A Nash player (I forget who) weighed in on this, he said that if Gief plays the ground game he’ll take even more damage. I also find myself jumping a lot more against Nash than in other matchups.
As for Necalli, he gets oki off of everything and forward dash into cr. fw. (?) is very hard to deal with. He can alternate between normal jump ins and divekicks to bait Lariat. His attack is very diverse; he hits hard, is very mobile, has a command grab, an overhead and possibly the best V-trigger in the game. From afar he obviously has Seismo. His combo ability is great too, you’re always only one quick dash + cr. fw. away from eating a combo or a CA.
On another note, does anyone have some general advice against Kolin? A Diamond Kolin I play against knows the matchup very well and he has a hit-'n-run style that feels similar to S1 Nash. Am I blatantly overlooking something or is this - yet again - an awful matchup?
Probably not. Characters that are huge like him tend to have more polarizing issues than Gief usually has. He might excel at certain things that Gief doesn’t, but odds are Gief will stay the better tournament character.
When Gief runs into Dhalsim, Guile, Nash, Necalli or Birdie it’s pretty much curtains, I don’t know how much worse Abigail could be for a tournament run. Too early to tell though, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Abigail has a chance to get bodied harder by all of those characters that Gief. Maybe Necalli being the only exception because of button range difference, but V Skill should still be rough for him.
I think he’ll do better vs Chun Li than Gief, but that’s the only somewhat relevant character I’m seeing him doing better against than Gief ATM. We’ll see in a little while.
Hugo was because Gief couldn’t focus him, that and his buttons were too good. Hakan on the other hand was more about patients and punishing you with slide and if he got you to the corner that was usually GGs.
Abigail is bottom three guaranteed, imo the worst. I think it’s pretty obvious already. Of course in the first few weeks or so all the whiners we’ll be saying he’s op just like with Gief at launch.
Itazan is using Abigail now, I wonder if he’ll main him. Infexious switched to Necalli, so who knows.
Right now I’m struggling to see why a competitive player would pick Gief over Abigail. He has Dhalsim-like reach on some of his normals, more HP, same damage on command grab, comparable V-skill, much easier to get in with Nitro Charge, much better comboability incl. CA and an overhead. Gief has more range on his command grab, more damage on CA, and Borscht.