Guile top tier status

Admittedly, I haven’t been playing super as much as I should. And I haven’t been following the tier list on SRK. But with the latest tier list, I hear Guile is now considered top ranked. While I do believe Guile is a very good character in super, and he is a top tier character, many have perceived him a free win character. I haven’t had a chance to compete in super like I was able to in vanilla, but I still gather offline weekly with a small group of friends. All are relatively new to SF and started playing in vanilla. I’ve personally have been playing since HF. I beat them more handily now than in vanilla, and many say it’s only because Guile is top tier. Now I did beat them in vanilla too, but I could be randomed out more there. In Super this is a little less effective (but unlike in vanilla, I actually have studied my frames a lot more preventing mashing).

My question is, do you think Guile wins easily or if he's a free win?  On PSN when I was playing super regularly, I noticed there were more Guile players.  All pretty horrible at that.    Many didn't know how to zone, had poor timing, were jump happy, did stupid things on a downed opponent, silly make-shift blockstrings (like cr.lp -> cr.hk), focus happy, ultra happy (doing ultras apparently to show that they can do them), and psychic flashkicks.    Now I'm far from the best Guile player in the world, but I do have his fundamentals down, and I can gladly admit it took me 16 years to get him up to par where I play him "correctly".     Do you think Guile wins against randoms because he's been buffed, or because people aren't use to playing against him?   Do you think his top tier status is deserved or just overhyped?  I personally don't think Guile is accessible to newbies, though I'm glad to see anyone new pick him up.   But you need good knowledge of matchup and most of all situations to make him even look halfway decent.  Any opinions?

I’ve been playing Super for some time since it came out and I would say that the changes balances Guile quite well. Previous bad matchups like Sagat and and Ryu have been balanced, but however, some 5 : 5 and 5.5 : 4.5 matchups like Abel and Sim have gotten worse.

Tier lists are calculated by total matchup score and by the number of good matchups. Guile now has more favourable or 5:5 matchups than most of the rest of the cast and that’s why he’s ranked A tier. Most of the other characters have more bad matchups than him. I would say Guile in Super is something like Ryu in Vanilla with a few more bad matchups. However, in most of these matchups, he doesn’t really have a significant advantage against most of them, like e.g the Ryu and Ken matchup. The most you can say about these 2 matchups are 6:4 in Guile’s favour which I don’t think really affects either of these characters a lot if both players are familiar with their respective characters and know the matchup well.

To me, bad matchups are 7:3 or 8:2 matchups. I think Guile’s worst matchups (IMO 7:3)are Fuerte and Viper and I think Ibuki is also a bad matchup. Their random advantages really tears him apart and it’s lot easier to get stunned by these characters once they get going. I think Guile sometimes look like an idiot while fighting against them especially against a Fuerte with a life lead. If he has ultra and you get knockdown, you’ll eat his ultra if you try to neutral jump, FK or backdash to avoid his safe tortilla setup.

I think those Guile scrubs you’re talking about are those that are trying to hop on the bandwagon in Super. Those who really main Guile in Vanilla wouldn’t play like that. They can’t feel the improvements between Vanilla and Super Guile. We play better cos when we play, we feel these improvements and we have the basics of Guile, something which they don’t. Guile is not a character you can pick up and play and be good with him fast cos he is really different from the rest of the cast. He requires you to think differently to win and different execution, and he doesn’t really have 50 50 setups into big damage.

I think there are 2 most important things in order required of anyone trying to main Guile aside from how smart the player is

  1. SB charge times(shooting SBs fast really makes it hard for opponents to get in on you, but then, it can be your downfall if they managed to guess it and jump in earlier)

  2. Strong footsies(He’s a footsie character and you have to force opponent to play this game with you cos you are in advantage most of the time.)

  3. Execution(Don’t think I need to elaborate here)

Guile is not Sagat in Vanilla. But he definitely feels closer to what he was in ST now than in Vanilla.

Tier lists are irrelevant to scrubs. It just gives them excuses for losing.

He’s definately up there though for sure. I’m really interested to see how top Guiles end up panning out. It seems at the moment, all the best Guile players are super solid in 2 or 3 ways, but all have a flaw that keeps them from going all the way. I think next EVO, we’re going to see some awesome shit from the Guile community.

i know i’ve changed my stance on this in the past. but right now i do believe guile is in the top 5 characters on the game.

there’s been loads of times recently where i’ve played high level (not pro) players who’ve actually started counter picking because they can’t beat me with their main, or i’ve downloaded them.

although i’ve improved heaps, there seems to be lots of characters that struggle vs guile. in the past it was only a handfull. right now i’d say guile beats at least half the cast 6-4.

Guile’s undoubtedly A-tier. If I’d put anyone ahead of him, it might be Chun, Rog, and possibly Honda, but he runs even or ekes them out at high-level. For a guy who’s mained him since SF2 it’s certainly not as hard to get out the wins as much as it was in Vanilla because his old-school strat has real power again, and U2 really helps him out in plasma wars. He is HARDLY invincible though and still has some bad matchups (Viper, Fuerte, Dhalsim, Ibuki, Abel, maybe Akuma) that will keep him occupied.

It’s similar to Honda’s status in Super IMO. Only really scary at top-level vs. top players, but he really does destroy almost everyone else. He’s not easy mode like Ryu/Sagat in Vanilla as I would agree you need huge knowledge of fundamentals, pokes and tight setups to win vs. anyone decent.

Tier lisrs for any new game are wrong. Just play the game with who you want.

You see how all the tier lists from vanilla SFIV are nothing like the accepted lists for that game now? it’s because they evolve over time, and it makes people look like twats if they profess to know everything about a game when it’s only just come out.

I have been playing Guile and Blanka since the release of SF4 and I am not really sure,if he is number 1.Many match ups which seems at first in Guile’s favour such as Bison,Blanka,Rufus and Ryu according to this new tier list are in my opinion 5/5.I would even say that the Rufus vs Guile match up is 6/4 in Rufus’ favour.When both players are on the same skill lvl,it doesn’t feel like Guile has the advantage at all in SSF4.There are a few very good Bison and Rufus players on PSN and I just can’t see how this match up is 6/4 in Guile’s favour.
Blanka is currently rank 20 on the tier list,but I feel like he is stronger in most match ups compared to Guile.
I would say that Blanka is the overall better character,if played right compared to Guile,although Guile might have a slightly advantage over him (still 5/5),but Blanka is nowhere near top,but I would say sth around rank 14 or so.But the last thing what I said about Blanka is overall the better character compared to Guile doesn’t really make sense when Guile is so much higher on the tier list.

As I first gave Guile a go (I played him in vanilla for a short while and after boredom with mains I gave him another shot) I realised I was much worse with him than I remember. I was guilty of this “make-shift” block string for a short while, then I changed it up when I realised how scrubbish I was being. For block strings now I simply throw to light jabs (hit confirms) and if blocked I change it to light kicks to increase the distance apart so I can retreat/predict a scrub counter. If the jabs do hit however I combo into c.mp and h.flash.

I bet that a year from now people will consider guile upper mid tier. I think he’s on a hype train right now is all.
but still, its nice that he’s better than his vanilla incarnation.

I’m going to have to agree with this, the fact that Guile is one of the most buffed characters in Super (if not the most?) gave him a lot of attention, so it’s only natural that he’s encountered a lot more in this game.

That, combined with the fact that he destroys people with poor fundamentals seems to have made him a lot more popular with online players, but if he really were top tier, shouldn’t we be seeing more Guiles winning tournaments nowadays, or at least more high level players picking him up?

I think he’ll ultimately land at mid/high mid tier, I can’t imagine him staying at the top for the entirety of the game’s lifespan.

No matter how the game evolves, he’ll always be one of the better characters in Super.

Again, there’s how we (ie USA) play Guile, and then there’s the proper way (Japanese pros). Once dudes like Yazu start playing Super SF4 seriously it’s a Reynolds wrap. Even dudes like Dieminion and Dagger G don’t have shit on them