I have much experience in fighting sticks. After entering many a tournament and knocking out endless amounts of opponents with my supreme skill, I can personally confirm with you that the best fighting stick is the one in the picture attached. It has support for those of us who are left-handed and makes combos a breeze. It's fully portable and sets up nearly anywhere in mere seconds. Need dual-hand support? It's got that. Wanna up your metagame? Throw off your opponent by its secret feature whereby, if you put it on the right settings, you can control HIS character temporarily, provided you don't get caught. Losing the battle? It automatically performs desperation moves for you (depending on the game, but this is programmable), just turn the stick in the direction of your opponent and press the punch button repeatedly to activate.
Other notable features:
- Infinite attachment capabilities
- Swappable cover
- Compatible with nearly any system
- Durable
- Weatherproof
- Wireless
- Easy to use
- Customizable
- Lightweight
- Extremely long-lasting battery life
- Comes with instruction manual and lifetime warranty
I've been using mine for the last 3 years and haven't lost a fight yet.

You weren't the only one, I also thought this was going to be a thread about weapons, haha!
You're the one who should do it, he's right - since you apparently don't know the word, google eczema - and spell it right, not with the "y" you used. It makes perfect sense, the two words sounds very similar, haha!

Personally I don't know much about fighting sticks but I was also thinking of getting one because I found it harder to pull of 360 and DP on my pad, however maybe I was doing it wrong - but for some reason I feel like I was inputting the DP correctly, but often it did instead 236, so maybe I was going too much up.

Ask Bradley he's taking some sort of fighting class.


Side Note-
Didn't read OP....

Funny, I thought you meant these kind of sticks.

Aren't they brown and sticky?

Ok since the "Dan Inosanto knows the filipino fighting sticks" jokes are already taken, I try to answer seriously. I'd think they are quite a niche product nowadays, as fighting games aren't probably that big a genre anymore that it was on the Sega Saturn and Playstation times. Even less so when talking about PCs, even if nowadays at least PC seems to get some good(?) fighting game ports too. The problem is that those sticks aren't very useful for other genres nowadays, I presume. By "joystick", do you mean analog flighsticks for PCs. The digital arcade sticks are nothing like that.

I don't really recognize your problem of a too long travel distance with arcade sticks, in fact if I'd e.g. have to do some motion where I need to move the controller from left to right to left to right repeatedly, I bet I could do it much faster and more comfortably with a digital arcade stick using my hand, than with a D-pad using my mere thumb.

I'm speaking largely from experience with sticks I had probably 20 years ago. I've avoided them since then. I am seeing a similar issue trying to use the analog stick on a 360 pad. There is just a lot more distance to cover. I'm sure you don't have to go edge to edge, but it's a lot of work fighting the self centering.

It seems like it would end up being a precision vs distance balance issue and I'm wondering if different sticks have taken different approaches. At this point I'm doubting there are a many people here with the nuanced perspective to be comparing one make to another.

I'm probably just going to jump in with whatever looks good at the time. SFV themed ones are coming up it looks like there is a cheap option that may be a good place to start. It's not an investment I can make just yet, so it's not like I have to make any decisions anytime soon.

You're thinking of cinnamon. Not sure if cinnamon sticks are good for fighting. Cinnamon is normally known as a lover, not a fighter.

Y'all just gonna ignore my beautiful response? Man, tough crowd...

You know, for just a moment I thought I was getting some insightful information. Then I thought something is going on here. Then..sigh.

I thought the same

I'll accept that as a success on my part.
All jokes aside, when it comes to the world of fighting games, not only am I a pretty casual player, but I could never figure out how to properly use a joystick. I have heard, however, that Mad Catz and Hori make some of the best. Here's a handy-dandy article which might help you on transitioning from the pad to the joystick:
http://www.eventhubs.com/guides/2009/jul/08/tips-switching-pad-joystick/

Just a suggestion, you can build one yourself using a Xbox360 controller as donor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5qrZHVFXE0

Actually to save some money you could just use any cheap PC compatible gamepad.

You can't really go wrong with any one from a notable brand, and you're likely just going to use the settings one is built with instead of customizing the joystick ring and other crap. So go for it and figure out what settings work for you. Adjust it as you improve, if you improve, since it's mostly the pro scene that makes the most use of them anyway. The best controls won't make you better than a more experienced opponent anyway. :P