Lol @ everyone saying hawk is trash. he just has 0 representation besides literally myself. i dunno who else plays him as a main anywhere. also whoever said he has no combos is sorta right but saying they do mediocre damage is laughable. his bnb, splash jab cl.mp ex spire is like 350 with a mixup if they tech or not. or jump in jab jab dp is 300 i think and also has a mixup after it. he needs some changes absolutely because some of his problems are just silly but hes definitely a mid tier character right now
Abel is what a grappler should be.
High health+high damage is fucking retarded. It doesn’t matter if you character is huge and easy to combo. It doesn’t matter if they’re slow and rely on being close. It’s fucking stupid that a character can win by doing three moves.
Assuming having a 360 motion in a command grab is a grappler
Zangief-He has really solid footsies and if he gets a knockdown, its really hard to escape. He is rated B on most tier lists.
T. Hawk-Like other new characters, he was a bit underpowered. Capcom wasn’t going to make him the strongest grappler in the game anyways, as the mindset was Zangief to be designed as the CLEAR leading grappler of series
Hakan-Joke character. If they make changes to him, he should be buffed to a level of T.Hawk at least
I think they got Zangief(main grappler) right in this game. It was ridiculous seeing him do easy link combos in Vanilla. They fixed it by making c.lk~clk one a 1F link, meanwhile making him more a grappling dependent character. Health(1100) and his lariat are now balanced. Has bad matchups, but thats the nature of a pure grappler. Possible to play at a high level, being repped well at Evo and seeing other JPN giefs. He is still a dangerous character
Gief is a pretty solid character in this game as it is now, he really does not need any major buffs. Headbutt still does stupid stun and beats out a lot of moves. Really strong normals too. Lariat is still good despite nerfs.
T. Hawk is not underpowered at all, his command throws do almost the damage Zangief did in Vanilla which is stupid powerful. He does have decent pokes like crouching mk, but doesn’t have a mix-up game nearly as good as Zangiefs which makes up for the stupid damage he’s capable of doing with command throws. He also doesn’t have a gtfo me move like Zangiefs lariat, or one that’s nearly as good.
Hakan would be better if he had more tricks on someones wake-up like a cross-up or something. Also it seems close to impossible on some characters to get oiled up before getting hit without having to confirm a slide or grab. And the oil needs to last longer.
Reversal DP’s and zoning characters like Dhalsim/Guile/D. Jay are the bane of grapplers though cause it’s hard to get in and they easily stop their mix-up game on wake-up, but that should be expected. There are just a lot of these types of characters in SSFIV and they happen to be used a lot.
Hakans an interesting breed of grappler. unlike other grapplers, he can operate at any spot on the screen, thanks to oil. And DNC’s give him some interesting tools against fireballs and for getting in.
Hakan ain’t a joke. he’s just a really, really big challenge. gotta know your matchups, know your setups and DNC’s, and stay oily. he’s got solid normals, and he can dish it out nicely when oiled.
why isn’t honda a grappler? he has a command throw and a command throw ultra.
hes big, sorta slow, above average defense and stun resistance. sounds like a grappler to me.
honda is the complete opposite. zangief uses the threat of his command grab to pull off combos, but honda uses the threat of his combos to pull off his command grab.
the threat of c.lp xx hundred hand bitch slaps gives you plenty of opportunities to land the ochio.
Grammar police incoming. Please edit the thread title and remove the apostrophe. Please.
Uh, don’t forget the rest of the people in the Hawk forums. I main Hawk.
buffering 360’s and 720’s aren’t hard to do in sf4 AT ALL…but regardless, in a game about option selects and very easy to set up 50/50 situations, grapplers do very well…if you have a basic notion of mix up and how it works, then you can do damage with a grappler
My problem that I come across with T.Hawk is this:
No matter who good I am, I will always lose to players who are less better than me because of his obvious flaws.
Hawk requires almost perfect play to stay afloat with the entire shoto cast. He does not have the luxury of making a mistake and getting away with it.
1100 health certainly lets you make a few mistakes. Its not gg if he gets knocked down.
Hard to really explain but his margin of error is really small in the late game for lets say… for arguments sake, a Ryu.
But you know this more than ever that in certain match-ups you make a mistake you’re screwed. It just seems that Hawk is put in a lot of those situations in the late game. Then again you can look at it from the other side of the fence too.
Why? The “in” obviously belongs to the grappler. 
I just want Hugo…
oooh, nice. very nice.
I just got rock hard.:love: Broken, but it would be fun.
I really like the suggestion about Hakan starting with Ex-Oil, I would use the hell out of him. Also, having 1100 health isn’t like a free pass to Disneyland or anything for example take Guile vs. Gief (a fairly even matchup). Gief eats 1 ex-Boom, 1 s.hp or 1 c.hp and it is an even fight stamina wise. Trading s.mp with Bison’s s.hk is a losing trade in super. Not complaining or anything, just saying that +100 health isn’t game shattering; you still have to really play on point and spend that stamina on chip to get to work.
No, but, it’s an extreme uphill battle against too many members of the cast. Akuma, Guile, Dhalsim, Blanka, and Honda are all horrific matchups. And then every character with a fireball aside from Dee Jay, Sakura, and Dan is a a bad matchup.
Thinking about it, the only non-shit tier characters Hawk actually has GOOD matchups against are Dee Jay, Ibuki, Zangief, and Dudley. Since you’re likely not going to run into any of those characters in a tourney aside from Zangief, for the most part a tourney Hawk player has nothing to look forward to except a ton of uphill battles and a few even ones.
Lol ryu and ken are not horrible up hill battles. AT WORST 6-4 for each in favor of ryu/ken. Sagat can be bad but he has a lot of issues when hawk gets in. And hawks footsies are supreme in that matchup. Akuma is barely a horrible match. Its definitely in akumas favor, but id rather play koonmz than a guile or sim. One fp spd makes up for like 3 vortex mixups. If you really want me to write up a matchup chart for hawk ill be glad to.
Let me reiterate, T.Hawk has the following uphill battles as in when I see someone pick them I just roll my eyes:
Blanka (especially)
Gouken
Sagat
Sakura
Fei-Long
Guile
Ryu
Ken
Akuma
Fuerte
Vega (especially)
Dee Jay
Seth
Chun-Li
Dhalsim
A good Juri
Rose
Characters I’m not worried about are:
Most Ibukis
Dudely
Makoto (She is so free)
Gen
Dan
Sakura
Abel
Viper
Vison
Most Codys and Guys
Hakan
Geif
Rufus
Rog
Adon
I think I missed a character but the point is the characters that I am worried about have a lot more play in tournament which means I have to try 5X harder than most other players.
they actually don’ have to be broken. if grapplers had target combos that ended in very specific grapples, it could be balanced by making the grapples set up mixups, as opposed to dealing damage. like, zangief quick target combo into grapple end. lets say this specific grapple leaves the opponent near or fairly close to zangief, allowing for some nice old zangi-mindgames. maybe the grapple itself does piss-poor damage, but that’s not why its good. its good because its part of a target combo, and allows for advantageous positioning.
and I’m kinda split on the “beginning with oil” hakan. it sounds nice, but I worry that it would be too much. I think there are other areas where a buff could be given that I would prefer over starting oil. but that’s just me.