Oh don’t get me wrong. The most successful I’ve been against Birdies was when I went absolutely bananas (no reference intended). Start of the round, jump in HK. Start of the second round, EX Siberian Express. That kind of stuff. Just trying to bulldoze him.
But I feel like that playstyle won’t exactly get me far and I’m just looking for some more reliable, in-depth and stable strategies.
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Watching Snake & Stupendous vs Jayce at WCW.
My opinion on the Nash vs Gief match-up ratio is veering closer to 7-3 the more high level Nash vs Gief I watch. It’s just awful.
Just fought my first good FANG. He kept throwing out varied patterns of poison ball. I tried to play patient and sometimes go ham, but damn. I couldn’t do crap. Some matchup advice would really help.
Sotoja is very punishable. The best he can be is -3 (EX). Everything else can be punish with a SPD or cr. HK. Ryobenda can be countered with HK. As for Nishikyu, it’s better to use cr. HK because everything else could trade and that benefits Fang. Try to stay close to him and anti air with st. LP (a meaty headbutt is an excellent option since his only good reversal is his CA) or lariat. After every knockdown, do a dash. His cr. HK and j. HK do two hits, so be aware of that if you want to use armor.
If he manages to create some distance, use the vskill and a careful placed dash. And after his “teleport”, most Fangs go with normal throw. Also, wake up lariat is not a bad idea.
As mentioned before. I am definitely in the camp of players saying that this match is hard for Gief. The blockstring pressure is real.
Personally when I play FANG I go pretty hard. Kind of like how Gief would play against Dhalsim in USFIV (the Hagejin vs FChamp money match being a good example).
My points of attention are Iron Muscling the poison balls at medium/long range and trying to bait out FANG’s Sotoja and sweep when he tries to blow up your armour.
FANG also easily blows up Zangief’s charged HP and regular armoured moves in general so try not to use them often.
When he goes for his rolling kicks block strings I often try to interrupt it with V-reversal. I just don’t want to deal with the pressure.
The other thing I practice against FANG is working hard on punishing his corner escape slide thing since it’s not throw invincible. You REALLY don’t want him to get away from you in the corner. Lariat might work as well if he tries to do something.
The ryobenda is a massive problem for Gief and one of the main reasons you should be in his face at all times. I often try to frustrate him and trying to make him use it at close range. This results in a free SPD or HK. His poison balls as well by the way. Never allow him to use any of those moves at close range. You can just grab or kick him him right through like with Laura’s projectile.
Sadly the hop back he does for the EX version is much harder to punish.
V-Trigger is good against FANG and his use of the poison balls to keep you out should provide you with plenty of V-metre both for reversals and the trigger so I doubt that will be an issue.
The other main issues I feel are his standing double slap move which is insanely good and his instant overhead. Haven’t really found the best ways to deal with those yet.
This FANG was making me wary of doing Iron Muscle on Poison Balls. He would let me build up white life and add on to it with his pressure and poison balls. So Iron Muscling his projectile isn’t always a good answer.
I can’t remember, but I don’t think you can Lariat through his poison balls.
Don’t have the PS4 atm. What’s funny though is that I beat him two sets FT3 and never lost a match. 3rd and 4th sets he beat me by relying more on poison balls, gas clouds, and multi hitting normals. Almost like if another player took over, or he just adapted possibly. I couldn’t figure this dude out.
After taking a break from SFV, im back. I have played a lot against Ryu and Vega this week. Now i feel competent enough that i can actually do a write-up from those MUs. Just need some more time to gather my notes.
Yuck. If Alex is better than Gief it sure isn’t by much. I’d imagine his history and expertise with the character would put him above Alex anyway. Damn shame.
I think poison balls are one of the best projectiles to v-skill actually. Because they don’t do a lot of damage by themselves and you don’t get poisoned. Lariat works but it’s tricky since they are falling down and FANG has A LOT of far low attacks.
You can’t bee too scared to armour against FANG though, a lot of his pesky long range double jabs are great candidates to Iron Muscle into LP SPD.
It’s definitely a hard match-up and FANG definitely wins it but remember he is very squishy so getting in on him is more important than against most. Getting that knockdown/corner carry is essential because jumping in on FANG is insanely hard. His anti-air options are just too good. Your best chances are blocking/muscling his big pokes and taking him for a ride.
Shall we have different match-up threads for each character? We can list the typical punish, strategy, gimmick of that character in the main post. Right now I feel this sub has a lot of information but they are kinda cluttered in a few threads.
Here is my question: How do you fight a defensive Alex? His cr.mp seems beats a lot of my buttons and his other buttons are not bad. He just play defensive and mainly crouch. We know Zangief has some problem dealing with croucher. His AA is good. I feel that I don’t have many tools to get in, which make his AA easy. On the other hand, if he wants to attack me, he got a lot of tools, which makes me have to watch many things and naturally makes me respond them slower. I was dash threw a few times and was not able to react it.
I don’t even think Alex is better than Gief.
I think Alex is identical to Gief matchup wise. Only difference is Alex can do huge damage on the chance he does get a big counter hit in.
Alex has way more tools than Gief does, that’s obvious. I think he’s gonna end up being pretty weak in general too cause he has some of the same weaknesses Gief has but overall he’s a better character imo but that’s not saying much. I also think he wins the mu too.
There’s more to a matchup than knowing what can be punished by spd/ca.
I mentioned before that it would be nice to have threads for each character since a lot of other character forums have them and this thread will eventually be quite annoying to go through if you’re just looking for information on one matchup.