Lately the focus on Gen

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

It seems that lately the focus on the meta game of Gen has been on situational character specific tricks. Cross up Ogas, TC2 lk Gekiro -> cross up oga, back throw to ultra, sweep to ultra. I feel however that the focus on this character should be on discovering play styles that are most effective, utilizing both stances, and of course techniques that work with frequency.

Here’s a little move that my friend taught me. [M] MP -> [M] MP -> [C] MP

There is a reason why we were attracted to Gen. His two styles were attractive rather than intimidating to us Gen players. When I play or see a Gen win its unspoken, but the general feeling is “wow that guy just won with a low tier character, the hardest one to play.” We have many tools, much more than other characters. We have a move that hits low first for god sakes! We just have to figure out how to take all these tools that Gen has and assemble them into a unstoppable machine. Its time to take Gen to the next level!

2

well, it’s a good idea and many of us are trying to do it, I guess. Gen has a lot of tools in my opinion but nothing safe enough to allow a character with low health/stun to be aggressive and apply a constant mix-up, nor a very effective defensive move. But I do agree with you, working hard with Gen is very satisfying and this character has, in my opinion, a lot of hidden potential and strength

3

Not sure if trolling or serious.

4

Forever we’ve been talking about straight forward technology, stuff that works almost no matter what. Because we’ve been so focused on that, we missed some of these gimmicks that could be used as a last resort option. Now these last resort options have been discovered. And people have been playing off them. Not putting them out for other Gen players to play with will not shed light on other possible sure thing set-ups. Like I said countless times, some Gens see the glass half full and others see it half empty. Digging over and over is what brings out the lost gems that gen has to offer.

5

I completely agree with the OT on something: character-specific stuff is brutally farfetched.

When someone starts popping out several videos of tournament matches where they pull off the walkforward crossup Ogas on a consistent basis (and we still have to guess that it wasn’t the opponent’s fuck-up for sucking at blocking when the oga wasn’t an actual crossup), then I’ll start taking all that stuff seriously.

Character-specific stuff that matters: option selects+safejumps+easy Oga setups (no delay, no walkforward).
That’s consistency for me. (I’d like to mention that T SRAI is the flashiest of blankas, the one with the best execution, and still way below on the top 10 blankas in the japanese arcades… Taku is way more basic with his combos and whatnot, thus proving that there’s more to winning than being “complete”… keeping it basic is sometimes much better… Ask dieminion why he barely never uses the more complicated punishing combos with guile (reverse kick > c.mp xx etc), and opts for c.mp xx FK; also: top japanese cammy players are skipping on the crazy punishing combos too, and using basic stuff… playing it safe).

Now that I’ve mentioned consistency: s.mp > TC2 whiffs so retardedly often on shotos, that I’ve actually stopped using it altogether for the most part. I can barely notice the difference in damage thanks to gekiro’s horrendous scaling, so I tend to wrap up my punishes with TC2 xx Gekiro straight up.

And about the whole glass half full glass half empty… Well, I think Amiyu does make his mistakes (his safe jumps tend to suck very often against some characters… I guess he hasn’t come here yet and checked the table :D), but his style is indeed the most solid.

I sort of mirror his style for the most part. The difference being the safe jumps and the fact that he sometimes (just sometimes) uses c.lk s.lp TC2, and I always do c.lk c.lp TC2 for hitconfirms. Ah, and he’s Amiyu, and I’m a nobody. Minor shit. I also tend to vary between LK gekiro and HP hands after TC2, but Amiyu goes for LK gekiro almost everytime.
HP hands as a finisher is useful if I want the meter/chip. The chip damage is miserable, but it’s something. I also use it for several other reasons that would take a few more paragraphs to explain. But for the most part, I end in LK gekiro.

Anyhow, Gen is anything but low tier. I still consider Gen top tier.
But I guess I’m alone on that one.

6

My statement about the glass half empty half full isn’t about styles being solid. It’s how I look at digging with what some people may call dumb stuff, until we find other technologies that aren’t luck or once in a life time.

So let me put it this way.

Even though we are finding stuff that you could use once, it might cause a snow ball effect. Shedding light on something that someone may have over looked. Just because we keep coming up with set-ups doesn’t mean a full proof set-up isn’t at the end of the road. Basically the same thing happened with Gen in Super when everyone thought he was a lost cause. He wasn’t a lost cause, just certain things hadn’t been discovered yet. So with multiple testing people found certain set-ups that gave him some edge vs other characters. Everything is trial and error, taking things and making them better. Nothing is end all be all.

As for my videos, I pretty much state the obvious. Like “these can be mashed out of by certain characters” so I’m not advertising that they are full proof.

As for Gen being top tier. I’m really really curious to hear the characters you place him as being the same level with…

7

You’ve used the example of the “glass” with Xian’s Gen being unbound by the typical Gen player restrictions, and that he has a sort of clean slate since he just started.
I immediately associated that with Amiyu as if to say: no matter the style, the one that matters is the most successful.

The problem about the setups is not the mashing. 95% of the stuff in this game is a guess. And those guesses can be beaten by invencible reversals.
The problem is the balance between consistency of execution (particularly for the recent LK gekiro height juggles > oga findings), and the reward for landing that, considering how unsafe it is when blocked.

Gen is top tier and on par with other top tiers.
The only three characters I consider above Gen are Yun, who’s clearly broken, and Yang+Fei Long, which are above the Top tier by a slight but still meaningful margin.

The rest is bananas. I completely ignore things such as 6-4 matchups. There’s only “fair” and “unfair” matchups.
Fair: Ryu vs Akuma in Super (they say it’s slightly in favor of Akuma… but that “slight” is irrelevant for me… it’s more than doable).
Unfair: Dhalsim vs Gief. Blanka vs T.Hawk. Again, it’s doable. Just unfair.

Gen has one unfair matchup: Yun. And even Yun I can deal with by whiffing lk gekiros (which catch lunges, shoulders, and divekicks). He’s extremely easy to outpoke (I get trades with c.HP (M) in my favor from afar against his best normals) and to safe jump as well.
What can’t be dealt with is the retarded normals and the command throw into insane damage and stun.

Again: my perspective on “tiers” is a bit more ample than most players’. I know that the fact that I’ve been around srk since ~2003 (as a guest viewer, and created account in 2005) is completely irrelevant in terms of how good I am. I clearly suck. And even the tiny bits of knowledge I’ve gathered don’t guarantee me any wins. But being around for a while has changed my views in regards to a few things, and one of them is matchup lists and tiers.

Some things are clear, like Yun being broken (and in my opinion should’ve been banned from the start, considering how ridiculous the character is, but that’s just me being intolerant). Others are slightly obvious as well (Yang and Fei Long being extremely good).

The rest is dependent on each and everyone’s perception.
Some characters are “Extremes”, and hence I don’t even take them into account in terms of tiers: Zangief, T.Hawk, Dhalsim, Honda amongst a few others. As in: they’re extremely good in several matchups, and horrendous in others.

Then you have the characters which aren’t “on-par” with the others: Dan, Gouken, Elf.

The rest is “top tier” with a few exceptions. As in: they’re all balanced amongst themselves in terms of potential. I’m not gonna pull a matchup chart out of my ass, but of course that amongst the characters I consider “top tiers” there oughta be a good share of the so called “unfair” matchups. But for the most part, if you exclude those cases, then those characters are indeed balanced.

This post was completely off-topic by the way.

8

I’ve used it many many times for different things

I just wanted to know who you think is on par with Gen, and I’m still confused on who you think they are. You are saying everyone but Yun, Yang, Fei, Dan, Elf and Gouken are on par with Gen?

9

And apart from Gief and Dhalsim as well, yes. The rest is on par with Gen, or the other way around. Each and every single character apart from a select few has the potential to have a fair matchup between each other. There are always nuances (the so called 6-4s), but I leave that up to the players’ skill, style, and knowledge. All I have to do is see Uryo overcoming the sakura-blanka matchup against Taku to understand that to its fullest.

Or KOG beating Tokido.

But hey, it’s just the way I’ve come to see things. I used to care about tiers, and play it all mathematically in my head based on matchup theory. Nowadays, as long as each character has a toolset that makes the matchup between one another “not unfair”, then they’re on the same level.

10

so are Gief and Sim better or worst in your opinion?

11

Worst. Gen completely outshines both. It’s extremely easy to shutdown Zangief’s game with simple pokes, and on the same note, extremely easy to get in on Dhalsim (and Crane U2 makes him useless in the air, and with no chance of using projectiles or attempting anti-airs when we jump-in).

I apologize if I can’t ask Zangitan or Mochi to have a few matches against me while I attempt to demonstrate (in my futility as a shitty player) why the above is true.
But I can at least try to upload videos of me vs Gief/Dhalsim, and have you attempt the same methodology yourself against whomever you want, and verify if it works or not.

Just in case you’re skeptical of course.
“It works for me”, and theoretically for every Gen against any Gief/Dhalsim. I don’t use gimmicks, nor silly unsafe shit. Apart from the ocasional random lk gekiro. I’m talking about fundamentals here. Having in consideration the characters’ hitboxes and framedata. Knowing full well about Gief’s pokes and jab spd range, and Dhalsim’s (not so relevant against Gen) pokes.

12

IMHO, Gen’s health and moves in his arsenal are not enough to win only with basics when going top vs top. In order to win, the Gen player needs to outsmart the opponent, or the opponent needs to make stupid mistakes or have lack of match-up knowledge. If he had 1000 health or 1000 stun I can certainly play with basics only… but wait, just WHAT is Gen’s BASICS?

I honestly believe making those setups consistent is players’ job. I wouldn’t simply count them out cuz it’s hard to pull them off as soon as they are found.

You are not alone in Gen’s tier, it’s just that like you said, your way of deciding a tier is vastly different from the tier list posted around here somewhere. I’m not saying one side is wrong.

One thing I’ll openly disagree against you tho: Zangief and Dhalsim being worse than Gen cannot be decided by Gen VS Gief or Gen VS Sim match-up only. You also need to take into consideration about other match-ups as well, and break all 3 characters down.

To answer OP, we’d been discussing the playstyles since Vanilla.

13

I’m not sceptical at all. I find both of them very easy to play against. I outpoke giefs don’t panic in corners and vs sim I just build meter by staying to his FB’s hitbox max distance so I can focus then back dash making it hard for his HP to hit me. Then once I have Ultra 2 move in.

The way I see the tiers is a lot are midish, very few are mid low, then there is top tier then bottom tier. I see Gen mid low (almost mid) with a lot of even matches, few hard, and few good.

14

Gen’s basics would be every single poke he has, frametrap, tick setups into throw, setups into overhead, anti-airs, safe jumps, air-to-airs…
Wait I’m describing exactly what makes a characters’ basics =P That applies to Gen, also. He has the tools.

Gen has two, and only two tiny things I hate. Two only.
Gekiro scaling and Stance changing mid-string getting me punished (when I HAVE TO CHANGE STANCE if I want to throw out a reversal EX gekiro).
Stance changing should be instant, and gekiro should do 130 damage (LK version) with no multi-hit scaling.

And about the setups: it’s not about being hard. One could say that landing a 1frame link is hard. I still go for those if they land consistently when I do the combo properly.
The Oga setups, on the other hand, are extremely figdity and prone to failing apart from the easy ones. I’m not saying: “don’t use them”. If someone masters those, congratulations to him. Truthfully.

What I meant was: it’s far from necessary to use those to be able to win with Gen.

15

Even if stance change was instance it wouldn’t be that much different, because unfortunately human fingers don’t move fast enough most times. Only if you could block during those frames.

I will partially agree on your comment of not having to have Oga cross-up setups to win with Gen. It is certainly possible to win with the basics you are talking about. However, it later becomes an uphill battle. What if your opponent’s character has better normals than Gen, outzoning you and not letting you get close thus rendering frame traps and tick throws useless, and AAing perfectly? And you don’t want to counterpick? (eg. Chun-Li. Shit is possible to win, but is really exhausting when you fight really good ones). In this case, Oga cross-ups become really useful. Believe it or not, true cross-ups are a bit safer on block because you sail over to the other side. Only when you screw up would at least 30% of Gen’s health disappear. It is also great for mindfuck purposes. If you can break the opponent’s rhythm for a bit, then you can change the whole tide of the match.

But I’m not going to force anyone to learn character specific stuffs. If they want to learn it, then good. If they don’t, then good. I simply want to use everything I can do with Gen to beat opponents.

16

Gen’s pokes are on par with Chun’s. “HERESY”, you say.

Well, I manage to trade with most of them, or simply outpoke her. It’s also extremely easy to cross her up (at mid-range it’s very easy to use crane stance to go over her… which in turn is much safer than an Oga dive), and as soon as you knock her down, she’s free. Crane j.HP pees all over her.

I still believe most people have yet to understand the power that is fierce hands :smiley:
Just whiffing Fierce hands will beat tons of stuff in the game. But that’s obviously not a proper poke.

What is a good poke? LK Gekiro.
LK Gekiro is not a special. That’s a lie. It’s actually a really good normal with a brilliant gimmick built in where you choose when/how to recover from it.
LK Gekiro’s hitbox, dare I say, is broken. It’s like a mousetrap. Someone extends their limb, and BAM, they’re caught!

If you know Chun, or any other character for that matter, is about to poke you, all you have to do is use gekiro. Just vary on the timing for the recovery and the 2nd hit. Sure, it’s extremely cheesy, but oh does it work…

Apart from that… His sweep is on par, if not better than Chun’s range-wise (1f later, etc, but both are pretty much the same).
Chun’s far HP can be focused and it trades very often with Gen’s TC2 (buffered into hands for extra crispy tasty damage).
Gen’s s.MP beats it as well if used pre-emptively (and so does c.mp). All of those come out faster, even if they lack in range, but they catch her hitboxes while extending. She’s at -1 on block after using it, so you’re free to try an FA after that, or poke her yourself.

Gen’s cr.HP comes out as fast as her s.MP. Except it does almost double the damage, stays out longer, and has better range (or does it? Can’t recall).

Overall, if you stay unpredictable, you can jump over chun.
If you always imagine your opponent as being perfect, then it doesn’t matter who he’s playing. He’d always win.

Players do make mistakes, and you have to force them to make them by simply being unpredictable. Sometimes that involves being a wee bit random. But it’s part of the game. Talk to poongko. He knows.

I can tell ya that one of the few matchups where Gen has a hard time using pokes against a decent player is Makoto.
My friend, who’s been playing Gen for much longer than me had quite the hard time against Vryu-sensei. We ran a few matches with him and fuma (the akuma player) at my place during the summer. Although he and Fuma were evenly matched (going back and forth with the wins), he had a much harder time against Vryu. He managed to steal the first few matches, but started losing more often as soon as Vryu started learning the matchup.

Then again, my friend lacks several things from his Gen. He doesn’t use c.mp xx hands (still plays vanilla style, and he’s a pad player…), he doesn’t know the proper safe jump setups, and he relies very often on silly gimmicks like empty crossup into © cr.lk (which works VERY often, but I consider it too risky).

Point is: Gen is a great character. Every subforum around here considers their character “lower than someone else”. Even Yun players whine about Sagat being above them. It’s hilarious.

I’ve used almost every character in the game, apart from Ibuki, Rose, Viper and Elf. So I have a relative idea of what people think about around here.
Gen is not “average”. He’s balanced. He’s got some great things, some even extremely good (and I’m thankful, I love abusing them), but he’s not even close to being broken due to other flaws he has.

But the truth is that he has:
[LIST]
[]great air time,
[]a ridiculously good crossup,
[]jump-in move and air-to-air (which are basically one and the same… © j.HP),
[]a superb set of ground normals in Mantis Stance,
[]good safe bnb that builds a modest amount of meter and measly chip damage,
[]Good anti-airs (not as good as, say, Guile’s in terms of ease-of-use, but with training and proper timing, they’re extremely reliable),
[]pretty good versatile normals,
[]Best super in the game, apart from Yun’s broken d-baggery (by far the best “set” of supers in the game… since he gets 2 and they’re simply amazing, and don’t give me that “Chun-li/boxer/Ryu” bullshit :P; that’s one super per character, and they need meter for other things far more than Gen, and they only get 1 super, two of which need charge, and the other guy can’t combo an awesome ultra after his for full hits).
[]Fantastic sweep range, that goes unpunished against the vast majority of the cast, when used from max range (part of the superb set of normals, but I thought it deserved its own bulletpoint)
[]Excellent variety and utility in his specials
[]Particularly EX Gekiro and LK gekiro.
[]Mantis Ultra 1 damage and comboability, Crane Ultra 2 utility.
[/LIST]
Flaws:
[LIST]
[]Takes more time than most characters to use properly. Though I dare say that Elf and Cviper are harder (it’s not about combo execution, but overall execution).
[]Non-instant stance switching (human reaction speed always matters, that’s not the point though… the point is that if I mistime my PPP and Gen isn’t blocking, I don’t want to eat damage because Gen decided to swap stances AFTER blocking).
[]Crappy gekiro damage.
[/LIST]
Not a flaw:
[LIST]
[]Not having a 3f non-ex reversal with invencibility
[]cr.Short not being 3f
[]Not having EVEN BETTER hitboxes in his normals.
[]Not doing more damage on hands
[]Not having fully invencible EX Oga.
[/LIST]
By the way: big post.
Damn, too late.

17

I’m not going to comment on this tier debate as I disagree as much on your views as I possibly could. But your comment on Oga cross-ups are interesting, considering walkforward oga cross-up is probably the most easiest and consistent cross-up there is. And after practising the newly found ones I can safely say my game went up a lot, it actually has a really high reward since you can take 40-50% of your opponents life with one cross-up. Also Viper isn’t harder than Gen at all, her execution is barrier you need to cross but once you do that she becomes pretty damn ridiculous imo considering her 100 ways to land ultra and her mix-ups leading to quick stun and huge damage. I agree on El Fuerte, but that’s mainly because he doesn’t belong in this game at all and his whole character is basically gimmicks.

And the OP must’ve missed all the other topics where we discuss match-up information and combos and frametraps.

edit: a lot of ‘top’ gen players use cross-ups frequently unlike what you said. Some of them are actually relatively safe and a lot of them can’t be reversal’ed.

18

I’m sorry, but there is an astronomical amount of crazy bouncing around in this thread. I personally adore the idea of focusing on non character-specific matchups, but my best solution is to play purely shenani-Gen, which is generally not a method anyone should ever rely on (unless you’re playing Elf, he’s nothing BUT shenanigans). Most of the info I’m reading in that wall of text is just plain… wrong. I know you’ll demand like an annotated list detailing every offending point, but shit. I already have a five page essay to work on.

I’m generally the odd one out because I’ve been arguing that since Dan, Hakan, Makoto, and T. Hawk got their massive buffs Gen has actually fallen to bottom/low-low tier in AE, but I feel like I’m more in line with the Gen-eral public by far all of a sudden. Top tier Gen is just too ridiculous for me to even fathom. Even weirder is how I’m reading that someone thinks Yun is one of the bad matchups, when I find that he’s one of the few good matchups for Gen in AE. All the character specific tricks work on the guy, we have unblockable setups against him, and Gen is the only character I’ve found to counter some of the Yun ridiculousness like the ground to air shoulder crossup stuffer.

Honestly, I don’t even know what’s going on in this thread. Something about trying to simplify Gen play, then like something about upside-down tierlists… I’m confused, what was this thread about? If we’re rambling I think I saw something in here about Xian, and I definitely want a thread to talk about him. He’s pretty painful to watch now, but I really have some hope for him. He shows flashes of brilliance (when he isn’t throwing out naked supers, which makes me weep openly) and I’d love to see him actually learn some of the better tricks of the trade. Right now he’s repping a “simplified” Gen playstyle, with plenty of shenanigans which seems relevant to the topic at hand.

19

I made this thread to bring more activity and positive energy to the Gen forum, I visited some of the more popular characters and they have new threads everyday. The purpose of this thread was to inspire and get people to say hell yeah! and go master Gen more. Which in turn will bring more Gen victories, which just might make more Gen players. But since we are on the topic of tier lists, I definitely believe that Gen is lower tier. His wake up options and health just are not good. The amount of practice and thinking that a player has to use when playing Gen is substantially higher than other characters. cough seth

I’m not saying that cross up ogas are not good. They are definitely good if you can pull them off in a game. However they seem to fail too often, perhaps its my execution. The thing about cross up ogas is that you have to memorize a massive list. Throw to oga has a different setup from lk gekiro, which has a different setup from back throw, which has a different setup from back throw in the corner, the list goes on and on. God forbid you Oga too low, we all know what happens then.

Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong places but lately it seems like the discussion has been on these shenanigans, throws to cross up ultras, different character specific cross up Ogas, discussion about ways to improve our game play consistently has fallen to the side. It seems lately I’ve been attempting these new tricks, yes some times they work and hitting a cross up Oga it feels amazing, but using them puts me into a lot of unsafe situations. Just yesterday I landed a sweep against chun and I remembered reading a post here that I could backdash into ultra 1. Well I attempted it and it was blocked. This is the kind of thing that I am talking about. This forum is a reflection of Gen players collective consciousness, perhaps if the threads were about emphasizing patience and how to zone properly or how to predict in certain match ups, we would improve more. I’m, typin off the top of my head, and getting bodied on psn (yes all at the same time), but one thing I know for certain is that Gen is my favorite character to play street fighter with by far.

My solution to the cross up oga situations, let me know what you think. If I feel like attempting a cross up oga after a gekiro I look at the position of where my opponent will land on the screen. If he lands closer to me I use a mk or hk oga. If he lands further away I use a lk or mk oga. A rule of thumb that I use is to always try to wiff the oga or cross up, never let it get blocked. So say I knock down ryu after a gekiro and he lands far away on the screen, I know a lk oga might cross up, but I will do a mk oga because sometimes it crosses up and other times I will be safe after it wiffs. the alternative is to do a lk oga, get blocked and eat a shoryuken fadc to metsu hadoken. For other characters such as sagat and gief I will tend to do a hk or mk oga, never a lk. What do you guys think?

20

I generally try to use Oga to train my opponent. When they spam fireballs at a certain distance, I Oga early and punish. Once they stop throwing fireballs randomly I’ll try to bait shoryus and anti-airs by Oga, dropping off wall, dashing in and punishing. When they start hesitating at mid-range I’ll go for cross setups. Or sometimes I’ll start with the cross Ogas on kd and go the other way. I don’t like to concern myself with the more intricate setups that are always tossed about because I always feel like they’re just too great a risk in many situations. Landing that Oga is just so nice because of the incredible damage it can lead to, but I hesitate to try anything complicated since there’s just so much to remember and so much that can go wrong. I’m actually excited over the new EX Oga, because it’ll really fit MY uses. I’m sorry for the rest of you guys though, I know how much having a wake up game meant to you, I kinda wish we had something to do on wakeup as well.