Sharpening my claws.. Vega(Claw) Wants/Needs

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1001

I don’t understand. At all. Maybe I’m just spoiled from Vega’s previous iterations, but what exactly does invulnerable ST take away from vega’s “Flavor”? What exactly would you lose? Would you really miss having less options than Dhalsim on wakeup? What exactly do you like having to do with Vega that Invulnerable ST’s would invalidate?

Furthermore, Without Invulnerability, what is the point of ST? a crappier version of gen’s gekiro? It has so much going against it BY DESIGN that it should have something reasonable attached to it, like invulnerability to make it usable.

An anti air that must be thrown out early? And it’s a charge move? And it can’t be FADC’d to be made safe? AND it’s a diagonal charge, so switching sides makes me lose charge? Boy, I’m excited. What a wonderful tool that isn’t GUTTER TRASH.

Screw that noise.

1002

If you played Vega well enough you’d know.

1003

You see the problem is that there are no good Vega players online besides maybe 1 or 2. Most Vegas in G1 on xbox live just abuse gimmicks.

Yeah, its called having a shit build. Maybe thats why he doesn’t win any big tournaments. And dont use the excuse “but he gets top 5 sometimez!” It doesn’t really matter does it?

Its ok if you want people to be able to continuously jump in on wake-up with no fear, spam light punch on wake-up for fun, and do tick throws all day because Vega’s entire move list gets stuffed by crouching light punch.

If you like that build of Vega than I’m sorry, you either A. Love using low tier characters B. Love getting beat by the same playstyle over and over again or C. Have no idea what you’re talking about.

If you get put into a corner you basically have to suffer a defensive state for at least 10 seconds if the guy knows what he’s doing.

I’ve been maining Vega since February btw. Mained ST Vega before that. This “Flavor” thing is total BS

1004

That’s not an answer. I’m honestly not trying to be rude here, either.

What exactly does vega get too good at for you to think he shouldn’t get Invulnerable ST? What becomes an obsolete tactic?

1005

i had made a post quoting prof but my internet started to freeze so i scrapped it

basically what i said is along the lines of what DHevil said, because vega has no invinc you have to always play a 100% safe game and that pretty much ties into the keepaway aspect of vega’s play
because you always have to make sure you’re creating space and never getting jumped in on
and if any character is capable of doing that it’s vega, the only problem is he’s just not good enough at doing it
so he ends up getting raped on defense when if he could play keepaway better he’d be fine
so that’s why i say that having an invincible ST would be unnecessary when you could just buff that
because an invincible ST would help his matchups yes, but so would a better zoning game and more mobility / better pokes

and ppl assume that i’m thinking of SF2 when i’m commenting on vega’s unique playstyle, but i’m not, i’ve played it twice and as far as i’m concerned it doesn’t have anything to do with sf4 vega cause it’s a completely different build as far as i’m aware

But… ppl keep flaming and jumping to conclusions. so i’m just gonna leave this post at that. most of the time my Vega loses it’s cause I can’t close. this alone will be helped by an ultra combo. the worst case of Vega getting annihiliated on defense is against abel yet there’s still plenty vega can do in that matchup both on defense and on offense
if he were simply more reliable on defense, in that he could play keepaway better, everything would be fine. its just that he’s not solid at all on D and thus he usually gets fucked over in those situations. i’m all for buffing vega but i’d also rather save my EX for the full screen counter attack EX FBA and EX SHC, and if RCF were actually safe I’d start FADCing out of it again which would be nice

1006

LET ME CONTINUE MY PRESSURE BY RUNNING AWAY

HOLD ON GUYS LET ME BACKFLIP OUT OF THAT CORNER

OH DON’T WORRY I’LL JUST SIT DOWN AND WAIT FOR MY OPPONENT TO WILLINGLY SURRENDER CONTROL OF MOMENTUM SO I CAN GET SOME POKES IN THERE

You’re the fucking moron. So you want to make Vega’s backflips like Akuma’s tele? You want Vega’s backflip to go a fullscreen length backwards? Better yet, you want Vega to be able to frontflip over your opponents head to the other side of the screen? But that would ruin is “flavour”! Please tell me - elaborate on this buffed backflip that isn’t predictable and isn’t punishable by walking/dashing forward or by timing ANY special move that moves forward.

Teleports are different because you don’t know where they are going - you have to THINK about which direction to move, THINK about which direction to attempt to punish, THINK about what distance they chose to warp. Backflips? One direction, two distances, both of which have a tell at which one you did.

Do you understand how a “buffed” backflip doesn’t do anything? You are still submitting to pressure. People still are not afraid to waltz on you. You still drive yourself into the corner, and you still get destroyed in said corner. You are subject to mix up hell against every other character. You still block your opponents safe strings and loops as you watch your equipment fall off your face and you watch your health chip away.

Your problem is that you don’t really know what pressure is, or a wakeup game, or a corner game. How could you? You’re too busy thinking of a zoning-only game to realize that there are other aspects to victory.

Go play Dhalsim.

Yes I saw your hilarious posts linking to a joke Sagat player and claiming faux-Izuna loops beats everything ever and totally isn’t punishable by full Ultra combos on one whiff.

Oh and these people who “cut” in are those other Vega players who happen to think you’re full of shit.

1007

all i know is that if i’m as good an sf4 player with claw as i am now, with the buffs he’s inevitably going to get, i should be doing that much better come ssf4
time will tell if he gets invinc or not, i’ve made my piece so i’m gonna take a break from this thread permanently, it’s just full of trash / flaming / ppl not listening to each other’s opinions (which is the point of discussion)

1008

read before you make dumb comments.when the hell did we say that we love using low tier characters??

what we said is that vega is supposed to be improved more in the line of where he is supposed to be good at(zoning,speed,spacing,better normals etc),giving him
a invulnerable st and retaining his current zoning abilities woulld make him a very bland character.

as thedevil says,if you had been playing vega you’ll understand.

1009

1.a better forward dash,
2.speed buff and trajectory change of the fba which would actually make the fba a good zoning option.( so that opponents wont be able to jump forward and stuff.
3.faster jump speed
4.wall dive glitch
5.better startup times on his specials
6.recovery on flips.(right now it can be punished on reaction),it should only be punished on prediction like bison and akuma’s teleport etc.

just to name a few.

belive me when i say that it would be as difficult as pinning down a dhalsim with the above said buffs.
i implore the next give who randomly comes in and types “better st” to atleast look at this message.

1010

i actually like this list it would actually be so beneficial to his gameplay
Hell today alone in some clutch situations that damn wall glitch messed up my ultra and caused me punishment for a loss.
also a speed buff on jumping to the wall would help because there just should not be any reason that ryus late sweep should trip me up as i jump to the damn wall. hahaha
recovery on flips would be good too, seriously y ryu and kens shoryuken have like no recovery time and vega cant even do a little short after a backflip, and get walked in on with no hesitation.
1 i would like to add is his mask and claw staying on a bit longer rather than having them fall off if you are stuck in a silly block string, and the 2 ex bars you lose is just ridiculous, there is no reason you should lose ex bars to allow the opponent to do more damage to you.
Good list i really just hope that wall dive glitch is fixed. that alone will up vegas game.

1011

Laxlight, people read your posts. They just disagree. Telling people to go back and read your posts as if that is the only explaination as to why they disagree with you doesn’t make much sense.

1012

You’re the one making dumb comments since you half-assed reading what I said. I never said you love using low tier characters. I stated that if you like Vega’s current build, then either of the 3 following were true. I listed 3 options, I never said all of them applied, maybe just one does.

Do you like the fact that the opponent doesn’t even half to work half as hard as you do to win a match?

I have a question for you…

Imagine you’re in a corner with 4 chip damage hits worth of life left. An akuma player throws you in the corner. He does a meaty air fireball as you wake up. As you block the fireball he continues with Fierce SRK, which kills you from chip damage.

You can’t block because it leads to a chip damage blockstring win.

You cant backflip because its easily punshinable.

You can’t backdash because the fireball will still hit you.

Also, for some strange reason Vega’s EX ST still gets hit by most air fireballs, even though his EX ST’s are supposed to go through fireballs. Awesome.

What do you do?

ST Vega had a faster walldive, invulnerable ST, easier to land izuna drop, amazing super, better reach on his pokes, less punishable slide, better backflips, and no mask falling off. Even after ALL of that he was only considered to be top 4 by most people, nowhere near being broken.

Now if you would be so kind, please tell me how out of all of what I just listed, how giving him only ST with invulnerable start up frames would ruin his “flavor”?

1013

Ok, first comment…that’s exactly what’s wrong with Vega. His game is poking, hit and run, speed, tricky shenanigans. It is NOT having to play 100% safe, which is just a result of bad design. You know what character does have to always be safe as an aspect of his playstyle? Seth. Look at his options that enable him to do so. Now look at Vega’s. Yeah, doesn’t add up. Most every other character in the game has BOTH better options than Vega, and don’t have to play it safe 100% of the time to compete. This is where the tiers come from. In high level play, people aren’t gonna level the tiers by letting you backflip w/o punishing or telegraphing jumps to the point where Scarlett Terror seems like a good anti-air. The better the competition, the more it becomes whoever makes fewer mistakes wins. If one player can afford to make a few extra mistakes thanks to their character choice and the other can’t fuck up once or the game is over, that’s a massive disadvantage. Look no further than the Tatsu/Valle match posted earlier for a great example of how this works out.

As for the 2nd comment, no offense but if that’s the case, you don’t have much perspective on the matter. You’re a new SF player so you just look at it like “oh Vega’s a character that’s really a challenge if I want to prove my superiority over the opponent.” This is where all this masochistic “Don’t give him anything good!” talk is coming from; you guys like being at a disadvantage and winning against the odds. Dan’s already there for that…Vega isn’t supposed to fill that function and neither is any other character in a well-balanced game. SF4 Vega isn’t a completely different build from the past, as much as it’s the same build with nearly every aspect nerfed, plus some extra disadvantageous silly shit that doesn’t even make any sense (mask removal, anyone?) Going back to my Ryu analogy, would there still be people playing him in SF4 if his fireball and srk were shitty, he couldn’t land ultra reliably, etc.? Yup. Would they still find ways to win some matches? Yup. Would it be well balanced? No. Would it be doing the character their proper service? No. Its no different for Vega currently.

Lastly, your final argument against a better EX ST is that you’d rather save your meter for other uses. Umm, go right ahead? Having the option available to you isn’t forcing you to use it or stopping you from spending meter on full screen EX Barcelonas. In fact, the largest benefit of the move would come regardless of if you ever actually used it and that is the threat itself that tells players that they can’t just pressure you with reckless abandon and no fear of retribution.

The winner of most ridiculous comment in the thread goes to whoever said invincible frames on EX ST would make Vega “bland.” Lol really? Since when does more options = more bland? As far as I’m concerned, everything in laxlights’s last list is just stuff that Vega should’ve had in Vanilla 4 that would’ve made him solid mid-tier. Don’t forget everyone’s getting better in Super and all I’m calling for are things that Vega’s ALWAYS HAD, which includes a good ST, and it’s not even the full list of shit he’s had nerfed in the SF4 iteration, nor the changes in basic game mechanics (overall speed, pokes aren’t as good, huge reversal window, etc) that lead to more indirect nerfs. With every way he’s been so much better in the past, he’s never been close to broken.

1014

Oh yeah, who loves being standing light punched out of forward EX walldive? Who likes being standing light punched out of an EX sky high claw after Vega jumps off the wall?

1015

Holy shit prof is raping this thread with knowledge.

1016

Wow, so much hate spawned just because people have different views on how reliable wake up/AA options for Vega should be implemented? Cut it out, people. You should know better than that (if you don’t, now would be a good time to learn).

1017

To make a last point, games with very strong runaway and keep away characters are boring as hell. I think it is the reason why Guile is so bad in 4. Guile’s entire game is about controlling all space in front of him with slow projectiles, and all space above him with amazing anti-air. A game in which Guile is top tier is frustrating and boring as hell competitively. While I don’t think they gimped him on purpose, I think they errored on the side of making him too weak. A game with strong shotos and offense is fun. A game with strong turtles is boring.

So to bring the point back to Vega; Vega is already hard to catch and does have good normals for spacing and beating out attacks. To make him harder to catch and even better at keeping characters out, would in my belief, actually result in a much more boring style of play. Stronger tools to make your competitors work just so they can touch you isn’t going to result in a better Vega, or a better game in my opinion. Vega’s tools are a lot of fun to use (that’s why I like him) and just strong enough to give you an edge when going toe to toe with opponents. He doesn’t need to be stronger in that aspect to the point of being godlike. He needs his weakness covered in other areas where he is seriously lacking to the point of being at an unfair disadvantage.

He needs better ways to get past defense for turtles (He got that, and it looks fantastic) and he needs something to give him a fighting change to turn the tide when being rushed down, and to make his opponents choose wisely when deciding how to attack.

Invincible ST is not a magic bullet to beat all offense, it is an option C, when his previous options were simply A: Block, and B: Tech. Opponents need to know you have that choice, and they need to plan their attack around it, and you need to plan your defensive around that fact that they know it. That is what makes SF interesting. Guessing your way out of a free repeatable offense, where you are punished for guessing wrong, and not rewarded for guessing right, isn’t interesting and isn’t fun. Not even for your opponent after awhile. You should be rewarded for guessing right and predicting your opponents moves. They should be punished for guessing wrong, or playing sloppy and not giving thought to your options. It the chance to out think your opponent and come out on top that makes SF fun and lasting. Vega needs invincible ST so he can play that game with everyone else.

1018

Very fast, further travel on double backflip, low recovery.

Get out of here, motherfucker. You just got served.

1019

in the end st is never going to get invincibility frames.thats hows its supposed to be and thats how it will be.

capcom knows the areas in which vega needs improvement(the ones i stated).and those areas are exactly the ones in which vega will be getting his buffs.

1020

your set piece is a bit vague. ex st would go through the fire ball if properly timed.the fierce srk will completely wiff if vega uses his flip(even in his current build) and would leave vega to punish for free.

bad example,but i certainly do see your point.in a way you certainly are right.
vega is indeed pretty helpless when stuck in the corner.but again my point is so is dhalsim!!so what im trying to say is,if vega where to have better zoning options,these kind of
scenarios would become less pronounced than what it is right now.

as i said if they give vega better options to control his space,it certainly will be as hard as closing in on a dhalsim player.guessing your way out of the corner would
be a digestable trade off compared to a lot of zoning tools which if properly used,wouldnt have landed you in that situation in the first place.

these kind of tools are the ones that vega lacks right now.IMO