are you playing online?
Are you crouch teching?
If not you have to learn it ASAP.
Ok, I’m sure I’m going to catch flack over this, but once, in an interview, a pro who will remain unnamed addressed how he got good at teching. He mentioned that good players will blow up crouch tech mashing so he taught himself to anticipate throws better by watching high level playing with his arcade in hand, and practiced teching everytime he though one of them was going to throw.
End result was he grew to recognize more accurately when somebody was going for a throw.
That being said, I am really bad at teching too. I anticipate decently (except against Nobalman) but playing online makes it hard sometimes. 
hmmm
That is a very interesting method, but teching late is just as good I suppose.
Yeah I am.
Well…I try to crouch tech, I know how to crouch tech. But the whole technique is useless if I can’t anticipate grapple’s most the time.
On a unrelated note, my confidence has been shattered recently. Yesterday afternoon I started playing with only 60PP needed for 2000PP and at the time I also had roughly 3800BP, all gained solely using Vega. I was really proud of myself. By the end of last night I finished on roughly 1522+PP, then this afternoon that continued to drop now I’m on like 1370PP.
It’s honestly sole destroying, I don’t rage when I lose no matter the circumstance. But as of right now I feel very disheartened. Because I don’t half try my best, I’ve been playing Vega since Vanilla. Not rigorously practicing everyday but I still get plenty of time in I’d say. I read guides, I watch loads of tournaments on Youtube and live streams etc. I really put the time in to learn.
Regardless of Vega’s weaknesses I love to play him, but I’m facing facts now. I just cant win with him consistently so I don’t believe I’m good enough to use him. And to be quite honest I don’t wanna use anyone else, especially characters that every other fucker uses I’ve always liked to be different. So I’m considering stopping playing all together. Anyways /end rant 
Haha, yeah that’s a tough spot but I guarantee you nearly everyone of this forum has gone through the pains of climbing up and falling down. Listen man, it’s cool for us to have certain point acquisitions as milestones and pat ourselves on the back when we get there (usually briefly), but you should never use points as a judgement of your skill. It WILL give you an inflated ego, and set you up for some big crushes when you take losses and need time to figure out whats going wrong. Try to eliminate negative emotions tied to losses, but to do this you have to prove to yourself that points don’t matter. You can be ranked really high online and get completely bodied offline anyway.
I recommend taking Justin Wong’s advice and starting over. Use the color pink and just do silly stuff all match. Pick a new character (fuck Vega!) and play with them. This will tank your score, and slowly you can start to play Vega seriously again (if you want to). This is an exercise in learning to relax really, and it helped me greatly to my surprise. Concentrate on playing a variety of skilled players, and go out of your comfort zone when finding ways to better your game. Never be afraid of making mistakes or losing.
Feel free to even put the game down for any amount of time. A day, a week, a month, whatever. When and if you feel like playing again, you will have a fresh mind - and I’ll bet you’ll be surprised to see yourself playing differently than before.
ok 2 things:
-trying to tech online is a lost cause.
-trying to crouch tech online is even worse.
i’ve found that you tend to play smarter if you just straight up avoid teching online. it also prevents you from setting yourself up for failure when you go offline and you’re addicted to auto tech and geting raped by tech traps. If you have to tech do standing tech.
ie Hav’s advice once again rings true. Block more, Think more.
You do realize that stand tech leaves you vulnerable for lows and comes with a whiff animation of about 21 frames?
If you have to tech, crouch tech. But do it properly, for the fuck of it. Don’t mash or abuse and you’ll be fine.
yep… and because of that you tend to use it less often and in smarter situiations. a good thing because using crouch tech online will develop bad habits for offline. if you never play offline then it doesnt matter i guess.
I am getting blown the hell up on jump-ins… what the hell can I do?? This Cody player get jumping in once I got knock down it was annoying as hell…
Are you the godlike Cody player i have been viewing lately?
No, I’m a Claw main since Vanilla.
@Vegaman: I don’t see how it develops bad habits. I only play the local community, things aren’t THAT laggy.
block
it easily does with me. everyone online throws like mad and i pull my hair out trying to tech. that’s why i play gief online now.
You shouldn’t play ranked too much then. If it’s player matches and my opponent is from Europe I can almost certainly be sure that I can tech the throws (more or less) without failing cause of lag.
I thought you was this guy.
[media=youtube]uIvxZk5OQwo[/media]
I’ll tell you something…as ridiculous as this may sound if I could tech grapples I’d be easily winning 50% more matches at least. You see…I have such a weakness for it that I panic often which causes me not to block because I’m looking for the grapple straight away since so many people are dependent on it, so I eat a combo instead on wake up.
I’m fully aware that it’s much better just to hold block on a potential incoming combo, and to eat the grapple instead. But what can I say, “old habits die hard?” Lately I have been blocking a great deal more then I use to, which unfortunately is just inviting more grappling. And often I ask myself “How on earth are you meant to see most these grapples coming?” Because I swear to me there so hard to spot.
Often I get beat due to simple patterns that end up with a grapple as a finishing product, and that makes me feel bad about myself to be honest :/. I’m with Vegaman 100%, people online constantly grapple especially when they realize they can’t work there shitty flowchart patterns on you, and it makes me wanna pull my hair out because it makes me think I suck since 95% of the time I can’t tech a grapple when I’m knocked down. At times I think about just how different this game would be if there was no grapple function.
If Vega’s wake up options didn’t suck. Correction if Vega actually had a viable wake up option which works as a REAL Anti Air. I wouldn’t crap myself half the time when I get knocked down since people wouldn’t “safe jump” me to death, and then perhaps I wouldn’t worry about the scrub like fake combo’s just to grapple you scenario.
Is there anyway to control where the claw and mask go during Claw/mask toss? It seems to be random…
First you really don’t want to do this in a match.
Second if you are far away/mid distance no matter what button claw will fly forward if really close to opponent it will fly behind him same for mask.
@Joker: I’m this guy
[media=youtube]u51gBEoz9Tk[/media]
stupid matches, and it’s already been a whole year.
@Raiden: You don’t really know the throw range of the character you’re fighting against then. Let’s say you’re blocking low (high block generates more pushback but leaves you vulnerable for lows). Ryu is point blank and tries getting a blockstring on you:
cr.LK, cr.LP, cr.MP
He can only directly throw you (without walking towards) after LK and LP. Immediately after you see each of those normals blocked, push throw. If he tries to throw after cr.MP, he is going to have to walk a great distance forward to get into throw range. So what you’re gonna do is delay the timing you taught yourself earlier a little bit. You can even try making words up that fill the time gap from the blocked cr.MP to the throw. “Shithead” works for me (not kidding). If you’re failing hard, try standing up to tech.
Of course he could fake and CH you and stuff, but that’s not important at the beginning. Use your practice mode!
The thing, is as Sas’ hints, grapples are totally part of flowcharts, you need to learn those flowcharts too as best as possible. Predicting 100% of grapples is impossible, they are the coremost RocPApSic component of this game, and online especially it is even more difficult to react to them on the fly which makes it more powerfull, ergo making frame traps or other mind games based on them (what you are victim off for being too anxious to defend from it) althemore easy to land.
Online games have diffrent flowcharts with more grabbing, more baiting, more jumping, more setups/traps, and less ‘reaction’ base mechanics like ‘hit confirms’, and reactive ‘counter hits’, proactive air defense and durable defense. It adds more random to the game, for some who are good at mindgames or rushing and reading it can be beneficial, for some who usually benefit from quick reflexes solid defense or spot on reaction timing it is detrimental.