Wolf's Neutral and Punish Game

[victinivcreate1]

Hey guys, I'm a relatively new Wolf main. I understand how this character works, what moves are used for what purposes, etc.

However, I'm wondering, how would Wolf play neutral? Blaster is fairly slow (say Mario or Falco could Fireball or Laser me faster than I can shoot my projectile) and Nair shine is not really an approach option, since Wolf's nair has like no range and meh priority. Dash attack/DACUS are unsafe on block, dash grab/RAR bair can be punished on reaction, and autocancel fair loses to long range grabs.

Also I'm a bit confused on his punish game. What does Wolf's punish tree look like? Are fast fallers the only characters that Wolf can get more that two hits off? It seems that on everyone else, all you can really get is incorrectly DI'd throws into fair/dair, or Shine into X aerial followup. It seems that if you're not an FFer, half of his moves kinda become useless in terms of keeping the opponent in constant hitstun. Up tilt loses utility. Weak fair loses utility. Even things like down tilt and dash attack lose some utility. I watch some of the top Wolf players do their work, but a lot of it is on fast fallers.

ATM my punish game might suck because I play Wolf a lot like Falco when it comes to punishes (shine dair follow up from there).

 

[Soft Serve]

tl;dr because I don't have anything else to do and I can't play PM right now (or haven't for like 3 weeks, the rust is real >.>)


Neutral is pretty much dash dancing and blaster, going in with approaching grabs or aerials when its safe and they don't have room to get away from it. the blaster is slow and easy to Power shield, but because its slow wolf can catch back up to it and your approach becomes a lot more threatening. You have to play more patient and work at making openings to approach (something I suck at, tbh) because while he is fast, he isn't fox or MK or sonic fast, and he doesn't have a falco laser or bananas or a boomerang to force openings as easily. Yeah wolfs nair has bad priority because its a multi-hit (Ie there no reason for opponents to not try to trade with it, which is the only thing that makes his pressure not a million times better than fox's imo) but the range is fine because wolf himself can move so well across the stage and closing distances.

Certain parts of wolf's kit can be beat out by some characters (like you said, spacing aerials on shields will get you tether-grabbed) so just don't do those things in those MU's.
The key is that if a situation is bad for you, instead of solely focusing on a way to make that better you should try to develop means to prevent it from happening in the first place.
like
Some characters can set up projectile walls in neutral better than you so you have to be an aggressor in neutral against them (Mario, Link Zelda, Falco, Snake, DIDDY [100% diddy, the key to beating diddy is to just stay on his ass and punish him for pulling bananas in neutral, take it from an ex-diddy main]) If wolf is bad in neutral from a distance against these characters, stay in a place where you can close the gap immediately so you're safe but still threatening.

If a player/character relys on good OoS options or great reactive defensive movement (Marth/Roy/MK doing DD away>back in>grab on you, stuff like that), then respect those things a bit more, and play neutral more passive.

If the character/player wants to be up in your face or is a character that wants room but doesn't have projectiles (so like Fox, Marth, Sonic, Falcon, M2 to an extent, MK, Falco, Lucas, other Wolfs, fast characters or those with good pressure options) then don't let them, try to control neutral and be aggressive so you have the momentum on your side so they can't just take your stocks out from underneath you.

Wolf's neutral is great but you have to adapt it to the MU like a Fox would do. Respect your opponents options more than you think you have to, find what position that you want the neutral game to be in and work on that, figure out what the opponent wants out of neutral and don't let them. Its all really vague and it feels like I'm Nauccica/Bamsy or FD1 but its what you need to do imo. Basically I feel like the neutral game in PM(if you don't have a super spam-able move thats safe or a get out of jail free move) is hard until you're really good, or at least better than the opponent.


for the punish game, thats funny, because I feel like his kit was built around comboing mid weights and juggling floaties, and against fast fallers he has to tech chase until they are at higher percents. shine, weak fair, and Uair make for really easy juggles. Dair lets you reset them to the ground to get another weak launcher (normally shine, DA sometimes). My problem is that against non-fast fallers converting to finishing moves can be rough. You pretty much have to end things with side-b or go for sweat spot fair, or just juggle them off stage and go for edgeguards.

You don't need constant hitstun for it to be a punish. Just juggling them and following their movements and keeping the pressure up on them if they do land is still part of his punish game imo. As long as its not M2 (Combo breaker nairs are rough to begin with, and he can just TP away out of your juggles if you commit to the at all) you can normally juggle the floaties for days as most characters have bad options for hitting below them and Uair beats most Dairs.

Feel free to disagree (and please take the word of better wolf players over mine) but I think his punish game against floaties is fantastic compared to most of the cast. Its not as good as some characters like M2 or Falcon but he has a much better time of it than say, Marth or Ganon or even fox imo.

 

[1FD]

I don't have any full videos uploaded but I'm really used to comboing mid-weights.
Mario and Lucas (and I assume anyone between/around their weights) specifically can basically be 0-deathed anytime you touch them.
Here's a post from the social thread with random combos.

So I noticed I always get leads in matches but suck the rest of the time.
Had a training session today and recorded 2 Best of 5s. I'm good at first stocks apparently.

Spoiler

I also liked this tech chase LOL miss the JC Shine and just run for ever.

Our only good player has a dollar taped to a CRT and if anyone beats him in a best of 5 on it, he gives them the dollar. Trained hard and we both (lucas and I) challenged him. We both got 3 stocked repeatedly and I got JV 4'd in a ditto.
LMAO back to the lab.

Here's an example of a 0-death.

There's some 'meh' DI in there but you can adjust accordingly anyway. I end a lot of combos in F-Air > Side-B/Shine Turn-Around B-Air
Bamesy is probably the best Wolf and has been since 2.1 but he doesn't play much, isn't around much, and has nothing recorded, but he has some good advice on Wolf.
Did you ever see the DAT thread on smashmods?
Basically you want to stale-mate the neutral game kind of like Sheik does. You're not going to win by overwhelming your opponent or zoning them out, but you can thrive when the neutral is 'Nullified' because when all the opponents 'good' options are cut down to nothing, and yours are cut down in the process, you STILL have options that are good because you have so many of them, where most characters thrive in specific areas.
Just like Sheik. You don't try 'winning' neutral. You try shutting it down, and what's left is you with flexibility and the enemy limited because you're so flexible even in a stale-mate.

Work on not getting hit, don't worry about the punish game because it comes easy. Work on not getting hit WHILE in the middle of aggressive punish game if anything. But really just work on not getting hit all the time and you'll always slowly be gaining advantage through stale-mating.
It's kind of like when Bamesy explained Pikachu to Anther. You don't try to make people do things to deal with you and don't try to deal with what they throw at you. Instead, go to exactly where they're trying to keep you out of and just sit there, your work is done and your chances WILL come.

 

[Soft Serve]

OH MY GOD THE DAT THREAD I FORGOT ABOUT THAT GOLD MINE

 

[Soft Serve]

double post because this deserves a post of its own

http://www.smashmods.com/forum/threads/dat-wolf.4486/