The top 3 imo right now (and granted none of us have played the final build - we simply had a cracked pc version of beta 3) are Chun, Bison, and Nash, in that order. Chun has no weaknesses, she's amazing. Bison is really really goofy, I'm not sure why they gave him all the stuff he has. I legit thought his dash was only invincible during V-Trigger but nope, he disappears completely during his regular ol' dash. Especially online, it was very hard to stuff his post-dash button on reaction to the dash. Nash is very strong as well - he received some nerfs, and he's a little harder to play than the other two because so many of his good normals are deceptively shitty on block - they need to be spaced properly.
Laura is strong, but limited. She has incredible counterhit confirms, and a command grab to encourage people to hit buttons or jump away while she's pressuring. That's the nature of her mixup - will she throw, or continue pressing your block? She's very punishable, but she has some really nice tools. She's going to struggle vs characters that can keep her out. I'd put her on the lower end of the cast at the moment, but she is completely fine and playable so far,
Vega, I really have no idea. Every Vega I played was complete trash, and I had no interest in messing with him myself, sorry From the footage I've watched, he seems good, but kinda gimmicky...
Rashid is gonna surprise people. He's hard to play, but he has some very interesting tools. Watch out for this character, he is gonna be a problem once someone gets a strong handle on him.
New Sim is probably my favourite character in V (not that I'll play him in tourneys lol), love his redesign. He has legitimate combo and stun potential on top of his strong neutral, which is basically all he was missing in 4.
Necalli is very very good. I think people sleep on him because he's a little less intuitive to play for someone new. For a new player it'll feel like Necalli's buttons are very limited, that he has to work harder than the reward should require, etc. I disagree entirely. One of the biggest changes in this version is that all medium and heavy normals do a bit of damage in the way of grey life (life that will regenerate if you're not hit/blocking for a bit). His command grab is low damage by itself, but when combined with fast, high damage normals that are + on block, it becomes a scary tool. You'll get an extra 40-60 damage on your grab if they block a couple stand strongs first. His V-Trigger not running out makes him unique... dude can cover the entire screen in 2 dashes in V-Trigger.
Birdie is fucking sick, but I don't think LPN's gimmicky aggressive play from Mad Catz V Cup will last. He seems built different from other grapplers.... traditionally, grapplers have to close the distance, and when they get in, they're scary. Birdie is built to make people come to him. Pretty neat. I also agree with Combofiend's assessment of him as (imo the only) a bad matchup for Chun, because he covers largely the same areas that she does in neutral, but his damage is way higher.
Ken, I'll reserve judgement. He can't possibly be as weak as I think he is, I only think he's weak because he was so strong in the first beta.
Ryu is incredibly fun to play and he's pretty legit. I think he's weaker than other characters because he lacks... tools I guess? I just feel like his parry isn't good enough. It's good enough to punish obvious shit, but not good enough to be used like it is in 3s. His fireball game is SIGNIFICANTLY better than Ultra Ryu. Significantly. You will have a hard time closing distance on this guy, you need to be WAY closer to punish a fireball with a jumpin. He has some super neat tech with using the V-Trigger activation screen freeze to assess the situation, and punish with his fireball or CA in situations other characters can't. Its up in the air where he stands on the tier list, I really couldn't say. I feel like he's weak compared to other characters in terms of opening people up and getting damage.
Mika is strong as fuck but pretty hard to play. There's a lot of decision making involved.
Gief I'm not sure. In the PC crack I had, he doesn't work properly, and he was likely the least played character in the beta
Karin is..... they made this character for me. Karin takes everything I'm good at and puts it in a package, and mails it to me with a birthday card that reads "enjoy your damage!". She's very good, and it has nothing to do with all the goofy shit I'm sure you saw Karin players doing online. You wanna know why Karin is so good? Start with s.mk, that's a good place to start. She is difficult to anti-air with, so practice that shit if you want to play Karin
I tried to put in a decent amount of time with everyone (Except Gief because he didn't work properly in the build I was playing).
I'll be maining Karin and Chun in tournaments, but besides those two, I enjoyed Dhalsim, Necalli, Ryu, and Rashid the most. Ryu might be "weak" (again, he just feels like he doesn't have the same offensive tools as others) but his basic fundamental gameplan is much improved over its sf4 iteration. his fireballs are real as hell and he's been an absolute joy to play. Highly recommend, whether he ends up "high tier" or not, he's very satisfying
I gotta head out and pick up a bunch of setups now... our farewell to Ultra tourney is tomorrow :D
Here's a promo video!
Yes I'm aware I'm not in the video - I forgot to send him footage xD FlakeSteve amirite?
This is just showing off some of the players around here - there's a couple Calgarians in there as well, the guys who always show up to our events and so have become part of our scene, the way I did it travelling to Calgary all those times
I'll check the thread periodically for questions if people have 'em. I'm sure there's others here who can answer as well.
Nice write up Steve. I pretty much agree on everything you said. I'll just add 2 points:
Ryu gets written off a lot because he doesn't have abusable tools other than his fireball game as you mentioned. However, that shouldn't take away from the fact that he has a very solid overall moveset and has tools to use in almost any situation. A good street fighter player will be able to play a solid Ryu. However, something I heard some commentators mention before that I feel might be the case is that most people are going to have a pocket Ryu that they will be able to play, but not necessarily take into tournaments. He is in the end of the day Mr. Street Fighter, and Capcom even stated that all other characters' movesets have been designed with Ryu as a starting template. In ranked play and casuals, I feel Ryu will be solid. In tournament settings however, I think you need to be a pretty damn good player to do well with him.
As for Zangief, I like what James Chen said on twitter about him around beta 3's time (I can't find the tweet). He claims that Zangief will be a balanced and fair pick at the top levels in tournament play, however in low-mid levels he will be very strong and in some cases, possibly unfair. In other words, Zangief is the scrub killer of this game.
Edit: PS. You forgot to include Cammy in your assessment. Another very strong character that you can't sleep on. Lots of top players claim she has one of the best sets of normals in the game. In beta 3 some were even going as far as to say she had THE best normals in the game.
Gotta say it's good to see some more activity in this thread. Was thinking maybe it's a good idea to combine the fighting games thread for 2016 and the street fighter thread seeing as there is a lot of crossover between players/posters and that might keep both of em alive?
On a gameplay lvl, I pretty much only played ken and thought he was pretty strong if you bait crush counters but I read everywhere that he's bad. What's with that?
Ok, I played Cammy a bunch too and I'll share my opinion, but first, a little backstory...
I really should not play Cammy. I can definitely play her, but I always end up playing too aggressive and making bad decisions. I'm like, not smart enough to play Cammy in tournaments or something. I can't NOT play her like a donkey sometimes. I've had some great tournament success with her at times, but if you watch some of the replays....
...I honestly just see a scrub mashing buttons, it never felt consistent.
So I am definitely not playing Cammy in SFV. I am punishing myself.
I have dropped Sakura 3 times over the course of this game, and each time I tried to main Cammy, and each time I got frustrated by my over-aggressiveness and went back to a more "limited" character. The 3rd and final time I dropped Sakura to try to main Cammy was in Ultra - all my 2012 tech was virtually useless, Cammy players had to switch to a completely grounded, frame-trap based approach. I'm actually very happy about that, because its more in the vein of Sakura, right? Nah, I hit a mental wall with this character and I can't break habits from the previous version. Part of that is because all that shit still works on lower level players and you end up getting away with a lot in early rounds of tournaments, but at any rate, with SFV on the horizon I dropped Cammy again lol
SFV Cammy!
She's super super super super good at specific things, and has a deceptively strong midrange footsies game compared to Ultra. Her divekick setups are weak, not just unsafe, but weak overall. She suffers from really poor hitboxes on her divekicks, they're easily stuffed out by a c.lp or any other button that's fast enough. If you watched Poongko play Cammy during his beta streams you are probably getting the wrong idea of what Cammy is about. Netcode aside, people should be able to react to her side changes. I haven't had any trouble. If you can reliably react to her side changes, even if you can't poke her out of the dive kick, you should be able to block and begin generating your own pressure, because now Cammy is right next to you with negative frame advantage. I really don't buy that any of the gimmicky stuff is real (V-Trigger excluded, but she only gets 2 special moves with the buff before it drops), and I expect a lot of online (or just lower level tournament) Cammy players to lean on it - hit the lab and get your punishes down early if you're worried about her.
Despite her mixup options being a lot weaker than AEv2012, she doesn't seem to need them to be effective. They'll have good utility as hard reads in some situations, they're definitely not useless, just... not given to the Cammy player freely, if that makes sense. What Cammy has in SFV, are fucking amazing buttons. I'm pretty sure her c.mk got nerfed in the latest version, but it's better than USF4. Her s.mk is amazing. Her c.lp, c.mp, and cl.mp are very strong pressure tools that give her a dynamic offense up close when paired with her walk speed and throw. Confirming from c.mp or cl.mp is very easy, and the damage is good. Her anti-air game is on point and can lead to fantastic damage - her CA starts up very fast and has definite utility as an anti-air, or mid-screen punish for some things.
Her moveset encourages you to use her V-Skill, walk speed, and normals to close distance on the ground, not in the air. In my opinion, she's pretty good at it. I find her a little stale just because Ultra Cammy is similar and I've been playing Cammy on and off for a long time.
Generally speaking, we aren't going to have the entire picture of how these characters should be played until they have been explored a great deal more. For example, I barely scratched the surface of what some characters could do on crush counter knockdowns - if someone ends up having a bunch of dirty shit off of a guaranteed hard knockdown from crush counter, then the strategy with that character shifts more towards setting up that crush counter.
There's Shoryuken wiki for frame data, specific matchup tips, and everything else for the most popular fighting games, though they haven't set one up for SFV yet. Discussions are mostly done on the Shoryuken forums, or you can try Dustloop forums/wiki if you're into Guilty Gear/BlazBlue/P4A.
Here we have our thread for the TL community, naturally anything could be discussed here
Shoryuken.com is the best for Capcom fighting games in general (ie: Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom). They also have a subforum for Killer Instinct. They don't have a full subforum for SFV yet but will add a proper one when the game is out. You can expect it to be segregated into subforums for each individual character to allow for more in depth discussions on matchups, tactics, and other character specific topics. They have a subforum for people completely new to the genre which is extremely helpful (and highly recommended) for newcomers willing to take the time to learn fighting games with a focus on Street Fighter. In addition, they also have a wiki which is regularly updated for frame data and a calendar for upcoming major events and tournaments. Furthermore, there is a matchmaking forum with threads dedicated to communities in various parts of the world to help you find nearby players to spar with (unfortunately, some threads for communities outside NA and EU are not so active).
Eventhubs is the best for fighting game news. Not that good of a forum, but lots of interesting things pop up on the main page faster than most sites. They also have community tier lists for the more popular fighting games if you're into that.
Then you have the other dedicated sites for specific fighters: - Tekkenzaibatsu for Tekken (duh) - Testyourmight for Mortal Kombat - Dustloop for Guilty Gear, Blazblue, and Persona - 8wayrun for Soul Calibur
On the bright side, TOing went awesome and our new group is doing great things. I'm really excited to be helping lead our local scene to bigger and better things. Want your local scene to grow? Pitch in! :D
EPT
From the footage I've watched, he seems good, but kinda gimmicky...
![[image loading]](http://i0.wp.com/shoryuken.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/sfv-alex-bengus-stream.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.4cdn.org/vg/1455205719515.png)
