Let's Discuss Wolf's Grab Game

Example, Wolf's Bthrow is actually pretty good at very low percents. It's a low launcher that puts your opponent into a pretty bad situation. It gives solid options to follow up with, since Wolf can act pretty quickly after Bthrowing someone, and the throw itself leaves them close to you. Options that work best on fat characters and fastfallers.

Out of bthrow your opponent can:

A. Attempt to land on the ground.
B. Attempt to air dodge to the ground.
C. Attempt to land by attacking.
D. Attempt to jump away to safety.

Wolf can cover all of these options.

Simply stepping towards them, shielding, and regrabbing them covers options A, B, and C.

Fair relaunches them at a low height, covers option A and has enough speed and priority to cover option C against most characters.

Upsmash/DACUS and Fsmash covers options A and B. They also cover option C, depending on how much lag they incur.

Option D uses their second jump, in which you can chase with aerials and/or punish their landing with DACUS, Fsmash, shieldgrab, etc.

I hope you get the gist of this mini-Bthrow tutorial. After bthrowing, you're exploiting a situation that greatly favors you, like when Snake Dthrows people. By reading your opponent correctly you can do some fancy stuff, like Grab - Pummel - Bthrow - Fair - regrab, for example. Fair - grab combos at very low percents btw.

I heard about this working for fthrow as well - again at low %...I'm not sure what's up with Wolfs throws but I think we've been underrating them for a loooooong time now. I mean I always preached to grab more because of pummel -> dthrow (+possible tech chase) but by now I found uses for all his throws:

Fthrow works similar to bthrow, except that it doesn't send the opponent slightly upwards...either Ishy or Castor (I think it was Castor) told me that Lucien used to do that sometimes....fthrow then wait for the reaction. If they Djump away you can just chase them.
The thing with bthrow is that it has strange knockback that seem to throw opponents upwards (at higher % at leat), which make it a little hard to chase if they pop up too high.

I think uthrow is Wolfs most underrated move. If you grab the opponent at mid % and a platform is right above you should always throw him upwards (unless you can do a dthrow techchase) because Wolf juggles so well. Seriously Wolfs uair is just amazing if you know how far disjointed it actually is...you can beat almost every dair with it because it's either faster or has longer range. In some cases you may even be able to beat certain dairs because of the large angle Wolfs uair covers. Uthrow sets opponents up perfectly for such a juggle.

Either way, here are my observations in regards to throws:

At low % I prefer to do the fair to do what Ether described in the OP with bair...it probably works either way but I have a feeling it depends a lot on the opponents %. Since the position the opponent is sent to is very different for both throws, there are probably different tactical applications for them as well. I think bthrow works better at low % since the opponent doesn't land on the ground as fast as with fthrow...fthrow on the other hand probably works better at slightly higher % than bthrow since bthrow starts sending opponents too high upwards at mid %.

At mid % it depends on the position...if there's a platform above me I always do the uthrow...otherwise I do the dthrow.
Something you should try once in a while (something I told castor on AIM as well) is the juggle setup for the aerial dair -> usmash "combo". What you have to do is to throw the opponent up in the air and then chase him with uair. The thing with uair is that it has minimal cooldown lag (only 8 frames), which means that you can often react faster than you opponent if he airdodges. If you do a rising uair and the opponent airdodges it you end up in a position right above him. You have to time the uair extremely well but if you do it right the following dair is a guaranteed hit ... the trick is that your opponent has to didge the very last frames of your uair (hence the rising uair)...if that's the case you have a little frame advantage while the opponent sill dodges. The dair will hit the opponent right in the ending lag of the airdodge but it's not easy to do...I get it done only once in ten matches or sth like that but I still think it's worth learning because dair -> usmash deals 33% damage, which is like a fourth of ROBs stock (for example). If you don't get right above your opponent you can still get a free bair or fair (depending on your position) instead of dair but then you can't do the combo.
My experience is that uthrow is the best setup for such a juggle trap (and it is a juggle trap because the usmash sends the opponent back into the air unless he DIs) thus you should use it a lot more. Juggling is very easy in general if there's a platform since the rising uair is a lot easier to do if you start jumping from a higher position.

So you could say that all of Wolfs throw are useful depending on the %. Dthrow is always great since it deos not only deal 12% but it's also extremely dangerous at the edge, if you throw the opponent down. Some characters like Link or Mario can easily be gimped...I think at 60% you can gimp Olimar about 75% of the time (at least that's how it works for me) and against Snake you get a guaranteed spike at 100% (or slightly more/less).

tl;dr throw moar

That's a very good tip you have there.

I was thinking for mindgames, you could use the bthrow techniques to play mindgames and raise percentages, and then use dthrow to slide them off the edge. Wolf has good recovery power to throw them off edgegrabbing, so his grab game should be improved using these techniques.

As a general question, are enough people working on moving Wolf back up in the tier list? I've been dominating neoseeker and heard that Smashboards control tiers. So I'll be getting him up there.

Nice advice Turbo, I'll be sure to make use of it.

Yeah, bthrow is underrated at low %s. I just had an idea, since shine has a 4 frame advantage and nair comes out in 3 (right?), shine into nair/jab depending on % out of bthrow?

I don't use dthrow as much anymore, unless it'll knock them down or if it's at very low %s on characters like Bowser where I have a guaranteed regrab (or so it seems). Chaining fthrows works really well. Running shield covers A, B, and C, and leaves you in a fairly favorable position if they jump, just like bthrow but for slightly higher %s. If it sends them offstage, I usually blaster, so they either eat the blaster or airdodge and get into a worse position to recover.

I gotta say, I still think uthrow is wolf's crappiest throw, but seeing as how the main point of uair is to bait airdodges, that's a pretty good idea Gheb. Can't uthrow be DI'd like crazy though? I'll try this out a bit next chance I get, but is the usmash guaranteed this way? And yeah, wolf juggles mad well.

Also, speaking of tether recoveries (not really...), y'know how characters with long lasting bairs fall off and bair people who are just hanging there? What should we do? I go with shine, but just wondering what others use.

Welcome to smashboards BurningBlaze, there aren't too many repping wolf in tournaments sadly, but maybe one day.

ive thought of this before and i tried it and it works on certain characters or people should i say but i perfer down throw more.

Bair -> Grab
AAA -> Grab
Fair -> Grab

All these work pretty well, especially against snake

Ishieymoro said:

I gotta say, I still think uthrow is wolf's crappiest throw, but seeing as how the main point of uair is to bait airdodges, that's a pretty good idea Gheb. Can't uthrow be DI'd like crazy though? I'll try this out a bit next chance I get, but is the usmash guaranteed this way? And yeah, wolf juggles mad well.

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Its really good against characters that do well on stage and not as well on the air. You would use it against like Diddy or Snake and not against MK...you can bait the airdodge with a Uair and then hit with a Bair, or predict where they are going to land and charge a Dsmash/Fsmash/Usmash since most snakes air dodge into the ground, they are punishable on landing. If they start Nairing, then you can always shield grab that and then repeat.

Gheb_01 said:

I think uthrow is Wolfs most underrated move. If you grab the opponent at mid % and a platform is right above you should always throw him upwards (unless you can do a dthrow techchase) because Wolf juggles so well. Seriously Wolfs uair is just amazing if you know how far disjointed it actually is...you can beat almost every dair with it because it's either faster or has longer range. In some cases you may even be able to beat certain dairs because of the large angle Wolfs uair covers. Uthrow sets opponents up perfectly for such a juggle.

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Lolmetaknight.

More characters that have more than the amount of options Ether listed: Peach, Falco, Fox, Kirby, Pit, Game and Watch, Sonic (Even though it's crap lol), Pikachu, anyone with an insane double jump. I'm sure I'm forgetting characters, but whatever.

Anything that puts them up in the air sets them up for a potential juggle, that's why I think Fair is so awesome.

Fthrow at higher percents is crap, they get sent too far, and at lower percents, what makes Fthrow better than Dthrow? I've been experimenting with Bthrow recently (no joke) and it seems to work well when you're throwing them towards the ledge. Because when they're NOT being thrown towards the ledge, all they have to do is double jump away from you, and any attack will break through boost smash, and Wolf simply doesn't dash fast enough to chase.

It basically resets a neutral position when they're not being thrown against a ledge. If they double jump and move towards the ledge... then they're not in the best situation in the world.

I use Dthrow a lot. What's really funny is when they spotdodge, because I just walk up to them and regrab them ^_^

Could Fthrow lead into a DACUS at lower percents? Or is that too easy to get out of?

I guess that fthrow is moreso to stay less predictable, in my eyes. Mixing it up with dthrow during the times where you can sorta chain it works well enough, and also lets you see how your opponent would react to certain situations. By constantly going for a regrab you can prime them to jump out of all such situations, but otherwise it's sorta like a crappier dthrow with chases similar to bthrow.

whenever i grab someone i almost always use down or foward throw. then i laser immediately and they get hit by it.

Ishieymoro said:

I guess that fthrow is moreso to stay less predictable, in my eyes. Mixing it up with dthrow during the times where you can sorta chain it works well enough, and also lets you see how your opponent would react to certain situations. By constantly going for a regrab you can prime them to jump out of all such situations, but otherwise it's sorta like a crappier dthrow with chases similar to bthrow.

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Totally second that

Also, a fresh dthrow does so much more damage, it often seems a "safer" choice to me.

Hey guys, look who's back to wolf!

Uh, yeah. I use dthrow a lot, but bthrow at low % could land them on a platform, which is a **** good place to have your opponent. Uthrow has too much knockback to be of much use.

I do use fthrow periodically as a mix-up though. I'll be doing so testing on bthrow set-ups later.

Another thing to look at; does Wolf have any Grab Release shenanigans?

Maybe on Wario.

ArcPoint said:

Maybe on Wario.

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he doesnt have any on wario. But he can d-smash after a grab release on ness from what I hear.

On wario (and maybe MK too, actually), fair and boost smash. I don't remember what it was, but there's definitely something guaranteed off of an air break on MK.

I don't think wolf holds them off of the ground though. Wolf holds then low and he's not that tall as is.

From what I've tested: If the person mashes, they jump break (Even if they mash without pressing up or any of the jump buttons), if they don't input anything it's a ground break.

ArcPoint said:

From what I've tested: If the person mashes, they jump break (Even if they mash without pressing up or any of the jump buttons), if they don't input anything it's a ground break.

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speaking of breaks...there are only two types right?

If your grab attacks are fast enough (and wolf's are) to make sure that the grab attack is the last input made (by either player), then you can force a ground break.

If they don't hit up on the control stick (even if tap jump is off), or a jump button, they can't air break, unless their feet are off of the ground.