If you’re playing Hugo it’s REALLY important to have backup characters. His match-ups are so all over the place you’d be better off learning a secondary to fight them.
I also want to state how amazing a normal is, use it more; AA, Pressure, Just because, mix-ups, anti-poke
Just a couple thoughts on Hugo vs Poison. Played an online set with a decent Poison last night and that shit is ROUGH for Hugo. I won’t put a number on it right now, that’s irresponsible – but it’s definitely her favor. Here’s the deal:
(this is long so I spoilered it so you don’t have to scroll past it)
[details=Spoiler]Biggest problem by far in this matchup is that her fireball is huge, and so is Hugo’s hurtbox. Not just the HP/MP fireballs, but her LP one as well are a massive obstacle for big, slow Hugo. My first thought when drilling against her (which I did the day before to prepare for the set) was “well, that LP fireball is hard to jump over, I’ll just walk and block my way in and play it kinda Honda-style”. That approach doesn’t quite work with Poison because her LP fireball is so big you can barely walk forward at all before you have to block. You gain VERY little, if any ground, trying to walk in on her LP fireball, and jumping over it is a big risk because the timing is strict, and taking too much time to adjust your spacing can just let Poison recover so she can AA you with s. HP, c. HP, c. MP, or many of her normals, really.
You can get a little clearance with the fireball invulnerability on jump-ins like j MP (I prefer it for its blockstun + horizontal reach + hurtbox being farthest back, greatest chance of not getting beat by AA normals if you space it just right), but again, the fatness of the fireball makes counterpoking with it a thread-the-needle affair.
“So just clap it, then.” Problem with that is that the hurtbox on the startup of LP clap is super-huge, so you have to time it almost pre-emptively at all but extreme long range in order to destroy the fireball without getting hit. So just clapping LP fireball when you’re outside the range where Poison can chase it with a poke is almost as risky as jumping over it.
“So don’t try to destroy it, and just clap for meter when a fireball’s not on screen.” Problem with that is that if you do it at neutral and Poison FBs on reaction, the hurtbox is also big during the recovery animation. If Poison reacted fast enough, you might get your clap whiff punished by the fireball at a range that would surprise you. (It certainly surprised me.)
“Just relax, you only need to get to c. MP counterpoke range and then your offense starts in earnest.” Not quite true. Not only are you put in blockstun VERY early by walking into fireballs, but Poison has an annoying habit of not sticking her hurtbox out very much when she throws HP/MP fireballs at that range, meaning that a c. MP you thought was barely in range to tap her extended hurtbox will just ram right into her fireball as it spawns. Just getting to the TRUE c. MP/c. MK counterpoke range is a hard fight in and of itself without getting hit.
“Uh…d,d+MK?” Let’s not get it twisted, this move is fireball-invulnerable for days. Good in other matchups with faster and smaller fireballs. But sad to say, the fatness of LP fireball + its slow travel speed + the fatness of Hugo’s neutral (!) hurtbox means that it’s VERY hard to buffer the move with proper timing without getting hit. Too early, and you get hit meaty during the recovery of d,d+MK. Too late, and you get hit standing while buffering the d,d for Leap Attack. That timing is not merely nuanced but straight-up strict. It can be done, but I wouldn’t reccommend it against a GOOD Poison.
“…Focus dash?” I would ALMOST reccommend Focus dash at long range vs LP fireball if not for the fact that you can almost NEVER hang onto the grey life afterwards, even if you don’t even try to go in afterwards. You will almost always end up either blocking another fireball, or your attempt to vertical jump the next fireball will go awry and you’ll land on it, losing grey health and more.
“So what DID work for you?” Honestly? YOLO, in carefully measured doses. You can’t play this matchup very lame at all unless the Poison player is a fucking idiot. She piles up too much chip too safely to creep her to the corner. You need to make bold moves at neutral and be ready to react when and if they succeed. Roll the dice. Anecdotal examples:
If you gamble on a j. MP over a fireball and aren’t sure if you’ll hit with it, be absolutely ready to confirm to c. LP xx LK Lariat if you connect. You usually lose such attempts, but if you win, you MUST get that knockdown.
If you get an EX Lariat hit gambling on armoring through her fireballs, you MUST have baits, safe jumps, and OSes practiced and ready to use instantly as soon as you confirm the knockdown. Make a good guess, fast, and commit. You CANNOT let Poison escape. Main thing you wanna think about OSing IMO is her Vega backflip. I unwisely didn’t explore OSes for this wakeup, but some of the first things that spring to mind are crossup splash OS Meat Squasher, Lariat, at the very least a whiff/blocked clap so that she doesn’t get far. These are all just off the top of my head, I’m sure JiBBo or somebody already has better ideas on Twitter or YouTube. Go check there, SRK forum tech ALWAYS lags behind those two sources. (Sorry guys. Just the nature of the medium.)
The biggest move by far you can land against Poison is a Meat Squasher, for obvious reasons. Best way to land this move is to figure out at what range and in what situations Poison might try a Focus attack. If you land a Meat Squasher you have just saved yourself God knows how much chip and impotent misery. If you, by the grace of the Based God, already have the life lead after landing this move, don’t even worry about blocking that much (unless you know something predictable is coming). Just trade, trade, trade for your life with s. HP, s. MP, and don’t let her out of the corner. Live dangerously, because this may be your last chance to lay hands on her. Don’t be too too afraid of eventually getting kicked back to midscreen – if you get the life lead mangling her in the corner, that may be enough to clutch out the round with one last YOLO move at midscreen. You just want to pile up as much damage as possible on her.
If Poison gives you a blocked LP rekka, you MUST punish it, every time. I tended to freeze up too much in my set and missed free damage from SPD punishes on near-max-range LP rekka. This is why I reccommend picking U1 for this matchup (I unwisely picked U2). Jumping is not a big factor in this matchup because Poison rarely needs to jump at neutral in order to escape or control Hugo. What DOES make a big difference is being able to put HUGE hurt on Poison midscreen because she made a single minor mistake. So IMO you want U1 way more than U2 for this matchup.
You can also punish her LP rekka with reversal EX Ultra Throw, but since it’s a 1f punish, you can’t kara it and both the timing and range is very anal compared to LP SPD (which is the minimal punish you MUST land on her for a blocked LP rekka). With U1 you have a nice fat 3f buffer to get a ton of damage on her that will hopefully get you a life lead on which you can leverage trades in her face. But please, please don’t be ashamed if you have to settle for LP SPD punishes on her rekka. Getting damage on Poison without taking more damage yourself is so hard as-is that even 180 damage is huge. Take whatever damage you can get. Get the life lead and swing for the fences.[/details]
That’s all I have for now. If a comprehensive matchup thread gets posted, I’ll move this stuff there.
I agree with pretty much everything you state. I always always always punish rekka. If you don’t you’re losing no matter what. I’ve found that hugo’s empty jump is so good vs fireball characters. One of the things I really hate is not just her fireballs that you can’t do anything but block or focus through is that she’s also got a really good backdash to get out of situations. The positive is she’s one of the characters when you do get in on her and knock her down her reversal isn’t the greatest and her upclose game is only ok.
I just love playing as Hugo. Can’t explain it, he’s just a fun character you can’t auto pilot with. I recommend people to play him offline he’d far more enjoyable because tick throw spds and meat squashes are much easier.
My friend negative edges his clap combos and he gets good results but he comes from juri and zero from marvel so it’s way easier for him, I can do it.
One thing I recommend is if you do land a far ranged jump in to punish an fb, try the sweep right after, you’ll be surprised to see how far it can travel. I wish far jump in ex lariat comboed.
Hugo is fun to play with. Just deciding wether he is good enough to take seriously or just a mess about character whats everyone think of this giant.
Found something while I was messing around in the lab today that could be used to bait reversals (loses to 3 frames). Cr. mk > dash > MP slap. Leaves you right up in their face.
so far the more i play hugo the more i realize hes unfinished and sucks really bad right now
He just has really bad match-ups and really good match-ups. Nothing that’s really inbetween.
Also what MU’s are people using U1, U2, W in
I kind of like to us W ultra vs low health characters
I’m still curious to know how this went. Planning on taking him to a tournament hopefully next Saturday, myself.
I’m not sure I love some of the decisions made for Hugo. He got crazy good stuff (st.HP, MP, cr.MP, damage/health ratio, grab range), but I still question the lack of a normal that’s at best 0 on block >.<. Not sure he really required that yin to his yangs.
Lucky his claps have decent freeze time, but I’m not sure it fixes his main issue IMO, his crazy lack of confirms. Like that seems like his biggest struggle at a “higher” level. Not only do I have to kind of guess on a clap set up, or an appropriate jump in, or a meat squasher set up, I have to pretty much guess on any sort of conversion up close. Even t hawk has some decent confirms up close now, but Hugo is left always guessing the next move.
Has anyone messed with st.LK for this sort of thing? I’ve been using it mostly after splash set ups. Quick enough to combo, slow enough to confirm into LK lariat with negative edge and QCF buffer. It’s his best advantage too at +3/-1 for spd follow up.
I kinda agree with you here so I chose the like button instead. I mean, Hugo has little to no chance of being anything more than low mid. I can’t think of any Advantageous matchups for him. Only Evens and a lot of Disadvantageous and SERIOUSLY Disadvantageous.
I fought a friend who’s a DeeJay player tonight with my budding Hugo. Fam… DeeJay is a seriously problematic matchup and I KNOW that Guile will be worse. Fuck battling uphill. Anyone who can follow their projectiles will be a sheer wall to climb.
After playing hugo at first I thought he was bad and then I thought about being a potato and his play all makes sense. He is a very slow methodical character who fights a war of attrition to the corner where he wins the game, it’s kinda of fantastic IMO never maimed a character like this. I get my opponents to the corner and do nothing but react to win.
I think I’m going to drop this character. I don’t know.
A man can only take getting spammed to death so much. I mean people don’t even have to try against Hugo if they’ve got fireballs.
Become the potato.
thats why i picked up rolento, to scout people before i bring in hugo, i just got to b rank, i dont want to lose it because im going up against some dickballs seth player
Nvm, wrong thread.
Wtf was capcom thinking with him not having good jabs or other buttons? and what makes things worse is the HUGE recovery on his moves this is why i feel like hes unfinished,same with elena
I feel like his faults would be greatly compensated for if he just had something as simple as being able to dissolve projectiles easier with claps. That in itself would be a HUGE benefit for him because then at least he’d have a semi-safe way to deal with zoning, and since you can FADC out of claps it’d be fair because you’re using meter to circumvent spamming to get in and apply pressure, but you’re not forced to eat damage at the same time.
I mean, come on Capcom. Hugo was great in 3S but IV is a completely different game and I feel like they literally just copy pasted his moveset and called it a day, when the reality is that he was obviously going to have hell against all the zoners in this game unless they gave him some new tricks. Which they didn’t. Hugo had parries in 3S and there were only what, 3 or 4 characters that could overwhelm him with relative ease?
But when you throw him into a game that has…let me see…
…fifteen fireball characters, he was set up for failure from the start. That’s not even including all the changes to the mechanics from 3S to IV that ALSO sets him back a few pegs from a lot of the cast.
I’m finding it harder and harder to continue wanting to play this guy. I mean what’s the point if you’re always, always going to be playing an extremely uphill battle?
^This
I use U2 vs Divekick characters, so: twins, cammy, rufus etc… and vs character with wall tech, like seth, fuerte, claw… U2 is really really good
I think some of y’all might be spoiled by SF4. Getting around zoning has been easy as fuck in this game, so I feel like when people have to play a character that has to actually get around zoning the traditional way, it’s a problem.
Besides, I don’t think getting in with Hugo is as important as getting in with Gief or somebody like that. He can do enough damage in footsies to scare people in the corner. Not to mention if you predict a fireball (with certain characters at least) you can EX Lariat, EX Meatsquasher through it, s.HP that shit or trade with your normals. He seems more footsie oriented than other grapplers.
I could be a glutton for punishment though.