Dance with the Claw: Vega Match-up Guide/Discussion

What the fuck is Vega supposed to do about Guy? His elbow ensures air superiority and pretty much nothing that Vega’s got is a threat to him as a result. All Vega can do is try to poke him out, but that’s not enough if he’s smart enough to just block. If he lands a combo on you that’s easily 35% of your life gone and you’re probably cornered.

Guy’s elbow has ass range, j.MP and j.MK will beat it if you go air to air. You can focus it too if he does it as soon as he jumps. His normals on the ground lack range as well, he needs to be at kissing range to get any good damage and with his floaty jump you shouldnt have too much trouble in zoning him out.
Granted i havent played a good Guy in a while but thats usually what I did against him.

@Vega’s Worst Matchups: Chun, Guile, Rufus, Balrog, Honda. All of them are still managable aside from Chun and Guile for me :confused:

I would agree but I’m inclined to add Cammy to the list. Abel is no fun, either, because of that turdy ultra.

I don’t really have experience against good Guy players, but I have tried to learn Guy (poorly) and can make some observations from that.

Crouching really seems to diffuse alot of Guy’s offense. Some of his BNB’s whiff on crouching opponents (like his Bushin target combo), and neither of his elbow drop attacks are overheads. Since his bushin flip grab won’t grab a croucher either, you can basically always crouch block it and be safe. To avoid the pressure, you can often c rh slide under it or straight up beat it with ST or Splendid Claw if you have charge.

If he has you in the corner he may want to do a 50/50 with his ambiguous crossup (elbow drop directly overhead vs crossup mk). If you are in doubt and have to guess I’d say it’s in your favor to crouch block the elbow. That way you dont eat a horrible corner combo starting from the elbow, and if he crossup mk’s instead then he won’t be able to do the target combo into the corner throw and continue mixup raping you (since you are crouching he can’t land the bushin chain even if his crossup mk hits).

Most of Guy’s pokes and normals aren’t too spectacular, so he’s at a big disadvantage with footsies.

Backthrow to safejump mp is pretty terrible on Guy since it usually whiffs, but you can still use it to bait out a punishable EX tatsu if he has meter and likes to throw those out.

Those are just some notes that help me personally, although as I said I don’t really run into great Guy players.

Take your time and abuse mediums. Generally st.mk.

Works for me shrugs

air grab. but be carefull he will fess up and he will air grab on reaction to your jump. but you will at least assure that he wont be doing that shit.

I have so much trouble against my friend’s Bison. The pressure with the scissor kicks are too much. And I can never do anything in the air because he counters everything. And I can’t jump in when he has meter because ex psycho crusher is too fast. Anyone else have trouble again good Bisons?

If there’s one Vega that really knows how to use his MP button, it’s got to be Nao. His zoning against Haneyama (!) was simply incredible.

why are you jumping then? Bison is so free on wake up any escape option can be heavily punished by Vega. It gets really hard when you get tagged or cornerd. Thats when the match gets fun.

@Sasaki

i swear these japanesse players are just to good.

also i did back throw jump foward empty jump and I blocked reversal SRK. I laughed and beat him. Got to test more of that

Back throw to empty jump in on Guile also safely blocks Flash Kicks, whereas sticking out the mp will get you hit. Pretty useful.

Bison is one of my toughest matchups in Super as well. Be patient and don’t mash out random pokes when he is doing scissor pressure. If he is constantly spamming the scissor loop, simply jump out after blocking or neutral jump and punish.

On his wakeup I’ve been having success with a really deep J Fierce, almost to where it looks like a crossup. If he EX psycho crushers, he’ll go under you and I think you can punish with EX FBA.

Thanks! I’ll try that tonight. He ALWAYS EX psycho crushes on wake up so hopefully it’ll work for me, too!

Call me crazy but i don’t consider E. Honda a terrible matchup

like, 5.5 -4.5

You have to be on point with your anti-airs, but if you can do that and learn what the ideal range is for Honda’s jab hands and what range he needs to be in to throw and what you can do to stay away from the corner, then it’s actually not that bad

Yesterday I had a ft10 against Mr Snk, lost 10-4 but I feel as though I could have done way better. Fact is I lost, but I was starting to know exactly what I needed to do to win. Just couldn’t perform, heh, I was getting pretty angry as the set went on. Totally threw away some matches, you guys’ll see when I upload them.

For me personally, a good Honda, Cammy, Chun-Li (ugh this macthup seriously got worse I swear), Abel and Guile (only Lamerboi’s and Warahk’s lol) give me problems. Rufus is bad, but it got much easier in Super imo. Blanka is 5-5 now imo and I actually feel the most comfortable since I’ve played a lot of good Blankas in my area (Boy of Joy and Hiro to name a few).

I seem to have a lot of problems with hakan. I have most problems with his sliping grab thingy, his slide, and his jumping slap( i think its j.mp)

ok guys i got the new matchup guilde fairly complete (41 pages in word). however, i could use a few more writeups. In particular, for these characters (Joz hint hint…) nah anyone can do the write up but just make it good.

Ken
Akuma
Dan
Gen
Gouken
Rose
Seth
and all of the new SSF4 characters.

I have some information on these guys but as far as actual writeups, there isnt much. If any of you wanna do other charactes as well that’s fine but make sure it’s a new strategy or one that far elaborates an old one.

I just need to do some finishing editing and add these writeups and it should be good to go. Sasaki i’ll probably e-mail you a copy later this week. PM me your e-mail addy

Sure man, I’ll write a couple now.

poof

EDIT: Wrote the ken one.

I assume by “sliping grab thingy” you mean his DDT, the aerial command grab? Just crouch to avoid it and he’s free to eat a big damage combo. Now, usually a Hakan won’t go for this outside of a wake-up hooligan setup. When you wakeup, there’s one frame where you are in stand-up, even if you’re holding down-back; obviously you can see how Hakan uses this to his advantage. An easy way to avoid this standing up is to mash cr.lp and you’ll automatically go into downback, causing the meaty DDT to whiff, and causing Hakan to be free to punish.

EDIT: Or you could just hit him out of it with ST, that seems more reliable.

Just saying you might want to PM them your mail instead. Seriously you’d be surprised how easily it’s found and spammed~

In other news, I need to get back to doing my Chunners writeup. Bah, damn work bogging me down.

Hey Francys I never posted my email in there why are you throwing that around here like it’s your own

i hope that someone doesnt want me to PM them a 41 page word doc copy and pasted. that’ll probably be cut down in half tho when i fix sasaki’s font and margins