Believe me, Gridman isn’t the only one who wants Hawk on the map. I’d love to go to Evo and prove his worth (and become famous). :lovin:
I think that the seasoned players have seen enough of Hawk’s few gimmicks. Does Hawk have anything to deal with Honda?
You don’t know how tempting it is for me, Gridman, to reply to this with “try harder.” But I’m not sure gradx will get the joke, as we’ve seen in the past, and I’ll just come off as a Forum snob. Hahaha.
The answer, gradx, is that it’s not an easy fight at all. Hawk really has nothing to help in that fight, and you just have to work your ass off in the fight to win it. Others here can probably give you better advice than that, but to be honest, the fight isn’t gonna get any better even when you get advice. That matchup is the definition of an uphill battle.
- James
^^ I get the joke… Sigh … as unfortunate as it is… It just points out the one of the many broken points of view / philosophies that the “remixer” used to “remix” the game. I know that I can find that article somewhere…
Still not as bad as Guile though. I’ve beaten Thelo’s Honda before.
I think he knows that it’s a terrible answer, and that’s why he put “tried harder” in quotes…
It’s hard to say what would have worked without seeing what the actual changes he tried are. Like he said, it’s easy to think of a way to balance Hawk v Guile, but it’s harder to think of a way to balance Hawk v Guile that won’t upset the other 14 matchups in the game.
At least there is a real strategy to fighting Guile.
The strategy for fighting Honda is either to sit there and low jab and try to react to whatever he does, allowing him to build full super meter whenever he feels like it, or walk forward and mix up throws and psychic DPs. That’s really it.
He’s hard to tick throw for a variety of reasons, hard to cross up, normals are pretty worthless against him in general and his reversal is basically safe.
At least with Guile there is room to outplay your opponent. They do a low forward you do a low roundhouse or a low fierce. They do a sonic boom you jump early or jump straight up with jab. You think they’re going to reverse you block.
To beat Guile you have to work your ass off and outplay your opponent, but IMO it’s better than either doing low jabs until Honda gets bored or holding towards and guessing the right time to either DP or 360 4 or 5 times in as row.
I would love to see videos of a good Hawk beating a good Honda that consisted of something other than freakishly good guesswork. The vids I’ve seen when Hawk pulls off a win it’s nearly always because he guesses right 75%+ of the time, and that was before the changes that made 360 less reliable.
DP hitting low limbs better would help a lot against Guile and I don’t see it turning Hawk into some sort of dominator against other chars.
A dp boost would be, i think, all hawk would need to beat guile. like ive said a trillion times before, the fact that i have to be POINT blank for a dp to even trade with guiles low forward is ludacris. if im that close, im ticking.
hawk vs honda = spam cr.jab, wait till he loses his charge, dive at him, get a 360, spam some more low jabs.
LOL @ ryu being higher then claw.
I think quite a few people have overrated gat in the past (to my knowledge ouroborours still thinks he’s the best in the game) but people are now realizing how his fb arm hitbox is a bigger nerf then his fb recovery speed.
Gat doesn’t dominate anymore but he goes 6-4 with almost everyone losing 3.5-6.5 to only sim and boxer, while having a very slightly less then 5-5 matchup with claw and blanka. If that’s not definitely hightier I don’t know what is but where exactly in the hightier he is is the debatable part.
I’m going to have to agree with zoolander here, and not just because I’m a claw player.
In my mind top looks something like this:
Boxer & Claw just edging out Sim for the very top.
then…everyone else.
Ryu, and Dictator would be up there, and I strongly suspect Honda now has the tools to hurt a lot of people, but Ryu is not top. His fake fb just doesn’t offset his limitations.
I am not a top tier Sagat player by any means. I’ve been trying to use him since starting almost 2 months ago because I used to play Sagat a lot in HF via the arcades and didn’t log much, if any playing time since the mid 90s. That being said, I am fully aware of his capabilities then and started to notice the different almost immediately.
His fireball recovery has been hurt enough so that if the opponents guess right or if it’s a predictable sagat player, they can get in. More characters have moves to penetrate Sagat’s optimal zoning distance.
Lag affects the timing of his tiger uppercut making him no better than a B player online. In a tournament setting I’d definitely grade him 1 level higher.
It’s not that Sagat has necessarily lost so much because I don’t really see it that way. It’s just that everyone else has been given more tools to deal with fireball traps and quite a few strategies can make his tiger uppercut worthless as an anti-air.
This game is seems to lean more towards speed than power. This is what hurts Sagat the most because a lot of these speed characters are some of Sagat’s worst matchups.
And as far as the claw comment goes, I can see why he’s listed as a top tier but I haven’t been exposed to enough good Claws to say that personally. I’ve run into a really good one, ald_one. Claw has definitely been improved since he was given that anti-air and it felt useless to try and zone him, but I speak from experience only, not the general consensus.
Ryu is at the top because he’s well-balanced against the field, he has plenty of tricks to fill up the super gauge, and a full super gauge neutralizes most projectile attacks. He also has the hurricane kick misdirection mid-air which can help create some confusion. Yes, Ryu is in my top tier.
I find that the worst matchups for Sagat are Boxer, Claw, Deejay, Honda, and Dictator
I’d like you to tell me what you think these stategies are that make his dp worthless and by tell me I mean play me and show me today.
Are you lark anderson from the sthd gamespot tournament? <3 your commentating:lovin:
ryu is one of the better character and fake fb is a powerful tool when used correctly (which most people don’t) but he still has too many bad matchups to be considered toptier.
Boxer and sim are really bad matchups for sagat otherwise he beats everyone else (except blank and claw which are very slightly unfavorable matchups.)
More horizontal range on the ground for Hawk’s Thunderstrike would definitely help him against people that can sit and poke him from long range. I dunno…maybe just extend the hitbox for the first hitting frames while he’s on the ground and then have it revert back when he takes off? He either needs that or a normal that can beat those troublesome pokes.
It sure would be nice if he had the knockdown version of the Condor Dive again, too. 
In fact, I say let him have both and make the non-knockdown version put a standing opponent in hit/block stun for 16 frames…not 11. At least that way, if the opponent gets hit, Hawk gets rewarded for the opponent being asleep. After all, it’s a jumping move and it has noticable startup. It’s not like it’s quick enough to become a corner lockdown. (It would scare the scrubs, I’m sure.) His splash would still be a better choice for that.
I think those changes would give him a little more relief against Guile, as they increase the reward Hawk gets for smart play and increase the risk Guile takes in relying on three or four moves (cr.:mk:, Sonic Boom, cr.:hp:, Flash Kick) throughout the match.
How that would affect his other matchups? I dunno. Who’s T.Hawk’s easiest matchup? I wonder how that matchup would be affected.
^ Probably Bison or Chun.
Ok good…I was thinking about them. My changes would make their poking game a little worse against him, but wouldn’t change the fact that they’ll still have trouble with repeated splashes in the corner.
The move is not invinceable and this is where he has the disadvantage. Just as everyone else with anti-airs that aren’t an invinceable dp. Have you seen someone really effective at jumping in and using well-timed hurricane kicks from Ryu? JohnChoiBoy is the most recent exploiter I’ve seen. He made my dp feel worthless. If I traded it was to minimal advantage. Most of the time I missed or he hit me out of it cleanly.
Then there are the people who never jump in. I mean never.
Everyone has bad matchups but Ryu has all the tools at the highest level to be competitive. He just has to work harder than someone like Boxer who can constantly come at you from multiple angles with speed and power.
I won’t get into the tier debate right now but this statement sounds like one of inexperience. Tiger uppercuts have invincibility. You just don’t have the luxury to just stick it out whenever (as you can with Gouki’s dps and to a lesser extent with other invincible anti-airs) so it’s your job to time it so that the limited invincibility is used right when the opponent reaches you. Watch any of the top Sagat players’ matches (yaya, John Choi) to see how deeply they use it in order to consistently beat jump-ins.
OK so maybe I should clarify. The Tiger Uppercut’s limited frames of invincibility can make it exploitable or neutralizable to varying extents with aerial moves that have frames of invincibility, i.e. Ryu’s hurricane kick.
I’m curious as to what you think his bad matchups are?
I’d say Sim is very bad, follwed by Sagat which is kinda bad, and then maybe boxer and claw are just “slight disadvantage” but not really bad.
Does two 7-3 matchups, and two 6-4 matchus, as I would rate them, = automatically not top tier?
I mean, I can see where you’re coming from, I just want to raise that question. Ryu has the advantage in a lot of matchups, and even his best counterpicks are still winnable, just kinda hard.
I would put him near the top of the 2nd tier, just below Claw and Sagat.