Well, there is a 34 page (way less if you take the offtopic posts out) poll-thread talking about if Alpha should be banned or not from tourneys on FreeStepDodge. Take in mind the thread in question was created before 5U came out, so there is mostly talking about her “DOA5 1.03 / vanilla” iteration.
She’s a mashy and retarded character IMO. Playing her online will probably make you think she’s top tier, especially when lag is involved, lol. Just mix up with her long strings, throw punish some whiffed holds, land some CBs (he will have to guess within 3 hit levels and the chance to get a hi counter throw) and there you go. If you actually take the time to learn her properly, you will know she is some sort of “glass cannon”. She’s a rushdown character that can put some serious pressure out of her ass. However she has a REALLY subpar defense. Once you get a knockdown prepare to get slapped hard. Once you get launched, prepare to take serious damage (she’s the lightest character).
She seems to be tourney viable. Both Lopedo and Xcal played her to some extent to make it to grand finals at The Fall Calssic DOA5U tourney. Obviously there isn’t a final word on this, since 5U is just too new.
Lopedo played 17 matches
(Played Rachel 13 times - 76.47%, Alpha-152 4 times - 23.53%)
XCalibur Bladez played 25 matches
(Played Helena 12 times - 48%, Alpha-152 5 times - 20%, Momiji 5 times - 20%, Rachel 3 times - 12%)
My 2 cents. You’ll have to hear or read more experienced players with Alpha, tho.
I remember reading that thread on FSD. Even though that Thread was made before Ultimate, Alpha is still largely the same with a few buffs and nerfs. and they actually came up with legit reasons why she should be banned. To this day I don’t think anybody posted a valid reason why she SHOULDN’T be banned other than “It is too earlier to ban characters”
She has tools for basically everything, high damage, effective mix-ups for the CB system…However she lacks an actual counter system(since she technically only has parries), and the fact she is the lightest character in the game makes a lot of Alpha only combos; Jann Lee’s CB combo, for example, on Alpha does 50-60 more damage on her than the CB combo he can do on any on other weight class…
That being still…I think she is a horrible character design wise, and it blows my mind more people don’t use her…
She just looks really fun to me. I’d even be ok if they made her one of the worst in the game, kind of how Oni is the strongest looking dude in SSFIV but he’s actually pretty low tier.
Whatever though, I’ve been grabbing the world by the balls with Helena online. Her and Eliot make such a perfect team.
Except that Sentinel, even with the health he had wasn’t actually the best in the game. Sure he’d be top tier, but it’s still nothing to what the current top tiers have.
Also, it’s well known that Sentinel was actually meant to be nerfed even before release. Conjecture is that Capcom just did it so that people would think that they were listening about balance.
Thankfully, UMvC3 will never get patched again (unless Capcom somehow ponies up for the license again) meaning that the game can be free to breathe and grow.
While I do partially agree with that statement, the main difference between what happened with Sent and Alpha is that Sent was patched within the first month of release. It has been a year since Vanilla was release and she didn’t receive any huge nerf, while she got some pretty big buffs, meaning she is pretty much the same, if not, a little better. I’m not trying to say she needs to get banned or anything, i’m just wondering how much time do you need to figure out whether a character is broken or not???
Edit: Maybe it has something to do with this game not appearing in tournies as often as the other games?
It just seems like she can essentially combo into her heel stomp instantly after doing that one air throw combo.
I really wouldn’t have a problem with it if it was just a grab, like Leon/Bass/Rachel/Mila, whatever. But it’s just a normal kick so it seems like all you can do is techroll backwards.
But do are we really sure that it makes her as good as we think she is in relation to everyone else? Are we ready to say that after ONE MONTH of play, we know everything about the game to say that we have everything that we need to and have explored every bit of counter tech possible?
Don’t answer that because we obviously haven’t and we don’t really know everything we need to know yet. Not when people are just figuring out she does seem to have some counterpicks that my work against her. Give the game time to grow before you start scrubbing it up on the forums with proclamations that so and so is “too good” or other shit like that.