but I do have a rule that says once you lose 500 lp without anti airing someone once, it’s probably time to move on to a new character. I figure I’ll get through three more and then uninstall this game and jump off a cliff.
Dramatic Battle
I realize you’ve probably already decided that you won’t do this, but you should really consider changing that rule to “watching the replays where you failed to anti-air, confirming which normals you’re having trouble countering, and practicing against them in training mode”
I had a big thing in one of my earlier posts that I deleted because whatever, but basically Vega doesn’t have any effective traditional anti air to begin with. the two options are crouching fierce and standing roundhouse. crouching fierce is garbage. I’ve never gotten it to hit anti air cleanly. it can trade, and if you have the space to walk back before using it it can work. standing roundhouse only works at long distances. it clean whiffs at most relevant anti air ranges and also whiffs against crouch, so you can never throw it out speculatively. his best anti air as far as I’m concerned is his air throw, which, you know, leads to some problems. but basically the problem is not the moves, it’s the ranges. the two ranges people are going to be most likely to jump in at are 1) at very close range looking for cross ups/meaty hits, or 2) from just outside the max range of my standing and crouching strong. at those ranges vega’s anti air normals are not usable. that’s vega’s biggest weakness as far as I’m concerned. but his air to air options, his walk speed, his slide, his forward dash, and his other tools that can be used to keep opponents within his poke ranges are meant to mitigate that weakness. so what I’m saying is the answer is less the response to jumping and more the efforts to keep people grounded.
the high rank claw footage i’ve seen(there’s a rank 107-ish one) makes him look like he is Frame Traps: The Character and doesn’t really do the defense thing all that well
Yeah watching zeus play him at battle circuit tonight made it seem like his best defensive option against jump-ins is a preemptive neutral jump + button. Like, in general he seems like one of the weaker characters (Bison seems like a strictly better version of Frame Traps: The Character, at least right now), but I’ve seen strong players make every character in the game look absolutely busted so far, so who knows
…Snake?
i see u capcom
Oh, I guess Alex doesn’t have his slash elbow 
Hit the ‘hard’ karin combo in 2 straight matches. This is probably about as content as I will ever feel about my sfv play!
Wish I could say the same about the cr.lp mp cr.mk m sbk combo I’m trying to do for days with Chun li. Also, got bodied 16…0 by a local Dualism
No slash elbow… no STOMP… no DDT…
My poor, poor Alex.
Is this stuff confirmed or is it just because it is missing here?:
http://www.capcom-unity.com/haunts/blog/2016/03/10/new-character-alex-and-sfv-update-details
That’s just his meter moves?
There’s some additional information floating about that seems to detail his entire special moveset ( http://shoryuken.com/2016/03/11/at-ease-loser-get-more-info-on-alexs-return-in-street-fighter-v/ )
Basically, flash chop, knee smash, power bomb and something halfway between b+HP and stungun.
Hmm. Interesting. At first glance, yeah seems like a bummer: pretty much have just picked Alex everytime I’ve loaded up a III game in the last five years and pretty much just elbow rushed and stomped so RIP to that particular dream. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what that Head Crush actually entails.
alpha 2’s stages are definitely the best Capcom has produced, but even that would only put them about average on the Cool Stages scale when put against SNK’s oeuvre. maybe a bit above average
stomp was wack af and I’m glad it’s gone
also ddt will probably be a unique normal throw animation against crouchers like what mika has
And then you have World Heroes Perfect…
Despite losing special moves from 3S, I don’t think SF5 Alex has lost anything substantial based on what we know about him so far. I was drafting a long involved essay, but the gist of it is this: so long as his normals and grabs are good for his playstyle – and I think they will be – the specials they’ve advertised for his SF5 toolkit will be more than enough to make him a complete and good character. All the 16 initial characters have been surprisngly well balanced in most matchups, and I’ll be very surprised if Alex bucks that trend.
I think most of Alex’s 3S normals could transition from 3S almost as-is to SF5 and give him a very complete toolkit to play footsies with. He has a variety of long-ranged, good pokes, including a great-looking sweep that can only benefit from Crush Counter mechanics and Alex’s stored counter-hit V-Skill. Several of his command normals (f+MP, f+HP) suggest strong, rewarding anti-air if retained for SF5. He also seems like he is being engineered to take great advantage of SF5 counter-hit mechanics, especially Crush Counter, which will probably expand his existing capacity to combo into command grabs. The only significant changes I expect to his normals are stuff like the following:
- c.MP becomes special-cancellable to open up more combo routes to Flash Chop. It may not link from his s.MP on normal hit like many characters, but it may not need to.
- One of Alex's HP normals becomes a special-cancellable ground hit. They may want to keep s.HP the same as 3S because its overhead property was one of the special/strong things about Alex. My guess would be that they either expand the juggle capacity from c.HP 2nd hit or they make the 1st hit of c.HP special cancellable, allowing routes like c.HP (1) > Flash Chop. Or they could conclude that c.HP(2) > Air Knee Smash is a good enough route from fierce/CC punish and let MP normals be his main frame trap/neutral combo tool.
- Some sort of buff to Flying Cross Chop (j. d+HP). This move looked cool but wasn't very practical in 3S, so if Alex keeps this move for SF5, maybe Capcom will show it some love to encourage its use as a whiff punish/pseudo-divekick tool from long-range forward (or vertical?) jump. It will probably remain unsafe on block, but it will probably gain better rewards on hit, like a knockdown on ground hit or a Crush Counter property.
Alex’s specials all seem pretty sufficient for use with his normals as we know them from 3S. HP Flash Chop will probably see more use, if anything, in SF5 than 3S – even if he can’t get backturned state from doing Crush Counter > HP Chop, he might be able to use it as a DP punish instead of a Crush Counter move if it gives him combo routes to a more favorable situation. Presumably he won’t be able to combo light normals into LP or MP Flash Chop, but in this game, given the power of counter hits, stun, and grabs, he probably doesn’t need to. Power Bomb will almost certainly be good both on its own merits (Capcom probably rightly considers it the core of his mixup) and the ability to combo into it from Crush Counter. Air Knee Smash will probably be the same as it is in 3S – regular version is combo filler only (though air Crush Counter expands those situations), EX version is legit invul anti-air.
His new mini-Stun Gun special seems like it could combine the best elements of both his stomp and his DDT into one move if it’s designed as I think it is. If it has a version that leaps high into the air (while presumably not going very far forward) like Stun Gun did, that could allow him a way to jump over long-recovering lows and fireballs alike. But like most characters with anti-fireball tools, he may not need to leverage this too heavily so long as he has the basic mobility tools to slowly corner his opponent a la Gief or Mika – as well as scary enough setups when he finally gets in.
What I envision from Alex is that while he’s a bit more reliant on “old-fashioned” anti-fireball footsies like vertical jump and walking+blocking, he offsets that with relatively long-reaching normals, a potentially monstrous counter-hit game, and presumably large stun output to match. He uses V-Skill less for the stored counter-hit than to leverage V-Meter (I presume it builds some on whiff) for V-Reversal (hopefully it’s good, but hard to know) or V-Trigger. Given how high damage is in this game, I don’t see this as a significant weakness for Alex – hell, look at Mika. She has no meterless fireball-destroying tools, relies primarily on footsies to get in, and she’s utterly terrifying when she gets in. If Alex channels even a bit of SF5 Mika in terms of scariness when he gets in, relying on old-fashioned footsies rather than fancy fireball destruction/evasion can hardly be called a real weakness.
tl;dr I am quite bullish on Alex and expect him to be both a complete and decent character. Everything about this game’s character balance has pleased me so far, and I don’t expect Alex to be an exception.
3 Likes
Counterpoint: Stomps are awesome and I want to stomp on people who can’t parry and maybe instead of the cross chop that no one likes they’ll just give him a command stomp in the air to stomp people into the pavement.
I’m curious what they’ll keep from his normal moveset. If that v-reversal image of unknown origin is legit, it looks like he won’t have access to far mk. I’d actually be kind of surprised if he didn’t get some sort of minimal light confirm just because everyone else has one and there are so many 3 and 4 frame holes/punishes. I guess there’s always c.lk>c.mk, everyone’s least favorite target combo. I kind of wonder if his flash chops are going to end up functioning similarly to Necalli’s stomps. Of course it’s hard to take too much from the stills, but Alex seems to be taking a huge step forward as opposed to just swiveling in place and batting away.
Why do Karin’s throws lead to nothing 