Haha… you El Fuerte players.
El Fuerte got on my nerves. Obnoxious character to look at and listen to, even more so to play against. Still, I never fought a Fuerte I couldn’t beat, though the best Fuerte in Taiwan, GiPie, had long retired from SF4 by the time I started to seriously get into the game.
I almost exclusively mained Rose (dabbled with Fei but he was just too boring for me) for my SF4 “career”. Played an “honest” character in a “dishonest” game. Now I figure, why not do the opposite and play a “dishonest” character in an “honest” game? I’m having a blast so far.
Never touched Fuerte. I played Hakan when I use to play SFIV. I’m embracing the newfound hate for Mika.
this whole talk is interesting, and actually my friend said one of the best SFIII alex players unretired and is playing Mika now.
But at the same time, it seems like Mika is the “grappler” of choice in this game - people don’t like gief(Even SFIV Gief mains aren’t playing gief, look at the usage chart I posted earlier + Ehubs tier listing) and while there’s lots of command grabbers, that limits your options in terms of ‘grapplers’ if no one is gonna play gief.
PS: Fuerte is awesome, even before it was revealed he was a Mika fan. And sounded awesome. I just don’t think I could play him
I certainly feel like Mika, Gief, Laura, and Birdie are correctly categorized though - they’re all different facets or takes on the grappler base-line. Hawk always felt like ST Zangief to me - no slight, but the delta between the two was much more narrow than what we now have between those 4.
Mika is my first grappler.
First serious one for me. I only ever had a pocket Zangief.
I hate the fact that cr. MP having airborne frames is a liability against bad Zangief players. -_-
I actually think calling Birdie a grappler is a mischaracterization. To my mind, Birdie is far more of a footsies/zoning character - just look at those normals! Unlike Zangief or R. Mika, who really, really want to be right next to you, I think Birdie is actually at his most comfortable when he’s got you just outside of his s.mk range. He can harass you with long ranged pokes, reaction anti-air with c.mp (this might well be the best 1 button anti-air in the game), and use his Bull Revenger to suddenly advance on people who start to hesitate and block. It’s true he has a command throw, but I really don’t think his playstyle is like a grappler at all - it’s just another tool for him to use in close. Like, Necalli and Vega have command throws, and they’re DEFINITELY not grapplers. A command throw does not a grappler make.
To me, Laura is far more of a grappler than Birdie. Get in close, frame trap into scary CH situations, and start command throwing when they hold d/b. Her fireball is actually an amazing compliment to her pressure game, too.
I usually play grapplers in fighting games. I’ve got a long history of playing 'Gief in the SF series, but I’m also a long (long) time 3D fighting game player (if you want to bring out my true inner FG nerd, ask me about Virtua Fighter sometime, aka the best FG series ever). I tend to gravitate towards the “big guy/gal” characters in games. I usually play one of them, and then have one or two other characters with faster, more active and movement intensive playstyles. The reason I like big characters/grapplers is because they reward you the most for having “the read”. A character like Nash can chip away at you from a distance, dash in and out, land a combo or two, and slowly wear you down. Not a bad playstyle, and actually very solid because you have enough tools to adapt your strategy depending on the game-state/match-up. A character like R. Mika, on the other hand, is more of a “guess wrong twice and you’re dead” kind of character.
@b4k4 with all that overwhelming Mika knowledge I see you posting you should make an Evernote or something :o
I almost think it’s odd that Birdie has a command throw… I wonder if he has the melee one only because he has a few ranged ones.
SFV is Command throw, the game.
There’s more ppl who have them then don’t.
My first grappler was She-Hulk in Mahvel. That’s why I like Mika and Laura now.
My first grappler was Iron Tager in Blazblue: Calamity Trigger. Yeah…Mika is much, much better. -_-
Tager wasn’t my first grappler (that would be Accent Core Potemkin) but BBCT was my first serious fighting game. Talk about learning the hard way.
Goddamn the last three posts in this thread made me feel old.
Thanks 
Aw, thanks @Tensho
Honestly, I’ve been wrong about more than a few things, but everyone working together in the forum to build tech has been a really good community effort, and I always try to come back and correct any errors that I’ve made (definitely a non-zero number).
I’ve been a strategy mod on a number of different FG forums in the past, so trying to find and consolidate this type of info is a bit of second nature at this point.
I use Evernote occasionally for my own purposes, keeping notes and random musings or whatnot, but I hadn’t thought about using it as a public knowledge base. Is that a function available? To create a document, lock it from being edited, and make it public like a Google doc? I might consider doing that!
Really I should be less lazy and start making videos of my content. I even have a capture card, I just hate editing stuff! I’m old-school, yo. Message boards for life!
Well, I play Mika because I played Rock in Soul Calibur (the soul still burns). Nothing more to be said.
I got carried to gold league with Bison, after that i just messed around with the roster.
I tried graplers for the most part, gief is really, really fun to play but i don’t like Wall-tank char in fighting games (hope Alex will not have a slow movement speed like gief), plus i am really terrible with the red cyclone.
Then, played with mika, and she has charisma, dedication and a really good gameplay. Started to play her, from gold back to silver but i don’t mind since i love learning new characters.
Really, more i play with characters more i think capcom did a great job with the roster. Really happy with Mika now.
I’ve played Mika since the beginning and I’m doing pretty good so far, 4600 ranking atm.
She really isn’t that good. She’s absolutely playable and you can win with her, but it’d be bizarre for her to be nerfed, I would put her in the bottom half of the bottom tier frankly. Tiers are tight in this game but what in gods name would you nerf about Mika? She has nothing other than her stupid 50/50 knockdowns that are not good enough to make up for her normals and her god awful neutral. God forbid you have a v reversal that shuts her down too on her f+fp because it has so many frames of animation.
Mika quite frankly sucks. Does that mean you can’t bully people with her anyway? We all know you can. But it’s a slight uphill battle to do so.
Not much else to say.
Mika can do some dumb stuff up close but she’s nowhere near broken. This game overall is pretty balanced. Against people that know what they’re doing, Mika has a terrible time getting in and once she’s in she has to get momentum going. Wrong reads/guesses will lead to the opponent getting away and Mika has to start all over again which most likely requires taking a lot of risks.