Like most of you I have been trying to figure out the best way to play sagat after the nerfs. From all the changes he received I came to one conclusion. He is very much like his SFxT incarnation. Pure zoning doesn’t work that well. Instead think of your tiger shots as an extension of your footsies. Use them to poke at people, pressure, annoy and draw out a response. Let your opponent destroy themselves.
Your midrange game should be smart tiger knees and focus attack. TK forces stand so it will eat and punish virtually any bad button press from your opponent. St.mk is a strong counter poke. St.lk has range and speed but no damage. Good for pissing people off. I wad a fan of low step kick, but with reduced pushback on block I’m not so sure about it anymore. Low fierce is decent. Speed, range and damage are all solid.
Your goal should be to build up bar. When you go into round 2 you should have 2 bars MINIMUM. Sagat doesn’t get a lot of mileage out of red focus but so what? He already has hard hitting meter burning combos thanks to angry charge. I can’t stress enough how much f a tigergod sagat is with meter. Ex tu juggle to ultra 1. Super to ultra 2 works anywhere just use mk version of super. Super to ultra 1 in the corner. Ex shot to ultra 2. There is more of course. Sagat NEEDS his meter. Conserve it well and use it wisely.
Beyond building bar, you need to be comboing into tiger knee for the corner carry. Once sagat has his adversary cornered he is in control. Now that his ultras are fixed it’s imperative that you don’t let opponents out easy once you corner them.
As far as bad matches go, sagat has 2 hard counters. Juri and Dudley. If you lose to them, meh shit happens. If you lose to ANYONE ELSE ITS PROBABLY JUST YOUR SKILL LEVEL. You like sagat? Cool. Does sagat make excuses when he loses? Exactly. Hit the lab, train and stop sucking. Bonchan showed dedication and skill pays off.
Another thing about his hard matches. They almost ALL have the same weakness. Terrible wake-up. Knock them down and wreck them.
Don’t sweat your losses. Sagat is mid tier. It is what it is. Play, learn, grow.
Agreed. I’d put Sagat upper mid tier still, even if his nerfs were completely unnecessary. TK is still really valuable, as is his focus and certain normals.
I would say though I wouldn’t class Duds as hard counter. He is a nightmare up close with frame traps but there are ways to stop him getting in. Ie. neutral MK and stand MK. His jump in can also be beat clean by a very late TU.
I have a different take on Sagat, and somewhat disagree and agree with your points made.
As for damage, you have to be more creative with your Sagat punishes. It takes a lot more skill now than it did before. For example, his go to punish should be Cl.Mp or Cr.mp into TIGER KNEE not FB into cr.lp Hk.TK.
Or Cl.mk into low Ts FADC Cl.ml cr.lp TU. Does a shit ton of Damage. It takes 2 one frame links, but it can be learned. If you have a custom stick that has the select button near the lp it helps immensely(Plink)
Aside from myself and two other Sagat’s I know, I don’t see anyone doing these combos, they’re too busy playing the old Sagat.
Without those two combo’s, Sagat’s damage is mediocre without Ultra 1.
This Sagat relies on counter hits more so than other versions. You gotta memorize what characters you can cr.mp x2 into HkTK. Or what characters cr.mp into cr.mk is better etc.
I disagree with the match-ups overall. I agree with Juri and Dudley being his toughest match-ups, but I add ken to that list as well. My problem with his ‘bad’ match-ups is just getting annoyed with the design of the game. He now can’t play against other zoning characters the way he did before and his risk vs reward isn’t as good as other characters IMO.
Overall though, I still rank him a solid B. If your character has good normals and an invincible DP, you can overcome everything and sagat has both IMO.
It’s super important. Check the damage difference for yourself in the training room. He hits over 300 with the TK into fadc, he can’t hit over 300 with any other 2 meter combo(without jumping or ultra) if I recall correctly.
Ken as a character does not invalidate Sagat. He’s just tough to fight so I don’t consider him a counter. I dont think…yeah im gonna lose when I fight Ken. I just know I have to be perfect. When I fight Juri I know even if im perfect I will still probably lose.
Also you didnt disagree because I didnt say Ken was easy. lol.
Sagats Super is actually awesome and the things it can punish because of it’s insane start up, it’s just a monumental waste of meter, that and you might let a knee string slip and burn your house down.
Yea lk version starts up in 1 frame right? So technically it can punish Bisons lk scissors right? That’s pretty ridiculous.
I also just checked the damage on super to Ultra 2 and its only 60 less damage than Gens vaunted 2012 super to Ultra
Edit: also Ryu’s shinku hadoken is considered one of the better supers in the game but it only does 300 damage lol.
I suppose Sagat needs his meter more than most characters who actually use their supers for his neutral game to keep himself out of the corner and to make dp’s safe.