So this question was asked in another forum and I couldn’t find the answer anywhere so I did some testing. Sorry if this is already common knowledge, but like I said I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t find it anywhere and I was interested.
OK, I did some testing of my own and it turns out you are partly right Amano. This is what I did: I went to training mode, taped a piece of paper to the TV beneath 2P’s life bar, picked Ryu and did his Super against every character about 20 times each (with full life bars) and marked on the paper how far it took their life bar down. 1st off the amount of variance in damage taken in this game is pretty huge, that’s why I had to do it multiple times for each character and take the mean of the results. Comparing the results it’s very clear that there are 3 distinct groups when it comes to damage taken:
Zangief - he took far and away the least amount of damage, it wasn’t even close. The other two groups were fairly close but Gief takes way less damage than either of them.
T.Hawk, Honda, Sagat, Balrog, Bison, and Blanka. This group was way below Gief but a bit higher than everyone else. Their high end of damage taken equaled the low end of group 3.
Everyone else (Cammy, Dhalsim, Ken, Vega, Fei, Guile, Ryu, DeeJay, Chun-Li). They were all just a little behind group 2, again their low end of damage taken equaled the high end of group 2 so their average and highest amount damage taken possible were both higher.
Note: I did not test Akuma (no one playing seriously would ever use him anyway and it’s already obvious without testing he would be in a 4th group by himself for most damage taken).
With the large amount of randomness in damage taken it is easy for the difference in between groups 2 and 3 to not really matter much in a single match, but Gief was way above both of them and his was pretty noticable. Now remember, this was just done with one Super move, I don’t know if it also applies to normal moves and/or throws (and then you have normal and command throws).
I was a bit surprised to see Bison and Blanka in group 2 (and that Dhalsim was even with most of the characters).
In ST, Zangief takes 68.75% damage and everyone else takes 84.375%. (Didn’t test Akuma.) This is done by taking the damage number, multiplying it by 8 for Zangief or 5 for everyone else, then dividing it by 32 (more accurately, right shifting it 5 times), then subtracting that number from the original damage number, so all damage scaling numbers will be a fraction of 32. Normal throws and some hits of command throws (usually ones that do 20 damage) ignore this scaling.
They didn’t change any of that in HDR but the results I got go against that. The amount of damage that group 2 took never went below a certain amount, but everyone in group 3 went below that amount almost every time. Again this was with Ryu’s super, maybe I’ll try it again with a normal to see what I get.
But regardless, there appears to be more than just Zangief and everyone else.
Ok, I just did the same test again, using Ryu’s close standing Fierce against Zangief, T.Hawk, and Cammy (I had Ryu on 1P side and pushed the opponent into their corner to make it quicker and easier). Again I got the same results, Gief took a significant less amount of damage, but there was also a difference between Hawk and Cammy. After about twenty times there is a clear “normal” amount that the Fierce does to each of them and Hawk’s normal amount was less than Cammy’s. In fact only in the extreme random case when Hawk took the most amount of damage did it match what Cammy’s “normal” level was. And Cammy’s most extreme amount of damage taken was much higher than Hawk’s ever got. I did it multiple times with all three characters and the results fell in line with what I found in the Ryu Super tests. There’s more going on than just Gief has more scaling and everyone else is the same.
Edit: Just tested it again, this time using Honda’s HP Ochio and AGAIN same results: Gief takes a lot less damage than the other two, a smaller but noticeable difference between Hawk and Cammy.
Went back and used Honda’s normal MP throw and then the results were the same for all three. So normal throws do ignore any kind of character specific damage scaling.
I am, however, certain that there is more than just Gief and everyone else damage scaling when it comes to everything besides normal throws. I’ll do some more testing later when I have time.
I did try it in Classic mode as well, got the same thing. I began to attempt it on emulated ST but since there’s no training mode it would have to be done using 2P mode and that turned out to be to time consuming, with the amount of times needed to be done with each character and the fact I only use the damage taken when the character is at full life (don’t want the damage scaling that happens in ST as your life goes down to interfere with results and make things too hard to compare).
If you use the breakpoints he gives you for an exact damage formula, with the base damage, the tables - which Dammit included in a file “sf2damagebreakpoints” or something, and check the damage multiplier at the end, which he has reproduced in that table.
For emulated ST, you can use Dammit’s damage viewer or pasky’s Super Turbo HUD.
Edit: in summary, Hawk should be included in the first group, with Gief. Could you please check these two characters again? Your other results are consistent with the damage factors Dammit has provided.
Just did the Ryu Super test again on Hawk and Gief and they are definitely different. Hawk couldn’t get close to Gief’s lowest possible amount of damage taken and Hawk’s most damage taken was way more than Gief’s ever got. Only in the most extreme random cases where Gief took the most and Hawk took the least did the two ranges slightly overlap. But the average amount taken and the two extremes for both characters were very different.
I did it almost 40 times with each of them, I even used N.Hawk and O.Hawk just to make sure there wasn’t a difference between them (there wasn’t). I then did the test with Honda and he fell into the same range as Hawk, so it does appear that Hawk is in group 2 and Gief is in group 1 all by himself.
EDIT: I found something else out that was very interesting, while Dammit’s chart is right that normal throws in classic mode aren’t random, in HDR mode I got TWO different damage amounts for normal throws. One that was the same amount as an ST normal throw, and one that was slightly higher (more damaging). And I got the more damaging number much more often than the lower, ST level one. I don’t know if teching effects this or not (making it somewhat a moot point since almost all throws would be teched in a match between two decent players) but it was very interesting nonetheless. I didn’t check holds or multi-hit normal throws because again the opponent mashing would have more to do with how much damage it actually did.
Also, Chun’s MP throw still does more damage than her HP one in HDR, and in HDR it does even more damage than it does in ST. An un-teched MP Chun throw in HDR does almost command throw type damage.
I tested it on regular ST using Final Burn on my PC, using Ryu’s standing close Fierce punch on Zangief, T.Hawk, and Honda and measuring the amount the life bar went down. Got the same results I did in all the tests using HDR, both Remix and Classic mode. Gief’s range was less (took less damage) than Hawk’s and Honda fell into the same range that Hawk did, proving that Hawk is in group 2 (and Gief stands alone). I didn’t do as many reps as I did in HDR (too cumbersome) but it was enough to see what ranges they all fell into.
Doesn’t seem anyone else cares anymore but I found it all interesting, LOL.
Haha, we all know each other on GGPO, we josh each other. oldschool_BR just wants my cock so he tries to call me a fag in hopes that I’ll turn gay for him.
So I found out some more cool stuff. I tested air throws to see if there was two random values in HDR like there was with normal ground throws. There is for HDR, while in Classic ST they remain constant. Except for Fei Long, I couldn’t get two different values for his air throw for some reason. And once again the alternate (more often picked) value for the air throw was higher in HDR than the constant ST one.
I also found out that different air throws do different damage! I always just assumed all these years that they all did the same damage like ground throws do, but they vary by a lot between characters (and if they have two, they vary for the same character).
Here is the rank, from most damaging to least:
1.Guile’s K throw suplex - this does huge damage!
2. Gief P throw, Cammy P throw
3. Chun, Gief K throw, Cammy K throw, Guile P throw, Fei Long, Vega
4. Ken
I also think that there are different ranges for air throws because some were very easy to do over and over while some are hard to pull off even in training mode. Like Vega’s air throw and Cammy’s P air throw, you have to be in just the right spot to get them.
The ranges are probably the same ones from ST. Born2SPD added a bunch of them to the ST Wiki. Right now, you can see air throw boxes for Guile, O.Guile, Chun, O.Chun, Ken, Zangief, O.Zangief. They are definitely different. Chun’s are awesome. Well, if you are a Chun player, which I ain’t, bleh!
Chun’s always had a great air throw throughout the SF2 series. It was a great weapon in HF.
I never really payed much attention to air throws in ST before because they really don’t come into play very often. Most of the time someone gets one it’s on accident (or a type of “option select”) and if someone is in the air and wide open there is always something better to do to punish then use an air throw (except maybe against Ken’s whiffed Super).
But there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason behind the different damage values. I can see why Ken’s does the least, he doesn’t really need it. But why does Guile’s K throw do the most? And why just the K throw? Gief’s P throw being up there makes sense but then again why just the P throw? And why does Cammy’s P throw do as much as Gief’s (especially since jumping MP is already her best move in the air in most situations)? Why does Fei’s air throw do lower damage and have crappy range (is it because of Chicken Wing)? The ground throw range differences all made sense but the air throw damage and range differences seem somewhat arbitrary.
I’d like to see the throw range boxes on Vega’s and Fei’s air throws, they seemed to have very small ranges. It’s funny that Guile’s and Gief’s throw boxes are higher for P throws and lower for K throws.
FYI, guile’s back breaker is the most damaging throw in the game when he is behind a round (unteched of course), well besides the super throws from hawk and gief. It does more than a SPD.