I dont think she is bad at all. I think Hwoarang just does her role better but she has better buttons.
I thank cali-killa for mentioning how he uses Dudley’s overhead with Elena’s EX. I went in the lab and came up with a nifty reset taking advantage of Cammy’s new Jump cancel from her st.hk. The timing is pretty precise though, when you Switch Cancel(early) you gotta move forward to make sure the stunned opp is far enough not to get hit by the last kick which would otherwise launch them into the sky for a hard knockdown. If done correctly, Cammy’s st.hk will combo off of the EX Lynx Tail, enabling you to Jump cancel to the other side. Cammy’s Light Kick in the air acts as a cross-up and combos into st.hp, but I found it also causes a little less damage in the end, so it’s optional but probably dangerous against mashing opponents. Give or take I’m super satisfied this reset works with one of my mains from SSF4:
Med Mallet, cr.mp xx EX Lynx Tail xx Switch Cancel xx st.hk xx Jump cancel, j.lk xx st.hp, st.hp xx Launcher, cr.mp xx Hvy Scratch Wheel = ~600+ dmg/ 2 bars
P.S. - EX Lynx Tail hits a total of five times, get 4 hits for max damage then proceed with the reset. EX Scratch Wheel can net you extra damage, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you got a Meter Gem or something. And for Cammy players whatever you do, DON’T USE THE TK DIVEKICK otherwise the reset won’t work and you’re left with a bunch of damage scaling from a long ass combo.
She doesn’t really have good buttons, in my opinion. Her only good buttons are st. lk and cr. mp. Both good moves, but both quite short range, but too slow to be point blank range. She doesn’t have 3 frame normals that I can see, and few of her moves leave you at decent frame advantage. Her fierces and roundhouses are so slow that they’re worthless outside of cross rush. Her standing fierce doesn’t even hit crouchers.
Her normals are really deceptively bad. They’re short range, slow, AND don’t leave you at advantage (again, excepting cr.mp and st. lk, but you can’t build a character on two decent normals.)
Sagat is built around st.lk in this game. He is top 5.
So I could argue that you can do it. Also her cr.lk has good frame advantage it seems. But maybe poking ISN’T her strong point. Maybe she pokes to get in then applies mix-up pressure, but footsies is not the goal. Still only day 3 guys.
2 slight variations of Elena/Cammy’s reset:
Med Mallet, cr.mp xx EX Lynx Tail xx Switch Cancel xx st.hk xx Jump cancel, j.lk xx st.hp, st.hp xx Launcher, cr.mp xx Hvy Scratch Wheel = ~600+ dmg/ 2 bars
Med Mallet, cr.mp xx EX Lynx Tail xx Switch Cancel xx st.hk xx Jump cancel, j.lk xx st.hp, st.hp xx Cannon Spike xx Switch Cancel, cr.mp xx Hvy Scratch Wheel = ~700+ dmg/ 3 bars
Involving Cammy’s cross-up Light Kick from the Jump Cancel: [#first combo damage][#second combo damage]
Launcher reset + j.lk = [319][328] 647 dmg/ 2 bars
Launcher reset - j.lk = [319][331] 650 dmg/ 2 bars
DP Cancel reset with j.lk = [319][398] 717 dmg/ 3 bars
DP Cancel reset without j.lk = [319][411] 730 dmg/ 3 bars
I hope this hasn’t already been asked, but I found that for some strange reason, c.mp ~ c.mp link almost never works on Bryan or Jack-X. I managed to get it to work every single time after m.mallet or a jump-in, but otherwise it just would not link.
I haven’t had this issue hitting it on any other characters, so is it something others have noticed? Or is it just my execution? (wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter, but it’s only those characters I’ve had issues with)
She seems like an totally outclassed Bison to me : /
she has some very awesome normals though and mobility.
You’re totally right, I don’t want to write off a character so soon. I just don’t see what the point of her is, in the sense that with most characters you can see that they’re the best at something, that they have strategies and general tactics that take you through a match. If I tell you “well-played Ryu”, or “well-played Sagat”, you instantly know what that looks like, more or less.
What is a well-played Elena going to look like? She’s not going to apply normals frame trap pressure, she’s not going to play the mid-range game and outpoke you, she’s not going to dance around you and mix you up like Blanka or Ibuki, and she’s certainly not going to zone you out. What does she do? Is it just stay at cr. MP range and use overheads to get 60-75 damage at a time? And occasionally risk a mallet smash to go into a combo? Doesn’t seem promising.
And I’m assuming (from your profile pic lol) you’re a Sagat main, so you must know that Sagat’s st. lk is good, but he’s also built around kara tactics, tiger shot zoning, Tiger Knee pressure and a three frame cr. jab. Not to mention a good reversal and excellent long-range anti-air options. That character is stacked (though I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s top 5 in SFxT…:P)
ryan hunter went through elena yesterday
haven’t had the chance to watch it all but im sure its good stuff
starts at about the 3 hour mark
Honestly I take everything with a grain of salt. No one in the SfxT community thought Sagat was worth a damn. JiBbo and I were the only two that thought he was top tier and even thought he was capable of placing at a major or winning a tourney. Everyone thought he was trash and couldnt compare to Ryu when he was in fact a strong char with his own unique pros.
So you know what. Ima just play the damn game and come to my conclusions and post w/e stuff i discover.
Ok so after watching ryan test elena here are some things of note:
[LIST]
[]all version of mallet smash are + on block, with ex having so much advanatge that a s.lk afterwards is a true block string
[]ex rhino charge is also + on block and seems to be pretty safe to raw tag with after hitting
[]ex rhino charge also goes through projectiles but only during the first few frames
[]you can cancel the recovery of lynx tail with a jump, dash, normal…pretty much anything you want it seems
[]her f.mp overhead is safe on block, f.mk is not
[]you can connect her mk - cr.hp target combo after a counter hit anti air s.mp
[/LIST]
Fair enough. I don’t think it changes things. Mallet Smash is a great tool to have, and is a good special move generally, but its slow startup stops it from being great. At higher levels of play, you’ll just find that people react to it and hit you out of it, rather than punish it afterwards.
Lynx Tail recovery cancelling was known from Day 1, right? Again it’s a good thing…and?
-> MP overhead being safe is pretty useless since that overhead is way too slow to be generally useful. -> MK is going to be the one you see most.
connecting mk-cr.hp target combo (with a HK Scratch Wheel follow up, I’m assuming) is okay but just okay compared to the damage most characters can do off a CH anti-air.
I really do hope someone discovers something or some way of playing her that makes her good, but so far I’ve not seen much that’s promising.
it is slow but it had good range and can go over lows so it has uses in footsies especially against shootos
its true that a lot of characters can get more off of CH AA but a lot of characters also don’t have a reliable anti-air so atleast she has one thats pretty consistent
Im not trying to argue about her being good or bad cause ill play her regardless, just trying see what she has and trying to let other people who are interested in playing her know
after testing some stuff with counter hits i found that she can link cr.mp after counter hit s.hk and bk.hk, this is useful as you’ll be using this pokes to mainly counter lows, i mean you can already link s.lk off it regardless of counter hit but with cr.mp you get a bit more dmg
also you can link s.lk after her fw.mp overhead on counter hit
even on regular hit fw.mp is nuetral at worst so anytime you hit with fw.mp just hit s.lk buffered into lk spin sctyhe, if it did counter hit you’ll get a combo if your timing is on point, if not your still pretty safe.
well her alpha counter is ass, its her uppercut but you can’t get shit off it if you switch cancel, so only use it if you really need to get elena out
Ex rhino hoen does so much damage. I think it does 230 raw. The best punish she can do is cm.mp,ex rhino horn,cm.mp x2, lk rhino horn. only thing I dislike Is her dp, ex lynx tail and ex spin scythe does not launch the foe high enough.
Sounds pretty good, I can’t test this out yet (on holiday) but how good does this work with her CADC (from the little time I had with her it seemed decent). Could she LK Lynx tail (to force opponent to block low) > EXCADC (canceling Lynx tails recovery)> fwd.MP (counter hit)into st.LK > combo of your choice (for a nice high-low mixup). While I’m away from training mode I just wana throw sum ideas out there and get as much feedback as I can so I can hit the lab running when I get home (got a lot to catch upon). I hope peeps stick with Elena, if the past few months are any indication you should never write off a character early in this game. Hope there’s more to her as I’d hate to see her drop into obscurity (which looks to be the case at the moment).
I also found that LK Lynx tail (on hit) > LK Rhino Horn creates a safe (un-punishable by 3 frame srk’s) right-left mix up, couple this with mallet smash and you’ve got a pretty gud right-left-high-low mixup going on (if the opponent doesn’t roll of course). I feel one of Elena’'s strengths lies in her ability to create mixups off of her variety of hard knockdowns (Lynx Tail, HP mallet Smash, slide & cr.HK etc). LK Lynx Tail > is also a pretty good high-low mixup. I feel comboining into cr.HK will also be good at starting knock down mixups (need to look into if she dan go into it off her target combo’s).
Apologies if I’m wrong, like I said I can’t really fine tune my ideas until I get back home. All feedback will be appreciated though as I’m thinking of producing a PDF guide & short vids for Elena once I get better with her in the hope that it will get people’s creative juices flowing. 
Was hoping she’d at least have a good alpha counter. 
although alpha counters create a hardknock down & the recovery of her DP is very quick so this could lead to more hard knockdown mixup shenanigans like I mentioned earlier. Maybe there is a silver lining after all Elena is such a meter hog though. Good job she can build meter quickly (whiffing LK Lynx Tail builds crazy meter and looks unsafe despite being safe, which makes it a great baiting tool). I think her gem load out needs to be balanced between meter/defence right now maybe adding damage gems as we learn more about her.
One thing that bugs me about Elena is the lack of information people seem to have on her. Julia had similar issues when the game first came out, but out of all the combo videos and whatnot that have come out, almost none of them starred Elena (except like… 1 or 2 from Desk)
I definitely want to utilize the character. She could have some secret potential that makes her good but time and research will tell.