thanks for the quick response
got a beginner level q. what is the frame data explanation for why losers like cammy, chun li, ryu, bison, balrog etc are able to non stop mash their stupid cr. lk and cr. lp safely and mindlessly without ever being punished, yet whenever i mash the same cr. lk and cr. lp it always gets stuffed.
knowing this, what should a vega do in this situation? just keep blocking and lk flip or backdash once in a while? why can’t he pressure just mashing these buttons like a fool the way the other characters do?
most characters in this game have a “rapid fire” cr.lp or cr.lp or both, this means that providing they tap the button at a proper rythm their rapid fire attack cancels its own recovery
Taking chun li example a whiffed mashed cr.lp has 1 frame of startup then 2 active frames then another 1 frame startup 2 actives frames etc the first one being the exception and having between 1 and 2 startup frames. so she can basically shield herself with a hitbox 60% of the time. so can balrog. Every one else has a slower rapid fire attack and can only shield themselves 50% of the time.
Now you cannot do that, vega has no rapid fire attacks (maybee he is the only character) so you can never shield yourself by mashing anything ( doesn’t matter much though as you advance in level jab mashing will make you grin)
You have plenty solution to beat jab mashing with vega.
one of them is waiting to be at a proper range to use cr.lp, or waiting to be in range for cr.mp, both moves have a better priority than most jabs in the game when used at the proper range, meaning that you will touch their hitbox while yours stays out of reach.
Another solution is to throw, it is a statistical winner, grab has 2-3 frame startup and 2 active frames, so when done at the proper range the first frame you are too far, the 3rd-4th frame you are vulnerable on the 5th-6th frame you will win flat. so you are at a slight disadvantage against rapid fire balrog and chun jab, on par with 3 framers ( the normal case) and at a slight advantage against everything slower.
df.mk also beats most crouching attacks flat if you do it at the correct range, but people usually don’t mash jab at that range.
Against a fair deal of people df.hk beats jabs mashing ( when done at the proper range) and that is a real deterrent because df.hk hit confirms into a meter less easy 250 combo, people can’t afford to offer you this combo on a plate.
In fact the answer is pretty simple, when people mash jab if you are point blank you can try a counter hit or a grab, or you can wait for pushback. once you are not point blank you can stuff them flat, and if they do mash jab even beyond that range they are going to endure severe punishment.
chun li and balrog unfortunately also have excellent long range pokes to use when their jab is out of reach so you cannot use the push back method with them, and the grab method is risky (even impossible if they rapid fire properly but who does except a properly configured turbo).
Chun li and balrog have excellent footsies and you have to bear with it. Your only chance is to outsmart them defend better and attack better you are not beating these characters if you are not a fair deal better than the player manning them. Your only tools are your superior walk speed and grab range but those are not enough to make things balance in your favor.
Also don’t mix things up,
a blockstring mashed jab does nothing but push you back, you can do nothing against that and noone can even if they also have a rapid fire, even if they have an invincible, there is no pressure involved as long as there is no combo starter overhead or grab coming next.
When people mash their jab as a zoning (ambushing / defensive) tool to keep you at bay you can take advantage of it, there is no pressure involved, they are just trying to limit the span of your attack plans (and they do it poorly), vega is well geared against that because he has a couple of excellent pokes that outrange and outprioritise almost every rapid fire attacks and an excellent grab range. walk until the correct range crouch thrust your claw… end of problem
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could you explain how you get the numbers for chun li cr. lp 1 startup frame and 2 active frames? this doesn’t seem like something you can find directly off frame data (all they say is 3 startup frames and 3 active frames). does it have anything to do with her recovery frames? and how did you then get the shielding herself 60% of the time from that info?
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couple questions about the strategy to wait until you are far enough out of range so you have the hitbox advantage. how exactly do you know what the exact range needs to be for you to be at a hitbox advantage, meaning is there anyway i could compare vega to chun li hitboxes when both are in a crouching position? and secondly, how do you get far enough back while they’re mashing since many of their mashed jabs will hit you on a backdash leading to a reset. do you just have to time the backdash perfectly or are there better ways to push yourself further away from them?
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and finally could you also explain the numbers on the throw? i don’t see all the 2-3 frame startup (i only see 3 startup frames on eventhubs) or understand the frame advantage based on proper range. where did you get the stuff about being vulnerable on 3rd-4th frame and at advantage on 5th-6th frame (which frames are these btw?)
thanks for the reply
sorry got the numbers form the top of my head and I shouldn’t have.
Chun li and balrog’s are 3 frame startup which in fact means 2.??? for the first one and then 2 for every other rapid fire canceled one.
So for chun li in fact it is 3 /(2+3) which gives 60% of the time she has an active hitbox in front of her to touch you, and 40% of the time she is in startup. now if the guy does not mash exactly at the correct rythm the % drops.
For balrog it is only 2 actives so it gives 50% = (2 / (2+2) ) same here it is rapid fire but it can drop to lower. if not mashed exactly every 4 frames.
yeah technically you could do that but it would not help much, as you get seasoned you will feel when people mash one time too many and have a free cr.lp or cr.mp, and experience is better than knowledge, you don’t have time to think and measure here.
No,backdash won’t get reset by jab mashing you have 8 frames of invincibility, so you can vanish through up to 2 jabs, and even if you were point blank before you’ll be out of reach when invicibility fades.
The thing is you cannot backdash if you are kept in a permanent state of blockstun so if ryu for example mashes his cr.lp and you blocked one you cannot backdash as long as he connects rapid fire cr.lp, period. You can do nothing except change block stance, walk forward or start a jump.
Anyway, wait through push back obviuoulsy doesn’t involve backdashing, unless you are predicting he will mash in which case you should buffer your backdash during your previous move recovery or in some case block/hit stun of his non rapid fire previous move. Wait through pushback is exactly what it sounds like, you wait until every jab pushes you away from him.
okay brace up 
Numbers on event hub count the last input frame as startup while in fact it is not part of the movement animation. when you do grab you press lp+lk at some point you system registers it, and the game acknowlegde that this hapens at a random date in time during a frame, and following that flow just before the frame when the motion starts there is a random fraction of a frame of delay.
So in fact when on eventhubs you read X startup in fact the move only has X-1 startup when you do a move out of the blue you are vulenrable for “X-1 + a fraction of a frame” (rounded up to X in the charts). but when your input happens during block stun or recovery of a previous move ( buffering) your move starts on the next frame in the flow and you only have a perfect X-1 frame of startup.
you can attempts a grab under those condition, you are in the opponent’s jab blockstun so if you buffer your grab input it is registered by the game during the last frame of blockstun it will come out with a perfect 3-1 frames of startup.
Now the second principle to understand is that when the active frames of 2 hits happen together usually we trade hits, this is not the case with grab, when the active frames of a throw are simultaneous with the active frames of a hit the throw wins absolutely and you grab the opponent ( and in that case it is very unlikely he can tech it in time) grabs and command grab beat all regular moves flat they never “trade” hits.
Providing you are in range this basically gives you 2 I win frames and 2 I lose frames.
Now back to the point if you are caught in a rapid fire attack blockstring you cannot grab more than you can backdash in between 2 rapid fire attacks, again you have to do it before the first rapid fire or after the last.
What is more intresting is what follows, in the case where the guy “zone” you out by whiffing his rapid fire jab under your nose.
If you do the throw while coming in on a rapid fire mashing opponent, you now have 2.??? vulnerable and 2 I win frame but when done from some range you’ll be out of reach until the animation starts right so the 0.??? extra frames of startup don’t really matter. And we can assume things happen very similar to the case when you input grab during blockstun, if your animation starts and you impale yourself on his punchbox during the 2 frames of startup you lose, if you reach your 2 actives frames then it doesn’t matter where in his jab he is, he will be grabbed.
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To put it simply if he keeps mashing**
and you are in a block
You are naturally pushed away and if he tries something else, well so can you. Mashing is not a problem, the problem is what can you do when/if he stops mashing, is he at frame advance, can you grab, can you poke, should you bait, should you tech, should you counter poke ?
and you are moving around
You can punish him.
Okay enough with the theory :
When someone trys to zone you out with cr.lp or st.lp or cr.lk mashing he is asking you a question. “Look i am going to do that until the round ends can you get through that or do you need to jump on me ?”
If your only response is jumping on him he succesfully zoned you and forced you to do what he wanted and smash you eat an uppercut (or worse).
There is always a second solution to this jab mashing zoning, you walk at the correct range and you start charging a focus attack now you are zoning him, asking him the question " ok look in a maximum of 60 frames you are going to eat a combo starter if you keep on mashing" in response he can play footsies or back away or jump at your thoat and try to rush you down, in any case he is forced to change his gameplan, take risks or lose ground.
Then comes the top solutions, instead of trying your luck with a jump in, or threatening him but yielding momentum, you may want to dive right into footsies, and prove him that he needs a better gameplan.
What you can do if you want to level up your game in such a way is head to training mode, record chun li mashing cr.lp, then try to bypass her zoning with some stuff, try to walk in and grab her, try to kara grab her, try to hit her with combo starters ( cr.lp - fst.lk - cr.mk - CH), and if nothing works reliably try your single pokes ( fst.mk, fst.hp, cr.mp, cr.lk) if no poke works reliably try the counter pokes (PoM, st.HK, focus1 tap cancel backdash).
Depending on what you found you will have a 3rd and maybee a fourth solution hopefully working at diffrent ranges.
As for leveling up your game against rapid fire blockstings there is nothing you can do except play competitive or friendly matches again, and again and again until your defensive game is top notch.
Not sure where to post this question since it doesn’t really relate to matchups and it definitely doesn’t need its own thread, but anywho.
I’ve been a Vega main for quite a while and I got used to playing some higher quality level play from people on my friends list. I hadn’t played Ranked in months, perhaps since last June. Nothing but Endless.
Now, if this has happened to any of you other Vega players, I’d like to know. But when you’ve been used to fighting better players, have you ever jumped on Ranked and gone on a horrible losing streak to really, really bad players? I know the human brain gets used to things extraordinarily quickly, so all of a sudden playing DP mashing, jump-in happy people after playing good players can be a jolt to the system. However, have any of you gone through this?
To describe one particular match that got me flustered, I was fighting a Ryu that did nothing but jump at me every chance he got with fierce kick. The follow up would always, without question, be a grab or a trip. If I blocked the trip, I’d get a psychic DP. My brain couldn’t deal with this kind of elementary tactic for some reason, not after being used to fighting more advanced techniques. It was weird. I proceeded to lose to basic play for the next 5 matches against randoms on Ranked.
It was a little discouraging, so I was just wondering.
Yup, the reason this is is that you’ll find yourself losing to random.
People who are higher level, you can use footsies, proper spacing, a tonne of mind games, and it’ll work, because they’re trying to do the same to you.
Against people in ranked, you’ll find the mashers and laggy bastards. Who, by the way, don’t think. So your footsies and mind games are wasted on them. There’s no conditioning. You have to hope and pray that even simple baiting tricks will work.
TLDR;
Can’t mind-fuck a brain that doesn’t think, so you’re going to have a tougher time implementing your advanced skill on them so don’t beat yourself up over it.
yeah happens to all of us i guess.
The thing is whenver I fight someone I don’t know I always assume he is a dp masher in the beginning and my first choices are always to bait, they are usually easy to zone out or to tech because their attack plans are so corny, so I just hug db until they can’t resist anymore and try a lousy crossup ji-srk or something in that taste.
I have even met some player who are better than me overall and who play like that usually for a round or half a round just to shake me off balance and remind me I can get srked everytime I press a button.
The thing you wan’t to avoid at all cost are exactly thing that work against skilled player,
frame trap ( ban them from your game they ll fly over those guy’s head a good 1000 ft )
safe grabs put them in.
bait trap welcome
db charge hug welcome
Wake up pressure/gimmick big NO
Wall dives welcome.
I apologize if this question has been asked before, too lazy to look it up.
I’m trying to perfect claws safe jumps and his kara throw. Any advice on this? Like how to condition myself to use them or something along those lines.
Can’t do a lot other than practice in the lab, I’m afraid. Practice your setups, like how to do them and all that. The only way you’re going to be able to test your spacing really is playing offline with someone (NOT ONLINE BECAUSE IT WILL SKEW WITH YOUR TIMING IF IT LAGS)
Something in me this week has just sparked on that with the kara setups/Safe jumps and I’m doing them more than ever. I think I’m scared of AE changes so I’m compensating by abusing all of Claws other good things.
This needs emphasis. try to stay away from techincal stuff online. it will only hurt your offline game and throw your timing off
i would like to take this time to say… that after playing PSN for a whopping 4 hours…
online sucks
online throws suck
online tech traps suck
online timing sucks
online tactics suck
online sucks!
Fuck online
Thank you
beginner here, haven’t logged on in a while. back to the point about counterattacks to rapid fire jab mashing by cammys, chun-lis, balrogs, etc…
you mentioned here the best option besides throwing is to wait until you are pushed back far enough and then use cr. mp or cr. lp. can you tell me why specifically these two if their startup frames is exactly as quick as a move like cr. lk and far HK? why do you not use far HK, is it because the motion from going from crouch to standing would take too long?
Far HK has a fairly high hitboxs and will whiff on far crouching opponents so it’s probably not a good idea to wait and use standing HK. the other option for sHK is to use it up close. there are 2 problems with this. sHK is a 4 frame move. any 3 frame move will beat it clean. any i-frame move will beat it clean, any throw will beat it clean. then you have a whopping 23 frames of recovery to deal with if it’s whiffed, and if it’s blocked you’re at -7 or -5 at best if spaced correctly. it’s a big gamble.
as for cLK it doesnt have the range cLP and cMP have
When you say s. HK is 4 frames you’re talking about the active frames right? if so you ideally want a move with the lowest startup frames (anything with 4 for vega) and lowest active frames as well? is the only reason cr. MP and cr. LP are better than s. HK to fight off rapid fire jabs because they have less active frames?
and about c. LK not having the range, how do you determine this? just by common sense by seeing how far a cr. lk extends compared to a cr. mp and cr. mk (by playing it is very obvious the latter two have better range) or do you analyze hitbox data to determine the exact range for each move (if so, is there a site that can show me this?)
no i’m referring to it’s 4 startup frames. The only reason sHK is worse is because of it’s crappy recovery and chance of whiffing.
Personally i dont really analyze hitbox data unless i see some crazyness. I know the general size of the hitbox from experience.
Hey guys, since this is a Q&A thread hopefully I’m in the right place.
Vega’s my main and has been for a very long time, regardless of what Capcom has done to him in the SF4 series I’ve always done my best to keep plugging away with him. Even though the effort most the time is a joke.
I’ve not asked for help before online with this game, I’ve strictly taught my self so bare with me lol.
So to the point, I need help with my major weakness. Which is dealing with the onslaught of pressure that some people, those who obviously know how to play properly and know Vega’s weaknesses. Sometimes… all it takes is one move/combo and once I’m on my back, I can’t get up again! Especially when I’m locked in the corner, my options I feel as though are so few its difficult to keep my composure because I can’t help but think “jesus! help me!”
For example, I’ve been against Seth’s that have got there what I think is there BnB combo (crouch light punch x3/4, crouch medium punch then his “spin kick” whatever its called) and as soon as they do it I think “the bullshit begins” juggle juggle juggle for 20 seconds in that corner then dead.
But like I said that’s just an example, if I knew how to cope with the immense pressure properly it would improve my game play so much because I don’t even think I’m that bad. I don’t believe in spamming moves outta random, and even so its not like I can depend on the crappy scarlet terror as a counter when it gets crushed most the time.
Any help from some veterans would be great thanks.
If your in the corner and someone is constantly pressuring you, you have have a small window in between attacks to triangle jump off the wall and escape to mid screen, unless their psychic or easily anticipated it you should generally be able to get out some what easily.
@vegaman, is St.HK really so bad even at the negative frames on block?? the max range for it or at least the max range where you get the two hit is VERY hard to punish because of the range of the move, after someone gets kicked by a HK at nearly half screen once or twice they will fear that shit, negative frames or not.
most characters have at least 1 5 frame or less move that can punish at that range. yes it’s hard because it can be as small of a window a 1 frame, but hard doesnt mean impossible. especially at high level play. actually just going off the top of my head, i cant think of any character that cant punish at that range.
Raiden you’re going to have to learn how to block. If you get put into the corner early just straight up block. dont try teching or getting outta command throws. just block and watch what they do. memorize their mixup habits and exploit them when you know a window is open.
Dealing with corner pressure is all about blocking and patience. If you can stay patient, your opponent will probably crack and leave a hole in their offense, do an unsafe move, or go for a gimmick. Like, if you’ve been blocking for a while, they’ll probably throw out an overhead if they have one, which you could beat out with one of your own pokes. If you’re facing throw pressure, don’t panic and crouch tech. It’s better to take the throw than to eat a counter-hit combo, and after a few throws, you’ll hopefully be able to find your way out of the situation.
Remember that you can use FBA to get the hell out of that situation if you really have to. As soon as you land a poke, cancel it into regular or EX FBA and get yourself across the screen.