USF4 | Tier List Thread (updated October 2015)

[Eternal]

What could you really take away from the Ryu toolset though? He doesn’t have things like air fireballs or demon flip to snip off and replace with other things.

Yeah that’s the main issue with it, and why I didn’t bother trying to give an idea of what to do because I have no idea.
I guess that’s why slower normals and lower health for damage was the best bet, but they forgot and buffed all that.

Given his axe kick they could have removed his tatsu, then made the dive kick have a slightly lower height requirement + able to be done on neutral jump but not back jump. Results in him having a pretty noticeably different toolset. Also a few more unique to him normals instead of having so many copy pasted from either Akuma or Ryu.

Alternately instead of adjusting his dive kick, they could have given him sort of a square jump by letting him do F+MK neutral/forward jump.

I mean, even most of Evil Ryu’s “unique” moves aren’t really new. (Like everything else in SF4)

FarMK -> the shoto farMK in SF3
crMK -> shoto crMK in SF3
Target combo -> Akuma’s SF3 target combo
F+MK -> new animated version of the age old hop kick Akuma/Ryu had in Alpha

What I think would have been interesting:

Seans headbutt F+HP (it really would have fit Evil Ryu’s personality too)

[Shinebox]

Fei Long seems to be the best character investment someone could have made. Three versions later and there are still not more than 3-4 characters better than him

[Emanuelb]

Lol @ thinking that the best Ryu on Earth doesnt know his own character. And these are some of the best players in the world. Even if their tier list is not entirely accurate it still shows what their impressions of the game are. The majority of the chars in this game just plain suck. Ryu is only “fine” because he is just as weak and boring as the majority.

The same best players in the world considered Seth a mid tier character when AE dropped. (just check Mago/Tokido/Daigo’s tier lists in AE).
As for the weak and boring characters, 2000+ people went to Evo this year, that’s a ~ 400 increase from the last year. It seems people still enjoy this boring game.

[Veserius]

90% of people would have had to make their evo plans BEFORE Ultra came out.

[jebop]

Fei Long seems to be the best character investment someone could have made. Three versions later and there are still not more than 3-4 characters better than him

I tried but I can’t stay awake during matches. Dude is so solid, yet so boring.

[Veserius]

i do chickenwing crossups with Fei to keep him interesting

[jebop]

I try to dp/ultra things on reaction for fun. I got an ultra 1 on T. Hawk’s condor spire, it wasn’t very fun though. His Ultra 1 is just a flashy Rekka. Kappa

[LoyalSol]

Not really, the issue is more to do with the lack of other avenues of attack and the lowered punishment on a baited DP and the fact DPs lead to more damage on hit than most other games in terms of comparative to the damage the opponent could deal to you.

Reversal window timing is a pretty small aspect. Reversal timing + shortcuts combined are a bit more of an issue but the reversal window itself is only a small part of the problem.

The risk vs reward has been skewed in favor of the defender more than ever before. Many DPs individually do around two thirds as much as a hit confirm BnB (140-180). Then you have the fact many characters can combo into a high damage move if their DP hits (ultra, super, a basic followup.) and if the DP trades then usually the trade is in the defenders favor even WITHOUT a followup rather than the attackers since DPs typically do 80-100 damage on the initial hit if it’s a multi hit DP.

The fact it was safe on block was just ONE of the issues. There has been safe on block or almost safe on block DPs before but if you could make them WHIFF then you could often end the round from that one mistake with a combo that does 50-70% of the opponents life. However in SF4 most characters BEST combos don’t do 50% and aren’t always available as a DP punish (requiring ultra or counterhit.) Lastly the walk speeds in SF4 mean that it’s much more likely to have a DP blocked rather than whiff as many characters can’t get out of the way via just walking backwards or backdashing if they read a DP. This leads to the need for safe jump or DP whiff knockdown setups and the ability to alter jump arc in neutral becoming much more important.

Lastly, SF4 has been, more than any other previous SF game, all about pressure with lights if not using dive kicks as the game doesn’t have many other ways TO pressure an opponent due to the lack of things like very strong fireball games, or strong conversions from footsies, or strong footsies period, or any sort of guard break system or high low game (for most of the cast.)

The varied defense options with very limited offense options, the better reward vs risk for defenders, the lower mobility these are all reasons why the almost excessive OS usage and knockdown aspects had and will continue to be the forefront of SF4 more than ANY other fighting game.

DPs in SF4 suck compared to other games, but they suck LESS than almost everything else that was toned down from previous games and thus end up comparatively better off.

If I had to describe it. Playing offense in this game is like trying to open a can of beans with your hand but the can has a chance of exploding like a hand grenade and can randomly fly invincibly backwards out of your hands. And even if you do it successfully you just end up with a bad case of gas that night.

[ilitirit]

i dont think daigo did the scientific breakdown you think he did.

OK, here’s the thing: what sort of breakdown have you performed on the character, other than just disagreeing with everyone else? I don’t remember you posting any other than “Ryu’s fine”, which in itself is a meaningless statement because of reasons I’ve mentioned many times before.

[ilitirit]

The same best players in the world considered Seth a mid tier character when AE dropped. (just check Mago/Tokido/Daigo’s tier lists in AE).
As for the weak and boring characters, 2000+ people went to Evo this year, that’s a ~ 400 increase from the last year. It seems people still enjoy this boring game.

So what if they considered him a mid tier character when the game was released? Their tier list was based on experience with the game, just as it is now. What’s your point? That they could be wrong? How insightful…

I’m not going to get into the whole boring thing with you again because you’ve made it abundantly clear that you like things that I find extremely unfun, uninteresting and not exciting.

As for this game’s popularity, only time will tell what’s going to happen but I already know one thing for sure - I don’t play this game nearly as much as I did AE2012. To me it doesn’t matter if 100 or 1 million people play it - the game still sucks. I just got back from HEY arcade in Akihabara. Was planning on reaching 5k BP on my new card. I had to quit because there weren’t enough people playing. Meanwhile the ST cabs were on battles 95 and 45 respectively… Does that mean anything? Who knows, but I can tell you for sure that my only reason for even playing today was to reach 5k, not for the promise of super fun and exciting matches.

[Noocta]

Fei Long seems to be the best character investment someone could have made. Three versions later and there are still not more than 3-4 characters better than him

Yun wasn’t a bad investment either, and yet there’s only 3 relevant players that stuck with him.
And Yun isn’t boring to play.

People jump off characters too easily. Look at all the Cammy mains leaving ship, and AE 2012 Cammy > USF4 cammy wasn’t even a third of what happened to AE Yun to AE 2012 Yun.

[jebop]

Fei Long seems to be the best character investment someone could have made. Three versions later and there are still not more than 3-4 characters better than him

Yun wasn’t a bad investment either, and yet there’s only 3 relevant players that stuck with him.
And Yun isn’t boring to play.

People jump off characters too easily. Look at all the Cammy mains leaving ship, and AE 2012 Cammy > USF4 cammy wasn’t even a third of what happened to AE Yun to AE 2012 Yun.

Cammy is still legit. Frauds confirmed.
“I’ve been playing Yun since day 1 of Ultra”. Frauds confirmed.
Fei Long players always been frauds.

In fact, about 15 DWU setups have been discovered for Cammy.

[Genistar]

Rolento really just needs better walkspeed and a more reliable anti air imo. In exchange I would say make make st hp more whiff punishable, hurtbox is behind the stick. Now you would have a character with decent walkspeed, excellent pokes, a solid anti air game, and a solid mixup/frame trap arsenal. That would be solid enough

I have to say 4 of the 5 new characters need a faster walkspeed. I hope they give him a half decent reversal, I find it a little unfair to give someone like him no proper wake up options.

Poison needs a slightly faster walkspeed and a few tweaks to a few of her normals.

[Genistar]

idk how this would be a bad balancing issue for tiers, but I think every character should have one proper normal that anti airs without trading.

[Data_Beast]

OK, here’s the thing: what sort of breakdown have you performed on the character, other than just disagreeing with everyone else? I don’t remember you posting any other than “Ryu’s fine”, which in itself is a meaningless statement because of reasons I’ve mentioned many times before.

Everything is fine according to a good portion of people who still post here. That sand must be awfully comfy if so many people are willing to keep their head in it.

[jebop]

I don’t like Ryu.
Ryu is fine.

[Rin-Nakaret]

I think Ryu’s hadoken data should be completly changed. He should be able to pressure you with it because right now he lacks good tools.
Since they announced E.ryu with 950, we all knew regular Ryu was pretty much useless now. What’s the point of Ryu right now, can anyone tell me what he can do that E.ryu can’t ? If he had a better frame advantage on his hadoken he’d be a different enough shoto. I mean, he can’t do hado upclose because it’s punishable and he can’t do 2mk xx hado from further away because there’s a huge gap in between (unlike E.ryu), it’s ridiculous (same story with Ken but he has other options at least).

Ryu’s hadoken with more blockstun = offensive hadoken trap is back. There are enough tools to move around hadoken to allow regular Ryu’s hadoken a good frame advantage don’t you think ? Sure, he’ll probably shit on some character but hey… this is street fighter. A lot of character can’t deal with dive kick but capcom doesn’t give a shit.

Also with Sagat, because he lost too much damage on everything I’d be happy if they give him back the juggle potential on his low tiger shot. Man, sagat who can’t juggle you with 6hk + low.TS isn’t scary enough to stop people from jumpin’ on him. It doesn’t deal a lot more damage, but 1 high tiger shot with a low tiger shot in juggle here and there and you have a fun sagat again. “Sure, he’ll probably shit on some character but hey… this is street fighter. A lot of character can’t deal with dive kick but capcom doesn’t give a shit.”

Projectiles aren’t good enough in this game, so why don’t we give characters whose the core gameplan evolves around fireballs some help ? Oh I know… “fireball is for noobzzzzz, you fight like a pussy blabla” Dixit random scrub.
Dude, a good fireball trap is damn hard to do in this game, I have mad respect for the few good guys I fight who can do this - I’m thinkin’ about Ryan hart for example, I can’t read his fireballs it’s amazing to fight this man.

Sorry for my bad english.

[Terios]

Ryu with even on block hadoken. That’d be fun. Probably +5 from effective range? I dunno. What’s it now in a typical cr.mk blockstring?

[Rin-Nakaret]

He typically is around -5/-4 at best. With chun I can punish him with a reversal ex.legs (4 frames) if I want to.

Do the test it’s easy. You stay pointblank and do the average string like : 2lp*3 > 2mk xx hado against chun. It’s a free punish.

[Terios]

Huh. Frame data says -6 and I assumed that was point blank so I assumed from cr.mk range you were looking at -2ish.