I don't know why people are like "this game is super balanced bro anyone has a chance for the most part" and then when the midtier does well in tournament so many people are like "throw the tier list out the window Sol is broken again". The aggressive over reactions to any slight amount of evidence for a tier list shift are always funny. Sol's defense is really good but his neutral is bad and his offense is mediocre. Therefore he's a midtier the way i see it.
I think Sol is rewarding: you get clean hit HVV routes with meter and the opponent needs to guess for a possible wallbreak scenario from oki, landing a heavy counter starter is nearly a guaranteed kill from 60% or creates a guess for game from it; but he can be put in check if you don't reap your rewards well. He can deal with everything everyone has, just needs to work his sweat and meter for it compared to the folks above him while being very scary up close. Just don't take away my funny routes Daisuke, that's all I ask :,c
Sol is a good character. He's not the best. He's not the worst. He's good and has always been good, just like most of the cast is good, barring a couple exceptions. That's how I feel.
Honestly I think its impossible for sol to ACTUALLY be bad without gutting everything from him, he has all the tools you need to succeed but I don't think he plays the game for you, and instead reflects how good you are kind of like Jin in tekken
@@tabkg5802 yea 100%, Jin is like a very extreme example where you're ACTUALLY only limited by your own skill and you're piloting possibly the best character in the game
Why does his dp, his get out of jail free card have so much damage? Adding a 3 frame that converts into insane damage is not helping things either. I had to laugh when he said that sol has no bs factors lol
@@DestroyerOfDoom thats how we was designed. But if you look back from closed beta all the way till now they straight up changed his mechanics and then nerfed alot of his tools and options due to complaints. Bandit bringer loops gone. Vortex loops gone. 6p no longer wall bounces. 6s? Reduced hit box, increase hurt box, no longer gatlings from 5k outside counter hit or crouching, and then nerfed AGAIN to no longer pop you up in the air.. 6h increased recovery useless without meter. And ppl still complaining about sols tools? Seriously?
@@DestroyerOfDoom if you think 5K converts into insane damage, you do not play the game. If you think DPs are get-out-of-jail-free cards, you do not play the game.
@@DestroyerOfDoom because that's literally Sol's trademark. He has been nuking people since the first Guilty Gear. Literally the only character who has been doing bigger damage is f***ing Slayer
I think part of what you see in NA tierlists is how much they value a character having bullshit or "feeling bad" to play against. Where sol is a utility knife you really have to know how to use to get a leg up, he has really good tools but they have more simple responses so being able to take advantage of the character is very dependent on the player.
I'm inclined to believe that Mocchi is just very good, and that Strive's balance is in a good enough place that even one the less powerful characters, played by one of the best players, can do very well.
Yeah, Moochi is just the physical manifestation of Sol in human form (colloquially known as "That palguy"). That's why for the next patch Sol should be nerfed so then he doesn't even have gattlings anymore!!! It's so unfair that Moochi is that guy and I can't be!!! I know I just started playing since like, a year ago--but how come I can't beat a Sol player who has been playing Guilty Gear games likely around a decade now?!?! In fact, nerf Sin!!!!! He's too good, how come as a HC player I can't beat him?! Cring.
As an ex-Sol player myself I think Sol is capable of winning for sure but I can't see him being high tier in this version, he's explosive and heavily rewards very strong fundamentals but like you said he lacks the "bullshit factor" that so many of the other top tiers have. I know the whole "-character- players SLOP their way to victory" thing is a meme but I definitely feel like HC, Nago, Leo, Ram, Bridget, etc. have win conditions strong enough that they do let you be a little sloppy and still end up winning. That being said it's hard to quantify his strength to me because I feel like at the highest of high level he can be one of the most consistent characters just because everyone up there is playing less sloppy in general and Sol can be very consistent if you're as fundamentally strong as Skyll and Mocchi. That being said I don't think I'm That Guy and I know for sure he's getting nerfed AGAIN next patch so I'm staying on Baiken LOL
i took a 9 month break from games to focus on career stuff, coming back to strive and finding out that people have been dooming about sol is wild. like i can understand him falling down a bit in the tiers over time with new characters and buffs to others, but strive players are out of their minds to be calling him trash. i’m glad to be getting back into the game but i had forgotten how hyperbolic the discourse around this game is.
Top 10 isn't a problem, it's an opportunity. Which I think is good because the character's a great representative for the franchise. I don't play Sol a lot but actually getting stuff done with him is unusually satisfying and also fun to watch so I'd kinda like to see more of him at the top level honestly.
To me he either has an X factor or his kit is so well-rounded and useful that he is stronger than the sum of his own parts. If I were to try and put it objectively, I think it is incredibly strong to do work without relying on weird gimmicks, set-ups and specialisation, as if you can instead spend that brain power on just being a better player. I dunno man he just works
I'm inclined to believe that if the finals was played again we could end up with a very different set of results. I'm not good enough at the game to *really* make an informed opinion, but the impression I got was that players and player matchups decided things moreso than characters.
People were more annoyed by certain moves just no longer having a purpose like 6S and 6H which is very understandable. No one likes having dud moves in their moveset
The thing i wanna know is japan changed their opinion on Ram? 'cause consider of her so low is beyond me. She litteraly has all exept for DP. and good HP maybe.
I think a lot of ppl undervalue whiff punishing in this game, and even if he doesn't get the best reward when he executes it, it's very, very consistent. And consistency is insanely important in a tournament setting. Clear reason why you never see characters like Baiken who is strong but inconsistent when it comes to tournaments. To me he's top 10 but 10th exactly because to be where Mocchi and Skyll are you have to go thru actual bad MUps, but he's worth the investment i'd say.
Strive is definitely one of those games where it so balanced that Tier Lists are very subjectives unlike other games where Tier list (while still subjective) are very similar and community agreed upon unless they just dont know what the character does
I think sol is not a problem. A character who is mostly fundamental based, takes meter for better offense and combos, can be hard to get in with him (takes skill). And while it might be true that he can still be optimized, doesn't that apply for the rest of the cast? Can't they all be optimized? So what do people want? For sol to be unviable because "yes"?! So you nerf sol yet again, but then the rest are left unchecked?! What's the point behind that
This moreso shows that the game is pretty well balanced, japanese tier lists are both a product of their different playstyle and different perspective, biased towards their top players and not a more theoretical angle like western tier lists. EMEA for Skyll is also different, although generally much more similar to NA since EMEA uses english as it's common language so easier to share resources (even if the NA community acts like we don't exist most of the time). I think Sol is a well rounded character that naturally lends himself to being good at super high level play as a form of skill expression. Still mad UMISHO never fought a japanese player, send her and Tiger_pop to put the fear of happy chaos into them.
You don't have to play top tiers to win majors, especially in this game. I definitely think Sol is a strong character, either in lower end of or barely outside top ten, but not a nuisance by any means.
All I REALLY want is buffs to 6S(OR AT THE VERY LEAST, LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE) and Fafnir to be a better OKI tool(give Fafnir faster startup). Also Daisuke, can you PLEASE give Heavy Mob Cemetery an actual purpose. I think Sol is a great and he's an easy A tier character, you just work harder than your opponent to win most times with good OKI and neutral callouts.
I haven't played even for half a year yet and by no means am I a pro, but one of the few things I've learned so far is that one has to beware Sol. I'm heavily carried by my main and can out-neutral a Sol, but lord have mercy if he gets a hit in and starts doing a combo, even Floor 7 Sols are scary
There is an argument for sol being good, but mind you that Skyll had the factor of not being known by anyone, and Mocchi already having killed the god of Xrd and Johnny back in the day. Mocchi is just built different.
How do people not know skyll at that point he was already godlike at dbfz and soulcal, he won the vsfx, got 4th at the mixup, top tier players have been constantly playing him, including zando slash latif and tiger_pop Americans are just alergic to paying attention to EMEA, europe specifically for skyll
@@crillou3556 well I just don't know any top players, I don't keep track of all that, but he sounds like he's kinda in the same boat as Mocchi, where they're just already a god.
Great video! I definitely think Sol is strong, but like you said he does not have true BS. Also I love that this video is a hidden Sol guide so I will just pass this along to my friends that play him xD
Honestly, I side with the Japan scene. Sol is way better than people think in America. He's way more fundamental than gimmicky which doesn't seem to fit our play style. I also think a lot of American tier lists heavily consider pressure over neutral.
It's actually the opposite. JP is the one that heavily focuses on repeated pressure for character strength over the west's focus on neutral and heavy conversion damage. It's why Ram and Chaos are consistently high on the NA tiers while JP unusually place Pot and Ino higher up while Chaos gets relegated to bot 5. It's in other game as well. Evo Melty Finals had JP Hisui who runs heavy oki and pressure vs US Vlov who is a big button projectile zoner
honestly, I think Sol's fine. Even at my most frustrated while playing him, I can't find something I couldn't have done better. Obviously, I don't like that he gets nerfed on repeat, in some cases on the same moves (why do we keep taking things from 6S? At this point it's a 15F mid poke with minor reward), but he's still a stable, strong character. If I had my way, ArcSys would give him a single QoL buff that doesn't affect his standing, and then barely touch him going forward.
The obvious answer to why 6S got nerfed so much is because it completely invalidated 5H as a button. even now, it’s still a crazy button, it’s just being changed so players have a reason to use his full kit.
"I don't think their placement would change if they spent the same amount of time on any other character." Alright boiz, show me your best Potemkin Buster face.
i think sol is just fundamentally sound and has a lot of good options to where he cant be bad but i think if they added a bullshit factor he'd be season 1 all over again
I think it is also a regional difference that you also see in alot of other games. the west are more towards the sanford kelly mindset of picking the best character and not working so hard, while the east is way more inclined to play their favs no matter what.
my opinion on sol is that he has everything he needs but one thing he lacks is options that can help make up for the player's shortcomings, particularly in neutral and on offense a lot of this character is "be good at hit confirming", "be good at combos", "be good at footsies", "have good yomi". The closest thing to an option like that is his 5K which requires that you are in a losing position to benefit you in that way. I think this sorta makes him *feel* really bad to play sometimes even if he isnt actually. I think this feeling of being worse than he is is also compounded by the fact that so many of arcsys's decision with him just make no sense. Wild throw being so bad to hit with meterless, for example, feels AWFUL to use.
I personally think Sols thing is getting BIG rewards with just fifty meter damage wise, which can be really frustrating (ky main here). At the same time, you nailed it saying that he doesn't have a bullshit option... aside from maybe all these plus frames, come on man- Granted that just may mean i am bad at defence against him. That said? He can still be rather fun to play against as Ky. Which i cannot say about characters like Ramlethal or Gio.
Weird that people aren’t giving them the credit they deserve. Is sol underrated in the west? Probably a little, yeah. Are Mocchi and Skyll just plain godlike regardless? Absolutely. Sounds like copium to blame the character imo, lol
@@soren1803same as gio. if you’re good, no bad matchups, if you’re bad, several characters will be much harder for you. at most i see him struggling to fight ram and nago, but only under the condition that he loses round start. if he wins round start, it’s just as easy as the rest.
@@kuro_mori_vt a) not losing isn’t winning b) testament c) baiken d) a ham sandwich can win if the criteria is “just be better, lol”. Matchups are based upon equal skill. For every correct read you assume you’ll get you have to assume your opponent gets another
I kinda see Sol like how I saw Karin with all the nerfs in SFV: no they’re not the absolute strongest characters, but their tools allow godlike players to show their insane skill through just really strong tools. Edit: funnily enough, right after I typed this comment, Karin’s theme (which is goated btw) started playing in the video.
As a Sol main how is everyone doing with their safe on block special moves? Allot of Sol's specials when blocked are super punishable. So as a beginner I think he's harder than say playing Bridget who can just learn a combo route or two and just keep using it without having to think much because her buttons go half screen.
I haven't played ggst in a few months but as a Gio player I'm confident to say Sol is definitely the better character. He has more tools that are more varied, Gio has it easier to close the distance and Sol has better defense and better tools to open people up.
@@soren1803 well he has a Dp, his whiff punish buttons are smaller but just as consistent as Gio's but with more reward after. His mix and pressure is really really good especially if he has meter while Gio's is more basic. Also he has a command grab, it's situational but it's really good for some occasional funny tick throws
@@mrblooper1994 Gio basically has a better dp against lots of setups, especially safe jumps. What mix? Gio has waaaay better strike throw with her literally unreactable dash. You do know that sol 2S is a mid, right? The command grab is nice but you can option select it pretty easily if you’re playing tight enough. Also no way you’re saying Sol has better whiff punishment when Gio has that dash, lmao
@@soren1803 yes the strike throw on Gio is really good. But I still think Sol's mix is better. His air approach is so much better as well. I'm not downplaying Gio I'm me carried over here but her Dp is not usable as a reversal it's a situational AA and good for some frame traps (unless they hit a low) and if it works it hurts a lot. Gio is more consistent while Sol has more tools to deal with BS. AND YES GIO DASH IS GOATED
Really hope they won't nerf him again lmao. Imo problem of sol is rather simple. He's mostly honest character in an anime game. That's literally the reason why Ragna, Sol, Shiki etc keep being rated really highly at the start of the lifecycle but drop significantly later down the line (well this + nerfs ofc)
Yeah sol is literally a honest character. It sucks that he is actually honest and doesnt have anything broken to make him top tier like other characters. So i feel like a small buff will definitely help him out before he gets power creeped
I think the game is pretty well balanced. A pro on the top of their game is a tourney major threat with any character... except Sin and Pot. That said, I think it's comical that one tournament is supposed to end the discussion. NBNHR absolutely waxed Mocchi in winners. If Mocchi had lost his close match against Gobou and Skyll lost his close match against NBNHR would we all conclude Sol is bottom tier? I think Sol in the 8-10 range makes a lot of sense and he's arguably a bit better in tournament since his playstyle and win condition are more straightforward amd stable than some other characters.
I like your videos but this one is bizarre - I watched it till the end and I'm still not sure what is even the problem being talked about... Is it that Sol is still too strong, or that he got nerfed too much? :)
Jp players are ok excepting that blocking is not necessarily a negative part of your game plan, but westetn players feel like if your not in the interaction " drivers seat" thats a huge negative. Where as defensively the eastern midset understands that every 50/50 option for sol gives him a 50% chance to guess right, and delete half a health bar on confirms. In the west we see that as a 50 50 to guess right from the offensive side with little advantage to a reactionary player, thats false beacause s player whos practaced at skilled defence mixing both reactionary and premtive defensive measures can turn defensive situatioms into more then just a question of " whos turn is it". From the popular ourltlook of the west where " i didint pay 50$ to block" it seems strange to consider the defensive options, as far as what you can challenge on reation in situations and how much reward you get, as equal to offensive mindset of dictateing paceing and options. It also helps explain why charecters like millia who have very good neutral paceing dictation and more safe blockstrind counter dictation are higher. Maybe it seems rudimemtary for top players, but thats a stark diffrence ive found between playing top level western and eastern players.
He’s decent. Solid middle of the pack choice. For such an offensive character, his defensive options are actually where i’d say he shines, while his neutral is iffy and gameplan is one of the most deliberate in the game. You know exactly what he wants to do, and how he’s going to go about doing it, you just have to find a way to stop it. Obviously this is easier said than done. All in all, I don’t want to say its that he’s honest, i’d say he’s just straight forward. The better you are fundamentally, the more Sol shines, which is true for any character, but especially with Sol, cause if you capitalize, he can close out rounds in seconds. Tbh, the only buff I personally want to see is getting back some of my old routes. CH 6H on a hard punish feels so unrewarding now that it doesnt link into vortex. Vortex is my favorite move, I want my routes back.
a very important thing that makes sol better than people think is that he really abuses universal mechanics well. many characters can dash IB mid blockstring against characters like nago, gio, testament etc but very few if any actually have the tools to make those situations scary or even punishable for those characters, which is something sol can do with impunity. for being strike/throw his pressure also leads to so much damage and looping situations (clean hit HKD, corner throw safejumps that go into high/low and so on) that risk/reward is skewed obscenely in his favour in almost every matchup, because you can unfuzzyable high/low sol all you want on knockdown, but if he guesses right and hits you once, you fucking explode. i also think the point about him not getting much damage off neutral pokes meterless is kinda weird because not much of the cast can get that much without meter unless they have a unique resources or a really good starter. if anything sol is actually in a better spot compared to some others because his noncommittal +2 far slash that you need to preemptively low profile unless you wanna get CH and eat shit at least gives you a knockdown that lets you put people in strike throw, even if the pressure from that knockdown is weaker than what you would want. on counterhit it gets even better, because as long as you can hitconfirm, now you get hard knockdown for preemptively pressing 2S, which is easily one of the most ignorant pokes in the game. ultimately sol's flaws lie more in how balanced he is than any inherent problem with his archetype. he's good at a little bit of everything, so when he fights a character that can prey on his average stats to keep him out and force him to commit harder to make it in, he's going to struggle; even then, his reward for being right is so high that you can never count him out of the game until it's totally over.
Yea good point about the ib, def might be the best ib user in the game (mocchi in particular is good at using this). The point about neutral conversions weren’t that they are bad, but he has to work harder to get them
You do realize that sol’s basic pressure crumbles to 6p, right? Sol has to start making reads really early into his offense to get much of anywhere. Mocchi won the event with triple wild throw for God’s sake, lol
@@soren1803 if sol's basic pressure crumbles to 6P, neither of the players that made it to arc world tour against some of the best players in the world for their respective characters, most of which have amazing 6Ps (nago, HC, zato) would be getting away with doing any of the shit they were doing in the tournament. maybe consider looking at the bigger picture instead of taking your stats from shitters in tower who start mashing as soon as they register blockstun
@@SuperNimi35 his BASIC pressure. Mocchi won the tournament with triple wild throw. That’s not good or basic pressure, that’s being a godlike player. When both players understand Sol and respect his options, sol is decent, but I’m sick of people overstating that. He literally has no option to automatically beat backdash, he has to call it out.
Im very biased since my friend just started maining sol in like the last week and doesnt play often or practice and he is destroying me now after we were playing on equal ground. It may because I just picked up Chipp aswell but even my old mains like Sin and Bridget get smashed by his Sol. I can only beat him with Bedman.
Sol isn't a problem because you can't be scrubby with Sol. Sol IS however strong and should not be downplayed, ever. A good Sol player doesn't give two soaring fucks about the MU. His frame data, specials, and damage are all great, and some of his normals are just cracked as mentioned in the video. The rest of the cast can do what he does but better a lot of the time, but only Sol can do it all, and well enough to remain a consistent threat.
sol is a problem for himself i would like to preface this unhinged essay by saying that i don't think sol is a character that struggles to function or is in a state where the character is objectively bad. currently i would place him in the middle of the pack. i think the character functions largely by design and performs very well when taking advantage of the systems that he can abuse and i think that's the problem. the systems he abuses enables him to have as much damage output as he has. and there are two systems he abuses in particular that have allowed him to stay relevant for as long as he has, one being a system mechanic and the other being a personal mechanic. the first is kara cancels, the other is clean hit. now kara cancels affect too many things and is too central to the function of the game now to screw around with it this late in strive's lifetime, sin literally stops working without it. so we have to look at clean hit and i think it's time arcsys stop beating around the bush and finally give clean hit the axe it's current state is a relic of early season 1 when damage scaling was more severe with RC damage scaling and clean hit's purpose was to power through that and guts. every change and nerf he's gotten has made routing into clean hit more and more and more important as a means of getting meaningful damage in every possible situation. hyper focusing on his ability to route into clean hit vipers i think is becoming unhealthy for the character overall and the devs seeming fixation and insistence on it remaining the way it is has only served to put sol in a more awkward position and i firmly believe it will continue to cause problems with his balancing going forward if it is left the way it is get it over with. nerf clean hit so you finally have the freedom to make his other tools feel better to use i don't want more damage i never wanted more damage i just want to not hate neutral you can take away the damage but please. stop taking away the neutral to do it
I really didnt value japanese perspectives (mostly from not hearing details about them), and I feel overvalued common na perspectives when I was playing this game last patch. I think I really undervalued strong defensive options in this game especially. interesting video.
@@randomcatname7792 Wild to continue to generalize regions in 2023 lmao NA has had a strong presence nearly every year in nearly every game at EVO, along with most other regions. NA isn't the greatest, but now Japan isn't either. Also, Justin Wong has the most EVO titles in the world and he's NA, kinda blows a hole in your theory. So in conclusion: don't care + didn't ask + ratio + you fell off + cope + seethe + mald
I feel like sol is "fine" from a competitive stand point, hes not top 10 but thats not really a big deal, enough dedication and the character still works, as you said the character has two big flaws, struggles to dash in, and thats what he needs to get the win condition, and hes really honest (yea sun goodfella might be the most honest character in the game, deal with it) or as you put it he lack that "bullshit" factor that evryone else has. My biggest gripe with him is that, over the last few patches, he has gotten more and more "boring" some of his bullshit factor got taken out (ch6S and slow flame created a sort of danger zone in front of him that was hard to approach, making contesting that space wild for both players) and most importantly he lost options and routing. Id gladly traid a litfle bit of my clean hit vv damage to get ch6S back or more tools in general. Also a lot of the "better" characters play at mid range or specialize in midrange and sol struggles there, and last patch only made it worse, yeah good saul players can adapt and manouver in mid range but over all it "feels" like you struggle more with him then other characters. That said sol is not top 10, but not bottom 5. Iunno a comfortable B tier? Good to play and can put in work, but other characters have advantages
I think the player matter for sol. See how punk didnt grind the game he got back to the game with him to a tourney and he was smoked pretty badly by character that have bullshit factors But if the player know everything his dmg can carry like in the evo Hes just a solid handy simple tool with no gimmicks and it can work
i feel like a lot of characters in strive are like kind of at the same level of good, so who wins is gonna come down to player skill. like no matter how balanced the game gets, somebody technically has to be bottom 10 or whatevr, even if the bottom 10 characters are just like sliiiiightly worse than the top 10 characters, if ur making a tier list u still gotta rank them.
