If you want a truly balanced gief, then you are going to have to give up his command grab range, his command grab damage and his command grab followups. Then you will basically be Laura, but you will be given better walkspeed and pokes and might get your lifebar. Nerfed by 25 to 50 hp.
But the thing is… that ain’t gief. Gief is a big plodding dude that takes forever to get in, but once he does he’s the best character in the game. That’s what you picked, that’s how he plays.
And the funniest thing is… he is actually balanced. Midtier is the epitome of balance. But his balance is polarising. And that polarised balance is by design. Like if you make him struggle less against fireballs you’ve totally got to tone down his upclose game to balance it out.
etc etc.
He’s a decent character, have fun for what he does and is. He has a v trigger move that sucks people in and does damage from crazy ranges, he has an air command grab, armor moves, can combo into his super now, has easy hitconfirms.
I mean there’s not much more to want besides a way to completely bypass fireballs and neutral like ex DR, or have really good walkspeed
what is mid-tier anyway? 8th? 18th? It really doesn’t say much where a character stands.
I can think of only four characters who have more bad matchups than Gief: FANG, Alex, Ryu and Juri. If we’re feeling really generous and give Gief the benefit of the doubt we can add Vega, Chun Li and Nash to that list. That would put him in 17th place AT BEST.
He loses every mu imo and has some of the worst in the game. How is that a mid tier character?
I think one of the reasons why all these morons think he’s good is because 99% people don’t have any Gief experience. Lets face it, how many good Giefs are there? Basically none so when you do fight one you have no idea what to do and he seems op. Just look at the Snake vs Shine match on Saturday. It was obvious Shine had no clue how to fight Gief so all the “experts” will say Gief bodies Ibuki lol. Even Du looks like he has very little Gief mu experience. If you know how to fight this character he’s pretty free.
Fighting him is the same as always, keep him away all day, your options for his vortex are to jump or backdash or block or reversal or jab. Each one beats one of his mainline tactics like jab beats his double dash into SPD or delayed Spd. Block beats his st.hk and his fhp, back dash and jump beat his SPD but both lose to his st.hk and fhp
Etc etc
Neutral is stay away and punish his buttons. Punish his lariat, his st.hk, his fmk, his forward dash. And he has ways to punish you for trying to do all of this. I probably have 6 or 7 different gief players I play against. Some I destroy, some destroy me, going in against him is good on knockdown but it isn’t free by any means.
His matchups aren’t as bad as you guys are making out. Bad matchups are when you have limited or no options to beat key moves. Gief has ways around fireballs, he has great Anti airs, biggest command grab range in the game, a v skill and fhp that have armor for beating other players overly predictable pokes, an air command grab for people that obviously jump away.
The only real problem he has that I know of is that run away is very hard for hit to deal with and well, it’s hard for lots of characters to deal with and those characters don’t have his upclose toolset for when they do eventually get in.
You sound like an expert Zangief player. How do you go in the Dhalsim and Guile match ups? …
Are you fucken killing it there bro? You got it all sorted out? Yeah. RIGHT ON! ATOMIC!!!
How does anyone? You think gief is the only character that lists those 2 as bad matchups?
Yeah he has bad matchups, that’s gief. Those characters themselves also have bad matchups. Guile hates fighting rog, sim doesn’t particularly like rashid or Laura amongst many others.
Laura doesn’t particularly like fighting gief.
Having shitty matchups doesn’t automatically make a character shit.
Chun doesn’t like guile or sim, and doesn’t have a command grab to threaten each character once she finally gets in. Etc etc
I could see if you said “well it looks like NuckleDu needs to learn this small thing here or there about the matchup”, but saying the guy who WON the event knows “LOOKS like he has very little Gief mu experience” that’s just the scrub shit. I don’t know how you can say stuff like that and have any actual experience in competitive fighting game tournaments. Or fighting games in general.
If he loses every matchup you literally don’t play your own character. Literally.
No game is perfectly balanced. There’s only some attempt to make things balanced where there will always be a clear set of tiers and archetypes that typically do well/bad vs certain characters.
You don’t play a character like Gief or Sim solo and expect to have a great time. Unless they make the game like Guilty Gear where you can call on 30 different mechanics to help bail you out of matchup constraints, that’s the way it’ll be.
Like if every Gief player here just realized that Snake Eyez has already done the smart thing and realized Gief is not a solo use tournament character, this thread alone would have much less problems. Gief wasn’t a solo use tourney character in IV and he won’t be in V. SF and the way Gief works just doesn’t allow it. You gotta pick up that second side dude if you don’t want Grief.
Last game you could solo use Gief in was Alpha 3 and that’s because he didn’t really play much like a grappler. He had OD pokes and could custom combo you for ridiculous damage. This Gief is counter pick tier like most of the others.
Sim is not a bad mu, remember that guys. One of the experts said all our bad mu’s aren’t as bad as we think. S.mk isn’t bad we’re just overreacting and there’s ALWAYS a way around things. Now that I think about it Gief probably wrecks Sim so Gemini step your game up bro and stop whining.
That’s kind of the problem. We say that Gief has options, they say he doesn’t and he’s low tier and that’s where the circle goes.
I’d love for people to talk about Gief’s options and general strategy, but unless you got a plan the only people that are here are here to pity party. Hopefully you can work it out for these guys.