Yeah top tier in SC1 was Xiang, Maxi, Taki. Really strong strings and very evasive vs the other characters. Taki’s cheap unblockable cancels in SC2 were fun.
I’m definitely starting out with long ranged character because that’ll be free wins early on and then if Maxi or Taki becomes top tier I’ll look at them.
I dont remember maxi being TT. Jdok was the only player that really did anyhhing withh him and all he did was AA, BB, B and A with 2B and 2B added in. He was so robotic even the chicago players complained about him.
Maxis pure soul loops were garbage from what i remember. My maxi was pretty decent as i subbed him after nightmare… but i never ran into a good maxi outside jdok and i never ran into him after nationals. Probabky the strongest thing i remember about maxi was his 6a+b was nutty as shit and his post GI game with high low was pretty good iirc. But maxi just didnt have the speed to keep up with the fast characters or the range to keep up with the ranged characters so he had to be a PSL god, but no one ever was. I kina think of him like zeku. Stance based awesomeness but no one able to really break it out and own with multiple stances.
YOh yeah, i forgot about cervy and ivy. Idk if they ended up being TT but they were definitely up there. They were the GF nationals match between kageh and fetz, which was an all chigago GF.
My beat friend from cali had amongst the best unofficial cervys in the US though. That character was a real pain in the ass to deal with.
-edit… just realised you said sc1. Yeah idk what was up with that, but off the top of my head:
Hwang was supposed to be high tier iirc.
Cervy was op or seemed that way.
8wr was glitched and broken as shit with certain step cancels
Lizardman could glitch ring you out from the middle of stages (shit was bad) sc1 was just lulz all over the place but the game was broke shit fun times.
I think Sagat is pretty well balanced the way he is.
He have slower normals, yes. But he doesn’t have a giant hurtbox on every fireball he throws like every other fireball characters, so that is the trade off. I honestly, think, just raw zoning wise, he is better than Guile.
It is just that Guile is better at turning zoning into offence with V-skill booms and LP boom. But certainly, it does feel harder to me to get through a Sagat with a good fireball game over a Guile. Especially when i have to deal with sometimes very hard to react to tiger knees that knock me down and give him more space, or sometimes ex and him forcing a plus situation.
Then again, i actually have to respect his nonsense since i play Cody and Chun, so i don’t have a fuck fireballs move 24/7 like some of the others have. but honestly, any better than he is now and Sagat will 8-2 some characters.
He is perfectly fine imo.
That’s the problem though. He’s perfectly fine if you dont account for like top 10. Once you start looking at what makes the top 10 characters he just doesn’t have what it takes to really force what he needs on them to make things count (at best just ok counter pick vs certain ones).
The other problem is that not only are there characters that have anti projectile options, but when he has to do a zone vs zone battle, particularly Menat and Falke both can low profile shoot under his shots and generally force him to play away from his shot gameplan. So unless he’s like fighting Akuma, Ryu or to a lesser extent Guile, there’s other strong zoners that he can’t even zone that well vs.
Capcom not gonna tune top 10 down to make him fine where he is, so he’ll need some extra juice come S4 like most of the S3’s do.
Gief is a shitty SFV character even in Season 1.
They should have put R. Mika’s Master in his place or something. She would have had 360, Commands and a fuggin’ stick!
Falke low profiling the shot is true but from what i played, actually getting the prone shot to punish Sagat depends on the range and strength of his shot and more often than not, he can block in time. So it is more of a stalling thing than a direct direct counter.
Menat, well, she fucks up everyone so he isn’t an exception.
And looking at the top tiers, He probably get an evenish MU with Akuma, i don’t see Cammy being awful for him since she still have to get in. Ibuki will probably wreck him but that is Ibuki.
Bison will probably beat him badly since someone thought that giving Bison a V-skill where he can store then throw whenever he wants is a good idea. That change broke that V-skill in some MUs imo, certainly should revert back to it was in S1 to get back the right risk vs reward on it. Now it is all reward with zero risk.
I see him probably beating Urien, he probably beats Abigail, likely deals well with Mika. He will do well vs Kolin pre VT2 but VT2 Kolin will annoy him but that also applies to everyone. Rashid could be slightly bad but i think he might manage.
At this point the game got 30 plus characters, Sagat is top half, that is honestly fine.
Not everyone is gonna need to be top 10
The Falke example was just to bring up that Sagat’s zoning game doesn’t really threaten even other zoners. Which is not good when you’re trying to get within top 10. Menat and Guile are top 10 because they can force their long ranged game well even vs other zoners.
Yeah he’s not bad to pick vs some of the top tier. Definitely slows down Cammy and Akuma. Main reason he wont do well vs Ibuki is that he just doesn’t have any scary heavy buttons to stop Ibuki from getting in. Falke can slow down Ibuki because she can slam s.HP and f+HP in her face from a range that she can’t really do much about. Ibuki has a sweet spot vs Sagat where she can walk in at him and not have to worry about any damaging buttons, then once she gets inside of s.LK range he has problems.
Urien willl beat him for sure. The reason Guile zones out Urien is he has medium and heavy buttons to throw back at Urien along with his fireballs. Urien can just slowly navigate the shots and then throw his buttons until something hits. Bonchan does pretty well vs Rashid, but hard to say long term vs him.
He’s not bad, but he’s definitely not good where he is. Only S3 character I think that is good where they are is Blanka. All the others need some juice with maybe the exception of G if VT1 becomes good enough. No Sagat in the long run is going to be content with him in this stage. You just can’t really work tournaments without a scary heavy button game.
I think this tweet perfectly sums up what I dislike about sf5, you’ve got:
A player asking how to counterplay an AA…
A player jumping into 4 uppercuts in a row
A player then dashing in and throwing his opponent after he sees that he’s been AA’d 4 times in a row.
It’s like watching monkeys flinging poo at each other and grading the quality of the throw, the distance of poo flung, correct arc of poo, if poo was thrown fast enough, if poo was aimed at correct spot, if it was the correct type of poo for that situation.
L O L
That is the game now, you play a top 5 or 7 if you include Rashid or Abiagil or you play multiple characters for MUs.
Doesn’t matter if you are top 10 or top 34 if you aren’t in that top 7 characters that can solo run through a stacked tournament. Sagat isn’t really different at that from the EVO winner M.Bison or low tier Ryu, they are all in the same boat.
I think Sagat where he is a clear issue.
Like when people said Sagat was stubby…they weren’t really explaining things well, but they would have got somewhere with the right description. The big issue with Sagat is that without a strong heavy he can’t play a game that most of the even decent characters in the game can play and good shots/VT2 aren’t going to make up for it. That glaring issue makes him feel “stubby” even though he isn’t and that is an issue I don’t think Sagat should have long term.
A Sagat that can actually hit crouchers with a damaging button from a range should be a thing IMO and hopefully that comes S4. He deserves a bit more at long range especially with what’s in the game now.
How do players like that get past bronze, much less make platinum
He’s just trollin’
Why am I not surprised that you use Blake with Kokonoe Plate.
At least you’re still a man of culture.
Sanps choked super hard vs Bonchan that first round. Was scared to commit to a follow up attack after air trigger shot landed, then the king pushed him into the corner and he was scrambling jumping like 3 times in the corner. He would have been better off jumping once, ok that didn’t work then sit on a chance to EX PP out. She can easily EX PP through his armored kick any way and it’s not like you’re dealing with Ibuki or Cammy in the corner. Make him fear EX PP then press c.LP a couple times for him to block and get yourself out. He has too many moves that touch the top of the sky to start jumping like that in the corner.
He’s still going to rack up chip and white damage while Falke ideally doesn’t get hurt at all. I’ve said before that it’s in her favour but after a few more matches I think it’s just an awful matchup for Sagat. He has no other option than going into the offensive and that kind of desperation is exactly what Falke usually wants.
If she gets buffed in S4 that matchup will be a nightmare.
Edit: and because some smartass will probably tell me now that Bonchan won the set. Yeah, he’s Bonchan, one of the best. And he played against a Falke who left about 25% damage at the table every round and who got hit by way too many Tiger Shots.
Sanps is just a solid Falke/Guile player at best. The best Falke to watch vs Bonchan would be Ginon (who now is also messing with G). You can tell Sanps is solid, but he’s not someone that can really challenge the CPT jersey boys.
US and Euro won’t have a Falke of Ginon’s level till probably S4.
This was a good recent set that I think played out pretty well. Bonchan adapted well but you can see why any Sagat other than Bonchan is going to have to compensate a lot to win matches.
Can already tell Ginon is a smarter player because the first round Bonchan also pushed him in the corner and he escaped much more easily. Stayed there for a bit, found a spot and jumped forward out instead of jumping in the corner.
Top 5 characters are 1-inch over the rest of the top 10 and a good ft over the rest of the cast, I don’t believe in Capcom improving the weaklings like they didn’t do before. After all the shitstorm we riding I don’t think Cammy will be the same, the others neither. The top 5 will receive a tone down, not that big, but it’s almost certain. Atm I can’t even see a general mechanic change able to skyrocketing the low tiers over the tops, but they have time to work on it. Cody, Sagat and G are better out of the box than Sakura, Blanka and Falke at their reveal, probably even better than at least Zeku and Ed before 3.5 patch. I don’t expect a falling from Grace like S1 Ryu, Chun and Nash, but a tone down to the actual top tier band is coming. Capcom need to please Alex and Fang players like Guile and Akuma ones. Fixing heavily 5-10 characters is easier than fixing 24-29 of them and we all know what Capcom generally does in these situations.