Um no. Lariat is soooooo effing punishable. It needs to be a perfectly timed AA. And i do mean perfect. there is no margin of error against a jumpin designed to stuff the lariat. DP > lariat ma dudes. Esp now that people are really starting to learn the auto correct DP. And as far as fireball avoidance…takes a certain kind of skill because the slow fireballs will eat you alive with KKK, and PPP has way too much recovery, your guaranteed to eat combo by most characters
Back to the topic at hand. If you can win and win big with a grappler in this game, you quite frankly may not just be GDLK, but a god period.
This is the best SF for people that like grapple characters. Especially if they bring R.Mika on the DLC. It was also harder to take advantage of openings in previous SF games because they didn’t have shortcuts.
Honda isn’t a true grappler? 80% of Honda users can’t even do jab xx HHS. how do you think they get most of they’re damage. I guess ppl just hold up back when Honda gets close because they’re scared of his combos right? out of the big five grapplers (Hawk, gief, Abel, Hak, Honda) he has the worst command grab but he is still a grapplers. In vanilla Gief got most of his damage from green hand combos but you cannot argue that he wasn’t a grappler.
Trying to beat Lariat from the air is far too risky unless your character has an angled jumpin like Chun Li’s j.hk. Its first 2 active frames have a massive hitbox and Zangief wins on a trade because he still gets the knockdown. That’s why both Valle and Wong didn’t even attempt to jump at Vangief when they played him. They were forced to plant themselves on the ground and attempt to outpoke/zone him.
Ochio has a 5-frame startup and half the range of a proper command grab. He can be jabbed or thrown out of it. Zangief uses the threat of his command grab to pull off combos and get the knockdown. Honda uses his command grab as an occasional unsafe mixup/shenanigan. It’s not the backbone of his game.
Meh, I prefer ST for my grappler. SSF4 wins in the versatility department though with the options available for true and pseudo grapplers.
Actually I think that’s what half the people in this thread who are complaining ARE arguing about.
I mean hell, there was a ton of angst about Hawk from Zangief players pre and early super, because people were jealous that Hawk’s game was built around setting up his throws, while Zangief uses the threat of his throws to set up his poking and combo game. Mostly just whiny shits, but that does seem to be what’s upset them.
I’d put him as a hybrid because he’s a charge character by default and a grappler second, would you consider Seth a grappler because has a command throw? Probably not.
Hakan/Hawk and Gief all have one thing in common, much of their offense (more importantly Hawk and Gief) relies on them getting in and doing damage with command throws. Abel, Honda, Seth all have other options, but Hawk and Gief for the most part have very few options, get inside with moves and start the command throw game.
I’m not saying Honda isn’t a grappler, he has a command throw, that’s good enough for me, but to call him a true grappler when he’s primarily a charge character is stupid.
I’m not for or against it, I was just pointing out the crap tactics that grapplers have to deal with that make playing one, IMHO, much more of a chore than anyone else. And are probably atleast part of the logic behind suggesting comboing into a grapple.
And yes, you CAN bait a DP and try to grapple. But you know what? As a Hawk player, I’ve all but given up on that tactic. For one simple reason: the window of opportunity to grapple is far too small, because all those damn shotos online that are easily baited into whiffing a DP KNOW you’re gonna try to SPD/MT them and WILL be frantically mashing another one on the way back down. And because of virtually no recovery time that 2nd DP comes out as soon as they land, cutting off that grapple attempt.
The fucking mashers just make that shit too hard to pull off. Hell of a lot easier to just punish a whiffed DP with a Tomahawk Buster.
I’m not saying grapplers need that ability, I’m saying it’s something to consider which would work due to the heavy damage scaling of SSF4. Something like 90% of other worthwhile fighters that aren’t made by Capcom give grapplers ways to combo into their grabs, and grapplers in exactly ZERO of these games are overpowered. It would simply make grapplers more “grapply”, because right now their main focus is not upon grappling, but upon using their throws as a threat in order to make their opponents make mistakes so they can use moves which are not throws to punish.
It’s just how I see it coming from other games. A grappler who’s main focus is not to land throws is not actually a grappler. T.Hawk is the only character I’d really consider a grappler in this because his entire game revolves around landing throws, but because he has no worthwhile way to do this he is extremely low tier. If he had better normals and a couple ways to combo into command throws he’d be exceptionally better.
I agree with you man. Shit is full of boosters and ragequitters and whining bitches that don’t want to play against certain matchups and players, yet want to rise to the top of all of them in the rankings.
Seriously though, if you think grapplers are hard, try to play with a close-combat without a decent DP against a grappler. Fuck up a rekka, eat a throw. Miss a tight link, eat a throw. Whiff anything unsafe…well, you get the idea.
Basically saying, the road is hard for just about any character that isn’t a shoto online, but Capcom shouldn’t tweak the game to accomendate those who don’t play locally.
Oh I know. Believe me I know. I mained Sakura all through vanilla and fighting Gief was always an extremely dangerous and uphill battle for her. As far as Super goes, aside from Hawk and Sakura, I’ve also been playing Ibuki and Juri. Gief encounters with them have actually been few and far between. Still a dangerous matchup though.
But on that same note, I’ve also fought a few T.Hawk’s with all 3 of the girls too. But with the exception of one Hawk that cheesed out a win on my Sakura, they were all pushovers. Even for Juri with her pinwheel’s weakness to throws. Bad players behind the Hawks? Probably. Either way though, it’s just so damned easy to keep from getting MT’d since Hawk has no real way to get in for it. Unlike Gief who can just green hand his way across the screen and get in, all in the blink of an eye.
You never defeated the argument, you only stated it wasn’t easy mode. Fact is Gief has a dominant anti-air if you use it properly. Hell it even trades with Akuma’s dive kick.
After a while I get sick of the whining around here. Gief is still a very good character and he is a flat out nightmare to fight against if your character doesn’t have a great zoning game. Gief can take a ton of hits, but only needs one major mistake to drain a lot of health.
um yah… that’s my point… not to say PPP was crap only that it’s AA properties are NOT easy mode like a DP. That shit needs to be on point or eat combo. Honestly there are very very few characters that truly don’t have a zoning game and Gief hurts a whole lot more than before. Biggest example for me is how I used to bully Guile into the corner and and go to work. Now, i look up at the bar and more than half my life is gone by time i get in. wtf? Anyway, i think when you see characters at the top already, like Rufus the Doofus, get better but yours gets shittier…its natural for the sodium levels to bubble up.
If you are not landing enough grabs to feel like you are playing a grappler, it is because your opponent is doing everything in their power to avoid them. There a reason for that; your grabs scare the hell out of them. Grapplers are headgames characters. They have moves where their entire value is them existing as a threat, not in actually landing them. Any move that makes your opponent play differently just because it is there is a good move. Grabs are intimidating even when they do not do as much damage as a combo, because people hate being hit with them. People hate the idea you hit them with something they could not block. They hate the fact that they cannot tech them like a normal throw. They hate the fact that for a few seconds they cannot input anything into the game as they watch your move play out, while at least with a combo the can try and mash out in case you make a mistake. If Zangief spends an entire match without landing a SPD or any grab and he wins, he did his job perfectly.
Would it be amazingly awesome if characters like Gief and Hawk had combo enders that were grapples? Yes. It should be something new though. What would be nice is a Target Combo, incorporating some of Gief’s other grabs he lost since World Warrior. Making the existing grabs combo would be a mistake because it would completely rewrite how grappling works in Street Fighter. Consider Tick setups. Do you really want Gief to be able to tick into the same throws he can hit confirm? We would lose tick throws, which completely changes a large amount of the menace the grappling system in Street Fighter has. If grabs are comboed everywhere you would lose the psych aspect of your opponent knowing they screwed up to be hit by that grab rather than you just landing another bnb combo that you see all match long. You ose the job well done satisfaction of knowing you setup a good tick trap.
Grapplers are zoning characters, as much as Ryu is. The difference is where they zone for. All characters are about knowing which space is strongest for you and weakest for your opponent and maximizing on it. Your opponent is trying to do the same. An opponent doing their best to avoid your zone is not a failing of your character, it is how the game works. You maximize your zone by punishing their attempts to avoid it. This is why gief has Lariet and EX Glove. The jump up ; PPP. The dash back ; DP + PP. Each of these moves leaves your opponent exactly where they should be to threaten with a SPD again, and leaves them fighting like mad to avoid your zone.
Hakkan needs to start rounds with an EX oiling already activated. Would completely solve him.
I’ll give my input on the subject as someone who pretty much mains Hakan. I’ve never really played a grappler before, and i’m not a very good player so i guess take what i say with a grain of salt. Many people say that Hakan is pure gimmicks, and i do not disagree, but I believe that he (and every other underrated character) is more ‘solid’ than people make him out to be. He is missing a lot of tools, such as an overhead (which it seems like most grapplers don’t have, or else they’d be too powerful <,<), a cross up, and no real reversal to get the pressure off. Everything else is just tricky. As for oil, I mainly use it as a Mindgame tool instead of an actual tool. People go crazy when you have oil on, and its impossible for them to know the ins and outs of hakan’s tricks. It is mostly a poking game though, and Hakan’s normals do pretty good damage + having good range. It’s going to be interesting to see how they do the arcade rebalancing works out for him.
How Does he Fit in the rest of the cast? If we talk about tier listings, of course its going to be all the way down there. The interesting thing about Hakan’s design is that he’s a grappler designed with the SFIV engine in mind. Mobile FA and Crisco (Dash normal cancels) are some of the more interesting things you can use to get in and do damage with, but you don’t have those options if you don’t have Oil.
Haha, i know, what a bold comment i made right? The reason why I say something like that is the same mentality everyone is giving him so far. No one is ever going put time into learning the Hakan matchup because he isn’t a threat. Real basic things like Dash Normal Cancels, Range of Attacks and Throws, and even specific oil slide recoveries, are never going to be studied because people don’t think its worth their time, and they’re right about feeling that way. What it does do though, is give you a small (or big) advantage when it comes to the match.
An aspect of Hakan’s strength lies within his meta-game. Since he’s such a low teir and joke/silly character, its hard to take the match seriously from the start, which is an advantage to you. Then if the opponent is struggling/lost a round, then sometimes they get flustered, another advantage. Again though, I am a ‘09er’ who just plays randoms online.
Its an interesting discussion to whether grapplers get more dangerous when the opponent knows their tricks, or whether they’re more dangerous for the opponent not to have that knowledge.
I’d argue that Gief is balanced around people knowing the matchup.
When you face gief, you know he has a zone of death right in front of him and you do everything to avoid it, gief has the appropriate normals (headbutt, sweep lariat etc) to then create a matchup based around dancing around gief while he tries to clip you with his normals+ex green hand.
If you didnt know about giefs throws he’d just flat out murder you with his ultra every time.
I think the biggest nerf to grapplers has been the buff to reversal DP’s. Meaties don’t work well anymore, which hurts tick set-ups a lot. I gave up Gief because I found it to hard to land punishes consistently which I believe requires a strong knowledge of buffering to execute. In the end I moved onto other characters who’s 50/50 game is safer and more rewarding against the reversal happy.