Ill be surprise if i see them winning a set against a good ryu. Supposedly gief got faster, so what, everybody got faster too so its the same BS. Mk is faster but still unsafe, c.hk is faster but still unsafe. But lets give the benefit of the doubt to the high level zangief. Hopefully they proof me wrong.
Can’t wait to get my copy of Super this week. On paper, Gief sounds bad. Lowered damage on the two BnB things of the SPD and the GH usage. I’m fine with the lariat thing. I’ll admit, I lazied it sometimes on Abel matches for chip damage (don’t act like you didn’t!). Sounds like I shouldn’t get anyone sending me hatemail anymore for when I win. Noobs complained about Gief getting an auto-win, but anyone who’s dropped more than 5mins on him would know the truth. NO MORE EXCUSES. But people will still bitch, so c’est la vie.
On that note, I’ll still bitch about the Sagat match. His options are still too good to keep Gief at bay. I can’t wait to find out though!
Honestly that’s going to be a while from now. I mean, super doesn’t come out in the arcade until i think after the summer…if you are waiting on the japanese giefs. But i want to see how the US gief’ s do… people like Jan, IFC ZANGIEF/ VEGITA X , … i personally don’t know any other high level zangief players from the US, besides those two so(ULTRADAVID but he doesn’t play in tourny’s anymore :-C ), hopefully they will show us something
i have no problems with most of the nerfs. gief is supposed to be an uphill battle, and up until vanilla he pretty much always has been. SF4 gave him a move that was tough to punish for only noobs and because of that gief gets massive disrespect and i get mostly hatemail even though i hardly touch lariat. i’m still gonna main him, because there is nothing like getting in after taking a barrage of projectiles and pokes and still wrecking people. that’s the allure of the character and if they wanted him to be “more like gief” they should make SPD actually hurt. i’m ok with worthless non-ex hand and worthless RBG, because he (in vanilla anyway) resembled the alpha gief to me and godly CC aside, he was tough to use there too. so for those abandoning gief i feel sad. fairweather giefs just don’t get it.
So true man, i shed a tear for all of my gief brethren that’s abandoing him for someone else but i guess it’s for the best. But in anyother sf at least rbg was fucking usable and regular green hand actually had priority but in this one … they gave me the lariat which was so godly they said fuck rbg and reg gh …we can do what we want to gief at any point because we are capcom but oh you have to take the good with tthe bad
Truth here, while people are complaining about all these Gief nerfs we do all forget how hard Gief was to use in EVERY game except for SF4. SF4 Gief was a rediculous buff IMO. In older SF it was tough work for me to even win against lower upper class competition and now all of a sudden I can just destroy people. It was a fun year having a rediculous Gief but now when you look at the nerfs they made to him, he is still far better than he ever was minus RGB and Ghand. Ghand can be forgiven because the EX version is great. Lairat went back to how it used to be but he can still cr.Lairat which I think is godly. No excuse for RGB being how it is though…
All in all, a nerfed SSF4 Gief is still a buffed Gief for people that have been with Gief for the long haul.
Imo Gief’s best positive changes are the nerfs to Sagat, Ryu, Akuma, and Seth. And I don’t really see any of the new characters being bad matchups for him.
I don’t think his footsies are better, I’ve been testing all of them. St mk is still a free punish for characters with horizontal-moving reversals, even on hit. Cr. mk is still punishable on block. Sweep and down-toward+rh are still very punishable on block. Cr. fierce is still too slow (which is a shame because it’s always had a great hitbox). This sucks, I was really hoping for better footsies considering his damage nerfs.
But again, all of Gief’s matchups minus Blanka got nerfed worse than Gief did, and Blanka didn’t get any buffs that are relevant for his matchup v Gief. I can see characters like Chun who were on the cusp of beating Gief before getting buffed turning into bad matchups, but still not as bad as 4 Sagat. So I can see him being a little more tournament-worthy just cause Sagat, Seth, Akuma, and Ryu aren’t gonna be such mountains to climb (although Sagat and Seth at least probably still beat him).
Imo Gief will be what he was in 4: a good character with a shot at winning tournaments but who rarely actually gets #1.
THANKS FOR YOUR INPUT!!!
I have seen your old st strategy guides and loved them. But really, i do think that gief’s normals in the previous st was so fucking god-like. For example, st. mk was fucking insane vs shotos, st. hk beats almost all jumps from a distance, st. lp was even a good anti air vs neutral jumps. Gief’s cr. hp was fucking god like also vs people like vega, bison, sim, chun and it was was a god like tick in spd in the corner. I mean, even though gief in sf4 is awesome, but gief in previous sf versions had more practical uses for everything that he had, for example if cammy did a hk cannon spike rbg would grab that bitch for free and rbg at certain distance could rock sim’s world. I mean even his cr.hk was beast mode, i mean, if bison did a pysho crusho block and do cr.hk, if sim teleported walk and cr. hk no fucking problem but in this one he’s solid but there’s almost no uses for some of his normals which is really sad… do you feel the same ?
Gief is fine the allure of him is getting in and starting your mixups still hasoption selects and crouch ppp lariat seems just as good. Ex gh combos were icing on the cake. QQ
A lot of people have stated that Gief deserved some nerfs, but I have 2 questions for those people… Why didn’t Balrog get nerfed? and Why did Chun Li get buffed? Both characters are better, on the whole, then Gief. And yet Gief got hit pretty hard while Chun Li got a new rape sauce ultra and no nerfs. Balrog is A tier and they hardly touched him…
I’ll answer my own questions… bad players complained about Gief. 
Chuns ultra is ok damage is scaled to shit when juggled off of ex legs if used as an anti air she has to do it very early and read the other person if shepulls it out late they can block if it’s an empty jump in or most pokes knock her out of it. Amazing chip dmg though.
I personally think Gief was a better character overall than Chun or Rog. Granted Rog especially these days could be considered a very high mid character but I’d still overall place Gief above him. Sure, Chun and Rog probably had a few less shit matchups than Gief did but they weren’t really gods in the tournament scene either like Ryu, Ken and Akuma were. They had their own issues including Chun having low health in a game where characters like Rufus and Viper can rape your life on a dime and being free on wake up. Not to mention Rog not having a necessarily huge comeback potential unless the opponent makes a big mistake. I think Gief having 1200 health along with his huge damage output allowed him to survive well despite having matchups that weren’t particularly in his favor. Plus Gief was one of the few characters that actually beat Rog which is a huge matchup to have in your favor in Vanilla.
IMO Chun especially needed the buffs that she got because she is still mostly free on wake up even with the new ultra. df+LK and Ultra 2 did for her what she needed which was a reliable anti air that wasn’t hit box to hit box specific. She’s still dead if she gets knocked down though.
Geez clutch, i’ve seen you post and i always thought you were good. This is total bs man. Gief has the advantage against both characters and is stronger, tierwise. This just aint ok man. Oki beats chun (lk-os-hand to poke) and mp and piledrives + oki against balrog. Geez man. Gief is still strong, he was godly in 4. Sagat ryu and akuma made him not toptier. Not ok man.
Having an adv. in one single match up has nothing to do with being higher tier. Chun and Rog have proven themselves time and time again as all around better characters match up wise. You can’t argue with that. And Capcom didn’t just try to balance they also tried to make it easier on casual players who like uppercuts and sweeps. And everyone knows that Zangief owns casual players.
Ken is good in tournaments… O.o
Chun and Rog have both done much better in big tournaments than Zangief… and Ken. lol
These are facts, not opinions.
double post
I just got my hands on the game. All I have to say is… wow. The new jump is pretty retarded. And the screen seems all messed up to me. Like I’m missing part of the outside of the screen. Everything seems more zoomed in and bigger. Zangief’s size seems all weird like somehow, he seems smaller and thinner. Anyone else have the screen problem? The screen size is definitely not right. I’m using a 42" wide screen right now and it looked fine on SF4. Now it looks like I’m missing an inch of screen off of each side. And I really need the new frame data on the moves. cr.lk seems like a frame slower or something. I can still hit the cr.lk links but I’m missing it a lot more now. I definitely think it’s slower. I have no idea why in the world they would do that. WHY DID THEY CHANGE THE JUMP??? Why did they mess with cr.lk!!! UGH! Oh well, I plan on getting a new main anyways. Seems kind of a waste with 35 characters and I’m just playing 1 guy.
Imo the real reason Gief got nerfed is that they were afraid of the casual fans who hated him. Clearly at higher levels of the game, characters like Sagat, Akuma, Ryu, Rufus, and Rog were all better, and you could see that obviously not only in tournaments results but in the characters who the top players chose to use. So why nerf Gief and not Rog? If you and your friends aren’t great, you’re not worried about Rog… but you are about Zangief.
I couldn’t have said it better myself that’s why we need you in these forums bro!!!1
Like i said in my previous post, Akuma and Sagat made Gief place lower in tournaments. Why you ask? Because there is always a at least a few good ak/sa going far, and eventually gief has to face them, and with the old matchups being as abysmal as they were… Now you go; “dude, they had bad matchups against the godtier too”. Yeah, they did, that is why the gods are gods, still the general matchups for chars like rog(almost as good as gief) and chun(a bit weaker than gief and rog and probably intended to be strong) were a bit more even. Did rog even get buffed? his new ultra is ass.
Looking at it now: Gief is still strong, so he lost a bit of damage… He still does enough damage for you to want to get away. As a bonus, both Akuma and Sagat have been nerfed, quite alot too(okay, so Sagat is still broken). Gief will remain strong, U2 will add strong(er) okizeme against shoryuken.
played the game for a few hours giefs air game is pretty meh (my usual stratagy with sagat dosent work that well anymore) ive been trading alot with larriet i think his footsies are alot better…other then jump ins i think hes pretty much the same guy we know and love.