One of the main reasons Akuma and Seth are so strong now is because everyone else got their damage output reduced and Seth got a health/stun buff, which means they’ll have more chances to survive and play their game.
Maybe Seth had some crazy tools, but Vanilla damage was too unforgiving for a character with 750 health & stun, do you guys remember how much damage Ryu did with a HP SRK FADC, EX tatsu or trade into full ultra? Many characters pretty much only needed one mistake to finish off Seth or stun him and nobody can play flawlessly every time, only 1 SPD or tenden read could be the lights out for him.
Ironically, Seth could probably stun you the quickest out of all the characters (besides Gief Headbutt). That’s just off basic combos and mixups. Then there was his retarded Magneto loop. Noone could put Seth easily in a reset situation that drained his entire bar, but he could do that vs most of the cast. It’s pretty easy to see why he is regarded as top tier in Vanilla even though he has the lowest health.
What is Seth without his SPD and tenden engine? Those are extremely punishable if you guessed 'em out right, Vanilla Akuma would have stunned him in one combo lol , Sagat would only need to touch him once and a couple of jabs to KO him.
It just seems to me that some people make him out to be vanilla MvC3 lvl3 x-factor Phoenix or something, he’s not that brainless IMO.
Are you seriously comparing Guile’s LP SB (which BTW even if you guessed it out right he could still sometimes block if you didn’t jump fast enough) to the recovery frames of SPD and TE, both which can be punished with neutral jumps and Seth will eventually use one of them next to you? Hell even mashing reversals in Vanilla then FADC into ultra would blow him up bad.
I’d like to see one match where TE is used as much as Guile’s LP SB, I think there’s a very good reason for that. Risk/Reward and how punishable the move is considering the health of the character throwing it out.
I had no idea Guile’s Sonic Boom made him stand still, couldn’t be cancelled, started up in 21f, whiffed if the opponent was in the air, was unsafe on block at long range, and forced him to stand there for 40+ frames if they weren’t in range.
No, no I’m not comparing the moves. You said those moves can be punished with a guess, my point is pretty much everything can be punished with a guess. Just because you can guess and punish a TE doesn’t mean anything. If you have to guess to punish something then it’s pretty good; anytime you make someone guess you’re at advantage.
Even on a guess almost nothing punishes Sonic Boom though, at least not for nearly as much damage as those two moves that give you a free full jump-in combo.
True, but he can now take a couple of punches and still survive because his health is 800 and he got a very good boost in his stun to 900 + everyone else hit a lot less than they did in Vanilla.
750 health/stun was way too low and add to that some of the ridiculous damage characters did in vanilla, I just don’t see how some people can still think of him being #1 or #2 in Vanilla SF4, I’d never ever bet on Seth being the replacement of Sagat in the arcades rankings in Vanilla SF4, Sagat was just a solid ass character with insane damage, little risks compred to Seth’s game and with a lot more stamina (didn’t he have like 1100 health/stun? jeez!)