Alex's S3 UNOFFICIAL** Community Change List

Street Fighter V Alex
1

With Season 2.5 looming over my head, I can safely say Alex will be having yet another poor year within SFV. So because I’m completely unappeaseable as a player, let’s talk future balance adjustments.

Make sure to give all of your pipe dreams below.

NORMALS**
I feel the biggest issues with Alex’s normals are that he’s too heavily reliant on f.hp to get things started, and his other normals don’t allow him to pressure on block effectively. Consistency is a problem, and that’s what I want to target.

St.lp, +3 on block -
This is my most desperately wanted change. This answers almost all of Alex’s minor character issues, you give him access to a light > medium 3f trap, you give him a 3f tick throw option that isn’t f.hp. You also give St.lp a use after it got dismantled as an AA in S2 and cr.lp became comboable into L.Chop.

Cr.mp reverted to 7f -
This speaks for itself, Alex’s normals in S1 felt very well pieced together and he had a 7f/8f/9f normal pool to pick from for poking. That is now gone, and things like st.mp > cr.mp on CH are no longer possible because of this.

Cr.mk -2 on block -
Why is a now 9f crouching forward -3 on block?

St.mp, less pushback on block and hit -
This is pretty straightforward. St.mp currently has enough pushback that st.mp > Powerbomb can whiff if the opponent walks back. This is specific to faster characters like Vega, Balrog and Cammy but it’s a huge issue nonetheless. It also has bad functionality as a frame trap into itself due to the pushback, lowering the overall pushback will let Alex have slightly longer lasting pressure - at least 2 blocked hits before being pushed out.

St.hk, -2 on block -
This move has a bunch of range and about 7 years of start-up, but it’s punishable on block and awkward to space because it leaves Alex stripped of options other than st.hk when you’re spaced correctly. I think losing your turn is enough when normals like Urien St.hp exist with essentially the same purpose but 10x better hitbox data and frame data.

F.hp, extend downward hitbox -
This move whiffs on crouchers INCREDIBLY close. It should not be happening as close as it does, so I suggest an extension of its downward hitbox in the initial frames of the move.

SPECIALS**
I had some really gamechanging ideas in this thread before, but I decided to just simply say I want increased damage on his air mobility tools because of how risky they are to perform, especially the M/H versions. A bigger payoff makes Headbutt and Stomp look much more appealing for resets and approaches.

Stomp increased damage, L/M/H 130dmg/200stun EX 150dmg/200stun

Headbutt increased damage, L/M/H 180dmg/250stun EX 200dmg/300stun

END**

Thoughts?

2

Really ALL I want for Alex is a strong, reliable anti-air. Everyone knows Laura’s heavy Bolt Charge has a RIDICULOUS anti-air hitbox that lands a hard knock-down from a hadoken motion. Alex’s Air Knee Smash is a shoryuken motion, and if used as an anti-air, often from a charged stance. Tl;dr it’s way fucking harder to execute under duress, at a much higher risk.

I don’t even care if they nerf the oki after it, I just want people to be afraid of crossing Alex up.

3

I’d like to see Vtrigger buffed a bit:

  • It lasts longer
  • Sledgehammer drains less meter
  • Sledgehammer can be dash canceled but drains meter to do so
4

Anti air is Alex’s biggest issue by far right now.

5

Disagree, I think it’s frame trapping/forcing respect from 3f normals

6

I definitely disagree. Not all the cast members have a 3f normal first off but all the cast can crossup Alex for free because of his poor AA options.

7

S2.1 fixes this, it isn’t an issue. Jump back mp also covers a lot of deep jumps I’ve found.

8

Not all the cast have 3f normals, but all of the cast can be airborne in 3 frames. Alex has no tight traps (excluding vtrigger activation) that he can confirm off, and his t.hp st.mp 3f trap leads to nothing without super or a risky commitment. In a lot of matchups you have to constantly spend a bar for EX chop to create 1-2 frame traps that are safe on block.

Having said that, I do think AA is a bigger issue overall, particularly given that his normals are so slow they can frequently be whiff punished by jump-ins. This happens way more often than it did in S1 because no one has to respect the AA jab any more. The fact that he can be jumped in on so freely weakens his already weakened poking game pretty considerably.

I always thought this should have been in the game - Alex already has to commit in enough situations. Catching someone with guard break sledgehammer results in such pitiful damage due to scaling anyway.

9

Oh? How so?

10

EX Knee has been buffed to be an AA again, apparently.

11

I thought he might be talking about this note:

Alex

*Hurtbox

*Fixed an issue where Alex’s collision boxes would shrink in the reverse direction of other characters if Alex turned around while crouching. This led to characters being able to cross him up with certain moves after he landed from mid-air recovery, when they were not supposed to.