Okay, so I noticed a mold difference with Vulcan –
HERE's the post I mention it. As per Kai-V's request/taking me up on my offer, I'm working on updating the Vulcan article with a Mold Difference section, and this evening I sat down and did the requisite testing. I also tested two similar wheels – Beat, and Screw - to demonstrate the various performance comparisons I've mentioned, some of which are rather unusual or unexpected (I'll post the relevant sections to the relevant threads later) while I was there.
Oh and hopefully the coloration of RS to Red isn't too janky, I just did an automatic replace because I got lazy, as originally I was going to post this elsewhere.
Testing!
Setup:
MFB Attack Stadium in good condition, cleaned regularly throughout the tests to prevent mid-match detritus buildup on tips.
2x Light Launcher 2 – Oiled and fully functional, roughly the same power as a Beylauncher.
Libra launches first, straight shot, Attack combos sliding shot.
90 vs 90 chosen because side-on smash is the only area this is going to affect and Vulcan is generally best on low tracks. Libra can sometimes scrape at 85 so I went with 90 on Both, keeping it side-on.
Stuck with 90 vs R145 just because I already had it set up, and R145 was chosen for weight – I used my soft rubber one, don't know if it had a major effect – Vulcan hit it a couple times, some were KO's and some weren't.
Libra was chosen for its weight – this may well be friendlier to the heavier mold, but I also think this is the most accurate/relevant situation. It's also not super hard to get under despite its overhang, well, the Mold 3 version anyway.
Giraffe has probably the best exposure for Vulcan's wings of the good CW's for it, and is decently heavy.
MF-H's for recoil control.
RS is used because my RSF's are aggro and I quickly got tired of trying to get both an aggro rsf and an RF to play nice at the same time. I was able to do this because the wheels I was testing are for the most part uncommonly effective against RS, because they generally hit upward. On the other hand, MF-H Libra 90RS may as well be a shotput sitting in the stadium for all MF-H Pegasis CH120RF can do to budge it.
Okay this is complex. Sets of three were done like that to make things even-ish wear wise, though with two rubber tips there's only so much you can do:
Mold 1 Vulcan 90 v 90 R1-10
Mold2 Vulcan 90 v 90 R1-10
Metal Fury Beat 90 v 90 R1-20
Mold2 Vulcan 90 v 90 R11-20
Mold 1 Vulcan 90 v 90 R11-20
Sat down, looked at results, began analysis – decided I needed MOAR DATAS!
Mold1 Vulcan 90 v 90 R21-30
Mold2 Vulcan 90 v 90 R21-30
Sat down, finished 90 v 90 Analysis (new data confirmed suspicions), gave it some thought, realised I was being dumb by not doing formal 90 vs 145-height defense tests.
Mold 1 Vulcan 90 v R145 R1-10
Mold2 Vulcan 90 v R145 R1-10
Metal Fury Beat 90 v R145 R1-20
Mold2 Vulcan 90 v R145 R11-20
Mold 1 Vulcan 90 v R145 R11-20
Decided in light of surprisingly good Mold2 Vulcan Results to try Screw and see if I still found it better than Vulcan or not
Screw 90 v R145 R1-20
Screw 90 v 90 R1-20
Tallied results, investigated screw 90 v 90 results informally.
1. VKO
2. VKO
3. VKO
4. LKO recoil
5. LKO Recoil
6. VKO off the wall – this is the Vulcan of old!
7. LKO Rebound
8. VKO
9. VKO
10.LKO
11. LKO
12. VKO
13. LOS Vulcan having recoil problems budging it
14. VKO
15. VKO
16. VKO
17. VKO
18. VKO
19. LOS
20. LKO recoil
21. VKO
22. VKO
23. LKO Rebound
24. LKO Recoil
25. VKO
26. LKO Recoil
27. VKO
28. LOS wall saves
29. LKO
30. VKO
Draws: R21DKO
Notes:
Libra: 13/30 = 43.33% (10KO, 3OS)
MF-H Vulcan (Mold 2) Giraffe 90RF vs MF-H Libra 90RS
1. LKO recoil
2. VKO
3. VKO
4. VKO
5. LOS
6. LOS
7. VKO
8. VKO
9. LOS
10. LOS
11. VKO
12. LOS
13. LOS
14. VKO
15. VKO
16. VKO
17. VKO don't hurt em hamma
18. VKO off pretty weak hits where is this power coming from vulcan
19. LKO recoil
20. LKO Recoil bouncing Vulcan of the wall!
21. LKO
22. LOS
23. LOS
24. VKO
25. LKO
26. VKO
27. VKO
28. VKO
29. VKO
30. LOS
Draws: R28DKO
Notes: Seemed less consistent with power, but also a lot less recoil prone
Libra: 14/30 = 46.67% (5KO, 9OS)
Analysis:
Mold 1 Vulcan did better by a single round, and Mold 2 was strangely lacklustre for most of its initial 10 rounds, and the first few rounds of the final 10, so we can assume that their performance for side-on Smash is roughly equal. However, there is an extremely significant difference – how they lose. Let's take a look at the percentage of Libra's wins that were by KO against each mold.
Libra Victory Stats:
Vs Mold 1 Vulcan: 10KO, 3OS =
76.92% by KO
Vs Mold 2 Vulcan: 5KO, 9OS =
35.71% by KO
Basically, Mold 1 is losing primarily by KO, while Mold 2 loses primarily by OS. From my observations, this is as expected – Mold 1 has a lot of trouble with its recoil, while Mold 2 has a harder time knocking Libra out.
This is backed up by wear patterns – the tail end of the walls on my Mold 2 Vulcan, and most noticeably the bottom corner of them, which is noticeably chipped inward, show wear. However, from all the time I've used my original Vulcan (a lot more than I've used my mold 2's), the wear in this area is quite limited. Basically – in Mold 2, the additional metal
is making contact instead of the more effective 'wing' contact points, and this is likely why despite increased weight and lower recoil, the second mold fails to outperform the original – it's not quite as aggressive side-on.
Beat is included for Reference, and I'll discuss that further in the Beat thread.
Vulcan Mold Comparisons: 90 v R145
Now, on to how they do against taller opponents - I didn't see a big difference yesterday but after seeing the 90 v 90 tests, the results should be predictable – really, the main point of interest for these tests will probably be the Beat results, seeing as its top edges are more aggressive than Vulcan's.
Note – My RF was pretty dodgy on these tests, so they were very much not a fun time. Worked around it though:
MF-H Vulcan (Mold 1) Giraffe 90RF vs MF-H Libra R145RS
1. LKO recoil
2. LOS
3. VKO
4. LKO Recoil
5. VKO
6. VKO
7. VKO
8. LOS
9. VKO
10. VKO
11. VKO
12. LKO
13. LOS – again Vulcan lacking the weight
14. VKO
15. LKO – dunno what happened but Vulcan just flew away at an extremely weird angle.
16. VKO
17. LKO
18. VKO
19. LOS
20. VKO tripletap
Draws: dkor5 r14 r15
Notes:
Libra: 9/20 = 45% (5KO, 4OS)
MF-H Vulcan (Mold 2) Giraffe 90RF vs MF-H Libra R145RS
1. VKO
2. VKO
3. VKO
4. VKO
5. VKO
6. LKO
7. VKO
8. VKO
9. VKO this is a joke, add a gram and Vulcan has no problem
10. VKO
11. LKO rebound
12. VKO
13. VKO
14. LKO Rebound
15. VKO lategame off an awful launch
16. VKO
17. LKO
18. LOS – a completely unbelievable number of wall saves. Legit considered not counting this round because there were absolutely no exaggeration at least 10 wall saves that would've been KO's.
19. VKO
20. VKO
Draws: DKO R20
Notes: The first 10 rounds were easy. The second ten rounds consisted of Libra magically finding more walls than the stadium had – pretty sure it was pulling walls from other dimensions to get those wall saves and rebound KO's – in one case there were TEN wall saves that would've been clean KO's in a single round.
Libra: 5/20 = 25% (4KO, 1OS)
Analysis:
This is much simpler than the first set of tests – between how much the extra weight helps against a heavier Libra combo, and probably most importantly the fact that in this match, Mold 2 gets its weight bonus without having it get in the way, Mold 2 is vastly superior here. So, on the off chance the evidence so far wasn't enough, that pretty much settles that the mold change gets in the way side-on, because otherwise Mold 2's winrate should've been noticeably better based on this as the mold difference doesn't change its topside contact points significantly.
This also gives us the general conclusion that Mold 2 is superior overall - the extra weight makes up for the slight exposure drop side-on, and against taller opponents it is flat out superior.
Other Wheels for Comparison:
MF-H Beat (Metal Fury) Giraffe 90RF vs MF-H Libra 90RS
1. BKO
2. LOS
3. BKO
4. LOS
5. BKO
6. LOS
7. LOS
8. LOS wall saves
9. BKO
10. LKO
11. LOS
12. LOS
13. LOS
14. LOS
15. BKO
16. LKO recoil wow beat way2go
17. BKO
18. LOS
19. BKO after a good 8 hits. What Am Consistency
20. LKO
Draws:R1dko
Notes: So few of beats hits do anything it's depressing
Libra: 13/20 = 65% (3KO, 10OS)
MF-H Beat (Metal Fury) Giraffe 90RF vs MF-H Libra R145RS
1. BKO
2. LKO woahahhhhh recoil
3. BKO
4. LOS Wall Saves
5. LKO
6. LOS – somehow beat hit it upward, into walls, and every way but out the exits – and a lot of ineffective hits in between.
7. LOS – first hit was a wall save, the rest were completely innefective
8. LOS – a lot of hits just not powerful enough to get it past the exits. Admittedly beats hits seem more forward than vulcan's upward so it's likely to struggle more with rs
9. BKO- bounced it off and over a wall
10. BKO
11. BKO
12. BKO
13. LOS another critical failure of beat to make hits effective
14. BKO after like 6-8n hits of doing nothing
15. BKO
16. LOS one wall save and a lot of missed opportunities
17. BKO doubletap after 10 failures
18. LKO
19. BKO massive KO
20. LOS more missed opportunities.
Draws: DKO R19
Notes:
Libra: 10/20 = 50% (3KO, 7OS)
Yeah, I know this is very unusual, and judging by other people's tests, it is definitely me with something unusual going on, and it's not the first time I've had an attack wheel underperform – aside from the original Beat being quite inconsistent for me, I had some fairly well-known troubles with my Variares too. However the Vulcan thing in particular interests me, because from my perspective, the result I'm getting seems more logical/likely – not sure if you guys have done the same/similar tests with side-on attack of Vulcan and Beat, so maybe Vulcan does actually do better at that and we just haven't seen it yet, but yeah, I see a lot of reasons why Beat wouldn't be as good:
The gap between beat's wings is smaller, as is the main side-on contact point (the "snout" part) in terms of area. It protrudes slightly more but Beat is slightly wider, I can probably get measurements on how exposed it is but let's just go with "the same" for simplicity. On the other hand, the walls following the nose are better exposed on beat, but these aren't great side-on contact points.
When you consider the gap is smaller and Beat is wider, you get to my main issue with the part – far too much of its perimeter consists of round walls, meaning that so many of its hits are going to be with them, which is exactly what I see – I watched it land 7 hits doing nothing at all to libra, then an eighth that knocked it out – but too often it doesn't get that many hits anyway: the other very noticeable thing is that Beat seems much more prone to Self-KO's than Vulcan or Screw, and it also seems to circle wider overall – which is not really good for trying to hit a largely stationary opponent. This is presumably due to its slightly larger size (I have really big problems with Bahamdia which I suspect is due to the same thing. I did fiddle with my launch to correct this as best as possible (mostly though it was a matter of re-doing a lot of launches til I got a decently tight flower pattern without KOing and with actual movement), but for a wheel that has trouble with making hits count it's pretty bad to not be making that many hits in the first place in general.
The other reason I don't really like Beat is this:
Beat 33.27 Hasbro, Spark FX Beat Lynx
Vulcan 33.23 RB7 Unpainted Ver. (Mold 2)
Vulcan 33.07 RB7 Unpainted Ver. (Mold 2)
Vulcan 31.98 BBP-01 Black Version (Mold 1), heavily used
Despite its size, it's basically still the same weight as mold 2 Vulcan (I remember Vulcan being heavier but whatever) and I'm not sure the distribution is much better – it's wider and probably more edge focussed overall, but I think Vulcan has more weight behind its contact points.
That said, the vs R145 Matchup is harder on Beat than Vulcan – in this matchup, Beat hits mostly horizontally, not so good vs RS, whereas Vulcan hits diagonally upward, which is very good against RS – Vulcan is just better designed for LTAC IMO. Haven't done 145 comparatives of them, though, so Beat may well do better there (though the 90 v 90 tests aren't that promising), and the fact I used RS is probably a bit unfair on Beat given RS isn't legal in Limited.
So yeah IDK, I'm not really sure how you guys are getting the results you are haha, I absolutely believe you, don't get me wrong, but it still doesn't make much sense to me. I have played around with harsh banking as per the original and it helped Beat GB145 slightly, but that still only goes so far.
tl;dr: Beat did worse than BOTH Vulcans, it's just not consistent with its hits because of the fact most of it is so circular.
Given how well Vulcan did, I figured I'd do some Screw tests to see if I still found it superior to Vulcan:
MF-H Screw Pisces 90RF vs MF-H Libra R145RS
1. SKO
2. SKO up and over the wall
3. SKO over the wall again
4. SKO
5. LKO rebound
6. SKO
7. SKO
8. SKO
9. SKO
10. SKO
11. LKO Rebound
12. SKO
13. SKO
14. LKO
15. SKO
16. SKO
17. SKO
18. SKO
19. LOS – tonnes of wall saves
20. SKO
Draws: DKO R5
Notes:
Libra: 4/20 = 20% (3KO, 1OS)
All but one KO was a rebound KO, and my RF was particularly dodgy in these matches. So yeah, Screw seems at least as good, maybe a little better, in 90 vs 145 compared to Vulcan Mold 2.
MF-H Screw Pisces 90RF vs MF-H Libra 90RS
1. SKO
2. SKO
3. SKO
4. SKO
5. LOS
6. SKO no idea how this is happening
7. SKO
8. SKO
9. LOS
10. SKO
11. LOS – screw pushed it around but never got under it which I think is how it kos???
12. SKO
13. LOS
14. LOS
15. SKO
16. SKO
17. SKO
18. SKO
19. SKO
20. SKO (screw was just stationary at the ridge and libra kinda wandered out and then flew out the exit across the ring)
Draws: DKO R15
Notes:
Libra: 5/20 =25 % (All OS)
Uh, wow. This is pretty ridic – part of it is my RS getting a bit more aggro now, but yeah. Had to look into this one.
The weird thing here is that Screw is getting these KO's by hitting the TOP of Libra – the topside corners of my Libra have a lot of fresh wear on them, and Vulcan simply cannot deliver hits with its underside anywhere near consistently enough to cause it – its main underside contact points are obstructed by the wings and generally mine has relatively little wear there.
The wear on Screw is mostly on the side-oval's bottom edge, though it's there along the entire edge lower leading up to that. The same thing applies to screw vs bakushin on these setups.
I guess it has the weight and low recoil to use them or whatever, because Jade and Pegasis can't do this nearly as effectively. I can see this because the top corners of my libra show very fresh wear, and Vulcan simply cannot deliver that – its underside slope is not very well exposed. It's very odd that RS is being KO'd any way other than from below, but for what it's worth, MF-H Earth SagittarioII 90
RS shuts down Screw completely (alongside a lot of things, especially as its stamina isn't anywhere near as poor as you'd think for an RS combo – low centre of gravity helps a lot with the stability). Oh, and things on 120 don't do nearly as well vs Bakushin/Libra 90
RS, including Screw, Pegasis and 4D Jade in either mode.
But yeah, for everyone talking about Vulcan being listed as an LTAC combo on the list – Screw seeming superior is a big part of my scepticism about how much Vulcan deserves to be there.
tl;dr: Screw is a BEAST.
Oh and a little more on RS not monstering these combos: it surprised me too initially, and I discuss an even more peculiar aspect in the Screw section, but basically the fact Vulcan hits upward helps a lot against RS, and generally speaking from what I did with RSF, Vulcan seems to do better against stationary opponents in general (I know Coach for example sees this with pretty much everything, but this is the first time I've experienced it, personally). Mold 3 Libra is also not particularly difficult to get underneath.
Definitely explains a lot about our CC list back in the day though – Lightning, Gravity and Vulcan were the only things on there really taken seriously, and these are wheels which handle RS better than most – a warping of the format which is a major part of RS's ban.
But yeah, don't take it as RS not being a problem – Vulcan and Screw are pretty unique cases.
Aaaaanyway, off to go finish the Mold Differences section etc. Hopefully all this is clear as I was having trouble phrasing things yesterday.
Herculeo777: Oops totally forgot to do that. FWIW, leaning towards giraffe and byxis now - Giraffe is heavier and I like its exposure more for side-on or just below I guess. Horuseus is a bit thick so it protrudes upwards too much for me.
![[Image: 9ff5d708-ada9-4d9e-a353-d60f3c2fc6a2_zpsf8dc7f76.jpg]](http://s1303.photobucket.com/user/Bakubey13/media/9ff5d708-ada9-4d9e-a353-d60f3c2fc6a2_zpsf8dc7f76.jpg.html)
![[Image: UwZsp7A.png]](https://i.imgur.com/UwZsp7A.png)
![[Image: 68vfxj.jpg]](https://oi57.tinypic.com/68vfxj.jpg)