the thing is you cant punish df.hk with u2, but w/e
I’ve done it zillions of times. You do U2 when Chun is at top of you and the ultra auto-corrects and Chun gets sliced. I think you are not understanding that I’m not talking about punishing on block.
You can also use her change of side as your second input of the ultra and do it a little late without auto correct. Meaning while you are charging down back, when she changes side on top of you the things you are pressing became down-forward automatically, and what is left for you to do is press back, forward kkk. Aside from chun mu; you can also do this for cross downs. They won’t be expecting an ultra from you when they change side as you land. You can also do ST this way. Charge down-back and when they jump over you to the other side hit a late back (now forward as they changed side) + kick.
I think you may be both true : dfHK isn’t punishable on block (it’s even positive if think), but can be countered during the flip (move duration is 48 frames in total). =)
And the more I know you, GI, the more I know you’re fond of CH and U2. 
is +2 on block… and 7f actives.
df.hk is strong oki tool against characters with slow reversals. Im telling you that df.hk cant be punished with u2. If for some reason your hitting a random chun with u2 good for you… that chun is not using df.hk correctly and you should be punishing that mistake, mad props.
df.hk`s recovery is 5f and u2 start up is 8f, tell me how can you hit something that recovers faster than your ultra?
i have baited many vegas with df.hk as a meaty, if chun use this move outside meaty situations is very easy to punish, same goes for random ST/FBA from vega, and as you might know not every vega player do that bs because good players know how to use specials and what not.
OMG you started to drive me nuts. I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT A MEATY DF-HK OR PUNISHING IT ON BLOCK, I’M TALKING ABOUT PUNISHING IT WHILE CHUN IS AT TOP OF ME DURING DF+HK.
You really make me want to slice your Chun. Are you on PC?
no im not on pc sorry.
but really idk why any chun would do non meaty df.hk… but like i said, if you can, do it
Any thoughts about the Sakura MU?
Out of the top of my head.
You have to keep out, she has big problems dealing with vega’s pokes and scarlet terror works very decently if she goed to the air ( especially lk version).
The usual AA (airthrow, fw or bw j.mp, n j.hk, s.hk, etc) works ok otherwise.
In the groundgame she will be focussed most on hitting c.mk to shouken and s.hk, be sure to punish these attempts accordingly , preferably with a croucing charged fba combo if u were already crouching or else s.hp for most damage(be sure it hits if u use s.hp ), s.lk to whatever u can afford to do, is also good.
So yeah, you should be winning the ground game and she is ok to AA.
The match really boils down to not letting her get in even once, because once she is in, vega is in big trouble.
Against great sakura’s be carefull with c.mp usage, as she can focus dash cancel it into a damaging combo, i never realized this untill i faced humanbomb who exposed me on this.
Treat her almost like gief, with the exception that you can mount the offence effectivly a few times per match to keep her on her toes, just staying to keepaway for 99 seconds often does not work against an explosive character like sakura.
The beauty of offence vs sakura is that she has no good way to keep vega from jumping in.
Sure her c.hp works sometimes, but vega can beat it clean with the correct angle with both j.hp and j.hk, switch between them to throw her AA timing off even more.
Use this to your advantage to skip her annoying c.mk to shouken footsie game if your trying to approach or trying to make up a lifelead from sakura.
When she has 3 meters and your putting pressure on her always watch out for ex-shouken fadc, she can convert huge from this and bring the match to her with this one mash through a blockstring.
Also like any match up, avoid the corner like the plauge.
If your caught in her pressure, stay calm and wait for her to move slightly out of range before pressing anything, if your going to crouch tech, do it with c.mp, it has a chance to tag a tatsu or move your hitbox in a way that her combo’s wont fully hit all the time, because c.mp shifts your hitbox back. crouch teching with c.lk wont do neither of these.
As for ultra:
I personally prefer U1 for this match, purely to not let her make any use of any kind of fireball anywhere on the screen when you are stocked and i dont see many situations where ultra 2 would be of more use except just throwing it out on her pressure, wich to me seems more like a hail mary then an actual deterrent for her to do anything different in the match. (sakura’s pressure is usually to sharp/fast to get with u2)
Damn this became longer then i planned :x, sorry
I love that match,
First we can outpoke her all day. Use st.LK cr.MP to deal with focus. Cr.MP is hardly a good idea to use solely as a poke because of what Emersion said (unless if you cancel into KKK).
Th thing is I don’t thint that AA her ji.HK is easy, and her jump arc is nasty. You will trade, at best. The good thing is that she doesn’t have a fast SRK to blow up Focus absorb backdash. So she is an mix up situation when you focus her jump.
Forward Throw > Dash forward > st.LK is a meaty that she can’t do nothing about but block. It lets you +3/+6 framewise.
OS st.HP can catch backdashes.
It was a good read Emersion, I didn’t know you can jump in on Sakura for free, That’s prolly what my problem was in not treating her like Gief and not focusing on heavy footsies and yes when im in the corner against Sak i just get blown up. ooooo that sound really nice Haz, I never knew that set up.
I was talking to Da Kunt the other day and he said Vega is a bad match-up for Sakura and he also said Vega also Vega beats Fei-long is this true?
And thank you both for the feedback.
Sak and Fei fall in the same category of matches that favour Vega slightly, because we are kind of dominant in neutral game, but it gets very dicey for us if we allow them anything.
We win the neutral game and that is most important in any match.
We dont win HEAVILY vs them because they have tools against vega to balance it out:
Fei has the nice perk that if he hits something (to rekka), he usually has vega cornered right away, vega does not fight well from the corner at all and its fei’s speciality to kill cornered people.
Get cornered because of a mistake in the beginning and goodluck to you winning that round… its going to be hard.
Sakura does a shit ton of damage and stun and corner carry when she is in and the sak can hit her combo’s, vega can lose with 1 or 2 mistakes, because of his low stun rating and lower life when the mask drops.
but tldr, yes both are slight advantage vega.
Also let me clarify on c.mp on my earlier post, i said be carefull with it, dont ever not use it, just dont overuse it or fall into a pattern of using it… its our best poke, would be foolish to ban it from your neutral game because they might be able to do something against it. weigh risk vs reward before sticking it out and think of the kkk cancel indeed.
Is all about range. If you are near (cr.LP range) and you use cr.MP for poking… you are a moron.
cr.MP is very handy to use at max range and for whiff punishing anything.
Oh, just as full screen Chicken Wings, you can react to full screen EX Tatsus - which may come if you frustrated her options to get in. The difference is that she isn’t airborne when the last kick is supose to hit you and if you get hit you will eat an Ultra. Both of these points favors the st.HK as the move of choice to react to it (1f faster and won’t air reset her in the first hit). And you HAVE to react to it! Being hit is terrible and even blocking is bad, as she is at +4 on your face just because she had a bar. That can’t happen.
Haztlan asked me about guile and I ended up writing him a long response, so I’ll post it here too!
There are several elements to gaining an edge vs Guile.
Element #1: Getting Guile into the corner is a top priority. The mark of a pro guile is to not just throw sonic booms, but be able to recover bits of ground while doing so to avoid getting cornered really fast. The problem for Guile is that Vega can block a sonic boom, walk forward, block another one and end up CLOSER than Vega was previously. Little by little, Vega can close the gap just by walking, and the occasional focus dash covers even more ground. Walking up takes time so you need patience of steel and the smarts to block quicker against ex.sonic boom. As he gets towards his corner, guile needs to make a big move to jump over you or especially throw YOU to the other side, so watch for it. Guile will often win his rounds by throwing you into the corner that you worked so hard to get.
Element #2: If you knock down and jump in on the very far back side of guile with your j.HP, all of his flashkicks will go under you and wiff. Guile is absolutely forced to defend this positioning. His backdash and flashkick can both be punished with a cr.HK option select on the jumpin (a Cosmic Hell will come out instead and hit a forward-moving Flashkick), and with focus dashing he obviously risks eating the damage from your cr.HP and followup attack. He really needs to block high here, breaking his charge and putting Guile in an awful defensive position where you can do hit confirms, kara grabs, and tech traps. If he supers or ultras you will only take 1 hit and be able to punish. Guile’s flashkick is 4 frames, so technically you can safejump it from the front, but the timing is as tight as it gets. Also, your backthrow-immediate-jumpin setup will be beaten by flashkick so you have to decide whether to attack or emptyjump to be safe. Jumping in high on his back is always a better situation.
Element #3: Guile cannot escape a perfect walldive vortex, his only hope is to time his dash so he takes a soft knockdown on the slash instead of getting grabbed. You can grab his backdash too, but the later timing to do this will put you at risk of an ex.flashkick or a focus crumple. Remember that the way you hold the stick determines which direction the opponent lands, so hold away from the corner on the final descent if you want to keep yourself cornered for another izuna dive (remember that LK walldive is faster). Again, his U1 and Super will only hit you once. His ultra 2 can autocorrect so WATCH out unless you can break his charge.
Element #4: Certain risks can be taken vs guile when you are in his head. Random walldives are not solid but are sometimes your only choice if you can’t take any more sonic boom chip. Beat airgrabs and jump-back normals by taking a slower flight path and attacking late, OR by holding as hard towards him as possible and grabbing/slashing before he gets all the way up. You can beat cr.HP by taking a taller flight path to sail over him before attacking. Do not walldive a standing guile if he is cornering himself, because his cr.HP always wins there since you cant get behind it. Remember that EX.ScarletTerror goes through fireballs so if he has a sonicboom blockstring it might be a good burst option. Focusing after blocking a close sonic boom might catch his HP poke and give you a path in. If you expect him to expect YOU to jump in, do a nuetral jump instead of a forward one and you may be able to kill his too-far airgrab with a late nj.HK. If you expect him to chip you out with or FADC a flashkick, a bait-and-KKK can avoid this for a big punish. If he expects you do to KKK flip to avoid a flashkick, wake-up-grab him is a possibility that often works. Cosmic Heel will connect on crouching guile well, so dont worry about it wiffing as much.
When you’re in on guile your strength is determined by how well you can keep him frame trapped, afraid of kara-throw, afraid to dash away, how well you can make your corpse-hops ambiguous, and your ability to hit confirm ex.walldive off of difficult links. Know what to watch out for, such as his overhead upsidedown kick (which SplendidClaw WILL catch), his cr.MK into overhead target combo, and his far-reaching fast HP’s.
I wouldn’t underestimate the Sakura MU. MU are always a debate, and depends a lot on individual style of play. Still, as it has been said, she can take away half of your lifebar with only one opening. And she will, 'cause a good sakura can make her jump-ins ambiguous. More (and she has a lot of f-trap/throw/reset opportunities), and we’ll get dangerously close to stun.
She is almost as dangerous as Ryu is at contact : she’ll get a bit less openings, but have greater damage for each. Her zoning is weaker than Ryu’s, that’s the main catch about her : she wants to get at close range, while Ryu does not need to (though he’s even more dangerous once he is).
I think Sakura’s MU is better than Ryu’s to us Claw, but I do not consider Ryu being 5-5. Just my opinion.
About jHP-ing Guile far into his back… i have some doubt with me getting the good distance consistently, but I take the advice. Nice post overall, btw. =)
Good write up on guile.
My guile match up knowledge is mostly theoretical, since this is a matchup i find to be made very hard by online, wich is my only training tool for matchups besides tournaments.
Guess i need to find a good guile for some matches if i get the chance in a tournament.
EDIT:
Yeah, Sakura is always a threat untill K.O. is on the screen
I believe Ryu is actually one of claws harder match ups, this match up is always underrated because you know the match up from playing it 10000 times and meeting many shit ryu’s to boost our confidence in the match, but a master ryu will make vega’s life very difficult!
Between his zoning, his dangerous j.mp/j.hk, dp, his great frametrap options and stuff like an unblockable vs vega… this guy can be very hard to play against.
I did ok against CCG.Air at canadacup, winning a moneymatch 4-2 for him to run it back 2-4, but i lost to Alex Valle 2 times with 2-5 and 0-3… Valle was something else, i never played a ryu like him before… he had a very specific style to him and seemed to get in my head quickly, it could only make me think how hard it would be to face mr.Daigo.
Heavy comeback factor inside : agreed.
Then you’re probably on a whole different level than I am. Still, I do think Valle must be nearly as skilled as Daigo. A bit less gutsy in offense, but less random in defense (and Daigo abusing random DP FADC is part of the reason he lost to Infiltration, IMO).
The point is he can shut your options almost completely :
— Jumping-in/FBA-ing aside of wake-up is not an option against a good Ryu
— He has one of the most effective frame-trap game I’ve seen with his cMK strings, and can get a lot of damage from it when cornered. Even aside corners, I’ve seen replays of xwaxSolid comboing into U2 from a single EX hado.
— So you don’t wanna press a button, and he’ll just abuse that fact to throw you until he gets that HK tatsu cross-up into super…
— Fullscreen punish for fake FBAs
— Not to mention : comboable overhead, free solar plexus pressure (specially with DP FADC when he has 2 bars), 3 frames jabs, hard to safe-jump (specially if they know about backthrow safe-jump weakness), and lots of setups for tatsus to get you cornered.
Our only distinct advantage on him is midrange : at close, or long range, we’re outmatched. That’s what horrible in this MU : the price of a mistake is much heavier for claw than it is to him, and rewards of good guesses are better.
So you get something very hard to Claw, indeed.
At our advantage now :
— CH can beat predicted cMK fair and square
— sMK can shut his fireball game (which is powerful, but has relatively slow startup)
— Walk + block still is effective to get closer to him without taking guesses
— Focus range helps a lot (but cannot be abused)
— In punish range for nearly everything… the only tricky one being EX Tatsu (I wonder if a cHK or a CH would do the trick)
— Vulnerable to Izuna loop : i wonder if an experienced Ryu could not autocorrect DP, but I haven’t seen it yet
To conclude on positive thoughts.
I have been in the lab bringing up shit against Guile.
Got 2 things so far.
The first one is kind of meh because it comes out of a backthrow that leaves you in the corner (meh because you don’t want to do that, but it may happen).
Just triangle jump wih ji.HP. You can OS sweep to catch backdash or get near to him if he uses Flash Kick (will whiff) to an easy cr.MK cr.MP xx EX FBA punish.
The good thing is that the timing is the easiest as possible, just triangle jump and you’re set.
Now, the second one is great. Its very pratical and handy as it comes out of Izuna Drop (no corner/open field restrictions).
I was testing what Emersion said about the OS sweep to catch backdash and CH the whiffed Flash Kick and everytime I tried to do so I got sweep in both of these situations.Thats when this came in my mind.
So yeah, lets cut the crap, the OS work this way:
[media=youtube]ZIKWRju7vRY[/media]
Izuna Drop > walk “a lot” and wait a very brief moment > ji.HP OS CH***** (and for god’s sake stay on downforward) > cr.LP…
With that OS you can punish backdash harder with CH > sweep and now, to the coolest part: if he tries to Flash Kick it will whiff and the CH will still come out thanks to that side switch “bug/glitch/autocorrect/dontknowhowtocallit” that my first video showed. That means an easy CH > U1/U2. You started to charge for U1 even before the Hard Kick input of the Cosmic Heel was made and you hit him way up in the air.
Good stuff, Ill try this out, see if i can grab the timing consistently
Emmmm too much info vs guile. I didn’t read everything here. But as far as I remember flash kick fadc back is not safe vs vega. Crmp xx ex fba punisher.
Right?
Damn I miss using vega <3
Edit: from a safe jump, sthp xx hp roll… Chip and good corner push.
cl.hp xx hp roll is not a true block string and you risk getting thrown out of it, better to go with mp roll.