Sagat Improvement Thread

[n0thingman]

to trag-
well it looks like we can agree to agree—

[FoutsKazuya]

Where the hell are Ryu and Gouki’s weaknesses Capcom…you know what? Not even gonna go down this road again lol.

Oh come on. the obvious answer is the 2nd lowest stamina. As for Ryu, yeah he didn’t have any weaknesses in Vanilla, but being slightly more vulnerable on wake-up due to reduced priority on SRK is a start.

[MajenX]

I can make blanket statements too: “You sound like someone that has no idea what he is talking about!”

Seriously, If your opening statement is “you sound like someone who theory fights more than he has played the game” then you really should just stop posting altogether.

These things are emphasized for a reason. The things emphasized were the things removed. The things emphasized were the things that the developers felt made Sagat too good and needed to be removed.

Don’t assume I’m underestimating anything based on membership status. You brought that up, not me. If that’s something that weighs on your conscience, you should deal with it. Don’t try to twist your lack of self-confidence in your own ability/experience with how I perceive you.

Maybe you think so… but quite a lot of people DID… including the developers. Guess what? They made some adjustments.

It’s patronizing because you fail to see basic logic.

Here is some more logic for you. Sagat’s power is the sum of all his parts. If the sum of Sagat’s power is 10, let’s say his parts are 3, 4, 2, 1. If you remove 2 and 3, Sagat’s sum is now 5. If you add a 4, Sagat’s sum is now 9. Very close to 10… but not quite there. That added 4 is greater than each of the two removed numbers individually, but not quite as strong as both of them combined.

Sagat was a powerhouse because of the sum of his parts… not any specific part by itself. Each part, in conjunction with each other, is what made Sagat so good. LK cancel, trade/ultra, high stun, high overall damage, kara f+LK, jump MP, high-damage FADC ultra, TK pressure… and numerous other great tools. If Sagat had just one of them, he wouldn’t be good. With all of them, he was ridiculous. Capcom has purposely nerfed a couple of the things so Sagat can still be played similarly while requiring a bit more skill and technique.

So you are agreeing with me, and then in the next sentence you are saying I make no sense. Interesting. Also, you can play word games all day, but the fact of the matter is, lk cancel and trade/ultra as we know it in SF4, are no longer in the game. Yes, you CAN cancel stand LK (close hit). Yes, you CAN trade ultra in some cases… but the point is, it does not work the same.

I’m glad you think that adding “I think I know more about SF4 Sagat then you TBH” somehow adds any validity to your statement. BTW, it doesn’t.

I challenge you to name a first-edition SF that is as balanced as SF4. Sure, it is absolutely not equally balanced, but the amount of characters that are competitive is pretty solid compared to every other first-edition SF ever released. WW, SSF2, A1, SF3, CVS1 (Capcom engine, Capcom designed). Not a single one of these games is even remotely close to the balance in SF4. It is common knowledge that SF4 is Capcom’s best first-attempt ever. In fact, name ANY first edition of a highly competitive fighting game that has a considerable scene, that is as close. HF is considered one of the most balanced SF’s ever, and it is a THIRD edition… and that doesn’t even count all the arcade revisions that WW and CE went through first.

As for Gen and Rose, who cares? Capcom never said they wanted to make the game 100% equal. They simply wanted to compress the tiers. Simply making Sagat/Akuma/Ryu slightly weaker already compresses the tiers a bit. Making sure Gen/Rose don’t fall below the competitiveness of the worst character in SF4 also keeps that goal alive. It doesn’t matter if they go from 5th worst to 4th worse. If the worst character is still as effective (or even more so with new tweaks) than they were in SF4, then the tiers are compressed. Mission accomplished.

Semantics. Again, YOU don’t understand that a system change has been made so that all of the variants of trade/ultra are no longer the same. Yes, you can still trade/ultra in some cases, but it is clearly the same. In that regard, his old tool is gone.

You really don’t understand logic. There are multiple working parts here. First of all, if c.MP TK, st.LP TK were as good or better in SF4, you would see them used as much or more often than f.LK TK. But they aren’t, and they weren’t. Because he lost his best option, now players will have to use options that are “almost as good”. Almost as good is another way to say “not as good”. Stand LK cancel allowed Sagat to poke/pressure/punish. He lost one of his major (only) real footsie tool. Sagat built meter through his zoning, you are correct, and stand LK cancel was a tool in that. Putting opponents in relatively safe pressure strings, pushing them out of range so he could go back to zoning with FBs and stand HKs, these were mostly done with stand LK cancel.

So, now Sagat has lost that tool… meaning he has less effective footsies, less effective pressure strings, and getting into the proper zoning range is a bit harder. Why? All because of the change to far LK cancel. There is more to the LK change than what it appears. It has a resonating effect on how Sagat will be played. The developers new this, and this is why they made that change instead of changing something else.

Also, I never alluded to Sagat being meter starved all the time. Simply that it will happen more often. Think about this logically. With all of the examples mentioned above, it’s going to be a bit harder to get into the proper zoning range. He won’t have the same types of pressure strings. He won’t be able to play footsies quite as well. ALL of these things helped Sagat build meter. These are major reasons why Sagat had an abundance of meter. Now, with those gone, and the fact that he has to USE more meter to get similar damage, he’s going to get meter-starved more often than before. Nowhere do I say it’s going to be all the time, but it’s common logic. No one has full meter all the time. Everyone runs out of it once in a while. The fact that Sagat cannot build it as fast, and the fact that he has to USE it to get similar damage means hes going to have less, and go through it faster. Thus, it will be more common to see him run out. That’s it.

See, this is where you solidify your inexperience. I never brought up my “position”. I never discredited you because you aren’t a premium member, or an admin, or an 01’er. I’m simply pointing out where you are wrong, and how you fail to see that there are more to changes than just what you see on the surface.

… also, you can use the “you write too much” approach all you want, but the fact is, I put in real work here. I don’t just say “I think I know more than you”. I put it out there and explain why.

… and it’s good that he has that. It wasn’t about saying all the new stuff he has. It was that even though he got new things, they were not to make him BETTER than SF4, it was to make him remain a top-level competitive character because the main things they tweaked took him out of serious contention.

Close HK cancel is great for damage, but in terms of effectiveness, it’s nowhere near what far stand LK cancel is. Definitely good for him though. Solid damaging option instead of just c.MK + DP. Plus, with Scar cancels, hes’ going to have some nice variety.

The damage off stand LK cancel wasn’t what the thing that made it so good. It was how versatile it was, what it led into, and how it allowed Sagat to poke/zone/pressure while gaining meter in close. Every blocked frame-trap was more meter. Now he lost some (not all) of that effectiveness and requires meter usage for close to SF4 damage. He still has great tools.

You are absolutely right. He has some insane potential now with Scar, but you have to take the good with the bad. Because he lost such a simple little cancel, his footsie range game is changed, and this changes the frequency of how often he can go from 1-char distance to point blank. If people aren’t scared of pushing Sagat away at 1-char distance because he can no longer LK -> FB/EX, then he’s going to be pushed away more often.

Again, I agree with you. The development goal, as stated many times, was to compress the tiers. Not make everyone exactly equal. There’s nothing wrong with top char remaining top char. What matters is the difference between not only him and the top 5, but him and the entire case. If he is slightly less effective against the rest of the cast, but still better than everyone else, the game is just that much closer to being “balanced” (in as loose a term as can be applied here).

Without the threat of being punished/interrupted/zoned/pressured (fib, ex, tk) at 1-char distance, and without the ability to 50% (or more) off any potential trade, Sagat loses quite a bit of his threatening presence at certain ranges. It becomes MUCH safer to throw out normals to stuff him and keep him more on defense. Part of the reason he was so ruthless was that he could stay on offense so easily in many cases while building meter because of those 2 threats. Obviously he had more tools… but the two that made him super scary were removed for a reason. Take a look at Sagat vs Akuma, Ryu, Rufus, Balrog, and some of the other characters close to top. Watch how many times stand LK is used as either a pushback (combined with FB or EX), or pressure starter (with TK). It’s a ripple effect that changes how he plays. It’s easy to say it wasn’t that big of a deal until it’s gone.

Actually, you didn’t rest anything. You didn’t fully read what was said… but you tried to play it off as some kind of support for your argument anyway.

*2/far lk cancel wasnt “that” strong in sf4 as it wouldnt combo max range and wasnt really effective vs chars like ryu *

As mentioned, it was strong against chars that weren’t in the top. That tool is one of the things that expanded the tiers (moving Sagat away from the majority of the cast… not the top 4 or 5)… and by removing it, it allowed the LOWER tier characters a better chance to compete. Stand LK cancel against some of the lower tiers was just a show stopper. It wasn’t so bad against the top because they had ways around it… other characters did not. Hence, why it was removed… to allow more characters to compete.

5/Trade to ultra are not gone at all , same with trade into fwd rh

We’ve know that a variation of trade ultra has been in since the very first location test. It just doesn’t work entirely the same way. Not like this hasn’t already been said about 5 times by now.

holy shit I never knew someone could care so much about Sagat…

[il0veb00ty]

holy shit I never knew someone could care so much about Sagat…

Play him for a day and see how much hate mail you get… Most of SF4 cares about him one way or another.

[FoutsKazuya]

Play him for a day and see how much hate mail you get… Most of SF4 cares about him one way or another.

Winning by Trade > Ultra deserved hatemail. Other than that, nah.

[ionix]

I’ll never understand the mentality of loving low tier for the sake of a character being low tier. I picked up Sagat because with other characters I always felt at a disadvantage. I mean I am bad enough as it is, why handicap myself even more by picking a character that I exacerbates my shortcomings. Play to win, win anyway you can and make no apologies. If you don’t get hatemail you are doing it wrong.

I got way more hatemail as dhalsim anyways, usually from jump back and forward ryu and ken that I would knee and standing fierce all day: “fuk u pussy. all u do is run faget!”

[Spirit]

So after playing Super Street Fighter Sagat, I can say honestly Im enjoying playing as Super Sagat than Vanilla Sagat, for one Super Sagat can actually rush down more effectively and his zoning is still as good as it was in vanilla, angry scar really changes his whole strategy and game, I landed a jump in fierce to cr strong to angry scar to cr jab to ex tu, and Ryus life when down nearly 35% from that one jump in. Also ultra 2 Tiger cannon is excellent in certain match ups, vs Sagat tiger cannon is very good punish any tiger shot mid screen, Ibuki when she does air kunai you can punish with ex high er and tiger cannon full screen. Stand short has surprisingly good range into tiger shot than I first thought, although its better for all Sagat player to input the tiger shot as a option select rather than react to the st short being able to combo. Honestly angry scar is almost too good, I was able to react angry scar to aa tu on a gen jump in, as for the Honda match up, I can say its almost like ST now, high tigers have faster recovery, than low tigers, you will still get aa tu on Honda on reaction, roundhouse kara tu will still work on fierce headbutt, if Honda does jump fierce neutral after high tiger if in range roundhouse will hit him out of the air. Hakan and Zangief will have terrible match up against Sagat, hakans jump is like boxer in ST jump very low to the ground, so he will struggle a bit against Sagats zoning. As for Dudley if he gets in he will do alot of damage but not as bad as boxers mindless jabbing looking for hit confirm, he does have some good move like dash under but even that has a bit of recovery after, however will get him face to face. Juri vs Sagat only played one match of this, and her dive kick off the wall is pretty good counter to bad placed low tiger shot, but after high tiger you can react TU to it, however for some reason ex dive traded, I dont know why, maybe I did jab tu but yeh it traded. As for trades, the most sagat can get after trade is toward roundhouse ultra (both ultras), the least he can get is towards roundhouse, tiger knee, tiger shot, U2 connected alot without need for towards roundhouse after trade, perhaps due to hit box. The ryu match is slighty in Sagats favour I think, his super is been nerf a bit mainly due to less fireball set ups for it, the ryu has to react to your tiger shot with hadoken and not hadoken tiger shot super. Cody deals decent damage but he has the same problem as most grapplers, he needs to get close to do any of his damage, so I think its safe to say practise your zoning and youll do good as Super Sagat. Stand short ts was almost impossible to sa through, and st short tk is good for mind game/ mix up but its better to hit confirm it as opposed to st short tk trap.

This is all after playing a day of playing casuals just my notes on Super Sagat.

[iloveu]

Its all still there. Sagat will be Sagat. Played with him for about 3 hours and everyone in the room was still complaining haha. Angry scar is fun. He is AAHHHHSSS compared to dudley my god. Guy is the funnest character in the game i think also.

[Smileymike101]

What do you mean by AAHHHHSSSS.Is he weaker than duds?

[iloveu]

AHHSSS a.k.a. ass. Sagat is still damn good but im a 3rd strike player so maybe im biased hahaha. Dudley is a very very good character. Normals are grrrrreaaaat like forsted flakes. Good makes ups, damage when it counts, good ultra. Solid character. Me and javits have played about 100 matches cody vs duds. Cody is mad good too. Its 10am here, we have been cracking it since about 2am. This is a sagat thread so why am I talking about other characters. Ill tell you this, Angry scar is not easy to use in combos and stuff. Sagat does take a little more talent to win with now. TK traps are a little harder to do because of the st lk cancel distance. He still has trade fr ultra and all that jazz. I am going to go deep in with guy soon. Any questions hit me with a pm about any character I have no problem answering questions for any character.

[EmblemLord]

I think Gat will end up more solid just from what I have seen. Like Duds might destroy certain chars way harder due to pure force and mix-ups, but due to his nature (he has to get in) he is going to have some hella bad match-ups. I think Gouki will beat duds down way worse then he does to Sagat. Chun and Ryu look like trouble for Duds as well. Duds still looks hella fun though.

[AlboShinobi]

AHHSSS a.k.a. ass. Sagat is still damn good but im a 3rd strike player so maybe im biased hahaha. Dudley is a very very good character. Normals are grrrrreaaaat like forsted flakes. Good makes ups, damage when it counts, good ultra. Solid character. Me and javits have played about 100 matches cody vs duds. Cody is mad good too. Its 10am here, we have been cracking it since about 2am. This is a sagat thread so why am I talking about other characters. Ill tell you this, Angry scar is not easy to use in combos and stuff. Sagat does take a little more talent to win with now. TK traps are a little harder to do because of the st lk cancel distance. He still has trade fr ultra and all that jazz. I am going to go deep in with guy soon. Any questions hit me with a pm about any character I have no problem answering questions for any character.

can you give us ur impression of guy in the guy forum? I really want to main him to, he’s a bad ass ninja but he looks a bit weak and limited from what I’ve seen.

[Smileymike101]

High tiger shot now does 65 damage, low tiger shot 60.Low tiger shot LOST IT’S JUGGLE.Ex tiger shot now does only 120 damage (pretty huge news I think). St.hk does 120, exactly the same as close medium kick lol.the second hit of far light kick does 10 damage, the worst damage to be found in the game, lol.Tiger knee does between 100-130 damage i think, which is pretty good, but the second hit only does 40-50.Also close HK and far Hk, although the same, are indeed 2 different normals.Anything further than. like cr.lk or MAYBE 2 cr.lk’s and you get the far, uncancelable version, although it fully hits.You cannot cancel far HK AT ALL.You can only cancel the first hit when it’s close.The first hit of HK does 80 damage.I think j.mp has gotten a tad bit less active frames.
F.HK is now 100 damage.Cr.mp does 70 damage and cr.mk if i rember corectly 65.Sweep does now 100 damage, but is comboable after Hk xx angry scar.Combos like cl.HK xx angry scar ~ Tu FADC F.HK Tiger destruction do a lot of damage, close to 600.Crouching HP does 110 damage.

[DevilJin_01]

LAWL. Sagat is officially C.Viper status. Gonna love putting him through the execution ringer.

[EmblemLord]

Meh, the nerfs don’t even affect my playing style. And the buffs help me. rofl.

Rush that shit down bitches.

[Smileymike101]

What buffs:))?

[EmblemLord]

AS is all I need. You are directly rewarding me for hitting my opponent. I’m all for that shit.

[Smileymike101]

Oh, yeas AS is pretty fucking cool.The only thing that really bugs me from the nerfs is far lk doing 10 dmg.Ok, it’s not cancelable, but 10 damage?That’s effin useless.

[EmblemLord]

Oh, no doubt. I’m not even gonna use it really. If someone whiffs a low forward in front of me I will probably just low fierce or something.

[Smileymike101]

Sweep looks very fast now.