This is a thread where you can share your team setup. Let us know why you chose your partner, the order of your team, and the way you play the team. This will show us the various roles that Steve can fit and will make us all around better players.
Balrog/Steve
The way people handle Rog is a good way to gauge player skill, and how well they will be able to react to Steve’s counter hit shenanigans and pressure… Rog always sets them up, solid normals and good fundamental play (hopefully good fundamental play that is) - tag in Steve for some serious raw damage once I’ve sniffed them out with Rog. Steve goes in and utilizes knowledge earned from the Rog play - hopefully to good effect. Rog and steve have some decent synergy, but Rog doesn’t seem to get much off of a tag back his way.
That’s the plan anyway - I’m not that great so I’m working towards this more and more each day =D
I like the boxing characters quite a bit - as I ver much like boxing… I actually just took my first boxing lesson the other day myself!
Balrog isn’t super fun, but I’m going to be playing him until I get a better feel for the fundamentals of these games at very least.
Im trying Law. both charaters have moves with long enough animations that can lead to 1 bar super arts and so far they seem pretty good but its too early to say.
Hugo/Steve, i feel like hugo builds enough meter, does enough damage, and has enough mix ups to make up for steves lack of the mentioned, and i can only see steve being effective as a character as a filler/tag character, main idea of my team is to work hard to get the hit, then when i land the hit to hit as hard as i possibly can for hopefully around 500 life a combo
I’m using Hwoarang/Steve. I had Steve on point earlier but it really wasn’t working out
I am trying Law and Steve too. Steve on point seems to be lacking every where other than damage output. Law looks to have decent mix-ups, ways to get in, and decent jump attacks and cross-up. He has easy enough combos to tag cancel into Steve for more damage. The only problem is neither has a decent reversal and anti-air, basically you are screwed if you get pressure and couldn’t attack non-stop:(
I am not really what Steve could do well other than damaging combos. His pressure is ok but all his jump in sucks and his approach lose to a fast low. Having no good anti-air move really pains me in this game.
Hwoarang/Steve. But when DLC Dudley comes… oh man.
Abel and Steve right now. Trying to make Steve my point but it’s difficult.
using this exact same team.
I think Rolento is the best battery for him at the moment. I haven’t tried everyone obviously.
I tend to either pick Ryu, Poison, Rolento, or Juri as my first and Steve second for the damaging tag combos.
I feel that those 4 have excellent footsies (which is what this game is primarily about).
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[*]Ryu has excellent everything but his tag cancel is much harder to land and can be situational at times (I’m referring to a combo into DP tag cancel). He can LMH-launch pretty easily but that does pretty low damage.
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[*]Rolento has an amazing jab that can link into cr.MK patriots. He also has an excellent antiair (MP). His patriots build good meter, and when you tag cancel the final rep it gives a lot of time for steve to come and land a good combo (His patriots are one of the few non ex moves that throw the opponent into the air). There is practically NO reason for you to ever have to LMH-launch with Rolento because his jab>cr.MK is THAT GOOD.
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[*]Poison has great footsies and antiairs but requires an ex rekka with kick followup to tag cancel (doing LMH-launch works too but again, LMH doesn’t do as much damage as a link into tag cancel would do).
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[*]Juri has a great anti air (cr. MP) and has good footsies. In the corner with stocked fireballs she can be deadly. She builds meter fast but lacks a decent reversal.
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If I had to pick my main starter today I would go with Rolento, but I want to give every character a shot and that will take a while. My favorite starter at the moment is either Poison or Ryu.
Using Jin on point. No reason other than I like Jin.
I guess there’s a lot of us in the abel/steve boat lol
I gave that up recently for akuma though, feels great except akuma can’t take a hit!!
After playing this game for a week, I think the most important aspect is being able to create opportunities and have meter for tag combos and alpha counter into tag for safety and damage. So characters who can build meter and create damage without using too much meter will be strong. This is character-specific of course because some characters have great options with meter, but I have a feeling a large part of the metagame will revolve around these concepts. I also have to admit that this game is a lot more interesting than I thought it would be before I played it, and I’m enjoying the decision-making situations a lot.
I’ve been using AbelXSteve because I already play these characters in SF4 and Tekken. This is a really fun team because of the high-damage combos and it destroys people who can’t play smart defense. I used Abel on point because I feel he does a pretty good job at covering some of Steve’s issues, such as being able to:
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build and stock good meter while still being able to create good pressure/damage
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get in easily using forward MK and rolls. Abel is great against fireball/DP type characters.
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put up a decent fight at both mid (forward MK, st LK chains have also deceptive range) and open people easily at close range (TT, st HK overhead, etc). His optimal range is larger than Steve’s, who can really only create significant damage within cr MK/forward MP range.
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decent anti air with cr MK and EX Skyfall, even though I hate using EX for anti-air
Using tag in combos you can take advantage of Steve’s high damage juggles and put him into counter hit range, right where he excels. Make people press buttons within cr MP range -which they usually tend to do after fighting Abel at close range for some reason- and you can do massive damage.
I generally find myself often swating people out of the air for great counter damage, with both characters. Not very reliable against smart turtles but you can kill many characters really quickly if they jump around carelessly. Steve’s team super is also a good anti-air so I’ll use it if I have the meter and I’d rather switch to Abel, although it goes against the philosophy of “safety+damage first” I described earlier.
This highlights the first issue I have with this team: AA and reversal options are generally average without meter so sitting on a lead can be difficult sometimes. Playing against grapplers (esp. Hugo and Zangief) is a bit nerve-racking because for this reason. Your optimal range is located right into theirs so creating damage opportunities is difficult. Also unlike in SF4, Abel’s TT seems throwable in this game which makes it even more annoying. I’ve tried zoning them out with Steve’s fireball but had a hard time punishing their jump-ins.
The other issue I have with it is that it is a bit weak to multi-hit chip/pressure rushdown (e.g. Rolento, Yoshi, etc) because their tag-in options after alpha counter are not as good as other character’s:
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Abel’s alpha counter is a roll which feels like it can’t be canceled into tag, so safety relies on the recovery of the move you just countered. Sometimes you can punish the recovery of a multi-hit move with TT though, so it’s not all bad. Alpha-counter into raw tag doesn’t feel safe.
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Steve’s alpha counter is a knockdown and looks like it can’t be tag-comboed into. This move seems very useful but using 2 bars for no damage doesn’t feel great.
This is a really fun team but using it against strong rushdown/defensive players will be a challenge. RyuXSteve definitely has better complementarity. Not really sure who I’ll be switching out because I don’t really want to play Ryu (played him a lot in SF4) and I haven’t found another character I really like to pair with Abel yet.
Using Hworang until Duds comes out from DLC.
Hworang has slightly better defense than Steve, but can’t really play footsies too well. Both like to use meter but Hworang on point builds it better for Steve. Both do fantastic damage - Hworang definitely has easier combos and Steve is much harder to execute (flashier!). I believe both have pretty crappy defense, but Hworang has more mix-ups going for him. Steve suffers greatly from low-hits or jabs that out-poke him. He is also pretty stuffed with people holding d/b block, Hworang not so much with his overheads.
From what I’ve seen, Hworang can reliably get off his combos and set up for Steve whereas Steve relies on counter hits to be effective.
Pros to the team:
Fantastic damage output
Hworang has great mixups and Steve’s damage is unreal
Cons to the team:
Both get outpoked and stuffed pretty easily
They both have lackluster defense, but Steve’s D is so bad it’s legendary
Guile and Steve, simply because those are my mains for each respected series and we all know Steve is better as an anchor.
Dudley with pandora will be insane. I can imagine the crazy pressure and overheads already.
I’m on the same boat as you guys. How has it been working out for you guys? I find tagging in to be (both ways) to be a hard task at times. The teams hits hard though, that’s for sure.
I’m playing a lot of Steve/ Rolento or Cammy. Rolento is good on any team, but I don’t like his style, he’s really lame to play imo. Cammy was my first major main in SFIV, so it made sense to use her till Duds is here. Idk though, think I need to keep playing everyone.
Steve and Zangief! 
I play steve on point because while it is obvious that he does well with meter, I do not believe he NEEDS it. My Steve has been leveling up by leaps and bounds lately and Its because I have started to play smart, and also started to get as much damage for my punishes as I can.
Zangief works great with steve because most of Steve’s combo’s push the opponent to the corner and with the ability to do the LP Flicker jab team tag I can bring in Zangief and have them in the corner where gief is ridiculously dangerous. And on top of that they both do so much damage that it works out perfectly :D! I feel like my team is gonna do real well in tournaments and such!
I’m using Kazuya/Steve but I also like Balrog/Steve if only becuase I like the boxers. I’m using my point characters with a full meter-building gem loadout to get Steve ready for his big damage combos and punishes using power gems to maximise that effect as well.
I’m considering using Julia/Steve, but I’ll keep practicing with Kazuya for the moment. Really loving the Tekken cast at the moment.