Lariat! The Zangief Wish-list thread

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
281

RBG and ultra

I don’t think RBG has to be broken, I think it’s fairly simple actually. RBG should have armour, EX RBG should have 2 hits of armour. Fuerte has 2 hits on his ex run. Makes it a so-so anti air provided that it grabs when the opponent hits the ground, if the opponent tried j.HK->c.mk-> fireball the fireball startup will be grabbed.

It also increases the viability of it as a run. I know that 3x c.lp is pretty easy to get off due to his low run speed, but if they’re doing anything with any sort of startup, they get nailed. Punishable for sure, but the knowledge/skill requirements go up, and it adds to mixups. Think about sagat spamming st.HK and being able to take it, plus the follow up hit. Think about getting hit by an upball and being able to run through it.

As for his ultra II, I think it should be a long range grab, not anti-air. Make it have the range of l.spd or even longer. All it does is grab, and headbutt twice, stunning the opponent, with little damage, say 200-250. Then it requires you to follow up for the damage.

I’m completely in favour of nerfing his low hitbox on spins 2 and 3 of the lariat. It affects virtually nothing at the level I play at (which isn’t that great, I’ll admit, I’m still in mid G3).

282

alex might jump off a bridge if gief gets a better stungun than him. :lol:

283

StunGun

So make it canon, Gief taught it to him then retired to drink vodka and smoke cigars with Haggar in Metro City after the two of them lariated through the entirety of final fight. With two completely broken lariats they combined to make a move so invincible, even satsui no hadou ryu couldn’t beat it. The USSAR Nuclear Non-Proliferation UrsaMeatGrinder Buster. First you get tossed between the counter rotating lariats, then Haggar spds you into Zangief’s ultra lariat, but he’s holding a broken vodka bottle in one fist and a bear in the other. You turn into gibs MK style. Zangief and Haggar then pull out eye glasses and sit down at a table and work out how to permanently fix the economy and make world peace by using modified nuclear weapons to provide free energy, for asteroid destroying purposes and propulsion in spaceships. It can be performed by pressing lp. The end.

284

Armor isn’t gonna help that move. The ex version already has armor, but all that is is an ex taunt. It’s like you have such little regard for your opponent that you’ll not only taunt him, you’ll waste an ex meter to do it. The only thing that’ll help is to give it much faster startup and run speed and more immediate grab activation once it gets close. But again, the only way that’ll be effective is if it’s so much faster that it’s kind of bs. There’s a reason this move has always sucked, and it’s that Capcom knows that making it good means making it too good.

285

Running bear grab + mashing Dan’s back dash = lol

286

Faster Startup, faster grab action yes. Keep it slow, but with armour. It would help vs the people gief needs help with.

287

Heck, thinking out loud, make a move which is just a run. No grab, no nothing, just a cancelable armour run, like fuerte, but slower. Faster than RBG of course, but not speedy gonzalez.

288

I lol’d SOME ONE MAKE THIS A GIF NOW

289

lost it in the lab when i read this. can picture it so well

290

An avatar with this animation would be gdl.

Anyways, yeah, the rbg sucks real bad as it is now but as Ultradavid said, making it better without making it overpowered would be really difficult. Just look what happened with the Lariat…

291

Yeah, could someone please make a gif and let me use it as an avatar? I’d luv u 4 evar and evar.

292

Im really trying to be fair here. some things that i would like is AIR GRAB. and over head attack.
as for buffing up his ultra there really is no need to. and his focus attack should have a faster recovery rate not to much just a tab

293

would allowing Gief to cancel RBG into other specials (even if they are new ones) be considered OP?

Would be a nice way for him to close the gap (ex RBG, absorb an attack, then cancel into something else)

294

Goals
–Defense is a little worse
–Footsies are a little more nimble and effective but less damaging
–A little more damaging up close

–Nerfs
-----Punch lariat’s hittable hitbox is slightly more vulnerable at Gief’s head so that it’s not quite as good an antiair
-----Ex green hand does 50-70 damage instead of 80-80
-----All jabs and shorts do 30 damage instead of some of them doing 40
-----All standing strongs and forwards do 80 damage instead of 90
-----Kick lariat has no active hitting frames at Gief’s feet (still invincible low, just doesn’t hit there), weaker active hitting hitbox overall

–Buffs
-----Gief’s toward dash is only 22 frames long instead of 26 (still the 2nd slowest, just not as slow as now)
-----Close standing short is removed, far standing short becomes his only standing short
-----Close standing jab starts up in 3 frames instead of 4 and recovers in 5 frames rather than 7 (to partially make up for weaker lariat antiair)
-----Crouching short recovers in 6 frames instead of 7
-----Crouching strong starts up in 5 frames instead of 8 (to partially make up for weaker lariat antiair)
-----Far standing mk has 7 fewer recovery frames (-3 on block instead of -10)
-----Regular sweep has 3 fewer recovery frames (-2 on block instead of -5), Gief’s hittable hitbox is lower to the ground
-----Down-toward sweep has 8 fewer recovery frames (-3 on block instead of -11), Gief’s hittable hitbox is lower to the ground
-----Normal throw does 30 more damage (190 instead of 160)
-----Kick lariat moves faster horizontally
-----Regular green hand sets up a shield around the whole arc of Gief’s hand during the whole time Gief swings his hand over his head to in front of his body, starting just a few frames into the move’s animation; this would make high projectiles like Sagat p shot, Seth boom, and Akuma air fireball more easily neutralized without making the hand better against other characters’ fireballs

–Other
-----Far 360k running bear grab is completely removed from the game (this move has always sucked, i wish capcom would stop putting it in already)
-----Super is now a very fast running bear grab that throws instantly when it gets into range; does more damage the closer it starts from, but a max of only like 300 or so; is not invincible during its run, just moves very fast; has range on its throw like current super; has a 2 frame startup; and after the run, has whiff animation and recovery like current super
-----Sometimes when low short is canceled to ex hand, it doesn’t combo, and I have no idea why. Fix this glitch!

–Most important, in order
-----Fix the low short xx ex hand random non-comboing glitch
-----Faster recovery and lower hittable hitbox on sweeps
-----Green hand sets up a neutralizing shield around the arc that Gief’s hand travels during the whole time his hand travels, to deal with high fireballs better
-----Slight nerf to punch lariat hitbox
-----Faster recovery on standing forward
-----Ex hand does 50-70 damage instead of 80-80

Also, general changes if possible
–If a launcher move (like a dragon punch or lariat) trades with the opponent’s attack, it doesn’t launch as high. Hopefully this would make dp trade ultra less effective.
–Get rid of quick stand!
–Waking characters no longer push the opponent away as they get up

295

LP green hand needs fewer recovery frames too.
And it should never add frames when you absorb a fireball, like it currently does.

296

I don’t really think his green hands need to get safer to be honest. I don’t even think his green hands should be much better at nullifying regular fireballs. My proposed change of making the hand nullify fireballs all the way over his head and in front of his body might make the move marginally more effective at nullifying regular fireballs and whatnot, but mostly it would help him out against characters he needs help with instead of making him better against characters he beats or goes even with like Guile, Ken, Rose, Gouken, Chun, Dhalsim, and Sakura. Gief is in the weird position of beating or going even with most fireball characters, so it’s really handy that the ones he loses to are the ones with fireballs that could be more easily nullified in a way that wouldn’t much effect those other characters.

297

Just make it so that last spin on lariat does nothing. that’s all

298

Here are some comments about my proposed changes.

Zangief’s current matchups and tier position
He really only eats 1 arcade character, Abel. It seems like he probably beats a couple console characters badly, specifically Dan and Sakura, but it’s kind of hard to know for sure because almost no one uses those characters competitively. Early on everyone was so sure that Gief destroyed Viper, Dhalsim, Dictator, and Honda, but now I’d list all of those at even or even-ish matchups, so I won’t rule out the same against the console characters. I’ve already seen it happen with Cammy; what Cammy players originally thought was a terrible matchup is, in reality, pretty even.

At the same time, Gief really only gets eaten by 1 arcade character, Sagat. Matchups that earlier on seemed bad, like Blanka, Akuma, and Ryu, are in the end evenish or only slight losses, not so bad that the better player won’t win most of the time. It seems like Gief loses badly to Seth, but again, so few top level Seths have played so few top level Giefs and so rarely that it’s kind of hard to know for sure.

Overall, with just a few exceptions, Gief’s matchups range between something like 4.5-5.5 and 6-4. This means he ends up doing pretty well in the tiers, although the fact that his few losing and slight loss matchups happen to be against 3-4 of the other high tiered characters dampens that a bit. Considering that many of the characters Gief has slight wins against will probably get buffed in some ways, nerfing him to try to balance him against the SF4 cast instead of the SSF4 cast is a bad idea. With other characters getting buffed, Gief can remain exactly as good overall and still end up slightly lower in the tiers, and that’s totally fine. Any proposed buffs or nerfs have to take into account the fact that other characters will probably get buffed and nerfed as well.

Problem areas
Gief has only 2 bad areas, and they’re debatable but potentially bigger problems with potential buffs to other characters. The first is that his footsies aren’t as mobile as they could be. The reason this is debatable is that they’re already very good against some characters, but against others they’re really not. The ones where they’re not, it’s because a couple of his normals are just barely lacking, and luckily slightly buffing the ones that could be more useful there probably won’t have much effect against other characters. And again, we have to assume that other characters will get a bit better in footsies anyway. The second area is that with other characters presumably getting a little better overall, Gief might need to do a little more damage once he actually gets in to make up for the fact that his opponents will probably be better at defending.

I do think Gief has 2 areas that are problems because they’re too good, though. The first is that his defense is probably too good. For a character who’s supposed to be all about opening up the opponent and dealing damage inside, Gief sure does have some sick defensive moves. I like the fact that he forces his opponent to play differently, I think that’s good, but I don’t want it to be so forced that many opponents almost can’t pressure me at all. This isn’t so much a necessarily balance change as a change in Gief’s goals that I think would be desirable. Another thing that’s probably too good is that he’s too damaging at mid-range. Now, I think Gief should be good in footsies, but I don’t think his footsies should be so damaging, so I’d probably cut the damage on them a bit even while making them better in other ways.

The lessons from all this are that any changes to Gief have to be very slight, specifically targeted to deal with certain things and not with others, and not in the end make him any better or worse overall. I think my proposed list of changes does that.

Footsie changes: normals quicker, kick lariat moves faster horizontally, dash faster, regular green hand better at neutralizing high fireballs, normals less damaging, ex hand less damaging

Up close: neutral throw does more damage, ex spd does less damage

Defense changes: punch lariat is less effective as antiair, antiair normals slightly faster, kick lariat less effective at hitting things, ex spd has longer startup, ex spd does less damage

299

I like the ideas and how to make gief less reliable on lariat as an antiair when a smart player should just benefit from having more situational tools. The range on Jab SPD is already so big I cant see buffing that, EX SPD is so rarely used to me I dont know why you’d want to change it in any way, as most of the time I’m saving for a super or using EX hands. Also I would like c.fp to speed up stay out longer so it is a threat but not a move you would spam. Close Roundhouse and Fierce Punch are almost useless to me, i know not every move a character has is going to be usable but all his close normals are basically crap, 90% of the time i want the far version of any normal even at point blank, save for s.lp. Nothing makes me more mad than walking up to a character and baiting jumps or buttons with s.mp only to get his close attack. RBG needs to go or just be revamped it’s just a liability at this point, maybe it can be like Potemkins move where you can cancel it or let it complete its action with some benefit to it at least its ex version can be like an armored dash

300

For 1 EX bar make RBG a target combo after connected green hand (kind of like the end of Abel’s change of direction), with that non EX green hands can actually have a purpose where they hit the enemy as opposed to being punishable on connection, with this he can gain favorable positioning and start his abusive oki game in more situations.