Don’t say people here aren’t very good when u haven’t even seen them play. I agree the scrubs outnumber the good players by a lot but just because u don’t see them on streams every week doesn’t mean they don’t have game. Whether you’re a beast or a noob this forum is about info and helping players out.
My general opinion on Gief now is this:
Pre AE Gief-Your opponent had to guess more
Post AE Gief-YOU have to guess more
Agreed I’ve seen & played vl101, chief713, roman, devil & ^ they are all good Giefs I’m not at that lvl yet but I’m getting there also did people see the Gief matches it looks more like 5.5-4.5 in the twins favor IMO they can zone him out even with the added range on SPD.
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Gief is just a footsie character in AE imo, he’s not a mixup character anymore. He no longer gets crossups except after close 360k, ex spd, and normal throws, and none of those happen very often. SF4 Gief has always relied on footsies, but they were good and dangerous mostly because they led to knockdowns that led to sick mixups or to cornering that led to sick mixups. Now they’re less damaging than in Vanilla SF4 since st mp and ex hand do less damage and much much less scary than in Vanilla or Super because jab/short buffer ex hand no longer creates knockdown mixups and now allow the opponent to escape so that he can battle back from being cornered. Gief st mp is still a great normal, but his other footsie tools, st mk and sweep, are unsafe on block and don’t lead to mixups, and lp spd requires you to be in a range that you have trouble getting into anyway. I liked mixing people up on knockdowns, that was fun! I also liked threatening them with my dangerous footsies, that was fun too! Now I almost can’t mix up on knockdowns except after punishment situations and my footsies are way less dangerous.
So I think he’s a) almost purely a footsie character, not a mixup character, and b) worse at footsies than he used to be anyway. Basically, they got rid of or nerfed the parts of Gief’s game that interested me.
There are way better mixup characters and there are way better footsie characters, and you know what, there are characters who are better at both. Wanna play fun meaty grappler mixups? Go with Hawk, Hakan, or Abel, or even Seth or Makoto. Wanna play footsies? Go with Akuma, Rog, Chun, Ken, Dictator, or Rose. Wanna play both?? Go with Yun, Yang, or Fei.
I’m going Hakan/Dan in AE. But if I were still trying to win tournaments, I’d go with Yun, Yang, or Fei, no hesitation about it.
I remember they posted this up in the Abel forums a while back. They talked mad shit about Vance. Dude was like he doesn’t know why Vance wins as much as he does with as risky as he plays. He plays mad gimmicky, bla, bla, bla.
In my head I’m like how else is Gief supposed to be played? High risk, moderate reward character…
do you guys remember the days that a U1 was certain death? Lol sigh
Curious your thoughts on Honda in this same context versus Gief.
I’d like to see that as well, Ross is pretty salty about that (I don’t blame him, lol). Personally, I think Honda will struggle in high level play now. He really sucks against the likes of Ryu and Sagat, Sagat was even the reason he’d never have a chance at winning a tourny during SF4 days. Now that Sagat is more popular…it’s not looking good. Some people just look at a grappler and go “they strong or they’re cheap,” but like Final666 said, the amount of work to put a dent in your opponent is just hell sometimes.
Even at mid level play where I am, it’s blatantly obvious. Of course, that’s why I’ll be using alternate characters. I’ll main Zangief and sub with Chun-Li/Dhalsim/possibly Dudley. So if I ever want to go to a tourny, at least I got options.
“I liked mixing people up on knockdowns, that was fun!”
I agree, sucks I won’t have that when AE is released. 
I’m still hoping that they use AE’s time in the arcades as sort of a loctest and introduce new balancing features in the console release of AE. They obviously won’t let EX Hand knockdown because they seem hellbent on that, but something else to help compensate would be nice because a tiny range/damage boost on LP SPD isn’t enough. I’d like to see maybe a faster sweep, more health, or make regular SPD a little more like EX SPD where the opponent spins for a while before the knockdown.
Gief is actually looking very unfun in AE. I already put in a fuckload of work to win with him at mid/low level play.
Ah well I still have the old-homie, Dee Jay. Wins feel just as earned with him.
The reason why i’m saying it, is because i have seen alot of these guys play on xbl but yeah that’s besides the point. like ultradavid said, gief footsies aren’t that good…his dmg isn’t that good also. i mean, st gief( Which is what they said they wanted him to go back to), had great normals cr.hp,far.st.hk, st.mk was god like, close.st.lp, and once he got in it was over, so it was worth going through hell because once he was in … YOU DIDN’T COME BACK OUT ALIVE LOL.
i started playing, sim, balrog, ken and even though they have their own struggles… i feel no character struggles as hard as gief to get in and stay in except for thawk but he’s ass also lol
Lemme just disabuse you of that hope real fast. They’re not going to change AE for console, it’ll be the same game. They’re not looking for ways to rebalance the game, this is how they intended it. They purposely wanted to make some characters really good and others not good. It’s not, Oh, too bad they accidentally made Yun so good, too bad they accidentally nerfed Guile too hard, too bad they accidentally buffed already-top-tier-Fei etc. No, they were honestly looking to make the game LESS balanced than Super. Please trust me when I say that this isn’t idle speculation or conspiracy theory. Even in public, you can read interviews with Ono to that exact effect. Might have seen him compare Super to a flat sphere and say he didn’t like that, so he put in some craters and mountains? Well, mission accomplished obviously.
As for Honda, yeah, he got nerfed too hard. Non ex headbutt is not invincible, aka crappy antiairs and reversals, overall damage is nerfed pretty hard, jump mp got nerfed, etc. Harder for him to keep out, get in, and hurt you even if he succeeds in keeping you out or getting in. I don’t know if he’s really bad, Mike Ross tends to undersell his characters, but there’s no doubt he’s significantly worse.
THawk is probably the best pure grappler in AE. He got a little better and most of his bad matchup characters got worse. AE Hawk has better footsies than Gief imo, since they’re more damaging and take up better spots on screen and Gief no longer has the advantage of more frequent knockdowns. And Hawk can still play sick meaty games on spds, ex spires, dives, dragon punches, etc. For what it’s worth, the longest winning streaks I’ve seen so far in AE in SoCal have been Yun, Yang, Fei, and Hawk (40+).
Well mike did say Honda is ass in AE at one point while in super he would always say not that good key words I guess I believe he said that during AE first impressions video can’t remember ATM.
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Zangief in AE is more like Hugo in 3s now.
If you think Hugo is bad in 3s, then Zangief in AE is worse
he doesnt have that blocking in ssf4.
Heads up, sim is pretty much Texas toast in this game as well. Too many rush down characters are top and now he does less damage.
Yeah, I never really EXPECTED it to be rebalanced…but hope springs eternal. I do remember reading articles and interviews about how it was intentional that some characters we seemingly overpowered. Ono said something to the effect of “Having overpowered characters gives players something to rally against and can bring them closer together, blah, blah, blah.” But Ono is the biggest troll in the world so you never know about that guy.
I still kinda wonder if it was REALLY intentional, or just said to be intentional after it was discovered. I guess it was intentional, because by most accounts the twins and Fei are OBVIOUSLY overpowered and it can be seen after spending only a few minutes with them. And it’d be hard for the dev team to not notice that. They can throw all those BS reasons at me (the peaks and valleys and the rallying point, etc.) but I still don’t really like the idea of intentionally having overpowered or underpowered characters. Actually I HATE that idea. I think better balance and further tier compression should be the goal.
Yeah I mean obviously it’s very stupid to purposely imbalance a game. I’m all for having strong characters, but every character should be strong. If you’re super set on having peaks and valleys and whatever, there are two ways to do that. One is making AE Yun, which forces everyone to deal with the peaks and valleys even if they don’t want to because there’ll be so many people playing Yun. The other is have 3S Sean, so that people can play uphill matchups if they want but are not required to if they don’t want. Aaaand Ono went with Yun.
Anyway, I can’t really elaborate, but trust me if you can when I say that AE is imbalanced on purpose. Ono is a troll, yes, but he’s not lying about that. As you can imagine, other people who were instrumental in creating the excellent balance in SSF4 are super, super pissed that Ono threw their work away.
A crossroads then, I’ll stick with him he’s all I know.
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Maybe we’ll learn some new Gief technology, but aint lookin good right now. Im gonna stick with him too, tho. Just can’t shake the urge to piledrive bitches into the earth.
Lol… Aint looking good? Its looking amazing, looks like Gief is one of the broken characters… Itabashi Grand finales vs. Mago woooo =)
Some days i feel like crying 
The good news is that the scuttlebutt I’ve heard is that Gief is one of the few characters that give the twins a hard time - so, even if the vortex becomes an unviable strategy (which I am starting to see indications that maybe the eventual case at high level), if the twins are in fact overpowered, then Gief players will have an advantage at tournaments by virtue of the fact that most people will be playing the twins. Of course, that’s just me speculating.
no. zangief doesnt have advantage vs twins. like they used to think zangief vs feilong is 7:3, now we all know that’s bullshit.
Actually I think that matchup is in twins’ favour.
almost all of their move is safe and none of zangief’s is. and thier damage output is huge. much more than zangief’s.not to mention their speed.
Recent AE tournament matches show that twins beat zangief.