Sagat Improvement Thread

My local arcade has fortnightly tournaments. The winning prize is something along the lines of $80(guess with an expected deviation of 30%). That’s not a livelihood, but it’s still “serious”. Even getting top 8 at something like that requires a lot of time, money and effort. If you’re doing that, you better be taking it seriously.

Of course people should choose characters who match their playstyle. If you want to play balls to wall rushdown and you’re playing 3s, you should choose Yun, or Dudley, not Chun, but if you prefer a defensive footsie style, maybe Chun’s for you, but if there’s two characters who play similarly, but one is “better”, tournament players will pick the better one. It’s why you* see more Guile than Ken tournament players, it’s not that Ken is worse, or even as bad as Guile, it’s because most tournament players who started playing Ken, and liked his style, ended up switching to Akuma and Ryu, because they’re similar, yet have more tools.

High level players who use “low tier” characters, often do so because they believe the character is undervalued. JiBbo and Yeb think Gen is high tier. The serious tournament Chun players I’ve met believe she has the tools to go all the way. If they didn’t think that, they wouldn’t play her. If the other guys using Sagat, and you think your character doesn’t have the tools to go all the way, why would you intentionally give yourself a handicap? If other people are starting off with 3 wins, why shouldn’t you?

No. I’m not saying you need to choose these characters to win. Tournament results very much show otherwise. I’m not even saying it’s a huge advantage, it’s often a quite small advantage, but what I’m saying the low tier hero sentiment is a lot rarer among serious tournament players. They people are playing to win, when they sit down at a money match or a tournament match, they’re there to win, they’re going to choose the tools they think give them the biggest advantage within the rules, no matter how small. To them, the character that’s the most enjoyable is the one that gives them the win. Not because a tier list on eventhubs or some dude on gamefaqs told them, but because they’ve played the game enough to know which character give them the best chance. Many tournament players do learn low tier characters, to know those matchups (because they’re rare), to have an ace in the hole if the character isn’t as bad as other people say, or just for fun & casuals, but in a tournament environment, they’re not going to pick Dan because it’s more honorable, or because it makes the win “mean more”, because that kind of low tier hero mindset with it’s romantic ideas of moral superiority just isn’t one that’s conductive to becoming a serious threat to those kinds of players.

Of course, if you play Dan in casuals, but pull out Ryu for tournies because you know he’s a better choice from experience, is that the same as some scrub who always plays Sagat even against his little sister because eventhubs told him he’s the best character in the game?

*okay, in my experiance. I have done no worldwide testing on this.

The quote you referred to about using Ryu or Sagat to win has less parallel value to “Those who don’t use them aren’t trying to win” (as the sentence you quoted never made that argument, only that using Ryu or Sagat in a competitive setting–if your goal is to win, and have no particular affiliation with any specific character–is advantageous) than your post does to trying to argue that Ryu and Sagat can fit no person’s playstyle due to their tier placement and strictly, only based on their tier placement.

In an almost unlimited amount of games to mention, there are always characters or teams who specialize in flexibility–a non-specified character that is designed to change with the flow of battle. Ryu is that character design, there are people who greatly enjoy playing characters who have to constantly switch up their own strategy at the drop of a dime to handle a new crisis.

Sagat doesn’t necessarily fit into this, I’d place him as a zoning character only in that I see him as being more comfortable the farther away he is from someone–Akuma for instance, is someone Sagat doesn’t really want that close to him (I would imagine).

If anything, Ryu fits just about everyone’s playstyle, he certainly fits mine and I play a very patient game… I don’t main him, but I’ve picked him up and it felt very natural to hone in on openings the way he does. A friend of mine plays extraordinarily aggressively and mains Ryu, drastically different playstyle and suits him just fine.

yeah, i know. just gotta get my shots in at you sagat fuckers whenever i can. haha

priceless man.

Also, I’m one of the few non sagat players who doesn’t think he is overpowered at all. He is tough but he always has been, it’s fucking sagat!

People complain too much. most of the time they lose because they suck.

for what its worth I hope capcom doesn’t fuck all the sagat players over in Super4.

hey guys im worried about sagods st. lk now being two hits, can some1 explain what this means for his game im guessing i cant do st. lk to ts anymore to keep people out :frowning:

So what? you still got 2000 other options for that.

One of the many iterations of SF2 did this, I think the difference between O.sagat and N.sagat was that O.sagat could cancel both hits on his st.lk whereas N.sagat could only cancel the first hit. This required N.sagat to be closer to the opponent in order to get the first hit to connect so he could special cancel. O.sagat got a free long range poke into TS.

Among all the other shit O.sagat had.

It’s actually…a pretty big deal. Now Sagat who already had subpar footsies is going to be even worse up close. Combine this with lower health and worse damage off TU and this man isn’t looking so top tier anymore.

Yeah…but it still has his shinanigan setups and combos, just like before. Taking away some strength just means it will take longer for Sagat to beat his opponent. Taking away health makes it so after an opponent gets all the trouble of getting in to Sagat and doing damage on him counts…and now Sagat players after have to watch there health now because of it…it evens out.

But I never cared if Sagat had high strength, high health, or insane range(Ah…can’t forget his "why-the-hell-does-he-have-Kara-throws-in-there!)…I just kinda wanted him to be slower than he is now. I just think it is unfair “in-a-way” to nerf a character, that’s all.

Sagat can’t kara throw. And he is plenty slow actually. Kara knee is only good if you hit them with it blocked or not and it must be perfectly spaced or if you just threw them and you wanna close in. Kara TU is great for space control. But if your spacing is off on a kara knee or Kara TU you eat huge damage. There is a reason you don’t see Sagats whore it all day in japanese vids. Good players know how to bait and punish that shit.

His health is meant to balance out the fact that he can’t really dictate the flow of the match up close. Having bad mobility with average health is not a good mix nor will it ever be. It’s ok though I have already resigned myself to the fact that he will probably suck.

so… no1 knows how its exactly gonna work? cuz if it turned out like close st. mk it would be pretty useless

IMO all they really had to do was nerf his TK (less safe/break the trap, or more startup so it can be stuffed easily like SK), nerf either his overall damage OR his hp, and probably nerf his s.hk a bit. Either make it 7 or 8 frame startup or give it WAY more recovery and maybe make it 1 hit idk its just way too good at keeping out characters that rely on pokes since it beats most of their pokes. Not to mention at about the same range Sagat can just randomly lk TK and 50/50 you for 1/4 your life.

I don’t know why you’d say Sagat is “even worse” up cloes (implying hes bad) when he can do shit like this (very beginning- Mago vs Kindevu): [media=youtube]jdDNIUTFwG0[/media]

That rush down is way too good for a character like Sagat. Also if you watch the end of the round…look how high TK hits! Ridiculous. Mago throws out it randomly bc its safe.

That’s vs fat chars. Other chars can just do a hitbox reducing move on reaction and then punish. By worse up close I was really just talking about footsies though. In terms of raw rushdown Sagat is easily one of the best and I don’t think anyone will dispute this.

nope, I hate getting rushed by him. Gouken can’t do a damn thing…

Capcom knows that you’re right and as a direct result have decided to provide Dhalsim with 1200 stamina in SSF4.

That is the worst thing for Gouken, other than a knockdown by Gief.

Reducing his health is actually a pretty harsh nerf IMO, i never thought it’d be that harsh. I can’t imagine why people would still want his TK to be less safe even after that

Who ever made the eye for Juri should make one for Sagat.

Dhalsim has a really good escape option though that’s relatively safe and an amazing backdash. Also his zoning is top notch and overall the best in the game. That said he actually does have some mobility going on with IAT.

Sagat also has good escape options. He also has a good backdash. His zoning is also top notch. He also has mobility going on with kara specials.