I don’t sub characters. I pick one character/team in a FG and stick to it.
I approach my unfavorable matchups with the same attitude as my favorable ones: “Until I lose, I am going to win.” Telling yourself you’re going to win actually makes a difference. You might not win all the time or even improve your win rate, but you will perform a lot better so in the event you do lose you won’t feel as shitty.
I feel Will2pacs sentiment on having to like a character to play them. I could play Karin because I like her. I like Karin cause she gets money. Vega always had the coolest moves and was my fav from SF2 but the charge made me unable to play him. I enjoy SFV because I can FINALLY use my favorite character in the series (bar Ibuki). I don’t like Ibuki’s personality but I loved the way she moved and played in 3rd strike.
I could play Nash and Ryu at a way higher level than I play Vega, but I don’t like Nash while SF3 Ryu and A2 Ryu are the only Ryu’s I like to play.
I like this approach as well. It feels like there’s too much blaming matchups/tier lists when peoplestruggle with a matchup as an individual. If everyone thought like this, you wouldn’t have players like Takeuchi or Xyxxzy who find novel approaches to a character and cause people to reevaluate their spots in tier lists.
To me, learning a sub would detract from me making my main second nature to control. Having to learn a new set of buttons and answers to situations would be too taxing on my brain; I’d rather become one with the toolset of my main, rather than trying to learn a sub for a specific matchup because at a certain point in time, people think it favors one character over the other.
This is the problem have with Sim just like I have with Fang.
The people who want to talk about the positives of these characters and say they aren’t that bad need to think about how many great players play them.
If Xian (who’s is a genius) or Sonic fox (also a genius ) can’t win with Fang despite telling the world from the start that Fang is good what does that tell you?
Then there is F. Champ who got a Budlight sponsership mainly based off the strength of his Sim play in SF4. He’s been an afterthought along with NYCFurby, YMCyoshi, etc.
Guilty even with all the work she has put in has to rely on controversy to stand out. She’s been an afterthought.
Its down to preference and how it creates variety. You have players like nuckledu, PR rog and Infiltration who can throw you in a character select battle because you have to deal with a different match up depending on you pick. They are basically world class level with all of their characters too. I dont feel nuckledus Mika or Nash play is heavily nerfed now that hes also using Guile. Hes just a natural character artist and has the luxury of choosing which character to beat you with.
Its also good to have the loyal character specialists who just grind every match. That works too.
They are garbage but he can make up for it with his oppressive fireball game. The idea is you force your opponent into shitty positions with your fireballs then go for CC, sweeps, or throw.
Same style he always had except now his v skill allows him to become a forward moving wall at times with a real pressure game.
Of course none of his best shit works if your fireball game is trash.
Shes from my city, has a man, cool ass chick tbh very down to earth the couple times i met her. Her dude is super nice peeps as well. Both are around the 10k lp range iirc.
Before we reevaluate Birdie (yes I know, time for my regularly scheduled shit on Birdie post), let’s recognize that Xyzzy was doing super fake, super punishable shit and a lot of what he was doing were well-timed super hard reads. That’s not to say that he’s playing the character poorly- it’s necessary to take more risks when your character is trash. But just because he was doing stuff that LOOKS real in one or two tournament (against people who likely don’t have a variety of high level Birdie experience) doesn’t all of a sudden make Birdie jump up the tier lists.
It’d take forever to go through everything that wasn’t real, but when I say fake and hard read, I don’t mean like a command grab mixup. I mean like there’s no real threat and it should be punished almost 100% of the time. One example (that I still catch a lot of people with) is EX Dolphin Dive -> dash -> EX Command Grab. Birdie is negative after the dash so you can always hit a button. Another is his usage of cr. hp. I was baffled why the Cammy player he was playing never spiral arrowed it. Its recovery is long and it’s a free knockdown for her. Xyzzy wasn’t reacting to the Cammy’s jump. He had good placement and timing, but a lot of whiffed cr. hps went unpunished.
This is why playing the unknown is advantageous. Birdie is a not great character with a funky aesthetic and play style. Nobody is going to bother to research his options so you can get away with stuff.
Playing top tiers are good and all, but unless you’re playing a fraudulent top tier you don’t have much to pull the wool over people’s eyes with and just end up being another predictable user of the character.
