This is EXACTLY the same case for Gief, just put Hawk in roll eyes category and maybe move Sakura to not worried about column (though she can be a pain if she gets the mixup going from one nj)
Look bottom line your right, grapplers need to play better and smarter versus half the cast, but it is that challenge i think why some higher level players go with a 360 grappler. But its obviously not in Capcom’s vision for these type of characters to be all that powerful. Can’t bitch and complain about.
If you want to have more favorable match ups with a command grabber, I suggest you pick up Abel OR take a page out of the Vangief manual where he is EXTREMELY combo heavy, almost never misses a link and in most matches won’t even land a 360 unless its a hard punish. Goes against basic Hawk gameplay to go away from tick setups, but that may be how he can get some bigger W’s.
Zangief doesn’t need target combos. Nor does he need target combos into grabs. This is just ridiculous. Why do people want combos into grabs? I don’t get it. I’m not a big fan of target combos to begin with. I don’t need SF to be like MK3.
I didn’t say Ken and Ryu were horrible. Just that they were uphill. As in, 4-6. The other matches I went out of my way to mention are the horrible ones, ranging from 3.5-6.5 to 2.5-7.5.
So… give Gief and Hawk Change of Direction basically.
Hawk doesn’t have the combo potential Gief does. You have to realize that the major difference between the two characters is Gief uses his command throws as a spacing and zoning tool more than a direct damage source, in the same way the value of certain EX moves, Supers, and Ultras is in what it prevents your opponent from doing more than the actual damage they do.
Hawk on the other hand, uses them as a primary damage source, he’s built around his SPD and lacks the combo potential of Zangief. Hawk’s big problem is the tools he has to access his powerful command throws aren’t particularly strong. Dive is easy to punish, spire is slow, buster is very stuffable, his ultra 2 has limited uses, a relatively awkward input for that use, and a tiny hitbox.
This is exactly it. Hawk’s game revolves entirely around getting in on the opponent, landing a LP Mexican Typhoon, and then playing his ridiculous mixup game. The problem with this, of course, is that it’s EASIER for Zangief to get in than Hawk despite Zangief’s game revolving around the threat of landing a 360 and not ACTUALLY landing one. Even sadder, Hawk is supposed to be a mobile grappler who can get in easily, yet all of his supposed options for mobility suck ass. Because it’s so damned hard to get in in as Hawk, he has to rely on his admittedly awesome normals to deal any sort of damage most of the time.
Zangief is solid mid tier and extremely viable in tournaments, Abel is the only other true grappler (and calling him that is a stretch because he doesn’t fit the classic grappler playstyle) who is viable in tournaments. Hakan/Hawk are, for differing reasons, extremely weak in tournament play.
Gief revolves around using his grabs as a threat to keep his opponents in check and set up combos. Hawk, on the other hand, depends pretty much solely on his command grab for the vast majority of his damage. He has a few decent combos but they are both hard to set up and extremely unsafe on block. The reason he sucks for this is that he has essentially no good way to set up his command grab.
Hakan is just a bevy of problems and the fact that he’s not exactly a true grappler isn’t one of them because I love his playstyle. The range of his command grabs is pathetic when unoiled, and a little broken when he is oiled. Same deal with all his normals and specials. He has absolutely no way to escape pressure and no reversals. Oiling up is WAY too hard for him and almost always unsafe. He needs to have the oil mechanic removed entirely, and give him range on all his moves just slightly shorter than what it currently is when oiled, leave damage somewhere between what it is unoiled and what it is oiled. Either that or the duration of oil needs to be increased by at least 4 seconds and made easier to do safely.
Oh really? Gief has no dive or spire just an incredibly unsafe GH that, although given to him to “banish” fireballs, is almost useless to do so.
OK, OK. Yes Hawks specials are unsafe too BUT BUT BUT, most fireballers cant just spam because hawk can dive right down on their recovery. Gief cant do that. I dabble some sim as well, ONE wrong timed hp limb I’m eating a dive. Point is, if you dive at the right moment, you can totally end the round in a hurry…
Seems to me Hawk fight theory should be to walk forward, use your INCREDIBLE normals, bait out a whiff. I think people are complaining about Hawk because they sit there and spam his specials all day to get inside. Gief CANT do that. He has to walk forward, using his normals and bait out something to punish then he’s in. Hawks can do the same albeit w/o the O-S EX GH knockdown.
Gief has the same bad match-ups as Hawk so Adv Gief in the game is ever so slight only bc of the O-S knockdown in footsies.
I get what your saying my dude but “viable” is subjective in meaning. No gief has ever won any major or “semi” major tourneys. The top 50 players in Japan for sf4 only have 3 Giefs in that list… in the 40’s.
So if by viable you mean can make some noise, get an upset or 2 a-la Vangief and finish top 10…certainly no question. But no Gief short of a miracle will ever win a major so long as the best players in the country are maining Chun’s, Sagats, Dhalsims, Ryu’s and Seths.
It is funny; I don’t even want a target combo or a target combo into grapple or whatever. I just think it would look really cool. Sort of like how T.Hawk’s U2 looks really cool but I never use him or even really want to.
The grapplers are pretty good. Abel and Honda are already high/top tier, Gief is worse than in vanilla but is still totally viable and deadly in the right hands, and Hawk and Hakan are getting to viability. I retract now my early statement that Hawk sucks (after seeing Hungbee do really well against me and other better SoCal players), and I’ve always said I think Hakan has a high ceiling and will eventually be a good character. All five of those guys can win tournaments imo. I think the only grappler with real issues right now is Makoto, although she’s hardly terrible either. Id like to see Gief, Hawk, Hakan, and Makoto get very slight improvements, but I really think we have to wait and see to know for sure, especially for Hakan. I frankly don’t want the arcade version to come out for a while longer, because nobody really knows how much or even if Hakan needs to improve.
Just because people are tier whores does not mean characters who aren’t tier whored are not viable characters, just that they are not top tier. The mere fact that a Zangief placed top 8 at EVO of all tournaments shows just how viable he is. Vangief wasn’t upsetting people, he was outplaying them by a longshot, and if Zangief wasn’t viable, no matter how good Vance was he wouldn’t have been able to outplay people whoring top tier characters. He outfootsied everybody because Zangief has exceptionally good footsies which he was able to make use of, not to mention his massive health and damage.
You can’t say a character is bad because they don’t win at majors. Most if not all characters who have never won a major have not done so because of the people who are playing them/who are playing other characters, not because the character isn’t viable. Ryu isn’t even top tier any more, just high tier, yet Daigo continues to absolutely annihilate everybody in his path very rarely losing, and this is because he’s truly an amazing player, not because Ryu is awesome (and he really isn’t that awesome).
As proof of this, a Zangief player won the HDR tourney at EVO, and he is near bottom tier in HDR.
Please, never try to offer tournament placements and player rankings as proof that a character is bad again. That proves nothing short of the fact that a character is not popular. NA players are 99% tier whores, meaning you will very rarely see a high caliber player playing a lower than high/top tier character around here, that’s why people have the impression that the game is imbalanced even though with the exception of a few characters it’s VERY balanced. In Japan there is far more diversity, maybe not among the top players (although there is still a ton more diversity in this category over there), but in general.
My point exactly, Gief isn’t being held back because he sucks, he’s being held back because the best players in the country are massive tier whores and won’t take the time and dedication needed to perform with Gief at a high level. I don’t know why you posted this part as it contradicted the rest of your post. You spent all that time saying how Gief isn’t viable because he doesn’t win majors, then you posted that he doesn’t win majors because top players don’t play him.
You mentioned tier whoring and Seth in the same sentence, ouch. Tier whores don’t play Seth, masochists do. And you don’t see many Seth’s winning tournies either. Who are the major tournie char winners in super anyway? Sagat never seems to win anything even though everyone says he’s still awesome. Well, he was in vanilla, but he didn’t win there either. I think Ryu just has a pile of notes stuffed in that carryall he lugs everywhere to pay off the judges.
Grapplers are my nightmare as Dudley lol, I have to play like three times better than usual to beat a regular grappler, except Abel that somehow I can deal without much problems.
I didn’t mention Seth at all, merely replied to his general post, and I put in that 3/5 of the characters he mentioned are NOT tier whored (Seth/Sagat) but apparently I accidentally removed that when I was merging a couple paragraphs.
And if you were referring to the other guy, he didn’t say tier whoring he said “maining”, although it was implied so I can understand that (who the fuck mains Seth and Sagat in this game? Oh wait, nobody).
