People (and by “people” I mean “Honda players”) keep wanting everyone to believe that Honda beating any fireball character requires an act of god.
AfroLegends, the guy who won the entire Evo tournament, chose a “counter character” fireball guy vs. Honda and barely squeaked by.
There isn’t a lot of empirical evidence that Honda is raped by fireballs in this game. People keep saying it but there’s no reason to believe it.
Honda’s buttslam can be very effective for punishing and evading fireballs, but he has to take risks getting in, and his huge hitbox doesn’t neccessarily make that easy.
I was under the impression that afrolegends was a boxer player before anything else(not saying he can’t be good with other characters).
Of course there’s reason to believe it. Look at his options (from ken’s perspective)…
[LIST]
[]Buttstomp --> sweep
[]Forward jump --> sweep
[]Neutral jump --> fierce dp or another fireball
[]Jab headbutt --> sweep
[/LIST]
This is one of the easiest fights in the game.
You probably haven’t experienced it. Honda has NEXT TO NO chance against top-tier shotos. See EAmegaman VS John Choi and Mike Watson at Devastation. Or Alex Valle absolutely ripping Kusomodo (sp?) at last year’s Evo. When it comes down to it, Honda still doesn’t have what it takes to best them.
Let’s see…
Honda’s got the st. jab which works, but its still hard to get in. Not to mention jumping in can remove his charge and limit his effectiveness.
Pretty much agree, been saying mostly the same thing for months. I think he loses to most fireball characters, but meh, not that badly. I still maintain that Ken is his worst matchup at 3-7, worst.
Is it just the fierce dp that skews it so out of proportion?
I think its Ryu. The superiority of his FB to Ken’s is what gives him the edge. I play Honda here and here for fun, and I’m LOTS more comfortable against Kens. The slower FB gives you options.
What? The slower fireball is worse! Harder to jump over and gives Ken more time to think about how to rape you should you choose to try and jump over it.
Some people here don’t seem to get what “empirical evidence” means. Hint: it’s not a flowchart.
Why are you using ST matches as evidence of anything?
Saying that Honda loses to John Choi is pretty silly, most people lose to Choi, it’s not a character thing, it’s a player thing. No offense intended to Megaman but he is not on the same level as Choi.
Megaman and Thelo are two formerly unknown Honda players who have done well for themselves in HDR, a game that includes Guile, DJ, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Sagat and Dhalsim. That’s 7 out of 16 characters that have fireballs. Hell online you also have Akuma who is also supposedly the best character in the game and has 3 different kinds of fireballs.
If Honda has terrible matches against these chars how in the world are Honda players doing anything at all? How did Thelo make it into the top 10 in online rankings and top 8 in Evo?
Are these Honda players just miraculously able to avoid fighting half the cast?
A character who loses to fireballs would not make Evo top 8 and the top 10 XBL rankings. Period. You cannot do well losing badly to half the cast.
After a lot of gameplay tonight I have come to the conclusion that the worst move in the game is most likely Cammy’s spinning backfist.
To say that the move is atrocious would be a compliment.
Unless you time your move perfectly - and preemptively - the defender can easily react with all sorts of attacks to stuff your spinning backfirst, including low attacks and fireballs.
I threw out a fireball, and was able to walk up and throw cammy while she was backfisting that should say something.
ST rankings are actually a great jumping off point for most HDR matchups.
There are changes in HDR from ST, but MANY of the matchups are still fought using the core ST strategies and many of the mismatches mirror those of ST.
Yes, that is an ST diagram, but Honda stills struggles vs. these characters.
Those ranking charts are based on top players.
Not every player is skilled of knows how to do anti-Honda gameplay.
I am sure if someone posted the anti-Honda strats (with backup vid footage) for each character it would reduce the Honda wins.
Most the Honda players didn’t make it.
I’m sure Thelo can run down the bad matchups he faced and who piloted each vs. him.
You’ll notice none of the old school top tourney finishers bother with Honda. (though they might bring him in as a counter pick)
I’m not really agreeing or disagreeing with you, i just wanted to make a small nit picky point or two, but the way i see it not all fireballers are the same and honda is definitely at a disadvantage to SOME of them. Take dhalsim for example, or chun li. When you compare their fireball game against someone like ryu or akuma etc they?re in a different class completely. Most of the shoto character?s games are BUILT around fireballs to a greater or lesser degree. Their fireballs all have different properties, usually better recoveries/speeds/ranges, etc (ryu even has a SUPER fireball, which IMO is the best super in the game) and their other normals, supers, and strategies all compliment their fireballs to make their zoning of say, Honda, an entirely different affair to how sim or chun or whoever would do it. Even charge characters and shotos have totally different approaches to zoning Honda with fireballs because of the mechanics of the charging for special moves & counters vs getting them instantly on command (a flash kick for anti-air versus a Dragon punch, for example), and Honda has different strategies for getting round either. It?s not specific enough to just group characters into ?fireballs or not? brackets.
More accurate would be honda loses badly to the top fireballers move sets, which is why he has a handful of really difficult matchups, rather than half the cast giving him big trouble. Simply put, if ryu, akuma, guile, etc want to zone him and are sharp, they can do it relatively easily and at low risk, and give Honda a big hill to climb to do enough damage to win. It?s not an ?auto win? for them, but on the mathematics of the situation they?re in a much better position and much better equipped to win it than Honda. Of all the fireballers in the game though, Ryu?s specific move set can definitely give Honda the biggest trouble. Megaman and Thelo are both exellent players, maybe not quite as established as Choi, but once they got to the top level at evo, where players are more or less all at the same level (more or less), and every player knows more or less every strategy there is for every matchup, the biggest limitation for them on winning a massively one-sided matchup like ryu v honda is the character?s move set, not the player or their skill level.
Thelo made it to the top 10 in online rankings and top 8 in evo by being better PLAYER than all of the other PLAYERS he beat on the way up. That in itself was no reflection of his character choice, he?s just damn good. I can pick any character in the game and beat a scrub using their main 100% of the time, that?s no reflection on how good my character is, it?s only reflection on how good I am as a player. It?s when players reach the top level and are roughly even in terms of skill that character limitations come into it, and at top level play, Honda loses to Ryu most of the time, no matter what, because his move set just can?t deal with Ryu?s move set effectively enough to do more damage than Ryu over 3 matches. That?s what tier lists are supposed to be about, character limitations at the highest level of play, independent of individual player skill level.
To put it another way, If Jon Choi could have a mirror match against himself, one playing Ryu at his best, and the other playing Honda at his best, I bet the Ryu Choi would win the majority of the time.
Choi vs. Choi??.Now that?s a match I?d pay good money to see?..:lovin:
Not to take anything away from Thelo, but I was the only Shoto player in his pool, and I didn’t play him until Semis, where he won because of a combination of
Being a fantastic player
Me still not being familiar with some of the changes of HDR (i.e., forgetting about jab headbutt’s new properties, and not completely comfortable with the new spritework)
He definitely put on a show against Afro’s DeeJay however, who’s supposed to be a worse matchup than Ryu.
I think Ryu and Ken are worse for Honda because they can reversal instantly without charge if he gets in, and sweep seems less risky than slide.
You nailed it completely.
Honda has tough times against shotos but I would think that he would still be higher cause he can deliver some damage. When will the new tiers be out. I know there has to be some post EVO tiers???
Luck of the draw is often overlooked in tournaments. Not to take anything away from Thelo, but If Damdai and Wesyde for example, were in his original pool, and he wound up facing them both, I think there is a good chance that he doesn’t even make it out of his pool.
I don’t exactly know who Thelo fought but as for myself, I just missed the top eight but my path did not cross with any top shoto players so I was fortunate in that aspect. If I had beat Sin’s Guile, my next opponent would have been Bruce Askew’s Dee Jay and though I would have had to win two matches Honda should lose against two excellent players, it would have been possible for me to have reached top eight without having even faced a single decent shoto (I think I only faced one the entire tournament) But for whatever reason, it just seemed like that there were not many good shotos around this time.
Also, I disagree with Sagat and Dhalsim being matches that he should lose now. Honda has always done well against Dhalsim and HDR Sagat is not O Sagat. Honda has a slight advantage over Sim and a slight disadvantage against Sagat but they’re basically even IMO.
And there are too many factors keeping the ranking system from being accurate, though I think it’s a good way to determine good players from average and bad players in general.
I agree, a turtling deejay who’se got honda at full screen has loads of options, but once honda gets in he can really hurt deejay. Ryu and ken have more options, as a good shoto player can reversal dragon punch as soon as he can think to do it, he doesn’t have to engineer a situation where he’s kept his charge, and you also have the stupid situation where ryu and ken can block confirm cancel into a fireball off their sweep. The 2 block pushbacks from one of those puts honda well back out of range of the opponent for any of his close attacking options and hands the initiative straight back to the shoto player.
I really hate that sweep cancel, it’s something that i always thought was overlooked and never should have been possible in the game.It’s impossible to combo off, if the sweep hits the opponent is airborne and unhittable by the special. The only possible reason for it being in the game that i can think of is to give shotos a block string shenanigan they didn’t need in the first place to push guys like honda back out of range.
:lame:
thelo beat valle’s ryu to make it to top 8 winners.
were you guys even at evo? seriously all i saw were bisons and hondas, and they were doing REALLY WELL too. those two characters are defitnitely serious bidness in hdr, theorycraft or no theorycraft.