Yeah, I’m still trying to decide if I should play Ibuki or Yun or even bother entering SFIV at Evo. I can’t give you any advice about safe jumping him besides “You’re doing it wrong.” You can definitely safejump him, his uppercut is one of the weaker ones in the game. Though, it’s still an uppercut, so if you time it wrong I’m gonna scrub it out and hit you with it. Just try to get that timing down, as difficult as online is.
Ryu gave me more trouble, but to be honest with the exception of a handful of BnBs with your entire stable of characters, you play them all EXACTLY the same. You throw projectiles and wait for them to come to you, and then you anti-air with a DP move, standing roundhouse, or bully them with jabs and sweeps. You definitely have a knack for knowing the exact spacing of each and every normal Ryu has, but the moment you lose the health lead you have no offense whatsoever and rely on a mashed uppercut through blockstrings. I’m still getting the hang of Yun (especially the timing to nullify or move through fireballs), but I noticed that all I had to do was hit you a couple of times, then stay full screen and build meter while dodging fireballs and you wouldn’t do anything about it. No walking forward, only some blind jumpins and a couple of uppercuts. In short, your defense and zoning game is fantastic, but your offense is underdeveloped. I’m biased though 'cause everyone knows I play with a shit defense and a risky offense, haha.
Besides my usual Wolverine = Balrog rant, I think that I agree that Wesker is a better overall character on paper. However, I think that Wolverine benefits more from assists than Wesker does. So while Wesker is better than Wolverine, Wesker + Akuma or Sentinel is not nearly as potent as Wolverine + Akuma or Sentinel. Wolverine has a much more ambiguous mixup than Wesker’s and he’s got a wonky hitbox that helps with anti-airs and the like. The standard now seems to be, for Wolverine, to take advantage of that more powerful mixup, X-Factor, kill the character quickly with 1/2 of your Level 1 X-Factor remaining, and then use the same powerful mixup on the next coming character. So with Wolverine, you have the potential to take two characters away from your opponent after a c.L or a divekick. Wesker has a less awesome mixup with his teleport (Don’t get me wrong, it’s still powerful) and while you can also burn your X-Factor to kill a character, his combos don’t have the same damage output as Wolverine does and take too long to kill another whole character while Level 1 X-Factor is running. In return, he gets a better zoning game with that gun and a little more health, but in this game I think that it’s more powerful to have the damage output Wolverine has. I definitely think that Magneto gives Wolvie a run for his money, but I don’t think that it’s a vastly better matchup for Wesker either because that gun doesn’t help nearly as much as it seems. Wesker still has to jump his way in and guess with some unsafe teleports, the same as doing some Beserker slashes.
TL;DR: Wesker > Wolverine. However, Wolverine + Assist > Wesker + Assist.
BTW, I think Zero’s in the same boat as Wesker. He can kill a character in one go and get a free mixup with Level 1 X-Factor, but his damaging combos are too long to kill 2 characters while XF is still active. In return he gets a Buster and awesome normals.
