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

cool, will try that.

Anybody wanna run some mirrors tonight after i get back from the michael jackson movie?
Xbox GT is Chicago Bully88
Warning: i have not played with Vega in about a month. Im so fucking free right now.

Okay, so since studying these SRK Vega boards, a lot of my match-ups have gotten better, but I still am in need of a lot of work.

The Zangief match-up is an example of a match-up that I now perform much better in than before coming to SRK. However, there still is one area that is causing me grief:

  1. His ground game (normals, dash game): I’ve managed to neutralize
  2. His greenhand advances: I’ve managed to do a lot better.
  3. HOWEVER, his jumping normal advances are the source of grief. It seems like more often than not, a s.RH leads me to trade, which is incredibly in Gief’s favor. Waiting a little more gives him a chance to follow it up with something unpredictable.

So, my question is:

Tips for dealing with Gief’s jumping normal advances?

Yeah Gief’s jumping normals are some heavy shit. No matter what trying to anti-air him from the ground will result in a trade if he’s jumping in on you with the attack. And of course… trade for you = bad, trade for Gief = good. Keeping him out means a lot, but you obviously are going to take far more damage than he does.

Even going air-to-air is scary against Gief thanks to j. rh and super man punch. It’s best to not try to jump into Gief for air-to-air. What will work more oft then not however is jump straight up fierce. It beats Gief’s superman punch all day, and the angle it hits at is really beneficial to Gief’s slow as hell jump and your fast as hell jump. Once you get Gief afraid of jumping in because of your air-to-air, he’ll start using air-to-air meaties like j. RH or super man punch early, so NOW you can safely use st. RH or crouching fierce from the ground. The key is mixing it up as Gief’s jumping normals aren’t really that bad, they’re quite good in fact. Prioritize avoiding the trade, and to do that, mix up your air-to-air and ground-to-air options. If you anticipate a jump in from Gief, you can use ST before he’s even ready to attack as his hitbox is huge and ST hits at a wide arc. EX FBA to go under if he’s jumping in on you in the corner or to punish an air-to-air meaty that you didn’t go air-to-air with.

tl;dr: Jump straight up fierce to make him afraid of jumping in, begin mixing up your air-to-air normals and air-to-ground, ST will work if you anticipate a jump in with a charge stored, EX FBA in specific circumstance. Jump straight up roundhouse and air grabs seldom work.

For this option select, I just realized you can use Cosmic Heel instead of a sweep and hence punish a backdash with more damage / stun, minus a hard knockdown a sweep provides you with.

not to say that your wrong on going air to air with gief but doesn’t jumping forward/back mp work pretty well in that situation. stuffs quite a few things (probably his best air to air normal in my experience in situations like that)

yeah, that would work too. Another option you can use.

I don’t commonly use j. mp. Don’t know why, but I prefer j. mk.

yea mp & mk seemed pretty interchangeable so i decided look it up mp does 80dmg w/claw 70dmg without 5 start up 5 active and is mk 70dmg 6 start up 6 active. i think mk might have more range so its kinda just preference

It doesn’t seem like it do to the animation, but I have found j.MK to have far more reach then j.MP.

According to the eventhubs tier list, Rufus vs. Vega is 7:3?! Wtf?!

Because if he gets you in the corner you’re… [expletive deleted]

His moves’ hitboxes are so big its hard to get around him.

Why is a fat guy so fast?

At worst I’d put Vega vs. Rufus at 6:4 to Rufus. A patient Vega can zone him pretty well.

I kind of agree, but I believe that tier list is according to Justin Wong’s Rufus

???

I love when I see rufus on the screen cause I know I got a win. His big fat hit boxes get stuffed with my claw everytime. You just got to watch that ex meter as ex messiah is a game changer. When he doesn’t have ex, rush it down. If you’ve been playing vega for a while you know, don’t get it the corner with anybody lol.

Speaking of getting in the corner. I was playing another vega today and was playing as dan. Talk about getting stuck in the corner, vega has literally no way of getting out of dan’s Dankukyaku rushdown. Once he was in the corner I just spammed lk/hk Dankukyaku with meaty lows and throw mixup, I really don’t know how he could have gotten out. Vega flips right into them.

Yeah, you just gotta treat the EX messiah as if he has an ultra and get ready for it when you go for combos or wakeup attacks. You can usually ex ST right on the last hit. And yeah a jump back mp beats out pretty much all of his jump attacks and i think a standing jab form anyone beats his dive kick.

And maybe that vega sucked? A lot of people try to get out of the corner with vega when they should be blocking and going for the tech throw. That’s one positive to maining Vega, your defenses should be greater than most ryus/akumas/etc. cuz you begin to learn that you have no safe move to counter with.

I would agree that being a Vega main means you get more practice blocking than a lot of the rest of the cast.

How do you escape Balrog (boxer’s) blockstring, especially when you’re trapped in the corner? I usually get hit by a knockdown and then get faced with a jumping roundhouse. 95% of the time, there is no affective anti air as everything gets stuffed. I also can’t slide underneath because there’s not enough room to squeeze through.

My only solution is to block, which is when I get hit by the block string and have to be constantly on alert for the throw. If I try to wall jump out, I’ll get hit by the headbutt and get knocked back in. Ack!

What’s the best way to counter attack this? I feel like right now if I get pushed into the corner, there’s no way out.

Against your average Balrog scrub:
Block jump-in, do a couple of option selects (db+c.lp+c.lk) to counter the early grab or block his c.lk. Then, as soon as you see him standing up or going into c.lps, stand up yourself and prepare the throw input. If you are sure he is going to tick throw or overhead you, (most do this all the time), just mash back+throw.

Against good Balrogs, you just need to tech properly. Watch his stand up animation and pray.

Yeah wait for the opening. most balrogs will throw a few jabs and either tick throw, overhead or jump. So just block until he does one of his specials then counter it. If he does an ex version keep blocking cuz they recover quickly(except the headbutt, that one you can feel free to punish).

I didn’t see this posted here or on the main match-up thread. I noticed this when playing someone online and tested in training mode.

Vega’s st HK doesn’t work against Honda’s FA because he ducks low enough to avoid the second hit. So the first hit gets absorbed and you get crumpled. Also the reason he’s hard to inzu drop when he uses focus (imo its as bad as Sakura’s FA where she ducks down).

I didn’t come up with this, saw it on youtube and start using it (and didn’t see it in the match-up notes) but Vega’s st MK can punish a blocked FP Headbutt (if you don’t have charge to punish with EX FBA).

And I’ve found if the Honda uses nj FP a lot, you can hit him with st. MK when he lands once you figure out the spacing/timing. You can also hit him with EX FBA if timed right. I’m not a tournament player or anything, just online, but at my level the Honda main I was playing was pretty good.