Is the "Claw grip" important for playing with a controller?

Hey. I've finally come up with a legitimate question to ask you guys.

So when playing with a controller I've read here about what I call the claw grip; it's when you use not just your thumb for ABXY buttons, but your index fingers as well. I suppose you'd be using your pinky to press the shoulder buttons, or maybe bind HP/HK to the left shoulder buttons instead.

I'm playing with a 360 controller at the moment, currently using the analog stick rather than the D-Pad because I have a hard time trusting the 360's D-Pad and I feel I can overcome my inconsistent QCFs and DPs with practice. But I digress.

I'd like to know if you all experienced controller players out there (not just 360, I'd imagine this goes for pretty much any controller) find it to be essential to learn to use more fingers than your thumb for the Light/Medium buttons.

At the moment I feel like I can do any combination of two L/M buttons quite well with just my thumb, however I bought the game 5 days ago and I have yet to face a good player. I do sometimes slip and input them one after another, which generally registers anyway but it's slower than pressing them at the same time right away.

If it's about PP or KK I can just learn to use my thumb for one L/M button and use another finger for one of the H shoulder buttons. But when it comes to Grabs (LK+LP) or 2nd Tag (MK+MP) it's more difficult. The assist combinations (MK+LP & LK+MP) is obviously really hard, but I can use the 2 macro bindings for those which are on by default.

So should I continue learning using my thumb only or is this considered suboptimal when playing with a controller? I'd rather find out sooner than later since I'd hate having to re-learn muscle memory from switching hand placement...

Thanks!

Hey thanks for your input. It's nice to hear the opinion of someone who has more experience & playtime than myself. I do feel better using just my thumb; I just wanted to know whether it was a really big handicap (as in, very difficult to do consistently) when you get to higher level play, which seems like it isn't the case.