Chad
13
FANG just takes A LOT of work. Playing FANG is accepting a hard life and a long road. I don’t think he is bad, but it will take some time to see where he ends up.
He’s going to be working a lot of unpaid overtime just to get by.
Super Makoto was a hard life. Super Hakan was a verrrry long road.
Fang reminds me of Super Juri really. Little exposure pre release and an extremely conservative approach to an interesting gameplan. Biggest difference being Juri was noted for having some crazy stuff before release and Capcpom chipped away at her. Outside of a few exhibitions they were quiet about Fang.
It’s extremely doubtful that we’ll find some magical tech that will turn every match 7-3, but at the same time figuring out the time and place for each tool plays a big role and how he’s going to grow. 3 weeks ago we thought block string into lp ball was the bees knees and realized how wrong we were, and now we’ve learned how solid tip range c.mp xx mk trap is for pressure against certain matchups.
There are weaknesses, not trying to sugar coat it. But there’s a truckload of trial and error we still have to get through to work the kinks out.
I really wish his poison did more, feels like such wasted potential.
I see poison as a tool, rather than just an extension to his maximum damage output. If you score a poison, 9/10 you have a life lead and they are losing health. Typically you can sit back and chill out while they sit for 6 seconds eating poison. It might not be a lot of damage, but its damage. Any damage versus you taking none is still damage and the opponent knows that. using that to your advantage is key to winning with FANG. The more people realize that, the better people will get and the higher FANG will climb up the fake tier list they put him in.
If they just buff his poison to do more damage, to me at least, it would destroy any purpose to using him because he becomes highly reliant on poison and no one would learn to use him properly.
But his poison-less damage is abysmal, and even with poison it doesn’t compete with other characters. His combos from a medium attack starter deal about 100-110 damage + 50 poison, where most characters can reach 200 ( 250 for the top tier). Even if his poison damage was doubled, it would still be inferior because poison can be healed.
F.A.N.G does slightly less damage than Dhalsim does off his basic combos, but that’s not considering the poison effect. c.HP counter, c.HP, MP Yoga Blast does 253 or so. s.HK, s.HP, HP Sotoja does 241 and up to 291 if Poison lasts full duration.
So I think they probably based his damage to be around Dhalsim’s level, which sounds fair to me on paper. They both have similar game plans, where they want to zone until they find that opportunity to pressure.
I would like F.A.N.G’s damage to go up a bit as well. More specifically, I’d like the poison to be a bit stronger, but I could see how he could get out of hand if they weren’t very careful.
We all know it can be frustrating to chip away at someone, only for them to bulldoze their way in eventually and kill us in seconds, but those times shouldn’t happen often. We have all the tools we need to make them work for their win, and to get the win ourselves. We can’t have comparable damage AND strong zoning.
And we still have so, so much left to learn. Gotta keep a positive attitude :).
I will say maybe his damage output overall could be higher. In many matches where im in control it seems to take forever to really eat at their health. Fought a Laura one time both rounds I won took almost 70 to 90 seconds to win because when I was zoning scoring Knockdowns, I played it safe. I have a rule when dealing with grappler type characters to go ham on them all because I just don’t want to deal with all those grappler mix ups and Laura can be as slippery as FANG can be.
Still even if im winning its A LOT of work and time and the matches drag. Even Dhalsim can melt peoples health away from afar faster than FANG. I can see why people want poison to do more damage but I feel he might need more damage from his specials so he is awarded properly for doing the right thing. I could be wrong. He is still a fun character to use. I see why SonicFox gravitated to him so fast.
3SJ
21
It sucks that he’s not that good.
He takes work, but he has enough tools to piss off enough people and can cleanly get away with it.
And hey, people forget that he has the highest stun-damage potential in the game.
3SJ
23
It really sucks that FANG is so terrible.
Hopefully they fix him by holiday season or next year(via patch).
I don’t know what the OP is talking about, but he’s a big #2.
It’s a lot of work and a special mindset to play FANG seriously.
Just as an aside, the best Rolento player in Korea for USF4 is playing FANG and looks good doing it. He still lost to RagingStormX but he is a total lab monkey that prepares himself well for everything. But it takes a mindset like Rolento took to make FANG work.
The best Rolento in Korea eh? I’d love to search him up… but you didn’t offer his name.
F.A.N.G is a good character to use for those who know how to use him I’m pretty sure he will be buffed cause as of right now he desperately needs it. Other than that I think he is just as good as any of the characters in the roster.
if he was as good as any other character on the roster, why would he “desperately” need a buff?
I don’t even know how to fight fang or even Vega. People online just rarely uses these characters
Let his poison stack, put a cap of something like 3 stacks.
Boom hes a much better character and more interesting to play/fight against.
F.A.N.G reminds me of Twelve (SF3) in a sense most of your attacks are not straight forward and you must rely of baits or situations to pressure your opponent to open up to punish. Although I feel F.A.N.G has it easier opening people up than Twelve did.
wewk584
32
It seems in this game where Kens are so strong. Where having a dp is so helpful. Ken can randomly dp your limbs and present enough other options where just waiting to punish one of the random dps isnt as easy as it sounds. (defensiveness is sort of what they want)… In general it seems reversals are strong in this game. Since there arent really ways to make them safe anymore, everyone does them.
So FANG has no reversal… And honestly he probably shouldnt. But then the stuff he does well should show this. His zone like said earlier in this thread is decent but you cant sit on it at all. IMHO (i just started winning with fang, only on week 2 with him - so take it with a grain of salt) he loses to ryu kens fireballs until he has meter. So you pretty much have to go toward them until you have meter.
I like his normals but long normals are bait for yolo characters. I get hit the startup of kens (lk?) tatsu so much when poking.
FANG has v-reversal but ive watched Xian get punished enough using to know its no real help. He has ex command dash but its throwable. And he has block… but every character has block, and blocking is way more effective when your opponent has to worry about you mashing out something that will hurt them at any moment. Ex command dash if your successful only gets you out (unless they try something with a ton of recovery and you c.hk them but everyone elses ex reversals can make someone sorry for even pressing lp)
He seems to do little damage. Of any character Ive used in sf4/sf5… Ive had the most times in matches where am putting in work and I feel like im winning and I look up at the health bars and Im losing… by a lot. … I also have a hard time with grapplers but maybe thats just my newness to the character. They just bulldoze in at whatever cost and erase any damage I did instantly. This happens to all characters to some extent but also. This happens a little less since Im getting better and abandoned trying to zone to start matches.
So how do you fix him? (assuming he needs fixing) I think the buff to his v-trigger will help. part of his issues is that what he does well happens too slow. At least once a round you will be able to fix that.
Mild damage buffs wouldnt hurt. Not much… I understand why it is how it is now, but just a little here and there.
Also His v-reversal should move him further or stun the opponent… It costs enough that making it a pure get out of jail move wont break FANG.
Otherwise I think hes OK. Hes supposed to take alot of work to win… just maybe not SO much… He is really fun, especially when you can frustrate your opponent.
