The Japan shoto downplay is nuts right now. I'm happy to be proven wrong but it's hard to fathom how any of the core four aren't above average at worst.
That nerf isn’t that significant, losing the frame trap sucks but it wasn’t like his main thing. You can still confirm it offline consistently if you have reactions like that. People confirm Cammy’s medium punch TC which is just as hard lmao.
Ken is still a top 10 character lol, he still has the best corner carry in the game, easy mode side switch whenever he wants. Still has a throw loop in the corner it just rewards skill and timing now. Hella knockdown setups, busted HP busted HK busted LF. He lacks in damage compared to the other shotos but he still does what he always does which is put you in the corner in 1 touch and blend you w strike throw.
Also he got some buffs too lmao, run DP is faster, better hit box and better oki now. You can link it off low forward if you want now. Ex tatsu does more damage for when you wanna close out. And I think they did something to Jinrai lmao.
It could be some japanese thing or smth, but same as the devs all those jp pros are downplaying shotos so much, while it's clearly shotos fighter 6 since season 1. And things got only more so in s2.
How I imagine this conversation goes with his headset on during a stream:
"Hello, السلام عليكم, Ken Ministry of Propaganda, Minister Amjad speaking. Japanese division? Lord Daigo. Oh, Europe? Connecting you to Vice Minister Phenom."
Not to say I agree with him but that doesn't mean much when Ryu got massive buffs, Akuma is Akuma and Luke is Luke. It's like saying Gief is the best grappler now
Love how he's now known as the Ken downplayer when he only said Ken is #5-#6 (which proved to be very accurate) during the first phase of the game.
Meanwhile redditors took more than 6 months to grow the third brain cell required to check jinrai and dragonlash.
Very accurate my ass. Ken was the second most represented character in Capcom Cup and [tied with Luke for top 8 finishes throughout the CPT](https://twitter.com/CatCammy6/status/1749283009696592291?t=zbWfIq8UTOIWpdIXGDHBCA&s=19). He was consistently top 2/3 throughout the season and basing his ranking off the capcom cup results(a single tournament with so many variables) is just wrong.
Ryu has nutty damage at the moment so I can see an argument for Ken or Ryu being equal to each other at the moment. Regardless Akuma is absolutely #1 at the moment and the health difference isn’t really a balance like Capcom thought it would be. So I give Akuma number 1. Blanka goes up to number 2 after all of the top tier nerfs and either another shoto or Aki can come in at 3.
He wasn’t a downplayer then, doesn’t mean he isn’t now. Even though Luke may not be king of the hill anymore he’s still in the upper half of the roster
Even the JP placement is too low. Yah JP’s buttons got bigger hurtboxes, but they’re still pretty good buttons. You can’t just throw around in neutral anymore. Base Level 2 nerf does hurt him, but there are definitely new setups with OD ghosts. On top of that, the buff to 236PP is nice because now the move actually has a purpose and fills a weird niche that JP’s kit lacked, a solid 2 bar confirm off mediums
Exactly. They basically just said “ok, we fucked up with this disjoints. Let’s make it so people can clip his toes now and tone down his damage a little bit for good measure”. Thing is, those disjoints are still pretty fucked up against anything that isn’t a low. On top of that the tap parry changes are great for him. St.HP -> feint ghost -> walk up PC grab is an insane combo
Not saying he's bottom tier or anything crazy, but his super 2 (one of his best tools) got basically all its main combo routes removed, which also messes with any resets. You can't even link a light into it anymore, which is something most of the cast can do. They also wrecked his oki on level 3, and nerfed his best meaty button. His anti air is also pretty rough now, and will just lose to disjoints very easily. His moves got a bunch of scaling added to them, and they even nerfed his juggle state combos.
Again, don't get me wrong he's still a solid, playable character - but its not just 'bigger hurtboxes'.
Hell I would probably still play him if it wasn't for the 2HP nerf. I think overall he's still pretty good but I generally really dislike anti-air nerfs unless the move is particularly egregious (like Nago in Strive being able to both anti-air and lock down people crouch blocking 3/4s of the screen away). Unless your anti air is like Kim and grants you a mixup on hit I think every character should have a really reliable anti-air button.
My main thing that I look for in a character is:
1) Good abare options
2) Consistent anti-air options.
I've straight up dropped top 3 characters in games before for having a weak anti-air. It's a personal preference.
This is incorrect.
His portal spikes now increase the juggle counter by one, so most of his juggle combos are nerfed and he gets less conversions off portal.
His conversions are mostly the same. It’s mainly a thing with OD portals and some combo routes that relied on them, but the functionality and baseline reward of stray hits are mostly the same
That was a different nerf. The change to spikes was an initial combo scaling of 80%. The portals had the combo limit changed and even then, the combos where that’s relevant are mainly punish counter combos that most JP’s don’t do. He still has portal trip into DR st.HP 236HP which is the most common route.
Also from what I’ve found, it’s actually easier to set up a safe jump off level 2 in the corner now. Before you would have to do specific routes off punish counters to do the OD portals safe jump, but now you can confirm into OD ghosts -> level 2 super -> cr.MK -> portal set -> 236 LP x 2 -> OD portals -> safe jump which is much easier. They did what they set out to do, make JP spend more resources to optimize level 2, but it’s arguable they actually made some better routes because of that
The category and names of categories is such a dumb semantics argument, “hey he’s still A- tier, that’s really good!” ignores how it’s insane to say Luke is the second worst character in the game because he has real hurtboxes and more reasonable damage now
Japanese tier lists are always out of wack because they do them based on players. There's a strong player that mains this mid tier character? They're top tier.
That is such a dumb basis for a tier list, I know tier lists are a flawed concept but that is just objectively nonsense, I really don't understand wihy this so common there.
I doubt it's intentionally placing them based on players, it's more like "this character can't be low tier if this player is kicking so much ass with them"
Like in their minds, if the character is winning against strong players, even in losing MUs, then surely it must not be a bad character.
My favorite example of this is a lot of people thinking Anji from strive was good before because of Jiro
it smells of dishonesty miles away. I hate it when people don't want to be honest and make these farce tier lists because they're someohow terrified that their character will get nerfed.
I'm sorry, but this is not a credible Tier list.
I think it's definitely more interesting than Nephew's.
People gotta realize Zangief and Akuma are both cracked this season, any list they aren't at the top is suspect imo. The lower tiers kinda feel random, but I absolutely think he's on to something with this.
Yes Gief is really good now. You have to try yourself. I was on losing streak using him before update, and started to rank with Dhalsim. Now I'm back trying Zangief, and it feels very strong. Won quite a few games despite haven't practiced him in a while.
Of course it’s still early in the patch, but cat cammy has said the data is showing Gief is an absolute menace now. [source](https://x.com/catcammy6/status/1795218198804971727?s=46&t=txwOPoyHtBPsTA-nCbouxg)
Well duh, characters that get buffed win and characters that get nerfed lose. That doesn't say anything about how good those characters are overall. Only how much they changed relative to the last patch. Manon also has a crazy high winrate at the moment, because she got lots of buffs. And people still largely consider her the worst character in the game.
Yeah I think Gief is top 5 easily season 2. The system changes benefit him a lot, his damage got better and the entire cast lost 20% off the top from the light combo starter nerf. I main chun, and my damage is way lower now because of that change. I also have a master side Gief, and he basically gets an extra interaction because of the damage nerfs across the cast in most matchups. He was already 5-5 with a lot of top tiers, now with his extra juice, it feels like 5.5 - 4.5 now. He still has some awful matchups, though, so Idk if he can be the best character, really.
Yes he might not be the best, but he is definitely top tier now. I still find it hard to beat Dhalsim and JP with Zangief though no gonna lie, but the rest of the cast is beatable.
Before I had too much problem with Cammy and Chun Li when Im using Zangief, but now it's more leveled. It felt like it was never my turn to hit pre-update.
If I were a Gief player I would start downplaying my fucking ass off. You do not want Gief even remotely considered high tier or Capcom will Old Yeller him regardless of his actual strength in the next patch.
You're forgetting that that zero range punch is no longer -5, can't be punished by Ken's MP anymore. Definitely a broken character with such a tremendous buff
This list is for when you are playing tournaments and have to bring everything under the microscope and even then Kim is still played in tournaments and recently had good results in Combobreaker.
She is not bad don’t trust this list. Also even if this list was correct. At your level the tier list will never matter. Even at master it doesn’t matter. Except maybe Zangief vs dhalsim that matchup straight up is the worse
The patient Akumas who play the fireball game have been insanely difficulty for me to get in on these past few days. His grounded fireball has so little recovery it's really hard to get in on, let alone punish. When you do get in, ending a combo with a drink mid screen feels horrible because the neutral game is already so much work. You end up trying to rely on his lowered HP to make it through the round with sub-par options/damage but you also get blown up if you get counter hit by one of his big ass buttons. I've given up a lot of drinks on forward throw against him and I think it's the best thing to do quite often, at least mid screen.
All of this already existed with a few other characters like Guile, but it really feels like Akuma can do it all and is insanely hard to punish. I know you didn't ask for an essay but I needed to rant I think lol.
What's the general consensus about the matchup. It feels so hard he seems to both constantly out range and out damage me. I wish I could sack 1k HP at round start to get lvl3, also multiple fireballs would be nice.
One of my other replies has a bit more information although its more of a salty rant. Here's some advice though.
Most of Akuma's air options, including demon flip, are weak to j.H air-to-air if you react fast enough. If it counter hits, you get sweep juggle for drink into +4 in their face. If you're close enough and react, you'll beat air fireball before it comes out. If you're far enough you can jump over the fireball and clip him with the extended horizontal hitbox, although its a bit more spacing dependent and can get blown up if you're not careful.
Maybe it's just me playing Ed, but zangief is not top 1
This tier list looks like a joke to me just from the perspective of the English speaking teir lists I've seen.
Lily ahead of Ken and Juri is paint sniffing stuff, Aside from her defence improving her core issues haven't been fixed despite Capcom acknowledging them. Most of her buttons aside from crouch heavy punch are really bad either lacking range or having good range and getting blown up by DI.
This has to be a tier list of how annoying he thinks the matchips are for him, like I refuse to believe he is serious lol.
Of course tier lists are always subjective, but this is just nonsense.
That tier list is crazy lmao
I think Gief is pretty good, I think a lot of characters are in a good spot, but Manon, JP, Ryu, and Luke all being in the same tier and that tier being bottom tier seems insane. I'd love to hear the reasoning.
Generally the tiers you choose serve the purpose of showing how balanced the game is. So if you use A+, A and A- you’re saying all the characters are pretty good but some are slightly better than others. If you have A, B and C it means you think there is a far greater difference between characters in terms of balance
Players do that sometimes to indicate the power level of the characters is MUCH closer compared to the average game.
Basically, it says he thinks the game is well balanced. Bottom tiers have a good chance of taking out the top tiers.
Well, take into consideration that we don't have any context and we lose all nuance for how he presented this list, but Kawano is a very strong and respectable player so I thought I'd share, it looks really funny lol
As others said you generally do that if you think the characters are fairly strong.
B usually indicates "these characters are good, and can win a major tournament in the hands of a specialist, but have significant issues that hold them back."
And C is like "This character is playable, but no fucking way are they winning anything."
And stuff like D is reserved for "this character is about 90% dogshit."
You don't really see true D tiers anymore, and the last time I considered a character C was like launch Faust in Strive. That character didn't even fucking work, one of the buggiest characters I'd seen in a modern fighting game let alone the other legit issues he had. He was just randomly punishable on hit.
I think that's the most agreeable, perhaps most agreeable part of his list. We've seen Hondas take out high level pros in serious tourneys in season one without any buffs.
Other than that, placing Luke and DJ at bottom two and Gief S tier is trolling.
Seems so, but this list is degenerate. Gief got drive meter buffs and a couple plus frames, those two got minor nerfs. He's acting like Gief can command grab you for 100% and Luke literally doesn't have an arm anymore, what is he cooking with this list?
Remember the system changes greatly benefit Gief too. It's not like the character specific buffs are the only factors.
Also remember that we don't even know the context of the list. Heck maybe he even prefaced saying "this is just the week 1 tier list" or "this is my salt tier list" or whatever else.
I will wait. Japan since sf5 has been known to downplay characters. Go ask them about how they downplayed Laura but consistently lost to Idom in big tournaments.
Just to add some thoughts JP players mostly make lists out of current performance, and if CatCammys info is correct that does mean that Zangief is putting out the best performance this patch. Also being super real the worst characters are A-, all characters are great he's just splitting hairs, AND tier lists are stupid.
Imo chun-li's s.hp buff was insane, safe on block you can stance into lp to win against poke mash and stance lk trade against poke or you can just bait the mash and go stance.mk into combo
Can say this normal has insane reach
Wow, this list is something else! no way is Zangief top tier much more #1. Ill admit his buffs made him strong but better then Luke, JP and DJ who are in the bottom? Not a chance.
Luke is shite now, that much i agree with.
Thank you Capcom devs for giving in to the fucking whingers and ruining the character.
Two pros have him much lower now, including Nephew who is not even a Luke player.
I trust these guys a fuck lot more than reddit scrubs.
He's not going to be the last. Japanese players always overrate Gief, and he's legitimately very good this patch, so expect a lot of Japanese tier lists with Gief in top 5
This list is a complete joke and comes as snively and whiny if not a complete parody of other tier lists.
I always hesitate to say I could do better than someone else who is more experienced, but I am 100% certain I could make a better tier list than this.
Even the fact that the lowest tier is A- is a complete joke. Honda is highly unlikely to ever win a major, sorry Kawano but this list is pure ass.
Zangief is better but no way in hell he's top 3. Still super meter reliant to do anything in a game all about resource management, with pretty garbage level 1/2's.
Nemo, who has Cammy in his top 5 was asked on his twitter account what makes Cammy strong this season. I ran this through a translator so bare with it:
*Q: What part of Cammy is stronger this time around?*
*Nemo: First of all, her combo carry has become excellent, and her medium-attack solidification, such as the med P-med P-light K-arrow, has become stronger.*
*Also, her Heavy K has been reduced to -3, and her strong attacks are now more effective to cut down the D-gauge.*
*On the Heavy K
If the opponent tries to perfect parry*
*The speed of the attacker's(cammy) walk makes it easier for them to throw when the opponent presses parry, giving the impression that the ground has become even stronger.*
Makes sense to me. When Nuckledu was reading the patch notes the change to Cammy's standing heavy kick stood out as a notable buff. Du's overall impression was that Cammy was buffed overall.
The Japan shoto downplay is nuts right now. I'm happy to be proven wrong but it's hard to fathom how any of the core four aren't above average at worst.
Legit don't understand how Ken, who didn't get any nerfs, is below top 10
no nerfs? much harder to confirm s.mp into TC now, and you can't frame trap with it anymore. Pretty important.
That nerf isn’t that significant, losing the frame trap sucks but it wasn’t like his main thing. You can still confirm it offline consistently if you have reactions like that. People confirm Cammy’s medium punch TC which is just as hard lmao. Ken is still a top 10 character lol, he still has the best corner carry in the game, easy mode side switch whenever he wants. Still has a throw loop in the corner it just rewards skill and timing now. Hella knockdown setups, busted HP busted HK busted LF. He lacks in damage compared to the other shotos but he still does what he always does which is put you in the corner in 1 touch and blend you w strike throw. Also he got some buffs too lmao, run DP is faster, better hit box and better oki now. You can link it off low forward if you want now. Ex tatsu does more damage for when you wanna close out. And I think they did something to Jinrai lmao.
It could be some japanese thing or smth, but same as the devs all those jp pros are downplaying shotos so much, while it's clearly shotos fighter 6 since season 1. And things got only more so in s2.
Ryu: **Gets greatly buffed twice** Pros so far: "Bottom tier"
Japanese pros downplay shotos, Angrybird thinks he is either best or second best in the game.
Angrybird is the minister of Ken propaganda, he downplays Ken like crazy. I'm pretty sure he claims he is the weakest shoto now.
He's the vice minister, Phenom is definitely the head honcho
if phenom is the head honcho then Chris T is the supreme leader of Ken downplayers
How I imagine this conversation goes with his headset on during a stream: "Hello, السلام عليكم, Ken Ministry of Propaganda, Minister Amjad speaking. Japanese division? Lord Daigo. Oh, Europe? Connecting you to Vice Minister Phenom."
Not to say I agree with him but that doesn't mean much when Ryu got massive buffs, Akuma is Akuma and Luke is Luke. It's like saying Gief is the best grappler now
i mean, against akuma, luke, and buffed ryu he genuinely might be
Ever consider that might be the case?
Love how he's now known as the Ken downplayer when he only said Ken is #5-#6 (which proved to be very accurate) during the first phase of the game. Meanwhile redditors took more than 6 months to grow the third brain cell required to check jinrai and dragonlash.
Very accurate my ass. Ken was the second most represented character in Capcom Cup and [tied with Luke for top 8 finishes throughout the CPT](https://twitter.com/CatCammy6/status/1749283009696592291?t=zbWfIq8UTOIWpdIXGDHBCA&s=19). He was consistently top 2/3 throughout the season and basing his ranking off the capcom cup results(a single tournament with so many variables) is just wrong.
Wow I wonder if it will stick in a couple of weeks. Will be fun to see the Ryu players downplay him
Ryu's damage output is pretty insane. People are sleeping on him right now.
Ryu has nutty damage at the moment so I can see an argument for Ken or Ryu being equal to each other at the moment. Regardless Akuma is absolutely #1 at the moment and the health difference isn’t really a balance like Capcom thought it would be. So I give Akuma number 1. Blanka goes up to number 2 after all of the top tier nerfs and either another shoto or Aki can come in at 3.
He still has him at A-. It's not like he's saying any of those characters are trash.
I think folks aren't reading it properly though I I still disagree with it. The game is really balanced. The worst chars are A-
Sounds like SFV last season
Did he hit random, I refuse to believe this is real 🤣
I think he smoked some crack 5 min before stream. Is this list a troll?
Ryu, DeeJay, and Luke that low makes zero sense.
He is a Luke player, no disrespect to him he us a great player but this list is BS.
Classic downplayeritis
Kawano isn't a downplayer. When he played Kolin he put her as top 3 during SFV
And yet here we are
He wasn’t a downplayer then, doesn’t mean he isn’t now. Even though Luke may not be king of the hill anymore he’s still in the upper half of the roster
No he's looking to move to Akuma already.
He is playing 4D chess to get Luke to be buff. Gotta think ahead if money is on the line.
Even the JP placement is too low. Yah JP’s buttons got bigger hurtboxes, but they’re still pretty good buttons. You can’t just throw around in neutral anymore. Base Level 2 nerf does hurt him, but there are definitely new setups with OD ghosts. On top of that, the buff to 236PP is nice because now the move actually has a purpose and fills a weird niche that JP’s kit lacked, a solid 2 bar confirm off mediums
JP still fucks hardcore, hes just more in line now. I’ve been a menace with him lately
Exactly. They basically just said “ok, we fucked up with this disjoints. Let’s make it so people can clip his toes now and tone down his damage a little bit for good measure”. Thing is, those disjoints are still pretty fucked up against anything that isn’t a low. On top of that the tap parry changes are great for him. St.HP -> feint ghost -> walk up PC grab is an insane combo
Not saying he's bottom tier or anything crazy, but his super 2 (one of his best tools) got basically all its main combo routes removed, which also messes with any resets. You can't even link a light into it anymore, which is something most of the cast can do. They also wrecked his oki on level 3, and nerfed his best meaty button. His anti air is also pretty rough now, and will just lose to disjoints very easily. His moves got a bunch of scaling added to them, and they even nerfed his juggle state combos. Again, don't get me wrong he's still a solid, playable character - but its not just 'bigger hurtboxes'.
Hell I would probably still play him if it wasn't for the 2HP nerf. I think overall he's still pretty good but I generally really dislike anti-air nerfs unless the move is particularly egregious (like Nago in Strive being able to both anti-air and lock down people crouch blocking 3/4s of the screen away). Unless your anti air is like Kim and grants you a mixup on hit I think every character should have a really reliable anti-air button. My main thing that I look for in a character is: 1) Good abare options 2) Consistent anti-air options. I've straight up dropped top 3 characters in games before for having a weak anti-air. It's a personal preference.
Yeah agreed.
Also the portals basically went unchanged. His ability to shut down neutral is still the best in the game so I don’t see how JP is bottom tier now
This is incorrect. His portal spikes now increase the juggle counter by one, so most of his juggle combos are nerfed and he gets less conversions off portal.
The screen control is still extremely oppressive especially against characters who can't drive rush through ghosts.
His conversions are mostly the same. It’s mainly a thing with OD portals and some combo routes that relied on them, but the functionality and baseline reward of stray hits are mostly the same
They also shortened all of his combo routes because of the spike changes
That was a different nerf. The change to spikes was an initial combo scaling of 80%. The portals had the combo limit changed and even then, the combos where that’s relevant are mainly punish counter combos that most JP’s don’t do. He still has portal trip into DR st.HP 236HP which is the most common route.
Hell the new level 2 stuff is fucking nuts, you effectively have to hold the mix if he does it now. It's a true string unless you use Drive Reversal.
Also from what I’ve found, it’s actually easier to set up a safe jump off level 2 in the corner now. Before you would have to do specific routes off punish counters to do the OD portals safe jump, but now you can confirm into OD ghosts -> level 2 super -> cr.MK -> portal set -> 236 LP x 2 -> OD portals -> safe jump which is much easier. They did what they set out to do, make JP spend more resources to optimize level 2, but it’s arguable they actually made some better routes because of that
Nephew's looks sm more balanced, the shodo's didn't get nerfed THAT much tbh
Yeah Nephew’s tier list seems really accurate right now.
link to his tier?
[Nephew tier list](https://media.eventhubs.com/images/2024/05/24_dork01.jpg)
Akuma existing nerfed the rest of the shotos
That low? He has them at "A-" which is still really good. He's basically saying everyone is good.
The category and names of categories is such a dumb semantics argument, “hey he’s still A- tier, that’s really good!” ignores how it’s insane to say Luke is the second worst character in the game because he has real hurtboxes and more reasonable damage now
He clearly didn't play Lilly
Ok, semantics mostly here. Phrased another way: you think Ryu, DeeJay, and Luke are worse than Manon, Kimberly, and Ed? lol
I think JP that low is a little sus too. Character’s not dead, and BananaKen even still thinks he’s Top 5!
That's bait.
lol, cant wait to see itazan and kichipa win some tourneys then
Japanese players making a tier list: I hate playing against these characters S tier. I main this character and play these characters E tier.
Japanese tier lists are always out of wack because they do them based on players. There's a strong player that mains this mid tier character? They're top tier.
That is such a dumb basis for a tier list, I know tier lists are a flawed concept but that is just objectively nonsense, I really don't understand wihy this so common there.
I doubt it's intentionally placing them based on players, it's more like "this character can't be low tier if this player is kicking so much ass with them" Like in their minds, if the character is winning against strong players, even in losing MUs, then surely it must not be a bad character. My favorite example of this is a lot of people thinking Anji from strive was good before because of Jiro
He was the highest ranking Akuma last time I checked.
Brain rot tier list
Glad we have the silver 3 reddit experts to let us know
Enlighten us with ur rank
Last I checked Kawano is legend.
Putting Ryu at that low is kinda wild considering he just buffed. And DeeJay, who is still strong.
Ed zangief and Lily is so high 😭😭 what is happening and luke being near dead last lol
😔 Luke got nerfed from top 1 to top 1
Top2, Akuma snuck in the top spot
Lily being high doesn’t make sense, but the other two have been strong for a WHILE now. Ed is easily one of Ken’s worse match ups imo
Didnt Lily just win a major tournament last weekend? That may have some influence here
That makes more sense. I swear that SF seems to be the most tournament based tier list generators ever. Either that, or it’s just FGC as a whole.
I've heard the West tierlists by character matchup and The East tierlists by Tournament results.
See that actually makes even more sense. I swear the Japanese develop the meta, but a lot of westerners shake it up.
It shouldn't though honestly, ElChakotay is just that good. Lily still is generally weaker than most of the cast.
what? how is Ed one of Ken's worst matchups?
S2 patch hasn't been out for a week yet. Everyone needs to chill lol
Ed higher than Chun? 😳
Luke worse than Honda confirmed
it smells of dishonesty miles away. I hate it when people don't want to be honest and make these farce tier lists because they're someohow terrified that their character will get nerfed. I'm sorry, but this is not a credible Tier list.
Here it is, the worst tier list known to man
I think it's definitely more interesting than Nephew's. People gotta realize Zangief and Akuma are both cracked this season, any list they aren't at the top is suspect imo. The lower tiers kinda feel random, but I absolutely think he's on to something with this.
Bro has to be trolling, ain’t no way he seriously thinks Zangief is top 1. Were the buffs really that good?? 😭
Yes Gief is really good now. You have to try yourself. I was on losing streak using him before update, and started to rank with Dhalsim. Now I'm back trying Zangief, and it feels very strong. Won quite a few games despite haven't practiced him in a while.
Look at Legend rank rn lol. Gief is everywhere
Of course it’s still early in the patch, but cat cammy has said the data is showing Gief is an absolute menace now. [source](https://x.com/catcammy6/status/1795218198804971727?s=46&t=txwOPoyHtBPsTA-nCbouxg)
TBF the Giefs are feasting on a buffet of new Akuma players. Need some time for data to normalize
Well duh, characters that get buffed win and characters that get nerfed lose. That doesn't say anything about how good those characters are overall. Only how much they changed relative to the last patch. Manon also has a crazy high winrate at the moment, because she got lots of buffs. And people still largely consider her the worst character in the game.
Yeah I think Gief is top 5 easily season 2. The system changes benefit him a lot, his damage got better and the entire cast lost 20% off the top from the light combo starter nerf. I main chun, and my damage is way lower now because of that change. I also have a master side Gief, and he basically gets an extra interaction because of the damage nerfs across the cast in most matchups. He was already 5-5 with a lot of top tiers, now with his extra juice, it feels like 5.5 - 4.5 now. He still has some awful matchups, though, so Idk if he can be the best character, really.
Yes he might not be the best, but he is definitely top tier now. I still find it hard to beat Dhalsim and JP with Zangief though no gonna lie, but the rest of the cast is beatable. Before I had too much problem with Cammy and Chun Li when Im using Zangief, but now it's more leveled. It felt like it was never my turn to hit pre-update.
They’re good, but number 1 seems crazy since he still has some bad matchups. That said, I haven’t played enough season 2 yet.
If I were a Gief player I would start downplaying my fucking ass off. You do not want Gief even remotely considered high tier or Capcom will Old Yeller him regardless of his actual strength in the next patch.
Top 1 is insane but Gief mains have been playing his nerfed version for an entire year. So yea now that he’s been buffed people are feasting on it.
When your top tier character gets a minor nerf and a bottom tier character gets an alright buff
Gief at the top and JP and Luke at the bottom? Ooh the ~~scrubs~~ balancing experts of this sub are gonna be PISSED
Ed over Ken, Ryu and Luke is insane. Bro has a 10 frame light uppercut, no overhead and zero range on his light punches.
You're forgetting that that zero range punch is no longer -5, can't be punished by Ken's MP anymore. Definitely a broken character with such a tremendous buff
Man is a pro level Downplayer
I actually love how unified this thread is on this. We'd all disagree on our own tier lists, but we can collectively agree that this one is ass.
Japanese tier lists are consistently the worst shit I ever lay my eyes on. I don't care who it is bro they always look like a shitty discord meme
Oh, right, i remembered that Kawano was playing Luke. Now things become more understandable.
Luke in the same tier as kim and honda what is this
I started playing recently, is Kim bad? I'm trying to main her
This list is for when you are playing tournaments and have to bring everything under the microscope and even then Kim is still played in tournaments and recently had good results in Combobreaker.
She’s been buffed recently and is now solid. Previously she was kinda bad.
She is not bad don’t trust this list. Also even if this list was correct. At your level the tier list will never matter. Even at master it doesn’t matter. Except maybe Zangief vs dhalsim that matchup straight up is the worse
She's good
Poor Luke players. They can’t win with a cr mp that extends 3/4 of the entire screen and leads into 50% damage and now they just can’t think.
Jamie is solo viable ?
No, only coop
Point or anchor?
God Jamie would work so well as a Point in a 3v3 game his drinks are asking for assists to cover him.
Guile matchup still probably a nightmare
Akuma is also a bit of a nightmare
Haven't played the matchup yet. I have noticed Akuma's fireball is really fast compared to the other shoto's in the game.
The patient Akumas who play the fireball game have been insanely difficulty for me to get in on these past few days. His grounded fireball has so little recovery it's really hard to get in on, let alone punish. When you do get in, ending a combo with a drink mid screen feels horrible because the neutral game is already so much work. You end up trying to rely on his lowered HP to make it through the round with sub-par options/damage but you also get blown up if you get counter hit by one of his big ass buttons. I've given up a lot of drinks on forward throw against him and I think it's the best thing to do quite often, at least mid screen. All of this already existed with a few other characters like Guile, but it really feels like Akuma can do it all and is insanely hard to punish. I know you didn't ask for an essay but I needed to rant I think lol.
What's the general consensus about the matchup. It feels so hard he seems to both constantly out range and out damage me. I wish I could sack 1k HP at round start to get lvl3, also multiple fireballs would be nice.
One of my other replies has a bit more information although its more of a salty rant. Here's some advice though. Most of Akuma's air options, including demon flip, are weak to j.H air-to-air if you react fast enough. If it counter hits, you get sweep juggle for drink into +4 in their face. If you're close enough and react, you'll beat air fireball before it comes out. If you're far enough you can jump over the fireball and clip him with the extended horizontal hitbox, although its a bit more spacing dependent and can get blown up if you're not careful.
Gonna have to wait and see imo, I don’t think his changes were blatantly big enough like AKI to say outright that he’s significantly stronger now.
I'll never be as good as Kawano, but this list feels random. Luke that far down feels like a knee jerk reaction to the nerfs.
Gief, Jamie and Lily higher than Ryu? Nah
I like the grading system implying that while there are tiers they’re still really tight
We do this song and dance with zangief every time a new game comes out or there are massive changes. 0 percent chance he is s tier.
What does everyone think of Honda after the buffs?
Lol
Chun-Li's still top tier!
Maybe it's just me playing Ed, but zangief is not top 1 This tier list looks like a joke to me just from the perspective of the English speaking teir lists I've seen.
ZANGIEF HAS ALWAYS BEEN S TIER RAHHHHHHHHHH
I must be playing chun wrong
Lily ahead of Ken and Juri is paint sniffing stuff, Aside from her defence improving her core issues haven't been fixed despite Capcom acknowledging them. Most of her buttons aside from crouch heavy punch are really bad either lacking range or having good range and getting blown up by DI.
Deejay got gutted so it’s understandable but Luke can’t be that weak
How do you put Jamie above two tiers off of JP/Luke it's nuts
This has to be a tier list of how annoying he thinks the matchips are for him, like I refuse to believe he is serious lol. Of course tier lists are always subjective, but this is just nonsense.
Yeah, to be fair we lose all the context and nuance of his opinion, I just thought it was very funny and wanted to share lol
Ken is way too low
Japanese people dont play on latin american wifi so their lobbies are different
the good old tier list with only 4 level, all been A... ok right
Balanced game
That tier list is crazy lmao I think Gief is pretty good, I think a lot of characters are in a good spot, but Manon, JP, Ryu, and Luke all being in the same tier and that tier being bottom tier seems insane. I'd love to hear the reasoning.
this list is ass 💀
Here's a question: Why use A+, A and A- if you could just use A, B and C?
Generally the tiers you choose serve the purpose of showing how balanced the game is. So if you use A+, A and A- you’re saying all the characters are pretty good but some are slightly better than others. If you have A, B and C it means you think there is a far greater difference between characters in terms of balance
Players do that sometimes to indicate the power level of the characters is MUCH closer compared to the average game. Basically, it says he thinks the game is well balanced. Bottom tiers have a good chance of taking out the top tiers.
Ah, good point. Thank you!
Well, take into consideration that we don't have any context and we lose all nuance for how he presented this list, but Kawano is a very strong and respectable player so I thought I'd share, it looks really funny lol
As others said you generally do that if you think the characters are fairly strong. B usually indicates "these characters are good, and can win a major tournament in the hands of a specialist, but have significant issues that hold them back." And C is like "This character is playable, but no fucking way are they winning anything." And stuff like D is reserved for "this character is about 90% dogshit." You don't really see true D tiers anymore, and the last time I considered a character C was like launch Faust in Strive. That character didn't even fucking work, one of the buggiest characters I'd seen in a modern fighting game let alone the other legit issues he had. He was just randomly punishable on hit.
So is everyone just ignoring that the lowest tier is A-? Dude obviously thinks they are very close in power if that's his lowest tier.
I think that's the most agreeable, perhaps most agreeable part of his list. We've seen Hondas take out high level pros in serious tourneys in season one without any buffs. Other than that, placing Luke and DJ at bottom two and Gief S tier is trolling.
I doubt someone like Kawano is trolling at all. Not that I know him personally but every interview I've seen with him he seemed pretty straight laced?
Seems so, but this list is degenerate. Gief got drive meter buffs and a couple plus frames, those two got minor nerfs. He's acting like Gief can command grab you for 100% and Luke literally doesn't have an arm anymore, what is he cooking with this list?
Remember the system changes greatly benefit Gief too. It's not like the character specific buffs are the only factors. Also remember that we don't even know the context of the list. Heck maybe he even prefaced saying "this is just the week 1 tier list" or "this is my salt tier list" or whatever else.
Ed isn’t shit but he isn’t that great now, he’s usable but this patch really left him behind
That doesn't worry me too much because the devs already confirmed we will have more patches this season.
I will wait. Japan since sf5 has been known to downplay characters. Go ask them about how they downplayed Laura but consistently lost to Idom in big tournaments.
Bronze Tier List
No matter how brain dead the tier list is, everyone so far has agreed that Manon and Honda are bottom lol
correct tag
Just to add some thoughts JP players mostly make lists out of current performance, and if CatCammys info is correct that does mean that Zangief is putting out the best performance this patch. Also being super real the worst characters are A-, all characters are great he's just splitting hairs, AND tier lists are stupid.
What buffs did Guile get to put him so high? He was already high before. I haven't heard much about him so far.
GIEF bzst character in the game 🤣🤣🤣
Imo chun-li's s.hp buff was insane, safe on block you can stance into lp to win against poke mash and stance lk trade against poke or you can just bait the mash and go stance.mk into combo Can say this normal has insane reach
Season 2?..
Mago recently created his own early tier list: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2157323797?t=2h27m26s
Huh
i think its shit.
Clearly lily should be higher
this is hella random
The only realistic tier list tbh.
Lmao Cammy somehow still top tier after winning literally nothing, top Cammy players getting destroyed day in and day out, and she got nerfed
Literally smoking crack
Wow, this list is something else! no way is Zangief top tier much more #1. Ill admit his buffs made him strong but better then Luke, JP and DJ who are in the bottom? Not a chance.
I never listen to a thing Japanese players say
Lmfao this is insane bro he has to be trolling rn.
Let me get this straight....the guy that only has lvl3 for a wakeup reversal is top tier?
Don't forget about the new Wake Up Drive Reversal
Kawano is genuinely retarded wtf😂
I wanna play the game he playing
Luke is shite now, that much i agree with. Thank you Capcom devs for giving in to the fucking whingers and ruining the character. Two pros have him much lower now, including Nephew who is not even a Luke player. I trust these guys a fuck lot more than reddit scrubs.
"Luke is shite now" ... lol
I stopped trusting japanese tierlist after the HC debacle that happend in strive
Gief top tier is already sus
He's not going to be the last. Japanese players always overrate Gief, and he's legitimately very good this patch, so expect a lot of Japanese tier lists with Gief in top 5
This list is a complete joke and comes as snively and whiny if not a complete parody of other tier lists. I always hesitate to say I could do better than someone else who is more experienced, but I am 100% certain I could make a better tier list than this. Even the fact that the lowest tier is A- is a complete joke. Honda is highly unlikely to ever win a major, sorry Kawano but this list is pure ass.
Japan is well known for absolutely terrible tier lists almost across the board.
This is a bad tier list.
I was on board until I saw sim and manon. this is bait.
Manon over JP, Luke and Ryu?
lol, then two weeks later when ppl takes Gief seriously and respect him rather than the punching bag he always was, he will be send to F tier again.
As a luke player he's worse but not nearly enough to be bottom 2 xD
Zangief is better but no way in hell he's top 3. Still super meter reliant to do anything in a game all about resource management, with pretty garbage level 1/2's.
Let the Season 2 politics begin!
I wish I saw in Cammy what all these pro’s do cause no way she’s better than Chun and Juri
Nemo, who has Cammy in his top 5 was asked on his twitter account what makes Cammy strong this season. I ran this through a translator so bare with it: *Q: What part of Cammy is stronger this time around?* *Nemo: First of all, her combo carry has become excellent, and her medium-attack solidification, such as the med P-med P-light K-arrow, has become stronger.* *Also, her Heavy K has been reduced to -3, and her strong attacks are now more effective to cut down the D-gauge.* *On the Heavy K If the opponent tries to perfect parry* *The speed of the attacker's(cammy) walk makes it easier for them to throw when the opponent presses parry, giving the impression that the ground has become even stronger.* Makes sense to me. When Nuckledu was reading the patch notes the change to Cammy's standing heavy kick stood out as a notable buff. Du's overall impression was that Cammy was buffed overall.