I understand it essentially lowers their chances of coming out on top, it is just a personal thing I guess. There are players who will stick with their characters even though they have 3-7 or worse matches. For example in VS, Jedah has some 2-8 match ups against Felicia and Talbain (vampire savior) but jedah players in tournaments almost always stick with the character. When they win those steeply disadvantaged match ups, it is just incredibly impressive. If someone counterpicks every disadvantaged match up so they have the advantage, where is the struggle the uphill battle?
Sim is so low tier and has no chance anyways, but what if you are Rose against Seth, or Zangief against Sim, etc? Solid characters, who have a heavily disadvantaged match up? I’m pretty sure Luffy or Snake eyes would never counter pick, though someone who has watched these guys more could say for sure.
many good players know their bad matchups thoroughly and would do better with their main in a bad matchup than a secondary in a better matchup. it’s also quite possible that if you know your bad matches inside and out, you know the match better than the other guy knows his good matchup.
I’d imagine this doesn’t apply to Blanka/Hawk though. if you don’t have a counterpick ready for Blanka you are probably praying you just don’t run into any on your way up.
That’s the thing about Capcom/SF. The way the games were originally designed back in the 90’s emphasized having unique movesets and archetypes over balance.
The reason they dont counterpick is because they cant play other characters as well as their main, they probably feel that their fundamentals are not on a level to switch to a character they have less experience with so they would rather just go for a familiar matchup even if its bad for them.
I know for a fact that I would go with Ken or Akuma all the way if I was to go to a tourney, since my Fei and Bison are not quite as good as those 2 (they aren’t outright terrible, but Id much rather play a slightly bad matchup as Ken/Akuma than a good matchup as Fei/Bison), so even if I had to face a Cammy or an Ibuki player, I would still rather stick with Ken/Akuma than switch to Bison, despite Bison having a much easier time against those 2.
People should look at Infiltration and take some notes, the guy plays Akuma who doesn’t have any truly horrible matchups, but still plays Several characters in certain matchups because it increases his odds to win.
Those character specialists can’t throw out an alt they barely train and expect to get results (e.g FChamp and his troll Seth), they have to train their alts almost as much as their main specially in the needed bad matchups.
Gief vs Juri/Sagat/Gouken (winnable but still hard)
Gief v Akuma/Seth (perhaps even? But Seth has to play solid and Gief need luck)
Bison vs Guile
Abel v Gief/Thawk/Seth/Akuma
Dhalsim vs Makoto, Akuma, Hakan
Thawk v Blanka
Yang v Gief
Yun v Gief
Elfuerte v Hakan
Adon v Gief (somewhat, very difficult)
I believe these are the match-ups where it’s literally one sided that you feel like you can’t do anything.
I know its a pipe dream being that they play for money, but wouldn’t it be cool to see top players playing characters they felt real attachment to. Like even if the character sucked.
Right now the only hope for character specialists is for one of them to develop into a top player. And then you have to wonder if they would be recognized as top players. As they get eliminated before top 16 running into bad matches
I really wanna see T. Hawk do well. I find his style very interesting. Unfortunately he is hamstrung by a few absolute god awful matches (which I don’t see improving too terribly much) but it would be awesome to see a Hawk take a major, just once.
Here, here…I always thought your main character was supposed to be an extension of yourself. Not only that character, but also how you play him/her. That’s why character specialists are awesome, no one wanted to see PR Rog play Fei long…we already got Mago, Fuudo, and Rog is known as Boxer…that is who he is. To see him make incredible use of what people say is the worst or one of the worst FAs in the game…was inspiring.
As for the “being true to your main” comments, I like and respect that too, but would only recommend it if you’re playing an all around balanced character that barely has any horrible matchups, not extreme arch types such as Dhalsim or Gief.
While I have a feeling people downplay Akumas advantageous matchups at times, I agree here. Vega doesn’t have it so bad against Akuma. He can convert stray pokes into big ass damage in this match, and his great footsies mean Akuma can’t get away with just tossing around sweeps nearly as much as in some matches.
Yeah and Vega’s excellent at punishing air fireballs with his walkspeed/sweep and EX ST in certain cases since it’s fully projectile invincible. EX FBA and walkspeed/sweep/CH also makes it very easy to punish teleport escapes.
Yes Vega is very vulnerable to the vortex, but a good Vega will make you work hard to get him into that position and NO 1 knockdown =/= dead, this isn’t vanilla SF4.
I don’t think Gief Juri is THAT bad. I mean it’s a moment for Gief to go OH SHIT but if he gets in and gets a knockdown he can have control for a good while and Juri’s health is pretty damn low. As long as he’s careful about her 7 frame reversal that trades most of the time then he’s good. Don’t get me wrong. It’s bad but it’s no Guile-Bison, Blanka-Hawk, Rufus-Vega imo.