e.ryu is really good, but not quite on o.iori’s level. i’d place him on the lower end of top tier though. he’s got all the good parts of akuma with slightly more life, way more damage and incredibly good tools that match him up well against the top tier
his sweep becoming 4 frames is a really big deal. it gives him probably the best standard b&b combo in the game:
c.lk, c.lp x2, c.hk xx qcb+lk, running dp
a lot of damage, and at least 50% stun on all characters, really good set up afterwards (which leads to dizzy if successful). also incredibly salvageable: easy to verify if the jabs are blocked and use the frame advantage to instead continue on offense
4 frame sweep also allows him to heavily punish a blocked blanka ball: run up sweep xx hurricane, running dp. same with a blocked bison scissor kick
his fireball is the best in the game, and is a large part of why e.ryu is so good: recovers only slightly less quickly than a sonic boom, and it doesn’t even require a charge. the numbers are almost exactly the same as a cammy standing roundhouse, just with infinitely more range. rc fireballs give him a huge advantage on the ground against most characters; most will have to start rolling (into aforementioned b&b combo), or jumping (into a dp since his fireball recovers so fast). just playing basic fireball / s.hk anti air especially gives kgroove a hard time. also, e.ryu can run after jab fireballs to get in safely
the funky air hcb+k hurricane kick that e.ryu has contains pretty enormous untapped potential, depending on your level of execution:
at the lowest level, tigerknee’ed backwards hcb+lk hurricanes (which i’ll call HF hurricanes from now on, HF stands for Hyper Fighting) is probably the best meter builder in the game
at medium level, there’s a lot of tricky cross ups you can set up with it, usually by just jumping straight up and doing it (then juggle a regular hurricane, then a dp)
at high level, if you’re able to tigerknee it forwards relatively consistently, then a lot of things open up to you. tigerknee’ed HF hurricanes going forward becomes a very abusable move as it’s crazy fast, cannot be crouched by most characters, leaves ryu with about as much frame advantage as a blocked jump-in on block, and on hit juggles with itself (then dp or super). it basically becomes the fastest low jump imaginable, and without the low jump landing recovery time. in addition to being able to use it as an abusable attack and method to get in close, it can also be used as really fast cross up on a waking up opponent (then juggle another one… you get the point)
on a theory level (or if you use a program stick or something), the move gets retarded if you just spam it. doing one after another on a blocking opponent is almost like a sakura shosho cc without using meter. there’s small 2 frame holes in there that the opponent can use to hit you with an invincible move, but that’s pretty much all that can be done. also, you can just do low shorts after a blocked HF hurricane, which is a block combo
but even without HF hurricane nonsense, you still have an incredibly strong ground game with the fireballs, air-tight anti air, big damage high stun no-meter combos, a dive kick and hop kick as offensive tools, rc hurricane kick and teleports as really strong wakeup options, and even a raging demon
