Character Playstyles/How to pick right char for u

All I know is that Eileen gives me fits. Fighting against her is mind boggling, I never know where the next hit is coming from.

 

Pick Jeffry, seriously. He is very good, because:

1) He looks dumb. Hell, he may even be dumb, but that's good, because people will underestimate him. Just keep in mind that you have to be very clever with him, if you mash the buttons, the faster characters will mash you to death.
2) The consensus among players is that he sucks. That's is good, because people will underestimate him. Just keep in mind that you will have to play better than your opponent in general, know as many moves as possible and use them in the right context.
3) Nobody knows if he is really black or not - your opponents will get distracted by thinking about it.
4) Dreadlocks. Dreadlocks rule!
5) He's a recommended beginner character. Therefore, if you lose by a margin, you can look happy and say: "Well, as a beginner, I did not think I will actually last this long". If you lose big time, you can say: "Okay, I am new to this game, but I learned a lot." Your positive attitude and your refusal to throw a whining/raging tantrum will derail your opponents' mocking self-confidence. Next time, you will spread them all over the wall with a well aimed kenka kick!

As a sweet cherry-on-top, Jeffry has very loud and annoying winning animations your opponents will have to suffer through each time they make the mistake of underestimating you!

 

That's quite a bullshit kind sir He is considered low tier by a lot of people that's true but in VF we don't have so called Shit Tier as in other fighting games

But still Jeffry can be really good character for beginners, he is heavy, he hit hard and he got really good throwing game after all

 

Sebo does not seem to agree with you, check the "Mariner strength" thread:

 

@ More beginner-friendly, Lau or Jean:
Lau. I've used Lau starting VF4evo. In general he doesn't change much thru the editions. His attacks are straightforward but fast and powerful; so are his combos. He has multiple options of attack but they're all easy to understand and use.

Go thru his Command Training and you'll find no moves/strings that are difficult to execute. The same can NOT be said of Jean. I went thru his commands and there were multiple ones that are hard to execute or require remembering a lot, and I know if I played Jean it would be a while before I could use those moves against live player.

@ Playing Jeffry:
You kind of have to have the same mentality for if you want to learn Zangief: You're picking a big strong guy who has to be smart and work for his hits. You also can't depend on just his moves to score (Lei Fei), you have to understand how to use the fighting engine.

 

Describing playstyles is not futile at all. To bring a Street Fighter comparison because that is what I am familiar with, you could say that it's futile to describe a playstyle for a character like Ryu or Akuma who are very versatile and can be played basically however. Yet the newbie would find it very helpful to know that Ryu is quite good at footsies and that his fireball/shoryuken combo excels at midrange control. He'd find it helpful to know that despite being quite well-rounded, Ryu has a bit of a defensive bent to him.

Likewise, Akuma is a character that can basically do whatever the hell he pleases. Even then, emphasizing a good fireball/runaway game, extreme mobility and the existence of the vortex (great oki that on hit results in another kd for more oki) is very helpful.

For example, right now I know that Akira doesn't have full circulars, his body check is supposed to be great and that he does a bit more damage than most others. This suggests a linear-ish playstyle but beyond that I'm lost. Single, solid hits or combos? What about mobility options and favoured ranges and the like?
Something simple like mentioning that Shun likes to use the threat of drinking to make people come to him and punish them for it (which is what they said in the UltraChenTV tutorial video) is great. It immediately gives an idea of a "proper" Shun playstyle that he's especially good at, even if he can do other things. Bottom line: It may not be comprehensive, but short playstyle primers sure are USEFUL.

 

I appreciate the rundown of the playstyles but I'm still a little lost on who to play. I generally prefer keepaway / zoners / runaway but I also enjoy characters who may hit hard (and are slow) and that have good pokes. I clearly value defense over offense as I have no faith in my offense lol.

I also come from a 2D background, here's a rundown of who I play.

Arcana Heart 1/2: Fiona
Arcana Heart 3: Nazuna
Melty Blood: Hisui / Riesebyfe
Blazblue: Lambda / Nu
EFZ: Mizuka
Skullgirls: Peacock / Parasoul
Fate U/C: Sakura

In other games:

ST: Guile
3S: Q
A2 / A3: Charlie
CvS2: Vega / Nakoruru / Mai / Haohmaru / Barlog
KoF13: Mai / King / Yuri / Maxima / Kula

At the moment (with suggestions from other players) I'm looking at Shun / Aoi, though I'm curious about Sarah (mostly because she's hot as hell lol).

Looking forward to losing plenty!

 

So one of the guys on VFDC wanted to know what is elieen's playstyle. What makes this girl unique. Now that is actually a hard question to answer because everyone has their own way of using the character. I will be giving my own personal opinion on how eileen needs to be played in order to be effective.

First off she's fast, safe, and is a mix up god. Fear of your mixup options should be in the heart of your opponent, along with frustration from the constant poking you'll be doing. The better you're able to cancel her moves the stronger you'll be. Typically I"m looking at my opponent's bad habits and looking to set them up for huge damage to punish them for being predictable.

That said, eileen is risky, just due to the fact that she's super light now. To deal with that, you need to be relatively defensive and prepared to block everything that's thrown at you. Until you know your opponent's habits you shouldn't be throwing out too big a move. The problem with that though is that you've just limited yourself to mildly damaging pokes that sometimes leave you at frame disadvantage.

Knowing if you're fighting the kind of opponent who gives up their frame advantage or not is also key. You want to know if you can keep chucking out moves because they're going to keep blocking or if you need to actually defend because they know how to use their frames gained on block. The difficulty with answer a question of this nature is that a lot of the stuff I'm saying applies to all characters.

If I had to break eileen down to a short phrase I'd say, she's a high risk high reward character that requires you to have very good yomi and pressure skills.

 

Shun might fit nicely. He's not quite "wall-like" like Guile and Dhalsim are, that is to say he doesn't focus on keeping the opponent away constantly. Like the UltraChenTV video said, an appropriate Shun playstyle seems to be runaway, baiting the opponent into (probably reckless) attacking by starting to drink, and then punching the poor fool in the face. Good and uniquely Shun. Plus you have scrubs like Fuudo and LA Akira to learn from which probably helps a bit.

 

Sarah is a lot about offence.
Anyway:
Shun
* keepaway / zoners / runaway - check
* hit hard - semi check
* slow - nope
* pokes - semi check
* defense over offense - semi check (with Shun, it is a lot about your playstyle in this; many of his attacks ahve both offensive and defensive part incorporated)

Aoi
* keepaway / zoners / runaway - semi check
* hit hard - nope
* slow - nope
* pokes - check - with all that canceling, she can be the most anoying poker in VF
* defense over offense - full check

I will add few more to your list
Taka
* keepaway / zoners / runaway - nope
* hit hard - full check
* slow - semi check (but if he is not slow, then noone )
* pokes - check
* defense over offense - semi check (you need to play defensivelly, but you do not have any reall special tools for that)

Wols
* keepaway / zoners / runaway - semi check
* hit hard - check
* slow - check (about as much as Taka)
* pokes - check
* defense over offense - semi check (some great evasive attacks, RAW)

with this notes please keep in mind that in VF, characters do not have that much of preset roles as in most other games. Everyone can do everything, if it is your choice, and while some characters may not having the best tools for everything, they still can do it pretty nicely.

 

There are some great tips here, but for beginners, people have heard or at least some-what-know-about that any character is viable and such, but a better rundown when someone is looking for an answer coming from a game like SF, it's probably best to say what the characters specialty is and what you initially want to be doing with them when first starting out.

This means that yes Pai, can be played like a grappler because of the universal options, but she excels in high-pressusre mix-ups situations. This is better for the U.S. I feel and helps when describing to someone which character might fit someone's playstyle.

Master Chibi: I (along with the other players that posted) would actually recommend Shun since running away and playing a zoning game with Shun only makes him stronger because of the drinks. If the opponent does make their way in, you should have some drinks in your system to make them fear your mix-ups and hits so they are afraid of infighting with you. This will get them to back-off for a bit, giving you more time to stock up on drinks.

 

When doing a write-up, I'd say also include a representative vid which shows the character's strong point, what someone who's training can mentally strive for.

For EVO example, a match where Aopai dominates somebody with ridiculous speed. It demonstrates her fearsome pressure when you get skilled enough to move her as fast as she is able.

I also liked GT's showing when he used Jean to beat up that Japanese player who doesn't main VF. Sure it was one-sided, but it showed Jean's strong points very well.

 

I'd agree. I'm a SF4 player who's just starting to pick up VF5 (and now I regret not doing so in the past). I figured out quickly that Wolf likes to throw and Jeffry and Taka and powerhouses, but having played and studied quite a bit over the past week, I'm still not sure the exact style of characters.

Which is a shame, since I'm starting to think Wolf's throws don't agree with me in this game. I'm thinking my ideal character is someone who can block and defend all day, then strike for big damage when the opponent doesn't expect it, or maybe whip out a counter attack once the opponent lets his guard down. I'm just not sure who that'd best be.

 

Block and defend can every character, as it is more about player skills that about sometzhing special.

But overall... Aoi have the best defensive toolset in VF (2 great sabaki moves, sabaki stance, reversals), but her damage is not the best. On other hand, Goh have pretty decent sbakai game as well (basically, he can sabaki liike very non-circular move with something) and his damage is pretty decent. Then Shun have tons of moves with pretty great evasive properties...
Dunno, I will say "try Goh" probably

 

Maybe I'll just stick it out with Wolf. Ranbats start Friday and I've already a week down with him. ^_^

 

I'm glad you're enjoying VF and I hope you continue to do so!

Some thoughts occurred to me while reading your post, so I will share my thoughts for whatever they are worth (or not worth) ^_^

First off, VF is a very general-system game first--with the nuances coming into play after that. I won't go back into the whole list of flowcharts and what not, but the point of saying this is:

"technically you can block and defend all day, then strike for big damage when the opponent doesn't expect it or counter attack once the opponent lets his guard down WITH ANY CHARACTER because the game has A VERY GENERAL FLOW that has to be mastered before the nuances make big differences."

While the flow of the fight in other games is very heavily dictated by the matchup and the differences of the characters--Virtua Fighter is often won by "constructing your wins from the answers you find that work best against your opponent's chosen options and tendencies and cutting some others off--and one of the easiest ways to find your opponent's options and tendencies is through the strong use of the basics of the game and testing their ability to deal with the general and basic responses that just about every character has."

To sum it up... we talk a lot about Guarding, Punches (High and Low), Elbow class moves, Throws, and a simple Low Poke because they are the basic building blocks of constructed attacks in this game.

And then there are the options we talk about after that because they become exception-handling and cutting off tendencies that work around the basics. Things like half-circulars, circulars, and guard-breaks.

And then option-selects come into play after that because they eliminate multiple options, but have weaknesses themselves.

Back to your concern... You can play the rope-a-dope with any character in this game and they all have different approaches. I'll list some characters as they could be applied this way:

* Your choice in Wolf is not a bad one (honestly, he's a great choice imo), Wolf actually has good attacks and can heavily punish recklessness in the opponent. You have to understand the basic flow of VF really well and applying that to how you read your opponent to decide if throwing is valid against your opponent (generally don't even go for throws against mashers though because attacks will beat them down and Wolf can do that quite well when you get better at using your frame advantage to destroy opponents who attack too much--throws become more valid against better opponents because they will use their defense more and Wolf has good throw options). Wolf has good throws and attacks, and he can whiff punish a bit even, though it takes some time and training to do this better. I actually think Wolf is a fantastic choice for what you describe as the kind of game that you like.

* Taka is another really good choice, imo. Opponents have to learn Taka's unique weight class and this mitigates some of the potential damage against you. Taka has a good throw game once you learn his combo throw and you can mix-up your throws against the opponent and even read what direction they will try to cut off if any. Taka does very easy damage at pretty much all ranges which makes him viable for whiff punishing.

* For a different spin on what you're talking about, and this is a character I probably DO NOT recommend to you, Kage is a character that can safely poke and prod opponents until you get a good read on them. Once a good Kage player has a good read on opponents, his damage opens up with options that hard-counter opponent tendencies and score good damage. Again, I don't recommend Kage, but he sort of fits the bill in that he can play small safe and defensive damage and then nail unsuspecting opponents with options that are designed to beat out opponent tendencies. As simple as Kage looks, I throw him in the "Technical" category because I think his higher damage game typically requires more understanding out of the Kage player.

Again, in VF... the general flow is so important in this game. The approach and "style" is almost secondary because how you apply it really is based on the habits of your opponent. And the reason it's like this is because in VF, there are generally AT LEAST 2 answers for EVERYTHING!

With so many answers (and very little true "zoning"), it is very hard to be oppressive in one way in Virtua Fighter. And the basics game is such a strong measuring stick and can handle almost anything that that is why we keep talking about the simple basic pokes when we talk about VF. However, because of all these answers... In VF you can play defensively strong as well as offensively strong. You'll probably need a lot of discipline for the defense and good reading ability for the offense.

 

I'll tell you how I chose Sarah as my character, maybe it will help some of the new players.

When I started VF with VF5 I was using Aoi, but after a while I started getting bored with her play style so I started trying out some new characters. Eventually I started just going on Youtube and watching some videos.

It was on Youtube, watching the high level matches from Japan that I realized Sarah was the character for me. Her play style was so flashy that it was exactly what I was looking for. I would never have gotten to that level myself though, it was only on high level play that I really saw what the character could do.

So I would recommend anyone who is looking for a character to check out some videos and see how the characters move, find one that looks cool to you, because you'll be spending a lot of time with these characters and you want a character that you can really enjoy playing as.