When do YOU counterpick?

[haney]

I counterpick when I whoop dat ass then try to whoop dat ass again.

[Seraph]

I mostly use Seth during recent times (When I first started playing SFIV I only used M. Bison like 99 percent of the time), but if I can’t win with Seth, I use Bison. If I can’t win with those characters I use Guile, Balrog, Blanka, or Honda depending of which type of character my opponents choose. Most of the time though, I use Seth no matter what since he is so fun and satisfying to use and I like learning/mastering just one character instead of being mediocre with many characters since my time and focus is spread out.

[d3v]

Or, maybe he plays ST that way since it’s more advantageous for him to play it that way since Ryu has some bad match ups against characters like Boxer, O. Sagat, etc.

And speaking of pros “playing who they like”, I guess someone missed Infiltration actively counter picking Eduardo’s Boxer with Hakan. Or what about FChamp picking Magnus/Morrigan/Doom as a hard counter against ApologyMan’s team at Curleh North and Evo2014? Heck, even Justin made an adjustment against ChrisG in his team order since having Storm up front basically counters point Morrigan.

You’re not too bright, are you? Yun is a counter to Dhalsim. But who did Daigo use?
Yep, Infiltration and Sako are the big names that counter pick. As for Marvel… It’s a team game. Changing your team doesn’t… you know what, I only made an account because you made me laugh so hard.

Except we were talking about Daigo in ST, not SFIV and we know that ST is pretty much a counter pick friendly game due to it’s “meta-balance” (as S-Kill would call it) where the archetypes are strong and match-ups do matter more since they can get lopsided due to these strong archetypes.

As for Marvel, Ryan changed his team against Vineeth exactly because it was a counterpick. More precisely, Firebrand is a hard counter against the Phoenix team. The former can easily work his way through the characters to Phoenix while leaving the latter with not enough meter for Dark Phoenix. Now, I’m not just saying this because the guy’s a friend of mine, but using the Morrigan team was the smartest thing Ryan could do at that point against a player who has taken him out in other tournaments. Morrigan prevents Vineeth’s team from turning the match into a “one player game”, once that’s taken out of the equation and Ryan is able to play his slow, methodical, defensive game, then he has half the game in his hands already.

Consider yourself taken out

• The Garbage Man

Considering that your “arguments” don’t really account for much and, at worse come down to either dickriding or just plain scrubbery, I’d say the only garbage here is you.

personally I’m not a fan and would prefer tournaments adopt single game formats to get rid of it, or a format like starcup/versus grand championship where players can choose a team of three, with repeats allowed, but they must commit to that team for the length of the tournament.

But wouldn’t single game promote more randomness?

doesn’t really bother me lol. the way i see it, you’re always accepting a certain threshold of randomness. certainly 3/5 games is gonna be less random than 2/3, or 4/7 will be less random than 3/5, but eventually you compromise a certain degree of randomness for just being able to finish a tournament. there is obviously some acknowledgement of this when you see a lot of money matches having extended formats like ft5 or 10, but I doubt anyone would think running a tournament of ft10’s is a good idea.

i also think that ‘randomness’ tends to favor people who play aggressive styles, which is my personal preference. it also seems to promote character variety. to use 3s as an example, since its the only game i follow, you see better character variety at sbo or the one year evo was forced to switch to single game than standard 2/3 american format.

in general i think different game communities should explore more customized tournament formats. i always thought it was ridiculous when cvs2 tournaments would be run 2/3 games, but that is kinda off topic.

I’m the opposite in that aside from preferring more methodical, defensive play, I do think that character selection is part of the game and am fine with less character variety in tournaments.

I do see the point about accepting randomness due to shorter sets due to time constraints. But IMO, the current 2/3 or 3/5 formats eliminate enough of the randomness and (if the brackets are seeded right) can prevent anyone from having a random lucky streak.