After fighting a pretty good Hugo, I honestly feel like that matchup is at best even after thinking it was in her favor. Most her good options that keep her out of grab range are slow and predictable enough to be Focus bait for any competent player with good reactions/reads due to the range of that focus attack. I can only imagine how much worse it is with T.Hawk and Zangief. Then we got Abel who can punish her Healing Ultra whether she gets full healing or cancels it, taking by far the biggest advantage of fighting a grappler away from her.
As for shotos, the only shoto I feel may be even or positive for her is Oni. Ryu, Ken and Akuma have very significant advantages in the fight, and Evil Ryu flat out destroys her, no contest.
As for zoners, what gives her the advantage? Slide? EX RH? In the case of some zoners, they’ll recover from their projectile in time to punish the slide unless Elena was at a position where a projectile would have been a stupid move regardless. Even mid-range, I can’t punish Guile’s Boom with a Slide on reaction, I literally have to predict the move. As for EX RH, again, it’s VERY slow (I could not punish a Guile Sonic Boom even midrange unless he threw the boom AFTER I did EX RH) and won’t punish everything, and it’s 63 damage on counter hit. SIXTY THREE DAMAGE. You waste a meter on pathetic damage that won’t stop them from spamming fireballs anyway, IF YOU EVEN HIT THEM.
She has unsafe normals and specials, yes. That’s not all though. Because they are unsafe, you have to use them at her ‘ideal range’, which means even if you do manage to get a hit, you aren’t going to combo into anything because your link moves won’t have the range. We’ve got several characters in this game with dizzy resets off of one combo, hell even a few with TOD resets off of one combo. Having a character who will be doing 50-100 damage off of each read, needing to read the opponent correct 10 or more times to win when you’ve got opposition that only need two reads - that’s a serious disadvantage.
If her footsies game was so superior that you could prevent that from ever happening, that’d be one thing - but it’s not. She gets more bad trades than a damn comic book convention. Not only are her moves unsafe, they don’t have the priority to make up for it. If you manage to get a hit at her ‘ideal range’ with a special cancelable move, you then run the very real and very common risk of having that special move just phase through the opponent, or having a multi-hit move not mult-hit.
The damage is shit and however you get a knockdown. You can also discourage fireballs and you’ve closed the distance. I guess if you look at the damage the move is shit.
I honestly couldn’t have said this better myself. I have been grinding Elena out in ranked on XBL for the last three weeks and I’ve played about a good 500 matches with her so far. You have pretty much hit the nail on the head with this post. I can honestly say the only reason I am using this character at the moment is because she is one of my favorite SF chars and she is fun. That is pretty much it. Would I use her to be competitive? Perhaps, if I ever got to that level; but she definitely would not be my first choice. I put Elena as my primary and Rose as my secondary, but as of right now I would never use Elena in a tournament setting. She has major glaring flaws that really didn’t kill her until Capcom nerfed her in the final build. When I used her at SCR back in February, she was extremely good. Too Good? Not really. I believe some of her nerfs were justifiable like the damage nerfs, but that is pretty much it. I do agree for Elena’s character design, her earlier builds did a bit too much damage. However in conjunction with her other nerfs (mainly to her links and meter gain) I really think they shouldn’t have touched the damage. Using this character is high risk with very little reward. The best way to beat Elena is pressure her when she has no meter and block high. Her lows are not scary in the slightest and they are all unsafe and lead to little or no damage unless it’s EX lynx tale into Ultra.
Another way to beat her is to turtle against her. I can honestly say fighting Chun Li and Bison are the biggest pain in the ass for this reason right there. She is def not top tier by any means, and when everyone learns the match up against her in the next few months, I can not see her getting far with her current design.
Which matchups are in her favor other than Dee Jay? Honestly I don’t see your defense being adequate wow she has 3 buttons that can’t be punished by a shoryuken! Well you got us she’s as good as Rose and Juri! (btw sarcasm) She has no true blockstrings outside of meaty LAST active frame cr.lk into cr.lp and meaty cr.lp into cr.lp and those are +3 at best that’s just awful. And don’t say her game is counter poking that isn’t her game.
Her arcade self had options on top of options and she was considered upper mid then, but now that she’s nerfed she’s definitely not upper mid tier. Do you know who was upper mid tier in AE? Ken, Sakura, C.Viper, Balrog nah man just no. What does Elena have that is even remotely close to any mid tier character let alone upper mid? 50 damage overheads?
Well, to be fair balrog is a very good mu for Elena…and maybe dhalsim/blanka. Past that though everything else is 5 - 5 or worse with most being worse.(unless I’m missing someone)
Guile has to counter my EX RH with a Sonic Boom for me to hit him during his Sonic Boom, and that’s from about two training room squares away. It’s a lot more than just the damage that makes this move shit.
You aren’t going to discourage fireballs with this move anymore than you’d discourage jump ins with her standing punch attacks.
Honestly, Elena absolutely destroys Blanka. I love that MU so much! Also she beats Sim, and does well against Rog and Vega too. She can beat viper because of her hitbox issues which takes away alot of Vipers options. So as far as MUs in her favor I can definitely say Blanka, DeeJay and Sim. Otherwise everything else is either even or she loses.
Not only that but relative to other specials that do the same thing its shit. I think she does the least amount of dmg for an ex projectile invincible special and has the most faults. Which other projectile invincible special(I’ll even include non ex specials) do not hit crouchers?
This is an assumption, but AlmostLegendary, I think you’re looking at Elena’s options within a vaccum. You say she has so many options but fail to see that in SF what makes a character good are MU’s and what makes MU’s good are your options relative to an opponents. In a vaccum it might seem like Elena is decent, but this isn’t a solo fighting game. Elena isn’t the only character you can select. There are other characters in this game and what makes Elena bad is that relative to the rest of the cast her options are massively overshadowed and this isn’t even bringing in her own personal faults such as specials whiffing etc. Why do you think Deejay(Hell even Dan) is and has been considered bottom tier in the game? Technically, he has all the tools he needs. AA’s, a slide, a projectile, a projectile invincible special, a move that changes the trajectory of his jump, great walkspeed, etc. When looking at him or Dan in a vaccuum they could seem like decent characters because they have all the basic tools, but relative to the rest of the cast they just aren’t good. It is the same case with Elena. You can’t just say ‘dmg doesn’t matter when you get a knockdown’ because there are plenty other characters that have the same tool but either do more dmg and knockdown, or do more dmg and dont cost any meter. Not to mention wont whiff on a crouching character. Relative to the rest of the cast that option isn’t that strong. The same goes for pretty much every single tool she has in her arsenal.
lol, seems like we think the same way. I still need to play more vega matches to get a good opinion on that matchup. Right now it seems like a 5 - 5. I do think Rog/Deejay are her best MU’s overall though followed by Blanka and sim.
I say Dee Jay is her best matchup overall. Also I literally couldn’t state your points any better. What character has 3 versions of a non invincible DP that do the exact same thing outside of start up and hits? At least give her the decapre treatment (1 for strikes, projectiles, throws and EX for all) like damn lol.
I feel like it’s even from my experience. His new cr.mk is nice for bridging the gap it his footsies. And his LP CU can only reliably be punished with st.lk. But he can basically punish all your specials with cr.lk and he can link off of his overhead. But once you get the life lead it’s harder for him to come back than vice versa UNLESS you screw up and he combos youinto his unblockable/ meaty DWU set up.
I feel like that’s a Mu that should be in vipers favor but is even simply because of her hurtbox making her specials whiff
Ah, I knew there was something that could punish Elena’s shit that he was missing. If that’s the case I’d still put it in Elena’s favor but more like 5.5-4.5. Just because you can sit back and let him come to you the entire time. I made a dumb personal WIP of her MU’s here, I’d like to know everyones take on her MU’s.
Her buttons are super good, two useful overheads, j.hp has a godlike hitbox, good anti-airs, an ex-shoryu (which combos on fadc), U1 has multiple usage areas.
She can also score knockdowns from almost every hit, she does a lot of damage and her c.lp x mk scythe (whiff buffer) is great for making people afraid to press buttons.
Her slide is hard to deal with, EX waterfall is a strong tool in footsies since people are afraid of the slide (also blocked jump-in into ex waterfall is pretty much guaranteed).
Right now I feel she struggles against the shotos and poison.
She does well against other footsie-characters and zoners that are easy to slide under.
Managed to break the 3000pp barrier with her yesterday at the very least, whatever that counts for.
I’ve been trying to break 3000PP for the longest…lol. I got up to 2997 but then lost to a 1400 PP abel. He got Elbow into Ultra and it killed me and I was sad…lol. Ever since then I’ve been hovering between 2500-2800 and can’t get passed that. I’ll get there eventually.
I really wish Elena could combo off of b.hk on counter hit, it’s so good for blowing up techs/crouch techs. She gets decent combos off of s.hk, but it can’t hop lows at close range like b.hk, even though it looks like it should be able to. It’s still airborne halfway through though, so it works against throws/stand techs… nice to use after blocked lvl 2 FA xx forward dash.
Everyone keeps saying that there is no reason to block low against Elena… If Elena has 2 bars and catches you standing with HK Lynx Tail, she can get some good damage. FADC it and either go into U1 if you’re using that or do s.hp (s.hp whiffs on Blanka and Dan :[ ) xx hk SS or s.hp xx MK RH, EX SW (something like 375 damage) if you have another bar. These combos do huge stun as well. I know most of you already realize this, I think sometimes people just overlook how useful it is. I personally almost always use U2 now and play really lame, so I focus on building a lot of meter so I can make HK Lynx a real threat. Too bad her meter gain got nerfed so badly. Would also be nice if HK Lynx actually worked at the tip of it’s range instead of dropping hits…
I think it’s pretty important to learn all of the places where you can use s.hp, because something like s.hp xx hk ss not only does considerably more damage than c.mp xx mk ss, it also does way more stun. You get 60 more damage and 120 more stun raw, obviously at the end of a combo it’s not quite as major but still. You can stun people in two good combos sometimes if you’re able to get those heavies in.
She could on CH it’s just the world’s worst 1frame link. (I’m also near certain it’s 0 on hit)
If you’re gonna do St.hp might as well go for mk RH. And the bolded part is what makes me say her high low is terrible. Trust me if HK lynx worked off of max range st.lk I wouldn’t even care about her other lows, but it’s too iffy about when it’s going to hit, especially vs characters like chun who have weird stances (you think a move will hit vs her and shit just goes right through her).