I play against Gief differently than Ouroborus it seems. Gief is one of Vega’s really good matchups.
I play it similarly (from a philosophical standpoint anyways) to Blanka. Poke harass with s. strong and s.fierce, and flip kick or s.rh his jump ins. Its super crucial to my mind to never allow Gief to jump attack you unpunished, as he forces too many guess after. Sweeps are great, they own both lariats on reaction. Just let one full rotation go by in case he did kick lariat.
Max range wall dives are still really good, but beware the Gief who knows about the c.fierce AA for the max range ones. Lariats will beat a crossup / square on top wall dive, but c.fierce loses to the crossup / square on top claw dive. Mix them up and get Gief confused, and you’re fine. I like wall dives in this match still though you can’t endlessly spam max range ones like you could in ST.
First post!
New Claw player here and in need of some help. I do fairly well online, at least when I play people who don’t seem to know what to do when facing a Claw. I do have some noticeable trouble against people who are prepared. That is why I’m here. Sorry if any of these questions have been answered, I’ve done my best to read this thread, the Wiki, and Sirlin’s posts about Claw. Here they are:
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Claw’s ground game. Because I can’t really use too much wall shenanigans against experienced players, I need to improve my ground game. Can someone just summarize his ground game for me? For example, best poke to use (If I’ve read correctly, it is cr.MP?), when to use his roll and with what punch, and anything else needed to know when trying to effectively use Claw’s ground game. If you could, explain it to me as if I know nothing!
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Because I tend to crouch/charge a lot, my standing/jumping game is pretty weak. Something I want to work on correcting, if it is important to Claw’s game that is. So, with that in mind, what are the best standing/jumping punches/kicks to use and in what situations?
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One thing I don’t really utilize is Claw’s single/double backflip. Is this a mistake? Should I be utilizing this in my game? And if so, how? Also, could someone explain the difference between the single and double backflip, I’m just not understanding how to do it?
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Tick throws. What are the best for Claw? (Tick throwing is something that is very new to me, so the more detail the better!)
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Reversals. This is something I have trouble with. I know that the flip kick is one of Claw’s reversals (Is it the only one?) but I have trouble using it as a reversal consistently. Maybe someone could better explain the timing so I can get it to work more regularly. One of the things I struggle with is Shotos (Everyone really, but them especially) jumping in with a kick as I’m getting up. If I don’t reverse then I have to eat the block damage, but if I try for the reversal and my timing is messed up then I eat the attack since the flip kick is charged by crouching and the jump kicks need to be blocked standing.
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Does Claw have any punches/kicks that work to stop headbutts/rolls/etc… like Boxer’s jab?
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Finally, could you explain anything else that isn’t a basic tactic or isn’t covered in the answers to the questions above that needs to be utilized by an effective Claw?
Thanks for the help guys!
First post also
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Ya cr.MP is your go to poke, long range and fast its good stuff. Cr.MK is good if your close and st.MK has a lot of priority and stuffs almost anything a shoto does including hurricane kicks. Cr. HP is good AA sometimes, and its standing counterpart has long range, hits mid, and does a lot of damage. Thats the basics of the basics for you. There is a good run down of claws pokes on his vanilla st thread.
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In the air: MP for air to air and a chance to throw, HK for its speed and range, HP for priority, when you jump straight up LK/MK can be good.
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backflips? I dont use them much in vanilla st, one the more enlightened claw players will have to help you there. But maybe they can be used to escape Akumas air fireball setups, its an idea.
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Good ticks are st.LK, cr.MK from the ground. You can tick throw off jump ins as well.
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A lot of people have trouble with reversals. I wish I could give you a trick or something but its just a matter of practice. I would take the block damage in that situation (do you mean block damage from a follow up fire ball? Because normals dont do block damage)
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Unfortunately nope but jump back HP will work on those.
Best advice I can give you though is to watch mach videos on youtube (search for ARG, Tokido, and the evowest 2k7videos). Other then that play a lot and dont be afraid to try stuff out, no ones going to hold it against you if you loose an online match good luck. :wgrin:
Back flip with 3P is really good. Use it. A lot.
Use the cheatin’ input for it though, mp+mk or hp+hk. So much more consistent for reversals, especially if you play ANY CvS2.
The great thing I’ve learned about Gouki/Akuma’s Air fireball is that if not used as a crossup, (assuming you are already holding d/b) you can execute a rather ‘delayed’ backflip that will go through it. Don’t know if it was mentioned before.
Ahhh thanks. I was looking for something like that. I’ve been doing j.LK all this time(stuff Honda Torpedo but trades badly with other characters).
Hi I’m new claw player too and I learned a lot reading this thread. Thanks for the tips.
A couple of questions.
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down, up + P is useful or useless?
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I have a lot of problem playing agains the shotos that just go to the corners and spam hadokens and wait for the dive or jump for a shoryuken. Also is I try to use the poke or slide they use a shoryuken. Any tips?.
Thanks a lot guys.
Against shotos I usually stick mostly to the ground, use the occasional fake wall dive and backflips to dodge fireballs. I like to test their wakeups if it’s someone I’m not sure about with meaty rolls. Once they establish they can do the wakeup, I move back to cross up wall dives mixed with fakes.
-i don’t rely on tick throws as much for vega as i do with other characters. since his walk speed is so fast, i can just get away walking up and throwing them. then again, if tick throws are your thing with him, more power to you
-flip kicks are crucial if you want to play ninja turtle style with vega. without it, its much easier to get in on him and stay in on him. flip kicks are crucial vs chun li, blanka and sagat.
-i’m not too sure what do you mean by single/double backflip. by single backflip, do you mean the lk version or do you mean just a backflip x1? you can tack in 2 backflips for a 3 hit combo but the timing is tricky and position dependent.
theres no penalty for missing the 2nd backflip, but i wouldn’t always go for the 2nd backflip as by the time you knock the opponent down with the first backflip, you can always go for crossups or whatever if you don’t think you’ll be able to land the 2nd backflip.
-you can also reversal with both the backlash and double backlash. unlike the backflip, its not a universal solution, so you gotta know when to use it. on the bright side, the new command makes reversals much easier as onikage pointed out
-vega’s standing lp, c.lp and c.mp will stuff blanka balls. standing lp is the most consistent and c.mp is the least. use all 3. with standing lp, you’ll lose your charge for the flip kick but it’ll hit blanka out of his horizontal ball like 95% of the time, c.mp will lose sometimes, trades sometimes, beats it cleanly sometime. if it trades, you’ll both do about the same amount of damage to each other so. what i like to do is mix up c.lp and c.mp vs blanka and throw in some lps in the mix also.
as for psycho crushers and headbutts, don’t even bother trying to beat it out with your ground normals. nothing work consistently.
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it has its uses. its really good if people try to punish your wall dives with jump back attacks. its not one of his most important moves but its useful when least expected
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learn how to bait dragon punches. do a wall dive and land like a few steps away from them, then stab them when their arms are still flailing in the air. it won’t work vs kens hp dragon punch, but with kens slow ass fireball, you can jump and hit him on reaction or just prevent him from throwing fireballs all together with your ground normals.
even without wall dives, its easy to predict and jump over fireballs on reaction with vega. of course pay attention to when shotos are able to recover after throwing their fireball so you wont get nabbed with a dragon punch.
you can also stuff their fireball with your ground normals. most of your ground normals comes out faster than their fireball and requires no input motion.
Anyone have any advice on what the hell you do in a Claw mirror match?
I’m fairly solid on all his other match-ups from ST experience but I’ve never fought against a Claw player before and it seems like a complete crap shoot with whoever’s Claw gets momentum ultimately winning. My main issues are:
- Defending against wall dives. I usually back flip away from them but this resets the situation and I’m looking for something to flat out discourage wall dives.
- Following on from that, I’m also looking for a way to break the cycle when we’re both wall-diving like retards. This is where the momentum thing comes into play but it feels too wild and crazy to be a solid gameplan.
- A decent counter for cr.MP
I remember playing Mycah a few rounds, and he said, “Man, your Fei Long needs to do more chicken wings.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Gotcha that last game.”
“…no you didn’t. I won.”
“What the hell?!” and so on. I think it was only our last game that got de-synched.
Does anyone know the rate that Vega matches are getting desynched?
Just sit and wait for wall dive and just neutral j.MP.
If your reversal timing is on point, just LK flipkick the c.MP.
As for wall dive vs wall dive. It starts getting random. But since this is HDR, there’s no knockdown on wall dive, so just go for j.MP and keep him grounded.
Btw, s.fierce beats slide.
Constantly.
Which hit is his cross over? HK?
Any chain combos?
So I got destroyed the other day by a Blanka who just spammed jumping short all match. It was nasty and scary because I tried to avoid getting trapped in a bite, which happened a lot anyway. Any help?
Did you try flip kicking? It has such amazing priority that it will stop them from trying to jump in on you anymore.
Vega desynchs are geting more and more common :sad:
Add forward to your arsenal vs. gief because if you space correctly it seems to beat out a lot of his normals and the lariat unless it hits you on the invul frames, I think it beats green hand also. It recovers fast enough to react to him jumping with a flipkick. Atleast test it out and see if you like it.
They are sadly :(. I hate it when I am doing a tournament and winning and then I don’t go onto the next stage of the tournament.
Nice Vega by the way Mycah!