His armored stand fierce, the overhead elbow, is one of the best moves in this whole build, and I say “this build” because it’s so strong that I kind of find it hard to believe Capcom will let it stay as is lol. It’s one of the best even though it looks like it’s probably unsafe on block to at least some degree (didn’t do any testing though) for two reasons: its gigantic hitbox and its armor. Without exaggeration, its hitbox extends from near the floor (it hit every crouching opponent I tried) to near the ceiling (it hit Elena out of the top of her jump!) and so far horizontally that at the start of the round it hits Ken out of his fireball while armoring through the fireball itself. We’re talking like, some significant percentage of the space on screen! As an antiair it is untouchable by almost everything because it armors through jump attacks and slams the opponent down into a soft knockdown right in front of Hugo. Again, because of that height and range, if Hugo has the opponent cornered and is standing like 1/3-1/2 screen away, there is almost no chance the opponent can jump out or even jump back by the corner except on a hard read that Hugo will be whiffing some button/grab. We tried it against Elena’s jump lk-mk air chain, and it actually absorbed the lk and hit her with a counterhit before the mk came out, so it even beats at least some multi hitting moves. Akuma demon flip punch breaks it like it breaks any armored move, but armor breaking air moves are few and far between. The armor doesn’t start on frame 1, but it doesn’t seem to take too long either.
I imagine stand fierce being useful in more situations than just antiair. I used it in footsies to blow through single hitting normals at ranges where some characters can’t easily whiff punish. When mixed up with cr mk sweep, that range in front of Hugo is gonna be a no man’s land. I’m also thinking of other uses. Let’s say Fei does one rekka, and then I press st hp. What could he do about that? A second rekka might get absorbed and hit and chicken wing probably starts up too slowly. Would even ex dp work, or would it lose its invincibility after the first hit gets absorbed and get hit? Or could Fei maybe block and punish the fierce after instead? I can’t wait to find out.
Hugo’s st mp has even greater range than st hp. Playing footsies in Hugo v Hugo is a 2/3 screen enterprise. It’s fast too, it was super easy to whiff punish Hawk st hk from half screen. His st lk is also really big and pretty fast and has a really strong hitbox at the end of it. St lk combos to lp clap on counterhit, and it seems to counterhit quite a bit in footsies because of its hitbox. Cr mk’s hitbox extends beyond its animation but it doesn’t have as much range as st mp or anything. St mk comes out quickly, hits overhead, and doesn’t whiff over crouchers even on its first hit. It has such huge range that if the opponent is fully in the corner, Hugo can stand with his head under the timer and still be in range for st mk to do both hits as overheads against crouching opponents. That first hit always hit, it was so weird looking! It seems like st mk could be unsafe if its second hit whiffs, but I’m not sure, and some characters can’t duck it anyway.
I realize now that I forgot to test down down+mk, his 3S leap attack universal overhead button. In SFxT, leap attack can link into cr lp against crouching opponents and is airborne from frame 1. The last USF4 beta change list says that leap attack is airborne starting on frame 2 and lower body projectile invincible from frame 4. But again, I didn’t think to test any of this.
I was very pleasantly surprised by his focus attack, which has pretty good horizontal range and in the vertical space even hits crouching Chun Li despite looking like it should whiff over her. I did lv2 focus into dash toward, and I dunno how unsafe it actually is but it wasn’t obviously unsafe at least. Certainly it’s way safer than doing the same with Zangief, I can tell you that.
Unlike in SFxT, cr mp is not cancelable. Cr hp dolphinator and toward+hp swing both have good antiair hitboxes but there’s no point in using them because of how good st hp antiair is. Cr hk ass to mouth and st hk are useless, they hit overhead but are like minus one second on block or something. Hugo’s moveset includes some of the best but also some of the worst normal moves in Ultra.
His spd ranges aren’t that great, maybe like Zangief mp/hp spd range? Spd is 2f startup like Zangief and Hawk. The regular versions did 180, 200, and 220 damage iirc. Ex spd is hit invincible. The non-ex ultra throws have pretty similar range, but the ex version’s range is huge, almost like Zangief jab spd range. I didn’t test to see how unsafe his running lariat is. Ex lariat has two hits of armor on it and moves at a decent speed. Clap has more active frames so it’s easier to use as a meaty and still has huge range. Backbreaker is kinda weak as an antiair, it can trade like Abel’s ex falling sky, but that’s almost irrelevant considering st fierce is available. Like in SFxT, meatsquasher is decently fast but not really fast enough to use in pressure or footsies much, although the ex version has a hit of armor so it could be used in random situations I suppose. But Hugo has so much control when he has the opponent cornered due to st hp antiair, st mk overhead, cr mk low, and ex ultra throw that the fact that 360k aka meatsquasher always gives him that exact awesome spot seems like, pretty incredible to me lol. Unless I can kill, I imagine I’ll always use meatsquasher to punish if I can.
As for combos, I did focus crumple, asap dash toward, asap hp clap, lp clap, st lk xx super, juggle backbreaker for like half life damage. If you wait just a few more frames after crumple to dash, the hp clap will hit the opponent airborne and then you can juggle with with lp clap, backbreaker for like 400 damage. I also did hp clap, ex clap, cr mk sweep for lots of damage and a hard knockdown to boot. He can also do ultra throw (the wall bounce throw), mp clap, backbreaker or u2 for like 300-500 damage or something. Like I said, counterhit short/jab combos to lp clap, and lp clap can link into jab/short but not cr mk. The other strengths of clap do link into cr mk. Also, canceling jabs/shorts into the light version of lariat combos if you’re close enough, but the light lariat’s range is pretty small for Hugo. These are the only combos I found. As far as I could tell, none of the normals I tried can link into anything.
His ultras are ok. U1 is the same ultra every big grappler has, blah blah. U2 doesn’t seem to work as well as Hawk u2 in blowing up safe jumps and its hitbox doesn’t seem as big as I would have thought. Might stick with u1 because I’m really not worried about opponents trying to jump at Hugo.
Hugo has awful walk speed and his dash goes nowhere. He’s also so tall that Dhalsim st mk hits him while he’s crouching even at max range. Despite how strong some of his normals are, his lack of mobility is going to make playing against zoners and strong footsie characters pretty tough. But he has 1100 life and 1100 stun, and he’s built to control the corner, to get that single meatsquasher, to get that one 500 damage combo, so he might be able to withstand a drawn out game like that. I think he has a really interesting design! But his matchups will probably end up very polarized. I dunno how he’s supposed to beat Dhalsim, but I also don’t know how, for example, Rufus is supposed to beat him either.
