well, i think gen is pretty difficult to master, relative to the rest of the cast. just having the two stances to manage makes him more difficult than anyone except viper fuerte and sim IMO
then you move along to all the character specific safe jumps and anti airs, and i think you have a character that is at the bottom end in terms of ease of use. i play a handful of characters at a decent level, and for most of them, you always know what button does all your AA’s, and they can hit confirm from lows into 2 frame bnbs etc.
not gonna say he is hard in a Guilty Gear kinda way, but when compared to everything else in sf4, he’s tough
on a different note, i figured out a strategy against characters with good jump ins, and the players that abuse them. like sakura or blanka. i know that crane cr.rh is decent against them, but i dont like to sacrifice the mantis ground game without a life lead.
i feel like when i switch to crane early in matches, im sacrificing my ability to get any momentum going, and the tempo usually favors my opponent. only problem was that when i got into the spot on the screen i wanted to fight at, cr.fp would get stuffed cold, and im not fast enough to get crane rh out from mantis without taking a trade sometimes and others eating a CH jump in
so recently im staying in mantis, and using focus backdash for AA until i get meter first. then using most of my meter in these matches on AA ex giekro. and lastly im starting to sit on life leads in crane. its winning me many more matches against my problem AA characters
my main problem with my gen now is either assuming my opponent will be an idiot, or on the other end giving too much respect asuming that my opponent will be skilled.
I like how people downplay stuff like pianoing hands and cross-up walldive setups as easy. I think this is a matter of perspective. For all of the combos and setups and whatnot is now fairly easy, but that’s because we mained him for a long time. Fact of the matter is Gen has so many moves, so many variables, that when you switch to say…Honda, things seem very one dimensional all of a sudden (no offense to honda mains!). I suppose Viper is harder to play on a technical level, but the sheer amount of options someone new to Gen has to deal with is overwhelming, and not to mention Gen has to play footsies which god knows is something 90% of the players online can’t/won’t do. On top of this you have fairly low stamina and are easily stunned. If you look at the rewards compared to viper, she can blow up a match within mere seconds if given the momentum by simply a few educated guesses/mix-ups (into ultra >_>). I feel like people who downplay Gens difficulty often dorget about that aswell, he has so many tools but you have to know which is the most effective at any given time (which anti-air for example).
Also yeb, every time you post something it has the word vanilla in it, I respect your achievements in vanilla but it’s time to move on. No offense or anything ofcourse.
index finger on mp (where people usually use it on lp) then piano hp~mp~lp with ring~middle~index (so that your hand moves across) and then hp with ring finger. It MIGHT make it a little easier to guarantee your off the mp button ahead of the piano.
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I don’t see how Yeb’s comments are particularly negative. Paraphrasing, they are: much simpler bnb and traps into it [bonus], he has some of the best anti-air normals in the game and can cover almost any angle [positive] and burning meter for FADC is almost pointless (outside of kill combos), making your life easier [bonus].
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Mike, I’m finding myself using (m)2mk xx hands more and more as an anti-air against characters that tend to give me problems in that regard. Obviously spacing/timing is tight but its making me less free to jump at. Maybe now I’ll use a combination of yours and mine and will be a no fly zone for the first time in a long time.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he’s easy to play, but he’s a lot easier to play than people like to think
And execution wise, 1f links are not that difficult with practice and especially with plinking. Pianoing/sliding? When was the last time you messed that up once you knew how to do it?
A character being hard to play/master does not mean only executionwise. Gen mains have massive bias I see though, pretty much ask any one that doesn’t affiliate with Gen how they feel about him and they will most certainly say he’s very hard/one of the hardest. Like I said, it’s about perspective, we play with him for a long time so pretty much most combos (well they should be) are second nature to a Gen main.
I’d say only el fuerte is harder to really be efifcient with, and maybe Viper but she’s so fucking strong once you get decent with her and learn the 500 ways to land her ultra. There’s a reason el fuerte and gen (and dan lol) have so few people maining them, because they are hard as shit to actually get to a good level with to actually beat a good Ryu or Ken. Viper has a lot more mains but that’s mainly because you see results with her pretty fast once you get the technical side down (aside from a couple of shitty matchups for her). Playing Gen means first you have to get used to the whole two styles gimmick, combos, and genanigans, + footsies and normals, but then you still will have a lot of trouble against skillfull opponents. I believe too many people look at hard to play based on technical merits only, which is plain wrong.
You’re telling the guy who created the footsie/genanigan thread designed for newbies how to play footsies… Gen is pretty much all footsies based if he wants to get anywhere against strong opponents…I’m out of this discussion.
People from an outside perspective say he’s one of the hardest, opinions within Gen community vary. It does not really matter anyway, all I know is that learning to become good with Gen took me a lot longer then learning to beast on people with Viper (except her horror matchups). By getting good I mean winning matches on a consistent basis against strong players, none of that online random encounter bullshit.
"Element 03: The Gekiro kick is a decent tool. If you should however find that your Gekiro is blocked, wait untill the very last possible moment and do a 2nd kick before returning to the ground. Many (even advanced) players do not know this and it messes up their timing completely sometimes even whiffing their throw or normal attack. allowing you to safely return to the ground to backdash/throw/whatever. Also after doing an Oga or roll and they are blocked it sometimes helps to do a Gekiro immidatly afterwards as a lot of the time your opponent will try to attack you after those moves. "
So, your advice to newbies is to Gekiro after an unsafe move? You’re teaching them well
Your opponent should be attacking you after those moves, they’re unsafe and can be punished
*But…but…but I love being that unique butterfly that totally deserves everyone’s respect and admiration now and forever for playing such a demanding character… Please don’t take this away from me~ *!!
It is only logical to, when it is blocked (and I do not state you should do it on purpose which you seem to imply here), atleast try to take advantage of your opponents ignorance by floating longer than your opponent may expect to get that second hit in. And when it comes to the heat of battle and as a new gen player your walldive is blocked, there is a big chance your opponent will try to react to it and if you happen to do a gekiro…Notice how the thread title is ‘shenanigans’? Some advice are footsies based, some are purely shenanigans that may or may not work depending on how you read your opponent (or if you just guess, wouldn’t advice that obviously). I should note that the subject regarding shenanigans or footsies (the thread used to be named footsies, but alas it was slightly misleading) in that particular thread is somewhat mixed with eachother, which is why it is now the shenanigans thread and serves for a vast array of tactics that not only me but a lot of members have added to.
I apreciate that you took the time to read the topic though, even if it was only to attempt to create some sort of meaningless discussion for the sake of it. Hope you enjoyed the read. You should check out what other people have added and commented aswell, very useful stuff for any Gen player.
Also, the discussion was whether Gen was regarded as a hard character, I have no idea how you jumped from citing an excerpt from another thread into a discussion regarding character difficulty.
@MTS: welcome to insert any relatively rarely played character forum section. Not to go much offtopic, but this is pretty much with everything in life haha. People like to be unique in some way or another.
But then you give bad advice on footsies. This is not a shenanigan, this is praying that your opponent doesn’t know how to punish you or at best, testing their punish.
And by beast on people with Viper, you mean hitting her BnB and doing 50/50 Burn Kicks or actually playing footsies and making people eat counter hit fierces because that’s truly beasting with Viper. Playing against Viper is definitely harder than playing against Gen.
Regardless of your view, I’m very tired of debating about such trivial things, regardless of what you call it (I call it a trick, thus shenanigan, which is pretty much a one trick pony anyway).
And yes, I do fish for counterhits. C.mp/c.hp all day baby. You don’t survive for long with her if you just rely on 50/50’s all the time. I agree viper is harder to play against if competent. That’s why gen is imo hard to play, people aren’t really scared of him either, like* at all*. Gen has no big damage to combo into unless he has super or the opponent is dumb and gets hits by an Oga or whiffs. He just isn’t that scary for most people (speaking from personal experience here).
That’s kind of another interesting point I think. Usually when a match begins people will (not always and it also depends on their style and character) be quite offensive, they don’t respect Gen at all. It usually takes a few anti-airs and well footsied knockdowns for them to become a little more cautious. Has anyone else noticed this? This isn’t nearly as prevalent against seasoned players or people I play against more than just a few matches^^
I’ll admit to that. I find I need to watch my back spacing. I’m trying to. However. I’m more comfortable in the corner now than I was before. Especially vs Gief. But I really need to work on not getting bullied around.
Fei long is a pretty hard match-up for Gen. I really hate how I keep misjudging his Rekka range, they’re insanely good. ''Oh guess I’m slightly out of range…time to gets hits by random rekka in the face
