Low Tier Team Construction Theory: S-Up Wolvie

Besides the ever-present Gief kick, I've picked up Chun and Speed-Up Wolverine lately. They're both fast, with a good overhead presence coupled Tron (with Chun being dangerous with her top-downs solo as well). I can't comment too much further on Chun just because she's throwing me for a loop as far as execution right now-- I just need some more time fiddling around with her arsenal.

Wolvie on the other hand, I've been messing with long enough that I can get into some of his options. First off-- teams. Wolvie, like 90% of the lows, doesn't have a lot of specific teams run by a vast amount of players. So it's a lot of fun just screwin' around with character interaction, trying to hit upon something unexpectedly useful. Since it's Wolvie, I was looking for some character's with decent to incredible projectile assists, because I want to get that horizontal control slash jump-check goin on to set up Speed-Up rushes.

Here's some of the character's I tried (and why):

Spiral (projectile) : When I want to play-test a potential team for horizontal control, this is what I usually start with. Reason being that Spiral's Knives assist is quick, holds up to a lot of projectiles, is resistant to disappearing after fly-screen, chips well on block, and is open for recall very quick (meaning you can set them up to block one Knife assist, and reset your offensive progress under the cover of a second).

Son-son (projectile) : Son-son is another useful horizontal assist; it stands up to Spiral in almost every department, and has an added perk. While it doesn't chip for any useful damage, the 3 monkeys spread as they travel, so they become super-useful when you are able to set up Monkey recalls. It's Doom-like screen coverage that moves even slower, so more time for mixups.

Sentinel (drones) : Sentinel is great for a lot of characters. There's a reason why Zaza was running double-Wolvie/Sent. However, I just don't like the way Wolvie has to work off of drones, because if they're blocked I can't recall drones effectively because they leave the screen at the bottom unlike Spiral or Son. The pro to picking Sent. is that top tier love you get, and a safe DHC. I'm more into straight low-tier though.

I tried a few more-- Gambit (nothing special), Jugg Variety (fun, but Wolvie has to work too hard to cover miss-calls), and Doom (as Shoultzula pointed out on SRK-- you'll lose your rocks every time you change the horizontal plane unless you so very specific combos)-- but none of them held up to my idea of how Speed-up Wolvie wants to play, which in my opinion is all out rushdown, but backed with safe assists that turn your blocked rush strings into trap reps. I'm a trapping whore, because I don't have top-tier reaction time. Too much green or whatever the case, I just need to always have some kind of position control going on at any given time to stand a chance.

Long story short, I chose to play mostly Wolvie/Son-son for the horizontal lock aspect of my Wolvie team because to me the spread pattern for Son Monkeys outweighed the allure of the safe-chip on miss from Spiral Knives. I figure Wolvie doesn't mind trading chip damage for an incredible control on anything in a fat arc in front of him. Now, Wolvie doesn't get that instantly, but has to set it up with Launcher + Son-son, pkp, HP/HK, land recall Son. So it's not free, but incredibly useful when you can set it up.

Now I needed to fill that last slot. I had one no-brainer choice, but I didn't want to go with it until I tried a few others:

Tron (duh) : Wolvie/Tron is too good. Overhead plus Tron dump is enough of an offense for most any low to work with. Wolvie's no different. Lk, Lk Tron xx Speed is free for the start of your Speed-up rushes. Etc.

Sent (Rocket Punch) : I had to try this to see how Sent's other assists would go along with Wolvie. I like the block-stun off of RP. It gives Wolvie time to set up some approaches. It still paled in comparison to Tron.

Thanos (Bubble) : This one I tried because of this vid. Wolvie/Thanos plus infinite execution = a whole bunch of resets from S-Up stuff. In retrospect, this assist goes more with horizontal lockdown stuff, because it looks pretty safe on block. I'll go back to this as my execution gets tighter, because [sLP, cLP] xN is haaaard right now.

In the end, the team I settled on became Wolvie/Tron/Son-son. This is a pretty point-centric system of team building approach, but IMO that's the best way to at least start with finding teams for the more obscure (harder to use) characters. Damage from Wolvie on point is off the hook with this team. You can use Son-son + Launcher to set-up free Tron pins on landing. Decent safe-DHC's, but Wolvie -> Son-son is a hard DHC puzzle-- haven't quite solved that one.


Sick of typing, thats it for now. I'll do a Gief Teams one next.