Vega and m.bison beat dudley “by design”. Even though they are inherently tough match-ups for dudley, when a dudley player develops a strong mid-range gameplan against them then the match-ups swing from 6-4 to 5.5-4.5 giving them only a slight advantage at worst in high level play, all the dudley player really has to do is to stop being a whiny scrub and adapt. In other words, when aquasilk whoops my ass, I’m just gonna comfortably say he outplayed me rather than complain about gief being a tough matchup
If it were an extremely polarzing match-up like sim/hugo then I would understand where you’re coming from, but you’re really just making excuses for every time your ass gets handed to you since you’re too stubborn to learn a typical 6-4
Watch li joe play the dud/gat match-up correctly here starting at around minute 11
the goal of all matchup charts is to speculate the difficulty of winning a match between two equally skilled players who are pushing their characters to the limit. there is no finality to them except in extreme blowout matchups, but mechanically speaking the game is the game is the game. it doesn’t change based on how much experience you personally have in matchup X vs Y. you are only discovering that you were wrong in the first place.
key word “speculate”. Hence the tier lists and matchup rankings varying depending on which player is making the tier list. Hence the fact that matchup rankings are gross assessments and are subject to change rather than objective facts. Hence the conclusion that 6-4 matchups are subject to change based on how they are played.
If you want to bring the mechanics of the game into this discussion, then you’re going to have to go into fine detail on the following
. How walkspeed affects each pixel of movement
. How each move interacts with one another based on each micro movement; one small square in training mode can make the difference between a move being whiff punished or winning/trading, there are a fuck ton of pixels and squares so good luck with that
. How each move interacts with one another based on frame rates and how the frame rates themselves summate with spacing
. How mind games affect reaction time be it faster or slower, also is tied in with the former.
. There are a fuck ton of other variables like how execution requirements restrict options or the lack of said requirements free up others and once again affect mind games, spacing ect
There isn’t one person that systematically breaks this game down to an exact science, matchup charts are based on intuitive assessments of said variables rather than a complete understanding of them. I know for damn sure that I don’t understand entirely how each and every variable in this game interacts with one another to lead up to an outcome so it’s safe to say that neither do you. If you actually do stay up all night graphing everything out then kudos to you and I’ll stfu
If they are based on intuitive assessments (ie: "this seems like a good spacing to whiff punish x with y, therefore I’m going to use y on reaction to the first movement since I believe my opponent will use x at around this space, since my reaction time is only at around 20 frames on average then it will work if done correctly and if my opponent is actually pressing x instead of z), then yeah it’s safe to say that what is generally considered a 6-4 matchup can easily be based on misinformation and can be turned around by adapting
When Dudley was worse and Sagat was better and very popular in japan, Kuroken and Matsugoro were pretty much designated Sagat killers in team tournaments and would generally be held in reserve if the other team had a Sagat on it even if Dudley could be brought in for a favorable matchup
Another example of gross assessment, he even used the work “like” in there. See what I mean? How am I supposed to argue with someone like that? Do I just say “nah, it’s like 6-4 fool” because being reasonable, forming arguments, going into detail, and even giving sources that provide information to the contrary doesn’t seem to work.
i’m from California, thats just how I type/talk in a casual sense.
I’m sorry my regional vernacular caused confusion.
Sagat has always been widely considered Dudley’s best matchup. Dudley beats Sagat 7-3 OR BETTER in my opinion. I think that Dudley being used as a counter character to Sagat in Japan as he has been somewhat justifies my opinion.
i know its probably sacrilegious, but smugs footsies are his weak point. he has a good feel for when to stick out stand roundhouse buffered into ex mgb based on a predictable button rythm, but the rest of his footsies are kind of meh. its ok because he does a bunch of other stuff extremely well, but that area is lacking
if he’s going to let sagat just stick out a barrage of buttons without sticking out something different that wins from those ranges (stand fierce), or without tagging the big obvious buttons (sagat whifing stand roundhouse or crouch fierce), then it maybe isnt the best example of how the match is manageable for a sagat player. he still won despite all the guessing, and random shit joe was doing to throw him off, and he still didnt play the match at 100%
The high tiger shot nerf just adds to an already bad matchup for Sagat vs Dudley. I give a lot of credit to all the Sagat players that are still going to play him. Sagat was good in 2012, but for whatever reason he was nerfed more than any other character. Tiger Shot nerf + Dp Nerf = random tiger knees all day. So really everyone suffers now when playing Sagat.
I think the Sag vs Dud matchup might require a counterpick; sort of like Sim vs Makoto; etc… Sagat also is gonna get beat up by Sim. Maybe someone could put up some preliminary matchup numbers before EVO to see how things fall out.
Smug got probably the strongest OS game in the business. Between his OSes, setups, and good execution he’d be a nightmare if he played Ibuki instead of Dudley. He’d still be able to get away with ‘ok’ footsies too since she has that sMK that could Smug could replace his usage of Dudley’s sHK.
The problem Sagat faces Mocha is that in the match Sagat doesn’t have his own way of beating Dudley and I’m sorry to say that’s what Sagat kind of feels like in a bunch of matches. Most of the time holding down back, throwing well timed Tiger shots , using great defensive footsie’s and anti airing are his main plan (he still has great situational normals, great uppercut and AA, good Ultra). Protecting a life lead and not doing anything too risky.
The thing is you could do this with a bunch of characters better and have other useful options open to you. What Sagat does he doesn’t do well and I think people get confused about what Sagat players want, we don’t care about getting destroyed once you get in, we just want to keep you from getting in. Like someone mentioned matches are more tense and fun when there are big risks or reads involved for both characters (think Daigo playing against Filipinochamps Sim) and not just simply negating a characters whole game plan with a couple of button pushes.
Yeah because of the forced damage scaling and lack of scariness in the punishes for this game, the bad matches felt worse than I remember them feeling in 3S. Bad matches just feel like a chore in this game where your reads dont even pay off and make it more obvious that you should just switch characters.
The problem is most Sagat players are character loyalists (At least in Japan), and they won’t switch character even if it’s a bad matchup. Kinda like Gief, do you ever see a Gief player switching in case of a bad match up? No, they stick with him.
In all fairness, Sagat’s bad matchups were more manageable for the most part up until Ultra. At least by comparison to Gief. Sagat has less matchups where his only hope of winning is that the opponent makes a mistake, instead there are a bunch of matchups where Sagat’s only hope of winning is that HE doesn’t make a mistake. It’s a big difference. The Sagat player is control of his own failure while Gief has no control and has to hope the other person screws up.
That is for the MOST part, and really that applies to AE2012. Sagat vs Juri in USF4 looks a lot more like one of Gief’s bad MUs where Sagat can’t win unless Juri screws up. I wouldn’t be surprised if some japanese Sagat players pick up a char just to fight Juri.
Pretty much posted that exact post in gat forum yesterday lol. At least Gief can still possibly wreck Sagat running his game, the reverse doesn’t apply to Gat vs juri though.
Anyway, gats shitness is approaching akuma levels of posting, better move on.