Zangief Strategy/Match-up Thread

You’re pretty much never going to catch a good Chun after her overhead kick. It’s -1 for lk, hk, and EX and 0 for mk on block. Unless she does it really deep (which good ones will never do) and you reversal it instantly with super/ultra/atomic suplex (you have to be in range), she can just neutral jump and punish your whiff. The reason why you catch some Chuns doing that is because they try to sweep or EX legs immediately afterward. But good Chuns won’t try that. On hit, you’re out of luck. She has plenty of time to link another move after that. If you’re lucky and it’s laggy, you might be able to mash out a SPD. The best counter to it is to bait it and focus it. There’s a lot of time for you to hit her with a level 2 FA which should cause her to be a lot less reckless with her hasenshus.

?? Random heh.

Zangief’s toward dash takes a total of 26 frames, by far the 2nd slowest aside from Dhalsim’s (which is much slower than Gief’s). Add that to however many frames it takes to absorb a normal and cancel out of focus and start spd you get basically a huge amount of time. It takes 2 frames to do spd, and I don’t know how long it takes to absorb a normal and cancel out of focus, but let’s be charitable and say the whole operation takes 30 frames. Essentially no normals in this game have more than 30 active+recovery frames. Dhalsim’s standing fierce has 22 frames and Chun Li’s hazanshu has a total of 21-22, for an example.

Gief’s focus attack isn’t super useful, really. His backdash takes 26 frames too, so he’s -11 on lvl 1 focus backdash on hit or block and -5 on lvl 2 focus backdash on block. Dhalsim can actually punish you for trying to focus dash through his normals. I’m trying to think of situations where I use focus… You can predict focus through a Chun Li hazanshu or Ken toward+mk to hit them, but that’s pretty rarely effective. You’re close-range playing footsies with Ryu and you think he’s gonna throw a fireball, you can charge focus, let go if you see a fireball to hit him, and then backdash out of the way, although Ryu can actually punish this on hit with super. You can focus through a few other characters’ footsies too, now that I think about it, but in general Gief has better footsie tools than focus.

To be honest 90% of my focusing is to dance around some characters’ fireballs at some distances.

LOL, pretty random ya. Ok I just needed someone to spell it out for me so I didn’t play 500 casual matches trying gimicks that don’t work. One other thing though that I’m sure has already been covered, but what is the exact set up to punish a teleport from Akuma/dic/sim?

Akuma -
*after spd - im assuming nothing at full screen.
*point blank KD - maybe jab green, then EX green into spd?
Dictator
*after spd - jab green x2 into spd?
*point blank KD - FP green into spd?
Sim
???
???

Sim’s teleport in the corner is pretty easy to punish because he usually ends up right next to you, if you get them in the corner they pretty much can’t do anything. I haven’t fought one in a while so I don’t remember about midscreen.

With Akuma, it’s pretty hard to even catch up with them when they wakeup teleport, the only thing you can do is jab greenhand to cover ground I believe. When he’s in the corner, you want to stay at the distance where if he teleports you get free damage on him.

With dictator, it’s pretty tricky because a lot of them don’t teleport away but they use the ex headstomp or devils reverse. I try various things to mix them up, but you definitely don’t want to do what I did at 2:55 in this video lol

Also interesting thing to note that the ex psychocrusher takes absorbs one hit of the ex greenhand but he takes damage from the second at 9:52

[media=youtube]EIZvFLD7HlU&feature=channel_page[/media]

I posted this in the match vid thread but for your purposes of learning the dic matchup, I think the rest of this set may be useful for you. I started off bad, but I gradually adapted.

[media=youtube]1R5C_6uMZSk&feature=channel_page[/media]
[media=youtube]7M-DCBW-WDs&feature=channel_page[/media]

Ah, tru dat. Thx

I’ve propably been playing scrubby Chuns, I guess im lucky cuz I hardly ever play any chuns.

I can’t seem to get this to work (I’ve had people jump away on me).
is this 100%?

Yes, it works. You have to time it just right though and meaty their initial jump frames. This works well against Balrog. A lot of times, people will try to headbutt on wakeup if they think you’re going to try to SPD them and the cr.short or cr. jab will beat it.

If you absolutley know someone is going to go for the jump. Mixup your game and throw a Headbutt instead of a standing SPD. Seems common sense but, you gotta get those headbutts in! Its easy becasue most people think Zangief is too dumb to jump on wakeup.

If you know someone is gonna jump out of your block string, just put crouching short into your block string… they can’t hold up and block low at the same time. And failing that, do far standing roundhouse. EX hand or headbutt? You guys are risky.

It works for me in other situations but I can’t get it after the jab greenhand.
folks still jump away.

It is risky David, I don’t do it too often but when they’ve been trying to abuse me through the round neutral jumping me on wakeup and I hit that one HP headbutt and get another meaty, the tide of battle usually turns in my favor.

I really think its a good way to show that they don’t have you trained and you can even train other opponents to try and block your headbutt then go you can just go empty.

Of course this is highly punishable, but I am a safe player but sometimes I take risk when I am confident. And when Im confident I tend to play way better. I learn my opponents though, if they seem pretty smart. It would be pretty dumb of me to repeatedly do a high risk move.

My headbutt timings have been HOT latley.

I’ll throw in a headbutt every now and then too on wake up if I see that they like to jump. Usually, it would result in a dizzy or on the verge of dizzy.

Why don’t you just do a crouching short? It’s safer, leads to a more damaging combo, and leads to a knockdown.

Meaty headbutts seem to work on Dhalsim and Zangief (has to be max range), but I don’t know if it’s any useful against any other characters of the cast.

I hardly combo at all. I propably should a little more.

Alot of the times they have already jumped before I get up so I know I can hit with the jump. Especially if they have jumped every other time I have been knocked down and they have been close to me on wake.

So you Cr. Short VS ChunLi neutral jump?

I have never been overly punished for this move either. Only people I wouldnt do this on is someone with an SRK.

Its just a mixup man. I could do the safe route EVERY time but they would be expecting me to be safe if I was always safe.

I should post some vids of my strange Gief play.

I didn’t realize you were talking about on your wakeup, I thought we were talking meaty attacks. Yeah, don’t wake up with cr. short on your wakeup, and waking up with headbutt can be fine sometimes if you saw the other person jump. Doing a crouching attack under Chun’s neutral jump rh can actually work if she times her move to hit you at the height she needs to for the rh to beat lariat, but obviously if she times it later she’ll put the hurt on your random normal. I’m not sure how you’re doing headbutt against that move in a wakeup situation anyway, Chuns usually time it to hit at your head/shoulder as you’re getting up, so like, you shouldn’t have time to jump and press up+fierce and still have it hit. The Chun I play against mixes up between cr. short, cr. short, cr. short (xx legs), jump back instant overhead rh, and throw, which is a really effective meaty game against Gief (Chun is one of the few characters who can actually play on Gief’s wakeup) so actually neural jump rh isn’t a big deal for me.

By the way, mixup games aren’t necessarily about being risky, they’re about mixing up your opponent. Ideally you want the opponent to have to choose between multiple situations none of which are harmful to you if he guesses right. And while that’s a rare situation, it does exist, and even where it doesn’t you still want to reasonably minimize your potential risk while reasonably maximizing potential payout. Mmmm, streetfighternomics. Maximize that utility, baby.

Attention all Gief players!

I’m from the Ryu forums and DarthPaul1982 is coming up with an interesting idea to get people together who are serious about the game and want to get together with other serious training partners.

Skill level is irrelevant at this point, but dedication is a must. PSN and XBL welcome.

Weekly online matches and tournaments are required. Tournaments are for practice and gauging your own improvement only. A point system is being established to help keep track of active members so you can clearly see who is serious and who isn’t.

We’re still working it out the details, but if you are interested, please check out thread here.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=200770

Tru that. Actually I usually just Cr.MP most of peoples nuetral jump games.

Our difference is propably that you are playing WAY better Chuns that I am playing random ones online. I dont know one person in my group of people that really uses Chun enough for me to actually have to work for the win. This is why certain matchups are real tough for me when someone knows how to use the char. Guile, Chun and Viper are my main problems but Im getting much better with the honda matchup.

so some 80+k gief on one of the latest trf tournies got 2nd place, but he had this dope set up of getting them cornered then setting up a tech throw where it would leave them in the perfect distance for an instant lp 360! madness.

I’ve seen some players do that and every time I’ve seen it tried, it’s worked. I think it’s just a post-tech block/spd mixup or something. Seems pretty cool.

Gief’s neutral throw is really good, think I’m gonna start using it more. After neutral throw, either immediately or after taking a tiny step forward (depending on the opponent’s character), do either empty normal or empty short jump to crouching jab on landing. If short jump you won’t cross up and if regular you will, and there’s no visual way for the opponent to know which side you’ll land on so he just has to guess which way to block. You can do this post atomic suplex against most characters too. Shenanigans!