Biggest change I could want for him would be a change to his v skill. It’s slow speed and the fact that it goes away on block make it kinda useless.
I’d at least like a significant speedup.
I think making it not gone on block though would make it kinda broken as then all that would happen is Alex players just spamming sthk till it hits and it would just become degenerate gameplay.
But a faster v skill would suit him well IMO.
The only other buffs I could see would be to make his jabs and certain other moves give slightly less pushback, that would allow him to powerbomb after moves without increasing powerbomb range.
I don’t disagree but I don’t entirely agree either, honestly I’m fine with lp.chop being -4 because of how easy to space safely it is, and st.hk being -4 I fully agree is straight up retarded, it should not be punishable with that much start-up.
If v-skill were changed he’d still be relatively weak, it’s so easy to just negate it’s effect by letting Alex get hit, you have to think that when you perform v-skill you won’t be “in”, and the only decent long range option he has access to from ranges he’d v-skill is st.hk and maybe cr.hk, so in general I think Alex’s v-skill is always going to be bad. You’d want the hard hit to be on st.hp, st.mp, f.hp. Cr.mp can work for whiff punishing but you’d be too far away to link into a lp from those ranges anyway.
I think the entire concept of the v-skill is poor and it only really works as a combo starter tool when the opponent is stunned
edit**
using v-skill with the superman dive also lets you get a f.hp or something on the landing, so that’s another option for long ranges. Saw it on a @GroundedSF video I think. Never bothered trying it.
V skill from far will make opponents turtle up, not wanting to get hit by CC st.hk
It wouldn’t be GREAT,but it would be decent.
And decent is all we really want as that already puts his v skill in a place that ties asbest with the best v skills in the game. Remember that most v skills are trash.
I don’t feel like st.hk alone is anywhere near scary enough at long range, really susceptible to jumping or just blocking on reaction and pressuring after it’s blocked. If it applied the hard hit to things like Elbows it’d be really nifty but alas we’re pretty much forced into using our slowest button with bad frame data on block
Also if someone gets hit by st.hk in footsie situation it’s 90% as a counter hit anyway.
EDIT: as I see it Alex has a lot of the same issues Abel had in SF4 with the downside of not having a step kick and his pressure on knockdown being very minimal.
Hell, speaking of step kick maybe it’s something to think about in regards to st.hk?
I don’t know if I’m late to this discussion, but here are my two-cents (especially considering the forthcoming changes that will nerf s.lp as anti-air and make s.hp +6 on hit, which will allow us to combo into s.mp).
Biggest changes I’d like to see are with anti-airs:
a fix to the speed and hitbox of c.hp. It SHOULD be the go-to anti-air, but your hurtbox is so big behind you, you can basically only hit folks in front of you. Should be made to hit folks directly ABOVE you too.
Every version of Air knee should have upwards invincibility, like the shoryuken (but not fully invincible, as there will be no invincible moves without meter anymore on season 2). The idea is we could have anti-airs for three different scenarios: a) f.HP for long range jump-ins (and it’s great as it is now); b) c.HP for close jump-ins (and it doesn’t work well for that now); and c) air-knee for mid-range jump-ins, as a general anti-airing dp.
Make Ex Knee OR Ex Flash Chop invincible. That way Alex would have a true reversal (using a meter). ALTERNATIVELY, make his v-reversal more effective, like ken’s.
Make his v-skill a bit faster (say, like Nash’s) and build v-gauge from any TOUCH - either block (a bit less) or hit (full build) - with any button. Currently, his v-skill only builds v-gauge from crush-counters (only f.HP or s.HK), which is REALLY limiting. That way it would have a constant use throughout the fight, in order to use more v-reversals or be able to parry more often in v-trigger (I personally prefer this combined with an upgrade on his v-reversal instead of an invincible meter reversal. Puts more strategy and intelligence into it).
Make Ex-Stomp hit airborne opponents, so his jumping specials are less gimmicky (would make headbutt more effective);
Make s.lp +3 on block, like other grapplers, so you have a 3f gap for the command throw.
Overall, I really like the changes I HEARD so far that would be introduced to Alex on season 2 (also coming is c.lp being cancellable into l.chop, which is quite good); but an urgent fix to his anti-airs (c.HP and air-knees) is needed in order to overcome the end of s.lp as anti-air (which I think is a good measure overall). The other crucial change would be on his v-skill, because it is completely out of uses right now, and could be made to help Alex build his game up if used intelligently (especially if combined with a faster v-reversal).
What do you think of the official changes announced? The increased frames for sMP and cMP suck, but we can’t know if it’s really bad until we see the actual dynamics. The frames for cHP have also been increased according to the notes and there are videos showing how fast it is now. So I think we’ll have to wait and see. 2 things I really liked: v-trigger now adds v-gauge on motion; and projectile invincibility for EX Stomp FROM FRAME 1, which I think is a huge thing. They definitely nerfed Ex Knee (more hurtbox, more distance after landing), but they said nothing about the distance from normal knee, which, considering the bette cHP, will have better ways to be used mid-screen and allow for setups (depending on the viability of sMP). All in all, looks fair, some good buffs and some nerfs that I don’t know if are good or bad.
Reading the notes - Oki is not as good, best buttons are slower, cr.HP is our new anti air but even at it’s new 10 frame start up I see it losing a lot and getting in/maintaining pressure with Elbows is gone.
Oh, but we can cancel our cr.LP now and actually hit.
But they left the rest of the cast with ways to get in.
The slowed down our best buttons in line with the rest of the cast. Fine.
Ex-Knees now reset to neutral instead of giving an advantage. Not cool.
They straight up dismantled Elbows. Alright, now you’re taking the piss.
Alex was hit by universal changes, but if I had to guess they didn’t test Alex to see exactly how those changes would hurt or help the character. I’m certain that the buffs and “universal” nerfs he received were done by spread sheet not by how the character actually plays in game. Basically Capcom is analyzing data, numbers, statistics etc and making changes from there. A lot of companies tend to do this, it can work but what can happen is that reality doesn’t match what the spread sheets illustrate.
no, you misunderstand, you can headbutt or dash - f.hp. Both beat 3fs. You could headbutt before, but it’s much safer now. And I could be wrong, but I certainly don’t remember dash - f.hp after an ex chop beating 3f attacks on wakeup in S1.
Okay but again headbutt whiffs on quickrise and it’s not safe then.
f.hp after ex chop was fine before it would hit on last active frame.
And hey if you really want a positive side of things you can use st.lp-> mk elbow after ex chop to beat 3 framers on backroll and it’s safe on block then (tested on Ryu so far)