Zangief Flowchart (with Option Select Meaties)

I updated my list of questions. Here’s the new list:

–How many seconds does a whiffed ultra takes off the clock before Gief is punishable?

–Which reversal special moves lose to meaty ex spd?
-----Lose:
-----Don’t lose:
-----Still unsure: Abel, Akuma, Blanka, Boxer, Cammy, Chun, Claw, Dan, Dictator, Dhalsim, Fuerte, Fei, Gen, Gouken, Guile, Honda, Ken, Rose, Rufus, Ryu, Sagat, Sakura, Seth, Viper, Zangief

–Which characters’ wakeups lose to up+fierce headbutt?
-----Lose: Abel, Boxer (safe jump), Chun (safe jump), Claw, Dictator (safe jump), Fuerte, Rose (safe jump), Rufus (safe jump), Sakura (safe jump), Viper (safe jump), Zangief
-----Trade: Boxer (non-safe jump), Ryu, Sagat, Viper (non-safe jump)
-----Doesn’t lose: Blanka, Chun (non-safe jump), Dhalsim (teleport), Gouken (counter), Rose (non-safe jump, ex antiair grab),
-----Still unsure: Akuma, Cammy, Dan, Gen, Honda, Ken, Sakura (non-safe jump), Seth

–If Gouken is close to dizzy and you try up+fierce headbutt and he tries to counter it, will you still stun him?

I took down my question about where headbutt is useful in punishments. AReeves pointed out that it’s really only useful in punishing super obvious things like ultras and whatnot, so, ok. I also took down the question of how well an unthrowable lariat will work at the end of a dp fadc rush. The answer is not well. It’ll beat the throw, but it’ll lose terribly to another dp. Not really worth the risk imo.

I still need people to help me out with figuring out whether headbutt can beat or trade with some characters’ wakeup moves. I’ve tested most characters, but I still need help on the ones listed as unsure. I tried Seth at close range and it doesn’t work, but I’d be very interested in hearing about how it works v Seth’s regular and ex dps at max range. Try all sorts of timings for the headbutt, from early to late.

Also check out that new question on Gouken. I suspect he’ll get dizzy (after all, he’ll die if he’s close to losing life), but I’ve never seen it to know for sure.

hey just a correction UD, you say vipers ultra cant be beaten on reaction, which isnt true, you can actually do K lariat and punish with anything (including suplex, spd and ultra). lariat will randomly hit her out of it too but if you do it early enough it wont.

Gouken doesn’t dizzy when countering whether its high or low, ex or no.

If you look at Gouken’s stun meter on training mode, bring it up to 950 and then c.mk (which normally produces a dizzy), the attack will fail to dizzy him and then the stun meter drops back down after his counter connects. The max stun vitality does not increase in value even though it reached 1000 for a time (ie go up from “1000 till dizzy” to “1200 till dizzy”).

Set-up for testing ex/regular high-counter: two fierce headbutts from zangief, one after the other.

Set-up for testing ex/regular low-counter: fierce headbutt followed by splash xx s.mk xx exgh (knockdown), c.mk on wake-up.

Of course, I made sure all of these attack sequences on gouken occurred before his stun began recovering.

Also, if you’ve got gouken to the point where first hit of exgh will bring him to, say, 999 stun, the second hit will beat the counter, produce a knockdown, and dizzy. But you guys probably could’ve guessed that before.

edit–
So it looks like, after more extensive testing, characters cannot be dizzied when absorbing damage/stun with their focus attacks/super armor. Gouken’s counter having dizzy resistance is a specific example of this general game mechanic in SFIV.

You can head butt cammy on wake up but you can’t be right next to her. You have a be a little bit away and connect with the headbutt after her initial invulnerability frames. It will hit her out all all cannon spikes including EX. I couldn’t hit Seth out of any SRKs. Even the LP one seemed to beat out headbutt. Of course, Seth can always just reversal teleport away.

Yeah, too bad that Gouken counter thing doesn’t work. Turns out it’s the same with all focus and armor attacks.

As for Cammy’s dp, to be clear, fierce headbutt beats Cammy’s dp when timed late and at max range? That’s great news, thanks.

Yeah thats defiantly great news…its some what easy to bait trigger happy Cammy, especially on wake-ups. I need to take this into practice mode adds to growing list

  • :bluu:

So even very maximum range late fierce headbutt loses to Seth’s dp?

At the very least, seth’s dp’s can trade with fierce headbutt.

light dp: trade seth grounded, gief flies through air; trades in air.

medium dp: trades in air

heavy dp: trades in air

still not sure if headbutt can win during the ascent of the dp though. The descent easily loses to headbutt, but I don’t think that’s a surprise to anybody.

edit–

Fierce headbutt can beat light dp during its ascent. Correctly spacing and timing the move knocks seth out of the air cleanly just at the height where his neutral standing head would be. Space yourself about a c.lk or so away. Aim for his head, and don’t let his fist touch you.

How can I confirm that I’ve recorded zangief doing a meaty ex-spd? Is there a straight-forward way to test this?

I did a little more extensive testing. If you time it perfectly, you can beat out his regular SRKs. You’ll also trade some times. You can’t be next to him. I think you have to be at max range. You can stuff him on his way up. But if you’re timing is off, you get beat. The window seems kind of tight. I was not able to beat EX SRK at all from any position.

I was not able to hit his s.HP with s.MP either. The best I could do on reaction was tag it with s.lk. But that’s better than nothing. s.MP seem to work pretty well against his j.HP if you space it well. I will have to start working those into my game.

I’m late to the party but this is fucking epic.
Thanks for all your efforts to make certified 'Gief an ass-kicker.

Updated!

Going through these again:

–How many seconds does a whiffed ultra takes off the clock before Gief is punishable: 1 sec, useless

–Which reversal special moves lose to meaty ex spd?
-----Lose:
-----Don’t lose:
-----Still unsure: Abel, Akuma, Blanka, Boxer, Cammy, Chun, Claw, Dan, Dictator, Dhalsim, Fuerte, Fei, Gen, Gouken, Guile, Honda, Ken, Rose, Rufus, Ryu, Sagat, Sakura, Seth, Viper, Zangief

–Which characters’ wakeups does up+fierce headbutt beat?
-----Beat: Abel, Boxer (safe jump), Chun (safe jump), Claw (regular scarlet), Dictator (safe jump), Fuerte, Honda (safe jump), Rose (safe jump), Rufus (safe jump), Sakura (safe jump), Viper (safe jump), Zangief
-----Trade: Claw (ex scarlet), Dan (regular dp), Guile, Ryu (regular dp), Sagat (regular dp)
-----Lose: Blanka, Cammy, Dan (ex dp), Dhalsim (teleport), Fei, Gouken (counter), Ken, Ryu (ex dp), Sagat (ex dp)
-----Still unsure: Akuma, Gen

That first question was looking for a way to kill time at the end of a round, but I thought it took 2-3 seconds rather than a single second. Turns out it’s useless for killing time. Almost done with which characters’s wakeups get beaten by headbutt. As for setting up meaty ex spd, I would just set dummy Gief to knock you down (you as whatever character) and then try to set dummy Gief to do meaty spd. Hard to make it exact I know, but after all we’re looking for useful things instead of just interesting but useless crap, so there’s no need for anything but ordinary-style timing. If it’s too hard to set up then I’ll scrap the idea.

Cammy’s and Fei’s will lose or trade most of the time. I posted about it about a page ago.

Yeah, setting up meaty ex spd that precisely is next to impossible. It may not even be the best approach anyway due to start-up invincibility frames of many character’s specials. This should be loads easier!

I’ve got a few things to add concerning safe jump headbutts. First, I’ll just give the observations I wrote down.

here’s the set-up:
-Record zangief doing point-blank df-sweep followed immediately by a neutral jump fierce headbutt.
-Jump is buffered immediately after activating df-sweep.
-Zangief is jumping upwards about 4 little training mode squares from point-blank range.
-Headbutt goes off towards the beginning of his descent to ensure that his head is tilted down as far as it will go before he begins his landing frames.
-Crouching block is buffered after activating headbutt and held two seconds after landing.

What we get out of this set-up is a safe-jump meaty fierce headbutt just outside of point-blank range. This set up works against some characters, but definitely not all of them. Here’s how it does against a few character’s wake-ups. All specials are reversal-timed. I left out supers and ultras since, in general, they both beat the headbutt.

Dan
L/M/H/EX dragon punches are blocked
L/M/H/EX hadokens lose
L/M/H/EX hurricane kicks lose

~ This is a winning set-up against dan’s wake-up specials. He either loses or is blocked, and its fairly easy to punish his DPs on block.

~ Ultradavid listed Dan’s EX-DP as beating headbutt, but with this set up gief is alright. Maybe its a spacing discrepancy? I’m not sure.

**
Gen**
L/M/H Hands lose; EX hands are blocked
L/M/H/EX Geikros are blocked
L/M/H Jasen loses; EX doesn’t come out?
L/M/H Oga loses; EX Oga escapes

~ As usual, Gen’s EX Oga presents problems. With meter he can escape from this set up everytime. And he almost always has meter. I still say its a win for gief, since each option is either in gief’s favor or resets the match at the cost of EX for Gen.

~I couldn’t get EX Jasen to come out. I tried many, many times. This happened with a few other character’s special moves. I get a reversal message, a counter hit message, but no ex bar ever was spent. Maybe there’s a few frames of start-up before the ex-meter actually gets burned? I dunno.

~BTW I know this has been mentioned in a few other threads, but Gen’s wakeup is super weird. If he isn’t holding a direction on wake-up, Zangief’s headbutt whiffs completely. How dumb is that?

Honda
L/M/H Hands lose; EX hands don’t come out?
L/EX headbutt blocked; M/H headbutt lose
L/EX stomp blocked; M/H stomp escapes
L/M/H oicho loses; EX oicho doesn’t come out?

~ Ultradavid listed safe jump headbutt as beating Honda’s wakeup. I agree. None of Honda’s options seem particularly scary. Light and ex headbutt are safe, but gief only takes chip damage from it.

Ken
L/M/EX dragon punch are blocked; H dragon punch beats headbutt
L/M/H/EX hadokens lose
L/M/H/EX hurricane kicks lose

~ I guess I agree with Ultradavid on Ken, too. In the end, safe-jump headbutt isn’t so great of an option. Its close though. EX-DP is punishable with fierce headbutt, s.mk xx exgh combo and that creates another set of wake up games after dealing like 850 stun. The other two dragon punches are punishable on block as well. But I guess that Fierce DP is pretty annoying.

Seth
M/H/EX dragon punch are blocked; L dragon punch loses
L/M/H sonic boom loses; EX sonic boom doesn’t come out?
L/M/H hurricane kick loses; EX hurricane kick is blocked
L/M/H Tandem engine loses; EX tandem doesn’t come out?
L/M/H SPD loses; EX SPD beats headbutt
All teleports escape

~ Crapface made a good point about Seth being able to simply reversal teleport out of wakeup games. Resetting the match sucks here, because that basically means you have to get another lucky headbutt or two. If you’re lucky enough to get him in the corner, this is a pretty sweet set up. It’s sweet because seth’s teleport, along with dhalsim’s, sucks in the corner vs. lariat. You can beat or block all his specials with safe jump headbutt, and then control teleport escapes right afterwards. Hell, you could option-select that. But you’d be pretty lucky to get Seth in the corner like this IMO.

To be clear, you’re doing all that at a close enough range that the opponent is forced to block the headbutt if he just holds back while waking up, right?

^ Yeah, for these characters at this distance the headbutt connects whether they block standing or crouching.

Honda’s lp headbutt is safe btw.

With Cammy and Fei, no. The headbutt loses if done from closer in, b/c their DP’s hit him in the bottom of his hitbox. Not to mention that if they hit with the 1st frame of their EX DP’s, a clean hit is assured. You need to be back a little bit.

you are still in SPD and low short range though, but holding up back or back dashing is very effective mid screen.

I have a newb question shrug yeah I admit this one
How are you guys setting up dummies for “practicing” the timing on thess?

  • :bluu:

You have to use the character you’re testing against as 1P and gief as 2P. Then record gief doing a sweep then following it up with whatever wake up you want to try out. Then as 1P, perform the wake up option you want to test against while having your dummy play back the recording.

It’s a good way of testing out wake up OS to see if you’ve done it correctly. I’ve gotten better at OS hand and OS SPD (on Abel). It feels awesome when you do manage to pull it off in a fight.

I’ve managed to use os hand against Viper’s wake up EX burn kick and Fuerte’s wake up ex guac.