Learning Resources
General Tactics
Venom is a character that rewards good fundamental play, and thrives off of knockdown situations. Venom's normals have decent frame data and fantastic hitboxes when used in neutral, and these can be leveraged to gain breathing room to set balls. Without balls, Venom fights on the ground from distances primarily utilizing his fS and 2S pokes. They cover good horizontal distance for their speed, but be careful because they lack vertical control, have little active frames, and have lots of recovery. When poking with them from distances, you should also frequently cancel them into a ball set, the preferable option for sure if you don't have charge.
Venom's Stinger and Carcass Raid specials are situationally very strong spacing tools and can be used to punish poor positioning and movement, and interact with his other balls to level them up.
Balls augment Venom's neutral and oki significantly. Balls can enable strings which are normally impossible both on hit and on block.
Usually Venom will only have time to set 1 ball in neutral, so it is important that the player utilize a mixture of SA, CR, Teleport, and normal moves in order to control space and set up for an opening to get a knockdown.
Off of a knockdown venom has numerous options for oki. In brief: Venom wants to usually set a ball or charge a QV in order to set up safe and powerful oki.
Blockstrings
- 2K cS(2) sCR - a strong, short blockstring which opens with a low and ends with + frames from a projectile. sCR at this range is a good reset
- ending with QV leaves you -4 on block, but is often still safe because not all characters can contest the 5P BH option after QV.
- jSPS or jSH into sMS are strong overhead strings that help you get back to the ground safely while putting many overhead hits on the enemy.