Zangief Questions
hey all, i recently picked up zangief and i know pretty much how he should be played. i know things like look for that knockdown and then start the mix ups. i usually like cross up chest spash into cr lk into lariat. or maybe an empty jump 360 with kick. or a chest splash and 360 with kick. or maybe some jumping D+LK into some shenanigans. or empty jump into ultra. or cr mk into ultra. or whatever. you guys get the idea. i know the other half of zangiefs game is the cr lk which snags people who try to jump away. now...onto my problems.
im having trouble with the cr lp, lp, lp, lk, ex green hand. the green hand comes out late or never. any tips on how do to it? the only thing i came up with is to start holding F when i hit the lk and buffer in the dp motion. but im having a lot of trouble. my execution is pretty good with everyone else. i can do consistent shoryu cancels into ultras and nothing else in the game gives me problems executions wise. maybe just guiles ultra 1. that motion in the instruction booklet doesnt make sense. but im telling you this because its not my execution, i think theres some trick that i dont know about. kinda like dhalsims tele you have to do F,D,D/F,U/F to get that air-tele straight off the ground.
my 2 friends who play with me consistently use chun and ryu. they're pretty much onto my tricks and are beating on me like i used to beat on them. they just seem to give gief such problems. they do a lot of jumping straight up and coming down with a chun HK or a ryu MK/HK. and i know they're going to do it, but i just cant beat it out. i try neut jumps with headbutt or jump forward with early HP/HK/LP/MP. but at best sometimes i seem to only trade, which i know is still good considering the life lead. but like i said they have to be done early and almost pre-emptively. meaning they've been getting good baiting them at doing lp shoryus into metsus or chun's got so many anti air to air options into her kikosho. i know i should try to snag them with a cr lk but lk doesnt have as much range as they do so they do their neutral jumps just outta that range. and its almost impossible to confirm lk into ex green hand. i know i can do 2-3 lks in a row to confirm i snagged them outta their jumps but then the ex green hand timing gets really strict.
so my questions is how do i beat people who just know what to do and keep jumping. i know it seems easy in terms of theory, but they mix up their shoryus and ex birds up pretty well and its so hard to get in now. they're getting very familiar with the ex green hand range as well.
zangief seems to have lost the jumping HP into standing HK combo. anyone know whats up with that?
i thought gief was A rank. its starting not to feel like it lol. i can do so much more with abel and stuff now im starting to wonder if i should drop gief. most gief vids i watch anyway seem to be him getting his butt whooped. or he just seems to catch random things like out of nowhere lk into ex green hand. outta no where too, not like on wake up or anything like that but really outta no where. or am i missing something here?
Responses (3 total)
I main gief.
My tips
1.) Know SPD range like the back of your hand. Know the special range where you can short jump safely and not get tagged by an anti-air.
2.) Option-selects. These are MANDATORY! s. short O-S EX-GH.
3.) Learn the links. His combos are REALLY difficult. The timing is odd. However they do great damage.
cr. short > cr. short > s. strong > s. short xx EX-GH
cr. short x 4 xx EX-GH
4.) Be patient.
When they neutral jump, you can punish. If they're right next to you, crouch and punch lariat. You have a tiny bit of invincibility at the beginning of your crouch lariat. This means you'll sometimes hit them cleanly, but usually you'll trade. If you trade, then catch them with an ex hands on their way down. You'll have the distinct damage advantage there and be positioned for wake-up mix-ups. There are some attacks that will hit you cleanly, but it depends on the spacing, so try it in training mode--just have the computer neutral jump and attack with different attacks and different timing and try the crouch lariat on them at close spacing and slightly farther spacing.
If they're not right next to you, you can try standing hard kick if you have the time. If you don't have the time just let them land and don't do anything (just be prepared to block a sweep if you're in range).
This shouldn't be that tough--especially the Ryu matchup. I think that matchup is probably 5-5. I don't have too many problems with it. I actually have a harder time with Ken with his quicker normals.
As for Chun Li, well, a good Chun is going to give Zangief fits. You can't really do a mix-up game against her if she has any meter (she'll wake-up with ex spin kick), and her footsies will beat yours every time. It's not a hopeless matchup (like Sagat was in vanilla, and still kind of is), but you'll have to work hard every time to have a chance.
As for your last comment, you are missing something. When you see a pro Gief catching people with a short kick into ex-hands, that's not random and out of nowhere. They're buffering the ex hands during the short kick (or jab sometimes). Try to find a video of a pro zangief with the inputs on and you'll see what I'm talking about. They do the short kick and REALLY QUICKLY do the ex hands motion. If the kick hits, it connects into ex-hands (it also does this if the other player is blocking, which is why it's a mid-range footsies tactic). If it doesn't hit, the ex hands doesn't come out. This is a high level tactic that takes a lot of practice, but once you have it down, your footsies become extremely dangerous. Look, Gief is a pretty simple player to learn. He's a tank, and has some great match-ups. He also has some terrible ones. In order to overcome those terrible ones (Chun, Dhalsim, Seth, Sagat, etc), you need to learn his high-level stuff. And even then it won't always help.
the only point I can really help with (it's 04:30) is when you're playing against your two friends is they have now figured out your shenanigans after you knock them down next time you play just think about if you are doing things in a certain order every time! get a camera and watch your match back this helps a lot to notice habits.
Another good mix up is the no mix-up mix-up do the same thing twice or even three times (this can be risky but in casuals with friends it's just funny nailing a guy with three SPDs would be cool after the same cross up.
if they are juming up a lot just give them the space to do it they can't hurt you up there :) just block and punish with lariats (i think it works if they hit you high, best test it)
Also pick ultra two (anti-anti-air or air-air) if you catch them a few times with it they wont want to keep jumping up when you're near them
with regards to combo stuff just get back in the lab (training mode) and get that stuff down there
