I mean I did say before this discussion started I left Sagat out because I didn’t have enough experience against him? You asked me my thoughts after the fact, I thought it was established most of these opinions are based on lab-time in the MU and not MU experience.
Yeah well I mean I think most of your points are valid, I’m just not sold on Cody having a beastly mid range where I can’t press anything. Thats ibuki or Guile.
I think Cody can get a run on, I’m just not sure that if you’ve got a life lead I can’t get it back. Sagat isn’t too dependant on Trigger, so v reversal is a legit strategy.
5-5 seems fair, but I’d like to see the match at high level.
aye, that’s what I’m waiting on, when I had match-up experience vs. GM Sagats they weren’t good enough at the fireball game which dismantles the need to form a counter-strat, I’d need to see Bonchan go up vs. Shazyy which is a dream MU considering he doesn’t travel.
There’s a match where Valle beats shazzy …and Valles Sagat isn’t very good. One thing about this game, it’s quite hard to find match up replays.
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O.Zeku and Cody mobility are almost the same, Kokus can’t beat Tornados from the right distance. With that in mind it’s almost certain a Cody attempt to jump over them and OZ can Dp Cody. Flips are useless against him, but if OZ does a short one to visit the mayor it’s a free CC into big damage with change form possibility. The problem is when Cody has meter and EX Zonk is too good just only to close the gap between them. It’s doable, but just ain’t worth the risk since up close Cody is better.
Young Zeku buttons are far from bad in mid-range vs Cody, it’s similar to the Necalli my. St.HP beats everything Cody does outside his St.HK range, he don’t need tornados anymore because Zeku can bypass them easily. Cody air attempts aren’t that scary, from far St.MK and LP Hozanto are ok, in crossup situations Zeku can just walk under Cody and that situation becomes dangerous for the latter if Zeku has VT stocked because cr.MK is amazing for trip guard combos. Up close YZ can bully Cody because even him don’t have nothing to avoid the pressure, run stop shenanigans aren’t needed. Cody can try to V-Skill or St.LK xxEX Zonk between holes in Zeku pressure, but good luck if Zeku foresaw the attempt to escape.
I would say it’s a 5.5-4.5 my at best, just because Cody has better AAs and a better VT, but it’s close now.
Young zeku’s normals arent that great. St hp and st hk have less range than old zeku’s and ryu’s st hk, his st mp has bad range, and cr mp is inferior to cody’s stmp, it has just about the same range as ryu’s cr mp. I would argue young zeku’s normals to be inferior to cody’s overall.
Young zeku is half of a character. His normal anti air is terrible and st mk loses out to heavy’s everytime. The l hozanto can whiff and be punished. So a zeku player would need to either position themselves so that they can use l hozanto or occasionally transform to make use of old zeku much better anti airs.
Old zeku’s bushin gram zoning game loses out to most zoners and it’s dangerously unsafe in general against most of the cast (including zangief but exc abigail and birdie). The idea imo is that you switch to mix up your game. zeku’s highlight is offense and high damage. If your not constantly on your opponents back then your not properly taking advantage off the character’s strength.
Zeku can either feel op or feel like a weak beta character, it all depend on how well you execute your game. it’s the main reason why the character is so difficult to do well with.
Cody vs Falke and Ibuki numbers look about right. Cody definitely outneutrals Ibuki, it’s just if she gets in it can get bad for him.
Falke out ranges and outbuttons him pretty well. He can use s.LK to counter poke some of her shit, but it won’t lead to as much damage as the shit she will land. Her EX PP is really good defensively vs him and he basically can’t really jump on her outside of cross ups. He has to place really good fireballs and make sure he A2A punishes any air fireball she goes for to even get started vs her. Could argue his V Trigger makes it more like 4.5 for him, but pre trigger match is definitely in her favor clearly.
About Cody vs Sagat
I dunno, it just looks like Cody has a lot more he can do than Sagat. Bonchan doesn’t really use much s.HK with Sagat at all so I dunno if that’s just something that Highland is doing that Bonchan hasn’t implemented in these matches, but he basically didn’t bother to use it. It was either s.MK or shots from Bonchan for the most part. Which even then Poifuru doing the walk and down block would generally evade Sagat s.HK any way. Poifuru in general just opts to slowly walk him down with walk and crouch block until he’s in range to hit Cody’s s.HK or other buttons. Poifuru occasionally gets some jumps on Bonchan while Bonchan doesn’t really jump much at all and the only real times he did usually get anti aired or don’t lead to any real damage.
The only other buttons Bonchan bothered to use were s.LK and s.HP and Poifuru quickly made sure to j.HP on any abuse of Sagat’s s.HP (which is a pretty garbo button without v trigger active and likely was only pressing it to fish for VTC)
Toward the end you could see some of the use of Cody’s trigger vs Sagat. Using the arced rock with the pipe reflect to hit Sagat over his low shots and reflect his shot back at him. Definitely don’t see anything here that looks like a clear win for Sagat and I’d argue more even or even slightly towards Cody favor. The matchup is basically what Cody wishes his match vs Guile was.
Abigail vs Cody may not be 7 3 good for Cody, but neutrally until Abi gets trigger it’s likely pretty close. There’s no way Abi can jump and land successfully vs a Cody that has eyes and most of his run/flip shit Cody has quick answers to. Cody’s fireball also perfectly covers where he likes to run and jump so he is left neutrally never being able to bully the horizontal and throw s.HP or c.LP like he usually likes to.
If that’s the match that’s dated 7th of August , that’s one day after Sagat release. Makes it about as useful as Frostys chocolate butt plug on a summer’s day.
I wouldn’t consider any match older than about a month for Sagat, maybe 6 weeks for Bonchan.
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Hmmm…oh yeah I see that now. It is day one.
With that said, that looks like most of the matchup regardless. Let’s say they play again now. What’s Bonchan going to do? Throw a lot more of a duckable heavy button? Throw other normals that won’t scare Cody?
This is about as recent as I’d review, if Alex Valle could actually AA even half the jumps then this shazy fella would have been dead a lot quicker.
Bonchan would legit destroy this guy.
I’ll take that bet when it comes.
Yes, I have been a gold scrub for almost 4 months.
Only now I managed to scrub my way into super gold.
I wonder how long it will take for me to scrub into ultra gold next.
This is true power!
Zeku in general isn’t a neutral monster kind of character, he’s a counterpoke character, playing him like a male version of Karin is dumb. Aa-ing with Young can be problematic, but his mobility and amazing walkspeed are there for a reason, good positioning becomes easier with experience and from the right spot his AAs are all working as intended. No Birdie/Mika/Akuma/Cammy easy way to AA the opponent, but that’s intended. His normals aren’t there to dominate the neutral, but to counter the others neutral normals and stay up close right after, like Necalli.
Old Kokus have too much recovery, that’s true, but you have to space yourself to react to potential jumpins and that’s hard but doable. The Grams aren’t there for zoning battle, but to force the opponent to jump and it works perfectly in that regard.
In general switching it’s the way, with Young you have to push the opponent into the corner, with Old you keep them there, that’s why Zeku forms are so different. It’s hard to do that consistently at first, but everything becomes second nature with time. Zeku gonna have mad buffs next year,but his game plan ain’t gonna change.
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Imo zeku biggest problem is lack of one of the big 4 tactics in the game:
Neutral bypass
Re offense move that is plus on block ( ex kunai, ex whirl wind, bison dfhp etc)
BS v trigger
Command grab or abuseable normals (range or CC property)
It really seems like the youngin deserves either an ex kunai style move or a command grab. As it is, he does have those types of moves but they are very weak versions (st.hk moves forward and is plus against crouching opponents, ex run is re offense but horribly negative)
Etc
I think he just needs a better vtrigger.
I get that some people don’t want the game to be just all characters looking to activate, but thats basically what it is anyway at higher levels. Good characters have good vtriggers. Its the clear starting point when you determine character viability.
Let everyone including the bad characters play SFV. Sure, do some other stuff, but make sure everyone can steal rounds.
I agree with your statements. But my point is young zeku struggle against most of the cast in neutral including cody. Old zeku does slightly better in neutral. But young zeku is about making reads and getting that counter poke knockdown.
He’s got plenty Neutral by pass, just that either they are reactable or punishable.
The way it should be in a normal game not called ham fighter 5.
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st hk is 0 on crouching opponents.
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His neutral bypass is in the same level as sagats tbh. It’s there, but it isn’t particularly great. Sagat gets tiger knee… “great” at least it’s safe…young zeku gets a command dash and unsafe slides. Old dude gets an ex demonflip… without the demon, or the flip, and it’s barely got ex properties.
His neutral bypass is there sure… it’s better than oh say… chuns. But that’s not saying much.
Plus against 4 frame characters 
How’s that os? Hehe