Meh.
I think Vega is really strong in this game, like the best he’s been in SF4. Footsies and neutral game are favored in this meta, the system mechanics favor him (except W-ultra) and he got some real offensive buffs + a reliable AA. But he doesn’t have the inherent big damage on random hits and the rushdown out of neutral that all the best characters have, and he still has a real weakness to pressure when they’re inside on him. Vega is weak to what makes top tier characters top tier, + some bad matchups against people like Abel and Rufus.
Vega is about as good as you can be without being S tier. Good choice for top 10, but not top 5. I see him winning majors at home but not huge international tournaments.
^ cr.hp is still far from being a reliable anti air and even though ultra is probably his strongest version I don’t think that his overall standing is higher than super. Also if they wanted to improve his offense significantly they would keep the +5 on hit on cr. jab
This is a big IMO post, but c.HP is very good in most matchups and meh in some of them. Off the top of my head, the only MUs I don’t rely on it too much is against people with very fast jumps or very good air normals. So basically Adon, Juri and ironically the mirror match. It trades a lot there or just loses. Grapplers usually have tools to beat it outright if they’re looking for it (condor dive, Gief jLK, Hugo far away jHP). Shotos can never beat it, other charges characters can’t, most fireball character can’t jump (Rose, Sagat, Poison, etc), if I OS with it then Cammy can’t do instant dive without getting stuffed and dives from higher than that can be focused, it beats twins/Rufus dive kicks sometimes but it’s timing dependent, Cody can’t jump, none of the new characters can jump on Vega, the list goes on. I feel the more active frame (plus glitched priority on the new active frames) was very good in most matchups.
It’s also not Vega’s only option to deal with jumps. He’s always had different, reactive ways to AA but was overall weak to jumps. Forced to air-to-air, walk under trip guard, early HK ST so they run right into it, air grab, etc. The problem was that all of his unconventional anti-air options forced him to react very early or guess when they’re going to jump. Vega had to put lot of focus and energy just into stopping jumps, a low-risk high-reward option that the oponent didn’t have to put much thought into. Just giving him one decent grounded AA + his old anti-air tech was a huge buff.
“Shotos can never beat it”. " Other charges characters can’t". “Cammy”. “Cody can’t jump”. And some of you guys still have the guts to disagree with me when I say that people do not know the Claw matchup in 2014.
People do not know how to jump in at this game. Most of the time they jump with the move that has more range/blockstun and not the one with higher priority.
Shotos have jiHP.
Blanka has jiHK, Guile jiLK, Chun jiHK, Dictator jiHP, Honda has jiMP.
Cammy has EX CS.
Cody has jiLP.
If they knew the matchup: Guile, Shotos, Juri, Chun, Blanka, Honda, Ibuki, Makoto, Dictator, Fei, Cody, Adon and Sakura players could body you for using crHP as AA. But, no… they keep jumping with their crappy buttons. Meanwhile you are anti airing them with crHP thinking that Claw has a reliable AA…
Tip: He does not.
I lost to Ricky O at Evo. Sorry everyone.
Well at least you did not got eaten alive by Daigo 
Did you enjoyed it at least?
i reckon beating ricky with vega is more of an accomplishment than beating daigo’s evil ryu TBH. hell even beating kazunoko with vega is better than beating daigo
I got a little jumpy and kept getting slide instead of cosmic heel when he did shitty dive kicks 
My friend, RIZHALL, recorded the match but he hasn’t fucking sent it to me.
We are waiting
Vega again got a pretty bad new costume. They didn’t give up the tradition.
Except for alt.2
I’m glad Vega finally gets his suit from his SSFIIT ending. Though the default color isn’t like ST’s purple/HDR’s black, which I’m sure will come up as alternate colors. It’s gray, similar to Balrog’s white default in his alt 3 suit. Is this alluding to the Shadaloo team color seen in SFA2 Sagat’s ending?
http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/arcade/a/sfa2sag.htm
I’m glad they stuck with Vega’s default mask for this one. The snake design on his suit is nice. The sleeves roll up to reveal Vega wearing gauntlets, possibly alluding to his early concept artwork in SFII of him being an armored knight. Nice.
Vega sure dodged a bullet here, as some of the other Vacation alts are just terrible. I can somewhat excuse Chun-Li’s as it seems to take inspiration from her 80’s fashion.
http://www.eventhubs.com/artwork/chun-li-artwork-4-street-fighter-2/
But C. Viper… WTF.
the entire shadowloo squad looks like they came from the mafia
Well. I mean. they’re literally organized crime sooo.
mmm. That costume sucks balls to me. The claw looks pretty cool tho.
Sup guys.
Haven’t played or posted much since vanilla but i actually went to Evo too for the first time and I did “okay” for not playing for a few years.
I didn’t make it out of pools and lost very very close games due to bad matchups (lost to chunli in winners, eliminated by abel in losers), but at least i took out 2 Cammy’s in the process lol
Any chance to we get some screenshots of the Claw section from the BradyGames USFIV Bible?
I don’t plan to buy it for obvious reasons. But I’m curious to read that one.
i’m predicting 2 days before the digital version of the bible gets uploaded in torrents. i’m more looking forward to the refinement of the hitbox viewer on pc though. i find that way more informative. seeing how corners of hitboxes collides with each other to form unblockables gives the the giggles
Hm, as far as I know the digital version is a html one. It’s not pdf or some extension well known for ebooks. Printscreens will obviously be shared, though.
Anyway, just leaving a request here so that once it’s out I can read wth they typed about Claw.