Jab is fast and beats almost everything C.HP is better if there is time ; but lariat… well… that escalated quickly 
Lariat is often a selfkill lol, you get a counterhit and get a full punish 300-600dmg.
I fell like Zangief will be really weak against good players. All you have to do is rush him down. he can’t grab you because the grabs are too slow, his anti airs are garbage, I don’t care what other people say, I had about 120 matches yesterday , 50 against a pretty good FANG. FANG was made to shit on Zangief’s head. every normal hits twice, he outpokes you in range and priority, I ate so many counterhits and crush counters, sometimes get a perfect, not because he zones me, no reason… he just rush me down, Zangief can do nothing but block or waste vgauge with reversal. FANGs sweep beats Zangiefs s.mp clean. s.HP is useless against FANG, you always eats a crush counter.
Again, don’t zone Zangief, don’t be scared, there is no reason, he is so slow, stand close to him, jab the shit out of him and mix it up with some normal throws, he can’t do shit.
Does kinda suck that he has no invincible moves.
To be honest I see why they did it. Gief’s neutral game is much better than it was in SF4 and he actually has tools to deal with a lot of the problems he classically had. Which at the same time would also make him a lot more dominating against character types who struggled with grapplers. So to balance it out Gief has weaker defense than he’s had in the past so those character types actually have a chance.
That said with the neutral game Gief has, if someone gets in your face like that you royally screwed up.
but at the same time, he is worse against zoners, so he is nerfed on both sides… much waker against melee and zoners. Man Zangief will never win a tournament, trust me it will never happen. He can’t even combo against crouching opponents
Not by a long shot. He’s better against zoners now than he ever was.
This post is so full of wrong
it’s not, did you play him or even the full version? did you play against good people? not random scrubs you find on rank matches?
try to play against aggressiv people they know what they do, you will never win one single match with Zangief against them. He is a fail design in so many levels.
instead of posting some random shit, give him/her some reason why this post “is so full of wrong” you scrub.
I don’t have to do shit, lol. I disagree with his post. Simple as that.
Anyone who’s played Gief in previous iterations could tell you how he has more options against zoning than he EVER has had. That’s not even an opinion, you can look at the properties of his moveset and clearly see what can be used against fireballs.
It’s day fucking zero. And still niggas insist on trying to say X or Y character is going to be the “best” or “worst” in the game. I’ll never understand that shit.
But hey, scrubs making dumbass long-term assumptions on day zero ain’t gonna bother me. Gief could be the worst character in the game and I’ll still play the crap out of him.
So lariat is not an AA anymore? Wut…
sorry double post
It can sorta be used as an anti-air, but not as strong as it was in SF4. But then again s.LP, c.HP, and air SPD along with a few other situational AAs pretty well cover most of what you need to play Gief.
sigh
I’m really getting tired of people who haven’t figured out how to use Zangief blaming the character for something they don’t know how to do yet. I think Gief is not going to be as beginner friendly this time around compared to SF4 where he was pretty braindead early on.
I was blowing up people who were aggressive without the actual fundamentals backing it up. You can keep trying to dash at me and jump in on me all you want, but I’ll keep Jabbing your dashes and AAing your jumps. And when that happens I get a mix up out of it.
Yeah… Dam grill. Wtf do you expect from like day one, especially vs Fang. Yeah I got rushed down a bunch, but I never thought it was because Zangief is worthless. I just need more time to study other characters play style.
How is his neutral better? I don’t think it’s bad by any means but I certainly don’t think it’s that much better than 4. I can see what you’re saying tho about him being too strong with a good defense. Honestly, I wish instead of EX SPD doing a million damage and having near jab SPD range, it should’ve just been like SF4. Hit invincible on startup, MP. SPD range and damage, and crush counterable if whiffed.
As it stands, all he really has to get people off him is V-reversal, which definitely isn’t bad, but it doesn’t make the opponent think twice about going ham when they get in; and it takes away from VT, which I’m sure is only going to get more important as the game goes on and matchups get fleshed out.
EDIT: Also, the characters that usually have trouble with Gief are the ones that have to get in too but have no way to deal with SPD outside of making a hard read. That’s not really the case anymore since everyone has buttons faster than SPD and it’s no longer hit/throw invincible. So I really don’t think hit invul on EX SPD would be all that game-breaking.
EDIT 2: Forgot about EX bear grab. I guess that’s kinda his SF4-ish EX SPD with the armor. I’ll take that with air SPD.
lol you people… I got the game 2 weeks ago and I played about 400+ matches with him. Day 0 my ass. maybe for you. Nearly everyone in Asia and Europe has it for at least 1 week. I played and won against people like Ryan Hart imstilldadaddy and more, I’m not a scrub and I know what I’m talking about. I know more about SF5 Zangief than you guys, thats a fact, so just stop. pls, use your disagree spamm button, this forum is on the same level than reddit. all you guys can do is downvoting, l2p and gid gud.
when I play against random online scrubs, sure it feels like Zangief is the boss, but he is actually at max mid-tier or lower mid-tier. you will see guys.
wait some month and then come back here and say he is better than SF4 Zangief … great joke btw.
Yes, the best way to convince people you’re not a shitposting idiot scrub is to sit there and say “You’re all terrible, I’m the only good player here!”
Congrats on beating top players in a brand new game? Hopefully if I play 400+ matches I won’t cry about the character, since my then I should know how to approach a bad matchup. You make no sense man, you just said that Gief is crap and you are getting rekt by Fang players. But then you tell us to l2p and get good? I don’t know what to say to you lol.
Anyway, I’m moving on xD
so this is the quality discussion topics for sfv? nice