Thanks for the write-up Immortal. I’d like someone to confirm this in TRUST using scripts and we can use frame advance to walk through it. I.e. script each character (claw and ken) for each of these scenarios. It’s one thing to block, but you’re talking about DP’ing as not just blocking but a counter to the wall dive. At least one thing does not seem quite right to me in your explanation for the final screenshot (wall dive hitting in sector 3) before it’s confirmed with scripts: If the opponent inputs a dp facing to the right (or, where claw jumped from to get to claw’s far wall), it seems claw is on the back side of opponent during much of the inputs in order to get the dp and switches sides at least once (twice if you need to start the dp early while claw is still going up to the far wall, and again when he goes back over opponent’s head to reach sector 3). Are you saying a dp will still come out to counter sector 3 attacks?
I was messing around with scripting last week and noticed that the if the opponent successfully blocks a wall dive done from the far wall (claw’s far wall, i.e. your scenarios for the 3 sectors), the opponent must have already started blocking while claw was still very high and has only started to spread his arms at the latest. (like first frame where his arms are kinda like a “v” pointing down and not horiztonal yet). Well, “latest” depending on how deep/low it goes, however it seems from your examples, claw probably wants the hit to connect relatively high, not so deep/low, right? I want to account for all of the factors that affect this because the wall dive is so fast and the ambiguity so high of how to simply block it successfully, let alone this anomalous, special-case dp method as an actual counter to it.
So to get the counters you describe (DPs), the opponent has to guess which of the three scenarios it will be, assuming Vega goes to the far wall at all (i.e. if he does not, the possibilities of ambiguity shoot up to four or five or 6 (each sector) if Vega goes off near wall instead, and if that’s not enough mix-up, there’s the wall spike for seven). I mean you’re not reacting to wall dive’s with dp’s because by the time you can see and process it (def not determine which of 3 sectors), it’s already too late to start inputting a dp, from either side.
And to simply block (not counter) the wall dive for these 3 sectors, it’s a 50-50 left or right guess. Right? Mostly you should block it holding right (ie from where claw took off from to get to far wall) in sector 1, but he eventually goes for sectors 2 and 3 so sometimes you have to block left (far wall).
good question about how high or low the wall dive should hit. he didn’t go into that part of it i don’t think. from his matches he had them hitting all over the place.
one thing worth mentioning about this setup with the pictures… when we all did this together for group learning our badic setup was a roundhouse scarlet terror (flipkick for two hits) then delay a split second after landing, then wall dive.
also for more pratice pn the crazy motion for dp’ing #2 the fastest way to try is to just have Vega jump U/F over your head and you can try to do the half circle thing to dp him.
He has frame advantage on an empty jump? How does that work? Are you telling me that Vegas can do a random cross-up jump, and throw, before the opponent even has time to change sides? Good God, patch this guy now, lol.
he whiffed the jumping kicks on purpose, giving him 3 possible situations, rog’s whiffed reversal, rog’s whiffed grab attempt or rog’s block animation to a whiffed attack. Vega’s jumps in r really fast n seing how MAO plays he uses calculated strategies unlike getting lucky random grabs.
also he gets rid of the ungrabbable period after wake up. so whiffing those aerials is pure genius.
You mean, to turn his wall dive into a sweep attack so you have to block low? No, that isn’t possible. He’s too tall, so when he jumps his center will land before you can attack that low. While you can do a very low attack, it’s about knee height but still capable of being blocked high. Any lower, and he doesn’t get to finish his attack animation before he lands and recovers. See below:
That is the absolute lowest you can get the wall dive to hit. Even against a tall character like Hawk:
Papercuts is just spreading MAO myths, lol. Building up the legend.
MAO timing a wall dive to hit your feet and getting the knock down since you blocked high, not low. This is what bodler and my posts are referring to.
There are others, like MAO having perfect wall dive timing that you can’t even reversal out of, even though Kusumondo sumo splashed out of a loop during ToL.
MAO is an excellent player, but some of the stuff I’ve seen them say about him on GGPO is getting to the point of myth, lol. It’s like everyone forgot when Futachan beat 3 top notch Claw players in a row, two of them MAO and ARG.
I’m not really sure why there’s any myth here, since a lot of us were at Evo actually played and talked to the guy.
The wall dive never hits low, MAO is just extremely good at making the wall dives as ambiguous as can possibly be.
No Claw can ever perform a “perfect” wall dive 10/10 times, but he can get close. Kusumondo preferred to simply buttslam his way out of that situation, which forces Mao to slide as a punish, which disrupts the timing of his perfect wall dive. So scenario A) he hits claw with the buttslam and gets a mix-up opportunity, b) he gets hit by claw and has to guess at another wall dive attempt (same as if he had guessed wrong and gotten hit anyways), or c) he avoids the claw altogether, MAO has to slide at him to punish, which disrupts the timing for his wall dive attempts. Basically, Kusu chose to sacrifice health in order to avoid getting destroyed altogether, which allows him an opportunity to stay in the fight.
And you can reversal out of MAO’s wall dives, but it’s extremely difficult to do. Based on which position he’ll decide to attack (you have to guess, he doesn’t project where he’s going to hit), you have 3 options to do reversals. Standard directional DP, DP in the other direction timed late, or a cross-cut DP that is preferably neg-edged and ends with a high block on the cross-up side.
Yeah, as Honda, you sacrifice health to get out from the center of the screen towards the corner. And at least Honda has that option (when he has health to sacrifice), where as some characters are just kind of screwed at that point. XSPR made a great point once. A huge reason that Claw is such a strong character is that, while most characters are in a position of strength when they have their opponent cornered, Claw is the opposite and 80% of the screen, he has the opponent where he wants them. And depending on the character, it’s not that great to be cornered by Claw either.
But even Kusumondo had trouble getting out of the wall-dive loop though. During the very final round at ToL, he got nailed three times in a row and was one more wall dive hit away from being dizzy. He made a tiny bit of a comeback but by then it was already too little too late.
And the final round of the damdai-MAO match. That was so painful to watch. =/
All good points. Honda v. Vega is very much about using health as a resource, both in terms of risks that you’re allowed to take, as well as protecting it in order to maintain the life lead and run the clock out. Honda’s very capable of fighting Vega as long as he’s standing on his feet. But much like everyone else, once the wall dive vortex starts, odds are he’ll most likely be eating damage.
Claw’s powerful for a variety of reasons. The wall dive is arguably his deadliest method of attack, but he doesn’t even need to use it in order to be competitive. He has excellent speed, range, and some of the best normals the game has to offer.
As for that final Damdai v. MAO match, I couldn’t tell if Damdai just made incorrect block guesses, or if he was trying to do reversal out of the wall dive. To me, it looked like he was trying to reversal DP, but since Mao kept accurately changing sides on him during DP inputs, they weren’t coming out, and so he ate the knockdown. I know Damdai has a pretty high success rate with reversal DPs and is very confident and capable in this matchup. So I guess it proves that Mao’s wall dive game really is on another level.
People like to make life bigger than it is, that’s why there are all these MAO myths going on. It’s cool though, it gets people hyped for the game, but in this instance with the wall dive hitting low, we have bad information on how the game works.
Both Kusumondo and MAO played damn near perfect matches. I couldn’t believe it when I was seeing MAO wake up throw Kusumondo’s tick-oichio attempts multiple times.That blew my mind. Kusumondo also knew when to sacrifice health and when not to, as you pointed out, and on top of that, Honda has a lot more health and less dizzy potential than Claw does. Seeing how skillful Kusumondo was, I wanted him to take it especially since it went 2/5 down to the last hit when both players were 1/1. He was climbing a big hill to get to the top, and I had to root for the guy after seeing such hard work pay off. MAO was an excellent player, too, and I didn’t want to see him lose either, but I thought if it came down to it, the Honda player would probably take it a lot harder after such hard work and I felt he deserved to be there. I also saw MAO play Claw how Claw should be played, using a tight poking game and normals to chip away at his opponent’s health, and looping when an opening came into play.
I personally feel like Damdai lost the mindset to win after everyone on stream was being so derisive towards him during the Afro Legends match. I doubt he was at the top of his game after losing a good chunk of change and credibility in the eyes of many.
I think everyone wanted Kusumondo to win. He’s a super nice guy, he had his kid watching him play, and he damn near won the first ToL with HONDA. It’s not like he had an easy bracket either, he had to face Ryus, old shotos, and a Deejay to get there. But props to MAO to climb back from loser’s and take it. He clearly made some adjustments in his game, both prior to grand finals and during the match itself. You could tell he took his 3-0 loss to heart when he got knocked down to Loser’s, and upped the scumbag factor to take it down to the final round of the reset. It was an awesome example of how two near-perfect masters of their characters can go toe-to-toe, while using a variety of tools, techniques, and mind games to win out.
Are you referring to the comments on the stream chat? I doubt he read that during the tournament. In any case, I think this event really motivated him to practice and step up his game to reclaim the title, which is the way it should be. I think Damdai was just caught off guard by MAO’s dominance with Claw, and is most likely revising his strategy against Claw to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I was amazed he made a 9-1 match look like it was in his favor, going up against one of the best DeeJay players in the country. Dude has major skill.
Yeah, the chat, but I’m sure losing a hugely hyped money match with lots of people voting against you would do a number on your mindset. I know I’d probably have been thinking about it afterwards and most likely not very focused, but that’s me. Maybe Damdai doesn’t take that kind of stuff to his head and really was in it, and maybe just wasn’t ready for MAO’s Claw.
