lol - I’m sure you can use his broken-assed tiger shots to do something…
/I keed
I’m just happy that everyone still considers boxer to be high on the list. Don’t really care bout everyone elses position.
^^^^ those are jap opinions on ST.
Additionally, i would argue that
honda loses to ryu 6.5-3.5
beats dj 6-4
even with chun 5-5
beats sagat 6.5-3.5
loses to guile 6-4
don’t know the ken matchup, but it’s probably 6-4 ken advantage.
honda now has more than enough effective tools and mixups vs. fireballers it’s not even funny.
the super eats fireballs and is free 20% + mixups from 3/4 except maybe against guile
jab headbutt from 1/3 screen is hawt sauce. mix it up with wait, poke, hhs and sumo splash/jump = honda wins in options vs. fireball/poke/jump/uppercut
short sumo splash over fireballs still works and gives mad bar
super is too good, and honda builds so much bar he can do 2 or 3 a round.
honda still does 40-60% easy on a single good knock down i.e. sumo splash/fp throw
people just think honda still loses cause they don’t understand jab headbutt. if it’s going to hit clean it’s a guessing game in honda’s favour. if it’s max screen jab headbutt is basically a safe way to build bar.
block jab fireball, fierce fireball, jab headbutt the next one. if you eat a fierce fireball punish you’ve built half a bar in super. do this twice and you can super the next one from mid screen.
what i think throws people off is that from a lot of ranges jab headbutt through fireballs is going to get you raped. that’s anywhere but max screen and 1/4 distance away. from there jab headbutt is ridiculous.
so from max range, honda builds bar to threaten super. he can even stall with straight jump fierce if he wants to. from 1/4 screen honda wins, cause jab headbutt will eat fireballs, beat pokes, beat jumps, counter hit early uppercuts.
so the only time honda really loses is outside those ranges
from 3/4 to 1/3 screen away, honda now has as many options to get in and do damage than shotos have to keep out. and even then, honda does straight up more damage/option than shotos have to keep out.
If shotos are gonna sit there and spam headbutt beating normals then you can afford to short splash/hhs to get super then get into range to super and then super their normal, if they they react by throwing fireballs, you haven’t lost anything, but gained bar, their pattern and position, and you may even be able to jab headbutt the oncoming fireball.
honda can just turtle vs. fireballers and get bar, then smart super smoething, take 20% and then rush down shoto ftw.
shoto can’t rush you down, cause jab headbutt + oochio wins every time.
play honda like chun li, and you’ll understand.
if chun vs. shoto is like 4-6 then honda vs. shoto should be like 6-4.
honda can do everything chun can do, he can do more than what chun can do and he can do it all better.
I don’t know if Honda beats Sagat cleanly.
The fact that Sagat has to switch between highs and lows makes it hard. Lows won’t stop a head butt but highs can. Highs won’t cause chip though.
So he has to mix it up but Honda still has plenty of good options. Plus Sagat’s AA’s ain’t exactly the best. I would say it’s 6/4 Honda or it MIGHT be even. MIGHT.
Cuz Sagat still does alot of damage and can still lock Honda down if he plays smart. Jab headbutt is good but Sagat can punish the recovery with TK x 2.
or honda can like j.hk sagat in the face/arms for throwing a high tiger.
I just said that honda shouldn’t do jab headbutt from those positions where eating the fireball makes it whiff.
he does it on scared fireballers from 1/3 screen where it eats the fireball then headbutts their face.
or across the screen for bar.
honda has so many good options to get in/get out of trouble.
and he only needs to get in twice to kill.
That’s a matter of timing. Jump at the wrong time and u may very well eat the shot you were trying to punish Sagat for throwing.
You worded it like the j. hk is free or something.
Far from it.
it is free. and i’ll take a trade any time.
honda’s hk is hella nice, you can’t even deep it properly.
Jab headbutt is far more punishable than you say. TRy playing against those players I mentioned a few posts up, it simply doesn’t help him as much as you think.
Shoto’s don’t need to rush Honda down. The fireballs work just fine if used properly. Sure he can do all sorts of stuff to stop them, but in the end, the fireball game still favors the shoto.
There are quite a few other players that can punish Honda rather badly, those are just a few that came to mind. E5105 is a good Dee Jay also and knows how to fight Honda as does wax, KJ out the 17th, Sabre and others.
The super makes a differnce, but it’s use is conditional and he can’t slap, butt bomb or headbutt willy-nilly to get bar like he can in other matchups because he’ll get punished if he tries.
I don’t know of any top Honda players that thinks he beats Ryu in Remix. Ultra has stated that it may be much less bad, but stopped short of saying it was even, much less Honda’s advantage.
At close range jab headbutt cannot stop fireballs on reaction. At the ranges in which you can, it is almost always punishable. Basically, you need to anticipate and harass with the close-ranged headbutt, while trying not to eat any reversal specials.
It’s far from useless, but I don’t think it’s the silver bullet that you portray it as.
I think Honda is like 5.5 to 4.5 in Sagat’s favor and that’s mostly because if the Sagat player is smart with mixing up the tiger shot, he can still impose a nice lockdown. The tiger is so fast that he can often punish the straight up j rh by making him land on a tiger on reaction.
KJ out the 17th comes to mind when Sagat is mentioned to me. Try playing Honda against him. He hates playing Honda, as it is one of Sagat’s harder matches, but that’s because Sagat is so good that to him a bad match is one that he wins by less.
Sagat…good?
LOLOLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
No j/k j/k.
Man, I’m just so confused about Sagat’s placement these days.
Yes.
Thanks for the backhanded compliment? The statement that Claw is better than anyone (save akuma) is far from an obvious certainty.
Top players don’t even agree whether or not akuma is broken, so that’s not obvious. If it’s not obvious whether or not akuma is broken, why would Claw’s strength be any less so?
Could you put that in a memo and entitle it “Shit I already know”?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking.
I don’t agree. I think he was strong without the walldive spam. But I think what made him top tier was precisely that.
I totally dispute those two “facts”. I’m not the best player in the world but I don’t suck (9th at evo this year with Claw and Boxer). Those two are my tournament mains, and have been for over 10 years. It’s not AT ALL obvious to me that they are top two. It’s not at all obvious to me where they place in the tier list, either.
zass - you dont think boxer is still definitely top tier? id love to hear reasoning for that. the only nerf ive seen is his throw range. (if theres more please enlgihten me, casual boxer player here). really the only character i could definitely place in a spot on the tier list would be hawk at the bottom or middle of middle tier 
Info from Sirlin’s blog: first hit of throw does less damage, TAP and headbutt give less metter, super does 50% damage instead of 60%, strong headbutt has more recovery, jab headbutt is no longer safe. One might be interested on this quote from the same blog on this last change:
Edit: (NOT VERIFIED) I also think his super is a bit less safe. I will try and get more information about this. I am not sure it was a permanent change.
Extra edit: added other nerfs, from Jimmy Rey’s blog.
Final edition: According to Sirlin blog, Boxer’s super has the same invincibility and recovery. Quote from the blog:
ah shit, i forgot about the headbutt and the super. i didnt know the other stuff.
boxer still seems like a fucking monster though.
Cant you dp the super after the flash now, like you have 1 frame to do it or some shit. I think I heard something bout that. Or I be hearing things.
You’ve just contradicted yourself here. My view is
“It’s not obvious that Vega is the best”.
You agree with this in your first sentence. Then, in your second sentence, you disagree with my view.
I don’t think anyone ever said Vega was weak or “shit tier” in ST…ever.
Accepted tier theory for ST years ago was Ryu, Dhalsim, 4 bosses definitely at the top, with most people ranking Dhalsim, Balrog, O.Sagat, Ryu slightly ahead of Vega and Bison. Chun didn’t get talked about as a high ranking character until a few years ago. I don’t really know why since Chun has pushed her way pretty close to the top recently. I can’t recall playing any skilled US Chuns that I couldn’t just overpower with my normal brand of stupidity until NKI though. Kinda strange.
Anyways, what most people would argue was that while Vega was still a good character and probably one of the top 5 in the game, he was significantly more exploitable than any of the other top characters, with his weaknesses and hard matches much harder than any other top character. Dhalsim, O.Sagat, Ryu didn’t have any matches where they get smashed in but Vega does and he has a couple of them as well as some matches that are pretty even (DeeJay, Balrog) that aren’t unwinnable but are completely retarded anyways.
Nobody credible ever denied that Vega was a good/top 5, top 6 character in vanilla ST, but the wall dive played a big role in keeping him as high as he was. As far as the current debate goes, I have no opinion because I haven’t played enough of HDR to have a real opinion. But I will say this: whether he’s an accepted top 5 character again or not, it seems pretty obvious to me that he fights Akuma better than probably any character besides Dhalsim, meaning that he’ll be a useful and important character throughout the life of the game.
–Jay Snyder
Viscant@aol.com
First off, the disclaimer is that I play claw and I welcome that anybody else play claw if they’d like.
Anyway, I don’t see your underlying point. Are you trying to say that OG claw players underrated their character because they didn’t want others to play claw? What would it matter what they said about the tiers? If they were winning tourneys, you’d think more people might be inclined to try claw out anyway. The worst such talk would’ve done is keep away folks who perceive tiers as gospel without really understanding the game, and even they should have noticed something if they really took the time to get better and grasp the character dynamics.
It was commented pretty well from the early days that claw was great overall but that he takes damage hard and doesn’t inflict much damage, all of which is true. If anything, claw is now hyperbolically viewed as a messianic figure what with NKI commenting on More Balrog’s unbeatable cheese, zass mentioning the JP disfavor towards using him, and Tokido wall diving to Evo wins. And still, despite the infamy and all the ranting, there’s somehow been no resulting influx of good claw players in the tourney scene…
STHD claw has a permanent loss of at least 10% damage per round on average with the wall dive removal (this percentage is actually higher in his tougher matches where he needs to wall dive more and lower in his easy matches) and that certainly isn’t a negligible amount. That’s a bigger loss than anybody else out there; Chun Li and boxer may have lost 10% on their supers but that’s not something they can connect in many rounds and with more minor other aspects lost/modified, that makes their overall loss much more manageable. The removal of the wall dive knockdown is significant enough that I guarantee top US Dhalsim players feel the claw matchup is somewhat in their favor now (even if standing flipkicks hasn’t been removed).
Personally, I agree with the JP players that boxer is claw’s only disadvantageous match in ST (and not by much) but some matchups have definitely slid more towards evenness and maybe into disadvantage in STHD. As to how far those slides are in light of his still-great overall abilities as well as the shifts in other characters, I’m with zass; he’s definitely still good but I’m not certain what level of “good” he’s now at.
Thanks for the compliment bro:)
I have to say though that while I pointed out weaknesses like in the “Killing ST Vega” thread, I always thought Vega was great.
In fact, I disagree with Viscant about Vega. I was just chuckling with some Seattle bros at how Viscant was doing the same thing he did on CvS2. Basically, he is reliving the cycle of saying that Vega sucks. His SF4 assessment echoes his early CvS2 posts. I am on the opposite end. I pointed out that he would be wrong about SF4 Vega as well. People are saying he sucks and that is ridiulous for a couple reasons right away. It is still too early to have seen a master actually master him. Also, I can win with him with basics like before. I have no doubt that if I get into SF4 I will dominate with him. Vega in ST is as good as a character gets. I wish he was more fun to play but as he is, he has every tool needed to win in every match actually.
Back in the day, all Vega players just abused the wall. I always liked to be different so I played a ground game. I end up using the wall when I see players claiming that his wall stuff sucks. Yup, I play to buck the trends sometimes. It’s fun. It’s been on both sides. First was wall-dive crap. Then I brought what I thought to be finesse and footsies. People liked that way of winning more for a while and thought that the dives stunk. Then I went to using the wall again. See what I’m saying? Vega is so awesome that he can be played in many ways and win with both. I’ll recite what other players say for the perception but in all honesty, the moment ST introduced the flipkick, he became top tier in my personal book.
So, we may have used the same character but we think the opposite. I used Vega when he sucked(SF:CE/HF). I know the difference. I won tournaments before he had a flipkick and his flipkick has never sucked it has just changed in the way it should be used. Vega is good in every game in recent memory and that includes SF4 so far imo.
heheh and I was just as successful with Rog and moreso in ST’s heyday. He’s just more fun. With Vega you can literally just react and that bores me very fast. It’s more fun to create openings than to just react. Then again, I like to have fun. lol
Apoc.
Vega is a monster.
Ground game is too good and his wall bullshit is nasty.
Oh and he has an AA with his flip kick which can combo INTO itself.
What more can you ask for in a character?