On another note, is it me or does (crLk, close stMp) seems a tad easier to combo than (crLk, Far stMp)?
Kreymore has been saying Guy sucks since…Guts 2 or Summer jam and thought about switching since then. Mind you he was formerly an Abel player in vanilla. I don’t believe he will switch because he would have done so already but if I ever run into him I’ll ask for certain.
I feel this too, almost as though its a TC. Also it seems against some characters, the cl MP doesnt come out as easily after cr LK, so far MP comes out instead. This happened against Dudley and Hakan and a few others that I cant quite remember.
There seems to be this myth that playing safe and staying on the ground is the only ‘correct’ way to play Guy. But ask yourself, if you’re playing that way and still losing, how ‘correct’ can it really be? I admit, Guy is riddled with small flaws, which when added together do seriously affect his game. Unfortunately, so few people main Guy or have a true understanding of his matchup that this hasn’t really changed much for the better across the various iterations of SF4. But we’ve had more than enough time to figure out what his flaws are now so we can work around them most of the time. It’s a little late in the game to cry about these things now. But back to my main point, if you are losing, how can you say you are playing ‘correctly’? The most successful Guy player of recent times is Marq Teddy who certainly does know how to play a safe, grounded game. But how does he win? He goes nuts! You could argue that he is taking a huge risk by doing that, but surely taking a risk and winning is better than playing it safe and losing? Just speaking from my own experience in the mirror match, I VERY rarely lose to a Guy player who sticks to a solid ground game and tries to outplay me that way. I know what they’re trying to do probably better than they know themself. But if they go nuts and don’t do what I expect them to do (what Mike Ross likes to call ‘going dumb’) then it’s much more likely for them to steal the win, if only for a couple of games. I feel that by his design, Guy is a much stronger short set character. At least that way you can go ham and catch your opponent by surprise. But in longer sets, particularly if you stick to a safe low-risk ground game, the chances are you are going to get bodied. A few exceptions apply, most notably against grapplers, but I say go with whatever beats your opponent, don’t worry too much about ‘playing properly’.
“go with whatever beats your opponent, don’t worry too much about ‘playing properly’.”
That’s what really confuses people about how “strong” Guy is and how “good” the player playing him is. I’m gonna be honest, it totally frustrates me when I say a Guy player winning against someone by doing stuff that simply shouldn’t work - but because of the opponent’s lack of match-up knowledge or just plain game knowledge, he wins. The commentators don’t know Guy enough to say “that’s fraudulent” or “it shouldn’t work” and instead go on to praise the player and that Guy is actually good bla bla.
I’m talking about unsafe throw setups, like forward throw, double jump forward into “ambigious” mixup. There’s** no way **you do that against a shoto cos all you have to do is crouch block and delay DP - there IS no mixup cos it’ll autocorrect and blow Guy up. And yet you see it happen so many times and it works.
The same for people who don’t punish Guy’s flips with projectile Ultras, or low forward, but instead just crouch block or worse, stand altogether and get grabbed.
Or you have Guys who use the normal slide a lot and sweep their opponent continuously - how about you focus that from time to time and put Guy in his place?
I feel like making a video on how to punish Guy so we can finally start playing the match-ups realistically and not give praise where its not due.
I totally see your point, but play like that is what adds ‘hype’ to the game. People like to think that the top Japanese players only do very precise, calculated, minimal risk things. Just off the top of my head I can remember Daigo doing 3 overheads one after the other and they all worked. In another game, he hit 5 throws in a single round, more or less one after the other. If a Ryu on Xbox Live played like that, you would think “WTF is this idiot doing? He is playing so dumb!” But if Daigo does it, all of a sudden it’s a genius play and a hype moment. I think one of the keys to being a great Guy player is knowing how and when to ‘go dumb’ and put your opponent on tilt. But yes I agree, stupid shit like ‘safe’ jump setups against shotos etc. is an unnecessarily stupid risk for any Guy player and indicates the player doesn’t know the matchup correctly. But then that’s how Xian won EVO…nobody knew the Gen matchup to that level.
Well Gen was an exception and his setups are **way **crazier than Guy’s…so I wouldn’t compare the two that much. As for crazy play, you have to do that and surprise your opponent, keep him in check, and not appear obvious or too safe. In my opinion, doing 5 throws with Ryu whilst having 2 bars and Ultra stocked is not crazy - it’s saying I have control. Doing walk forward DP’s however, and I’ve seen Daigo do those, is.
And as for hype, it’s actually when both players know the match-up well, don’t lose to party tricks like double jump fw - that’s when there’s hype… and it takes something special to break each other’s mental guard and get in.
In tournmanet play, I prefer to watch Marvel more so when its like top 32 or so up until GF, cos all the players are so dangerous and carry more or less lethal teams. For SSF4, I feel like I have to wait till top 16 or sometimes top 8 to see knowledgeable players fight it out - how its meant to be, and even then you have one-sided matches that look really bad.
No, there is a difference between taking risks, and playing dumb. Theres no point in using Daigo as comparison, because he has genuinely good spacing and reactions, he can afford to take risks because he establishes a strong ground game which forces opponents to making certain decisions, such as down-back blocking more (thats when the risky multi overheads for example come into play).
Can Guy be played in this similar manner? Sure, but Guys “risk” moves rank low among the cast. Moves like run overhead and bushin flip are slow, have vulnerable low hitbox, easily reactable and punishable. Sure you may find them hitting every now and then, but when your entire gameplay is revolved around throwing these all game (Marq Teddy), then now you’re playing dumb. And I ask, when there are characters with bigger risk rewards like Fuerte, why play Guy?
Theres two reasons Guy never makes it to top 8 EVO or whatever else event. Hes either played full blast dumb, which means there is little surprise throughout the entire duration of the tournament, or he is played with a superb ground game, but falls short simply due to his flawed/inferior design (see Luminaire vs Infiltration).
Of course there are many characters below Guys tier, and thats why they dont show much success either.
I’m one of those rare breeds that has beaten you Nebbiez! I’M ONE OF THOSE!
TC whiffing on crouchers, MK crossup, and f.mp overhead not hitting twice on some crouchers are all major flaws and all of them have cost me rounds or matches in general… the 2012 or any previous versions of GUY have never had that go to move thats always reliable… we’ve had to always do this against this character and do that against that character and its just bullshit… and i agree with afo, commentators swear that the shit marq teddy does is legit shit or thats what u have to do as a GUY player… when they have no idea that all that “dumb” shit doesnt fly in high level matches… the only thing that guy has thats totally safe is a safe jump then TC xx shoulder. thats it… everything else is not really reliable. he has no true block strings except for that and that only. nothing after that can be used to keep pressure safely… flaws flaws and more flaws… GUY would be and should be a HARD counter to any shoto and do to the flaws in his design, he not… we’ll have to wait till ultra to see what they “socalled” fixed and the “socalled” buffs…
Marq teddy isnt succesful as you think. Once he goes up against someone that knows the character he crumbles.
Guy has 2 true block strings for the record. ,
Weren’t you more positive about him few months back?
Hell no.
Haha if memory serves me correctly we only ever played one FT3 or FT5 and you only took one game 
Although the connection was absolutely awful. Nice talking to you on headset though!
To list some players that Marq has beaten in tournament:
NGL.Chris, OnlineTony, Velociraptor, Alex Valle, Mike Ross, Dieminion, Ricky Ortiz, Filipino Champ… the list goes on. When he’s beating big names like that, no offense intended but who are you to say his style won’t work in high level matches?
I’m not saying that alot of what Marq does isn’t unsafe or often times unnecessarily risky. Rather than playing solid as a rock, he opts to use Guy as more of a risk/reward character. The reward he gets is having beaten all of those top players. If you watch him playing Snake Eyez, you can see how well they both understand the matchup and nobody on either side takes any stupid risks. That is called ‘calculated risk’. If you think your opponent is going to back dash or jump…do the run overhead. Don’t NOT do it because you’ve convinced yourself it’s a shit move and your opponent will beat it out with a low profile normal. If you go for it once or twice and your opponent reliably reacts…then of course stop doing it before you lose because of it. But from my observation, Marq wins a hell of a lot more than he loses as a result of his risky playstyle. It might look cringeworthy to other Guy players, but if he’s getting the job done, who are we to complain? It’s hardly his fault that his opponents don’t know the matchup better.
Yeah US to Europe isn’t exactly favorable. Couldn’t bait the u2 ;;
Of those people you named they have alsobeaten marq as well. But at SCR marq didnt do very well. He lost to people who knew the matchup and knew exactly how he was going to play and it cost him. He goes back and forth with mike Ross but loses to hoodaman, who in my opinion is someone you can’t go nuts on.
Guy needs a lot of things to fix his flaws but the his core game plan is to frustrate the opponent with tick throws and pressure from Cr.lp/Cr.lk. He is momentum based which frustrates me more then my opponent sometimes.I can’t think of many ways to make Guy better without him being OP. Faster lp Hozanto would be true blockstring from far st.mp, he doesn’t need a damage or stun buff, good health and stun,faster ultra would allow for more meterless ultras.I think the ultra buffs he is getting so far with make him better in general if they could add something else make both neck flip and shadow kick -5 on block allowing for human error on the punish.
This is sort of how I feel. I liked guy since I saw him appear in Alpha and when I saw him in SSF4 I tried my best to actually learn him. There is no fraudulence or cheapness in Guy - I’ve never seen it in a match nor experience it for myself. I’ve never one a match genuinely felt like the match was in my favour. Every win I get I definitely felt I earned from simply being the better player. All of the things that Guy can punish or beat out are things that the other player never has to do ever again in a Guy matchup. But that being said, I’m now at a point where I don’t particularly like any other character enough to play them. I started with Sagat because I heard through match up data that he’s a good secondary for Guy. I used him for a couple Honda, Boxer and Guy matches. (The reason I didn’t use him for Sagat matches and why I did for Guy is because… I hate mirror matches online - shit just psyches me out man.)
It was working well with T.Shot pressure… but I just felt like a whore. I was genuinely happier when I raged at the screen in a loss with Guy and after a month went back to maining Guy alone.
[hr]
EDIT: Also I’ve been meaning to say this for months but had a posting bug that stopped me - I faced “Th3 Guy S3ns3i” in a random ranked match. That dude brought out the best play I have ever done in SSF4 and I managed to scrape a victory in all the chaos. He was cool enough to message ggs afterwards and add me as a friend so we might be able to play again. I couldn’t find him online since then, but I’ve seen his name around here on SRK and I know he’s one of our Bushin-Ryu masters, but I just wanted to give him a shout out and let him know that he clearly deserved the run back that never happened.
s3ns3i… you mean TBR S3ns3i Guy? Don’t be fooled by him…