I know this forum is primarily for people who seek advice playing as Vega, but I was hoping for some help playing against him.
I can’t figure out for the life of me how to defend or counter the Izuna Drop.
If I block high, I get thrown; if I block low, I get thrown; if I attempt a jumpkick, I get thrown even though my leg is out and in his face. I’m pretty sure I’ve also attempted Focus Attacking the move as well, but to no avail.
I just don’t know how to consistently counter this move.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
Do what everyone else does…mash the dragon punch!! If that doesn’t work…mash the dragon punch!!
DP doesn’t work against Izuna drop… and what character do you play?
I play as Ken, Fei Long, and last night I started playing as Adon (to counter Vega’s speed, and insane f’n range).
My buddy mains Vega, and while playing last night, I put myself in the corner to make sure his Flying Barcelona wouldn’t cross me up (which, it didn’t).
However, seeing that I maintained the life lead, he started utilizing the Izuna Drop, which seems to be way too difficult to counter if you’re playing someone who’s just spaming it. The only counter I’ve found is to perform a jump-back jumpkick, but it only hits one out of every four or five times. During those other times, my leg’s extended, but as I said earlier, I get grabbed out of it. Wth?
As I said earlier, I appreciate any assistance provided.
LOL
Well that is not really a counter pick…maybe in our favor. Vega has so many tools and responses to Adon if you’re not going to play aggressive and keep him on the ground. As for defending the izuna drop, you can try to at first DP Vega as he descends or you can simply just do a well timed jump and hit him off of of his FBA to keep Vega patient and on the ground until he finds a chance. That is something most players do to me when they begin to realize i’m not going for just a normal FB attack but an Izuna drop. Focusing the attack is also very risky.
Just go with the character your most comfortable with when doing all this. These characters each have an in the air normal that stop Vega easily.
I’ll keep attempting in-the-air normals as you suggest, but so far my experience has almost always been his ID attack ends up taking priority over just about everything.
The guy I frequently play against starts off in a crouching position so he can attack first, then follows that up with FBAs (which I can block almost no problem), and IDs (which are freakin’ killing me). As I don’t have an answer for the ID, he just keeps running it repeatedly until I’m out of health.
Heeeeeelp!
It’s very frustrating, as it seems Vega’s moves are extremely low-risk. If I successfully block his attacks, he bounces harmlessly out of range of any of my normal attacks. Any special moves I attempt to counter with after block leave him too much time to block. The character has complete control of motion in the air, so he seems to bear no penalty for 'guessing wrong.'
I know I’m probably just missing something very simple, but Good Lord do I hate that Spaniard.
Lol.
As always, appreciate all assistance provided thus far.
like i said. you have about 1 frame to DP the ID and nail him. 1 frame too late and you get grabbed. 1 frame too early and we both whiff or you get slashed (depending on character). Backdash is the other option, however you have to also time the backdash correctly. Too early and you get slashed, probably from doing a forward dash, too late and you get grabbed. Focus only works with characters that move a lot on them, and only if vega doesnt expect it. Teleports always work. AA ultras always work (gief’s U2, hakan’s U2, hawks U2, etc). backflips always work. other than that you have to guess. and if you play sagat you’re just SOL.
another thing you need to consider is that Vega’s ID is only active for 1 frame. So that means that vega has to guess just as much as you do abouth whether or not you’re going to jump, duck, DP, AA with a normal, etc. a whiffed wall dive is easily punishable. So unless you’re on your back or face you shouldnt have too many problems avoiding it.
ken and fei long are faster and have better range than vega…contrarily to what people not playing him think vega actually has very decent range but he is one of the slowest hitter in the game.
if you are not being ID out of a wake up you are doing something wrong. try to mix dash, air to air counter, ground uppercuts invincible antiair or focus. if you play someone better than you…well expect to perform accordingly to the level difference, continue what you are doing refine your counters, tune your game until you can match him.
on wakeup you cannot “crouch” immediatly, also you cannot decide which way you will face vega does.
if ID is done on the exact frame you wake up,
any reversal with at least 1 invulnerablre to grab frame will get through it, in the worst case you get hit in the back with the claw, so you can be up before vega can reproduce the ID.
just frame backdash will work perfectly too, but can you do a just frame wake up backdash, and also if vega is not where you think you will front dash instead of backdash and get grabbed.
focus, high block, low block doesn’t work.
just frame cr.lk or any other move you character can perform where he leans close to the ground very fast (ken/ryu cr.mk, juri cr.mk, fei long cr.HP/cr.mk etc…) i don’t know all the moves honestly i coundn’t care less but some work. if the move is inapropriate you get grabbed, if it is appropriate you can get hit with claw, you lose 100 but then you are out of the loop of death. you can trade , whiff and recover faster and in the best case you hit vega’s landing and combo.
most of the time though ID is not done just frame on your wakeup it is happening 3-5 frames later,
in that case depending on your character invincible reversal is very likely to not work,
crouching may work if your character is not too big.
backdashing works fine but you may be hit by claw and you can still guess wrong about the direction.
just frame crouching move works the same as before.
in fact to pick the good solution you need to be comfortable with vega’s wall jump timing, the time when vega can perform izuna drop on you is about 5 frames outside of that he will get claw or land before he can hit. depending on when he started the jump on wall he may only grab you just before landing, or on the contrary only grab you well after your wakeup.
if he is on the late scenario don’t try the reversal
if he is on the early scenario try the reversal.
if you have a good crouching move that put you very low work on your timing until you are good with doing it exactly at the apropriate time during the jump.
Remember vega can stir his wall jumps, but the amount of time between when he leaves the wall and when he lands is always exactly the same, and he can only grab you during so many frames before he lands ( the main factor is the size of your hurt box).
Adon totally beats Vega
uh no. Adon beats Vega.
ID beats a lot of stuff that is timed inapropriately,but to my knowledge 95% of the cast has at least one air to to air normal that will shield him from all wall jump option unless vega guessed right.
how exactly holding down back allos him to attack first if something at all it allows him to block first.
That is right after that that you ll wan’t to jump to air duel or start dashing.
if you ve met someone who can ID you 100% of the time you are not mobile enough it is a very difficult move to land on someone who is not planted like a tree.
we do that, when we find something that work we use it, also maybee he wants you to finally find an answer to that so the game gets more intresting. anyways after one ID vega will very often use it again because after one ID you cannot move and you are indeed ‘planted like a tree’, you also suffer from wake hup hurtbox (you are standing when you wake up) so your hurtbox is higher than you think even if your character looks like he crouches.
ID on wake up is not very risky indeed. but generally speaking it is pretty much the contrary. vega’s move set is very unsafe, cr.HP, st.HK, Sky high claw, level 1 focus can be punished ON HIT… st.HK, cr.MP, fst.MK, Scarlet terror, cosmic heel, piece of mercury, flying barcelona attack, slide are punishable on block.
Attacks suggest there are several in a row, if you mash any invincible during any of vegas attack you will counter hit the following one, and as hinted in the paragraph above, you may also punch his recovery before he can even choose to stop atttacking, and in some case you’ll sucessfully punch him in spite of him succesfully hitting you.
“he bounces harmlessly out of range of any of my normal attacks”
well so does he, and then what …he is not going to fireball spam you, sit tight and wait for him to abandon his block to come back, and if he doesn’t, close on him from the ground, until you are in range for a crossup jump in or a safe poke of yours and lash away.
that is because he is playing safe, don’t try to counter what cannot be, and learn whet your character can do to vega that he cannot counter (anything that doesn’t leave you with -5 on block or worse is safe, any string you can think of that doesn’t have a 5 frames gap can be safely mashed to generate meter or net a hit confirm. speaking specifically about fei long, you should be able to stay on vega’s face mashing stuff into his block for like “ever”
That is what vega wants you to believe, vega has above average air game, but maybee your character is even better than that (ken is), and even if he gets total air superiority, bah, just let him jump, antiair him from the ground, focus backdash, or both until he lands a slide into your block.
he seems wrong, vega can be punished when he guesses wrong, my bet is you play someone that you cannot force to guess because your attack plan is flawed. and when you decide to defend he fakes attacks to bait a counter from you when you shouldn’t.
Really it doesn’t matter, we all have characters we suck against in spite of statictics or tierlists, my advice on it is that you need to play that matchup on and on until you know it, you seem to be a ‘changer’ people who like picking diffrent char play half the cast averagely and whose main answer to difficulty is to get around it with a counterpick. most vega’s player are “clingers” they’ll play vega on and on an on and on.
The result is they know their distances and the matchup in detail, what you have you don’t know how to use or he knows how to counter because it is cheesy and the 500 fei long before you did that already until he found a counter, a counter he now pulls on you effortlessly.
there are three things you can do to learn vega’s matchups,
A - play vega and pay attention to what other peopel do to you, then keep that in mind when you play against vega.
B - record the caracter’s moves you hate in training stage and reherse punishes/counter on and on.
C - stick to one character you like and play against vega on and on and try stuff until you find what works and when, and get a grasp of the matchup.
There’s a whole lot of bullshit conversation in here when the answer is simply, any normal that hits upwards or shoryuken, cannon spike with cammy etc.
It’s immensely easy to knock vega right the fuck out of the sky which is one of the things that makes FBA a risky move.
ID has a really small hitbox, and Vega’s really easy to knock out of FBA from neutral. As a Balrog player, my two ways to avoid ID (and his super as well), is either j.mp if i want to go air to air or a really late hp.headbutt. The j.mp puts a hitbox right in the way of Balrog’s grabable hitbox. To connect with an ID Claw’s looking to hit you right on your back (IMO, i play claw a little and have done looping IDs), so by being mobile and AAing with really good timing. Vega has to collide with whatever attack you use. In general, if you’re not air-to-airing him, you want to use an invincible move that has little to no horizontal range (Balrog’s cr.hp, Feilong’s lp.dp, Sagat lp.dp) so he can’t steer too far from your hitbox.
the best answer is to not give him the opportunity to be able to ID you, and this is usually pressure. Keep in mind that Vega’s only offensive strike invincible attack is U2, which got nerfed in AE. Pressure is really easy to apply to Vega, and if you’re applying pressure, he certainly can’t FB to ID, ever outside of a combo. That’s probably the root of your problem, you’re too far away from claw and giving him an opportunity to zone you with his long range normals.
Thank you for the replies, all. Very, very helpful.
I’ve been applying much more rushdown pressure over the course of the last three evenings, but now I’ve got to deal with a new wrinkle.
My buddy starts spamming Vega’s backflip to get through all of my close-up attacks.
My only recourse seems to be throwing fireballs, and hoping he mistimes his succession of backflips to inadvertantly land into one.
I was hoping throws or jumpkicks would be able to counter this tactic (as the backflip seems to go through everything else), but Vega flips right on through those, too.
So now closing the distance isn’t an issue; it’s being able to land a hit when up close.
(By the way, I love seeing two characters occupy the same space at the same time, and still not land a hit. Wtf.)
Curse you, Vega! You son of a b----!
When i was trying to figure out how to O/S the flip, i had the most success with buffering a fwd dash (since it’s his only invincible special w/o a freeze it either hits/gets blocked/ or safe fwd dash). It may also just help to walk forward and sweep, or dash and jab/throw. With Balrog, I can safe jump buffer forward dash, confirm whether or not it was a PPP flip or a KKK flip, and jab/throw or sweep as necessary. It’s a weird move to deal with, but easy to punish it if you practice, it’s vulnerable toward the end of its recovery frame.
Pushing him to the corner makes it easier to punish too.
I have no special defense lol, I just try wtf comes to my mind first.
Short SRK, unless they’re high in the air, then I´ll go for fierce.
Focus attack since most people only screw it up.
Jumping attack, e.g Ryu’s jumping mp stuffs it if you do it first.
Dash?
Random move to move across? E.g Hurricane kick, JAGGAR TOOT, RAISING JUGGA
Ultra. E.G Bison U2. It was so good when it wasn’t a charge against Vega lol, almost a free ultra next to fireballs.
You could always just stand there like you’re afk and combo his ass when he stops!