Well I have a reset with Iron Fist’s Rising Fang where if they tech forward they eat Drill Claw to divekick, and if they neutral/back tech they’re still stuck in the corner and have to guess low/throw left/right etc when they come out of block stun, and it’s a pretty tight setup because apparantly Drill Claw is really hard to throw and it stuffs most options except for like Hard Drive. Other than that and TACs I sometimes (rarely) end with a hard knockdown and move to where they will be if they forward tech and pressure again from there, but normally if the character’s worth killing I’ll XF the Slash anyhow and start the momentum.
When do people use their XF with Wolvie? I often blow it off of an airthrow in order to take a character but I’m considering another option if I get a clean hit.
My BnB ends in the Fatal Claw loop. Out of the Fatal Claw loop I can snap instead of doing the second Fatal Claw. If the second Fatal Claw won’t kill I think that Wolvie’s best option might be to snap in the anchor or problem assist, do an incoming mixup, then blow XF to kill that character.
The snap + mixup potentially gives you more for your XF. If you burn your XF on the first character and their second character escapes the mixup you’re still up a character but you’re out XF and their team is still somewhat intact. However, if you snap the first character and attempt a mixup on the character of your choice there are two possibilities. One, you fail. Now they have to play their team out of order and possibly try to switch out whoever you snapped in. Two, you succeed and you burn XF to kill a vital character. The result is that their team is kind of gimped and they must face an incoming mixup while you still likely have some XF left.
Either way, blowing XF1 seems almost necessary for Wolvie since he’s so strong when he has momentum.
In my mind I have set scenarios which I’ll use XF:
- On a B.Slash xx B.Charge hit, if their point character is a threat enough I’ll XF immediately and kill them
- Same for if it’s a throw or a scaled hit with Dark Hole assist or sometimes one of those moments where you accidentally get swiss cheese and it hits
- If I get a clean hit on their first character I’ll almost always burn XF on their second after using my Dark Hole entry mixup, and if they block i’ll go left/right (they’re trapped in the air and you can dash under) and then mostly low/instant overhead XF
- Any lockdown situation where I read they want to block low > instant overhead XF
- At the very end of a combo I’ll sometimes burn XF to only need 1 meter for the kill, and to keep Wolverine in with about 80% of the XF left for the next character
- On happy birthday combos if for whatever reason I don’t have an assist available
- If I do B.Barrage xx Fatal Claw to nail an assist like Hidden Missiles but catch the point character too i’ll XF falling S into whatever
I try to XF in any situation where the combo would otherwise have not killed. The same doesn’t apply however if it’s say a team with say a heavy char like Hulk on point, snaps are preferable there IMO (especially seeing as heavies almost always make dreadful anchors if you kill the other two chars).
In general though I feel one of the absolute most important things to be able to do in this game is manage your meter. If I kill the first char for say 1 bar, or reset him, XF the second one, then I will always have enough meter to kill the third from any hit. If I XF the first char and spend a bar I can kill the second char but have to reset the third. That’s why I use Iron Fist though, clean hits from his assist get me 1.1m for 2 bars, or from a st.LMHS I get 1.05m anywhere on screen.
Really I should just use Zero though, he doesn’t need to manage shit.
Thanks for your answer. I like the list of situations + explanation of your philosophy of using xfactor to conserve meter. Do you ever use TACs to get damage/meter instead of XF?
If I get a Slash xx Charge hit on a character I’m not fussed about killing then I’ll do a combo into a TAC, Dorm’s TAC gets me enough to finish with a super to do 1,050,000 from a side TAC and 1,100,000 from an up or down TAC. If I TAC on throw combos I can get 975,000ish for 2 bars. Like I said though it just depends on the character in question.
Does anyone use Berserker Barrage when they sniff out an assist call in order to tag the assist?
I have started using it and it works fine against the scrubby people I play but I’m wondering if it’d be bad against someone better. It seems fairly safe to do if the opponent is normal jumping. I don’t think many characters can punish Wolverine while he’s doing Barrage and going underneath them, even if they block it. The upside is that it has plenty of hitboxes to happy birthday a character and an assist.
I was trying to come up with a happy birthday combo off of a Barrage confirm and the best I did last night was to wait for the pop at the end of the fully mashed barrage, XFC, then launcher into MMHS, OTG + Assist and follow up with Fatal Claw. I feel like I could probably go into a B. Slash loop after popping XF but I’m not sure if that would be better damage.
I use it a lot for that purpose tbh, it’s a great punish for Hidden Missiles. Just after he fires the last missile if you ram him with a B.Barrage and then cancel to Fatal Claw alone you’re doing good damage and if you’ve got an appropriate DHC it’s likely completely safe to most things. For happy birthdays from this though I normally Fatal Claw first and the XF that into falling S, st.M, st.H, st.S etc. Generally so I have more time to confirm I’ve hit them both.
I usually do it when either A) I smell an assist call and have 2 bars, or B) when Wolverine has hardly any life and isn’t worth saving, so the risk/reward is much better. For my team if their point character blocks the Barrage H I’ll go into Barrage X and DHC to Stalking Flare for good chip and damage on their assist if I did actually catch it.
Edit: Shoutouts to having made more discussion in the last week that there has been since November.
Good shit. I will try out your Fatal Claw then Xfactor variant. I’d like to do something that does at least 1 million so that I can kill most point chars off the happy bday. The combo I mentioned does barely over a million, more with DHC. For the on block case I’m using Sentinel second so I have the option to DHC to HSF if Barrage xx Barrage X gets blocked.
H Barrage is great for catching Hidden Missiles since Doom stays out forever but it works against any telegraphed assist call. A LOT of people do shit like normal jump back with some attack + assist over and over to space Wolverine. Barrage H just after they jump blows that up pretty bad. I sort of think of Barrage as using Wolverine as a mid range beam. During Barrage H Wolverine moves at least as fast as when he’s plink dashing. Just like with a projectile the time to use it is to catch people as they are landing from a jump or to catch assists when you have a read. People feel like they can call assists for free against Wolverine from midrange since he has no projectiles but with Barrage he is the projectile.
The thing I’d really like an opinion on from people is if I wait till they jump before I Barrage H how bad can I get punished? I feel like there are very few characters, if any that can get a full combo off of a punish in that situation. There is some stuff like Taskmaster’s down arrows that could hurt a lot but I can’t think of anyone who could full combo there. Maybe Spencer off a down grapple or bionic bomber? Anything on a dive kick angle as well as Vergil and Dante’s hammers would whiff because Wolvie would go right under them.
I’d also like an opinion on if Barrage is useful as cover for drones. Specifically, is it good to use Barrage in advance of drones in order to put your opponent in blockstun until the drones get there so that you can do mixups once the drones arrive? At what areas of the screen might that be a good decision? I’ve also started using drill claw as a kind of box dash to keep people on the ground when I call drones near the corner.
Another thing I’d like to talk about is c.M anti-air but I’ll save that for another time.
It’s pretty safe against most characters unless you do into the corner (lol), but shit like Helm Breaker is definitely to large of a horizontal area to get underneath to risk doing it like that.
I suppose it would be good cover provided you get it to hit, but it’s still risky. With Missiles at least, for the most part I call them and then immediately B.Slash to the other side of them and go nuts.
When I get push blocked and I know my opponent wants to do something like upback, airdash up, fly and then fly dash away, I will sometimes do dash > jump H or jump S xx Drill Claw to keep them down and possibly hit them. Other than that I use it for a lot because it’s got a really good air-to-ground hitbox and obviously if you cross them up you face the right way after it and get a dive kick. As well as that it just stops you from being mixed up left/right if you ever super jump.
After stray ground bounce if you have 1 combo extension assist available you can do:
Forward jump > j.M, j.H, j.S > Land then neutral jump > j.M, j.M, j.H, j.S > Land > st.S > SJ > MMLHS into combo extension assist into Fatal Claw or whatever. I normally have both my assists available for a better combo, but with only one like Tatsu or something that combo’s pretty efficient and gets you like 500k+ before the hyper.
I try to push block a lot of tri-dash characters with cr.M, the thing’s got rediculous hitbox so if I mistime my pushblock cr.M has a good chance of slapping them out of the air. I’ve not explicitly gone for cr.M in response to air moves though I prefer to move out of the way and work on pressure from there so I’ve never really applied it that way, but I might start testing it.
You’re talking about the hitbox on j.S when you say it has a good air/ground hitbox, right? Cuz dash j.S xx drill claw sounds a whole lot better than raw drill claw. I thought about doing dash j.H but I was a little worried about its hitbox leaving Wolvie open underneath.
Thanks for the stray dive kick combo. I have been relying on Fatal Claw loop, DHC, or TACs to get damage in that situation.
c.M beats or trades with Vajra depending on your timing. I believe it at least trades with Zero’s pizza cutter. I believe it also beats/trades with derpy Ryu air Tatsu and j.S. I think trades are worth it because they can create ambiguous situations that Wolvie can easily win if he throws out a s.L, dive kick, or even an accidental swiss cheese and they make people think a little bit about just pressing buttons at you. I was holding off on posting about c.M AA because I really haven’t tested it enough. However, I’m starting to see where I could use c.M to AA people and it has a godlike hitbox/hurtbox ratio. What you said about using L + M to push block tridashes is smart shit. I always pushblock with L+M so I never really thought about it but that exact situation has happened to me before and I think it’s why I started thinking about investigating c.M as raw AA.
Well I mean that dash jump H/S xx Drill Claw bit to keep them from escaping the corner while my assist cools down, but I meant the raw Drill Claw things for coming back down from SJs because once it’s started up it’s got a hitbox which seems to stuff a lot of good moves, you can mixup where you’re going to land and it delays your landing as well which can sometimes make opponents mistime what they were doing. One use I’ve had for raw Drill Claw has been vs. Alioune’s Magneto a lot recently. When I first started playing him he would run away like crazy and every now and then he’d be able to dash under me while I was in the air, move a little away from me and then he’d come back in for a high/low, and Drill Claw keeps you in the air that little bit longer in that situation and comes back down with a strong hitbox, as well as having no recovery frames once it hits the ground unlike dive kick.
As for situations for using H over S for the dash into jump normal thing, H is quicker (8 frames) and extends very upwards which makes it good for catching people trying to get away upwards (like Mags. lol I seem to have developed a lot of my newer tech playing him), but yeah you’re vulnerable if you whiff, but it’s like with anything, good reads rewards you, bad ones will cost you. S has that nice circular looking hitbox but it’s 11 frames, but you can cancel to Drill Claw on whiff anyway to minimalise the punish window.
I use Drill Claw the same way. If you’re careful with it it’s a much better move to use out of a super jump than Dive Kick. Whiffing a Dive Kick is a great way to get Wolvie killed whereas switching up where you come down/stuffing a move with Drill Claw is pretty safe. Just don’t use it to land too much cuz you will catch a beam punish.
Drill Claw is also nice for getting in that little upper opposite corner area where Ice Storm doesn’t hit and totally avoid it. It’s pretty easy to bait Ice Storm. Just super jump straight up and Storm will think you’re going to dive kick since Wolverine only has two buttons, dive and kick.
so what combo are people using for happy bday kills these days? Is it possible to kill both without popping xfc?
One is:
:l: 
:h: :s: j. j. j.:h: xx Fatal Claw, XFC, land, :l: :h: :s: j. j. j.:h: Fatal Claw
You wait till they’re above you in the fatal claw so that when you pop XF you fall to the ground first and have time to hit with a s.:l: to continue the combo. Fatal Claw does hard knockdown so they’ll fall to you.
I usually do:
:l: :h: :s: j. j. j.:h: j.:s: :a1: :df:+:m: L tornado claw xx Fatal Claw (Fatal Claw loop)
Mine assumes you have an assist that can pick up both characters (with the help of Wolvie’s :df:+:m: OTG). The upside is you don’t pop XF the downside is it’s not enough damage to kill the point with only 2 meters.
The problem with the standard relaunch combo is that neither drill claw nor dive kick will hit two characters so you have to construct a happy birthday combo that doesn’t use those moves.
One I was thinking of but haven’t practiced would be to do the b. slash loops e.g.:
:l: :h: :d::db:
+:m: :d::d:+:atk::atk: dash :l: :h: :d::db:+:l: dash :l: :h: :s: then end with normal j. j. j.:h: xx Fatal Claw or j. j. j.:h: j.:s: :a1: :df:+:m: then pick up with Fatal Claw loop or whatever works for your team.
It would use two meters, no moves that don’t work in HB, and should do much more damage than the one I usually do. You may not need to XF to kill with that one and depending on what you do at the end you could set up for a DHC.
You switching up your team? I used to always watch your Shuma on stream but I haven’t seen you on stream lately.
yeah thinking of going back to wolverine…haven’t really used him much in ultimate. stream has only had dlc chars like once in the past 6 months so all my matches have been off stream.
Well I’ve got 2 assists on my team which help me happy bday. I get like 4 bars before having to end the combo with hypers lol. But, if I didn’t have any extension assists the easiest way to kill both (IMO due to not really having to time anything) is:
LMHS > MMLHS > :df:+M xx XF, st.H xx Beserker Barrage H xx Fatal Claw xx DHC
Same when you have no assist to end a combo you can OTG xx XF, Beserker Barrage M xx Fatal Claw
If you get a happy birthday off a B.Slash xx B.Charge, XF and do dash st.H xx Slash L, st.H xx Slash L etc.
I need to fix my face a bit. Here is a more optimized b. charge b. slash combo from thrilla:
s.:l: s. s.:h: :d::db:+:m: xx :d::d:+:atk::atk:, dash c. s.:h: xx :d::db:+:l:, dash c. s.:h: xx :d::db:+:m:, dash c. s.:h: :s: …
Tell levelup I will buy the subscription or mail them the 10 bux or whatever if it means they can put your shuma back on stream.
i never posted my optimized b.charge b.slash combo, only my b.charge b.slash bnb. i have a few that do more damage than that. also, i wouldn’t advise going for a b.slash/charge combo if you’ve already opened them up with s.L
Suppose I go for the ol school vanilla mixup where on an incoming char, I call jam session then berz slash into the corner making the jam hit them as a crossup. I confirm by sj-ing into a dive kick. I remember that being the correct confirm off the jam session, tell me if I have better. Anyway, I’ve already used my ground bounce early off the jam. With drones still at my disposal, what would be my most damaging non-xf continuation from this situation? Might a rep or 2 of some jump loop be possible before, something like, sHS+drones, sj-some sequence that makes them fall into the drones, then barrage xx super?
Just thinkin out loud, I have no idea. But just considering different meats for a wolve xxx sent sandwich, and really liked that jam session mixup in vanilla. Thanks!
You could always TAC into Sent’s infinite. I have been thinking about running that same team and TAC infinite or TAC combo into a DHC back to Wolvie would be my goto off of Jam Session.
If you don’t want to TAC you could s.H, b. slash xx b. charge and do a couple reps of c.M s.H xx b. slash before hitting with the standard air series ender.
I believe Noel Brown does a small jump loop off of the dive kick ground bounce when he’s trying to get extra hits to level Frank West. Perhaps if you did that, I think it’s j.M j.H j.S s.M s.H S, you’d eat enough time that you could call drones. If so, you could drop the launcher and after the dive kick do:
j. j.:h: j.:s: s. s.:h:+:a1: :d::db:+:m: (drones will juggle, if you’re in the corner you need to do :h: version), :d::db:+:h:, plink dash x 2, jump + :h::s: :atk:+:s: :d::db:+:atk::atk:
I’m pretty sure that second slash is and H version but it might be an M version. It’s been a little while since I played with that combo. You can do different stuff after the second b. slash. You can dash up and tornado claw into fatal claw loop. You can do b. slash H into Fatal Claw.