Skankin Garbage

Lilith Juggling with an attack after ES Mystic Arrow is not regarded as a combo by the game. To get the full damage value of the Throw + Juggle, you need to add them both up seperately. For example, vs. Morrigan: ES Mystic Arror, Luminous Illusion 22/30 - ES Mystic Arrow's Damage 30/39 - LI's Damage The combo damage value will only show the damage for LI, but the whole juggle actually dealt 52/69 damage.

Felicia Since Toy Touch counts as a Pursuit, it also displays its damage in the improper places. More importantly, ES Toy Touch, apart from displaying damage in the improper places, also adds up the sum of its damage under "recoverable damage" in the combo column, a la Bishamon's EX Pursuit. This is important because, also like Bish's EX Pursuit, Felicia's ES Toy Touch does red and white damage, so the damage readout displays much higher damage values than you're actually getting. Thus, when you end a combo in ES Toy Touch, you need to know how much damage the rest of the combo did, and then how much the EX Pursuit did. As an example: "C.Lp, C.Mk xx ES Rolling Buckler (all 7 hits) \/ ES Toy Touch" 36/56 - Combo damage without ES Toy Touch. 4/8 - The amount of damage that ES Toy Touch will add to this combo (4 hits of 1/2. Notice that the hit column incorrectly reads 2/1 for each hit) 40/64 - The actual damage values for this combo 48/56 - What the in-game combo readout says. When determining damage for individual combos with ES Toy Touch, take care to watch each hit, as the individual hits do more damage on shorter combos, and will scale downward with longer combos. Against some characters, the individual hits even begin to scale in the middle of the attack. For example, if you do C.Hk, ES Toy Touch on most characters, the first hits will deal 1/3 damage, and the last hits will deal 1/2 damage.

Bishamon Bishamon's EX Pursuit (aka. Togakbu Sarashi) not only displays it's values in reverse, but it displays it improperly in the "combo" column, adding both damage values together and putting it under "Recoverable/Red". This is misleading as well, because this error causes it to show the move doing more damage than it actually does. Thus, when you end a combo in EX Pursuit, you need to know how much damage the rest of the combo did, and then how much the EX Pursuit did. For example: "C.Lk, C.Lp -> C.Lk, C.Mp xx ES Spirit (W/Followup), EX Pursuit": 27/51 - Combo damage without EX Pursuit. 15/18 - The amount of damage that EX Pursuit will add to this combo (note that the display actually reads 18/15; incorrect) 42/69 - The actual damage values for this combo 60/51 - What the in-game combo readout says. Notice that in reality, EX Pursuit adds 18 total damage to the combo, whereas the game tries to tell you that it's adding 33 damage to the combo.

Demitri Midnight Pleasure's damage display does not include the first half of the move (the repeated bites). Thankfully, however, that part of the move doesn't account for defense modifiers and does the same damage on every character. Thus, if you are interested in MPleasure's damage on any character, take the Damage Display numbers and add 18/18 to it. Just because I think this is important and useful, I'm writing it again - the first half of Demitri's Midnight Pleasure deals 18/18 to every character in the game, regardless of their defense modifier.

Victor 1. Victor's Mega Spike is totally fucked. The numbers on Red Life and Total Life are displayed backwards, for one; both hits read 20/12 (obviously impossible) when they should read 12/20. Another oddity is, under the "Combo" column, it displays 32/0 for both hits. This is not only different from the display on the "Hit" column, but it's also incorrect. Both hits should display 12/20. Also, since Victor's throw is multiple parts, the two hits don't add up under the "Combo" column. Since both hits do the same damage, however, you can just double the value and that will give you the proper damage for the throw (i.e 12/20 x2 = 24/40 vs. Morrigan). 2. While Mega Crush works normally when landing it on an active opponent, the damage values are improperly reversed when used as a Pursuit attack.

So, I noticed two quirks about the training mode today for VSav. 1. The labels "Recoverable Damage" and "Permanent Damage" are not quite right. If you don't believe me, go hit somebody with any attack; the first number - recoverable damage - is always lower than the second number - permanent damage. It goes without saying that you can't do more Permanent Damage (Red Life) than you can do Recoverable Damage (White Life), because then the concept of White Life wouldn't even exist. Also, if you're wondering, no, the total damage of the attack is not the sum of both numbers. There's nothing wrong with the actual numbers being displayed in this case, though - just the labels. "Recoverable Damage" is actually how much Red Life the attack dealt. "Permanent Damage" is actually the total damage of the attack. In other words: Recoverable Damage = Permanent Damage Permanent Damage = Total Damage (Some of you may know the next bit of this, but I'm writing it out for the sake of clarity) If you want to know the figures for Recoverable Damage on any attack/combo, you need to find the difference between the second number and the first. So, if your attack reads 9/16, then 9 is the red life, 16 is the total, and 16 - 9 = 7 white life. 2. This is a pretty big deal! There are attacks that display numbers incorrectly in training mode. This should be very important to anyone who actually uses training mode to figure out the damage of their combos, because you might have the wrong numbers on how much you're getting out of a combo. I've compiled a summary below that accounts for every glitch I've found. Gamewide Oddities 1. All pursuit attacks have their damage values reversed. Thus, if a pursuit actually deals 0/8, the game will read 8/0. 2. "comboing" a throw into a pursuit attack is not counted as a combo by the game engine, and will only display the damage values for the pursuit attack. The sole exception is Sasquatch's Big Sledge, since the second hit of Big Sledge isn't considered a "throw" by the game. This glitch also comes into play when comboing any attack after a move that the game considers a "throw". Summary of Training Mode Problems 1. Moves that are considered "throws" by the game engine will not add up properly in the damage display, opting only to show the last attack/combo. You can make this happen with anyone by following a throw with a Pursuit attack. Lilith can also make this happen by juggling an attack after landing ES Mystic Arrow. Some "throws" are two-part attacks where one part is considered "normal attacks"; these throws are one move, but will not add up both parts together (Demitri's Midnight Pleasure, Victor's Mega Spike, Sasquatch's Big Sledge). 2. Pursuit attacks have their damage values improperly reversed. Thus, if a Pursuit attack does 0/8 damage, the game's damage display will add up that 8 damage in the first slot (i.e 8/0). This phenomenon occurs with special moves that are considered Pursuit attacks as well, such as Bishamon's EX Pursuit, Felicia's Toy Touch, and Victor's Mega Crush. It's noteworthy, however, that Mega Crush does not suffer from this glitch under normal circumstances - only when used as a Pursuit attack. Also worth noting is that Victor's Mega Spike (his 360 throw) suffers from this glitch, as well. Hsien-Ko's Tenraiha is the sole exception to this rule, and will always displays its damage values properly, regardless of the opponent's state (i.e standing, crouching, otg). Thank god - that would be a nightmare to try and calculate damage for! 3. Very specific moves glitch the combo damage display, giving an improper sum of damage. In other words, if a special move deals 12/20, it will display in the combo column as "32/0", which not only improperly reflects how the damage is spread in terms of red/white life, but it's also the incorrect damage value; an attack that does 12/20 deals 20 damage, and a move that does 32/0 would do 32 damage (technically it wouldn't exist, cos the first number can't be higher than the second number, but I digress). All three of these moves also have their damage values improperly reversed. Thus, the move that does 12/20 damage will show up as 20/12 under "hit" and 32/0 under "combo." The moves that have this phenomenon: Bishamon's EX Pursuit, Sas's Big Sledge (second hit), Victor's Mega Spike (both hits).

Negative Stolen is tied for the worst CMD throw in the game, along with Jedah's and Lilith's (if you even count Lilith's). 5 Frame startup, no invulnerability at all.

I'll let people know to subscribe!

I've resubbed to XBox Live, but beware - my connection is pretty awful. I think my talents are best used hosting beginning rooms where I can just spectate and give advice.

You should move that to "zero reversal Shadow Blades" since you can't actually Piano Reversal attacks in Vampire Savior. Getting a Reversal consistently is way more difficult compared to other fighters because of this. Make sure other Morrigan players see this too. I don't know why they try anything else mid-screen - I especially see a lot of C.Lk -> S.Hp xx DI.

That's one of the most infuriating things about the VSav tutorial to me - a great deal of the lessons teach weird, impractical shit that you would never do. More frustrating is the fact that before this game was finished, I fucking asked at Capcom-Unity if they had any ideas for the challenge modes and said that we had a bunch of people who could help out. Glad they forewent our advice to do their stupid shit. Gallon- If Morrigan tries to setup a Finishing Shower from a cr.hk & does not command cancel the super, Gallon can wake-up neutral and ES-Beast Canon for a huge punish. From the ES-GC he can combo: ES-BC_9~1, Land, ES-Climb Razer. OKI w/ DF~Command Throw; the escape is to stand & block. Holding [4] will have the character stepping out of throw range and can than punish the cl.hk w/ a low.

In the interest of making sure I archive important things about Talbain on this thread, here's some good bits of information on Wolf vs. Q-Bee that from the Facebook community page about a month ago. The posts are written from the perspective of helping Q-Bee players, but I think the info will be useful and insightful for Wofl players too. The first few paragraphs are from Shoultzula, an excellent Q-Bee player from the US, about situation-specific strats, and the rest are from me about the broader scope of the matchup.

Yeah, there's never any reason to use Lk - Mp xx Moment Slice. C.Lp does the same damage as C.Lk and it hits low; but, it also has better range and makes for a much easier hit-confirm in this situation.

Thanks Egolei!

I play almost exclusively on GGPO. Find me there some time!

Lk - Lp - Mp - Hp - Hk, from thumb to pinky, is the main way I know of. I'm a pad player, but as far as I'm aware, this is the "standard" way of doing it. If you're getting a Dark Force, it's because you're pressing Lp + Lk at the same time. I guess that sounds obvious, but it's just something you'll have to be aware of. You need to press the buttons quickly, but you need to be absolutely sure you are not pressing them (or any combination of two buttons in your AG motion) simultaneously. Turn on the button input on Training Mode, record a dummy throwing some fireballs, then try to AG them and see what the button display has to say about your AG. This is excellent for troubleshooting your sticking points on execution. ...And, as for your other question. I have a PSX emulator on my phone, and the only ISO I have on my phone is SaGa Frontier. So I guess what I'm saying is, yes, time to time is more like any time I'm bored, lol.

Just bear in mind that any character with an air-special/air-dash/any normal that alters their jump arc (i.e Q-bee J.Hp, Jedah J.Hk)/Double Jump can mess you up pretty hard for just trying to anti-air every time they jump in. In fact, the only characters with no ability to do anything like this are Felicia (though he does have her wall jump), Rikuo (though the Hk drill theoretically does this, it's more dangerous than simply jumping), Victor, and...Sasquatch. Every other character can mix up their jumps to create a variety of terrible situations for you. While I'm not saying "never AA an attack", I am definitely saying "Don't just think that because you can AA their attacks, it's always the best solution." And, yeah. It's very good form for you to practice quick AGs. I don't know if you play on pad or on stick, but if you play on stick, a ton of people here can help you. If you play on pad, I can try to help you, but my button control scheme is apparently batshit crazy.

Actually, Sas's AA is not very consistent or reliable. But here, let me answer a few questions that Sas players run into: "How do I AA _________?" ES Big Towers. "How do I stop people from spamming random normals at mid-screen to stop me from doing random dashes?" ES Big Towers. Learn to love, ES Big Towers. Hell, even the normal version is good...but, it's not a Hadouken and a Shoryuken at the same time. Only ES Big Towers has that distinction. It might be better for you to start thinking of anti-air in terms of "what to do about jump-ins" rather than "which moves counter these attacks"...or, at least, that's a better move for Vampire Savior. For example, as a wolf player, I know that Sas doesn't have a whole lot of consistent AA against me. He can try to C.Hp, but it requires some precise timing, which Talbain can definitely mess with. He can try Big Towers or ES Big Towers, which is a very good move if I'm just jumping in willy-nilly; however, if I decide to block Big Towers, it's bad news for Sas. On the other hand, one thing Sas does to "anti-air" me (and probably a lot of characters with IADs, like Hsien for example), is to AG my jump-in attack and then immediately respond with a dash. People rarely think to block high/jump after this; you'll usually find that they are crouching, either because they were ready to do their ground chain or because their natural defensive instinct is to crouch block. The only safe way to beat this "anti-air" of Sas's is to know he's going to do it; then, an opponent can be prepared for the AG, and be prepared to immediately counter his dash. ...but, hey, they're at about mid-screen, throwing a random normal to stop my dash! What can we do about that? ES Big Towers. (or jump or let them try again to mess with their heads, or whatever) Now, you've got a whole, complicated mixup game out of simply blocking and AG'ing a jumping attack. Most of the options are in your favor as far as safety and risk/reward goes, all because of two things: 1. We stopped thinking "If they jump with X, I'll counter with move Y", and 2. ES Big Towers. <----------- If you make a habit of setting this situation up consistently, I guarantee you most of the cast will either stop jumping/dashing at you, or die trying with futility.

More specifically, D.Hp when you do the full dash crosses up quite perfectly when characters roll back after a sweep. Short D.Lk crossup is the standard high/low pressure move against shorties, since dash links don't work on them. J.Hk is also a pretty important maneuver for safe deactivations. The way that's used mid-screen if you need to deactivate is to just do a backwards D.Hk and deactivate right as you land. It's very hard to chase Talbain through that.

Good stuff! If I may, let me throw in some fun stuff that might be relevant to your guide. - I've found that if you're going to dodge an attack with Dark Force, and you intend to throw them, it's best to just use P Throw instead of anything else. You should have enough invincibility with your Dark Force startup that you wouldn't need to use his command throw. More importantly, P Throw is an OS into his unblockable setup: if they don't tech hit the throw, you can deactivate. If they DO Tech Hit, you can go for the combo, C.Mk XX Quick Move, C.Mk XX ES Beast Cannon ("3" hits), then deactivate. This combo is unblockable if you press the first C.Mk as early as possible; the reason being that your active frames on C.Mk will have finished by the time they land, but your Mirages' C.Mks will still be out, and Mirage attacks don't trigger guard states. Incidentally, if Rikuo's timing is sloppy when he uses bubble, this is a decent response to him doing, say, a Dashing something-or-other to follow it up. If he can't time the meaty properly, you can Dark Force right through it while he puts himself at point blank range. - Also, as difficult as it is, the ES BC unblockable does work on Q-Bee. When I first had this shown to me by Takahashi, I remember he specifically showed it to me on Q-Bee, so I can confirm that for sure. It's also worth noting that any forward motion can be unblockable; it doesn't just have to be 2 -> 9, it can be 2 -> 6 and 2 -> 3. They are just not as practical for continuing the chain. I suppose if you're a total baller, you can do something like, 6 9 2 3 \/ ES Climb Razor, but I haven't tested that, lol. - another "oki" setup that I see high-level Talbain players doing lately (and that I need to learn to incorporate better) is to just neutral jump where they think the opponent is going to get up. They make sure that they are far enough into their descent that they can do a meaty J.Mk, but they will mix it up with a BC or ES BC to punish AG attempts (and possibly to open up the possibility of more empty jump command throws). This is not a half bad move in neutral situations either, but it is less effective because it can be punished simply be neutral jumping during Talbain's descent (i.e, Talbain jumps straight up and comes down with a Beast Cannon, but his opponent neutral jumps and punishes the whiffed BC on the way down). This possibility is removed when setting it up as a wakeup game. - It's important to note that Talbain's ability to walk under stuff is useful for more than just projectiles. People who like to try and zone or punish with high attacks (Anak Cobra Blows, most peoples' S.Mp, etc.) can easily whiff Talbain in his walk animation, allowing ample opportunity for high damage counter-attacks. - Crossup Moment Slice OS: when you think an opponent is going to roll forward, stand where they are going to get up, and neutral jump with J.Lk. Do the Moment Slice chain (C.Lp -> C.Mp xx Moment Slice), and if you picked the right direction, you'll get Moment Slice. Otherwise, you'll get C.Lp -> C.Mp -> C.Mk, which is still not half bad considering you got it with a coin flip. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkzwK6vw4xQ#t=9m

Both command throws have a ton of invulnerability (28 and 37 frames respectively) and have the same startup, but the ES Command throw also has ten active grabbing frames compared to the normal version's one active frame.

1. Good Q-Bee players: - Don't jump right away when they get up - Don't jump right away as soon as they are done being hit with an attack/done blocking an attack - Understand that Q-Bee's CMD throw is the best in the game by a longshot, especially her ES Command Throw - Learn how to hover while blocking, as this can be very difficult to handle (it essentially allows you to move forward while blocking any attack) These are the main things I would say. A Q-Bee player who isn't jump-happy, uses her Command Throw defensively, and knows how to safely advance on an opponent is pretty hard to beat. The things listed address all the general pitfalls I've seen from Q-Bee players over the years (very obvious when they jump, very easy to throw on wakeup, and have a large tendency to close the gap with full-screen dashes).

Ahh, sort of. I think the physical timing of plinking in most fighting games won't actually count as pressing simultaneous inputs. It's best if you open up the training mode, and set up the Input Display. That way, you can see whether you're doing it or not, as well as where it happens most frequently.

It's also important to note that the command for LI (and DI...and every command super in the game) will fail if the game thinks that you are pressing any of the inputs at the same time. So, while doing it quickly is very important, you may also want to practice it in training mode with the input display on to see if maybe you are pressing any particular part of the sequence TOO quickly.

UF + F should work, but you can also do any forward... so instead of UF + F, you can do UF + UF, or UF + DF.