You shouldn’t be trying that hard to get close. If you want to rush down, only do it if the opportunity is there and they let you. Otherwise, make them come to you. It isn’t that uncommon to win an entire match without a BnB combo. It isn’t uncommon to win a match without jumping in… In fact, you will probably win way more matches if you make a serious effort not to jump… ever
If you aren’t getting hate mail that you are throwing too many tiger shots, or punishing jump ins, you are playing sagat wrong
Well I understand now that I should be zoning more with Sagat than anything, but shouldn’t I use some attacks, whether it lead to a BnB or not, to stuff an enemy from afar besides just high/low TSs and f.hk? Maybe s.hp/c.hp?
Most of sagat’s normals are pretty good. His s MK is pretty good at stuffing almost anything, his S. HK has awesome range and hits half the cast crouching, his cr lp comes out really fast, his s lp has good range and can combo easily to s hk.
With that being said. sagat can be a poking machine the range that it is unsafe to be throwing tiger shots. but it tends to be based a lot on the opponents options. Learn the match ups in order to know when to throw out pokes. Example: Rose players love to do their gay little slide to grab throw setup, so when rose is at that range, I throw out a s mk and land a counter hit about half the time.
Now, since you said that you are new to sagat, your focus should not be on mastering your rushdown tactics with sagat. You should be trying to learn how to bait jump ins, and keep people out. Once you build that foundation, and you complement it with a strong close up game, you are a very dangerous force.
You can still get mash dped out of it by ending it with a TS. But emblem is right. If you start the combo slightly too far away, you will whiff the TU regularly on half the cast. You are better off learning the timing for the Lpxx hptu. PLUS, crlk to crlp is a true block string, which is another huge bonus of the combo.
Crouching Fierce is a good normal, but there are some significant disadvantages to using it instead of hit confirming a TU. Main one being that cr shorts on wakeup are awesome against half the cast and easily make sagat rape them. Second one being that Cr F doesn’t knock down the opponent, making it harder to continue your pressure. Third, is if you have ultra, learning the hit confirming allow you to TU FADC Ultra your opponent. Fourth, it could be good to do, but nothing is good to do all the time, so if you get predictable with it, you will eat a counter.
Those are the primary reasons I can think of off the top of my head. Cr fierce is a good poke, I guess, but no way is it better than his BnB.
cr.lk cr.lk cr.mp xx TU actually seems viable against characters with wide hitboxes, like Rufus, Honda, Balrog, Chun, etc. You don’t even have to be point blank to hit it against them. Sagat wants all the damage he can get, so I think it’s worth knowing who this higher damage (and stun) combo works against.
And cr.lk cr.lk cr.mp xx TU does 186dmg, which is pretty close to the 203dmg he gets in vanilla with cr.lk cr.lk cr.lp xx TU
cr.lk cr.lk cr.mp xx ExTU is 256dmg. Not bad for one bar.
If it was simply for more damage, you could do the combo cr lk s lp cr mp xx hp tu 196 damage… but you’d have to learn which cast members it works on when crouching… Or we should practice our 1 frame links so we can rock out cl mk cr lp hptu for 196 damage against the whole cast. or even more character specific, we should spend time practicing cl lp cl mp xx ex tu for 305 on the 1 character that works on when they are crouching. Any guesses on what character that works on???
Seth, get practicing for your character specific situation specific damage maximizing combos!!!
Wow, really? Way to take the idea to its logical extreme. Obviously you have to draw the line somewhere. If you can hit your 1 frame lp links consistently in matches, then go ahead. I was just suggesting that replacing the cr.lp of sagat’s bnb with a cr.mp against the significant number of characters it works well on might be worth the extra 30 damage it nets you per bnb. That extra damage adds up, especially when a lot of the characters this works well on have poor wake up games.
No cr.lp CANCELS into HP TU. Meaning you CANCEL the recovery of cr.LP into HP TU, basically as soon as cr.LP connects you do HP TU. You just need to get used to it and be fast, but once you’re used to it you will never mess it up. Reason the BnB is cr.lk, cr.lk, cr.lp, HP TU, so you can hit-confirm.
this is probably a dumb question, but what does “kara” mean? i hear it regularly, like “kara tiger uppercut” etc. can someone explain what it is and how to do it?
Kara means empty in japanese, in terms of ssf4 it means canceling the start up of a move into a special in sagat’s case his tiger upper, tiger knee, and tiger shot…
just do a towards + short then tu you’ll see sagat cancel his towards short to a tu
right
my question
I need some help on the ken match up, st strong and st jab generally beat out sagat’s options… so yeh need some advice in that respect went to training mode and ken’s st strong beats out alot of sagat’s normals and really in games now its getting annoying, so yeh help needed…
thanks
PS. also if possible is there any vids of sagat vs ken in super recently
Check these videos for kara TS. What I do is practice with a lk TS and just as it is about to hit the target (or leave the screen), start another tiger shot ending in lk, then tap the button you want to do the TS with after the LK.
Basically the input is 236 LK wait for it to almost hit 236 LK HK. Get a feel for the timing and you’ll nail it. There is an input that doesn’t use an existing TS on the screen you basically f.LK HCF whatever TS button But the timing is harder for me to get down.