You’re not going to punish it. He just can’t safely put out any normals. You can ch them with a short.
Well, if I can’t punish it on block, then it’s still effectively ‘safe’. He might not be able to start anything afterwards, but he still won’t be dissuaded from continuing to do it whenever he feels like.
It might just be me, but I don’t like my opponent to feel like they have a safe, turn-off-my-brain move at their disposal. I feel like I have to make them think twice about doing anything.
Can you tell me whats safe so i can lab it lol you’re both too vague and idk if its Akuma DP or Psycho Crusher lol or something else. There are many things that are safe to Elena and not to the rest of the cast like Dudley MGB pressure, DJ Sobat Kick pressure, and Decapre EX hands and regular hands pressure.
This is bison 101 man. Don’t let him sit comfortably in down back. Move from that effective range. He’s not going to sk you safely outside lksk range.
I don’t believe that those moves are just safe vs elena. For decapre lp leaves her at -3 and when done right its safe. Like cr. Mk lp hands is a big tool in decapre game. I’m not sure about ex. For Dee Jay I believe LK sobat is now -3 spaced right its safe. It’s not an Elena specific thing. I’m not sure about Dudley but the other stuff isn’t something specific to Elena. I also believe decade can be safe even vs grapples with lp hand. Idk the frame advantage of ex hands.
Been messing around with Elena vs characters specials in the lab and this is what I found. Some of it may be usable in game and some not, but they may be worth trying out. All situations assume these specials are being used around midrange(ie the space between you and the opponent during the start of the round or farther out)
Balrog
vs mid rush punch
- Rog’s mid rush punch loses for free to elena’s sweep. In fact if you stand outside of the rane of his lvl 1 rush punch and whiff sweep, it will never hit her. Her hurtbox becomes really low, even during recovery so even if timed too early and you’re recovering from sweep the rush punch will whiff. If you see a rog player trying to do mid rush punches from midscreen, you can whiff sweeps and it will either:
a. hit him for a hard knockdown
b. rush punch will whiff due to elenas smaller hurtbox
If it whiffs you can just block any followups he might do after or throw tech.
vs low rush punch
- A rog player might realize that Elena can blow up his mid rush punch for free from mid so they might try going for his low rush punch. Rog’s low rush punch beats Elena’s sweep for free every time, but! Elena has a counter for this move too. c.LP will eat Rog’s low rush punch every time. His low rush punch is also slow enough that you can easily react to it if done from midscreen, so you can buffer in a LT or try throwing out a c.mp after followed by an EX mallet
Anyone that plays a lot of Rog’s offline or on, try this out and see if it works when put into practice
Deejay
vs EX sobat
- EX sobat may seem like it’s really good against Elena, but Elena’s s.lp and especially her s.mp will eat this move alive every time. If you feel that a Deejay player is going to EX sobat you can whiff s.lp from midscreen. The recovery is low enough that if mistimed you should be able to recover fast enough to block the ex sobat. If Deejay uses EX sobat from farther than midscreen you can react to this with s.mp which will beat it as well.
s.lp beats EX sobat at mid range
s.mp beats EX sobat at all ranges, but comes out a frame slower than s.lp and has slightly higher recovery.
Mix it up between whiffing s.lp and s.mp depending on your spacing if you feel deejay is fishing for EX sobat.
Bison
vs scissors
This might be harder to replicate in practice vs the lab since scissors come out so damn fast, but if someone can use this then great. s.hk and s.mp thrown out slightly before or around the same time as bisons scissors will either beat it outright or trade. s.hk is of course the preferable option if it trades as you’ll do twice the dmg to bison than he does to you(he gets a soft knockdown though.
Blanka
Blanka balls will lose outright on block to slide. If you see a blanka ever try to derp you with random rolls, block and slide every time.
You’re sorry i should have specified but a lot of moves are safe in general but extra safe on Elena because even though the frame data says she can punish she really can’t because none of her moves reach or have way too much start up. For Example Dudley MGB pressure is always safe on light period anything above that is just hard if not difficult to punish because MGB pushes you too far away to get any real punish even if you do connect the cr.lp you cannot connect a cr.mp into special because they’re too far away for the moves to actually hit. The same is true DJ sobat pressure if they do it in a string we cannot punish period because of the spacing making all version except EX kinda safe because we cannot connect a cr.mp into special to punish it on block. EX is an exception we can connect a cr.mp after an ex Sobat if done in a string but we cannot connect LT or SS because they fall out or can block in time. All we can do is just cr.mp into EX MS for a guaranteed punish. As far as i can tell all of Decapre Hands if done in a string push her to far to punish at all for Elena and any special we have is to slow in start up to actually catch her. Which is why i recommended the Pseudo Punish i think that mix up is a great way to keep a lot of charc in check showing “hey you can’t pressure us for free you know”. Of course it waste a meter so its not always available but its something right?
If i am wrong about punishing any of these moves plz tell me so i can re lab them and will update the guide crediting whoever found a legitimate punish.
Perfect I will add these to their respective characters and give you credit, although i already have the Blanka Ball punish already in there lol also you can Red Focus or EX DP in the middle of scissor strings, Super also works but those all waste meter so idk how useful they would be at all.
Ok will add that in as a note thanks for letting me know
those things you talked about are safe vs everyone. light mgb is only -1 on block and sobat is -3 and if this is done in a string or spaced no 3 frame light will be able to reach him to punish. Same goes for lp hands.
Hey guys,
I think you guys need to be careful about throwing out that she has 7-3 matchups, it takes quite a while to establish how match ups are going to go and its way too early to make these calls. A 7-3 is a near unwinnable matchup, and I really don’t think this is the case for any character vs. elena. With this character being so new, the sample size that you’re drawing your conclusions from is definitely not reliable enough to decide anything long term. I’ll agree there are some difficult matches though, so I’ll contribute what i’ve found so far to what some of you have deemed a 7-3.
In general, I’ve been not too stoked on how little she gets out of AAing with her st.mp so I’ve been trying to find other ways to deal with a lot of characters disrespecting her AA game. I played elena pretty successfully in sfxt as using her footsie tools in the range where she excels and reacting to jumps with her strong air to airs. In sfxt it definitely netted more damage due to the combo system, but in ultra it is still incredibly effective. You can get incredible milage out of her jump strong and fierce, the range and startup on these is great and beats most characters air to air free. When you land you’re also going to be in a safe range for you to continue pressuring, not forcing you to push any buttons or anything but placing them in a situation where they might fear an overhead or something and throw out a reversal. Try it out, she is able to react to a lot of jumps in her strong range around her cr.mp max distance.
Yun- probably one of the hardest match ups i have ran into so far. Fighting him outside of your Cr.mp range allows you to air to air him with jump fierce, whether he neutral jumps or dive kicks. St.mp also works well from this range. You basically want to limit the range that he can dive kick from so that you can control it in spaces that elena excels in. You have to keep this in mind while pressuring him in his ground game. Low strong is very active and good to buffer into mp.ss. Standing short is a good footsie tool as it recovers fast and beats out all his neutral specials he will try and abuse to get in. Damage isn’t great, but its worth stopping his momentum and preventing his rushdown. You can pressure him, just try and do it outside of his low light buttons. Try using st. roundhouse a lot while pressuring him, it will stop him from jumping out of your pressure to dive kick.
Chun- I really don’t think this matchup is as bad as you guys are saying. The fact that elena can’t slide under fireballs really isn’t as important as some of you are making it out to be. Walk chun back into a corner, focus dash through fireballs and get to a range where you can buffer low strong. Focus is amazing in this matchup because chuns only real option in a certain range is to sweep, so prep focuses to punish her for it. Once she is cornered, you can high/low her without much worry, SBK is hella punishable and easy to see coming, and if she is blocking overheads she won’t have it all the time. Walking back in and out of her sweep range also allows you to whiff punish with a slide, letting you pressure her some more.
Let me know if you guys want some more of my matchup notes let me know, not sure how useful they’ll be. Some match ups are difficult, but elena has a lot of honest tools that can be used to outplay your opponent. Before admitting defeat, think outside the box a little and think of what you can do counter whats giving problems.
- yes we would love more MU notes i love people contributing will post up what you have put so far and give you credit
- Please don’t generalize us, none of us has admitted defeat if we did we would have abandon the charac long ago. We’re just making observation right now about MU’s and we know it needs time i even said the MU vs Chun is one that needs time for us to get use to and grow. Although that I do say that you shouldn’t generalize i will agree that we did throw out the 7-3 MU way too much albeit as a sort of fun but yes i understand your point TY for sharing
I actually haven’t tried using focus vs Chun, I’ll def try that out.
Do you have any impressions vs Decapre or Sagat? Decapre is weird to fight against as it seems she doesn’t really need to play footsies with Elena, she can just walk back all day to prep her charge and teleport to get in range and pressure. I don’t think it’s a losing MU, it’s just weird as hell to play against.
I actually think that Decapre is a great MU for Elena it actually feels so liberating because teleports are predictable and she seems to always be at the range where over heads just hit her but i would also love to hear goodone notes on this because i am lacking in Decapre
I used Focus with the Chun mu but it was mostly me just focusing and dashing back. I played the mu with Healing so eventually he’d stop throwing fireball and approach, realizing I’d just heal from the focusing.
I played about a 8 hour offline grind session with a decapre yesterday lol, heres what I took from it.
Decapre: I haven’t had a problem at all against online decapres, there are a lot of people playing her a lot of ways so nothing is set in stone yet. I think the matchup is definitely in her favor, especially if they know elena specific things they can punish. Definitely still winnable though. ANY blocked SS lets her get a free ultra 2, which sucks. Its hard to play a ground game with her because of her weird scramble options, letting her get in multiple ways that we don’t have great options for. Save meter to ex.dp her dive kicks and shenanigans on reaction, because st.mp does not work well. You can punish her heavy hands (you’ll know they’re heavy bc they hit 7 times) with a hk dp, its the only thing that was fast enough that reached that far as far as i could tell. Periodically neutral jumping punishes almost all of her long range scramble options, you’ll just land on her with a nj fierce. Focus works pretty well against her in footsie range also. I can’t state enough how useful her focus is in most match ups. DO NOT NEUTRAL JUMP WHEN SHE HAS ULTRA. Her AA version of U2 will catch you if you’re fishing to punish scramble. When she does get on you, you’re going to have to block, she has good frame traps so look for a spot to eventually focus backdash when she’s out of spacing to tag you with light normals. She is pretty vulnerable to elena’s pressure, and her reversal options aren’t great. Just sniff out when she wants to and punish accordingly.
some other decapre stuff:
-you can punish any version of her ground pound with cr.lp into anything. You can probably punish with low strong as well.
-ex divekick and air charge dive kick are both super safe, don’t push buttons
-she has to have charge to be useful at range against elena, force her to lose her charge. If she doesn’t have charge she doesn’t seem to have any answer to jump in fierce outside of counter air to air or air throw.
For sagat: I think this matchup is in elenas favor, but probably not online. You have to be able to whiff punish him up close on his low forwards, fierces, high tigers, etc. which is not as easy to do online. Don’t attempt to really slide through fireballs, but it is a good long range whiff punish still. Focus dash forwards and he has a hard time dealing with your approach. Push him to a corner and don’t let him out. You have far superior normals once you’re in and he can’t play his zoning game. I think you can focus dash through fireballs close range and punish him with cr.lp but I’m not 100% sure, haven’t played many sagats yet. Whiff punish with sweep, low strong, and slide. Free punish his DP fadc forward, and give him a fair share of overheads. You should be able to really make him uncomfortable in elenas footsie range.
Amazing stuff thank you for sharing your notes i will be sure to update and give you credit if you have anything else to add on any other MU feel free and i will update 
Also for the Dud MU, picking U2 isn’t smart as Dud’s U1 can punish full U2 or U2 cancel anywhere on the screen. No setups work against this.
Are you suggesting Dudley to pick u1 or us to pick u2?
He’s saying Dudley’s U1 can punish Elena’s U2 in too many situations for Healing to be viable in that mu.
Ah I see.