This took up like 12 pages on MS word lol
Couple players in my state main Wolf so here's some general input from my experience.
Ah poor Wolf...
So many "gay" things are possible on Wolf. Specifically most of the chain grabs and stuff like Sheiks tilt lock. Many of which either lead to death or put him off stage. His recovery is very vulnerable and his lack of ability to drift after his up b makes things even harder for him. True, a lot of gay stuff is possible on Wolf. I think you're underestimating his recovery a little bit though, although upB is pretty meh. More on this later.
Wolf isn't all bad though...
Side B mix ups for going through the ledge or canceling on the ledge. He can use the Down B invincibility to punish over aggressive juggles and or use it in some situations to land safely which works well in combination with his falling speed. Down B can also knocks MK out of Nado (happens to me alot). Spike doesn't sour spot although the spike itself is fairly easy to meteor cancel out of. Fair has decent kill power if saved and at much higher percents the lol uptilt (the mini snake). F-smash is good for punishing/racking damage on special fall landing and laggy moves horizontally. D-smash his normal kill move of choice gets the job done well if kept fresh and not forced. Wolf also has quick strings which are fast and good for building percent (jabs, bair to f tilt and others). His blaster is better than I first thought and can be quite annoying pepper damage and at close range the "claw/knife" part can be a surprise hit. As far as stages go the wolfs I've played against usually like Smashville, Delfino, and Yoshi's Island. They stay away from PS1, and Lylat. All pretty true, but I think that stages are usually more personal preference or dependent on the opponent's character. I've never heard someone say that a stage is a bad Wolf stage, tbh.
Wolf has a lot of decent tools overall and while I feel that he'll never be horrible he's just too easily counter gayed both with characters and with stages. He'll probably stay in the range of C to Lower B at the highest. The only example of this that I can think of is you're playing a character that you want to CP to FD and they switch to D3 or something. FD can be great in some matchups but (depending on the ruleset) it might not be worth the risk of the opponent character CPing you... they better have a very competent secondary if they plan to use that strategy against a great Wolf main though.
Wolf sucks GG RM?
Wolf would be ok if everyone and their grandma couldn't CG or tilt lock or extensively combo him.
I'm pretty sure this deserves a response along the lines of "Cool story bro".
Wolf has a lot of great tools. If he didn't have a crappy recovery, I'd still say he's really good despite the stupid locks and chain grabs that work on him. His Back air is amazing. His laser, while nowhere near as good as Falco's, is still useful, and gets about 6% fresh I think? His Dsmash is pretty large, quick and has great kill power if kept fresh. He even has a few combos and decent mixup game. Fsmash is hilarious in that it punishes moves in situations that normally nobody could. I used to say I liked playing the Wolf/Marth matchup because no matter how far they spaced, I was always in Fsmash range. Reflector has good invincbility and can set up other hits due to its low knockback (or leave him vulnerable for the same reason).
His spike is ****ing -huge-. For example, Game and Watch using Nair through the ledge. Wolf can stand on stage and spike Game & Watch from above the ground without being hit by the fish. He can hit DDD with it when he is above a platform and DDD is below it. It's not the strongest, but it's a surprising move. Overall, he's about where he needs to be now. He's not garbage, but being able to die at any percent to slight variations in knockback are isn't going to be helping him rise any time soon.
More or less all true and good info, except I don’t think any character has a guaranteed kill on Wolf out of a CG except maybe D3 
Killing is hit-or-miss though imo :x
his fallspeed can be used to his advantage w/ b.air pressure mixed up empty SH-grabs/airdodge behind, very well. his laser can be very annoying for large characters, and his shine is very useful in getting back to the ground, because its usually not worth DIing off stage w/ him. his jab and grab game is pretty sweet mixed in with laser and smashes, he can be pretty tricky. sadly, nothing he has is broken which keeps him from being high tier
Yeah, bair mixups are a necessity because getting predictable with bair = asking to get punished. Agreed on the last statement btw... Wolf is certainly capable, but doesn't really fit in with high tier because he lacks some absurd quality like the majority of the current high tier.
Yeah, I'm eager to see what the top wolves are going to say, because sadly, I don't have much to contribute except the 2008 mantra of Wolf being the best bad character due to a solid character that just gets ***** by virtually every gay tactic in the game.
At least you admit it
I list Wolf as a secondary, but
these days it would be more true to say that I exclusively play Wolf vs nooby Wifi Knights. You'd never believe how many players there are against whom landing a blaster vs a tornado leaves me ~90% certain of scoring 3 more blaster shots in a row.
Somewhat irrelevant to the discussion, but okay haha
I don't think Wolf gets gayed as bad as people say, apart from Pikachu (who doesn't seem to be deterring other BBR members from saying Fox should rise a lot).
YES. Thank you. Other characters have a "hard" counter or two. Fox:ZSS is in Fox's favor despite the dsmash chain because he can avoid the dsmash. Similar thing for Wolf with a bunch of his matchups that have problematic CGs and whatnot. More on those MUs later
Wolf's recovery is total crap, though - and this is coming from a Link/Yoshi dual main. I find that getting back on stage
without getting hit into another bad situation immediately afterward is significantly harder as Wolf than as my usual characters. This, imo, is why D3's chaingrab hurts Wolf so much, not the actual damage that it deals.
I'd take Wolf's recovery over Link's any day >_> more on this later, but it seems to me that recovering is something that you're always working on as a Wolf main. It is at least on par with Falco's recovery though.
YI: Melee could potentially be an amazing Wolf stage. Think about it.
*thinks about it*
I guess it WOULD be better for Wolf than many other stages....... Except against DDD. That would just be overkill for DDD.
Would it really be so bad even in that case? Gaining many additional ways to avoid getting chaingrabbed at all might balance out the extra punishment involved when the chaingrab does get landed. Also, the tiny stage helps mitigate the dramatic difference in momentum canceling ability.
Not to say that it would be a place Wolf would CP Dedede to, but I'm not so sure it would be the right decision for Dedede, either. For his more normal matchups, yay slope tricks with side B / FSmash, yay early kills thanks to FSmash (which usually isn't that great for killing), and yay no offstage zone to deal with.
Also, forgot to specifically address Falco and Shiek. Falco's chaingrab will deal massive damage, but the spike can generally be stage teched. Shiek's ftilt lock isn't that bad if you SDI super hard. More or less :3
Interesting thought about YI:M, I’ve never really experimented with it but I can see the stage being workable. Don’t really think slope tricksies are going to be too helpful though, except for getting the extra slide away from an opponent when you’re landing bairs and trying to force them out of the center. What’s special about fsmash on a slope?
HAWOO
Hehe...DACUS is fun... Very true :3 It can also avoid Falco’s lasers ;D
Wolf can have a pretty good keep away game with his SH bairs, FH Double bairs (Hungrybox should play this character) and laser. I don't know much more about him though...there aren't any in my state >_> Yeah, bair is pretty ****, but as I said before, gotta use mixups :x
Wolf is such an interesting character... Everytime I think he's awful I'm reminded of like 30 more things he's amazing at. His shine is a really interesting trait about him and his WOP bairs are pretty tricky to get around.
Not much I can say here but yeah, Wolf definitely has plenty of positives going for him despite his flaws.
Wolf is the perfect example of a character that could be really awesome if he was only slightly different.
I think if I could change Wolf, I’d speed his jab up a bit, remove some of the blaster cooldown, buff up his forward roll, and add crawling. Because really, crawling is awesome, and having to play around your weaknesses is fun 
He has a great move set, good kill power, great damage racking, and a decent ranged game coupled with a reflector (which has interesting properties of its own, such as technically being a "parry" move).
Agreed on everything but killing :/ With good DI an opponent can survive pretty well against Wolf (probably around 150% depending on weight and freshness of kill moves), but if you catch someone in bad DI they get wrecked
Unfortunately, by sheer coincidence, he happens to be at exactly the right weight and gravity to be chain thrown, locked, combo'd, etc. by every character in the game. He is the only space-animal that DeDeDe can chain-throw, for instance.
Yeah, it happens. Don’t get grabbed though, amirite?
Even all of that "gay" stuff that happens to him wouldn't be so bad if he didn't also have such a poor recovery. I think that he could be a perfectly fine character if he either had to deal with chaingrabs/locks/etc. OR had to deal with having a bad recovery.
Both are pretty manageable issues tbqh >_>
...but unfortunately he has to deal with BOTH of those weaknesses, and they seem to enhance each other.
See above.
I don't see any reason at all for him to go up, he just has too many inherent weaknesses as a character.
That said, I still think he can be viable in the right hands. Kain is an amazing player and does great things with Wolf.
He’s definitely viable in the right hands, as long as a player can play around Wolf’s weaknesses (as in, has good DI and spacing/zoning). I don’t know exactly about where he should move on the tier list I suppose, but he should certainly be included in the category of characters that are considered viable in tournament.
Since we are doing all of D Tier this week, I present my usual data for D-Tier characters.
As usual, the following graph takes tournament results as compiled by Ankoku (current as of the end of May, 2010), groups the results by character and player name, and shows on the Y-Axis how well the N-th best player (arranged on the X-Axis) of characters A, B, C... has been doing in tournaments over the course of 6 months.
If you forced me to answer whether Wolf mains or Fox mains were doing better in tournaments, I'd probably say Wolf is. But really, the two are performing about the same.
Wolf, the present bottom of D Tier, seems to be
notably better than Donkey Kong, the present top. Which is counterintuitive: Wolf's bad matchups might not be as bad as DK's, but he's got a lot
more of them to deal with. Is this not as much of a factor in terms of doing well (or at least above-average) in tournament as something
else that Wolf has that DK doesn't?
You make the best charts ever, good stuff And Wolf’s bad matchups are imo really overrated, but I’ll get to that later
It is probably because Wolves bad matchups, while greater in number, don't occur as often in comparison to DDs bad matchups, which are harsher.
Sounds plausible, but idk much about DK so I won’t say anything
I do think that Wolf does have potential, but the fact every single tactic that is gay murders him really hurts in tournament. Since Wolf ends up with such a small margin of error against those who have an advantage against him. yes he has the tools to avoid the SHeik Ftilt, but it does mean once it lands he's taking tons of damage or losing a stock.
You’re right about the small margin of error, kinda. A lot of the problems that Wolf runs into with locks/CGs are pretty % specific, meaning you won’t be aiming to avoid a grab/tilt for the entire match, just a portion of it unless they’re being stupid and only trying to land that one move on you, which makes it a lot less mentally taxing imo.
USMASH ALL DAY!
The problem with wolf is once people learn to power shield your B-air then you're screwed. If you’re not mixing it up like you should be, yes once someone catches onto your patterns and starts PSing frame 6 attacks you should clearly be getting punished.
I was playing to Seagull in friendlies and losing. I decided to start powershield and bam I started 2 to 3 stocking him.
this added with his horibble recover and kill moves that had a lotta lag (D-smash + F-smash) makes him pretty bad. Just because a kill move has end lag doesn’t mean it’s bad… Fsmash in general should be used cautiously because of the massive end lag, but dsmash really isn’t that bad. Recovery I touched on before and will get to later.
In my opinion though in the right hands any character can win. This game is mostly about reading your opponent which means if you're using Wolf you just have to be way smarter then your opponent to win.
No matter how much reading Ganondorf does, he's going to lose to ICs and Olimar. :|
I dunno, I wouldn't say any character can win. Theres some MUs that are just so abysmal that I can't even theorycraft the bad character winning, like the above mentioned examples.
Given that thought, Wolf is not one of those abysmal characters. He definitely has what it takes to win, but he doesn't seem to be in the league of C tier characters. There are D tier characters who are better than him, but I can't see him being in E tier either, with all of those "unviable" characters. Definitely not E tier. Wolf shouldn’t really be capping out the bottom of D tier either imo, he doesn’t have borderline-unwinnable matchups like various other characters in that tier atm.
If Wolf uses Shine when falling down and doesn't do any button input after said Shine until hitting the ground, he has no landing lag. They put something like this in Project M I think, lets shine > dsmash combo. I don’t think enough is known about this, but I think it has the potential to be really really epic. Do you have any more information on it, specifically frames and stuff?
Wolf's dthrow near the ledge is extremely effective against other spacies.
I didn't know Falco could buffer a standing CG without moving at all until I saw Rain do it at Apex in a MM
I did. It's not entirely new knowledge, just not widespread.
Dthrow near the ledge around... idr exactly, maybe around 150%? You send G&W too far to recover (just an example). It's not a common situation, but if Wolf reads your ledge getup/attack at high %s you are probably kinda screwed unless you have a godlike recovery. More on ledge pressure in a bit Falco’s standing CG is kinda dumb, but yeah, not too big of a deal, moreso just to be cool or make sure you end the CG at the ledge.
I think Ganon does a fairly splendid job at choking Olimar, and it's really impossible to DI out of dsmash, MU is even.
Just wanted to point out how epic this post is. Sorry, back to business
Here I come in here to see what people have to say, and I only find really one post worth it, and I have no complaints about it. I don't think Wolf has an advantage on MK, but I know the matchup pretty well since I used to play a lot of Wolf. It pretty much requires a completely different style of MK than most characters which is true of most matchips with MK where people start to think a character has an advantage. In my region we call this "The matchup is even unless you do X" in which case it usually tips back in MK's favor. Wolf pretty much just plays like a worse Falco in the matchup though if you ask me. Probably just barely MK's favor even playing as gay as possible. Kane is amazing, he's a good example of why DDD/Wolf isn't unwinnable. I refuse to play DDD against Holms' Wolf on stages where he can put Dsmash on a sloped ledge (Yoshi's, Lylat, Pictochat). It's almost impossible to recover against him with ledges like that as you'll eat a dsmash before you can even grab the ledge.
Yeah, discussion so far hasn’t really been too helpful I guess :/ BUT HEY, that’s why I typed up this gigantic post, I think? >_> Anyways. Yeah I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for Wolf to have an advantage on MK lmao, but it’s a decent enough matchup which should help Wolf’s tournament viability over various other mid-tier characters. Good point about Kain and the slanted ledges. There’s a match of Choice (Wolf) vs Michael Hey (D3) that I’ll post later if you want to check that out, it’s on Delfino.
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Now time for a lot of the stuff that I said I’d cover later
WOLF’S “BAD” MATCHUPS: The main five characters that have significant CGs/locks on Wolf are: Falco, Wario, D3, Pikachu, and Sheik. These are generally the ones people are talking about, as well as maybe MK as a troublesome matchup (who I really can’t deal with personally, but multiple other more notable Wolf mains think the worst it could possibly be is 60:40), so I’m going to throw out what I know about the CGs/locks that supposedly “****” Wolf and how said qualities affect the matchup.
Falco: Chaingrab (can smallstep/standing/walking/dashing CG) > spike (instant death if you don't tech it and the Falco knows how to ledgehog properly), or something like DACUS for extra damage onstage, can bring you to around 60%. It's not too hard to avoid actually, as long as you pick your stages correctly. Platform camp, past 23% iirc he can't CG you with a fresh dthrow. Shine bair laser dair are your main tools for camping platforms, and it works really well against Falco as long as you don't allow him to get the % lead (entirely possible thanks to shine, such a good move :3) The only worry I have about this is once people start platform cancelling, because I like to play Falcos on SV game 1 and... that might end badly D: Overall though, it seems that most Wolf mains think of this matchup as around even. Falco doesn’t really have anything on Wolf besides the CG that makes the matchup problematic, and good stage choices + intelligent playing can negate that advantage.
Wario: Dthrow CG from 59% to about 200%, but it doesn’t seem like he can land a guaranteed kill move out of it. I THINK it doesn’t work fresh past a certain % (or at least I hope so lol), but I can’t find any information on that :< Anyways, Wolf outranges Wario horizontally in the air and can use FH shine to escape incoming aerials that might lead into a grab. With the outranging and shine to beat out Wario's lack of disjointed grab setups, the CG is not a matchup-swinging factor at high levels, especially when you choose your stages wisely. Matchup is considered to be at worst 60:40 Wario.
D3: This is probably the worst, solely because one mistake means (under current BBR ruleset) that you get smallstep CGd until the ledge, then you get ledge infinited to 280%, then you get killed by a dtilt. It's like everyone vs ICs, except the grab range is twice as large and the focus it takes to do this is significantly less and the CG threat is always present. Without the smallstep however, this matchup is very winnable. That match of Choice that I was talking about before btw, check it out (so that I can be lazy
):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_BES0Y-TYQ
Pikachu: Usmash isn't guaranteed out of the CG, but I believe nair is? Won't kill but will do some serious damage and potentially set up for some nice edgeguarding. Idk the % that a fresh dthrow won’t work for the CG, but here’s the thread with CG %s and all for those who want to check out the data:
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=225783 Before the buffered CG was discovered, the MU was considered 60:40 Wolf I believe? Just throwing that out there to show that the CG is the only reason people consider the MU to be in Pikachu’s favor. I lack much Pikachu experience so I won’t say any more here, but yeah :x
Sheik: There are %s and stuff to this, I really don't know too much about it but from what I've heard it's not too reliable (%s/decay is too specific) and shine allows Wolf to escape the tipper usmash finisher (not so sure about this one, but SDI should avoid the tipper anyways?). Besides that, Sheik really does not have an easy time landing that ftilt on Wolf from what I hear, but I lack Sheik MU experience sooooooo yeah. Anyways, check out this thread for information on Sheik’s ftilt shenanigans:
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=175241
RECOVERY: Wolf's sideB is pretty good… I make it back to the ledge/stage without being hit more often than not after a D3 CGs me off the ledge, partially because D3 can't move too well in the air. Good DI means that you won't even have to use a recovery move most of the time to get back to the stage/ledge, because of Wolf's fantastic airspeed. Flash cancelling is excellent, lightstepping (where you hit the ledge and then fall but have your double jump renewed) is often unexpected and can be helpful, and upB is... pretty garbage (Fox can shinespike Wolf after being caught in it, Luigi/Pikachu can nair out iirc, etc) but you use it when you have to and the stall can sometimes throw people off. Wind effects can cause lulzy events, but overall sideB > upB when both can reach the ledge. SideB also has the benefit of snapping to the ledge but going onto the stage if someone decides to ledgehog as long as you position it correctly, which is great :3
Other tricks that Wolf can use while recovering are the blaster and shine to reverse direction so Wolf can bair away edgeguarders. Blaster temporarily gives Wolf a little "push" in the air to allow for an easier shift in direction or a boost towards the stage, and the invincibility from shine can also be helpful to get through edgeguarders. When recovering from above the stage, b-reversals with the blaster work pretty well but the blaster has a significant amount of cooldown lag (and no autocancel
) so it’s nothing too spectacular, just gets the job done.
MY MAIN POINT?: Wolf can avoid grabs through good spacing/zoning and playing keepaway when need be (for those of you saying “PS bair!”, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPi-hmLi6RA). He can also recover fine with good DI and a solid grip on how to work with sideB. It's kinda sad to see that people still pick on both of these issues as reasons to hold Wolf down, because while it's true that he gets ***** by many CGs and his upB can be gimped and his sideB is often telegraphed, they are all avoidable and/or manageable situations.
FIGHTING PLANKING (since it’s legal in the BBR ruleset): Someone mentioned how dair can beat a planking G&W. This is true :3 I believe it works against Pit as well. Shine allows gutsy Wolf players to jump in and attempt to go through the planking attack as well, following up with a bair/fair (although people with MU experience should know that they can airdodge the attack or clash if they have a frame 5? attack on that side, but airdodging can lead to a worse position and not many characters have a fast enough or ranged enough bair/fair to effectively combat the shine followup). Every plank-worthy character that I can think of besides MK (who I wouldn't ever risk something like this on) can be dealt with by a good dair or a ballsy offstage shine + followup.
WHY SHINE IS AWESOME: A parry with 8 frames of instant invincibility that can combo is absolutely excellent. FH shine (OoS if need be) allows you to escape a lot of bad pressure situations, like Peach/Fox/Wario etc coming in from above or Wolf/DK/Jigglypuff etc trying to wall you with bairs that lack a massive disjoint or Sheik/Luigi approaching from the ground. Crouching allows you to avoid many incoming aerial attacks and counter with shine, but I guess that’s more about Wolf’s crouch being solid. Simply having the option of a useable parry (which is extremely unique in that Wolf doesn’t need to be hit to activate the hitboxes, allowing shine to counter grabs) is a trait few characters can boast about, and as with most parries can turn the tides with a proper read. Sadly, just like other parries, getting read is going to suck, so it’s usually better to jump out of pseudo-CGs instead of shine in case your opponent predicts and shields.
OTHER: I’m too lazy to elaborate too much on these right now >__> I will later if anyone asks though. Wolf has a stupid good ledge pressure game, it’s really something Wolf mains need to start using more. Despite a mediocre run speed, flash cancelling allows you to get from one side of the stage to the other very quickly, helping you follow up and keep on applying pressure. SDI allows people to escape the second hit of Wolf’s usmash/fsmash if the first hit connects, which really blows but at least it doesn’t leave Wolf in a really punishable position. Wolf has amazing juggling and punishing skills. The rest of Wolf’s MUs with top tier are all 55:45 either way imo, but item mastery really helps vs Snake and Diddy.
In terms of where he should be on the tier list, I would say mid-C tier sounds fair with current results and whatnot... except for the potential problem of D3 considering the current BBR ruleset. Many people can (and do) pick up D3 as a secondary, and all it takes is one mistake from Wolf to get CGd into oblivion, it's not even hard once you grab Wolf. However, pocket D3s will rarely squeeze by top Wolves, so… idk. Either way, Wolf is pretty solid, just lacks the broken-ness of top-tier. Can’t spawn items, doesn’t live forever (but has pretty good survivability I’d say, and a smaller frame than Snake/D3 which is nice), no chaingrab on a significant portion of the cast, etc. So it’s more like, you have easier paths that at the top of the metagame will be at least as successful, so… yeah
And I’m done for now, I think. More like sick of waiting to post xD
