161

Wheel kick not as good in what way? More recovery? Smaller hitbox?

162

Oh god.

163

it felt the same to me… so Im not sure what you mean. I didn’t get punished more or less when I used it than in vanilla to now in super. =p

164

wheel kick seems to be the same to me didn’t test it much though
all Abel’s jabs and shorts seem faster? I could be imagining things
far fierce and far roundhouse are faster, I’m pretty sure.
he seems to have some of the strongest ultra combos, still. even the 15 hit CoD FADC elbow, CoD FADC ultra for corners still does crazy damage

165

Okay got to test punishes for Ibuki’s raida today… On block Abel can step kick, sweep, or U1&2, shit’s bad on block. jab -14, strong -16, fierce -18, and ex -9.

On another note, I’m really digging Makoto. She’s fuckin beast.

166

it felt like a smaller hit box to me…i dunno guess it was just me cause there was some moments it felt different a bit my bad there & yes busta it wasn’t as godlike as a DP but hey it was something ok LOL

167

Oh wow… Dhalsim matchup just got a bit easier. Abel’s normals beat out A LOT of Sim’s limbs. s.strong and c.strong were really good. s.fierce, a little less effective than the strongs. And s.short beats some limbs too, including Sim’s j.fierce. Sim can actually use his drill to gain ground if that makes any difference (actually, it’s a decent tool for Sim to tick throw/use his s.short/sb.short). Sim does have improved damage on his moves, but it just doesn’t seem to be noticeable in this match, lol.

I wasn’t playing the greatest Sim or anything, but there were still some noteworthy things I saw.

edit: oh yeah, when you cancel U2 (press a punch button), there is some recovery.

edit2: i think how they buffed s.jab is it either comes out faster or they changed the range between you and your opponent that determines whether you do a close standing jab or a far standing jab.

168

Anyone watch the stream last night? Some Abel player was losing and did a midscreen random ultra while guy was like 4 characters lengths away and he just stood there and took it lol Definitely shows no one is used to that ultra, cause I’m sure guy could have done a bushin flip.

169

people are already rage quitting when I use U2 a lot playing online, it is so good. Abel has problems with small character hit boxes, hp whiffs quite a bit.

170

I agree after playing wheel kick just felt really shitty to me.

Yeah I still Ill stick with ultra 1 except for maybe in zangief matchup and maybe some of the new matchups. Depending on how they fare.

171

Oh wow after hearing all this U2 beastlyness i can’t wait to try it out. Random question, can this still punish Blanka ball on block? I mean it probably can, i guess what im really asking is if you need special timing or just mash it out like U1 against a blocked blanka ball

172

I’m able to stuff the condor dives with s.mp, on an irrelevant note Hakan is fun to play with. I am landing his U2 like nothing.

173

i think they made his jab 1 frame faster from what it seems like when i was playing i could be wrong.

174

Most likely yes. I didn’t try it but considering it covers a good distance and you don’t have to catch them in the air I’d say it would be an easier counter than have to do U1 on reversal timing.

Again U2 is not amazingly good. It works well against jumps, neutral or otherwise- similar fashion to fuerte’s U1, and can hit after alot of moves with long recovery that you usually couldn’t hit because of their distance. Good footsies beat U2 easy. It’s going to come down to your own style of play along with your opponent’s. Rushdown sagat would go with U1 and that beats Abel U1 or at least even. But rush down sagat has poor footsie game now so U2 beats FA fakes and that bs. Also a weird hitbox comes from it so with good spacing you can avoid a TK clean and counter ultra. Sagat cr. lk into dp wins though. counter ultra can also catch whiffed sagat f.hk on reaction with practice. At the same time you’d have a better chance against sagat U2 with Abel U1 I think. Sagat U2 played right would be more long range and patient. That’s just one example though and I still haven’t had a lot of play time.

I think Abel is still going to have tough matchups but I think others are going to get better. His pokes definitely work alot better now. Step kick even stuffs a whole bunch of crap. cr.hk added range gives you more dominance of that mid range distance fighting too which is just where Abel wants to be.

175

Got my game on Saturday, been playing non-stop XD Ok wow, wheel kick, it seems more worse than before D=

At least Falling Sky seems much better than before. I’m lovin’ Breathless again Zangief, made things somewhat easier ^^

176

I’ve been using Breathless in fights in which I don’t recall landing Soulless too much in Vanilla, or matches in which I didn’t feel like Soulless really brought much of anything to the table.

Incidentally, I feel like I’m using Breathless in well over half of my match-ups, even though I always thought, and still think, Soulless is a really fucking good Ultra.

I use U1 against Ken, Ryu, Sagat, Cody, Chun, Blanka, Rose, Dan, Sim, and Gouken, and against everyone else, I’m currently using Breathless.

Now, obviously, this will probably shift one way or the other over time, but for the other matches, I either just feel like Breathless is bringing more to the table, or I feel like there’s something there that I can exploit.

It really does come in handy in a couple of fights (though not so much in a lot of them, at least for me… so far). The Gief fight in particular really benefits from Breathless for a lot of obvious reasons, but one thing I really like is that it completely shuts down EX Green Hand as a mid range tool. With Soulless, there’s some guess work if Gief has 3 bars, so he can FADC the Green Hand, or even if he didn’t, you needed two bars to be able to land Ultra (though you should almost always have those bars to burn in the fight). With Breathless, there’s no guess work. If Gief does EX Green Hand, you get Ultra. No if’s, and’s or but’s about it, and obviously, there’s less chance for execution errors.

I ran some numbers to see exactly what the trade-off is in terms of your combo potential, and here’s what I found:

A combo from Step Kick to Ultra does 520 Damage, 345 stun.
A combo from Step Kick to Fierce Falling Sky does 365 Damage, 465 stun.

Mind you, those combos were done with full Ultra bar, against Gief at full life… so really, when you take into account the fact that you’re not gonna have full Ultra most of the times, and damage scaling based on life bar (which is almost non-existent on full-health Gief, and will affect the Ultra combo, more than the Falling Sky combo, since it does more damage), the damage numbers are a lot closer.

The numbers on Low Strong to Ultra (495 DMG, 270 STN) and Low Strong to Fierce Falling Sky (305, 410) give a little more variance on damage (about one Fierce TT’s worth, which is significant).

Full Breathless does 480 DMG.

So what do all these numbers tell me? Not much, honestly. There are trade-offs, abound… but there were trade-off’s in SF4. A lot of Abel’s, myself included a lot of the time, chose to finish combos with Falling Sky, even when Ultra was available. This mindset leads one to believe that Breathless would be a better option, since your most reliable ways to land Ultra would often go towards a FS combo, anyway.

But, let’s not forget our general Abel bullshit.

Low Fierce-> Ultra (a combo that I landed a lot in Vanilla, off of dumbshit oki mix-ups) does 514, 150. Low Fierce-> Fierce FS does 270, 350. That’s a big difference, and that set-up isn’t match-up dependent at all (outside of not wanting to attempt that too much against Gief).

So yeah… lot’s of numbers… no conclusive decision. I’m gonna toy around today in training mode to see exactly what U2 can punish, to see it’s utility.

177

So does anyone no exactly how fast this ultra is? Frames wise?

178

Good shit HAV - would be really interesting to see exactly how quick that shit comes out… It’s interesting to see that you’re opting for U2 instead of U1 in the Akuma fight… I always found myself using U1 a lot against Akuma in SF4… My guess would be that U2 punishes teleport a little easier ? Care to elaborate on this ?

179

From what I’ve tested it’s as fast as chun li’s super if not a frame slower so from what I’ve seen it’s 3 frames. Seeing as chun’s super is 2 frames.

180

Like I said… none of the decisions I’m making regarding Ultra use are anything close to final decisions. In the Akuma fight, I’m trying to explore Breathless’ options as far as defense is concerned.

The one property of Breathless we’re not talking about is how it gets you the fuck out of situations. I believe it’s throw invulnerable too (haven’t tested, but I’ve seen throws whiff on me). Against wake-up pressure, Breathless beats Dive Kick for big damage, I believe it would be Demon Flip grab, for big damage as well. It beats empty jumps into shorts or whatever. It would get broken by Demon Flip palm, and it would escape cross-up Hurricane. Not a bad use of Ultra meter, IMO.

We’ll see though. Again… this is all very tentative.