« UPDATE: IPLAYWINNER SUPER STREET FIGHTER 4 MAY 2010 TIER LIST »
haunts;)
CLICK FOR FULL MATCH UP CHARTA+: Rufus, Akuma, Guile, Abel, Sagat
A: Dictator, C. Viper, Ryu
B+: Boxer, Chun Li, E. Honda, Dhalsim, Ibuki
B: Zangief, Blanka, Seth, Dudley, Cammy, El Fuerte, Ken, Juri, Rose
C: T. Hawk, DeeJay, Guy, Fei Long, Cody, Gouken, Claw, Adon, Gen
D: Hakan, Makoto, Sakura, Dan
The response to our initial Super Street Fighter 4 Tier List was overwhelming and created a lot more discussion and debate than we had ever imagined. The idea was to start with an initial base concept and slowly update the tiers to get everything inline month after month. With such a massive response from the community, we took it upon ourselves to come out with an update for the tiers before June. Moving forward, we will most likely only make major updates on a monthly basis.
This was a lot of work, but we got more input from top players and now have official Match Up Consultants that look over the data and give feed back to make sure most of the match ups and numbers and character letter rankings make sense. Everyone got to work and now we have what we feel is a much more fair tier list that is more inline with match up statistics across the board at this point. That said, much can change in the coming months, and a lot is still up in the air when it comes to the new characters.
Hopefully the match up chart is a little easier to read, and if you see any corrections to be made please let us know directly. Of course, we don't expect people to ever agree on any tier list, but your feedback is more than welcome. Hit us up in the comments and let us know what you think of the update!
Reader Comments (73)
Rose moved up, I feel Smart
Let the debate begin lol
BtW I appreciate the hard work IPW contribute to the scene keep it up
What does it mean 6.5 matchups that is Abel VS SIM is 6.5 Abel whats does that mean
@Wow,
That means Abel has a strong advantage over Sim.
For reference, a 5-5 match up is even, 6-4 is advantage, 7-3 is serious advantage etc etc.
Happy to see Rose moved up. E. Honda still holding it down in top 10 at this point. Well it's getting there 7-3 matches starting to peek in. Keep at it guys. Much appreciated. Let's be constructive.
Guile B+ to A+ wow, what a jump. Looks like Dan's matchups were adjusted :P
Awesome guys, great improvement from the older one IMO.
would you guys post a summary of the final reasoning for the major changes?
If you guys are gonna throw our names in there then shouldn't there be like a real discussion about this tier list....I didn't contribute to this crap at all besides some viper match ups....can I get my name off that lol
Sakura in D?
Are the changes new additional thoughts from all the authors? Or is this just from FlashMetroid's input? (just curious how you all come to a consensus)
Nevermind, didn't see FlashMetroid's post
On blast
it looks good for now. I'm just looking at the Sagat, T.Hawk, Makoto's match-ups. I have a feeling Mak will get a few more 3-7 match-ups along the updates.
Again, who did you consult for Hakan's matchups?
Because any decent (I say decent because there are no good Hakan players yet, just decent) Hakan would let you know that most of those matchups are bullshit, especially vs Blanka which is 6-4 for Hakan (at least) where whoever you asked put it as a 4.5, which is laughable.
Really feeling that Abel, Sagat, Guile power atm. Tho i wonder if boxer ended up low. Then again i don't go to tourneys. I am for sure not uber skilled also. Good stuff IPW already getting a look at changes. Don't listen to the salty sailors.
@Wut
I want to think you are trolling, but meh i honestly don't think their are that many good Hakan's right now. Too be honest Hakan looks very ass. Needing to have that oil on really drops him down a lot.
My only suggestion would be to maybe put a C+ tier in there between Fei Long and Cody. Also T. Hawk seem a little low, but those guys know much better than me.
Dang, there must be a lot of sucky Dudley players out there. He's like one of the best characters if you use him right.
Why is Juri vs Guile matchup considered as 4/6? I thought that Juri has stuff to make the matchup even or with a bit of an advantage. (hardly zonable and with an advantage in close-range)
I really like the tier list so far...except I'm very shocked over Chun Li's placement. The new characters are fairly new to the majority of the gaming community, so keeping them low or mid is not shocking, I'll give them maybe 2 months to see their actual ranking, but from what I heard and how I play Chun Li seemed to become much better, I guess not.
I truly feel like Cammy does not lose to Sagat or Akuma.
Hakan has a good matchup against blanka as others have stated, try to fix that if possible. Also, great update its looking a lot more accurate this time! Also, could I request you attempt to contact good sakuras for input. A lot of the match-ups look made up. Great work though guys. Keep it updated.
Glad Guy got bumped up, I knew he was a lot better than the old list said. That ranking seems pretty spot-on, but I have a feeling he should be a couple spots higher. Time will tell.
I don't think guile is A+ and juri should be in B+ IMO, Everything depends on the person using the chracter. But I think that tiers mean nothing at competitive level.
lmfao all my mains are c and d tier i love it.......can't wait to see how the tiers change after evo........oh and guys please stop posting what you feel.....we all play online and we get wins with our mains....so what this is a tourny tier list.....this has nothing to do with normal ssf4 players.....you have a problem with the tier change it by winning some tournys.....nuff said if you don't understand that then you shouldn't be here
@ Spiron: No trolling at all.
Ask Ultra David for Hakan matchups at least. He's the most qualified player right now and he will tell you that those matchups are not estimated correctly. He has an advantage on Blanka and fairs well against some characters. He's not a 7 - 3 against Sagat, he has lots of tools against tiger spam. It's a 6 - 4 for Sagat most likely.
Also Oil makes him much better, but he's far from the worst character in the game even without oil, and he has tons of ways to oil himself up (safely).
I'm not disputing your or others knowledge of the other characters, but whoever decided on the Hakan matchups clearly has no experience with the character.
@Wut.
I will find out about that. UltraDavid would be a good person to get input from on Hakan matchups. Good idea. We'll see if he's down for looking over the Hakan numbers for next month.
@FlashMetroid, we value any input you have on matchups, especially Viper. Seems to be some confusion here but we are talking about how to better get input from players such as yourself. Which players to ask and for what specific information, etc. Obviously we dont need everybody looking over the whole tier list. We want players to give input on characters they specialize in, like Viper for you as an example.
We're working out kinks, folks, but I think these will be useful over time if we can get the right contributors and the right information and not just throwing up a random list with no pro player feedback at all.
There are tons of players I'd personally love input from, lots of them East Coast for instance, but we're talking about that kind of stuff now.
If you guys, pros or not, have constructive feedback we'd like to hear about it so we can make changes for the better.
I dunno about Ibuki being 5-5 with Guile
Guile's flash kick is useless against her and he doesn't have a lot of options to escape off her mix up games once he's knocked down, but damn it's like going to hell and back getting that first knock down, and the moment you drop a link or get your approach blocked, it's back to the drawing board again
I'd also put Chun/Boxer/Dhalsim a little higher than Honda and Ibuki. I think they're better enough to have tier seperation and not be put into this ambiguous B+ ranking.
that's fine all I was saying was simply that I don't wanna be written down as a consultant like I was a major part of this project when I really wasn't I gave my opinion on a few of your viper match ups that I didn't agree with that was it.
If you guys really wanted to do a real tier list based on the top players I would think a bunch of us would have to sit down in a chat room or something and discuss it not have one person going around asking like "yo what do you think?" lol
@Flash,
Sorry about the miscommunication -- your name was removed from the project but thanks a lot for your input on the Viper match ups.
To be fair, it's really difficult to get everyone in a chat room all at once to discuss this so talking to players on per character basis over a long period of time is probably the most effective way to collect data at this point. Hopefully we'll reach something we can all agree on in the future -- actually, who am I kidding, that will never happen but we're trying our best. lol.
@ Stevie SNS
Do you think IPW will make an online version tier list????
@Psifer: And what exactly would that be/mean?
Maybe for June you could include some match-up notes from the "Top Players" in addition to the actual tier list?
Can it be noted that some characters being bumped up are misleading. The rank is based on summed totals of matchups. It looks like Rufus for example has gained slots of "6" against many opponents that he will rarely see in a practical tourney (yet he still has matchup issues with 2 of the most common players he will run across likely, Sagat and Ryu. ) Some of these stats are padded by easy matchups vs Guy, Makoto, Hakan etc etc. This tier list is merely a starting point and you still have to know your good and bad matchups. Picking Rufus and Guile does not necessarily mean an automatic win.
I have been playing Hakan almost exclusively so he is about the only character I can comment on. I would say Sagat is a 4-6, Boxer is a 4-6 (I think this is a worse match up than Sagat) and Blanka is a 6-4, Elf is 5-5, Juri is 5-5, DJ is 4-6, Makoto is 6-4. I am not top player but that's just my take on it.
Can you like explain why Sakura's 5-5 matchups from vanilla turned into 4-6 when she's buffed lol.
@ Bradido: I would say Hakan - Boxer is 3 - 7 but I agree with you on everything else. In fact I believe Hakan has an advantage on Juri, but that might be just me.
Could someone explain Guile's advantage over Sagat, Balrog and Blanka? I haven't had much time in Super with the matchup but damn if Sagat, Balrog and Blanka still scare the shit out of me (thank you vanilla).
One of the things we are *considering* doing for future tier lists is putting some very, very general notes as to what kinds of problems or advantages certain characters have in certain situations or against certain character types. That should help people get an idea for the reasoning behind some of these numbers.
It would have to be super general though. We can't possibly mention specific matchups because there are 35 characters. If we did mention a matchup, we'd explain a special case that is really bad and out of the ordinary for the character.
Like how Blanka gets his butt absolutely handed to him by a good Balrog.
@Mr. Wah,
I'm no pro and I'm not a direct contributer to this list (because I'm not qualified/good enough) but I think Guile has more of an advantage over Balrog and Blanka than previously is due to his new Ultra being more useful and especially due to Guile's reduced charge time for Sonic Booms. Guile can zone way better than he did in Vanilla from what I'm hearing.
No clue about Sagat though.
@YoYo. I'm wondering that too. Could it be that the reduced damage in the game overall really, really hurt a combo heavy character like Sakura? Damage scaling already hurt her damage output pretty bad in vanilla. I mean it seems like she has the tools to at least be in the mid-tier range..
umm those viper matchups are kind of miscalaculated on the viper and adon matchup it says 6-6. And just to point out a lot of those matchups do look well made up. Not to flame but DU vs VI is 5-5 as well as CA vs Vi, DA vs VI ( I say this because Dan can pressure the hell out of viper with those kicks and frame traps), JU vs VI ( juri can kind of stop viper shenanegance with her long pokes mk's and becus of her low crouch hitbox. Its a natural defense against bk shenanegance not to say you cant cope with it but its hard adjusting. Viper also cant really attack after pinwheel pressure. Dont want to make post to long but she does not have any advantageous over new characters besides hakan at the moment ( Since his game is still being exploited he is excused )
Guile moved up.. I love it!
@Yoboy,
thanks for pointing out that error.
Rose beats Guile 6-4. Absorb, reflect, slide around booms all day. She'll gain about two to three times as much meter as he does. Guile has to come to her and her U2, and he's not exactly good at that. I'd probably lump DeeJay in there too on a hunch, but I haven't played that fight much.
She also beats Gouken 6-4. He has no way to get in and his fireballs are just food or come back at him.
Zangief's matches need to be adjusted again. Seriously, Seth/Sagat got worse IMO. Those are 8-2 matches. Guile and Chun also beat Gief 6-4 now. Both of them got more damaging anti air options while gief's jump got nerfed. Gief/Cammy is 5-5. It wasn't even a bad matchup for her in vanilla.
That's about 5.5 points down and at the top of C tier.
@Renegade "Robin Palm": Wait what? FUCK yes Gief is and was a bad matchup for Cammy. Tell me what Cammy can do against Gief that he can't just murder her for. And with the huge damage nerf the matchup sure as hell hasn't gotten better for her.
I think Makoto - Guile is Makoto's worst matchup. I haven't beaten a SINGLE Guile as Makoto. Not one! Every other matchup I can cope with one way or another, but Guile just seems near unbeatable to me. Her U2 can't punish his Booms, you can try if you want, the only way you'll hit him like that is with luck. Getting in on him is near impossible. Jumping over his Booms almost never works, neither does dashing through them etc etc. His normals are also beat almost all of Makoto's.
Sure, if you COULD get in on Guile you could pressure him really well, but doing so is near impossible. To me, this matchup is Makoto 3 - Guile 7 at best.
And as soon as he puts on his shades it's like 10-0 against everybody anyway. Good thing nobody ever does that.
I'm so very sad to see my baby Makoto so low. But maybe it's because of good balancing or the fact that i haven't fought anybody really good yet. But i only feel at a disadvantage with her when i'm not inside. When someone's zoning me out well, it takes sooo long to get back in.
I say these tiers are pretty accurate. But this game is balanced enough that you can use anyone you want and as long as you put your work in you'll succeed. Except Dan because we all know he's completely broken. I'm quite satisfied. Street Fighter 4eva!
Lol funny story about that Cheesus. I was fighting a Guile the other day, struggling to get in, second round i'm pretty much dead. He landed an anti-air Flash Kick to Shades.
Unfortunately for him, i floor-teched the Flash and U2ed on wake up and he ate it for free. I went on to win that fight since he never got me off him again. I lol'ed pretty hard.
That story is a blatant LIE! SHADES-GUILE IS INVINCIBLE!
@Cheesus apparently you didn't really see many great cammy's play the fight. It's pretty even. She can pressure him really well on his wakeup with meaty hooligans (that beat all of his options). He always has to respect DP->FADC->backdash, and she can punish whiffed grab attempts HARD after jumping by reacting with EX Cannon Strike.
Cannon Spike is almost impossible to safe jump.
Cammy's biggest hurdle is being able to use her fairly lackluster normals well enough with her DP to keep him at bay. She can help that by focus->backdash to catch and punish gief doing buffered EX green hands in footsie battles.
She CAN! She just has to work way harder than Zangief to win the match. Meaning Zangief has the advantage. I guess I made it sound impossible for Cammy to win, which it isn't, of course. She just has a disadvantage.