Alex General Discussion: "At ease, loo-suh!" The Alex SFV Thread

Street Fighter V Alex
2501

It’s been 3 days, and personally I think he’s pretty good. He isn’t breaking any new ground and Chun-Li is still definitively my #1 character in the game by a country mile. I can think of some negative points but they don’t ruin the character for me.

Relies heavily on bar.

Has somewhat slower normals.

Jump-ins are awkward.

Anti-airs aren’t very consistent, st.lp isn’t damaging enough.

No meter/meterless reversal, relies on good defence and v-reversal.

But why does that make him low tier? I think this character is good, his neutral is strong, he can set-up a lot of dangerous scenarios where the opponent is forced to make some crucial guesses and he has a good amount of tricks that we haven’t even began to look deeper for yet.

People thought Ryu was bad and then somebody nearly took two majors with him, most people thought Mika was bad and now they’re saying she’s broken and is an auto-pilot scumbag of a character. I’d like to go out on a limb and say this character isn’t low tier or weak. He has a very mixed bag of tools that’s for certain, but I assume most people haven’t been using them all efficiently enough to drag the best out of the character.

It’s day 3? It’s too soon to judge with how wrong people have been in the past. My judgement is always skewed, the only thing I ended up being right about was Chun-Li being top 3 and that was a broad estimate in itself.

2502

I don’t think he’s bad, but “vanilla abel” is kinda accurate. There’s nothing innately wrong with the character, they just toned down a bunch of shit because his mixup is real, albeit meter reliant and gimmicky. I’m guessing they toned down his Knee SRK because in situations where people would jump to punish a stomp/headbutt mixup they didn’t like it dominating all the time or something? idk, but it makes a bit of sense I guess.

The only really “this is kinda shit” thing about Alex is that he really really really needs meter for everything, and even the huge/easy meter gain in this game isn’t really good enough for how EX hungry he is.

2503

It’s

Why does being bad at a bunch of shit make someone low tier? Well it doesn’t standalone, BUT IT DOESN’T FUCKING HELP. “Sure he’s got slow normals, has bad jumpins, bad anti airs, no reversal, but at least he’s…?”

His neutral is strong compared to what? People with really really really bad neutral? Yes he’s got better pokes than Laura! He’s also worse in close than Laura.

The only people that thought Ryu was bad in his current state either are stuck at silver LP now or they didn’t say it in his current state and said it multiple patches ago.

Let me offer you something: Cammy has faster normals, better jumpins, better anti airs, a better walk speed, AND A BETTER CLOSE RANGE GAME THAN ALEX DOES AS A GRAPPLER. That’s comically stupid. Oh and she has a long range low hit confirm. It’s gonna take an awful lot of tech and discoveries to counter all of that.

They rushed man. I wish they didn’t, but they did. They didn’t think Alex through and they released a halfass character that has some toys but is not competitive. It’s no surprise considering they’re running behind deadline on everything atm. I know it’d be great if when a company released a new character “Everything’s balanced and it’s up to the player and their skill” but that’s not reality. Reality is they released a character with a laundry list of weaknesses and poor strengths that aren’t as strong as other characters with those same strengths and less weaknesses.

If someone forces their way through in some tourney results as Alex, that isn’t going to change that either. I doubt they even will because Alex sucks.

2504

I never said any of it was bad now, did I? That’s an over-exaggeration. Jump-ins are awkward to properly apply, j.mp is my go-to and the rest are some seriously good air-to-airs. His anti-airs aren’t consistent, they’re similar to Chun’s in how you have to change depending on the angle of their jump-in; that doesn’t make them bad. Does having no reversal accentuate to being a bad character now, same as having no 3f or something? Well shit, there’s Bison/Dhalsim/Nash/Vega down the drain I suppose. How is his neutral bad? His buttons are great and all fill a specific purpose, his range is better than most characters and he can hop over low hitting normals with st.mk and st.hk, not to mention the gap closing he has with l.elbow that can be +1 on block when spaced perfectly meaty, better pokes than Laura is an understatment. Considering Ryu’s changes from beta 4 to final version were non-existant, I’d like to say there was a visible amount of the community saying Ryu was a bad character from beta 4.

It’s not like Alex was a top 5 contender in 3S, he has his place though.

I saw the edit, uh oh it’s about corporate now. If you don’t like the character much, Cammy is always there for you. But they fill pretty different roles as far as characters go, weird comparison to make.

2505

I edited just because I thought of Cammy as someone who I thought was across the board better, heh. I don’t play Cammy. I play Mika and tried to switch to Alex, now I play Karin.

But yeah since they play pretty different roles, it’s fucked up that Cammy is better at everything and Alex has no answer to it isn’t it? Alex’s damn command throw is even 6 frames for god knows what reason instead of 5.

Want me to never mention Cammy again? I’m fine with it. Let’s go with Mika. Anyone that isn’t a stream nerd would probably agree Mika probably resides somewhere in the mid tier, probably within the 7-13th best chars, np there. I’m a Mika main so I can handle this one right?

Mika has better mixups on knockdown, better walkspeed, better anti airs, and god forgive me a better super which I didn’t even think was possible. Alex has s. mk. Her s. mp is faster than Alex’s anything for whiff punishing and…man this is starting to get embarrassing you’re making me think Mika is almost good. Maybe I’ll stand there so Alex can do his headbutts and stomps.

In fact I can walk forward with Mika randomly tapping her 3 frame s. lp and that’s probably better than Alex. All of Alex. His entire moveset.

2506

Mika to Alex to Karin? Damn you a topsy-turvy kinda guy. That’s some serious style switching you got going on lmao! I’ve seen a fair few who have gone from Mika to Alex, I haven’t seen a few of those people around lately. I don’t think the two of those character compliment each other very well, Mika is way too fast paced and mix-up heavy in comparison, she can go HAM a lot more so than Alex, but she also lacks what Alex provides and I find Mika can be shut down a hell of a lot easier because her neutral is poopy, a lot of the time it’ll come down to charged roundhouse, a jump, or something crazy to catch your guard by surprise.

Karin is good though, I like the Alex vs. Karin match. Played a bunch of it yesterday and it felt 5-5 from how it went, Alex fights her neutral pretty well and can punish the sweep from any distancing.

Laura’s is 6 frames as well, I think it’s due to them being hybrid characters and having other tools that they can apply to their game and it allows the devs to give them better overall frame data without having broken tick set-ups, as opposed to Zangief having well…command grab and lariat, so he can at least beat throws with his EX version and set up some stronger ticks, if Gief’s was 6f he’d be a lot worse for it, but Alex and Laura don’t suffer anywhere near as much. You know we get unthrowable 4f gap tick-throws into Powerbomb with cr.lp/st.lp/st.mp/EX stomp right? We also get un-anythingable 3f gaps from f.hp on block and m.chop on hit, they have to jump/reversal/backdash from those situations. If his throw were 5f that would mean he’d get a 3f gap tick throw from like, all of his buttons. That would be insanely strong dude, Alex would be better Gief v2 at that point due to his better frame data too and he doesn’t need to be that.

Right I’m unsure where you’re coming from with the Cammy comparisons, yes Alex is weak to strong pressure but uh…why should he be better than one of the premium rushdown characters up close? Like why do you think that? Alex plays totally different to Cammy, vice versa.

2507

edit

2508

Quick guys, it’s day 4, better tell everyone how bad Alex is…
Seriously, he’s not bad, but as Bronn said, he’s a meter hog.

"The only people that thought Ryu was bad in his current state either are stuck at silver LP now or they didn’t say it in his current state and said it multiple patches ago."
It’s funny what people tell themselves to make themselves feel better.
A large majority of higher level players were saying that Ryu was terrible. It wasn’t until 2-3 weeks ago when the Japanese said he was godlike they all started to believe it. You can say “They’re all terrible players who could barely make silver” but if you go and look at things like Twitter and see what good players were saying a month ago, you’d see that you’re incorrect.

Then you compare Alex to Cammy. Fuck it, why not compare Gief to Dhalsim while you’re at it?
They are completely different characters. When making your list of things that Cammy has that Alex doesn’t, did you think of it the other way round?
Alex has armour on a move, Cammy doesn’t. Cammy has short normals but Alex’s reach quite far. Alex has a parry, Cammy doesn’t.
By that reasoning, Alex is the best and Cammy is terrible.

That’s what happens when you cherry pick your points. It makes it look like you’re whining rather than be objective.

“They rushed man. I wish they didn’t, but they did. They didn’t think Alex through and they released a halfass character that has some toys but is not competitive. It’s no surprise considering they’re running behind deadline on everything atm.”

This is where I realised that you want to complain because on day 4, Alex isn’t an obvious contender for top 3.
As was said, over a month ago, Alex will not be good unless Capcom fudge his numbers completely and make him stupid safe/advantaged. It’s the nature of his toolset.

Things that you glossed over - People are working on functional 50/50s. He has a (Situational) parry (You know, one of the reasons why the Japanese think that Ryu is so good). He has some of the highest stun potential in the game. He is relatively safe.

All that considered - Is Alex top tier? Not on your life. Is he “Unfinished”? I would have to say no. He feels like a complete character, just not one destined to be fighting Chun Li for the current top spot.

2509

I don’t know why people are saying anti-air is iffy, the st.lp is straight up amazing with no caveats. The only thing I guess you could fault it for is it doesn’t beat crossups? but nothing else does besides birdie anyway.

2510

Damage, it doesn’t force your opponent to stop jumping enough. 5 st.lp anti-airs don’t even come close to one successful jump-in combo, that’s why people like to say it’s bad and I can agree with them.

2511

Uh you are super plus obviously? Chun st.lk is probably the second best anti air in the game after birdies and it only does 30 damage. Its not the initial damage is the threat you put out afterwards. Alex can absolutely no qualms no problem make you guess hit or grab as soon as you land.

2512

Basically unless you can catch them decently high or right on top of you it doesn’t lead to much in terms of mixups either. I’m going to keep playing him, but he’ll probably stay a secondary to my Necalli. He’s got awesomely ranged buttons but outside of that I kind of wonder why not just play either of the other strike grapplers?

2513

Imo alex st.lp is the fourth best anti air button in the game after birdie/chun/necalli

2514

When you think about it like that, yeah for sure you get great pressure post st.lp.

But we do have a special dedicated to anti-airing, Knee Smash.

And Knee Smash is + frames on a dash in post knockdown and allows for meaty st.mp/Powerbomb.

So yeah, I can still see why people are upset the knee isn’t as good as we thought it would be.

2515

But the difference is she can force the opponent to come to her and that 30 damage does so much mental damage it’s unreal.
People are just jumping at Alex because they know if they get AA’d, they only took a little damage but if they don’t, they get to hit for anywhere between 20-50% depending on resources and then just run away for the next 70+ seconds.
I’ve tried the st.LP, dash to do something but I find myself getting hit or having my button/move whiff most of the time.

EDIT - Knee Smash I find inconsistent outside of EX. It’s great when it works but when it doesn’t I just feel myself sinking into the depths of misery…

2516

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKPoy3pdgE#t=4m23s

Alex leapfrog best leapfrog

2517

Forget knee smash exists outside of combos, st.lp is superior.

2518

Well rather than talk about that stuff, better to talk about Alex. I do really like his V trigger, this may be a strength of his, it’s a 2 bar v trigger at that and you have to screw around and be REALLY careful as he randomly messes with you with multiple clotheslines. His f+fp is good and in fact not only looks like Mikas but is in fact better, because when Mika makes you block her f+fp, only her ex typhoon will reach. Alex can snag you with his lp powerbomb (or ex one if he wants too). Since it’s +3 the fact his powerbombs are 6 frames don’t matter in this case. So he offers that additional mixup. I dunno how many people even know that’s a mixup but it’s there. I would grab people with Mika after they blocked f+fp at final round (good players too, like japanese players in casuals multiple times) with her EX typhoon =P.

Every time Alex touches you with f+fp you MUST CONSIDER HOLDING UP! because his 6 frame power bomb is still fast enough to grab you just like the mika s. lp command grab stuff.

2519

It is, I completely agree. But that doesn’t negate the fact knee exists and it’s not great at what it SHOULD BE doing, similar to Laura’s HP bolt charge y’know?

I’m not saying st.lp is bad, I’m saying we had opportunity to have better anti-air capabilities due to a tool that is pretty much dedicated to that entire premise.

2520

So I just noticed his non ex stomps and headbutts are controllable too