I used to have a hard time against honda’s, but once you realize that its all about crossing up a honda player, it pretty much goes in your favor. I just wait on the other side of the screen, and if he head butts, j. fp takes care of his headbutt. if he tries to thwart your cross ups by jumping, do a claw dive on the wall on your side, and hit him with the tip, or do the claw stab and mix it up. eventually, he’ll start trying to close in, then just keep crossing up, or start jumping in with fp when they don’t expect it. now its so easy for me to tear up hondas.
While keeping your charge, do the short backflip (jab + short), then flipkick (downback -> towards + kick). If you’re not charged, either short backflip + jump away or long backflip. You may or may not be able to hit with an attack like low jab or low fierce depending on spacing/timing.
I think jump back :hp: is also pretty useful if you can get to the air before he comes down.
I personally like to counter with short backflip, and throw him on landing. EA Megaman also has a good idea with j.fp
I’ve been trying to do that. seems like some honda players will suprise me and I’ll whiff and get hit lol. but yeah, the few times I’ve managed to do the short backflip, it can be followed up with throws nicely.
so here’s a question. I’m not sure if anyone on here has noticed this, but I don’t see too many vega players out there. I’m trying to gather why. Even though he is supposedly “top tier” why don’t more people play as vega??
I thought about that too. I’m looking at it like this:
-
Vega got nerfed in terms of walldive knockdown. Hurts matches that relied on that offensive pressure that could’ve been applied.
-
Fake Walldive is nice for mind shenanigans, but not really a technical buff, more of a strategic mixup add-in with limited use.
-
All other characters generally received buffs, minus Vega
-
Very unique playstyle that takes getting used to. Low damage, and low stamina hurt his gameplay a bit, and requires patience if the player prefers a brawling style.
its just amazing when I hear people bitch online about him being top tier, yet they don’t play as him. I think he is hard to use compared to most other characters, as you’ve said. in many ways, I don’t see vega as top tier. I think he is mid to low due to the fact he takes so much damage and dizzies real easy.
Can’t you not piano hawk’s 360? Crazy that you can play pad and with your thumb no less. I have to play claw method when I had to play pad.
What does that have to do with anything? It would make less sense if they bitched about a character that they used. How hard a character is to use isn’t really relevant in tiers. Does he really take that much damage?
He has tools to deal with everything and a very solid set of normals. One of the few characters I can think of who can win matches with just normals.
Given how fast Claw is and also given the range on his normals, it makes perfect sense to me that his mistakes should cost him more. Even so, the man is easily in the top three. I lean toward #2, myself, with Boxer being #1.
If he’s mid tier in your hands, I’d really like to see some video of what you’re doing because chances are that you may not be playing good enough defense and you may not be getting in enough hits when your opponent is open.
I could be wrong but I don’t really see claw being played any less than, say, Dhalsim, who’s also still top tier; both don’t take damage well and require constant poking instead of huge combos or big damage. It could be a style that’s unpopular among SF2 players. But here are other reasons:
- For casual players, he’s not Ryu/Ken.
- At low levels, he loses hard to Ken and Blanka.
- At mid levels, he loses hard to Honda and dictator.
- At high levels, he takes a lot of damage and doesn’t really have any mindless fights.
He requires a lot of focus because any lapse on defense can lead to huge damage and a dizzy. - In Japan, for a long time this decade, ST claw was never a part of a winning team. I know when I started and watched X-Mania Gaiden and the Star Cups, it seemed the top JP claws always struggled to win and just missed every time.
- ST players with scrubby attitudes who used to feel that claw was too cheesy and refused to play as him still won’t touch him.
- Some ST players who used to have him as one of their characters don’t like him without wall dive knockdowns.
- R.claw doesn’t really have any interesting additions so there’s little for players of other ST characters to experiment with. Fake wall dive was probably just added so that wall dives wouldn’t become useless in the Guile match and has no ulterior use other than as a feint (it certainly serves as weak runaway right now as intended).
When you mention that people online complain, I actually do think that claw can be abusable online. There are a lot of jump-ins and ticks he can easily do online where other players won’t be able to react as they would offline. Much as how Kaillera made Blanka’s j.LP and any of claw’s jump-ins abnormally good since they were difficult for someone with offline reflexes to respond to, I think claw’s cheese tactics are given an extra advantage in online HDR where the faster speed and lag makes them much harder to counter than normal. There’s a good reason you never see these players who abuse them in an offline tourney.
But then, if you play claw in a positional poking manner, you may not always react to an attack in time. I often mention how I’m unable to really play the Zangief match in online HDR since the precision needed for my wall dive style can’t be supplied by the netcode. In whole, although online HDR is a good approximation of skill, I’ve said since day 1 that the lag is enough to prevent the game from representing offline play. Consequently, I don’t feel that tiers can be constructed based off online play (besides seeing certain strategies in action). So if that’s what you’re using to generate your view of claw, I’d suggest trying him out in a real (offline) tourney to see if your tiers are constructed on solid grounds.
I do sympathize with your points about some folks going on about claw though. All the ST high tier from O.Sagat to Chun (except Ryu) are nerfed. However, the interesting aspect I’ve noticed is there have been a lot of comments on Dhalsim and Chun being toned down and folks lowering Sagat for losing his super-fast tiger shots. However, when claw has the 2nd best move of the game neutered, he gets no sympathy and a few still view him unquestionably among the top.
I’ve noted a few times before that players have to maintain consistency in their views. Wall dives are primarily only useful on wakeup and are mutually exclusive from the rest of his game (his pokes). Either the wall dive knockdown was so awesome and N.claw wasn’t that great without it. Or, the wall dive knockdown was just a cheesy annoyance and claw was that great regardless (which is my position). Both views (wall dive knockdown being so incredibly good for claw’s game and claw being so incredibly good without it) can’t co-exist. When someone says that wall dives were too overpowering in ST (despite claw still being the last of the 4 top tier characters in most tier lists) and that claw is just a hair worse in HDR, I have to question whether they’ve thought things through enough.
The way I see it, even if everything else stayed the same, I lose on average 10-20% damage per round from wall dives no longer knocking down. That’s not a trivial loss at all with so many close games. However, claw’s lengthy pokes are still quite effective and, at least for me, still shut other characters down like they used to. I think claw is still high tier but that was after a long deliberation over how much wall dives really affected my matches; I certainly don’t take that position for granted.
An interesting tidbit is that just a few years ago, claw was just your regular high tier character without any connotation. NKI wrote of only 2 good claws at More (Sky High Claw and Noguchi). But when zass first mentioned in his Japan report on SRK that some Japanese players felt claw was too cheap, all of a sudden, a wave of players felt it was justified to start attributing their losses not to their own lack of experience compared to the other player but to the offending character’s reputation as being too good (despite no JP tier chart ever having claw in the top 2). They seem to have missed the concept that easy cheapness doesn’t necessarily equate to ultimate greatness.
And in HDR, that reputation of claw being too good seems to have rolled over (although claw is still no doubt a good character). That’s why I always urge folks who complain to try claw (or other high level characters) out against good players of every character and see for themselves how they fare.
Overall, I agree that Vega is a character that requires tremendous patience and takes more time to master than other styles. Still a great character though
Something new i learned today in the Blanka Matchup.
From Max-to-Mid Range :d::hp: shuts down balls and the majority of his moves even better than :d::mp: does.
Not as reliable from close range though since the recovery is kinda slow on it and can therefore be easily punished by an alert Blanka.
You can mix up between :d::mp: and :d::hp: from Mid-Close range though quite effectively.
I felt the same way for a while, 'til I realized that Honda can headbutt mixups on wakeup. As well, if you’re landing on the other side then Honda’s headbutt will still hit. A conservative Honda that maintains his charge and doesn’t throw out random HHS’s can demolish Vega; however, I think a REALLY careful Vega can win this match but its definitely more Honda’s match to lose.
really? I’ve never seen a honda ever do that. I’ve always been able to cross up and never get headbutted. against good hondas too. well even if thats the case, I still can be an asshole and play hit and run away from honda and that usually works too haha.
If you are in the corner.
:d::mk: into wallclaw will combo.
Kinda useless but fun to do.
On another note.
If you do a trianglejump which is where you jump from the wall normally you have enough time to charge to do:
:u::hp: :d::mk: :hk:flipkick x2. which works on larger characters like Gief, Fei etc.
For Smaller character like Shoto’s use :d::lk: instead of :d::mk: or the flipkick will whiff.
Which is kinda cool.
And does circa 60% damage on Ryu.
HAH bet you didn’t have that one in your fancy link combo faq Fresh OJ :arazz:
I was going to leave this alone until you called me out! 
I actually have jump up fierce, crouch strong XX Fierce Sky High Claw (Claw in corner) in my FAQ. I believe this will work from max crouch strong range but you probably have to double tap punch to extend Claw’s claw to be sure.
I also have jump roundhouse, crouch forward XX Roundhouse Scarlet Terror, Roundhouse Scarlet Terror. 
But…yeah…didn’t specify which characters that combo works on so…I guess I’ll have to add you to the credits when I finish revising my FAQ.
By the way…will j.:hk:, cr.:lk: XX :hp: Barcelona Roll work from a wall jump, too? In actuality, whether it’s Blanka or Claw, I think if you time the jumping attack just right, you can actually charge one of their attacks off of just one ground normal. It’s tricky though, given the small amount of time jumping attacks put your opponent into hit stun. You’d have to hit your opponent higher than normal. I’m sure that’s worth checking out.
Well the flipkick and the roll have the same charge time. So technically it should work.
Is probably mainly just a matter of being close enough so the roll will combo of :d::lk:
I have never gotten normal jump-in into ground normal - Flipkick/Roll without doing it from a wall jump.
Claw’s roll and flipkick are some of the moves that require the most charge time in the game second only to Scissor kicks which has 5 more frames of charge being required. Dictator on the other hand has long ground combos after a jump to charge and a slow jump which gives him ample time to charge.
So i can’t see how just :u::hk::d::mk:xx:hk:flipkick would work without doing walljump first.
Well…as I just mentioned in the Guile thread, you also have to take into consideration the 13 frames during which the game pauses when it registers a hit. That 13 frames can be used toward charging a move. So, if you hit with the jumping attack as early as possible and then hit with one ground attack as late as possible, you may be able to charge a move.
Theoretically speaking. I really need to try this because I know I can get this to work with Blanka when my timing is really on.
Blanka requires 11 frames less of charge time than Claw does.