After watching UltraChen last night, I’ve been wondering about grapplers and their role in SFxT2013. Do you guys think Gief and Hugo are already going to the bottom of the (premature) tier list? Or do you think that they will even out around mid tier or better?
What about Abel, King, Kuma, or Marduk? Who is the best grappler in the game as you see it and why?
King might fluctuate a little. He can still get thrown out of his command grabs. Also you can shoulder tackle people, get the armor, and still not get a counter hit. I do like that he’s rewarded slightly higher for grabs and that he actually has a decent anti-air now.
Counterhits only happens when you interrupt someone during start-up, so it should never happen if he absorbs their hit, right?
Kuma might be worth it because of his damage potential and decent mobility with his backdash and Hunting Bear stance. Although i would consider him more a heavy hitter than a grappler. Just look at the Kuma forums, people love him!
I would say that Marduk is scary. His grab is the fastest in the game, especially EX is great. He has solid dashes, long range normals, his aa-grab and also some combos of his own. His lk is very good.
Both probably won’t win Evo, but in my opinion, they are solid.
Gief I think is one of the best defensive characters in the game. He can deal with pressure because of his lariat, grabs, and st.,cr.lp and st.lk. His lp.spd has great range, lariat deals with jump ins and cr.lp is very good.
But he really has problems getting in against pokers like Vega and especially against heavy zoners. Almost impossible with the roll nerf and especially the walkspeed and st.mp nerfs.
He also doesn’t really have good combos.
Hugo is just crap.
High damage, but how do yu get in to land it except after tag? Also without ex he is free under pressure.
I don’t know anythiing about Abel.
Abel is a fucking beast in this game, at least 2013. He has great footsies, good mixups/damage and lots of dirty tricks. Of course, a lot of characters have been buffed substantially that I haven’t played against yet, just wrecking the usual goons who played vanilla hugo/rolento teams cause they didn’t have to think and now have to.
That being said, I think gief and hugo will be around mid-tier. Marduk a little higher, don’t know anything about king. He has really dirty tricks in that you can basically block-confirm whichever command grab and make it very hard to escape, he still has good damage and a good anti-air now. That’s all i know though so maybe his footsies are ass?
Thanks for the input. I’ll have to give King and Abel a decent go after the next couple of tournaments to see if I’d like to use either of them.
I did hear that Marduk got buffed somehow, but I didn’t look into it. The last thing I heard was that he was average, at best. I’ll have to give him another shot, as well.
And yeah, that’s what sucks about Gief. I was playing him on point in 2012, and that worked fairly well. Now it seems like you have to use someone fast on the front to push people into the corner, and then tag cancel or ABC Gief in. And yeah, Hugo is ass. lol
Hmmmmm… I do like dirty… Lol. But seriously, I really need to look into Abel and King. Abel has always been a personal favorite of mine in SF4 (never my main, though), and I did see Renic’s video earlier this week. Maybe he’ll come into his own in 2013.
But I want to be rewarded for knowing/guessing I can shoulder tackle through something. All I get is an opponent on the other side of the screen. Argh.
King does have a lot of neat stuff, though. You can frolic through or counter a fair amount of reversals (be careful about counters, certain reversals’ strengths have different properties and will require you to use a different one), as an example. His footsies only got better with cr.mp being safer/actually linkable and cr.lk being 5f now. It’s pretty tricky to combo with him without meter for EX kick though, so mind that. The other thing that bugs me is if you want to grapple people you have to guess high/low which is kinda silly.