Thing is if you keep Birdie at mid-screen with the claw on, he can’t v-skill at all. He also out ranges Vega a lot if he takes the claw off. Birdie has some beefy buttons and as Vega, I really don’t wanna be too close to him. But eh, who knows? Maybe it could work either way. I’ve had a lot of success against Birdie with the claw on.
Hit/hurtboxes, combined with how jabs tend to hit at very common jumping angles. There might be more than that too, but I’ll leave that to someone else to answer.
I’ve used AA jabs quite a lot in 3S, and there were definitely situations where jabs/shorts were useful as AAs in ST as well, so it’s not unheard of in older SF-games either. They were significantly less useful as AAs in SFIV or SFxT than in both those games and SFV however, since in those games jabs usually didn’t cover good air angles (except against divekicks, which definitely was a thing in SFIV).
Like I’ve been saying I think all of the DLC characters are better than the worst of the launch characters. They have better tools than the worst launch characters.
Ibuki is one of the best V Gauge builders in the game so it’ll only be a matter of time before they see how quickly she builds V Gauge. Her V Skill is basically the lite version of Necalli’s V Skill and can be thrown out judiciously to build meter on hit and block. If your offense is good she’s not as reliant on V Trigger as people make it out to be. Plus if you do get it because of how good your V Gauge building is it’s usually easier for her to choose between using a V Reversal or her V Trigger compared to other 3 bar characters.
Urien’s neutral game is really strong so I’m not sure how reliant he will be on V Trigger in the long run. His s.HP shuts down the entire normal based mid range game of very high tier characters like Karin and Chun. You can’t fight against a good Urien expecting to throw out typical poke mid range vs him, you will get crush countered a lot. Even Chun’s slide gets blown up.
Urien’s defense sucks. He doesnt have a 3 frame, his V reversal doesn’t get him out of corners like Cammy or Nash’s does, his V skill is not very good at all, and his forward moving specials are combo punishable.
All that said I think he and Ibuki are good characters. But Uriens buttons are easy to whiff punish and he has to constantly be wary of jump ins because his are wonky.
Ibuki is good but she doesnt have full screen grab glitchy bullshit which is the only reason she’s lower.
The top 3 are all more solid characters tho. I say as Nuckledu beats Justin with Guile.