I don’t think I ever leveled up all of Ace’s moves. The f~b+lp+lk command grab was too hard for me to do. The rest I did manage to do.
When you start off at lv.0 all of Ace’s moves do terrible damage, just as you said. When you get them to level 3, the normals still do about 1-3 points less, and the supers and meteors do at least 4 points less. For example Guile’s sonic boom does 16 damage. At lv0 Ace’s does 12. At level 3 Ace’s does 15 damage.
Some basic tricks/combos with Ace…
Ace can combo a c.LK off his normal throw, similar to Bison. He can then cancel the c.LK into either a Somersault, Hagan Syo, or Rolling Attack. Both the Hagan Syo and Somersault can then be cancelled into Double Somersault.
Hagan Syo deflects projectiles at all levels. It cancels really easily from his moves.
His triple break is nerfed until you get to lv3. Before that it doesn’t juggle properly. Best used after a Justice Fist or Canassa.
Justice Fist lv 3 does something like 40pts of damage.
Shoran has a lot of invincibility to trade of for it’s terrible rage. It’s good canceled off a justice fist or canassa.
Aragyouji is completely invincible at the beginning of it’s animation. It can even go through Bison II’s Green Pyscho Cannon. At level 3 it does decent damage.
Zenpo Tenshin has no invicibility frames until you level it up to 3. Then it actually has a few. If you hate the Gigag Gladiator motion, set Zenpo Tenshin as one of your moves. Do a jab Zenpo Tenshin motion, and then do the Giga Gladiator. Also you can use the Zenpo Tenshin command to start a SPD or FAB.
When you hit with an Ex-plosive, Ace can usually follow it up with a f.MK depending on how close he is.
Just as ShinjiGohan said, Ace has an infinite off his Lighting Kick. You can either use c.MP, Lightning Kick, c.MP. Or you can use c.MP,cLk, Lightning Kick. It’s a great way to build meter and do damage at the same time, but your opponent also gains meter. Even if you can only do 3 in a row it’s still more damage than a super combo.
The Lv3 Shoryuken can do an infinite juggle. Execution wise, it’s no different from an Electric Wind God fist in Tekken. Even if you can’t do 5 in a row just doing a Jab Shoryuken into a Fierce Shoryuken does more damage than the average Super Combo.
Rolling Attack is a pretty solid move with the QCF+P motion. You can do all sorts of stuff with it. Really fun with Sonic Booms.
Stun Palm does great damage at level 3, but the execution is way stricter than Virtua Fighter.
The Galaxy is actually worth the trouble. I can’t remember the exact damage, but at level 3 it’s stronger than Shadow Geist’s meteor, which is over 150 damage. Normally when you combo into a meteor combo it does a lot less damage than the meteor combo by itself. The Galaxy has the best damage scaling of any meteor combo in the game. If you do jumping HK, standing HK, Galaxy, it will be the same damage as doing the Galaxy without a combo. This makes for game ending Tag juggles.
Ace is god tier with the Shoryuken lv3. Without that, it’s not hard making a top tier Ace. If there ever were serious tournaments for SFEX3 I’d imagine he’d be banned.
