While watching the tournament over the weekend, James and Seth made the statement that beating Dieminion was the benchmark of being a top player. Do you feel this is true or false?
Personally, I’m not convinced. Dieminion is an amazing player, but I wonder if beating his Guile really is the benchmark of entry into the top tier. Is it the idea that Dieminion’s footsies are at the top level, therefor if you can contend with them you’ve earned yourself a top spot? They are, but I’m not so sure if it matters, especially when the top brackets are filled with more offensive characters. I think footsies are a massive deal, but I don’t know if beating one of the best players of a defensive character is what grants you some magical key of entry into the top spots of the world, especially with the vortexes and characters that far outclass Guile. I think it also must be a frustrating label for Dieminion, as if he’s stuck being the doorman to greatness.
Infiltration’s dominance has been fairly absolute since EVO, but providing a nerf comes to Akuma in 2013 (I find this to be likely), will his constant first spot placing come to an end?
I’m not trying to belittle Infiltration’s skill as an Akuma player when I suggest that it will. He’s in a great spot of being one of the best competitors paired with one of the best characters in the game. In watching the Xian vs Infil grand finals, there was no player I really considered to be better. I think nerves got to Xian a bit, but aside from that, I think they’re close to equal in ability. The quality of Akuma’s options though really showed because of how matched the players were. I know that Infiltration plays a mean Gouken and Hakan, so I think he will always be a contender in future tournaments. He’s very skilled, and even if Akuma is nerfed a bit, I still expect an Akuma-mained Infiltration. I just think that he’ll settle into being a Top 4 or 8 familiar instead of a tournament destroyer like he is now.
true dat. we don’t know yet cause the official changes to v2013 have not been announced yet.
we all know the tier chart will change.
*capcom plz just fix sagat’s U1 corner glitch and improve his tiger knee hitbox for better mobility.
anyways, as always the players will just have to download the game, figure out some techno in the lab.
develop style and strats, and break the game.
tokido, xian, jwong, etc, these guys are reeeeally smart and literally professionals. this is what they do, they figure out the game and break it. then they figure out the opponent, as if they some megaman boss lmao.
infiltration just took it to a whole new level.
i remember at CanadaCup 2k12, everyone was sh1tting on infiltration because of his notes…
i saw latif knockin on him on twitter for him runnin on his notes on his smart phone.
well, infiltration is legit. he came to canada to win, at the venue while everyone was planning to make small money off money matches with scrubs and going out together. laugh and infiltration AND the japanese were in the lab the whooole time. they came for business, real talk. they got their eyes on the bigger prize than giving a sh1t about twitter and their followers.
and now scrubs hating on infiltration because hes “boring” and “lame” to watch… seriously, go fcuk yourself if you think so scrubs. he doesn’t give a sh1t if you’re entertain to watch him play fancy or not, he made easily $100k in 2012 playing to win. and HES STILL WINNING. do you people know how hard it is to win majors AND play akuma at the highest calibur. its not automatic win…
infiltration will continue to hold it down after the game changes cause hes smart and he have serious hard WORK ETHNICS. he puts in the work, he’ll keep winning after v2k13.
I think that comment about beating Dieminion was mostly about how Chris G had a rival in Dieminion and for a long time had a losing streak against him. It was a threshold he had to overcome and that he did. Even during the interviews before finals Mike Ross stated that he didn’t think that Chris G couldn’t make into top 4 but only top 8.
First he won against Dieminion at Civil War a week ago and now a week later he beat Justin, Wolfkrone and Momochi. I think that kind of proves the point that the commentators were making. He is now a top-level player.
About Infiltration I think that even if Akuma gets nerfed, if the nerfs aren’t too radical, he’s still going to be winning tournaments just like he is winning now. You’d need some serious nerfs to damage Akuma’s core game and I don’t think Capcom is going to take it that far.
Also in my opinion Infiltration did beat Xian by clearly outplaying him during Grand Finals. He was taking it easy the first matches and then turned it up a notch when Grand Finals came around. Xian did what he could but Infiltration just dominated and outplayed him. Xian is now certainly in the top 4 players in the world in SSF4. He and Infiltration are probably the only people to win against Daigo consistently. I just don’t think that even he is good enough yet to beat Infiltration.
He had obviously improved at the match-up now compared to the last time they played but not enough to beat Infiltration. He’s getting there certainly but for now I think he should be consider picking up Yun again to counter Akuma.
Regarding Dieminion - the commentators were reffering to Chris G. Guile is the worst match for Sakura, and Dieminion is the best guile player. dieminion always beats Chris, so Chris finally beating dieminion in a fw to 5 set is really impressive.
About infiltration - it depends a lot on the changes akuma and the rest of the cast will receive. But I personally think he will be less dominant.
I wasn’t aware of the history between Chris and Dieminion. So maybe it was more of a personal goal. With that said, I really have to give props to ChrisG’s Sakura. Really his win over Momochi is what shocked me the most. He made it the furthest out of the American players and deserved it (he certainly didn’t get the easy bracket route). ChrisG is really coming into his own as a competitive player. And maybe Dieminion was the gate, since after that win he just placed in the Top 4 at his next major.
Infiltration going to Ryu? Hm. I wonder. While I’m sure he’d make a fine Ryu, I wonder if it’d match his playstyle as much (that vortex, and switching between wearing out his opponent with zoning before lunging in for assaults). That and he’d be up against Daigo. And I just can’t see Infiltration’s (much less anyone’s) Ryu beating Daigo. That’d be quite the wall to deal with.
Infiltration isn’t a vortex-style player, really. His mixups are typically relatively simple, or something you can do with any character. The cornerstone of his play is just the ability to play pseudo-Sim and then use Akuma’s mobility to dart in for offense. In that regard, no, Ryu isn’t ideal, but it’s a pretty unique quality (and, in some ways, a need) of Akuma’s.
Xian was amazing in that set, though he did drop much more combos than he usually does. I actually think Xian played smart/more solid than Infiltration did in their set, even though he lost.
Infiltration’s dominance in the US will end when more international players actually come over. Most of the grandmaster level players cannot travel outside of Japan.
If Akuma gets nerfed too much Infiltration will just drop him since he is in the business of winning. You can bet that He and Laugh are currently exploring alternatives.
Akuma is his perfect fit, so if Akuma is nerfed and falls in power in regard to the rest of the cast then Infiltration will likely be less dominant. He will always be a deadly contender regardless, just like some of the other top players.
They nerfed Ryu from Super to AE and he clearly needed no nerfs. (But Daigo won Evo with him so he must have been TOO GOOD) As long as bad players scream the loudest you can bet that is where the changes will go.
I’ve been supporting the “no nerfs just buffs” balancing angle for a long time now, but it’s just easier to just toss around nerfs.
However imagine how good characters would be if they just left them good? This will be the 4th revision of Super and the “balance” isn’t really any better than it was in Super. Just leave good characters good, remove degenerate glitches, buff poor characters and address the unwinnable matchups.
Sanford had a very good suggestion for Sagat - allow angry scar to store until it gets used, even between rounds. I thought it was genius.
He is a perfect example that it isn’t just about training hard, it’s about training smart.
for sagat, i would just love it if they fix the U1 corner glitch.
and improve his tiger knee, just so hes not so 1 dimensional defensive zoner, and make him abit more mobile. like his walking speed and back dash is like non existant to a degree.
especially at the mid range where either tiger knee will whiff and tiger shot is a gamble…
stored angry scar next round will be cool, but i don’t think its a neccessity.
If Infiltration was just winning with Akuma you might have a point. The thing is he’s beating Ricky Ortiz with Ryu, Dieminion with Gouken, Hugo 101 with Hakan, and dominating SFxT.
If people think he is just riding on Akuma’s coat tails then they might want to get back in touch with reality. He’s shown he can play other characters at a high level and win with them.
Yeah Infiltration wins with other characters, he is not riding coattails…but again Akuma is the perfect fit for him. He’ll still win stuff even if Akuma sucks in the next version, but probably not quite as much.
Then who is the best Guile in the entire world in your oppinion ?
Last time he played Dieminion (Socal) he played akuma, not gouken at all (even after he lost a match). And he won a single game with Hakan against Hugo - and only because Hugo didn’t have a clue what to do.
I do believe Infiltration is an awesome player, but his reign started in v.2012, after the twins and Fei were nerfed. He is talented enough to pick any character and do well with him, but don’t forget it took him almost 4 years to dominate with Akuma.
It took 4 years of playing his first competitive fighting game and he started to win in AE 2012 (with the weakest incarnation of his main character). It had nothing to do with nerfs and everything to do with figuring out his optimal playstyle. Infiltration played very differently in Super and AE.
I think it’s not about having more international players, but a certain subset of international players who don’t get the chance to travel outside of their home country. A few of them also suffer from inexperience in the Akuma matchup or mental blocks that prevent them from performing better in it.
Akuma was never considered the best character in the game untill v.2012. He was always up there, but always overshadowed by others.
In vanilla, Sagat was considered the dominant force. In Super top tiers were very debatable. In AE HK trio dominated everything.
Then v.2012 came, Akuma’s competion was weakened considerably, and he started to be seen as one of if not the best character in the game. And Infiltration started to dominate this game.
Saying that nerfs didn’t have any impact on Akuma’s domination is silly. Just an example: even after the nerfs, Yun is still considered one of Akuma’s few bad matches. Do you honestly think Infiltration would be so successfull if Yun wouldn’t have been nerfed ?
