You’re right, its the same for me.
Para, I’ll look at some matches and tell you what I think. About rushdown, if people are jumping at you then you just have to get better with st.LP and lariat. Those shut down just about anything coming from the air. I find that using headbutt and st.FP in the neutral entices ppl to jump at you since those buttons have a lot of recovery. Chars with projectiles will certainly take a risk jumping at you as you keep headbutting their FBs and gaining meter from it.
If you’re getting rushed down because you fall for dash mixups (this is my weakness), then you just have to calm down, stop thinking about pressing stuff and wait for it. If you’re expecting the dash, many times you can react with cr.LP. Shut that down and chars like Laura and Bison lose a lot of their effectiveness. Also V Reversal man. Fuck VT, if you block a med/heavy button, VR that shit. A bar of V gauge is worth getting out of a frame trap easily.
I understand what you mean by Gief being weird in this game. You can’t really go ham and you can’t exactly be a walking tank like SF4. IMO, SFV Gief doesn’t have an obvious play style, just a set of tools that are capable of dealing with most stuff in the game. And as much as you may not like it, he is pretty much just pure reads, though with being able to do st.LK xx lariat in neutral he can play some footsies now too. But as fildoh said, if you put yourself in your opponent’s position, you’ll realize just how fucking terrified of Gief they are. Once you fully understand that, it becomes easier to exploit them. For example, if you have VT and super and you get knocked down, the opponent may go for a frame trap. You can wakeup flex, absorb the hits, tag them with the flex hit into VT xx super and win. Surely you understand how frustrating and uncomfortable that is for the opponent to deal with.
SF4 Gief was all about footsies, whiff punishing, and spacing unless you were a scrub. He wasn’t built on guesses at all. SF5 Gief IS all about guesses and hoping your opponent doesn’t know the Gief mu or hoping they fuck up badly to give you a chance lol
I am pretty sure gief will get nerfed hard in next patch
As even daigo is thinking gief is S tier but this is actually a joke
Zangief just doesn’t feel balanced to me. You shouldn’t have to worry about being rushed down while you’re trying to get in. You lose so much health bulldogging forward that you can’t afford to lose big chunks of life every time you are knocked down. I feel that making Gief like a beached whale on knockdown is a concession to the whining scrubs who can’t be bothered to develop a proper zoning game to keep him out. That’s a problem with the game as a whole, mindlessly rushing in and pressing buttons is a viable tactic for and against any character. I believe it was Infiltration who said that in any given match it’s hard to see whether pros are playing or random online players.
The metagame is catered to the lowest common denominator. You know something is wrong with a Street Fighter game when even Dhalsim is a rushdown character.
Back to Gief, his AA ability simply doesn’t cut it against smart opponents. Some players have picked up on the fact you can jump cross-up Gief from footsie range, and there isn’t a thing he can do about it. st. jab doesn’t reach and Lariat gets beat clean. I’m seeing this specific situation more and more in my matches.
In USFIV you used your Green Hand to get in, your invincible Lariat and 2 frame SPD to get them off of you, and you had 1100 HP to take punishment. Now you don’t have any of those.
Ok this post annoys the hell out of me.
He is still footsie based. He has great normals especially from distance.
Lets talk about the normals that are better now.
ST LP better
St MP better in 4 but not by much in ultra
St HP much better(this was useless in 4 and now is an armored normal that can be made plus when charged.)
Cr LP much better
cr MP much better
cr HP much better(again useless in 4 at least now its an antiair)
St LK same
St MK better(it is not negative on hit anymore)
St HK better
cr LK same
cr MK better
cr HK better
plus now he has headbutt and 6MK that are both really good.
He also now has an option select on wakeup with normal throw to IASPD
his dash is better
His jump is better
he has an air spd
you guys act like he was some low risk fighter that didnt have a command grab that was publishable by the whole damn cast.
Yes you are right he cant spin the stick like a retard in block strings hoping someone misses a damn link. yes he doesnt have an invincable reversal that also carried major risk but guess what no one does. Ryu, Cammy, akuma etc. all have reversals that use meter but if they get the reversal they get 140 damage if they miss they loose 350-600!
Yes Gief doesnt have a 2 frame spd, an invincible reversal or green hand. he also doesnt have to deal with Uppercut FADC or random ultras because you dropped a link(that was given to your opponent because you whooped there ass.)
Yes he has two bad matchups but neither compare to Seth(Vanilla SF4), Akuma SF4, Sim SFA, Honda SF2 or many others throughout the years. Both are very winnable.
Again i am not saying he is top, but his is a very good mid tier and could be top 10 as the meta develops.
Gief top 10? Not in a million years. Once the dust settles and the tier list falls into place he’ll be back to bottom/low tier again. He will never be top 10. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly swallow my words and admit you were right. I just don’t see it happening.
I understand what you’re saying, if you look at him in a vacuum he has glaring weaknesses are but so does 90% of the cast.
Urien
Guile
Cammy
Rog
Laura
Rashid
That’s not in order but those characters are significantly better than everyone else. Everyone else with the exception of fang are pretty much lumped together. He absolutely could be top 10 but he could also be bottom five
Even if he is in I don’t see that much difference between number seven and the bottom five. Point is he is very viable
In USFIV he had only one really bad 6.5-3.5 matchup vs Sagat, on a cast of 44 characters no less. In SFV S2 he has arguably four such matches with Dhalsim, Urien, Guile and Nash, on a cast of only 22 characters. He’s definitely worse off.
@filldoh Thanks for keeping it positive and upbeat. Good advice here too. I dare to say that Gief has the best footsie/neutral game in SFV. st.mp, st.lk xx lariat buffer, and st.hk make him a counter poking GOD. He is very good this season.
If you guys are struggling you need to post video for us to look at and also join the Gief discord https://discord.gg/4ucK8wj
Volta, I agree with everything you said but I think that’s what they wanted. Isn’t that why every move is safe on block in this game? So everyone can just press buttons with no fear of being punished. This game
Would you mind posting your CFN id? Honestly, I’d love to watch your matches cause I’m curious. You seem to think this character is way better than what most think and that most of his mu’s are 5-5. You think he could be top 10? You think SF5 Gief is footsie based? Either you’re an amazing player, I suck more than I thought, or we’re playing different games.
If there was an award for “character forum with biggest cry babies” the gief forum would win by a long shot.
S2 Zangief is really good except for a few bad MUs. problem is a few of those is against really good peeps in S2
no footsies: dunno man. Gief has really good normals. problem is he moves slow, but while approaching someone, you can easily outpoke them. this ends with gief lightly punishing a ton of small pokes, cause it is hard to convert a punish into big damage without VT. once you activate VT, you have like a minute of converting mediums/high attacks into 300+ or 400+ (I don’t remember) damage with the only execution requirements of being able to react to a medium punch connecting, and an air EX SPD that doesn’t have to even be instant
yeah the thing is those six guys are prolly the top tier in SFV. so yeah, gief has problems against them. worst MU is dhalsim but Dhalsim has his own share of problems and he is def not top 10
Gief could easily be top 7 except the other 6 guys have a good advantage against him. tho I am not so sure about Rashid or Cammy. or top 10 but the other 4 or 5 guys in the bottom with him are p matched to him, and the guys at the top own him
problem is that in SFV most of the cast has problems and only a few chosen ones have all the good tools (Cammy, Urien, Guile) and only one of those pays with a good health handicap (Cammy). So the game is unbalanced. Cammy MU is prolly not broken in her favor tbqh, like it is for Guile and (maybe) Urien
re: Gief being nerfed. I think some things are currently too good; I would welcome a nerf if it also meant some side buffs on stuff we have trouble, like mov speed which is ridic low even for the slowest character, and a couple of hitbox adjustment here and there
dunno, the game is odd right now
That is why Gief will not be top because of the top tier hurts him bad. Guile Urien, and Sim(not top) can really cause him problems. Rog and Laura i think he beats and he goes even with Cammy and Rashid.
As far as my CFN Id it is the same as my screen name here and my PSN ID. Dont use those matches as too much of a barometer as i was testing out shit for the past few days. when i play online mostly i try to throw shit out to see what beats what so i can learn, i dont really take it that seriously, plus i love fucking with people doing 200 cr jabs in a row just to frustrate them. If you have a secondary character that you can play i can show you some of the things i was talking about though? I say a secondary character because showing you in a mirror wont work.
What time do you usually play?
Anybody got anything good for the karin MU? It’s a matchup I personally have trouble in
Just like every MU, st.mp counter poking. St.lk xx lariat whiff punishing and counter poking REALLY blows her up. Her shoulder is -2 so you can decide between st.mp, cr.lk, or spd. This is a MU where V reversal out of pressure is important because she is so frame trappy and can get you to the corner pretty quick where she has access to a nasty throw loop. Keep it mid screen and in neutral and you’ll win this MU.
well said. i had massive trouble with this one but st lk lariat is king, also be on point with antiairs one jump in and she can go to work. Third if she pressures you and you dont have v meter take the fucking throw, you dont want to challenge that bitch when she is plus.
I think a lot of “year of Zangief” peeps will be left wanting cause Zangief simply has problems with what is gonna be the most popular characters IMHO, Urien and Guile. Maybe Cammy, depending on who you ask.
so basically you should have a pocket char to deal with those (and Dhalsim). I think the one who makes the most sense is Balrog. but since the guys Gief struggles are also going to be popular, you are going to be playing your “pocket” character most of the time and in the more important matches so you may as well have a pocket Zangief instead to deal with, like…Laura? I think Gief may have an advantage maybe there
so maybe we can avoid a nerf simply cause Capcom won’t see tournament results to provoke it
As long as Itabashi finishes in top 8 of tournaments Gief is doomed. Don’t believe me ask Xian who thought that season 2 was going to reward all that Fang struggle and instead he got bent over for placing high in tournaments.
Fang’s nerf is so random
only explanation I got is they thought the grey health change was a huge buff