving him more damage.
It’s just in most cases you either cancel after the first hit or you trade after the first hit.

I’d love to see a ratio of trades that are in FANG’s favour, I bet it’s low!

1344

So apparently the Season 2 build at PSX has FANG’s V-Trigger make it so that all of his moves have no charge time. That’s pretty useful for footsies, and I hope he has other changes to go along with that.

1345

I think it going to work like Bison’s and Necalli trigger , you don’t need charge to cancel into specials. Its a nice change but its not the improvement I was hoping.

1346

@Spada Agreed. While it is nice, I would rather FANG get touch ups to his toolset outside of VT. In the first place, FANG was not really designed to be a VT character (I think, I mean his VT poison damage is quite low), so only buffing his VT would be a little strange imo. And it wouldn’t really remedy the problems he has as a character. Its nice but not so good that it can make or break the character. Hoping he’ll receive some other changes, since that being his only change would require system-wide changes/a lot of characters getting the nerfbat for FANG to be legitimately strong. Speaking of the system-wide changes, needing to use EX to get a real reversal for all characters is quite good for FANG (since all he has is a not-so-good EX escape option). I also understand that midscreen throws tend to yield less follow-up, but not in all cases. I wonder if FANG’s b.throw is affected

1347

Is that it? no charge time in VTrigger? not enough to make me want to come back to this game, disappointing.