Guardian

if you train people to block 5C after 5B, then doing 5B, 6B as a mix up should definitely be viable. If they're mashing, they're either nervous/guessing (if it's done once in awhile), or really scrubby(if done all the time). Usually when someone starts mashing against valk, it's GGPO, one way or the other.

At neutral i find this match up to be extremely boring. Tager's 5A will beat anything from neutral in wolf. Valk's 5C, if spaced properly, can CH 5A mash attempts for full combos. From full screen/neutral, it's best to keep him honest in wolf. If he does just about anything other than 5/2A, you can punish the whiff with wolf, most of them on reaction with a 5C dash into [w]j.a or j.b. Even a well timed 7C dash in wolf can evade spark bolt. As orion said earlier, you do NOT want to be in his face. Your optimum range to pressure him is the max range of your 5B. It's a habit of all non-japanese tagers to not want to guess, so you'll have to have good oki in order to mix him up and bait all of his anti oki options (360A, backdash, 2C, both supers, 5A mash). I find [w]5B to be a safer AA than 6A or 2C;Orion is there a reason you prefer these over [w]5B? It still beats all his jump in options and if he does the elbow, you can always just 4/7C dash cancel away after you whiff.

I use 6A on telegraphed jump ins. Otherwise I just transform and use 5B. That's the new AA honestly; not worth using anything else.

Blocked 2D is safe w/ Ragna now. His 5A, 5B, and DP are horrendous problems for valk to overcome. It's pretty risky to try wake ups with him. Now w/ system changes and valk nerfs, his rushdown is a lot scarier. I personally believed that this match up was even in CS1, now I'm thinking it's 5.5-4.5 Ragna. It's going to be very hard to keep him honest and not mashing unless you're zipping around in wolf

So....his mix up now seems to be limited to wolf shenanagans and j.C rapid combos. Played him extensively last night; his mix up is a shell of it's former self. Training people not to mash A is going to be very difficult now though. The wolf fuzzy is now character specific, and any wolf mix up after 236A ON HIT can be mashed out of. 236A is now officially his worst move that should probably never be used outside of 50% meter.

Geno, you're going to have to delete the mixup section I posted from the main post. Valk has a lot of underlying nerfs/changes that are not so obvious. After I do some practice mode testing, I'll revamp the mix up post. At least the wolf fuzzy still works. I might owe someone an apology about him being high mid :-/

That......really sucks then, guess I forgot about that change. In that case we should just go with what Geno presented, and cancel into 214B and cancel into wolf. I'm gonna have a lot of work to do....

j.C can be jump cancelled on hit and on block, i do it all the time in matches to get wolf mixups. If they changed this in CS2 then that's another story, but I am 100% sure that this works. If you don't believe me go try it for yourself. I put [w]j.B in mixups because the resulting combo gives more damage. You can condition them to block with [w]j.A if necessary, but j.B is usually sufficient and results in greater damage. Pick your poison I suppose.

Geno you beat me to it; i was gonna start this today lol j.C can be done as an IOH from any situation; it doesn't need to be done in a string. I thought someone posted a vid to where you can still whiff cancel 6C into wolf? (will have to find it though) Some stuff for the mix-up section since all the practical combos are pretty much known. I'll probably add more in subsequent posts Valk is an extremely tricky character in terms of mix-up. His high/low mixup is one of (if not the) the best in the game, and you should exploit this whenever the opportunity arises. Your optimal pokes are dependent upon where your opponent is. You want to use 5A/2A, 5B, and wolf pokes for close range combat. Mid screen you want to space and counter poke with 5B, 6B (situational), 5C, and 6C(situational). Proper use of these pokes will either score you a simple combo into knockdown + oki, or a reset opportunity. His mix-up is somewhat vulnerable to mashing, however he has tools to deal with the majority of situations where someone is trying to counter your rushdown. The following examples will illustrate these basic mix-up principles, along with options to consider when someone is mash prone. After hitting with 5B, 5C, 236A You have several options, as 236A gives adv on hit: Stay in human, pressure with 2A and mixup into j.C(overhead) or 2B(low) These options are the safest and easiest as j.C can be jump cancelled on hit, comboed into super, or RCed for another j.C into more combos. 2B can gatling into 5C for another 236A that sets up the same mixup, or you can go for a reset with 6C or j.5D into wolf pressure. Wolf cancels (5D/3D/7D/4D) This is where things get interesting.From 5D you will cancel into wolf and perform an instant air dash. Since you're doing an air dash, you're in a jump state and you have access to all your overheads. This allows you to get a mix up that is extremely difficult to block. Canceling with 1D/3D will take you directly to the ground from the wolf cancel in the appropriate direction. 7D will cause you to perform a 45 degree aerial wolf backdash, then a very fast dash in the 3 direction. 4D will make you wolf backdash, then dash forward as if you did a normal [w]5c dash. -5D mixups: *[w]j.B hits overhead If this is blocked, you get a fuzzy guard opportunity with another [w]j.B, or [w]5a for the low. *j.236D if they jump (you can be punished if they don't jump, high risk/high reward). The aerial command grab has huge vertical range, and will grab every character in the cast if they jump this setup (Rachel MAY be able to escape with wind, but will require testing) -3D mixup *[w]5A(low) into combo Keep mashing [w]5a if you want to stay safe. it's very hard to reversal out of even w/ IB, and all the hits are low. Barrier guarding this hardly pushes valk away. *[w]236D(grab) -4D/7D/1D These three are primarily used for baiting purposes. Wolf command back dashes have a lot of invincibility, so these will appropriately bait out mashers and reversals, giving you ample time to punish. The use of each of these are very situational, and probably should be included in another in depth tutorial guide.

I could do Valk. I wanted to do something like this for CS1, but I didn't have capture equipment :-( He's pretty much the same so it'll probably only take a few days to hash everything out. Edit:I'll do it if Jais doesn't want to that is

LK I know you're good at MB, maybe you can help me understand Kouma a bit better. I know F-Kouma's oki game is godlike if you can execute it, but other than oki, what benefits does F-Kouma have over C-Kouma?

Not true dude! We had about 6 dedicated players in Tallahassee that played the FUCK out of this game (infinites, death combos and all), but no one else did so we stopped playing. I loved this game; why can't we get this on GGPO :-( I don't really agree with that tier list; there's no way Assassin is over Shirou, Archer, or Luvia. Rider is B tier at best. Rin is A+; she's not too far from Lancer/Gil. What's got people talking about this game again lol

Yea he really didn't know it at all; even with me dropping combos and such I was pretty much doing whatever I wanted. When I talked to him afterwards he said "We don't have a character like that in Japan"; I'm guessing he was talking about how strong CS1 valk is as Orion pointed out.

FlameIce was gracious enough to post my match with Tokido at FR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBtTd0Mq4mo&feature=feedf Quality isn't the best, but you can see most of the match.

I'm definitely talking about on hit. However he has many ways of sneaking wolf transformations in pressure.

If I do the C dash out of wolf, I'm in the air. If you try to do j.A, you get counter grabbed. His aerial command grab has OUTRAGEOUS vertical range. Sample setup: 236A hits, D cancel, 3 way mix up+many options: 3D cancel into Command Grab on the ground 3D cancel into [w]5A 6D cancel into [w]j.B or j.A, both will beat most peoples jab spam attempts If you jump, 6D cancel into command grab gets you out of the air. If you jump mash, you get counter grabbed. 7D~C~D cancel gets you safely away from SRKs and reversals, giving you time to punish whiffs with 6B for a FC, or 5C CH, 236C into 4k+ I can stay in human and spam 2A since I have +frames If I have 50% I can do j.C RC j.C land, combo for 4k+ If you can guess correctly out of all of that, consistently, EVERYTIME, then you my friend, are SBO material, and we mere mortals can only quiver at your monumental presence.

This just gets you counter grabbed. [w]236A on the ground beats most people's jab spam. On CH you can get almost 3.5k from anywhere on the screen, and it will still work in CS2. sG- I'm not better than most people here, I just know what he's capable of.

Wolf 5C command grab beats all jump attempts. Next?

Jumping out of wolf mixup? Yea just keep doing that and see how far you get against a GOOD Valk. I stand by my previous statements. His mixup is as good as millia's. Everyone here knows you can't block A GOOD Millia on reaction EVERY TIME. Just because he can't directly pressure SRK/reversal characters on wake up doesn't mean he can't wake them up. A whiffed SRK is still 7K+ in CS2 in the corner. It's good to see lively debate every now and then, even if it does possess slight layers of ego lol

You can't block valk on reaction; his mixup is equivalent to Millia's. If you're blocking wolf mix ups all the time, then the valk you're playing isn't that great. I seriously doubt anyone could consistently block a fuzzy guard mixup several times in a row, and I'm not talking about from C dashes. My God I wish I could make a video to put some of this to rest

Low-mid at best??? I have problems with that. Anyone with a mixup this good in ANY game has never been low-mid tier, and if they were, it was because everyone above them was obscenely broken (only example I can think of is Caster in FUC). Sure if you're doing telegraphed guard strings then people can be a little more liberal with taking risks, but good valks never do too many str8 up guard strings. It will be multiple transitions between wolf and human, with a TON of CH baits in between. You said yourself this is a pressure/offensive based game; how can a character with one of the best mixups be low mid? Your reasons for #4 and 5 seem to be the same; people have to start rushing him down in order to beat him. This is going to be difficult to do as he still has excellent movement (best in the game probably), numerous ways to get in on zoning characters, and a CA that pushes rushdown characters to the other side of the screen. Wolf drills still build fantastic meter, and it's very rare that valk is w/o 50%. Mid tier, definitely. Low mid? Not a chance.

I think whoever put him at B tier has it best; he may even be A tier. Plus it seems like they're still trying to flesh out specifics about match ups and such, as Orion already stated. I think S tier is a little overrated though, esp in CS2.

It was awesome playing you at FR LK. If anyone posts the vids of our matches, please let me know, as I'd like to avoid making those dumb mistakes again.

I made so many bad choices defensively it was ridiculous. Litchi is incredibly retarded. That's some 7-3 shit right there I swear to God

Orion I have to say, doing [w]IAD j.B combos open up A LOT of possibilities with him. Truly a great find. So, in the spirit of discoveries, I'll post some of mine: 1)You can get standing fuzzy guard setups in wolf vs Carl, Ragna, Tager, Hakumen, and himself. Any time one of them blocks a [w]5A up close, they are immediately in a 3 way guessing game: -INSTANT [w]j.B hits as an overhead, which you can combo into 3C, [w]j.B, land, [w]5B, combo of choice -[w]5A, 5B for low option -command grab. This is good because it makes any random close [w]5A insanely scary. Setup is mash/reversal/DP proof, b/c the [w]5A option beats any counter poke attempts, unless they IB (and even then it's REALLY hard to reversal). 1a)You also get all of these options on ANY character in the cast after a [w]j.B is blocked low to the ground(ie after a [w]5C dash). So even if they guess right on the overhead fuzzy, it sets itself up all over again. 2)Use [w]236A (GROUND VERSION ONLY!) to beat 5A spam (well, for ragna anyways, more testing is required vs the rest of the cast). It will beat it clean for a CH. Here's a combo I was messing with after the CH, works anywhere on the screen: CH [w]236A, 5C, land 5D, [H]5B, 2C, 2147B~6D, j.5D, land, [H]5B, 2C, 9D, [w]j.B, 3C, j.A, land 5D, [H], 5B, 2C, j.Bx2 j.C. approx 3.5k or so iirc. 3)Do 4x wolf drill combos (can't remember the name). Each one builds a crap ton of meter, so you end up doing 100% meter combos with only 50% meter :bgrin: