Zangief Strategy/Match-up Thread

I just can’t stomach c.mk->SPD anymore…the idea of it just scares me - anyone who’s played the Gief match up even a little bit can reverse it on sight.

  • :bluu:

JURI

I mean outside of hakan, cody and duds I have difficulty with the new cast but Juri just wreaks my shop. I have no gameplan or workable strat here.

At a distance: Fireball spam creates a fortress around her. Can’t walk and bulldog her at all since they can be multiple ones on screen. (Online doesn’t help either here, I see the fb coming block but the block just doesn’t resister in time). If you do happen to finally get in EX GH range she stops the spam and mixes up well to bait the hand and poke the hell out of you.

Up close: this just makes me want to pull out Balrog’s cornrows. She has a series of pokes that just destroys anything i try, ESPECIALLY this overhead jump kick she does. It makes all my standing pokes whiff and opens me up for a low to pinwheel combos. About the only thing that has somewhat worked is psychic s.mk but we all know how crappy that can be. You cant even punish it on block unless she is really deep with 360.

On Wake: knees stuff pinwheel, great then what? its 50-50 when you hit that mat and she has an advantage. She can parry, pinwheel or just to that dam chun li style nj. hk. Sometimes she’s baiting the cross up splash to nj parry into her combo of choice

On youtube: Only good Gief player I’ve found vids of this match up is WorstGief pretty much having the same issues I’m having against some dude named Zak.

Please post vs Juri strats ASAP. LOLOL

Zak Bennet is the best player in the UK and probably top 3 players in Europe (though he just went to Japan for a year so I shudder to think what he will be like when he comes back).

My biggest difficulty with Juri is the fireball charging thing. I find it hard to reaction EX GH when she decides to throw it out. It is problematic to discern whether she has thrown a fireball or is doing something else in time to hit her if it is a fireball. Maybe this is just online. Because of fireball spam I find the option selects to ex green hand pretty much useless at the moment. I’m a much better gief now than when I played Zak but I had 30ish games with a German Juri earlier this week and got raped just as bad. He, however, was doing a lot of unsafe stuff, like dive kicks which I was not punishing due to faigue or online or whatever.

I think the key issues are that Juri normally controls the match. So Gief spends most of the match simply blocking.

Questions: How does Gief control the match?
What should Gief do / not do when Juri is cornered?
Gief’s approach with meter vs no meter

Her projectiles are deceptively weak. This is a small guessing game to her disadvantage. Even her mid-level projectile can be crouched under. More importantly, a crouching heavy kick advancing forward gets right in there. Of course, to answer that, she can just use her low. Well, that one is so low that it offers absolutely zero defense from a jumping heavy punch (my favorite, the Superman). She certainly can charge up both or all of these, but once one goes out, she has to do the initial kick again to get it back. She’d leave herself open if she did that, so you basically can relax knowing that whatever she used is out of commission.
You don’t have a lot of awesome ways to get in, but neither does she have many awesome ways to keep you out. When I see a projectile charged, instantly I figure my best options are to advance low or jump from on high. Of course, if she’s playing reactively, there’s always the standby answer for turtles: grab her close and PUT HER FACE BETWEEN YOUR LEGS!!!
On wakeup, I fail to see how this differs from any other character. It most closely resembles the conundrum with Chun-Li. I like to threaten body splash crossup tricks or headbutts, but those are both easily answered by spinning legs of gold. Obviously, that’s the response you can just as easily bait out of her. Of course, the next layer is to simply go for the grab. Don’t forget that Siberian Blizzard will hit her pinwheels.

If anything, I find the biggest pain is from starting distance onward. A jumping Juri is very threatening, because landing her Dive Kick puts you all the way back, worst-case scenario leading to an Ultra. The best I can do is start up the Zangitroll, because headbutt will beat Dive Kick easily. I have to read whether she wants to keep the fight on the ground or in the air, and creep up with this in mind. If she does go for Dive Kick and it fails, she can really pay for her mistake.

In all fairness, it’s still a scary match. Mistakes on either side can be very costly. Honestly, I feel this is a match won by subtlety, and not just in the zoning sense. There’s no “best tactic” against her.

My plan usually is just to walk her to the corner very slowly. You can cr.mk under her mk and hk fireballs. You can also block the lower fireball standing. You can safe jump her easily. I’m not sure if you can do anything about her counters unless you guess it and grab her. I’m thinking maybe normal throw could be good. I think you can grab her out of ex pinwheel on start up. I need to test that out.

You bring up a good point in the counters. Most Juri players I encounter don’t use it much, but a successful counter would make a good way to escape the corner. My strategy still stands mostly as it is, though I must confess I don’t think I truly can articulate it. It’s a scary match, but I think my knowledge of how to win it is below the surface.

I really need to see how you folks pin her down in the corner. Some of the Juri’s I’ve played DEFINITELY used the counter parry to get out free during strings and with the dive kick she can get out the corner about the same way Fuerte or Seth can and its up to you to preemptive headbutt i guess. But I’m losing to her poking anyway. That overhead has the weirdest effing hitbox

Indeed. I’ll have to get some of that going. Unfortunately, I work with Xbox 360 rather than PS3, and I have no capability of uploading to Youtube. If someone with 360 would be willing to observe replays of my progress against Juri and upload it to Youtube, then we may have something. Until then, I’ll do my part in recording any relevant Juri information.

I can do that for you, as long as the juris are very good

If you don’t wanna play the poke game with her then do this:

Bulldog your way in to ex-hand range (outside of her poke range). Then ex-hand the startup of her fireball (where she kicks and charges) not when she’s releasing it. Train yourself to react to that kick or listen for her ha-ha laugh, because she has more recovery on that, than when she’s actually releasing it.

Now you’re in and did some damage - go for your nasty gief mixup or read pinwheel and punish accordingly. If they escape with parry; that’s fine, you took no damage and the fireball game starts again.

Gief needs a lot of meter in this matchup, imo. if you got no meter, it’s ok to build it full screen; she can’t hurt you with those slow-ass fireballs that you can mostly duck under.

sorry im pretty new to gief.

What all mixup gief got vs someone wakeup?
Can someone list me all option possible please?
thanks

tomle, just read the stickied thread on that.

k Giefsters sorry to intrude on your thread, i was looking for a general Zangief character discussion thread to post this but as I can find none I’ll post it here. I’m looking for a high res picture of the words “Zangief wins” that come up when Gief wins. I’m making custom artwork for my cousin for his fightstick. The picture can have other things in the background bcuz I can photoshop them out. But I just need a link to a decent size pic or screenshot with the words being pretty good res. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Anything for a Gief stick.

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h302/Hoblin/ZangiefWins.png

I cropped the words out but Photobucket still reduced the resolution from 1119 x 215 to 796 x 153. This is taken from a PC with the resolution set to 1920 x 1200.

If you need to the original 1119 x 215 size I can find another image-hosting site or cut it in half and upload as 2 separate images.

awesome, thanks hoblino, a link to the original would be good too in case he wants the whole screenshot.
Thanks Again

Explore scarsofzsasz

Here’s what it looks like so far

I like it. Great job!

Snag-ability of Gief’s SUPER

Nooby question here. We all know and love the ability to snag an extended limb with lp SPD and u1. But I would image his Super would have the same properties but it doesnt seem like it. Can someone confirm?

The newest incident i remmeber is I buffered the super in a backdash away from a Rog nj HP. he landed and went to cr.jab spam, my super starts, it freaking whiffs although his glove is like right in front of me. Basically his glove was in hp SPD range. I was like wtf?

Super has much less range than ultra and lp spd. go into training mode and push someone in the corner and test the different ranges.

Yeah I know the range is crappier (at 1.2 its his worst ranged spd), but Rogs limb was right there for the snaging. What I’m asking is can the super grab extended hitboxes like u1 and lp SPD can? And if so is there a specific timing like you can only grab a limbs startup, active or recovery frames?

SPDs can’t really grab limbs. People have hitable areas and throwable areas, but they’re very different. To throw someone the grab box on an SPD has to make contact with another characters throwable box. Some moves do make a character’s throwable box move forward so that it looks like the SPD might be grabbing a limb. Some moves even make the throwable box disappear, which is why some moves are unthrowable.

Also, sometimes an SPD looks like it has EXTRA good range if it happens to make contact from max range during the startup frames of the other character’s move if that move is one that moves them forward. A good example is Zangief’s st.HK, it shoots him forward quite a bit when it starts and moves his throwable area even more forward. And this happens before the kick really even comes out. So if Zangief-1 SPDs from max range right when Zangief-2 hit his st.HK then it can look like the SPD landed from damn near half screen.