The giant gap from Vanilla Sagat and Vanilla Vega is just super fascinating to me. Imagine making Dan a bad joke character on purpose, shipping the game, and realizing Vega is worse somehow.
@chillidewd5582 SF has a history of this tho. Just look at 3S. Sean is meant to be a jobber, but nowadays most people agree that Remy and ESPECIALLY Twelve are worse.
@@littlemisseevee2309This showcases the power of fundamentals and how much can carry a character being god awfull in every way (only pass some disasters but it's something).
I find it interesting that it appeared like there would be some “secret sauce” that made vanilla Sagat as oppressive as he was, but in the end it really is just “he hits harder than everyone else by a lot.” It also speaks well for the balance team in this case, because they zeroed in on what the true problem was and fixed it. None of Super Sagat’s most oppressive tools were removed, they were just made far less rewarding across the board. And it turned out to be exactly enough to reel him in.
You could've gone a little more in-depth about the Tiger Knee, especially the EX version. An armor-breaking move that has great horizontal movement was extremely difficult for the cast to deal with. It simply removed the Focus Attack from the game when fighting the character. If you thought you could Focus absorb and dash through a Shot, you'd eat Knee instead. Good luck in neutral if the Sagat wanted to spam out an EX version at that. The main damage was also on the backend/2nd hit (changed in Super I believe). The armor break and the extremely good hitbox gave the corner pressure insane potential. Many characters could not jump out of the corner due to this, and you simply could not Focus after the standing light kick.
I thought about talking more about this and I should have but in most of the footage I researched tiger knee was underperforming pretty hard. Because you're different widths when crouching or standing you get hit at different times by tiger knee, so sometimes what would have been a spaced tiger knee against a crouching opponent whiffs on a standing opponent, and what would have been a spaced tiger knee vs a standing opponent hits too early on a croucher and is minus. When a Sagat did something punishable which turned the game around for the opponent it was almost invariably a tiger knee. I should have talked about its anti air properties, armor break, and maybe even cross up knee tho, I was lacking in that section
@@Bafael Hmm. Characters who didn't have good GTFO options were just trapped in the corner (e.g. Vanilla Gouken, and I'm sure all the 6-4 MUs). Tournament footage from Vanilla would probably only show characters like Ryu who could get out of the pressure. Either way, that meter build also allowed a ton of "free" uppercut > fadc use. Considering Vanilla, there wasn't the -5 nerf to uppercut fadc. Sagat got a ton of mileage from throws out of fear of eating uppercuts. Combined with all the power of armor breaking Knees, Sagat was just oppressive to deal with.
@@emilalexander8292 Its hard even for characters like Ryu who could low profile the knee. You cant really react to it and if you guess wrongly you eat tigers. Even if its negative on block there is always the threat of a yolo tiger uppercut and they can make it safe due to FADC. knee + threat of the dreaded trade uppercut into ultra really kills alot of the characters. Vega cant do anything to get out.
The mass exodus of Sagat players from Vanilla to Super will never not be funny to me. All they did was make him fair and it was like Sagat got Stalin'd out of history.
"Sagat is basically always able to zone and outpace everyone while building meter. He also has tied 3rd highest health and over the top normals on top of the low/high projectiles." "Hmm he isn't as broken as I once thought." You've taken too many tiger knees to the face.
I loved the Vanguard Princess OST you had playing in this video! Your taste in music is amazing, I didn't think that many people had even heard of that game, let alone it's OST.
Irony is SFIV takes place chronologically after Alpha 3 and SF2, when Sagat encountered Dan and intentionally took a dive during their fight after he saw how Dan's desire for vengeance against Sagat was consuming him and realized he was in danger of falling down the same destructive path. SFIV is supposed to be the start of Sagat's redemption as he leaves Shadowloo and relearns how to be an honorable fighter in it for the spirit of competition. Before this he was motivated purely by vanity and soothing his damaged ego after Ryu scarred him.
BTW, Sagat had basically already left Shadaloo by SF2. Funnily enough, I don't think Sagat was that strong in A2 or A3. Projectiles losing damage from distance in A3 was probably a factor, but Sagat felt so unthreatening compared to SF2's O. Sagat and SF4. Then again, maybe it is lore-tied; in the Street Fighter universe, fighters motivated by blind rage tend to not do well in fights.
As a relatively new player of fighting games, I've heard about Vanilla Sagat many times but was never told much beyond his anti-air damage being absurd. This is a great video for us who weren't around to experience this version of the character. Keep up the great work, Baf!
Good video, but one suggestion: Maybe when you're making a point about hitboxes / hurtboxes, you can show them by running FrameTrapped 3 for that recording section. It would make for better visual examples with some slow-mo / freeze frames, so the viewers can properly appreciate what you're talking about. I know not every viewer knows how hitboxes work, but for those that do, having brief visual display of your point would help. I ended up booting SF4 with Frametrapped 3 just to see if there was any actual difference between the hitboxes of his Vanilla and USF4. Stand HK is exactly the same hitboxes. However f+HK hitbox got nerfed a little bit since Vanilla. Diagonal jump MP hitbox was also nerfed.
Good suggestion. While I perfectly understood what he was saying, a visual representation may be helpful to those that don't know fighting games as intricately (why watch bad balance if so, amirite?) but would also just be fun to see how busted they are lol
@@chillidewd5582 I'd be inclined to agree, but I cannot award Vanilla Gief the rank of S tier due to him being completely obliterated by Seth. None of the other S tiers in Vanilla had such a lopsided matchup against them in that regard, and went mostly even against other top tiers with a few exceptions, but nowhere near as bad as 9-1.
An analysis on how bad/mediocre characters improved over the years could be good. Like, for example you said that Sakura was pretty bad in Vanilla, but if I recall she was pretty good in later versions. Was it just her Ultra 2, or did other things change? Could be an interesting topic.
It was mostly that other top tiers got nerfed and Sakura's setplay and vortex got mapped out. She did get some buffs from Vanilla but people didn't understand how to play the game just yet so they didn't realize how potent setplay was. Hence why many people say that either Vanilla Seth or Akuma would've ended up being the best had Vanilla gone on being played
@@MuiltiLightRider Sakura *did* see buffs in every version of the game. Her frame data outside of EX hurricane kick was poor, her non EX hurricane kick oki was vastly improved, and they also gave her otoshi 2nd hit after EX hurricane kick impressive frame data. Also her damage values were redistributed to increase her damage output and stun values. Her Ultra 2 was the icing on the cake. The top tiers being nerfed had little impact. Akuma, Balrog, Seth and Viper remained strong characters for the lifespan of the game. Her poor frame data and low ish return on her mixup made her redundant. If you wanted vortex, play Viper, Akuma, or Seth. If you wanted damage, play virtually any other non charge character or Balrog. Her buffs gave her a place in the game.
over 7 ft tall, super long reach, able to leap in the air extremely high for an uppercut and the absolute best kickboxer in the world The dude is a monster and many don't stand a chance against him!!
That thumbnail alone deserve a like Baf. And its about time we talk about this beast. When looking at all 6 version of SF4 (vanilla, super, AE, AE 2012, Ultra, and Omega), Vanilla Sagat is def top 10. Mostly because he fireball spams like O sagat, has 1100 health and stun, and hits like a freight train. Also, there is a vid of Bonchan Vanilla Sagat vs AE Kaz Yun. In general, I love edition select and pray more fighting games do this. It gives you so many options to play the game and if you don't like how a balance patch affected your character, you can always go back to the previous version.
You could have mentioned that Sagat also had access to the unblockable Ultra glitch (where the fireball hits during the ultra flash) discovered late in the game. Didn’t affect us much as super came a couple of months later, but I imagine it would have been abused in Japan until AE. Definitely consider the glitch if you do a Seth video as it was mega cheap with him.
I thought about mentioning it but chose not to. IIRC if you weren't blocking pre-freeze they were blockable and I think Sagat had to fireball fadc and have precise screen positions for a lot of his setups
Dig the content and dig the video. These movies are really a form of preservation. There's tons of nuances in SF4 that are in risk of being lost to time somehow, so it's awesome having someone as calm and educated as yourself describing them.
I remember seeing from Error1 years ago that Sagat's super can infinitely loop into itself. Impractical and he's had it in every version of SF4, but still super weird. I think it's the only one.
The worst problem with Vanilla Sagat was mainly his high damage and how easy it was for him to land it. Once he has Ultra and enough for a focus cancel, you enter "one combo death" zone as soon as your health goes under 70%. I recall so many competitive matches (Tougeki, Nakano TRF etc) back in the days where every other rounds would end with tigger uppercut FADC high kick ultra and the commentators always saying "it's over" as soon as the tigger uppercut hits.
I love your Bad Balance series so much. It's really cool to get a breakdown about what made them busted. The fact that other characters lacking tools being a big part of what made him strong was something I didn't know!
Yes! I've been looking forward to this one! EDIT/UPDATE: So I just now got to watch the whole video. I think that you did an excellent job of breaking down Sagat for not just Vanilla SF4, but for, more or less, the entire SF4 series. Your comments also seem to support what I had always felt: it wasn't so much that Vanilla Sagat was "broken", but that he was a very, very strong character in a game that did not have a lot of other strong characters. I also felt that his biggest problem area was just how screwed up his damage input and output was compared to the rest of the cast. I felt that normalizing his damage input and output would have normalized him, even if all of his other tools stayed relatively the same, I feel that Super Sagat kind of demonstrated that.
Turns out it wasn't Sagat who was too strong(do he still was a bit) It's that everyone around him couldn't deal with him at the time. Like putting a professional muay thai martial artist against some street punks that barely know how to throw a punch.
It's extremely interesting to me, especially since you did a Bad Balance video on him, that fucking **Dee Jay** is the highest-ranked SSFIV character out of just the newcomers specifically. It's also really funny that, even though returning veterans appear to benefit a great deal (perhaps vs. just Sagat specifically) from having anti-fireball U2's, the relative benefit they serve for newcomers to Super don't seem to be nearly as high, seeing as all of them are low-mid tiers or worse.
You missed the fact that his ex fireball put the opponent in a float state on the second hit. So in a fireball fight, he could easily juggle a second non ex fireball from full screen when the ex fireball cleared an opponent's regular fireball. Other characters did not have this luxury and would need to spend bar to accomplish this while still inflicting less damage than Sagat.
IIRC I think SF4 was the game that introduced me to your content (or maybe SoulCalibur) but either way it makes me genuinely happy and nostalgic seeing you still put out quality content for this game all these years later. Something about it just brings me back to a more simpler time, thanks!
Would you ever consider doing a bad balance on third strike itself? You've mentioned a lot of times that the game has poor balance, and I think it'd be really interesting to see you talk about the game's balance as a whole, rather than examining specific topics in a vacuum. For example: Universal mechanics benefitting some character more than others, uneven distribution of good supers, and viability being determined by how well you fight Chun Li, Yun, and Ken.
Did anyone ever got around to do version select tournaments? I wonder how vanilla Sagat would fare against buffed characters and new characters, like the twins. My first impression is that AE Yun would be king of that tournament scene and maybe some players would make vanilla Sagat work
@@omega17ds I think sagat beats yun with his ability to control the space yun needs to dive kicks and Sagats's fireballs stuffing the rush punch. Yun still might be a better character overall though, I'm not sure.
This is something Ive always wanted to see with people who are way better than me. AE Yun is def top 5 of Edition Select, but Vanilla Akuma, Vanilla Sagat, AE Fei, and maybe Omega Honda or E ryu would give Yun a hard time.
Great vid man, Sagat is one of my all time favorite characters and to see his vanilla version explored in depth as to why he was so strong in the original cut of the game made for an entertaining watch during my lunch. I knew his damage was busted but to see everything else brought into perspective is great. Cheers Bafael
Really fun and insightful as always Baf. I think a quick vid talking about the hilarious Hugo v Sagat matchup would be fun. Gief and Thawk have better tools to deal with fireballs than Hugo
Off the top of my head, some reasons why i hate fighting sagat way back in vanilla sf4. Has the best fireball game, back than guile sonicboom had a longer charge time. Insane damage off tiger uppercut, it having lower invincible frame make it worst as it will trade into ultra. couple with his fireball gameplay this is something most of the cast cant deal with back than. safe knee pressure which deal insane chip damage, and the second hit does more damage making it in his favor if you decide to challenge it. this combine with his tiger uppercut and threat of ultra is really not fun. most characters in vanilla simply cannot deal with his far Hk and knee pressure. Abel, zangief and honda comes to mind. His insane damage make it so that even his worst matchup akuma die in 2 combos. most of the matches ended in you eating 2 tiger uppercuts, 2 knees and a trade uppercut into ultra.
IIRC Gouken was the only character with a fireball fast enough to match Sagat in fireball spamming speed. In fact since the low Tiger Shot was slightly slower it meant if the Sagat player was mixing them up rather than just throwing high Tiger Shots then Gouken would actually start pulling ahead. The problem was that Gouken's EX fireball wasn't a double-hit so Sagat could still push back in the spam by using his own EX ones.
@@reperfan4 Yeah, I honestly think Gouken's Ex fireball is pretty bad, it's not a 2 hit fireball, not even two fireballs thrown foward like dee jay, it's 1 foward and 1 diagonal, which is pretty awful for fireball wars. Sure, you can charge it to make it 2 hits, but you can already do that meterless, so why spend the bar? It IS possible to shut down 2 hit fireballs on a specific timing, but good luck with that, might as well attempt an ex goshoha for a combo.
Alright I'm sure you get a lot of requests for bad balance videos, but I just have to get my thoughts out there: Bad Balance: SFV Season 2 Vega First, Vega is the only character in SFV without a single invincible reversal. Not even his CA is invincible. In a game notorious for setplay, throw loops, and suffocating pressure, Vega is the only character with no way to make his opponent second-guess their wakeup pressure whatsoever. This dovetails into the second point, Vega's V-reversal, and the way he interacts with the entire V-system. Vega's V-reversal is just garbage. Instead of striking back at the opponent to interrupt them, he simply backflips away, pushing himself further into the corner and putting himself into a potentially worse situation than the one he was trying to reversal out of. Vega's skill is intended to be used as an anti-fireball move, or combo ender. However, it's much trickier to use than his other anti-fireball tools, and pales in comparison to his other meterless combo enders in terms of damage and oki. You'd have to go out of your way to use it specifically to build v-meter, which is kind of pointless considering how awful his v-reversal is, and how underwhelming his v-trigger is: Vega's V-trigger has three different versions, all with different purposes. Air trigger beats fireballs, but isn't as consistent or rewarding as just using EX walldive or EX roll. Crouching v-trigger is an anti-air, but loses to close jumps, which is where Vega's other main anti-airs also lose, meaning it really doesn't help patch up the holes in his anti-air game. Standing v-trigger is a combo extender and is probably the best use of it. Compared to other characters in SFV who can use their triggers to convert stray neutral pokes into huge combos with strong oki, or completely turn the tide of a match (Laura VT for instance), this is just kind of a weak party trick in comparison. What strengths does Vega have going for him? Strong pokes? Not really, when compared to buttons like crush counter Urien stand fierce. Vega found himself outpoked by most of the cast, challenging them with buttons that had worse hitboxes and worse reward. When clawless, Vega gained a command grab that allowed him some unique and somewhat scary pressure when combined with his high walkspeed. However, this aspect of his game was severely nerfed in season 2, when his low forward became worse on block (killing his ability to tick throw with his command grab off low forward), and his advantage after light roll was nerfed (killing pressure after his main light confirm route) I'll be the first to admit I'm jaded and biased because I suffered through playing that character at that time, but I still think my points are legitimate
Two weeks after SF4 launched, my local GameStop was holding a SF4 tournament. I looked who was the most broken character at the time and already Sagat was labeled S tier so I got to work practicing. Came out 3rd, but it was my first SF game and only got that far due to A) how broken Sagat was B) the other players also didn't play much SF4. The top 2 were ones who definitely played before and swept the floor in their matchups lol.
Sagat is literally the fighting game example of why 5'11 vs 6'0 does matter. (Also, as someone still learning about fighting games, Bad Balance is genuinely refreshing for the soul. Well done Baf).
I dont have any constructive criticism unfortunately.. as a new SFV player this video did a great job of explaining every single interaction and how it favored sagat. Solid job man, well done. Fun to watch too
I love these videos, please keep going! And if you're looking to buff your vids, I think a lil background music would be a really nice addition to help fill out the soundscape, I think it would help viewers to zone into what you're saying by keeping the back of their mind occupied so they're focused on your words. But regardless, I look forward to the next!
I'd really love it if you could make ''History of [insert character]'', where you briefly touch on characters and how they performed in different games and versions of games. Emphasis on ''briefly''; you wouldn't go as much in depth, because the video would be like 5-6 hours. TUDG's Mortal Kombat videos on characters is an example, where he touches on characters like Reptile and how they were in different games or different versions of games. An example would be talking about SF2 Sagat (Old and New/Nerfed) and then Alpha Sagat, CvS, so on and so forth. A series of videos like this would be EXTREMELY interesting and fun.
The algorithm took me here I just want to say I'm glad to see people talk about stuff like this. Back in 2008-2009 people were saying its totally fine and that Sagats insane OPness was nbd I didn't enjoy it at all, playing online into
I remember reading in a magazine in 2008 that Sagat was incredibly overpowered. Too strong. And I didn’t understand what it was about, damn, this game was very deep and difficult to master.
Been always looking forward to this series. Off topic tho, it's really weird now to see non counter light buttons linking to medium, especially the kicks
You are the person to get me into SF, even if the character I went on to main was total mid tier trash. This series was big on cluing me into just how deep the SF rabbithole goes
One thing I had not known for years was that all of Sagat's tiger uppercuts on the ground did the same damage. But when they were anti-airs the damage output was rather different.
The range on kara DP caught me so off guard that's just Tiger Teleport
Imagine Vanilla Sagat with something like a Dhalsim teleport...
Hi Big Yellow!
Akuma's teleport has nothing on the Tiger Teleport.
He literally covers half the screen + on a 170 damage anti air, I remember him being good, but this is absurd
@@javiermoreno5898 What's funny is that it's still in the later games, do not as potent.
@@chillidewd5582 he covers like a quarter, not fucking half and he does 160 no 170+ with multiple conversions
The giant gap from Vanilla Sagat and Vanilla Vega is just super fascinating to me. Imagine making Dan a bad joke character on purpose, shipping the game, and realizing Vega is worse somehow.
U know shit is bad when a literal joke character, made bad on purpose is somehow better.
@chillidewd5582 SF has a history of this tho. Just look at 3S. Sean is meant to be a jobber, but nowadays most people agree that Remy and ESPECIALLY Twelve are worse.
@@RoastedPheasant really? Of Twelve i get but Remy? Like i know that hes bottom 3 with them 2 but at least he has some little competitive play
@@chillidewd5582reminds me of melee pichu who is better than a surprising number of characters
@@littlemisseevee2309This showcases the power of fundamentals and how much can carry a character being god awfull in every way (only pass some disasters but it's something).
Sagat is both "You're dead when I get in" and "You won't get in" at once
Choose your path:
A. Get in.
B. Keep your distance.
What they lead to...
Sagat: "So you have chosen death".
“And even if you don’t get in…”
umvc3 vergil
Happy chaos vibes
Z-Broly
I can't believe they brought back my favorite character from SF2, Old Sagat
Capcom remade O. Sagat from Super Turbo in SF4 rofl
Lmfao
O. Sagat took way more skill.
@@airthrowDBT this just in, boomer says ST is harder than SFIV, crazy.
@@urmum9898 Ok '09er
God I needed this today. Bad Balance is a balm to the soul.
So God (as auto captions call Sagat in this video)
Amen brother.
It really is
Jesus loves you
Bars
I find it interesting that it appeared like there would be some “secret sauce” that made vanilla Sagat as oppressive as he was, but in the end it really is just “he hits harder than everyone else by a lot.”
It also speaks well for the balance team in this case, because they zeroed in on what the true problem was and fixed it. None of Super Sagat’s most oppressive tools were removed, they were just made far less rewarding across the board. And it turned out to be exactly enough to reel him in.
Vanilla Sagat feels like a boss character the devs forgot to make unplayable.
This was sf2 sagat with better graphics
You could've gone a little more in-depth about the Tiger Knee, especially the EX version. An armor-breaking move that has great horizontal movement was extremely difficult for the cast to deal with. It simply removed the Focus Attack from the game when fighting the character. If you thought you could Focus absorb and dash through a Shot, you'd eat Knee instead. Good luck in neutral if the Sagat wanted to spam out an EX version at that. The main damage was also on the backend/2nd hit (changed in Super I believe). The armor break and the extremely good hitbox gave the corner pressure insane potential. Many characters could not jump out of the corner due to this, and you simply could not Focus after the standing light kick.
I thought about talking more about this and I should have but in most of the footage I researched tiger knee was underperforming pretty hard. Because you're different widths when crouching or standing you get hit at different times by tiger knee, so sometimes what would have been a spaced tiger knee against a crouching opponent whiffs on a standing opponent, and what would have been a spaced tiger knee vs a standing opponent hits too early on a croucher and is minus. When a Sagat did something punishable which turned the game around for the opponent it was almost invariably a tiger knee. I should have talked about its anti air properties, armor break, and maybe even cross up knee tho, I was lacking in that section
@@Bafael Hmm. Characters who didn't have good GTFO options were just trapped in the corner (e.g. Vanilla Gouken, and I'm sure all the 6-4 MUs). Tournament footage from Vanilla would probably only show characters like Ryu who could get out of the pressure. Either way, that meter build also allowed a ton of "free" uppercut > fadc use. Considering Vanilla, there wasn't the -5 nerf to uppercut fadc. Sagat got a ton of mileage from throws out of fear of eating uppercuts. Combined with all the power of armor breaking Knees, Sagat was just oppressive to deal with.
@@emilalexander8292 Its hard even for characters like Ryu who could low profile the knee. You cant really react to it and if you guess wrongly you eat tigers. Even if its negative on block there is always the threat of a yolo tiger uppercut and they can make it safe due to FADC. knee + threat of the dreaded trade uppercut into ultra really kills alot of the characters. Vega cant do anything to get out.
Too long didn’t read can you explain in one sentence
@@flomperrr3105 tiger knee go brrrr
The mass exodus of Sagat players from Vanilla to Super will never not be funny to me. All they did was make him fair and it was like Sagat got Stalin'd out of history.
Same will happen to Deejay in SF6
@@xcaluhbration 7 of top 8 at CEO played Juri so I think she deserves a little more inspection lol
@@xcaluhbrationEven funnier considering he's not even best in the game atm
I'd like to see a series dedicated to bad match ups
Would love to see one on true 0-10 MUs like Victor Vs Pyron in Night Warriors
As a hawk player in sf4, the blanka matchup would give me a stroke every time.
@@jdzl Oh yeah. Wasn't that like an 8-2 matchup or something horrible like that? It just went under most peoples radar.
@@noless yeah, it was a nightmare. Especially online. Couldn't punish blanka ball, and even up ball was tough to get anything significant.
Haggar w/o teammates in mvc3
"Sagat is basically always able to zone and outpace everyone while building meter. He also has tied 3rd highest health and over the top normals on top of the low/high projectiles."
"Hmm he isn't as broken as I once thought."
You've taken too many tiger knees to the face.
I loved the Vanguard Princess OST you had playing in this video!
Your taste in music is amazing, I didn't think that many people had even heard of that game, let alone it's OST.
Based description reader
Vanguard Princess is a required game if you play fighting games on Steam.
Whether you're a SFII or SFIV player, the words "Vanilla Sagat" will make you tremble with fear...
Funnily enough the sf1 community also considers Sagat to be top 3 minimum
@@refreshinglemonade3426 "the SFI community"
Tf are you smoking dawg?
@@OccuredJakub12 they modded the game to make the NPCs playable and turned sf1 into a discord fighter
@@refreshinglemonade3426 oooooh, I think I saw that. Wasn't it a Mugen game?
@@OccuredJakub12 Let's not even forget cvs players.
Jeez, losing to Ryu must have really motivated Sagat to get stronger!
Irony is SFIV takes place chronologically after Alpha 3 and SF2, when Sagat encountered Dan and intentionally took a dive during their fight after he saw how Dan's desire for vengeance against Sagat was consuming him and realized he was in danger of falling down the same destructive path. SFIV is supposed to be the start of Sagat's redemption as he leaves Shadowloo and relearns how to be an honorable fighter in it for the spirit of competition. Before this he was motivated purely by vanity and soothing his damaged ego after Ryu scarred him.
BTW, Sagat had basically already left Shadaloo by SF2.
Funnily enough, I don't think Sagat was that strong in A2 or A3. Projectiles losing damage from distance in A3 was probably a factor, but Sagat felt so unthreatening compared to SF2's O. Sagat and SF4.
Then again, maybe it is lore-tied; in the Street Fighter universe, fighters motivated by blind rage tend to not do well in fights.
@@InfernoCleric384 evil ryu?
@@jaiden3473 Non-canon lmao
@@InfernoCleric384 akuma?
As a relatively new player of fighting games, I've heard about Vanilla Sagat many times but was never told much beyond his anti-air damage being absurd. This is a great video for us who weren't around to experience this version of the character. Keep up the great work, Baf!
Good video, but one suggestion: Maybe when you're making a point about hitboxes / hurtboxes, you can show them by running FrameTrapped 3 for that recording section. It would make for better visual examples with some slow-mo / freeze frames, so the viewers can properly appreciate what you're talking about.
I know not every viewer knows how hitboxes work, but for those that do, having brief visual display of your point would help. I ended up booting SF4 with Frametrapped 3 just to see if there was any actual difference between the hitboxes of his Vanilla and USF4.
Stand HK is exactly the same hitboxes. However f+HK hitbox got nerfed a little bit since Vanilla. Diagonal jump MP hitbox was also nerfed.
Good suggestion. While I perfectly understood what he was saying, a visual representation may be helpful to those that don't know fighting games as intricately (why watch bad balance if so, amirite?) but would also just be fun to see how busted they are lol
I'd love to see a Bad Balance on Zangief, if for no other reason than it's rare for a slow, big-body grappler to be on that end of poor balance.
no its pretty common, just for the opposite reason as sagat.
@@Neogears1312 i think thats what "on that end of" means
Coincidentally, Zangief shot up to almost S tier with the inclusion of RFC.
@@merkyofaycemfx2944 Vainilla Gief was crazy strong, but what's funny is that his worse wasn't Dhalsim this time, but Seth.
@@chillidewd5582 I'd be inclined to agree, but I cannot award Vanilla Gief the rank of S tier due to him being completely obliterated by Seth. None of the other S tiers in Vanilla had such a lopsided matchup against them in that regard, and went mostly even against other top tiers with a few exceptions, but nowhere near as bad as 9-1.
An analysis on how bad/mediocre characters improved over the years could be good.
Like, for example you said that Sakura was pretty bad in Vanilla, but if I recall she was pretty good in later versions. Was it just her Ultra 2, or did other things change? Could be an interesting topic.
It was mostly that other top tiers got nerfed and Sakura's setplay and vortex got mapped out. She did get some buffs from Vanilla but people didn't understand how to play the game just yet so they didn't realize how potent setplay was. Hence why many people say that either Vanilla Seth or Akuma would've ended up being the best had Vanilla gone on being played
@@MuiltiLightRider Sakura *did* see buffs in every version of the game. Her frame data outside of EX hurricane kick was poor, her non EX hurricane kick oki was vastly improved, and they also gave her otoshi 2nd hit after EX hurricane kick impressive frame data. Also her damage values were redistributed to increase her damage output and stun values.
Her Ultra 2 was the icing on the cake. The top tiers being nerfed had little impact. Akuma, Balrog, Seth and Viper remained strong characters for the lifespan of the game. Her poor frame data and low ish return on her mixup made her redundant. If you wanted vortex, play Viper, Akuma, or Seth. If you wanted damage, play virtually any other non charge character or Balrog. Her buffs gave her a place in the game.
over 7 ft tall, super long reach,
able to leap in the air extremely high for an uppercut
and the absolute best kickboxer in the world
The dude is a monster and many don't stand a chance against him!!
And he could throw fire out of his hands
That thumbnail alone deserve a like Baf.
And its about time we talk about this beast.
When looking at all 6 version of SF4 (vanilla, super, AE, AE 2012, Ultra, and Omega), Vanilla Sagat is def top 10.
Mostly because he fireball spams like O sagat, has 1100 health and stun, and hits like a freight train.
Also, there is a vid of Bonchan Vanilla Sagat vs AE Kaz Yun.
In general, I love edition select and pray more fighting games do this. It gives you so many options to play the game and if you don't like how a balance patch affected your character, you can always go back to the previous version.
You could have mentioned that Sagat also had access to the unblockable Ultra glitch (where the fireball hits during the ultra flash) discovered late in the game. Didn’t affect us much as super came a couple of months later, but I imagine it would have been abused in Japan until AE. Definitely consider the glitch if you do a Seth video as it was mega cheap with him.
I thought about mentioning it but chose not to. IIRC if you weren't blocking pre-freeze they were blockable and I think Sagat had to fireball fadc and have precise screen positions for a lot of his setups
You don't know how much I Tiger Kneeded this today
The wait was long but worth it. I'll enjoy every second of this
Yeah videos detailing extremely unfair matchups sound like a lot of fun.
Dig the content and dig the video. These movies are really a form of preservation. There's tons of nuances in SF4 that are in risk of being lost to time somehow, so it's awesome having someone as calm and educated as yourself describing them.
I remember seeing from Error1 years ago that Sagat's super can infinitely loop into itself. Impractical and he's had it in every version of SF4, but still super weird. I think it's the only one.
Gen can do that as well I think
Dudley can do It too
“Impractical” I mean. That’s one word for it
Dhalsim can, plus his ultra
The worst problem with Vanilla Sagat was mainly his high damage and how easy it was for him to land it. Once he has Ultra and enough for a focus cancel, you enter "one combo death" zone as soon as your health goes under 70%. I recall so many competitive matches (Tougeki, Nakano TRF etc) back in the days where every other rounds would end with tigger uppercut FADC high kick ultra and the commentators always saying "it's over" as soon as the tigger uppercut hits.
Great drop, thanks B-Man.
Damn, I didn't know that Sagat's EX Shot blended in with his normal Shot lmao
Many characters have very different voice lines for ex moves for this very reason. You'll hear the different sound and know to react differently.
@@TheEvilCheesecake sure, but even reactions can only get you so far.
@@fogblades6811 well you do react faster to sounds than sight so it's not that bad
@@eagerinspirit Yup, that's why most overheads in fighting games tend to be really quiet, specifically to make them harder to react to.
I love your Bad Balance series so much. It's really cool to get a breakdown about what made them busted. The fact that other characters lacking tools being a big part of what made him strong was something I didn't know!
Really nice analysis! I've never played SFIV, but I understood everything you said.
I've been down bad for some Bad Balance, so this is a welcome sight before I go to bed
I love that Vanilla Cone Sagan mod.
Yes! I've been looking forward to this one!
EDIT/UPDATE: So I just now got to watch the whole video. I think that you did an excellent job of breaking down Sagat for not just Vanilla SF4, but for, more or less, the entire SF4 series. Your comments also seem to support what I had always felt: it wasn't so much that Vanilla Sagat was "broken", but that he was a very, very strong character in a game that did not have a lot of other strong characters. I also felt that his biggest problem area was just how screwed up his damage input and output was compared to the rest of the cast. I felt that normalizing his damage input and output would have normalized him, even if all of his other tools stayed relatively the same, I feel that Super Sagat kind of demonstrated that.
Awesome stuff man. Always great to watch a video like this.
Turns out it wasn't Sagat who was too strong(do he still was a bit) It's that everyone around him couldn't deal with him at the time. Like putting a professional muay thai martial artist against some street punks that barely know how to throw a punch.
Oh yeah... Street punks...
It's extremely interesting to me, especially since you did a Bad Balance video on him, that fucking **Dee Jay** is the highest-ranked SSFIV character out of just the newcomers specifically. It's also really funny that, even though returning veterans appear to benefit a great deal (perhaps vs. just Sagat specifically) from having anti-fireball U2's, the relative benefit they serve for newcomers to Super don't seem to be nearly as high, seeing as all of them are low-mid tiers or worse.
You missed the fact that his ex fireball put the opponent in a float state on the second hit. So in a fireball fight, he could easily juggle a second non ex fireball from full screen when the ex fireball cleared an opponent's regular fireball. Other characters did not have this luxury and would need to spend bar to accomplish this while still inflicting less damage than Sagat.
True, regular fireball had jp1 in vanilla and lost it in super, i definitely should have brought this up
IIRC I think SF4 was the game that introduced me to your content (or maybe SoulCalibur) but either way it makes me genuinely happy and nostalgic seeing you still put out quality content for this game all these years later. Something about it just brings me back to a more simpler time, thanks!
Would you ever consider doing a bad balance on third strike itself? You've mentioned a lot of times that the game has poor balance, and I think it'd be really interesting to see you talk about the game's balance as a whole, rather than examining specific topics in a vacuum. For example: Universal mechanics benefitting some character more than others, uneven distribution of good supers, and viability being determined by how well you fight Chun Li, Yun, and Ken.
This videos are so good, thank you for all the time that you put into them! Seeing as you mentioned them, I’d love to see match up videos
SaGot that big damage
This made my day, I was so looking forward to another episode of this series~
Did anyone ever got around to do version select tournaments? I wonder how vanilla Sagat would fare against buffed characters and new characters, like the twins. My first impression is that AE Yun would be king of that tournament scene and maybe some players would make vanilla Sagat work
After the labbing I did I think AE yun is probably the king overall of the game. Or maybe Vanilla Akuma IDK.
Lookup the match between Bonchan and Kazunoko, Vanilla Sagat vs AE Yun. Everyone was hype, but Bonchan doninated him.
Actually, here's the link: czcams.com/video/OlhvbwkWtHM/video.html
@@omega17ds I think sagat beats yun with his ability to control the space yun needs to dive kicks and Sagats's fireballs stuffing the rush punch. Yun still might be a better character overall though, I'm not sure.
This is something Ive always wanted to see with people who are way better than me.
AE Yun is def top 5 of Edition Select, but Vanilla Akuma, Vanilla Sagat, AE Fei, and maybe Omega Honda or E ryu would give Yun a hard time.
Great vid man, Sagat is one of my all time favorite characters and to see his vanilla version explored in depth as to why he was so strong in the original cut of the game made for an entertaining watch during my lunch. I knew his damage was busted but to see everything else brought into perspective is great. Cheers Bafael
these videos are always so interesting to listen through. cheers for making them
Insane how broken this game was, even later on all the unavoidable setups, unreactable overheads, etc
And SF4 is now considered one of the Great SF games, right?
@@zegreenemachine8160 it is probably the most fun one to watch but id never play it myself
@@pastorofmuppets9346 bro, that’s what I Say about SSBM.
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The day of fate has finally come.
Really fun and insightful as always Baf. I think a quick vid talking about the hilarious Hugo v Sagat matchup would be fun. Gief and Thawk have better tools to deal with fireballs than Hugo
Can't wait for this series to come back, I've been playing Seth in SFV lately and I'm interested to hear what their SFIV counterpart was like.
This kind of FG content is literal crack, i could listen to breakdowns of extremely strong or weak characters for hours
These are my favorite videos and I look forward to watching this 10 times
Off the top of my head, some reasons why i hate fighting sagat way back in vanilla sf4.
Has the best fireball game, back than guile sonicboom had a longer charge time.
Insane damage off tiger uppercut, it having lower invincible frame make it worst as it will trade into ultra. couple with his fireball gameplay this is something most of the cast cant deal with back than.
safe knee pressure which deal insane chip damage, and the second hit does more damage making it in his favor if you decide to challenge it.
this combine with his tiger uppercut and threat of ultra is really not fun.
most characters in vanilla simply cannot deal with his far Hk and knee pressure. Abel, zangief and honda comes to mind.
His insane damage make it so that even his worst matchup akuma die in 2 combos.
most of the matches ended in you eating 2 tiger uppercuts, 2 knees and a trade uppercut into ultra.
IIRC Gouken was the only character with a fireball fast enough to match Sagat in fireball spamming speed. In fact since the low Tiger Shot was slightly slower it meant if the Sagat player was mixing them up rather than just throwing high Tiger Shots then Gouken would actually start pulling ahead. The problem was that Gouken's EX fireball wasn't a double-hit so Sagat could still push back in the spam by using his own EX ones.
@@reperfan4 Yeah, I honestly think Gouken's Ex fireball is pretty bad, it's not a 2 hit fireball, not even two fireballs thrown foward like dee jay, it's 1 foward and 1 diagonal, which is pretty awful for fireball wars. Sure, you can charge it to make it 2 hits, but you can already do that meterless, so why spend the bar? It IS possible to shut down 2 hit fireballs on a specific timing, but good luck with that, might as well attempt an ex goshoha for a combo.
Alright I'm sure you get a lot of requests for bad balance videos, but I just have to get my thoughts out there:
Bad Balance: SFV Season 2 Vega
First, Vega is the only character in SFV without a single invincible reversal. Not even his CA is invincible. In a game notorious for setplay, throw loops, and suffocating pressure, Vega is the only character with no way to make his opponent second-guess their wakeup pressure whatsoever.
This dovetails into the second point, Vega's V-reversal, and the way he interacts with the entire V-system. Vega's V-reversal is just garbage. Instead of striking back at the opponent to interrupt them, he simply backflips away, pushing himself further into the corner and putting himself into a potentially worse situation than the one he was trying to reversal out of.
Vega's skill is intended to be used as an anti-fireball move, or combo ender. However, it's much trickier to use than his other anti-fireball tools, and pales in comparison to his other meterless combo enders in terms of damage and oki. You'd have to go out of your way to use it specifically to build v-meter, which is kind of pointless considering how awful his v-reversal is, and how underwhelming his v-trigger is:
Vega's V-trigger has three different versions, all with different purposes. Air trigger beats fireballs, but isn't as consistent or rewarding as just using EX walldive or EX roll. Crouching v-trigger is an anti-air, but loses to close jumps, which is where Vega's other main anti-airs also lose, meaning it really doesn't help patch up the holes in his anti-air game. Standing v-trigger is a combo extender and is probably the best use of it.
Compared to other characters in SFV who can use their triggers to convert stray neutral pokes into huge combos with strong oki, or completely turn the tide of a match (Laura VT for instance), this is just kind of a weak party trick in comparison.
What strengths does Vega have going for him? Strong pokes? Not really, when compared to buttons like crush counter Urien stand fierce. Vega found himself outpoked by most of the cast, challenging them with buttons that had worse hitboxes and worse reward.
When clawless, Vega gained a command grab that allowed him some unique and somewhat scary pressure when combined with his high walkspeed. However, this aspect of his game was severely nerfed in season 2, when his low forward became worse on block (killing his ability to tick throw with his command grab off low forward), and his advantage after light roll was nerfed (killing pressure after his main light confirm route)
I'll be the first to admit I'm jaded and biased because I suffered through playing that character at that time, but I still think my points are legitimate
My favorite fighting game videos on yourtube are Bafael's Bad Balance series.
Thank you for continuing this series.
bafael awakens to grant us the greatest episode of the greatest sf series to ever exist
So glad to see some more bad balance! Continue making awesome content Baf
The answer is yes. Just watched this with cup of coffee and I went back to 2010. Looking forward to more.
Two weeks after SF4 launched, my local GameStop was holding a SF4 tournament. I looked who was the most broken character at the time and already Sagat was labeled S tier so I got to work practicing. Came out 3rd, but it was my first SF game and only got that far due to A) how broken Sagat was B) the other players also didn't play much SF4. The top 2 were ones who definitely played before and swept the floor in their matchups lol.
I've been waiting for years for this video
WAKE UP NEW BAD BALANCE DROPPED
Great video, thank you for the content
I would be interested in a video about vanilla Seth. Great video!
Bad balance is the best series. Please Keep doing them
Hell yeah love these!
HELL YEAH, NEW BAF UPLOAD!!!!!!
here at 11:23 pm
lets go
As someone who enjoys watching fighting games but sucks too much to play then and actually deep dive into the games i greatly appreciate this series
Sagat is literally the fighting game example of why 5'11 vs 6'0 does matter.
(Also, as someone still learning about fighting games, Bad Balance is genuinely refreshing for the soul. Well done Baf).
Also a prime example of why weight classes exist in combat sports.
No way in hell Rey Mysterio would live in a 1 on 1 fight against Big Show.
I dont have any constructive criticism unfortunately.. as a new SFV player this video did a great job of explaining every single interaction and how it favored sagat. Solid job man, well done. Fun to watch too
Thanks for the content, I look forward to every single one of these
Ayo, was just rewatching your bad balance series and was wondering about Sagat
Always nice to learn more about games of yore. Hope to see you cover sfv when sf6 comes out.
I love these videos, please keep going! And if you're looking to buff your vids, I think a lil background music would be a really nice addition to help fill out the soundscape, I think it would help viewers to zone into what you're saying by keeping the back of their mind occupied so they're focused on your words. But regardless, I look forward to the next!
HERE IT IS FOLKS, THE MOMENT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!
Amazing video btw, I just didnt want to say that before I watched it
I was waiting for this.
Please more SF4 content, the game is just so fun for how varied and strange some of the characters and design ideas were.
I just realized his character icon in the HUD doesn't have the magic eyepatch™. Nice detail.
never played sf4 but ive seen all of these bad balance videos. Its a testament to how well you script them to be accessible and informative.
I'd really love it if you could make ''History of [insert character]'', where you briefly touch on characters and how they performed in different games and versions of games.
Emphasis on ''briefly''; you wouldn't go as much in depth, because the video would be like 5-6 hours. TUDG's Mortal Kombat videos on characters is an example, where he touches on characters like Reptile and how they were in different games or different versions of games. An example would be talking about SF2 Sagat (Old and New/Nerfed) and then Alpha Sagat, CvS, so on and so forth. A series of videos like this would be EXTREMELY interesting and fun.
Best character breakdown videos on CZcams without question.
The algorithm took me here
I just want to say I'm glad to see people talk about stuff like this.
Back in 2008-2009 people were saying its totally fine and that Sagats insane OPness was nbd
I didn't enjoy it at all, playing online into
Ayy been waiting for this one since you mentioned it in the Yun episode
I remember reading in a magazine in 2008 that Sagat was incredibly overpowered. Too strong.
And I didn’t understand what it was about, damn, this game was very deep and difficult to master.
new bafkino just dropped
'Boss privileges'. Sagat used to be a final boss, then a sub-boss. His kit reflects this, and of course does not change much.
I love this seriiiiiiiies
Return of the king
Been always looking forward to this series. Off topic tho, it's really weird now to see non counter light buttons linking to medium, especially the kicks
Yoooooo, we've been waiting so long for this one! Thanks Baf.
SF4 content keeps me going
"This ice cream with arms is saying, 'You are not a [true] warrior, you are a beginner!'"
Oh man I loved that video!
You are the person to get me into SF, even if the character I went on to main was total mid tier trash. This series was big on cluing me into just how deep the SF rabbithole goes
Mid tier isn't trash, y'know.
When the Character is Alex in SF3, he is the very definition of Trash Mid
Yooooooo lets go
And this was the end of Bad Balance? 😥
That thumbnail picture already deserves the like. Awesome video.
One thing I had not known for years was that all of Sagat's tiger uppercuts on the ground did the same damage. But when they were anti-airs the damage output was rather different.
Yay, always looking forward to these!
This was awesome.