Champions of the Ring SvR 2011 Strategy Guide

Hello and thanks for checking out the CotR SvR 2011 Strategy Guide! This guide is written specifically for players in the Champions of the Ring league, but a lot (if not all) of it is applicable to SvR 2011 multiplayer gameplay in general.

Each section below details key gameplay elements and how to use them to your advantage to bring your game up and enjoy SvR 2011 as much as possible. I suggest taking the time to read each section (even if you think you've mastered this stuff) and incorporating the tips found here slowly into your game. I guarantee that if you manage to get half of this stuff into your gameplan, you will see a significant change to your match performance.

If you find anything that needs to be corrected or would like to suggest something to add to this guide, please send me a PM ASAP!

I. Building Your Character

The way you build your character in SvR 2011 can make the difference between being a jobber and a legend, especially in CotR where your options are limited to provide a better gameplay experience. This section will detail how to go about setting up your characters Attributes, Abilities and Moveset to make sure you have a strong foundation for your career in Champions of the Ring.

1. Planning Out Your Character

The first step to getting your career on the right track is to plan out your character. By that I mean that you really need to decide what kind of character you are creating, what kind of personality he/she has and what kind of wrestling style you want to play. It might not seem like it, but all of this stuff will help you create a focused character that you will enjoy playing. Go ahead and create his default attire, give him a name and then move on to...

2. Setting Attributes

...Attributes! This is really where the vision of your character's wrestling style will begin to take form in-game. As you should already know, characters in CotR start their career with a 67 Overall. This means you will have to make tough decisions on where to distribute your character's stats. I've found that the best way to go about doing this is to pick just a few attributes you want to be your main strengths and to pick a few that you will develop later.

Let's say you're creating an intimidating and tough brawler type character that just happens to be a heel (think Sheamus). You should try focusing on Strikes, Durability and Charisma at first. Lower Grapple, Submission and Technical to around 50. Keep Tech and Speed near 60 and you should be able to get the main three you want (Strikes, Durability and Charisma) up to 70. If you manage your attributes well enough, you might even be able to get one of those to 80.

Don't be afraid to have some low stats this early in your CotR career. You will understand why more as I go over each stat, but if you really want your character to have strengths, you're going to need weaknesses too. Every character, even the ones at 80 Overall in the league, have weakness (even some 100's that random people use online have weaknesses). Try not to worry about the weaknesses so much at this point and instead focus on the strengths you want.

I am going to go over every attribute and how they affect online play specifically. Even if you “know” what each stat does, take a glance at this section. Some of it might surprise you.

Grapple
Grapple is pretty straight forward. It only affects the damage you do off of a Grapple attack. As far as I know, there is nothing special about this stat. Let's move on.

Strikes
What I said about Grapple goes for Strikes as well. The Strikes attribute only affects the damage you do with Strike attacks.

Submission
As you probably already know, Submission is not just another damage stat. It affects the amount of damage you inflict on your opponent when you have them in a Submission move and it also reduces the amount of damage you take while in a Submission move. You're going to want decent Submission or Technical for your character to deal with Submission experts, but you don't need both. I would go with Submission, as then you can use it to do damage to others that have low Submission, even if yours is just average.

Durability
There is one last boring attribute that does exactly as it you'd expect. Durability reduces the damage you receive as the victim of your opponent during an attack. Even though there's nothing special about it, I consider Durability to be the 2nd most important stat in the entire game. The longer you can take a beating before getting pinned, the more opportunities you will get to turn the match around. It's just common sense.

Technical
Technical does almost nothing online. It does NOT actually affect your chances to reverse an attack (even offline actually). Technical only does two things online: 1) It will increase the speed that you break Submissions and 2) at 70 Technical, performing a reversal on a chain grapple attempt from your opponent will put them in a chain grapple of your own. I personally consider this to be the most useless stat of all. Not everyone agrees on that though.

Speed
Oh, Speed! Speed, speed, speed...Speed is great. In fact, I suggest that if you really want your character to do well, you need to get your Speed to 80 at some point. It really is the most important attribute in the game. At this point, you may be wondering “why?” Well, it's pretty simple really. The in-game description for Speed says it affects your movement speed and THAT'S ALL. This is entirely misleading as Speed does so much more...

For one, you need at least 80 Speed to get either Outside Dives and/or Springboard Devices. Speed also affects how quickly you climb the corner for Diving attacks. Also, when you use Kip Up with 90 Speed, you do a really awesome Shawn Micheals-like animation! Inorite!?

The big one though, is the fact that Speed also determines your Grapple speed when standing. This is HUGE, as it becomes incredibly difficult for your opponent to reversal your Groggy Grapples/Signatures/Finishers once you hit 90 Speed. Of course, such high Speed is reserved for the lighter weight-classes, so keep that in mind when you're creating your character. At 80 Speed your character will Grapple fast enough to make it difficult for your opponent to reversal. So, it is definitely not required to have 90 Speed to become a contender in SvR 2011.

Charisma
Not many people that play SvR 2011 put much focus into Charisma (and it's pretty obvious in their promos too...jk =P). I believe that Charisma is an important stat though, and you shouldn't drop it as low as possible just because it seems to be “useless.”

Your Charisma is compared against your opponent's Charisma to determine how much your momentum meter will fill or drop on each attack or reversal. This means that even if you're behind in a match, you could theoretically reach your Signature/Finisher quicker than your opponent if they have really low Charisma.

Anyway, it's just something to consider when building your character. I can see a strong strategy revolving around the use of taunts to build meter quickly between attacks. It's a shame I haven't seen anyone try it yet.

3. Picking Your Abilities

Next, you're going to want to pick your Abilities. You know you're going to start with one Ability other than Resiliency and you'll also add another Ability once you start getting EXP. To make things easy for you, I'm going to list off the most popular Abilities that people use and why. There will be more detailed information on how to use each Ability in-game later on in this guide, so for now, I'm going to keep things simple and you can change things later if you decide something else sounds better.

#1. Kip Up: The most overused Ability in SvR 2011, and it's no mystery why, is Kip Up (also called “Kick Up” by people that can't read). It allows you to immediately get back into the fight with a Finisher primed and ready to go! Kip Up can turn the tide of a battle in a heart beat, but be careful how you use it. You may end up just wasting it if you time it poorly or your opponent outwits you.

#2. Ring Escape: The perfect cowardly move for any Heel character that somehow also gets used by nearly every Face as well. Ring Escape is used by pretty much everyone (except a hand full of badasses) because it's basically like a 2ND Kip Up that you can use INFINITE TIMES. Yeah, I have no idea why Yukes/THQ did this, but it's a part of the game. Still there are plenty of way to combat this move, but it's not exactly easy and that's why this move is very popular.

It does have a couple obvious downsides though. Each time you use it, your Momentum Meter will take a big drop. Also, exiting the ring still leaves you at a disadvantage in some match types. You're going to have to get back in the ring before the ref counts to 10 anyway and your opponent will be waiting for you.

#3 There is no #3! No other Abilities come even close to being as popular as the first two. I would venture a guess that around 80% of the league uses only these two for their characters (and 99% of the people playing Online use them).

Now, given all of that, there's also something to be said about picking Abilities that match your character...

When it really comes down to it, a true champion will “make it work” with any Abilities they use and it's much more fun when you're really playing your character the way you want him to be portrayed. So while Kip Up/Ring Escape may seem like the only real option you have to take, don't worry, if you want to pick Abilities that match your character, I'm sure you can do so and be very successful (as I have proven myself already ;D). The other Abilities don't suck anyway, their usefulness just isn't as obvious at first glance and you will learn more about that in a later section.

4. Knowing Your Moveset

Your Moveset is very important in this game. It is so much more important than most realize. I'm only going to go over the outer layer of this facet of SvR 2011, but there is a lot of work that can be done here as you will find out below.

Planning Out Your Inputs

The most basic thing you can do to really take advantage of your moveset options is plan out the different inputs in a very organized manner so that it's much easier to remember which move are which. For example, when I make a character's moveset, I try to make all “Up” and “Left” inputs head attacks and all “Right” and “Down” inputs Body attacks when possible. In the case of Corner Grapples or Running Grapples, which are only Left/Right and Up/Down, I designate Up/Down as my Head attacks and Left/Right as my Body attacks. It is consistent. This way, when I go to target a specific body part, I know which inputs to use, even if I don't remember the moves. This is especially useful when I'm trying to win a match with a Submission move.

Doing this also makes it much easier to remember which moves are which. If I know my two Body attack Groggy Grapples are a D-Throw Suplex and a Powerbomb, it becomes much easier to pick the suplex when I've already eliminated half of the inputs from the possibilities. I know it's going to be either Down or Left on the Right Analog stick. So, if I need to pick the Suplex to make sure my opponent lands in the middle of the ring or to put them through a table, I've basically got a better chance of picking the right one. Remembering which move is which can be hard with so many available to you. Having a method to selecting your inputs can help with this a lot.

Signature Moves and Finishing Moves

There's another big part of your Moveset that often gets overlooked when creating a character: Signature Moves and Finishing Moves. A lot of people simply select whatever Finishing Moves that first come to mind, but there can be some strategic thought involved with that decision...

This may seem obvious to some, but not so much to others: the location/position that you execute your moves from is very important. You should really look into trying to make your moves "link," and by that I mean that you should be able to quickly go from your Signature Move to your Finishing Move with only a few chances for your opponent to reverse.

The easiest (and least creative) way to link your moves is to have a ground Signature Move and then to also have a ground Finishing Move (such as Sweet Chin Music into the ground RKO). Your opponent will only have two chances to Reverse this set up, as opposed to four chances to reverse if you have two Standing Grapples (one chance when being picked up from the ground, another when you perform the move - x2 since you will have to do this for your Signature AND your Finisher) or five chances if you have a Standing Grapple Signature and a Corner Grapple Finisher (add an Irish Whip).

Is this making sense? If you're a high flyer, a Standing Grapple Signature into a Diving Finisher gives your opponent three chances to reversal. A grounded Signature into a Diving Finisher only gives two chances. Which one should you take? Well, if you can find moves you like for it, do the latter. It's strategically the right choice to make, as Tyson Stewart would say.

Another point to consider is that you get a damage bonus when you do an attack after bouncing off the ropes. This can make Running Moves very attractive, especially for a Finishing Move, since the damage bonus will add so much more damage on a Finishing Move.

Would you like more? Of course you would, or else you would've stopped reading! It's important to have different kinds of Signature/Finishing moves when you get two of each. You want them to execute from different positions. Let's say you have two ground Finishing moves for some reason...if your opponent counters when you go for either one, you're going to get grounded and he's going to be left standing in the end. Even if you manage to get up quickly and recover, your opponent will now be standing, which means you won't be able to attempt your Finisher without grounding him again. See where this is going? If your 2nd Finisher was a Standing Grapple instead of a Ground Grapple, you could perform it from this new position. Your character will become more flexible if you have different kinds of Signatures and Finishers (and that is why you have to pay to get extra ones in CotR).

II. Ring Strategy

Your character will form a strong foundation for your competitive career in SvR 2011, but you're going to need to perform well on the canvas as well if you want to become a top contender! This section of the guide focuses on in-ring strategy. Hopefully, by the end of this section, you will have a much more focused battle strategy for each match you go in to.

I'm going to be implementing this section of the guide in smaller parts, partly because it's going to be the largest section of the three but mainly because there is a lot of information to take in here. While you're going through this guide, try and take things in one step at a time. Don't get ahead of yourself.

1. Going on the Attack

First we are going to cover attacking, because you can't win a match without doing it. You might be under the impression that there isn't a lot of strategy involved in this game, but there really is a lot to take into account for any match type in SvR 2011. If you've ever felt like you were getting reversed too often during a match, lost composure half-way through or that your offense felt ineffective in general, it's probably because you didn't have a solid attack plan. All you need is a little focus and you should see a drastic increase in your ring performance.

a. Control the Match

If you want to become a champion, you need to learn to control the match. First, come up with a plan of attack for getting your opponent on the ground. This can be as simple as running in right at the beginning, or as complicated as “zoning” your opponent (more on that later).

Whatever you decide to do, stay on top of your opponent. That guy on the other side of the ring is your enemy, don't give him an inch. If you're going to give “the crowd” a moment to “pop” after a knockdown, at least taunt your opponent. Don't waste that time standing around pretending to be badass. Badasses win matches by being relentless, not by showing mercy. If your opponent Ring Escapes, don't chase him out of the ring without a plan. Doing so will only put the game in your opponent's hands. When your opponent gets back in, beat him down before he has a chance to attack, don't let him get in safely as a gesture of “Sportsmanship.” That's precisely how matches are lost, not how they are won (of course, if it's in character to do those things or if you just feel like losing for some reason, go ahead and do them!).

b. Stay Unpredictable

Now that you're controlling the match, you might be noticing that some people have an easy time reversing your attacks. This is most likely because your offensive timing is too predictable. This is why you need to stay unpredictable. Even seasoned veterans who put delays on their attacks have very predictable timing. They usually pause for just a second when you're on the ground before they pick you up and you might be doing this as well. If your plans is to become a champion in SvR 2011, make sure you attack at different intervals each time.

For example, you don't want to Grapple right when you pick up your opponent from the ground, because your opponent will probably reverse it every time, so make sure you delay your Grapple (this also prevents you from getting R2 spammed). You ALSO don't want to delay your attack by the same length every time. This makes your attack timing just as predictable and very easy to counter. A lot of people do this, surprisingly, even top contenders in the league (Mercer, Killton). They always delay their attacks by the same amount of time. Don't do this, because when your opponent picks up on your rhythm, they're going to start using it against you.

Not only that, but also use different kinds of attacks when your opponent is up. A lot of people that play online rely too heavily on running strikes (the dreaded triple h knee), but after a while, any good player will get use to this and reversal your moves more and more often. Sometimes simply walking up to your opponent and doing a strike will end up working better than running at your opponent like you did the last 10 times (Aaron Webb...) because they won't be expecting it.

There are many options for you to take when you have a groggy opponent standing in front of you, but a lot of people go for the grapple 100% of the time. It may seem like the only option, but when your opponent is groggy you can also do: Strikes, Strike Combo, Running Strikes, Strong Strikes, Diving Attacks and Springboard Attacks. Standing grapples all have the same speed, making it easy for your opponent to reversal, but the other kinds of attacks you can do have different timings, which make it harder for your opponent to reversal.

When your opponent doesn't know what to expect, they won't know when to go for the Reversal. This means you'll get reversed less, and you'll start winning more matches.

c. Mix-up Your Offense

Finally, there is a mechanic in SvR 2011, that makes it so that you get more Momentum Meter gain when you use different types of attacks. As you know, Momentum Meter determines when you get your Signature and/or Finishing moves, so this is very important. Thus, six Groggy Grapples in a row will yield much LESS Momentum than Groggy Grapple, Strong Strike, Ground Grapple, Diving Attack, Running Ground Strike, Corner Grapple.

To get the maximum Momentum gain per successful attack, try to use different types of attacks while you're on the offensive. This will also make you less predictable and, thus, harder to reverse.

2. Defense

What would a strong offense be without a strong defense? Not much, that's what. We all know that the primary form of defense in SvR 2011 is Reversals, but defense isn't just about reversals and we're going to learn about that now.

a. Reading Your Opponent's Timings

As I had mentioned previously, many people play with a particular “flow” and when you come to understand their individual flow, you can start using it to more easily reverse attacks. A big element to Defense that most people just don't seem to get is that a lot of it is simply guess work. I can't physically see and react fast enough to Tyson or Cody's Standing Grapples or any Ground Grapples from anyone and that is the case for most people, but what I can do is pick up on their timings and guess when to hit R2 for the reversal.

I may not be able to react to a Running Grapple in time to throw out a Gut Kick to stop it, but I can certainly guess when my opponent will perform a Running Grapple and guess the timing for the Gut Kick.

It is very important to understand and come to terms with this element of the game. In fact, most (if not all) fighting games revolve around a high percentage of guessing and mind games and SvR 2011 isn't any different. Be prepared to start picking up on your opponent's behavior, because it's the best way to get good at this game (and other competitive games).

If you can correctly guess WHEN they are going to attack, you won't need to react.

When your opponent walks over to you while you're on the ground or after they pick you up from the ground, count how long it takes for them to go for the attack. You will probably notice a trend in their timing, and you can use this trend to guess when to press R2 for the reversal. Start here, because it's simple and it may greatly improve your chances of winning a match alone.

b. Interrupting Grapples

Another important mechanic to understand about SvR 2011 is how to interrupt grapples. If both you and your opponent are standing, and your opponent attempts to grapple you, there are a lot of ways counter their attack. Obviously you can press R2 to go for the reversal, but you can also use the Gut Kick (diagonal Strike move). This move will beat a standing or a running grapple, even if the grapple starts first. For some reason, this kick just makes it impossible for you to be grabbed from the front, so plan on mixing it into your ring strategy.

Other ways to interrupt grapples include very fast Strikes or a Strikes that causes you to go into the air. A fast Strike, such as a “Jab” will interrupt your opponent's grapples simply because it hits faster, so try to fit at least one of these types of moves into your Move-Set. A jumping attack puts you in the air, which makes it impossible for your opponent to grapple you so try to include one of these as well.

Mix these kinds of attacks into your defense and you'll have your opponent second guessing himself on how he should go for the knockdown.

c. Expiring Your Opponent's Finisher

I thought it would be important to mention briefly that when your opponent has their Finishing move, you should really try your best to expire it before they get to use it on you. Once a Finishing move is acquired, the player only has a limited amount of time to use it before their Momentum Meter resets. So, if you have the chance, try to get your opponent caught in a chain grapple and change positions to prevent them from breaking free before their Finisher expires. You can also try knocking them out of the ring or using a long grapple that will consume a lot of time, but whatever you do, be weary of reversals. The more attacks you do, the more chances they will have to reverse and use their Finisher as a follow up. You will have plenty of time to beat on them after their Finisher is gone and you'll be happy you did so.

3. Reversals

Reversals seem like a pretty straight-forward mechanic, but there a few misconceptions people have about them that I would like to clear up before moving on. This part of the guide includes some critical information for online play, so even if you think you understand Reversals, read what I have to say or you might miss out on some pretty important information...

Before we explore reversals further, we need a basic understanding of how they work. In most situations in the game, when you press the R2 button your character will attempt to Reverse an attack and no longer will be able to reverse for a short period of time. This is why spamming the R2 button does NOT work very effectively. A lot of people spam the button because it works in SOME situations, and they don't even realize how bad this is. So the first lesson you need to know about Reversals is to not spam the R2 button.

That being said, spamming R2 to Reverse attacks works in the following scenarios:
Chain Grapple > Grapple (even Signatures and Finishers)
Chain Grapple > Submission
Chain Grapple > Irish Whip > Grapple/Strike Follow up
Chain Grapple > Strike
Drag Opponent to Corner
Drag Opponent to Ropes
Drag Grounded Opponent to Corner
Drag Grounded Opponent to Ropes
Drag Opponent to Outside Barricades
and more...

There is a lot of stuff that loses to Reversal spam. What this means is that you should stay away from using those kinds of attacks. Instead, use the following:
Strikes
Strike Combo
Running Strikes
Strong Strikes
Chain Grapple > Irish Whip
Irish Whip Rebound Attacks
Chain Grapple > Strong Strike
Running Grapples
Groggy Grapples
Groggy Submission
Diving Attacks
Springboard Attacks
All Ground Attacks

The above moves cannot be spammed out of like the ones previously mentioned. Your opponent actually needs to wait and react to these kinds of attacks if they want to reverse them.

A couple other things about reversals, and these are mainly just personal tips, are to HOLD the R2 button when you go for the Reversal and be ready to press it at all times. Don't just tap the button. I've found that it's much easier to reversal attacks if you fully commit. Make sure that your finger is fully rested on that R2 button when you're expecting to go for the Reversal. It's easy to leave this out of consideration and have your finger resting far away from the button at a time of need. This will definitely affect your chances of pulling off the Reversal.

4. Taunting

Coming Soon!