I cant believe people still think gief is broken or even top tier.
The only explanation i can think of for that is most people didnt stick around long enough to realize a point i will make later on in this post. He still loses badly to remix sagat (my fav counter, but beware the belly flop loop) blanka, guile, cammy, honda.
Anyone who uses snake eyez win as an example fails to understand that guy is just a good player. Dude consistantly wins or places top 8 in sf4 or sfxt at wednesday night fights here in cali (arguably the hardest local weekly/bi weekly tournament to win or place in the entire country).
Sure those are totally different games but top players are top players and if all the current top players were competing in remix or ST instead of the new games you can bet we would see the same names in tournament results the minute everyone became as comfortable in their sf2 game as they are in the new ones. Can you imagine the salt oozing out of some of the long time sf2 players if that ever happened?
The thing about HD remix is that across the board the game is “mashier” or “more spammy”. I’m not here to argue if thats a good thing or not. I love remix and i totally respect anyones opinion who doesnt because i love ST too.
Moves go farther, moves are safer, moves are easier to input…this is across the board. nearly every character in the game benefits from this theory somehow. So in the end you must sort of relearn matchups and relearn how to respect your opponents options in given scenarios. Instead folks were just like “oh this shit is broke/trash/babyzone because its not what i am used to” or “i went online and lost to a scrub mashing spd or honda hands thru all my block/hit stun cuz the input is easier” which is stupid anyways because online play is ass in every fighting game. i dont care if your playing ggpo, hd remix, cross tekken etc. etc. Online play means nothing.
I cant believe nobody ever brings up how stupid crazy bison is in remix either. Too focused on gief or fei long i guess. shrug
In two years of hdr, bison has won a grand total of one tournament, which was Canada Cup in 2011. Rarely seen in top eights, bison still struggles with his no defence style of play. I would not say he needs more buffs, but that is just the nature of the character.
Also he is a bad meta game pick, since he loses to top tier guys AND loses to popular characters!
Damdai used to main Gief before HDR back in the days of Kaillera, 2DF (now Supercade), and GGPO. At least Gief was the character I always saw him use during Super Sundays (a weekly online ST league) and any online tournies. When HDR came out he mainly switched to Ken (though he could use almost any character). I don’t know (don’t remember) why he switched. If he thought Gief was so broken and easy to win with then why didn’t he try to prove it like he did with Akuma? Just switch to Gief and start dominating every tournament instead of whining and quitting the game altogether? Maybe he knew it wouldn’t be that easy? IDK.
As far as Bison, he does have pretty decent defensive options. Standing jab, neutral jumping strong (into juggle combo), reverse DR. All three of those changes can make it hard for some characters to attack him. He does still have some problems when certain characters corner him, but lots of characters have that problem (like Dhalsim). RenoMD is one of the few Bison players I’ve seen that really take advantage of Bison’s defense and run-away potential instead of just attacking all the time and always going all out for the ToD.
As for Bison’s HDR tourney record, I can only think of two US players that mainly used Bison that actually played in tournies, De Maverick and Zaspacer. And De Maverick left for SF4 pretty much as soon as it came out. I think if HDR would have stayed a tournament staple you would have eventually seen some Bison success. I think Reno’s Bison would do some damage in a major HDR tourney. I’m pretty sure Jiggly used Bison along with his Hawk with pretty good success in the MWC and other big HDR tournies in Chicago. Also, I’m pretty sure Professor Jones won a big HDR tourney in Europe with Bison (I’m pretty sure it was HDR and not classic mode but I could be wrong). I know he’s won plenty of ST tournies with Bison.
In this video he explains why he switched to Ken
[media=youtube]cRisoeMVfXQ[/media]
And he used gief to counterpick a boxer player in finals in Evo2k9.