Magaki

The first post have a character specific section containing your answer. Please read it first next time before asking for this kind of thing. As for Amane, his hitbox is really weird and you pretty much have to delay everything against him. If I remember right, you can hit him by delaying 5B and 236A but it's a pain in the rear. The wjA>5B>2C>6C and the wjA>w5C>w236A routes work fine however.

Yeah. When I saw that you were mashing 5A, I tried a bunch of ways to hit you out of it. Tried to delay Weiss Jagd but it didn't work out. Tried to do 4D>wjA but it was way too random to really work. Tried 2D>4C in order to wolf loop but that didn't go well either probably because of the delay. It was funny though to see that 5C>6D>wjA worked but I'm certain it would have never been the case offline.

GGs to Dreize. Even though we had some of the most ridiculous drops ever, the hitconfirms were SO godlike ! I'm sure anyone watching our matches would have thought that they were watching MvC3 ones ! Too bad all my wolf loop/brjA attempts failed really badly though. However, I need to work on new blockstrings for the command grab against barrier blocking. I'm looking forward to our future matches though !

Interesting. I know you mentionned that barrier blocking works quite well but can you give us some blockstrings that we can work on in training mode ? Also, do you know if there are some blockstrings where we can IB>backdash for a 5C punish ? If I remember right, Tsubaki had some setups for her unblockable 22D in Extend. Even though she doesn't seem to have unblockables anymore, do you know if there are other particularly good setups we have to watch out for ?

He's kidding man. His pressure isn't that great compared to the rest of the cast. Same thing for Zantetsu otherwise he wouldn't have said "it's actually useful". Getting back on topic, watch out for Agito cross-up/fake cross-up shenanigans. It's true it's not that rewarding if he lands it but his goal is to make you respect his pressure in order to make it drag as much as possible. Means more meter gain for him in the end.

GGs to Aki- Has been a while I didn't have a Valkenhayn mirror and it was really fun. Too bad this damn w5C>6D>wjA link kept dropping and same result with brjA or wjC>1DCjB. It completely killed my offense game Still, neutral game was really interesting though. Particularly when we were both trying our best to catch the other. I'm looking forward to our next matches anyway !

GGs to Hondo_Ayano. A lot of stuff dropped because of the lag but it was still really, really fun. Looking forward to more matches with you dude.

I agree with the fact that Valk got a big advantage here. I don't play that much against Noel players but I can tell you that I completely disagree with normal game sticking on the ground. Some air moves are really annoying to deal with. Her jC, jD and j4D beats pretty much anything wolf do on the ground. I tend to jump>wjA or air throw a lot in order to make the Noel player stop using those moves. Both options seems to fail against a well timed jC though because of the amount of active frames and the projectile property. I don't really consider 5B and 5C to be a threat though. 2D if used carefully can stuff a lot of things in wolf mode too whether it is an attempt to get in or w5C. I know that this is really risky but I stopped counting how many times a w5A and w5C whiffed against 2D. To be honest, I prefer to use human mode in this matchup. 5B is great against Noel. Same for 5C as long as you're not predictable with it.

While fooling around in training mode, I found the easiest safe jump ever. Works fine against Ragna's ID so I guess that you can use it against pretty much every reversals. After a 6C>3C ender in the corner, jump right away and press jC when you land. (If you don't want to bother with timing just hold 9. It will allow you to jump as soon as possible.) Told you it was the easiest safe jump ever ! Biggest weakness however is that you have to make sure your opponent is emergency teching after 3C. Delayed techs and rolls will bring back to neutral.

Here's a list of stuff I use. Just pick what you consider to be important to add in the video: w66D (I used and still use a lot w66D>air throw against jumpy opponents. Works wonders at mid range) crossup wj236A shenanigans 6D on the ground (I use it quite rarely in order to remind my opponent of how fast I can get in. I don't use it against Ragna, Litchi or any characters with good footsies though.) jump>4D/7D>jD>jB hj>jD>3D (Used a lot by Uma no Hone and got some pretty good results in neutral and defense.) crossup IAD in wolf mode (Used a lot by Shiro. Also used in safe jumps it seems. I need to use that more.) jD>6D>jDB As for the tutorial itself, I think the best would be to add basic ways to get in (w66D for example) while explaining clearly that they should be used and not abused. After that, I think some advices for specific matchups should be added. For example, you don't want to use 6D or w236A against Ragna because of his 5B. Or how useful w66D is against Relius or Lambda.

Haha. Don't sweat it dude ! I'm quite busy today as well so I guess it will be another day. You free tomorrow during the night ? Need to check if my "break" allowed me to reset my bad habits in defense.

Psssssssst ! In order to never fail Sturm, instead of doing 632146D, go for 632147896D as a gatling. In other words, pull a Tager and 360 your way through. Works with any 632146 motion in the game. As for consistency, I always grind the same combos again and again. Which consists of combos that use a minimum amount of wolf gauge so I don't really have any particular problem with execution in itself. Only combo I can't manage to pull off consistently in matches is 236B>236B>1DCA. Gotta grind more I guess. My only problem so far with Valk is simply defense-related.

Well, it's true that it's not really THAT bad. I agree with that point but out of all the combo enders we have, this is the one with the worst oki. It's still oki though but I consider that this is an ender that should only be used if you really have to. P.S: Congrats for your awards man. And thank you 50-50 for helping with the matchup threads. I seriously should try to contribute more there.

The wjC>djD>djC>(jC) ender gives crappy oki if the opponent emergency tech. Falling jC enders are usually used against opponents who abuse delayed techs but the problem with your combo is that you're not high enough to do a falling jC so there is no point in doing it for that result. Finally, you use a bit more wolf gauge than the one listed in the combo thread so even though your combo do slightly more damage, the one listed in the combo thread is much more rewarding.

By JC, he meant jc for jump cancel. J.C means jC. In other words, he wanted to say 5B>5C>jB>djB>djC.

I'm not surprised to hear that. I remember a long time ago: >Gets BBCSEX Vita. >Go online on day one. >Enter a room with only one guy in it. >Tesnolgic Wins: 36 Losses: 0

Glad it does. Should at least take care of all your worries when it comes to wake-up DPs.

Considering the fact that delayed techs are much more popular and efficient now against CP Valkenhayn compared to CS and the previously known method to deal with it (the falling jC ender) is now far from being as reliable as before. There are 2 ways to counter that strategy: -Either wait and see how the opponent techs in order to meaty accordingly. or -Simply pound him with wolf cancelable normals or specials and wolf cancel once you notice that the opponent techs. The problem with the latter is that a wise opponent can decide to tech during the startup of one of your move to seriously mess your pace. Because of this reason, I decided to only focus on the first option. Thankfully, we have an awesome normals with plenty of potential that can properly deal with that situation: w5C. w5C Okizeme guide. Requirements:The w5C oki must be done at a certain distance in order to reach its maximum efficiency. See when you hit with the ribbon on Valk's tail during w5C ? That's the "w5C range" and that's where you want to be. The main and most rewarding way to execute it is after a tk214B>6C>3C ender as it allows to gain plenty of wolf gauge and position yourself. The easiest way is with the 8jBBC ender (more details later). You can execute it midscreen too but you won't be able to punish backwards rolls hence why you should only consider it if you notice the opponent emergency teching. While the previous meatys introduced were all about having perfect, convenient and easy links to hit right when the invincibility on the techs end, it is not the case with w5C oki because it's a question of timing. And you will mostly use the time between your combo enders and the w5C to position yourself hence why learning the timing is the most important requirement. Thankfully, there are a few visual cues that will help you tremendously. Pros:Like you can see here, w5C is a meaty allowing you to avoid almost every meterless reversal in the game. It also completely avoids some Counter Assaults and punish every CAs if you manage to react to them and press 4D once the opponent triggers it. It's also the most damaging wolf normal and gives you quite a lot of interesting options if the opponent blocks. You can decide to do brjA or 6D>wjA right away for an overhead or perform the wolf loop for a second low which can be useful if your opponent is conditioned to blocking high after w5C. If your opponent respects your pressure, you can try other things like 6D>jD>throw. 6D>4C>236C works quite well too. The range of w5C is quite deceptive and a lot of people simply try to jump out of pressure once you position yourself. Considering that you trained in order to hit as fast as possible, it will most of the time means a free combo for us. w5C oki is mostly based on timing and being in w5C range makes the opponent roll exactly before you if they roll forward making them unable to escape. The same goes with Rachel's tech 6D who ends up exactly before Valkenhayn. Therefore, w5C oki beats any kind of techs in the corner. Based on all the above reasons, it makes w5C oki the safest and most reliable okizeme in Valkenhayn's arsenal. Cons:Even though its ability to beat most DPs is quite astounding, some reversals using meter like Nu's Calamity Sword or Valkenhayn's Sturm Wolf completely beats w5C. A specific list will be made later. w5C only possess 3 active frames which doesn't make it an easy meaty. Therefore, training in order to do it properly is important because in case it whiffs or gets delayed too much, the opponent can jump out of pressure or worse, punish you. The main reason why hitting on the first frame is important is because your opponent can do a micro dash DP on wake-up if he knows that you have troubles with the timing for w5C. Some backdashes on wake-up can bring back to a neutral situation. However, 2 backdashes can result in w5C getting punished because of its 21 frames recovery: Relius' and Valkenhayn's. Training: Now that you're convinced and willing to learn how to do it properly, it is grand time to train. [*]The first step is the most important: Simply bring the training dummy to the corner and press w5C. Once the training dummy techs, use w5C again. There is however a way to know whether or not you ended up hitting at the first frames. Did you notice that if you press w5C too soon, a blue wave show up indicating that you ended up hitting during the invincibility frames ? If you hit the opponent right, you will get a red-orange effect indicating that the game consider you were hitting him. The goal is to actually trigger both. Meaning, you hit the opponent right when the invincibility ends with the last active frames. You will be able to see both the blue wave and the red effect showing that the first active frame ended up hitting the invincibility frames but the remaining active frames could hit right when the invincibility ended. Might sound quite confusing like that so here is an easy visual cue: While the opponent is emergency teching, press w5C just before they land. After adjusting for a while, you will soon notice what I'm talking about. Ragna's animation is quite obvious while teching so I suggest first trying it out with him as a training dummy. Once you understand how to do it properly, simply keep grinding it in order to get the timing right. I usually do it 30 times in a row daily and if I fail once, I start again from scratch. Pretty much like when you do push-ups. You should be fine with 20 in a row though. [*]The second step is when we will be starting to be more practical. Do a combo with the tk214B>6C>3C ender and try to position yourself and press w5C once you're in the desired range in order to get the same result as the first step. This is much harder than it looks like however. If you're having trouble, you can simply do tk214B>6C with a N combo starter because it gives much more oki. [*]The third step is finally to do it in real matches and this is the hardest step. Most of the time, it will fail because of the timing required that will often result in the opponent chicken blocking and escaping pressure. It should considerably improve with time however. If for some reason you keep failing, you probably didn't train enough with the first or second step. w5C oki based on enders: w5C oki cannot be done after a wjC>djd>djC>(jC) ender because of the terrible oki that follows. Ending a combo with wj214A doesn't give you that much time either unless the opponent decides to delay tech. It is highly suggested to do it either after a tk214B>6C>3C ender or after a 8jBBC. 8jBBC is a slight variation of the jB>djB>djC ender. The only difference is that instead of jump canceling with 9, you jump cancel with 8. Why you may ask ? The reason is quite simple: pushback. Ending a combo with 8jB>8djB>djC gives you a lot of pushback and you will notice that you will land EXACTLY in w5C range. That's why 8jBBC ender is actually the easiest way to do the w5C oki because it already does all the positioning for yourself. It's also the best way to get in the max range with w5C in order to deal with Ragna's or Tsubaki's 623C. However, I wouldn't recommend it. It's true that it's indeed a really convenient way to use w5C but this ender won't give you a lot of wolf gauge back. And you will need that wolf gauge to apply pressure to your opponent later. You should only consider this ender if you just need one combo to end the match or your wolf gauge is already full otherwise simply go with the tk214B>6C>3C ender. This guide is obviously in beta because there might be some new ways to escape pressure that I'm not aware of. If you know something that I didn't cover here, don't hesitate talking about it even if it might look silly. Once we will all agree that this guide is quite complete (need to add a few things like pictures), it will be added in Kiba's strategy guide in order to expand it. Also, if there is an explanation that seems unclear, please make sure to point it out. I'll try to write it in a more suitable way.

The first one is a falling jC ender. The end of the combo should actually be ...>jAAA>jC>djD>h[jC]>(h[jC]) Basically, this ender ends quite high and allow you to do a second jC while falling. If the opponent is emergency teching, he won't be affected. However, if the opponent plans to delay tech which is actually the most common option high players do against Valk, they will get hit by the second jC and you will land right away granting you enough time to observe your opponent and see how he will tech to meaty accordingly. The okizeme thread got much more informations about combo enders and oki following afterwards. I would highly suggest you to read it. Also, falling jC enders gives terrible oki if the opponent emergency tech. The problem is that the opponent just has to observe what kind of enders you're doing to decide if he/she should emergency tech so this is by no means a reliable way to deal with delayed tech. I'm however actually writing a guide to deal with it and I'm almost done so you will soon be able to understand how to avoid this kind of situation. I would suggest you however to avoid learning falling jC enders. I found a new, easier and more damaging way to deal with delayed tech. It's actually so silly that both Kiba and I felt dumb when we realized it.

Most rewarding meatys are slow. Meaning that it's easy to notice them once you wake-up. If you want to take a minimal amount of risk, just mash 2A once they wake-up. Then you can decide to stop mashing and block if you think that the opponent is going to DP or keep mashing and starts pressuring. True, they can RC it if you block it but only a few characters can really make a DP whiff while taking minimal risks. If it's with wake-up reversals, there are plenty of ways but they are all risky. -Cross up/Fake cross up the opponent on wake-up to make the inputs reversed. Doesn't work in the corner for obvious reason. -Being close to the opponent once they wake-up (aka, not at point blank range) and backdash once they can. Most characters can do that but some are better than others. -Character specific option selects (Noel's OS against Azrael's Growler, Valk's w5C against every DPs in the game except Ragna's and Litchi's, etc) Anyway, I think you should first explain who you main/sub because your characters might have additionnal tools to deal with it that you're not aware of (Azrael's 6A or his 623C for example.) As for blockstrings and frametraps. It's obviously impossible with frametraps because frametraps consist of having a gap between 2 moves. That's the risk of frametrapping, it loses to DPs. On the other hand, there are quite a lot of ways with blockstrings. First if you look at the input, 623, you can notice that the opponent isn't pressing 1 in it. Aka, even if they are in blockstun, they aren't blocking low anymore. It means that if you do a blockstring with no gaps in it with your opponent mashing DP, a low will hit him. Here's an example with Valkenhayn: 6B is +8. A lot of people tends to mash DP after that because If you do 2B, it frametraps. And it frametraps with brjA too. In other words, people consider that it's when they can start mashing DP. 2A got 7 frames startup. In other words, if you do 6B>2A, it got no holes. So if you do 6B>2A>2B, you get a blockstring that ends with a low with no gaps in it. Again, it depends of the character but it's a situation that is quite easy to reproduce with any characters. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Another thing really important you have to keep in mind is whether the opponent is using a DP randomly, when he's anxious or when he DPs in very specific situation in blockstrings with gaps in it for example. For the first group, just rush recklessly in order to make them think that you're extremely aggressive and a DP is the best way to calm you down. Should be enough to make them get too confident and abuse it. That's when you can start baiting and get high rewards. It's easy to mess with people's pace when they act randomly and make them predictable. It's more a question of patience in that case. For the second group, they tend to DP when they are in scary situations. Knockdown in the corner is quite typical. The thing is that they do it out of habit and not because they want to making them extremely predictable and easy to beat. Just repeat the situation that scare them and make them regret it. For the third group, bad luck. Those are generally high level players that carefully studied your character and its potential. If they DP in a very specific blockstring, use another one. It's not really a strategy that will last however because they can (scratch that, they will) IB. You can also do gapless strings like I explained with 6B>2A>2B. The only real solution here is to adapt and improvise.

With 1DCA, you can piano it with no timing. I can do it better on pad rather than on stick because sliding is much easier and there is no need for any specific coordination with one finger rather than three. Well, actually THERE IS a timing but you have to do it extremely fast to notice that you were too quick. I simply press D with the tip of my hand, move my wrist and press C then slide it to A. I move my wrist in a way that it allows me to simply go in a straight line from C to A. You have to move your thumb really fast anyway so try to see if the position of your hand is the reason of your problem or not. What I'm suggesting you is to focus on 6D4CA when it comes to wolf normals as it's still mash safe. 1DCA should be used either as a combo filler or as a meaty but it's far from being as rewarding as wjC or as safe as w5C when it comes to okizeme. I use the same method with 1DCA and 6D4CA but the window is much bigger for the latter like Kiba explained above. Offline, I'm confident about the fact that if I do w5B/w5C, I can do 6D4CA with ease. This is not the case with 1DCA. Sometimes I can pull it off 5 times in a row. Sometimes I can't manage to do it right even once for several minutes. Also, I've trained daily with brjAs and wolf loop since the first day I managed to get my hands on CP. Seems it's more a question of being regular and rigorous rather than trying to get everything right in one go. Hope that helped.

Ohh alright. Anyway if you need some help/inspiration, here's a guide that I wrote about Ragna in extend. The matchup should roughly be the same in CP except that it's much easier for Valk now. Good luck and thanks for writing some matchup guides, the section is quite empty but I guess that's because we all started playing quite recently haha.

Ragna's 5B can be annoying in footsies or can be used to beat 4D. Works well against 7D by doing micro dash 5B. However, there is no way it can beat Valk's mixups. Usually, Valk's mixup barely have a gap big enough to allow the opponent to land a 5A. Even if his 5B is quite fast, it still means that he needs an 8 frame gap to be able to land it. What did you use to allow him to land it ? Also, don't forget that his counter assault is the same animation as his 5B. Would explain why you thought that way.

Even though I said I would write a section for delayed tech, I'm currently lacking datas to make a suitable one but I will probably write it another day. Anyway guys, here's one more reason to abuse w5C. Here is a list of every counter assaults that lose against w5C in w5C range: w5C vs Counter Assaults Isn't affected in standard range: Mu, Terumi, Nu, Bang. Isn't affected if hitting with the tip of w5C: Bullet, Hakumen, Noel, Kagura, Arakune, Carl. Lose whatever the range is: Relius, Hazama, Azrael, Amane, Tsubaki, Makoto, Jin, Rachel, Valkenhayn, Taokaka, Ragna, Litchi, Tager, Izayoi. Another thing you have to keep in mind, every CA gets punished obviously by 4D and should score you a counter hit. It's true that a bright light appear when the CA is inputted however some of them are way too fast to react to meaning that this is by no means an easy way to deal with CAs. Side note for Kiba: Don't add it in the video. Additionnal specific that will be used later as a reference: http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showthread.php?15846-CP-Valkenhayn-Gameplay-Discussion&p=1565282&viewfull=1#post1565282

Yeah I get your point dude and I know how SMP works. What I was curious however was whether it was possible or not to really get a proper combo and end it with 2 mondlicht. I did: w5C>6D>wjA>5D>5B>5C>tk214B>IAD>jD>wjAA>5D>5B>5C>tk214B>IAD>wjAA. Not only the timing was strict for the last wjAA but it was impossible to connect a 5B afterwards meaning no proper combo ender so no oki afterwards. Hence my previous post, this is not a route that is possible. As for Sine's combo, you need the opponent to be really close and on the ground to make it work. It works with 2C>tk214B as a starter. It doesn't work with 5C because of the pushback. The only situation I can think of where you can land this is in a blockstring with 236A>RC>2C frame trap considering that 2C isn't that great as a meaty midscreen