Snake Eyez comes on the tournament scene and all of a sudden Zangief is really good when it is just his skill level. Really Gief vs Ryu is pretty even and the reason he beats Ryus like that is because of a skill difference between the players. He can beat most of those Ryus in Ryu vs Ryu and thats not his main gief is. Bottom line is Snake Eyez is the man with one of the worst characters.
“Snake Eyez comes on the tournament scene and all of a sudden Zangief is really good when it is just his skill level. Really Gief vs Ryu is pretty even and the reason he beats Ryus like that is because of a skill difference between the players. He can beat most of those Ryus in Ryu vs Ryu and thats not his main gief is. Bottom line is Snake Eyez is the man with one of the worst characters.”
In your opinion, which is great, but I’m not so sure it’s everyone thinking Gief is a god now because Snake Eyes won with him, or it just brings to light just how over the top all the changes are that Gief received, and people are starting to see it more now. Hell, you can go back 1 1/2 years ago in the general HDR thread, around the time they announced talk of patching HDR, and you’ll see this exact same conversation, with me bringing up these exact same points, followed by everyone saying I’m crazy and Gief absolutely sucks… but it seems a lot less people think it’s such a crazy thought anymore. I was, and potentially still am, in the minority here, but I know I’m not only 1 of 3 people or so that see this anymore.
Personally, I think it’s absolutely insane to consider Gief one of the “worst” characters since this isn’t ST Gief, but it seems it’s hard for most to drop that thought because HDR is considered by most an “update” to ST, when it’s really more of a game that is loosely based on ST only. Is that a bad thing? No, but it’s not some sort of crazy insane feat of miraculous playing ability to win with Gief in HDR either, and if ST never existed, I don’t think people would have such a hard time realizing that Gief is nowhere near the bottom of any sort of tier list in this game.
Anyway, the original poster asked what people’s reasons were for thinking Gief is “beastly”, and I stated mine… take them or leave them.
Just curious do you even play HDR? Who do you main? Do you use Zangief? In your opinion, which matchups do Zangief actually win? I mean it seems like its you & damdai are the only ones who think Zangief is overpowered…
BTW where is damdai, probably stuck in a quicksand he created…
Rciado… Ya, I play on and off still. Feel free to find me on XBL if you want. If we’re talking HDR, I guess I “main” Ryu and Chun, but I’ll bounce around other characters too. Probably easier to list who I just find boring to play and never bother to touch at all, which are Claw, Boxer, Blanka, Honda, Sim. I also only use Ryu by force, since I’ve played O. Ken for years in ST, and for whatever reason taking out O. characters and effectively removing literally 1/2 the cast from HDR seemed like a good idea when making this game.
As far as who I think Gief wins against, if we have two players of comparable skill level, we’ll just have an easier time listing who challenges him… not straight up loses to, just makes him think a little. That list consists of Honda, DeeJay, and a top notch Guile player. I’m curious to see who you think Gief actually straight up loses to, since the way you asked the question makes it sound like Gief doesn’t stand a chance in hell against 99.9% of the cast.
And who knows, or cares for that matter, where Damdai is? He’s super late to the “Gief needs to be fixed” party. That train boarded and left 1 1/2 years ago as far as I’m concerned.
Gief straight up loses to Akuma, Honda, Chun, Deejay, & maybe Cammy/Blanka…Eveyrone else he has a slight disadvantage & he doesn’t have an advantage with any matchups in HDR.
Half the cast is still in classic mode and would you really want O Sagat in remixed mode? It would hurt the purpose of rebalancing the game.
Also hopefully Damdai comes back and further explains things. I made myself look like an ass as usual and here I am. I wrote that “angry” post while laughing though and not in a psychotic rage for I guess trolling? Don’t know! I thought I was leaving as usual but I keep realizing there are no better games to go to!
I’d say that Zangief is the best bottom-tier character.
Zangief
Blanka
Fei-Long
Cammy
He loses to Dhalsim, Sagat, Cammy, Fei-Long, Dee-Jay, Guile, Honda, Chun-Li, and Blanka. He is definitely not overpowered, Snake just mastered his tools. If you can play safe and reactionary against Zangief, you can win. I think DGV played a very risky style, and I will again point to the many times he tried to do a jump-in MP on wake-up, only to be stuffed by a lariat. With that said I think 'Gief beats Ryu.
I can’t agree with Chun at all. One measly knock down and Gief wins, simple as that. At least the other characters you mention have a decent chance of stopping a jump in Gief after knockdown, but jumping fierce Gief stuffs practically everything Chun has, including up kicks 99.9% of the time. “Well just don’t let him knock you down” you say? Sure, easy to say, incredibly hard to do with 100% consistency. Gief doesn’t have the same uphill battle that Chun does in this match as to where he is forced to guess right 100% of the time as to what Chun is going to do… he only has to land 1 low RH and the match is practically his. Chun on the other hand, again, goes back to way too many options to have to guess at any one time.
And of course DGV was trying to jump in MP… hoping to stuff a lariat on wake up is the only damn chance Ryu has to try and take any sort of control in this match.
DGV was actually doing a lot of j Fierces on wakeup. If he had used j Strong, those reversal Lariats would have been stuffed everytime. IDK why he was using j Fierce, could be nerves. Not knocking him or anything, DGV played much better than I could have, but in retrospect, there are some things that could have been done better IMO.
One thing, he was focusing too much on getting meter, and then blowing the Super on chip damage. It’s not bad if you can get a lot of meter (which DGV is good at), but I like to save my meter for surprise attacks during footsie battles or to catch Zangief on Lariat recovery. DGV did get a surprise Super a couple of times, and that’s what does a lot of damage to Zangief, I was cheering everytime he landed it. But instead he was using it more for ending block strings, hoping to catch Snake Eyez trying to reversal SPD and hit him with the Super. But SE was too smart for that, and after a couple of those block strings, I think it would have been a good idea to actually go for the throw instead of just blowing the Super. I mean, DGV is using it to threaten Zangief on block, in effect leaving SE open to tick throws, but then DGV doesn’t mix it up with throws, and just goes for the Super everytime.
But yeah, I think if he had used j Strong everytime on wakeup, stopped focusing on getting multiple meters and instead focused on the footsie battles and mixed it up with a rare tick throw, he might have won one of the second sets.
Except close S.Mk, Far S.Hk, Neutral J.Hk, and sometimes even C.Hk as an anti-air. And those are JUST the things one could do against that particular move. Chun isn’t doing half bad in the AA department versus Zangief.
Big O, stop making up facts and spreading wrong information. Anyway it was a mistake, it’s the same range of a Honda normal throw, so my bad here. Still much greater than shotos’ throw range.
You have to base a match-up list on top players, but you can not base it on a single event. That is blatantly obvious.
Jumping fierce on wakeup counters one the counters to jumping strong, which is to duck and throw right after. And blitzfu is right, at the correct distance and time jumping strong will always beat lariats.
BTW, I am not stating he is broken against Ryu or Ken, just that for most situations he is signifficantly better. As it was 5.5 on Ryu before, it probably isn’t only 6 now.
I know you never said he was broken vs. Ryu/Ken and I never implied you thought otherwise. I also don’t get why you think I’m spouting false information. Please tell me anything I said that is false. Btw Zangief’s super does have shoto range. It is fact T.Akiba’s SF2 Data. Clearly between the two of us, the only misinformation spread so far from the two of us has been one sided when you say stuff like this and Zangief’s new lariats make his wakeup harder to challenge. I can back my stuff up with frame data, hitbox images, the above link, and experience if necessary. It just bugs me when you say I make up facts and go on to do the very thing you accuse me of. I am glad you actually made an effort to own up to being wrong the first time though. It would be nice if more people owned up to their mistakes. Again, if I said anything that is wrong let me know and I will stand corrected.
So, we’re up to 50 replies. A good amount of it was off-topic, which is kind of lame. Here’s what we’ve gotten so far on why Zangief is beastly:
It’s a combination of his better Lariats and faster attacks which push him forward (RBG, Green Hand, T+Hp)
SPD motion too easy for a move that deals so much damage.
Ryu, the ‘middle ground’ for the game, loses go Gief which is bad for some reason
RBG can allegedly be done on reaction to a whiffed poke
For 1&2, I’d really like to see or hear about some specific points where these improvements help. I just don’t understand it yet.
For point 3, it really doesn’t matter if Ryu has a bad matchup. Ryu is supposed to be the middle ground, but the implication is not that he’s supposed to have perfect 5-5 matchups with everyone. You can be middle-of-the-pack and have some good and bad matches, even some really lopsided matchups in either direction (see E.Honda). This, combined with the fact that it’s just one match out of sixteen, leaves me doubtful that this argument holds much weight in proving Gief to be overpowered.
As for point 4, I’ve only heard one person say this is the case, and I’ve heard only one person contest this. Anyone wanna weigh in on this?
8, 10, 6+, and 6 frames startup for all those moves. If you are doing anything when he jumps, he’s going to hit you, combo into a knockdown, then kill you if you don’t have super. Zangief is basically a slow-moving wall moving forward that Chun has to keep guessing right to push back and if he gets a knockdown or pushes her to the corner before she gets super, she loses. She has an advantage on each guess, but once she guesses wrong, that’s it.
Probably the biggest thing Zangief has going for him is that there isn’t much you can do to him when you knock him down or corner him, but he gains a huge advantage if he corners you or knocks you down.
Upkicks whiff from max SPD range, which leads to a free SPD and SBK gives Zangief a free Lariat knockdown into another safe jump. This is even if you guess the right time to reversal.
Yeah, I have interpreted the chart wrongly, my bad. Still, I maintain that is does get used in high level play, in fact it gets used by better players than both DGV and Snake Eyes in VST, where Gief is supposed to have a worse time in every match-up. Good Giefs have stated they do land it often and other players who have faced great Giefs (e.g. fatboy) have stated the same.
Gief SPD making upkicks whiff I guess sucks for Chun, but it is better than getting SPDed outta shoryuken, like Ryu. It is a bit rare, so I don’t consider it an issue.
Gief beating Ryu is not an issue in itself, I and some others are only worried about how bad it might be now. Ryu already lost convincingly to all big 4 in VST, that is, to the worst characters in terms of facing them at a tournament. And he still was used quite often, if not the most used character both in casuals and tournaments, so I don’t see Gief players forcing Ryus to switch.
Beyond the fact that most good Chun players aren’t constantly throwing out moves (not even because of the jump, but because a traded sweep can be dangerous), this statement is just factually incorrect. Chun has plenty of moves that are fast enough to recover in time to use these anti-airs, particularly C.Mk. For two, if you’re spacing properly, you’re not gonna be so close that he can just jump in and combo/SPD you. This isn’t nearly the issue you’re making it out to be.
If you don’t believe me, watch these:
[media=youtube]eQnH8XXeHyI[/media] (Otochun vs. ZZT)
[media=youtube]1_FKMDDyyk8[/media] (Gunze vs. Prince)
[media=youtube]laLiJw_-MdU[/media] (Otochun vs Gunze)
[media=youtube]g1lcMYL1nWQ[/media] (Nuki Vs. Gakuzan and Pony)
No Chun player is doing tons of shit that Gief can freely jump over. In fact, the situation you mention only happens like once in all these videos. That’s because the proper spacing in this matchup is to be farther than the max range of your normals most of the time. In the Otochun vs. Gunze matches, the one time Chun loses a round is when she fails to create that space.
Chun lost 3/17 rounds in those videos, and they all happened off a sweep. Jumping in is extremely risky business for Gief.
You’ve got it all wrong. Chun stays too far away for Gief to be able to easily get a knockdown, and from there he can do a ton of things to psych him out and get a knockdown with C.Hk, Neutral J.Hk, or even anti-air Chundouken (which I forgot to mention last time). Sure, when she’s cornered, she loses the ability to safely throw fireballs, but it’s still not curtains for her just yet. Gief is the one making all the guesses - make no mistake.
It’s extremely hard for Gief to corner Chun, and all Chun needs is one knockdown to reverse that situation as well. Look and see what every single Chun in that video does after almost every knockdown: Meaty J.Hk / S.Hp XX Chundouken. If Gief tries to reversal this and fails (and the odds aren’t in his favor for doing a reversal lariat), he eats a dizzy combo and will probably lose the round. So, he has to block it and get pushed back immensely. You don’t need to do any big damage bullshit against Zangief - he’ll lose enough just trying and failing to get in. When he’s cornered, you don’t need to do anything but keep playing your game.
Skanikin’, you’re comparing HDR to ST here, which is the problem. I’ll agree that the Chun/Gief matchup is weighted more in Chun’s favor in ST, but just taking a glance at your first video example, I already see two things that would’ve made it game over for Chun in HDR in the first 30 seconds of that match. One being wher Gief green hands a fireball and then gets kicked… works in ST, highly doubtful that would’ve worked in HDR considering the faster recovery time, meaning Chun would’ve ate SPD there, and game over.
Second problem is trying to play the ground poking game against HDR Gief is pretty much rendered pointless with KKK lariat, since it knocks down in HDR… which leaves you waiting for a Gief to jump in, which will never happen because Gief has no reason to jump in on Chun, in HDR. You’re either eating KKK lariat, walking into lariat because you tried to delay your attack because of the new knockdown ability KKK lariat has, or you whiff your attack because you have to wait for invincibility frames to be over on KKK lariat before you attack, and end up eating SPD because KKK lariat recovers too quick.
Also, I think you misread what I initially said, because all your anti air options aren’t viable on knockdown, which is what I said in the first place. Wake up normals do nothing.
And to whoever it was that made the point about “balancing” the game, and that it doesn’t matter if Gief has an advantage over Ryu now, if the whole point of HDR was to balance ST, and you state that Ryu is already balanced, then yeah, Ryu, along with every other character, would be 5/5 straight down the board against all characters if the balance tinkering was successful. Realistically, that’s probably not possible in any game that contains more than 1 character mirror matching itself all day, which is why we’re here having this discussion in the first place.
