Who is what tier?

The Japanese don’t seem to have much interest in O. Sagat or O. Ken the way american players do. In fact, I think it was the american players that showed them how good O. Sagat was in the first place.

I’ve heard of soft bans for both O. Sagat and Claw, but who knows how many arcades this actually applies to, or how many people actually care enough for that to be an issue.

Who really knows why they don’t pick him though. Power Zantetsu is god tier in Last Blade 2, and I never ever see him at tourneys either. The ones I do see are usually pretty bad, and that goes for both characters.
It can’t just be an honour thing, because in other games, you see tons of Yuns, V-Akumas/V-Sakuras, Chois, etc.
Maybe they find him boring to use or something.

Your forgetting that O.Sagat barely has any strategy besides fireballing like mad and uppercutting.

The idea of such gameplay is not interesting for them I guess, it’s not because he’s overpowered they play other overpowered characters in ST and other games (Cvs2 Sagat !).

I guess they also like a challenge :wgrin:

John Choi mentioned in his Japan trip log that no-one uses O. Sagat because he’s too cheap/easy/simple. Kurahashi said there was one player who used N.Sagat, who, if he decided to switch to O.Sagat, would wipe the floor with everyone.

I always considered Boxer to be higher than O. Sagat

I think he was referring to the player named “yaya”. IMO japanese players don’t pick O. Sagat because he’s too boring to play and one dimensional.

Isn’t Boxer favored in that matchup?

What Daigo does to Choi from 4:10 till the end is the textbook definition of rape.

I would LOVE to play boxer like that, but I don’t think I have the patience.

Patience isn’t the majority of playing boxer. There’s tons of ways to close that distance with mind games, TAP/Headbutt through FB’sm etc.

The main part of playing with Boxer is rushdown and not letting an opponent get a chance to strike back. It’s mainly lockdown.

I was talking mainly about getting TAP’ing incorporated into my gameplay, that’s where my paintence falls through. I’ve heard of the method that Graham uses, but it seems extremely awkward to me.

OIC

Back to the topic, what advantages does Dictator have over Sim, since I saw Dic over Sim in one of the tier lists?

None. That guy’s tier list is some retarded shit off an old issue of gamepro
Dic’ can stuff 'Sim’s far drills with FP, but that’s about all I’ve seen.
Up close, he still gets drilled to death.

Even if that list was accurate, a character doesn’t necessarily have the advantage over every character below them in the tiers.

yo, been a while since i posted here but since i wrote the old school rankings in my old strategy guides i figured its a good topic to comment on.

first let me address a few things. Old sagat is not played in japan because he is boring, they dont play for money over there so fun is the driving force behind playing games ,and if a character is boring to them, they dont want to play him even if he wins alot. Winning is a driving force in america i think, i play to win, so does my brother, we have fun winning but winning ranks higher than having fun with your character in my book.

Someone posted about balrog being rushdown, this is true in some matchups, in others you must learn patience.

ST Bisons anti air is jumping toward and strong, its very effective, even stops drills if done at the same time as the drill.

Ok as for tiers…keep in my this is my opinion and not my bros.

Top tier:
Dhalsim, Balrog, Old Sagat

Second Tier:
Chun Li, Vega

Third Tier:
Ryu, Ken, Old Guile, E Honda, DJ, Old Balrog, ST Bison

Fourth Tier:
Blanka, Zangief, Thawk, ST Guile

Bottom Tier:
Fei Long, Cammy

Any char i didnt mention prolly not too important to me.

Keep in mind i feel any char can win at times. But this is how i rate chars based off their potential to get wins. If you put each char vs the rest of the cast 10 games each this is how i feel they would stack up in win %. Even though Old sagat loses to balrog and dhalsim imo, he still destroys everyone else so i put him in top tier, because his chance to win vs the rest is higher than balrog or dhalsim in alot of matches. Same goes for alot of the other chars. Also keep in mind its 2 am, if anything past the top 2 tiers is a bit sketchy its cause im tired lol, but question me on it and ill give you my reasons.

One last thing im adding on. As human beings we have our good days and bad days in anything including sf2. What this translates to in my rankings is how easily you win a match. If old sagat destroys gief like an 8/2 or whatever out of best of 10 of 2 pros playing it. Then on a bad day he will still do ok in the match even if the player of old sagat isnt feeling as up to par as usual. Now take a match like dhalsim vs balrog and if dhalsim isnt playing his best he might lose that matchup. This to me is another factor in my rankings, if old sagat has such a huge advantage that on a bad day i still win then obviously he is going to rank higher than a char that might have more advantage matches but not as huge as an advantage. This is why i rank balrog and old sagat so high even though both of them have some bad matchups. Because both chars can be played and won with even if the player isnt feeling himself. This is also why i put vega on a lower tier than them, because although he might do better vs some chars like say vs dhalsim whereas old sagat has more difficulty, he still doesnt have a huge advantage vs the other characters, he does beat alot of chars but not by a huge amount where i can be drunk as cole or high as nelson and still win with old sagat.

Curious why you like O.Guile over N.Guile. I know O.Guile is better in a few specific matches, but I think I like N.Guile better over all.

n.guile is shittier imo. less damage (i think) and less counters.

old guile has the standing roundhouse which is a huge part of his game. He also has the standing short while charged.

im sure new guile is prolly better in some matchups but old guile has his basic style that works in alot of matches where new guile lacking that roundhouse cannot do as much in some situations or say vs dhalsim cannot do standing short to counter dhalsims low punches during critical moments or vs djs slide.

i guess my take on it is he can put a bigger dent in some of the top tier chars, like sim, balrog, etc. but to be honest i dont know how much potential new guile has. I know ive seen old guile in action when thomas used to use him and he did alot of winning with him back in the day.

how do u use o. guiles standing hk anyways? what situations do u use it in?

lets say ryu is near you, like out of low forward range, you throw a sonic boom, he decides to jump when he sees it, you arent charged for flashkick, so you press standing hk as he comes in, since you’re still recovering from the sonic boom you cannot do a jumping air counter. But standing highkick fits the situation perfectly.

Also, I think it’s good to point out, even if it does sound obvious, that one of the biggest advantages of Guile’s Roundhouse as anti-air is that you can hold back and do it, so you are charged to throw a Sonic Boom right afterwards. So if you are at the right distance, don’t walk forward and Roundhouse them out of the air if you don’t have to. But, usually if you could have walked forward to Roundhouse them in time, you are recovered early enough that you have a lot more options than just Roundhouse.

Your right about HP stopping long range drills, but you got to have good reactions, otherwise you’ll end up trading (in your favor) or being beaten. So if you can’t get the HP, then go with LP, just smash it, it will stop LK and MK from medium to long ranges.

Up close is where the problems are at. If your lucky enough not to be in block stun when sim tries a drill, you should be able to jump MP before the opponent gets the drill out. You can’t do scissors and crusher as they will get hit.

As long as you don’t let yourself get stuck in the corner, bison should be able to put good pressure on Sim with his Pokes, and punish whiffed limbs with scissors or crushers. Also since sim doesn’t have a reversal, when you knock him down you can jump in or cross-up thanks to bisons’ long jump.

This match is all about not letting the other get in, cause unlike some of his other matches, i don’t think sim can afford to sit back and just react to what bison does, hes got to take the initiative, and put lots of pressure on Bison so he doesn’t have the freedom of moving around and taking advantage of the massive damage his pokes deal out. Bison on the other hand needs to get those knock downs to start his cross-ups, jump-ins, throw mind games.

Overall i’d rate this match as a 50/50, but in no way do i think Bison is higher than Sim in the tiers. Its my personal opinion that Sim is the best legal character in the game. He has a move for every single situation and can be played in anyway you want, and i doubt he has a single bad matchup. Only a few characters can really trouble him, such as Honda, Chun and Vega, but no where near to the point of hopeless. Bison has a few hard matches especially Honda and Chun. Gief, deejay, guile and rog can also be quite bad.

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Bringing the convo back to N.guile vs O.guile. I think you gotta go with N.guile. Sure O.guile has got some advantages, like standing HK, kepting his charge on Backfist and standing LK. Hes really just a shadow of his CPS1 days. Most of his moves have had quite a nerfing. N.guile has to be played totally differently from his past versions and i think this is were people tend to fall over.

Looking at N.guile’s moves, most notably his controllable MK, advancing HK and crossup LK. N.guile is more geared to being an offensive character rather than his old defensive orienated self. Cps2 guile’s booms are no where near as good, they come out further away from his body, meaning its no longer good to keep up with other fireball characters, but the recovery is still good. Now St guile has got more options than ever before to follow his boom. Also closing the gap after a boom is much better with HK than the Hop in most situations, But N.guile still has the hop so its all good.

Sure St guile’s super is rubbish, but its still very comboable from crossups and a good anti-air. Even if this is not enough, you can at least take solace from the fact that you can tech throws.

I think the move st guile misses most is not the HK, but the c.HP. Even O.guile’s c.HP is crap. In cps1 c.HP was a really good anti-air that would at the very least trade with most attacks, giving him great cover after he throws a boom. Now you’ll be lucky to even get a trade.

Anyway enough of my rambling, look forward to more interesting discussion later.

Just like to thank NKI, the wolfe bros, j.chen and other good players for keeping the ST discussion going, without you guys there would be very little to talk about. I can’t wait to go to America for evo next year where i’ll hopefully get to play some of you.

laters
r3ko

Does anybody know where I can find a match-up chart? I think that would be even more helpful than tier lists.