has anyone tried punishing a block sweep by the shotos? maybe trying a reversal normal/EX- Greenhand?
hopefully it will still hit…
This is probably common knowledge but I just figured out some cool stuff-
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In the corner off any juggle combo (either like a boost combo into launcher or like a DP/switch combo) his best damage is off the following chain: cl.HP, s.MP, s.MK, punch lariat. I’ve seen a lot of people substituting that HP for an MP but you get much more damage for not much more effort! You can also do this combo in the corner if you catch someone out the air with a splash.
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Cammy’s DP pushes her back really far and is very hard to convert meterless for gief- I thought the best you could get was a downforward RH for 150 damage, but I discovered today you can actually take a step forward, do C.MK xx HP+HK for the launcher, then whatever your partner’s finisher can do, which is almost always a lot more than 150 damage and a good positioning setup.
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The “SnakeEyes” combo (MP, MP, MK, RH) is great but doesn’t really work after something like Ryu c.mp, c.mk, HP dp, switch cancel. You can get it a certain amount of the time but I find it to be really temperamental. Instead if you find yourself in that situation, use Gief’s cl. HP, like a late s.LK xx HP greenhand. It sets you up for a really nice meaty crossup splash if they quickstand and only does like 10 damage less than SnakeEyes, but as I mentioned, I find is much more reliable.
Hope that helps somebody!
Cool stuff. 
I’ll have to keep these points in mind.
I wouldn’t let it deter you from using Gief. You can still beat him, you just can’t put yourself in a situation where you can get dive kicked to hell for free. The truth is that us Gief players are just gonna have to learn how to block in this game.
Just be glad your not using hugo…once he gets hit he turns into a practice dummy for the opponent
Gief is great against Rufus one if the best in fact, I don’t see why would you stop playing gief because of rufus lol. Especially with rolling in this game, If you correctly roll/not roll depending on the opponent’s spacing he should never get a chance ambiguous cross up dive kick you.
Still trying to think of a good match for Gief. Was learning towards Rolento but I dunno. I need to research Rolento more.
I can say without a doubt I’m having problems online vs Tekken only because I dont know all their combos and chains. its like they never stop attacking and it stuffs jabs. Not to mention mixing low and high attacks. Argh.
Also i never switch out that much and often end up dying without 2nd char ever comin out.
You’ve got to switch your characters to keep their health up! I’m not set on a partner yet myself but Willix really seems to like Ogre.
You might want to see if simply holding forward while doing the s.mp, s.mp, s.mk x hk does the trick. I was inconsistent landing it and I discovered that if you hold forward, I was getting it to connect 100% of the time. That might be specific to my Gief/Ogre team though.
Yeah I do like Ogre. I feel that he has amazing synergy with Zangief when it comes to landing combos. Off an anti-air lariat switch cancel, I can get 404 damage with no extra meter or 518 with an extra meter. From any situation where you land a good hit, you can actually loop back and forth from Zangief to Ogre until you run out of meter. I might reccord myself to show what I mean.
This game is simply not ALL about combos though. Ogre has some pretty big flaws. He has very few mixups a veteran player can’t punish and his explosion DP is not as strong as I thought it would be. Hunting hawk is a novice killer though, for sure. To summarize, if you play a Gief/Ogre team, you really have to depend on Zangief to carry the games to victory. Good chances that I’ll pick a new character soon, but I still want to explore a bit. I’ll probably write a brief primer on what I found out about Ogre pretty soon.
I also found out a bunch of stuff concerning Zangief. I’ll be writing that in a new post.
Willix, that is absolutely music to my ears. I was worried that if you’re competent with a second character that he sort of gets left behind.
At the moment I’m doing little more than using Rufus to let Zangief recover HP. Slight exaggeration. 
On a related note, we could really do with a thread so posts containing lots of nice data aren’t lost in these pages.
So what are people doing when you have the opponent cornered? It’s sort of hard to apply pressure like some other characters but I’ve been throwing out standing SPDs more than I used to try in SF4.
One pretty awesome thing is that if you land a 360+k in the corner, it leaves you cornered. Then, your opponent can only roll into the corner and not out. This lets you do some pretty nasty stuff like crossing them up late so they can’t escape (they could DP you though if they switch their inputs), or doing a jump-back body splash which is really ambiguous if they roll into the corner.
Here’s some more notes for you guys.
Footsies
We all need to forget about EX-Green Hand option selects completely. You get more meter and damage of switch canceling and it’s actually easier to perform boost combos (aka Magic serie) option selects anyway.
s.LP/s**.LK/c.LP/c.LK x s.MP**
From what I tested in the training room, you are at -3 on block after doing this. This means that you can only punish this string with a fast special move like Zangief Super or a fast normal like Nina’s standing lp (which has a 3 frames startup). This is a pretty decent frame trap. Also, if you have the reflexes, there’s some chance that you could hit confirm into a launcher from that.
Which normal you use is dependent on the situation and the matchup. For example, if you’re facing a crouching Ryu, s.LK x s.MP is a strong option. If you’re fighting Kazuya, you are better off doing c.LP x s.MP instead.
HP x Launch vs HK x Lauch
If you want to hit a crouching opponent, you HAVE to finish your string with either a close HK or a far HP, far HK will WHIFF. Your best bet is to go into the punch string when you notice that your opponent is crouching.
HK has a longer reach than HP though. That means that during standing footsies, it’s better to confirm into HK x Launcher for the longer reach.
For example, let’s say that you see Ryu whiffing a random dragon punch mid-screen. You can easily walk into s.mp’s max distance, then s.MP x s.HK x HK (launcher)
Counter hits hit-confirms
s.MP is still a very strong normal for Zangief. You can already link two far s.mp together and it’s a 2 frames link (mp has 4 startup frames and is +5 on hit).
From what the guide says, in most cases, a counterhit will add +2 to the hitstun of the character getting hit. That means that the s.mp link is now a 4 frames link… which makes it pretty easy to hit confirm into. Once you get into the habit of doing it, it’s definetely doable. Mid-screen, you can counterhit s.MP, s.MP x HP/HK x Launcher.
More on lariat switch cancelling
You can cancel off any lariat hit. That means that any random standing lariat hit can easily get hit-confirmed into a big damage combo once you switch cancel it. To add on to that, if you’re not doing a point blank lariat, there’s no point NOT to mash on the switch buttons. If it trades or if your opponent doesn’t get hit, nothing will come out.
MORE on ANTI-AIR lariat switch cancelling
Every Zangief players need to learn this. Once you discover the strength of a 400-500 damage anti-air… you’ll know how it felt to land a tiger DP trade into f.RH, Ultra in vanilla SF4.
There you go!
You do the oldschool stuff. You just manhandle the opponent, but you stay far enough to anti-air him if he tries to jump over you. Some s.mp’s, some s.lk x s.mp’s, etc. Once they start blocking, you can then walk up and standing SPD.
Something that some new players don’t realize is that Zangief’s super still hits pretty hard for a single throw. I got a few wins off that standing super from guys that thought they didn’t have to tag their teamate yet.
Good stuff Willix, I’ll look into that, thanks.
I’ll throw this question out there- I’ve been having trouble playing against my friends because they absolutely love holding up back and I’m having real trouble stopping them from doing it. One such situation is after any kind of SPD, if I do fierce Greenhand to get close and apply more pressure, no matter how quickly I try get there- it doesn’t seem like I can stop them just jumping back. I suppose I have to be patient and settle with that? I have tried using c.lk to try hit them out of prejump frames or standing strong to hit them as they jump away but honestly nothing has been working consistently nor has it lead to enough damage to stop them from doing it. Even jump forward fierce will lose to a lot of air to air normals or just whiff completely despite its big looking hitbox.
Another situation is in the corner- characters with strong jumpback normals I find can just hold up back at the first sign of gief advancing and it’s been very difficult to time a walk forward lariat to hit them, though it’s good damage if I can land one and switch cancel. I didn’t play Gief really in ST or SF4 so this might be basic stuff but right now I just can’t threaten people enough to keep them on the ground where I want them! Help appreciated.
whats the best way to beat vegas wall jump move
So… How do we anti air guys? I just picked up Gief a few days ago and love him to death, but I feel like all I can do against jump ins is block, and once people see that I’m not AAing they jump in repeatedly. I’ve tried lariats but they seem to get stuffed like 9/10 or trade. Very rarely do I get a clean AA from it. Is that user error or does it just suck in this game?
I’ve found lariat pretty consistent and most of the time when it is stuffed, it’s due to me doing it to early. Try doing a lariat from the crouch like in SSFIV and make sure not to do it too early.
I would guess it’s a matter of timing, just like SSFIV.
I’m pretty new to SF so I don’t really have any experience with him. Is the timing like you want the first swing to hit them before they reach you? I’ve probably been timing it wrong. And we’re talking punch lariat right?
Punch Lariat, yeah. Yes, don’t do it so they fall into it. Start from crouch so that it starts up and hits them.
It’ll be instinctive in no time.
cool thanks. Also I was messing around in training and I was charging up his charge grab (forget the name) to absorb the jump in hit and then releasing to grab right as they land. I haven’t had a good chance to try online but it seems like a pretty viable AA, or is there something I missed?