Why Nagoriyuki Is Top Tier in Guilty Gear Strive 

Sorry about my honesty but you talk - especially in the beginning - as if people mostly slept on him and he was hardly affected by balance patches, directly or indirectly (from the balance of other characters) since release, when thats simply not the case. It is a fact he was definitely way weaker on release than he is now compared to other characters. His blood gauge and move properties were crap compared to now and he was overall way riskier to play than he is currently. Its not like the game or the character are - or ever were - complex enough to people not have figured that out, even in the first month, and as if now they supposedly changed their opinion because of their experience with the character and the game. I agree this is what normally happens in fighting games with at least some depth but for Strive it is actually quite the contrary. The gameplay is so shallow and straightforward (in a bad way) that if you ask me most experienced players already solved it in the first week. Speaking for myself, the game in the end still feels exactly the same since release, despite the bells and whistles they dropped in since then. What I can say for a fact is that the final meta was called out by pros already in the beta and its scary how still spot on it is. Nago is top tier right now simply because the devs want it so, choosing him to out-unga what was dominating before him. I wish it was for a different reason but it isnt. Thats all this game was and currently is reduced to and thats why balance patches wont ever save it, just change who is in the spotlight as a result of heavy-handed balancing. Even trying to analyze the game in this state is giving it too much credit imho, since it presumes the game is something to be taken seriously. Only a complete overhaul of its mechanics and finally nerfing that outrageous damage (randomly rewarding people for basically doing nothing) can change it in any meaningful way. Until then youll either be bored to hell winning nonstop if your character is strong, or otherwise coping with losing to other characters BS while trying to find meaning or logic behind it when theres none at all.

As a Nago main since day 1 and no one else, I had no idea this game had a dash button.

it's also worth noting that nago has some of the highest round start threat of any character in the entire game in the form of a low commitment kick that's safe on block

they really need to let you set a blood level for nago in training mode like you can with GLD's security meter

Nago main day 1 and i gotta be honest, no other character has drawn me in faster than Nago in any FG, ever. What a sick and well designed character. Everything about him just screams cool.

I would love to see more breakdown vids like this. It's good to see why a character is considered top tier through action rather than just through word

Something that LK only sort of touches on/implies is that it's specifically the combination of high health+high damage & high consistency that makes Nago top tier. What this means is that whenever Nago scores a hit, whatever that hit might be, he's doing 60%+ of your HP. However, when you're right, even if you have similar damage output you're not going to be doing the same percentage of Nago's HP. This means that if you're both winning neutral the same number of times in a match, Nago will *always* win. It's just math. I don't think I have to explain why being able to ALWAYS win if the game devolves into a slugfest is incredibly powerful. What puts him over similar characters like GL & Potemkin however is the fact that unlike those two, as LK noted, Nago's neutral is actually good. Take Potemkin damage output & durability and take away the one thing that makes Potemkin balanced (mediocre neutral) and you have yourself a top tier.

Very well explainied. While I'm a complete scrub, Nago was my day 1 pick, mostly because of his charadesign and the fact that explaining he was an Afro Cyber Vampire (dandy) Samurai always made me laugh. I remember when people used to say his trade wasn't worth (easy special comboing versus blood gauge pressure and no dash) but, as a Vaseraga player in GBVS, I always thought he was ideal to play and his chipping on normals was quite god like. Anyway, great video, I like that your editing is not crowded/interupted with/by silly meme graphics and you don't seem to be playing a role. It's nice and clean and to the point. Good work.

I get that Nago is supposed to be a “one hit” archetype character who does massive damage. IMO the problem is it’s waaaaaay too easy to get that one hit

The way I defined top tiers in the last patch was "a group of characters who's weaknesses are that they are resource management characters that don't have to manage resources and with the added benefit of being able to deny 1 or more system mechanics" this still pretty much applies. Also I was one of the people that thought Nago was mid on release, but in my defense, my opinion was based on what I knew about him from the beta. His blood has gotten progressively easier to manage every patch/release.

wether nagoriyuki is top, mid or low tier.... his design is beyond god tier.

I think that his damage output of 2 life bars per second kinda helps

I don't really have much to add for gameplay... You covered him perfectly I'm just happy we get a black character in a modern fighting game that's unambiguously cool and badass. Nago means a lot to me, even if I don't really compete at high levels of play...

Nago is awesome. Sickest design in the game and he's really fun to play. I've checked out other characters but I keep coming back.

Great video! I'd love to see this kind of video for other Top tiers too, I think that would be interesting. You might also add a section about ways to fight against them as well.

Tbh I feel like he's kinda designed like a glass cannon character, with the cannon being his obvious offensive potency and the glass being losing half your health at minimum if you choke. Only "problem" is since you can control the pop to a certain degree, and since he has the highest health in the game, he ends up being less of a glass cannon and more of an ordinary cannon. Personally I think he was at his best in 1.0. Then with the first major update came the f.SSS blood reduction buff and since then there's been a push to increase his ease of use without compromising his potency, which gets pushed alongside the players developing more and more countermeasures to his biggest trade off. I'm not sure if it's good or bad design, and I still enjoy playing him when I do, but he has a little too much potential for "head empty" offense nowadays for my taste.

I didn’t even know Guilty Gear existed. Then I saw the Nago reveal trailer and that the game was made by ArcSys. He looked so awesome I knew right away I would main him. Now people hate me because he is top tier. I’d still play him even if he got nerfed tho.

Hey LK, thanks for the great vid. I've played Melee for a long time but I've been slowly poking away at the tutorials for a month and was thinking of playing Nago. Appreciate all the good Strive videos!

any other nago players feel pain when he was doing his fukyo spam? I'm referring to the fact that if you hold kick while doing a fukyo, you can just do a forward or back input to easy chain fukyo's.

When i saw Nago in the beta and people complained that he is such a bad character i just shook my head.....

I think the big problem with Nago is how he interacts with round start position and the damage in the game. He doesn’t just have options for round start, he has a tool for almost everything at that range and it all leads into a full combo for over half your life and corner carry/wall break. Round start against Nago is terrifying because risk/reward is always in his favor. If you win, you get damage and have to play neutral against him; if he wins, that’s basically the game unless you beat the next mix up. You have to burst him on his first combo or you lose, and he is a relatively hard character to burst sometimes. I don’t know if Nago is actually top 1 rn when HC still gets his win con from burst, but they’re both definitely top tier.

I think his greatest advantage is that he's fun to play. God I love this character.

While every thing you said is true, I feel like what really makes Nago a cut above is how every single thing is a frametrap so long as he has blood. Button > Spin or Button > DP or Spin > DP or Button/Spin/Clone > Back Fukyo > Button or Clone > plus frames. He doesn't have to end his turn if he doesn't want to. Good Nago players can sometimes get you in a situation where you have to block the bloodsplosion, which is much harder to punish if you actually block instead of avoid it. And the blood mechanic can, in some situations, work out as a free burst and freeze frame, which are minor annoyances. Alongside all of this, his good neutral buttons - which you touched on - can't be beat by 6P. So he's quite strong no matter where he is on the screen. I feel like have to make more correct reads on defense against Nago than most other characters.

shoutout to the editing in this video, really put together well and engaging (coming from previous LK talking head videos or simple edit compilations, which are still good videos)

Talking about broly he's so funny because he's a grappler that's also the best zoner. Which is just hilarious

Good vid overall, but just under half of it is spent saying "Nago has lots of effective health" and going into a bit tooo much detail on how that's calculated. It's not useless info it just feels a bit tangential to the point of the vid.

Bro lk is just so chill. I can't describe it but this is just calming to watch I'm not even playing strive right now but I watch these videos in case I feel like it

yesterday i had some matches with a nago and i never felt more threatren in my life. the fact that his 6H clashes with tyrant rave has changed me.

Nago was one of the best right from launch. Then he got buffed because people downplayed him. Then he got buffed more.

You can not calculate EHP like this, because guts has breakpoints. If i hit someone with a 100 dmg super before the next level of guts kicks in i will reduce his hp more than if he had a little hp less. This whole guts thing is really unnecessarily complicated.

At release I thought he'd be a mid-tier at best too, but not exactly due to his system limitations. I thought his pressure would get "solved" as the game aged. Even though his damage and range were insane you'd be able to OS most if not all of his pressure. And then they buffed him for 2 patches straight and I realized I had grossly misjudged how scary even a mid-dispenser (as you call it) can be. lol

In my dream world, Nago's bite would do just a little damage like Slayer's did, and his normals would only start chipping at lvl 2 blood. Beyblade wouldn't be able to anti air too.

thumbnail kinda poppin today 👀

How did ppl think that he's mid? This is a godly kit

14 frames is technically reactable, it's like 233 ms. That's above median human reaction time. It's reactable in theory, it's just very hard because he has other options.

Nb4 comments come in all telling how they were special and knew his potential from the start

I really want to see a video like this about Gold Lewis I need to learn to understand the character help help

Love these types of videos!

This is the first guilty gear I've played from the start really interesting seeing a character go from weak to super strong the way nago did

3:07 can’t you see I’m blazing!

You didn't mention that his "grab" is actually a command grab, so you can't tech it, it beats normal grabs. You have to jump, backdash or interrupt it. All of which require a bit of a guess, an educated guess that you can mitigate by using FD and watching for the times when he CAN grab, but still at the end of the day you can't react to bite, you have to guess or fuzzy jump if you have that down.

I know nothing of Guilty Gear, but I respect all of you Guilty Gear players. I hope to see you guys at CEOtaku and I’ll be rooting for some of y’all.

Just bought the game. Nago just appeals to me.

Thanks for the explanation, I kept wondering why I was always getting hit by that bayblade, good to know it comes out abd hits faster than humans can react. So basically if you are not blocking when it comes out you got hit. No reacting to it.

I think you should do this with every character. That'd be kinda cool

I always wondered why that superboss in arcade mode was virtually impossible unless you cheesed him

this video is mixed mad quiet. maybe add some compression?? the sound levels will stay relatively close but it will make things louder

My main problem is his clone. It’s literally skip neutral into rps.

I'm so sad that they nerf his standing H it used to go almost fullscreen

I love Nagoriyuki. Dude is so cool. But the difference I feel when I play him vs when I play Millia is staggering and that's just the way it goes. They're two difference sides of the spectrum and I can't really speak for Millia because I am not really at the same level with her as Nago but I still think that Nago ought to be put in more of a losing state when he pops Blood Rage.

@LordKnight Does changing between GUTS ranges apply during a combo, or only after the opponent recovers? So if my first hit takes you under 70% but I continue the combo after that, is the GUTS multiplier applying during the entire combo?

His gameplan is strikethrow, sure. But he also does damage on a blocked strike, unless you want to spend the meter. Which you should, just be careful about it. Also 6p and 6k mean that he has a pretty big advantage at round start. One beats higher hitboxes, the other beats lower hitboxes. Add that to the easy combo game for big damage, and you can get blown up very quickly. To quote an anti nago guide "don't fight this man at roundstart. You have to safely build space to force him to spend blood to get in." While that's a cool design that your supposed to exploit to fight him, it's still very strong for a high health high damage to essentially start the game in an advantageous state.

Hey LordKnight, How do I whiff punish Nago's 2S? I just bought Guilty Gear Xrd last week and the matchup is pretty hard for Ky

Even as a Nagoriyuki main, if in 3-4 years his bloodrage is entirely unchanged I'll be surprised (but grateful)

As a beginner, holy shit playing against nago is infuriating. I feel like I can't react to his dashes, he covers so much ground in so little time while getting not even a bar of blood, gets in your face with so much ease, has a near endless pressure string, which forces you to always be on a lookout for a 50-50 command grab scenario, and if you screw up, that's >50% hp. Also his overhead slash also hits the ground, like, cmon man.

This guys seems like he's a mix of Frank West and Arthur's armor from Marvel 3

all of that plus he looks cool af.

A decent Nago player won't even let you play the game 😃

I've always wondered why some players double tap their buttons. Is it a holdover from some mechanic in an old game or just a habit?

I don't play gg just like it and for someone who doesn't play you really explain it well

You can hold K to do insanely fast fuukyo's btw

THERE WAS A DASH IN STRIVE!?!?

Tbh I'm all for Nago being top tier cuz he does have alot of limitations and some complexity to a certain degree but if he's gonna be this boss character I atleast want a few more counterplays to his kit. Maybe being able to 6P his projectile like May's, reducing active frames from his dp so we can backdash if he delays etc. Ofcourse these are just examples I just thought of on the spot, I know iad is a good option against his projectile (just mentioning this before a Nago main comes to reply with it in a condescending manner) and season 2 did gave us counterplay to Beyblade but as we can all see its clearly not enough. I'm not for completely nerfing characters to the ground but when a character can easily force situations that favours them without multiple things to worry about there's always going to be problems.

He's carrying me through ladder ngl.

Only commenting before the spelling error correction. Also, Nago main. I am very intelligent.

i respect the chopper plush

I thought nago was really bad until I played arcade. Then I had to go to therapy.

He can say the N word

I think that Nago's design and counterplay are just not very fun to play against or interact with (like Chaos). The gameplan I commonly see against Nago is "either win round start and go ham or wait for 2.5 blood". This would be fine except, unlike Sin Kiske (who I firmly believe is very much better designed as a meter management character), the command grab essentially forces you to gamble on his terms. Now this would also be ok if at max range he could be zoned out, but as discussed in the video, he cannot at low blood. This would also be fine except in season 2, meter gain is reduced and therefore Nago can keep running his gameplan. Let's also not forget guard crush state when he pops (compared to Sin who just sits there and is ready to die). Overall it feels like this character has a convoluted counterplay plan that requires the enemy to mess up and get to high blood OR you flip a coin (which is also in his favor even if you win the coin flip because of guts). I'd like to see so many things changed about this character subjectively, however to be more fair, I think blood gain needs to be bigger. These moves are too strong (and rightfully so), but the cost of using them often feels like its irrelevant. If they increase blood gain, you see these big moves less and there is more thoughtfulness of when to spend blood or not

420 bullshit blaze it. I always appreciate these types of breakdowns

I dislike fighting Nago but I'll take a Nago every day over a Pot or a Faust. Something about those two just start opening my salt valve haha.

Bruh I thought he got nerfed when I picked him back up but now he just got stronger??? Back to Faust, I don’t feel good playing this character

Besides all of that he is just damn fun to play :D

I think Day 1 Nago wasn't overpowered...but clone buff and f.SSS buff turned him into a powerhouse. DP was also pretty trash. Nago day 1 needed help but high health, high conversion, good neutral buttons and strong strike throw mix makes a top tier. Sure his air mobility is trash and sure his defensive options aren't brain dead but if they we're he'd be beyond broken. I honestly thought they would nerf clone but instead "nerfed" 👀🤷🏿‍♂️😂😂 beyblade lol

Forgot to mention that his big ass normals do chip damage!

I just hate otg 6h other than that he's "fair" and I say that with a heavy heart because he never really does feel fair to fight sometimes.

Nago is just goku moroha Slayer and Johnny

Good video, but if you do another like this, you may consider structuring it differently. You spent about 5 minutes on this one - nearly half the video - explaining the basics of health. Nago's health is important, but it's not something that's central to his identity as a top tier. If you want to explain why a character is top tier, it may be better to structure the video as if you are explaining the thought process of a typical match versus Nago, as it happens. So maybe something like this: Talking about his round start coverage and reward (using the opportunity to say that his damage is very high) > his pressure and what makes it scary (can't escape easily until he's high on blood, have to guess strike or throw, talk about how rewarding both are) > talk about trying to take your turn back (how even glancing blows get him blood back to run another bit of mix) > his HP and neutral tools (hard to kill him, all his buttons are insanely strong so his lack of mobility doesn't really matter so much unless you're a zoner) > assorted privileges he has that just makes everything else worse (such as comboing into blood rage mix, or the freeze frame after blood rage ends, or the neutral skips he can use once it does).

is it his DNF blockstrings

Let's also not forget the absolute chaos that is f.SSS, both on block AND on hit. Shit takes nearly a bar of blood away on block, and roughly about a bar and a quarter on hit. That sounds bonkers already, but what if I told you that you can STACK THIS BS? Yup, you can stack f.SSS blood mitigation just by doing RC and repeating the processes. It's genuinely criminal. God this character is a war crime, but goddamn it that's my boy.

I still hate him more than HC. It’s probably because I’ve been a Gio main since day 1 and nago players mash so much that it makes me want to throw up, and they still haven’t changed.

LK please hold K to do multiple fukyos to bloodrage FAST, thanks. With love A lowly Nago player :)

His system weaknesses are exactly why i dropped him after a year. When they removed red rc scaling, nerfed a bunch of things and let the cast deal as much damage as Nago without the limitation his -oneshot- tag lost all value to me. Hes top tier sure for the same 5 Nago players, but a year of not double jumping, dash breaking, air dashing just really opened up how frustrating he has become for me. Moved to Gio, good break down, will like.

Yeet

Most hated. Idk when ram exist

gud vidya

1:31 LK you can just hold a direction and K to keep fukyo'ing, not only is it more efficient than what you did here but it's also hilarious

Im a Nago main and I hate Nago. Pls dont make him a braindead character.

May does as much damage as nago

Is that title correct grammaticaly?

Anyone else not really like this new white box video format? Am I alone on this one?

The main reason people slept on him early on is that he wasn't nearly as good - and Sol and Ram were a lot better. If you wanted to win on release you were playing Fair Far Slash Frederick.

People on release: nago bad Me: special cancels go brr

I THINK seriusly is not top tier anymore , there are too many characters with feint , dash , priority , dp , too make them safe after a rushdown setup , and rage meter build too fast for nothing

Its true nago can confirm off almost anything but we have to take care not to forget that he has to spend resources to do so in a lot of situations. Hes definitely strong though, cool af too.

Forgot to mention he has the best roundstart in the game so he automatically starts every round with an advantage.

What? Nago can't dash? Nah you're fake this whole channel is fake this whole channel is...