So Vanilla Gief was dumb but how many tourneys did he ever win? I think the number was a big fat ZERO. Other characters were dumber and way stronger. He also had the worst mu’s in that game. Jab spd really did 200? They nerfed the damage way too much then imo and the 1200 health should have stayed lol.
i agree
Sagat didn’t win any tournaments in Vanilla either, doesn’t mean he isn’t great.
I think ultra david said “now every gief will have to learn jump cancel spd and lariat.” And when you think about it, its actually a pretty good option after bnb into lp GH. With jump cancel no1 can grab us.
well, you risk losing HUGE damage from a 3 or 4 frame normal hit confirmed into Ultra for 350 damage, instead of losing 130 damage from a throw which you could try to tech.
Don’t kid yourself, blocking is the best option. They can only throw you, and you get rewarded if they jump or back dash. Everything else, if they guess right, you lose 300+ Although back dash could be a good option for Zangman, if they don’t have super or ultra, but expect to lose some life.
Also everyone, don’t get your hopes up. Version select is going to be purely for casuals. The gimmick of all gimmicks.
SO what’s the deal? Should I give up on Gief? Because Ultra is looking pretty bleak. The delayed wakeup will ruin Gief. I don’t understand why his footsies are getting nerfed as well as his vortex. He already wasn’t a good character, and now frustrating matchups like Guile, Juri, Dee Jay etc are going to get even harder.
It sucks I’ve mained him for so long. I’m a 3.5k pp Gief player, but I kind of relied on his vortex. I never used another character and so my overall SF mechanics are pretty shitty. I’m bad at teching, blocking crossups, etc and I never was good with footsies. Blah, I might just quit SF. I don’t want to get frustrated and I don’t know which character to pick up. Hawk never appealed to me at all and Hugo looks absolutely horrible.
I think Zangief will be fine in Ultra. His footsies are getting a little worse with the nerfs to st.MP, j.FP and LP SPD, but as compensation he gets meterless combos and a hit confirm into U1, which he’s never had. Also, st.MK has become a viable whiff punish.
My only issue right now is that Gief doesn’t have an armor breaker, and I think that’s going to make him really free to red focus.
I wish they gave us a real buff to be excited about.
A) Make short sweep safer (currently -5 w/ 5 active frames)
B) Make Close S. Jab a command normal. (B+Jab)
C) Make MP SPD throw immune (it currently serves no purpose, and gives gief a viable throw defense)
D) Make his HP button usable. These moves are soooo bad.
E) Improve his focus attack (only duckable focus in the game)
F) Either buff RBG or make it a a HCB motion to decouple it from atomic suplex.
G) Buff his forward dash. Seriously, It’s ridiculous. I’m pretty sure its slower than walking.
I’m glad ur optimistic Chief but lets see here. Worse footsies, less jab spd range, can be thrown every time he lands a gh combo, has no armor breaker for red focus, and all of his bad or iffy mu’s will be worse or flat out terrible. How exactly will he be “fine”? Oh I almost forgot, zero mixups if he somehow gets a miracle kd cause of dwu. St.mk is not gonna be a game changer lol. It’s not even good it’s just less terrible than before.
I think I remember watching someone try to red focus a lariat, he ate something like 3 or 6 hits, then there was a slight delay before the last hit, the red focus got automatically released since it stopped absorbing hits, and got hit by the last hit.
It was in one of the first loctests.
Also, we got AE 2012’s EX GH back.
I think his footsies are IMPROVED, and here’s why.
a) Major Buff: LPGH whiff punisher
b) Minor Buff: far MK safer on hit and block
c) Minor Nerf: Jumping HP easier to anti-air
d) Minor Nerf: EXRFA
The other features don’t matter in footsies, so they don’t factor in.
a) With the LPGH being able to be used for whiff punishing!!! The speed up would hopefully allow you to HIT EVEN MORE limbs as they retract, and on impact displacement, will allow you to stop short out of cr.lp/cr.lk/throw range. Currently, you can do this to Sagat’s far HK. But imagine if you could use it on a shoto. From match up to match up, whiff punishing the opponent’s far HP/HK pokes with this on reaction would be brilliant!
b) Far MK safer on hit and block. You could still use this for whiff punishing, and all in all, it hasn’t changed at all. But if your timing is slightly off, the penalty is reduced, so that would help out a little.
c) Jumping HP nerf. It depends if you use this often. If you play a solid ground game, you’d hardly notice it I would imagine.
d) I’m not afraid of random Red Focus per say. It is too slow to be a threat. Unless your very very predictable, it won’t be an easy play for the opponent. They need a good read on your game. But against Zangief, they could red focus:
- far HK if you think they’ll jump
- far cr.hk, far random MK which you shouldn’t be doing.
- GH and EXGH if you think they’ll back dash. It will make you think twice about chasing down their back dash unless you have 2 bars to FADC out and punish the RFA whiff.
Against bread and butter strings such as cr.lk. cr.lk. cr.lk or cr.lp xx cr.lp. st.lk - Red Focus is a non issue. You could cancel into SPD, or they could counter hit you for a crumple, but guess what, they could do that with regular focus anyway. If they charge the Red Focus to absorb two hits of your string, you would be able to tell, and block, SPD or back dash accordingly. EX RFA would be more dangerous on hit, due to the crumple, but again, unless your asleep or stuck in some kind of multi-hitting Ultra attack animation, by which Zangief has none, you should be fine.
If they try to timer scam, and charge Red Focus. The best option would be to back away via jump back or back dash, and jump with max range HP or empty jump into max range LP SPD. That’s what 1 think will be the most viable option. If the Red Focus is charged when your in the corner, or on your wake up. You have to judge on their release time. Either EX SPD or EX Runnilikely be ng Bear Grab. Without meter you have to make a judgment with LP SPD or reversal PPP Lariat to break their armor.
wakeup.
The other non issues: LP SPD is not used in footsies, unless your opponent lets you! If far st.mp is used for whiff punishing, that’s fine. But the nerf affects your ability to use it as a proactive or random poke.
Combos into LPGH could still be favourable and give you a positive outcome. But you would mix it up with EXGH at times.
Although Zangief could bypass the delayed wakeup with the 2012 EXGH, ultimately it would hurt. It would mean the end to Zangief’s cross up game, and ABSOLUTELY NO meaty throws until AFTER the delay. That will most likely be the rule of thumb for grappliers. The very thing that comes into your mind, when you whiff that Atomic Suplex and are -35 frames, “OH FUCK, HE DELAYED AND NOW I’M DEAD”
I will love see RBG heavy buffed, i hate when Capcom just left some moves behind
-HCB+K
-Armor on first frames of notEX version
-faster startup/walk
-being able to cancel clHP into ex version and work as combo, just imagine 
Personally I’d rather see running bear grab just taken out of the game, leaving only atomic suplex. If it whiffs, it whiffs. Hugo can have meatsquasher.
If the beta changes stick, Gief is gonna be pretty ok, maybe slightly better than he is now. Some footsie tools will be better and some worse, so whether his footsies will be better or worse will just be a matchup by matchup thing. His combo game will be better since he won’t need meter to combo into lp hand and it’ll be effectively more or less safe in most matchups.
His meaty game will mostly be better I think, even despite delayed wakeup. Yes, delayed wakeup will hurt after a 360k or corner spd where he would otherwise get a guaranteed crossup setup. But the significant shave off the total frames for lp hand means that lp hand to get close to the opponent after spd actually gives him quite a bit more time to stick out a safe meaty or get point blank etc! So his post-spd game will definitely be better than before, which is more important because spd is his best and most common knockdown option. In fact, I might prefer fierce spd in close punish situations instead of 360k since not only will it do more damage than 360k but the meaty situation might be almost as good.
The nerf to lp spd range is really tiny, it’s 1.7 instead of 1.75. I don’t think this is a big problem, especially considering the better situation he’ll get after landing the spd.
He’ll also be more mobile. Lp hand for whiff punishing could work ok, we’ll see. I had a slightly easier time using it to nullify fireballs considering its faster startup, and its better recovery means it might be better for random situations. It also helps Gief push corpses toward the corner pretty quickly.
Hakan will definitely be the best grappler in USF4, but among the more traditional ones I’m not so sure where Gief will stack up. I can see Hawk maybe being better, tbh, and who knows how Hugo will end up. But regardless, I don’t think Gief will be bad.
WTF does corposes mean idk --? … Combo Fiend can nerf gief but not Snake Eyes --
oh doh, i meant corpses, aka characters’ bodies when they’re lying on the ground after being knocked down.
UltraDavid, I’m pretty surprised to hear u say that u think Gief might be better than he is now in Ultra. Remember his mu’s are also getting way harder imo and in the end I think that’s the real problem we’re gonna have along with not getting any significant buffs at all imo. Hugo will end up being the worst character in the game and I think Gief will be close. Hawk will move past Gief since he’ll improve only slightly and I agree Hakan will be the best grappler.
Meh some of his matchups are getting harder, some easier. Lp hand is a pretty significant buff, really. It adds mobility, lets him punish new things on block and whiff, allows him to deal more damage without meter, gives him more time after spd, deals with fireballs better, and can be used better in more random situations. Stand medium kick will be better against characters who depend on footsie buttons placed lower toward the ground.
He’s not gonna be great, certainly, and I definitely wanted to see different changes for him. He might even end up toward the lower end of the tier list. But that’s because other characters are getting buffed more, not because he’ll be bad. In other words, he could be about the same or slightly better in absolute terms while still being worse in relative terms.
Don’t sleep on Hugo, though. He has some really good stuff already, and he’s not even finished yet.
Welcome back to the Zangief forum, UltraDav!!!
I think with the delayed wakeup on hard knockdowns, Zangief really needs this next buff. And I really want everyone to push for it.
- cr.mp (which forces stand on hit) to become special cancellable.
It would make the following combos possible: cr.mp xx PPP Lariat or KKK Lariat. The forces stand ensures it works on all opponents.
With that combo you get a soft knockdown, and especially after KKK Lariat. You get your cross up if they quick rise or re-jump if they don’t.
This combo is the only reason, for Capcom to make cr.mp force stand!!!
With the cr.mp cancels you can do all kinds of LPGH/MPGH cross-unders to anti-air
Ensuring his FA hits crouching opponent’s would be sweet.
A buff to the speed of RBG or EX RBG would be nice, as purely a counter to Red Focus.
I just want an armor breaker 
UltraDav, That is a very good point. Delayed wakeup, has rendered Atomic Suplex useless!!! I want answers CAPCOM! This is on top of ruining the cross-up game for all characters in SFIV, apart from those that don’t have a cross up!!!
So why on god’s green earth, would ANYONE ever go to the trouble of doing Atomic Suplex for 220 damage with arguably poor post positioning and less grab range than HP SPD? Capcom needs to prove me wrong, that delayed wakeup is not the garbage band-aid fix that it is.
It simply makes no sense, to risk a running bear grab AKA the penalty for a missed Atomic Suplex - All for nothing!
R.I.P Atomic Suplex
- Less range
- Less damage
- Poor post positioning
- Huge penalty on whiff AKA Running Bear Grab
Either put in a penalty for delayed wakeup, or balance Atomic Suplex with respect to HP SPD and delayed wake up. Because the move is NOW USELESS and will never see the light of Russian day.