No one here thinks Wolvie/Nova is even, we’re all pretty certain it’s in Logan’s favor 6-4. Justin is just playing horribly lately.
Also Moons somehow leveled up a lot before FR, and his Nova was completely in control that match. I love his style, totally patient and bait-oriented.
Never say nobody; I still maintain it’s roughly even only because wolverine gets the initial pressure situation. Once nova gets space it’s entirely in his favor. People don’t agree with that mentality because they don’t commit to playing defensively enough against him and get eaten after he blocks their pressure and counters once he’s back into a semi neutral state. Also, Justin still made Top 8 at one of the largest tournaments of the year, that’s pretty good for “horrible.”
It’s Justin struggling with the matchup. Wolverine beats Nova, even if it’s just slightly. Justin plays Wolverine too patient instead of being constantly in Nova’s face. If Nova can escape the opening then it becomes probably even. Good Wolverine’s make that very hard. It also makes a huge difference as to what assists each player is using. When I play Plasma Beam I do much better vs Wolverines since I can keep him out once I escape. Moons just played the matchup MUCH MUCH better than Justin did. Justin didn’t divekick enough. Moons stayed mobile, avoided Tatsu, stayed on the ground, guessed right, and didn’t let Wolverine get started. He outplayed Justin.
Doesn’t mean that Wolverine vs Nova is even. I still think it’s slightly in his favor, though it’s not as bad as fighting Spencer.
Should have said “most people.” I play the match defensively against good Wolverines and still get opened up one way or another. And I usually survive the opening gambit thanks to Marv’s option select posted on the last page. He just has a lot of ways to get in on Nova and normals that win over his more often than not. I’ll also maintain that Wolverine/Plasma Beam is way worse than Wolverine/Tatsu.
Justin Wong is still Justin Wong. He has really good fundamentals and can beat most players by using them. But watch this match and tell me he wasn’t playing like shit despite winning. He’s been very sloppy and autopilot lately, so I can stand by him playing “horribly” by his standards. He also really needs to stop being stubborn and pick a better team.
Also @Marvelo let’s talk about the Spencer matchup. I don’t have a ton of Spencers in my area, but when I do fight him I tend to lose and I’m not sure what’s going on. What’s the main reason the match is tough for Nova aside from fucking s.L and j.H?
Spencer zip+assist, bionic arm, and grapple body Nova. You’re putting up a pulse? Bionic arm. You whiff cr.H? Bionic arm. You try to Cent Rush? Bionic arm.
It’s a shitty matchup where you need to either punish blocked overheads with a grab, force him to block your assist, and try to hit him with ADD j.h’s.
Man, was my question so bad as to be completely ignored? Marvelo even put, “it depends what assist they’re using” in a post after it. So… bump?
It’s just kind of a complicated question… and it depends on your team construction as well. So it’s hard to give general advice about that sort of thing.
We play the same team so I can tell you that I have trouble fighting Vajra and Jam Session. I like being in the air and it’s hard to do what I want to do with those things keeping me down. Beam doesn’t do a lot to fight them and Cold Star is basically worthless even as a reset tool (any Zero just mashing the Jam Session button will hit Ammy out of most setups, and don’t get me started on fucking Lariat).
But Beam counters Missiles and Jam Session sort of counters Vajra. IDK, really depends so you’ll have to explore those options yourself or ask a more specific question. And if Wesker/Disruptor is actually giving you trouble, just be in the air more. Wesker can’t do shit about the upper corner away from him without Vajra. Bait impatience.
And man am I glad I haven’t fought any Spencers that Bionic Arm everything. I’m usually okay at baiting them out but punishing is a different story if they have extra meter, XF, etc.
That makes sense. But the complexity also makes character matchups hard to answer too. IMO n character with x assist is a different character than n character with y assist. But ok, I had another conversation prompt that should go over better. And please don’t confuse my lack of input for wanting to be spoonfed. I just don’t think I’m qualified to give out matchup info like you, marvelo, and other tourney players:
You guys did an amazing job breaking down novas bad matchups… howabout the good ones? Just because nova is a theoretical 6-4 or 7-3 vs some doesn’t necc mean we know against whom we have those advantages, nor why. So any matches we should theoretically WIN… which? Why? How?
The earlier convo about skrull is a perfect example why this is important… some of us may be needlessly struggling in a matchup because we don’t know the specific factors that make it advantageous. Dorm is a char I traditionally am soft to. Not as much with nova admittedly, but in general he gives me problems. So if we should be confident in that match, I wanna know why! Lol like the bad matches, there’s no one in partic I’m struggling with. Anyone you guys feeling like cracking the code for, I’m all ears(eyes?)!
I completely missed it! It’s a good question!
Yes, assists make A HUGE difference. Wolverine with Plasma Beam is MUCH MUCH harder than Wolverine without it.
However, the matchup usually is the same.
Wesker for example is 5-5 IMO. Nova has lots of tools for fighting him. Try to control the neutral with Grav Pulse H’s. Try to TK the Grav Pulse so it’s slightly higher off the ground so he can’t jump gun you. Also, if he’s scheming either a cr.L or a command grab, both of those options get completely stuffed by j.L. Instant overhead him when he’s going to mix you up. That option does get stuffed by cr.M so you gotta be careful really.
Haha nice, thanks! Yeah the disruptah wesker was a bit of an arbitrary example as it, at the time, was what I had JUST fought. But it made me realize that any matchup difficulty I mayve had was less about the wesker and more about the disruptah. I don’t face it too often lately, but I imagine vajra pisses in our cereal pretty bountifully. Mostly it and beams I feel really change the dynamic of what we’re trying to do. Really any assist where the opponent doesn’t need to already have the initiative to call. Tatsu, for example, is obv a great assist. But if were struggling against tatsu, we were probably already in some trouble before gouki took a douki on us.
Hey I was saying we should make a full matchup chart from the get-go. Marv and I made mmcafe Nova matchup grids earlier, but those are just individual opinions and we should definitely cull everyone’s to make a master list.
Of course, assists change everything (I’ve always said Nova/Vergil is 4.5/5.5 but Nova/Vergil with Vajra is 3/7), but I’m not sure how to implement that in the chart.
Nova beats Dorm in my opinion, but you still have to get momentum going or he can get annoying. In general he has no way of dealing with Nova’s approach if he doesn’t have a beam or Jam Session (there’s that assist influence again) since his normals are slow and Nova can punish them or just plain beat them out. If Nova has a beam Dorm is going to have real trouble. Speed Tackle makes the match though. Dorm’s projectiles are all really slow, and while you still have to read what and when he’s throwing, you’ll get clean hits from Speed Tackle into a combo. The problem starts if Dorm gets missiles/spells going, since those are harder to punish and you might have to eat some chip for a while. Overall I’d say 6-4 for Nova.
I have experience against some other characters we haven’t really talked about yet that are somewhat less common, like Skrull, Spider-Man and Haggar. Plus we haven’t talked about Nova vs. assist characters like Sentinel, Akuma, and Ammy. I’ll try to write those matchups up at some point.
This is a match against one of Australia’s best. Came 9th in FR which is good shit
You can see that Moons catches Wesker with j.L a lot. Also, it seemed that Moons was opting for a more “in your face” playstyle rather than his patient play. Antman’s team is very aggressive so that may be why.
Also, the MODOK beam knocked Vergil’s SS because it was so high.
C.L spam can trip guard ADD L if he has his shades off; it’s +1 without so presumably +2 or +3 with. Was testing it earlier today.
As for Spencer, my best suggestion for handling the matchup is force the issue via x factor. If he arms and you X, he X or he dies. If he Xs, then he used X and 1 bar VS your use of X. It gets even better if you put up the pulse and he Xs that, because he either eats it or is forced to block.
“But what if he has two bars for a safe DHC.” I’ll pre-empt that. if that’s the case enough of the match has progressed that either he did enough damage to build a bar without killing (which given the nature of Spencer is unlikely) or you didn’t kill him when you touched. The former is on your opponent, the latter shouldn’t happen if your team is built well.
True, which is why you want to be very careful when you ADD L to beat it. You want to jump when you’re outside of his range.
Spencer is just a rough matchup. There are ways around it, but he has the advantage. Not to mention he has high health. Meaning he only has to open you up once while you need to reset him or TAC.
Yeah it seems like if Spencer is really giving you trouble, depending on the rest of the team, you should X him and get rid of the problem. I feel this way about Wolverine and Cap and other 950k+ characters that give Nova problems.
I played the Wolverine/Beam matchup a lot better last night, and discovered that pre-emptive s.H is actually a decent anti-air against Dive Kick. It will beat it out on startup and move Nova back, and at worst if you’re a few frames late it’ll trade. It’s risky but I won out with it more often than not. Also Wolvies who like to do lots of Berserker Slashes can be beat out with ADB j.H. The rest was just applying stuff I read here like making use of the shield and being in the top corner. And a lot of patience.
Also played a long set against Luvcheez (Morrigan/Dante/Doom), didn’t do great but I realized that Energy Javelin straight-up hits Doom out of missiles and stops a missile or two on the way down. This is hard to do safely once Astral Vision starts but otherwise it can deter people from calling Missiles too much, I think.
TBH though, The Wolverine/Beam matchup is only really bad if you don’t have a good beam to counter it. My team for example struggles vs it since Weasel Shot has no durability, but when I play Plasma Beam I can deal. Same with how I dealt with Noel Brown/Angelic/others that I’ve played recently. I just can’t play Dante. Dante’s assist gets wrecked and Dante in general gets wrecked by Wolvie. 7-3 if I don’t play Plasma Beam, but 6-4 if I do.
That’s a very good point. I couldn’t fight Wolvie/Beam effectively with one of my non-beam teams.
Honestly I think that assist needs more of a nerf than missiles does.
Gravimetric pulse eats plasma beam even without red health. Wolverine has no projectiles. I’m failing to see the big problem here with the matchup itself; rather most problems I see are with how people approach it.
It’s just a matter of getting the shield out without being punished or put in a bad situation. If you have some footage of you or other people playing the match properly I’d love to see it.