[Xrd] Leo Whitefang vs Elphelt

[DaRealZil]

(Placeholder) 

 

Discuss the Leo vs Elphelt matchup here.

[Monokeros]

2H and 6P blows up the Aerial Bridal Express, 6P you can do pretty late and get a juicy hard knockdown from the air combo.

[SecretAgentN3al]

What do you in the matchup? I feel that leo has no real options against her cause of his limited mobility and tools. I play against a real good elphelt daily and his neutral is on point and its hard to really get in without being predictable. Grenades reck leo and her normals are better than his. How do everybody go about dealing with her? This seems like one of his worst matchups.

[Maho]

Honestly you don't really get in often against Elphelt, most times it's her that gets in and then you try to find a way to get the advantage back.

 

Here's a few videos of me getting rekt by Alioune a week ago, by far the best Elphelt I've played :

http://youtu.be/ev9ITvZomsY (this one has some Millia in it too)

http://youtu.be/-WvrKBJ3gdo

http://youtu.be/tgVyIoTXXwg

http://youtu.be/WdbQ-6SjTW0

Maybe i'll lower the quality a bit in the future, 720p60 is nice but takes forever with my upload, like 10 hours for one of this sets :/

 

So after this matches I look more into the matchup in training, first for the unblockables :

 

- The corner loop : unless you have 37,5% to blitz both the nade and the shot, you're fucked, if you have only 25% you can try to IB the ande then blitz the shot in case the Elphelt misses his timing, sadly for me Alioune doesn't miss much.

- Shotgun loop into YRC nade : this you can go for 632146H, can be baited but not enough time for her to YRC after the freeze, you can of course blitz like that (I could hit her out of pressure after the 3rd BS here, but it depends on what she does), or even better you can backdash YRC. If you happen to do so, 236S is guaranteed unless she YRC the rifle stance, but it's risky as if she YRC and blocks, you might get by the grenade explosion, so I prefer to jump out. But this is extremely hard to do due to the YRC slowdown that affect you on wake up, I played again with Alioune last thursday for like 3 hours, and I got it only 2 times :/

- High proration setup : this one is used mostly when there'e too much hits to go for the meterless loop and doesn't have meter to YRC, it's not a true meaty so it's actually pretty easy to blitz, just be sure to do stand blitz as the grenade can whiff if you do it crouch. If you don't have enough meter to blitz 2 times, you can try to backdash and most times the grenade explosion won't combo after the shot, depends on the grenade timing.

 

So now let's talk about neutral, it's pretty simple actually, almost everything she does is better that what you do and her grenade is the bane of your existence :/

 

- Air to air : Elphelt's jD destroys Leo air to air game, you can do much about it, only thing you can do is to hit her before it gets active.

 

- Air to ground : Elphelt's anti air game isn't the best but it's decent against Leo as his jump ins are so strong either, her 6H can stop your airdashes attempts if done early enough, her 2S can low profile jK and jH easely but she can do it too late as it lacks invuln, if you're directly above her, her cS is really strong and you can't do much but block. Raw YRC is good for baiting 2S, j236H YRC is interesting if you want to stop your momentum.

 

- Anti air : 6A is good here but air bridal can fuck up you timing, good thing is that Leo's 6P have fast recovery so most times if you do 6P AA loking for a jump in and that he bridals, you'll be able to block in time. Also when you 6P her out of an air dash jump in, just go from 6P into air combo (of 6H combo on CH), cS will whiff most times in that situation. You can AA 6P bridal but you have to wait, so if you're looking for it, you might end up blocking a jS jump in.

 

- Ground : her normals are quite better than yours, 5H can work tou outrange fS but it's pretty risky as her 5H and bridal can fuck you up, fS is ok but will lose most times against her own, it works decently against bridal, and have less whiff recovery than 5H so that's a better choice I think.

fS into 236S is also more interesting when looking for a CH because 5S > 5H > 236S will bring you closer on block, an Elphlet can punish 236S on IB with her 4f 2P if close enough.

Your best option here is clearly S fireball, but without meter it's a risk as she can air dash above it, if you've YRCd and it hits, just dash in then 5H into rekkas.

The big problem in neutral is her grenade and Leo doesn't have good answers to that, you can negate the initial hit of ground toss with a S fireball YRC and then try to get on the offense, if you don't have meter to YRC, you'll probably get iad punished so be carefull.

Upward toss is a bigger problem conbined with her strong normals and bridal, if you can get under it while havinfg a charge, S fireball YRC is also good, but that won't happen that much. If she does it from fullscreen away, you can do an H fireball right way to negate the initial hit and get some cover to go away from the explosion.

 

- Round start : pretty much you have to block, you can 2D if your opponent goes for 5H, otherwise you'll probably lose if you push a button.

 

- Offense : her 4f 2P is a real problem if the Elphelt player is good at IBing, if your opponent goes for that a lot, try to space your pressure reset 6K and 2S, then delay a 5K a few frames to whiff punish a 2P mash, not easy to do though.

In stance, it's the same stuff as against any non meterless reversal character, when she has meter, her super can be baited by bt.D and also by backdash, a bit more safe and you get a stronger punish but it also gives her the option to YRC the super.

 

- Defense : That's probably the part we need to work on the most as Leo will block a lot against a good Elphelt.

First bridal can be punished with 2P when badly spaced, from a farther distance if IBd, beware of Elphelt mashing throw there so you must be sure it will punish, if you're not, throw is a safer option.

Her overheads aren't too strong, 6A is 22f and can only be done from 2P, 2K, 5P and cS, 5D can be done from pretty much everything but has short range, but getting hit by it in the corner leads to major damage and probably an imblocable setup.

I've tried using blitz on 6A and 5D but then Alioune started doing YRC on those, the risk is pretty high if you're back to the corner, same thing for 6A > bridal, you can blitz between but that's a risk if he has meter, might as well IB bridal and try to punish there, a throw is guaranteed from 6A max range if you IB bridal.

But last time we played Alioune started to do 6A into 236H~H, it's not a true combo as you can theoritically mash out of the stagger, but it's pretty hard to do even if you know you're gonna get hit, honestly I doubt I could do it in a match.

This negates the blitz option unless you're very close as shotgun is a projectile (blitz the shotgun then 5P will punish in that situation), it's plus on block and if she has meter to RC can ead to a 5D combo.

Shotgun pressure is really hard for Leo to deal with if he's back to corner, if the guy just do non charged H~reload x n, it's not so bad, you can IB 5A if very close, from farther away you can do IB then YRC and pretty much hit with anything unless she YRCs the next shot.

But that's only if the Elphelt mindlessly does shotgun H over and over, when her options are mixed up well, it's very very hard to deal with, I pretty much sit there and look for the command throw to try to mash out most times.

[dukmunky]

This matchup really sucks for Leo. And for some reason I keep getting hit with her command throw super whenever I feel like I have a chance to get in close. It's like Elphelt is just built explicitly to counter everything Leo has.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[zankoku]

No, you're just playing a bad character against a good one.

[Maho]

Well I kinda understand the feeling, it's pretty simple, Leo have one of the worst neutral game of the game, and Elphelt one of the best, so it will feel really hard, because well, it is.

Also, she doesn't have a command throw super, judge better half is blockable, so if your opponent always goes for it when you're close and he ahve the meter, just block and punish, all its recovery is counter hit, so you can get some good damage even without meter.

[Maho]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH1WyNKtJxg

 

Another set against Alioune, if you have any ideas to not get beat-up as much, please share.

 

I've tried to use fS into rekkas in neutral, it's not as good as her fS and combos only on crouch/counter but it's faster than 5H.

I've tried to bait Bridals with fS~236P+S OS, it's quite risky but 2H is guaranteed if you auto-guard a ground bridal (she can try to PRC but you'll hit her out of it anyway, at least untll the patch), not as good against an air bridal as she can YRC after the autoguard and be safe, she can also block in time if the bridal hits low enough, the real risk is her going for YRC before it hits which is a much more common tatic for air bridal than it is for the ground one. Also if you hit with 2H before she hits the ground, it will CH which is nice but it's very hard to change the followup on reaction.

Not specific to this matchup but I've start to use rekkas into dash 4-6H YRC for midscreen oki, with proper timing you can make the fireball hit meaty, you'll see me do 6H YRC sometimes, that's what happen when you mistime it a bit, you have to YRC the 6H because your opponent can throw you otherwise.

[felirx]

I'm not a Leo player, nor the best player in general, but these are my general thoughts based on the first 5 minutes.

 

You didn't use a single projectile outside of [4]6H oki.

Many dropped combos and missed hitconfirms. There were many j.k hits that you could have gone to j.H j.236H and gotten oki from. At times you get a 5k5s air hit and you autopilot to missed 5H instead of getting jump cancel to aircombo.

 

As far as actually playing the matchup or mistakes related to the matchup, It's beyond me.

[Maho]

Projectiles are pretty dangerous to use outside of oki against Elphelt IMO, I use S fireball YRC as a poke sometimes, H fireball in neutral can get sniped or genoised on reaction so I don't use it much. Actually even without that, she have time to throw and upward grenade for cover when she sees you do an H fireball and go above the fireball, and you won't get much out of the meter spend.

 

As for the combos and confirms, well that's pretty obvious I need some work with this character (to be fair I wasn't probably at my best as I was sick at the time), I actually remember the autopilot you talked about and was like "damn I suck' just after it.

[Kikuichimonji]

Start of round test results:

 

Elphelt's 2S beats everything except a [*]delayed Leo 2D to whiff punish. You can't even H Eisen Sturm it because you'll trade. You can crouch block (you must hold back!) then stand up and 5H right as it's whiffing to punish with 5H. If you block standing or don't block, the 2S connects. If you jump, you get over the 2S... but she can just hit 2S again after recovery and anti-air your j.K. 

 

Elphelt's f.S beats everything except immediate H Eisen Sturm or jump forward j.K, which leads to a combo: j.K j.H 5K 2H rekkas

 

Elphelt's 5H loses to 5K, 2D, f.S, and a slightly delayed 236H. 2D leads to a small air combo at this range on CH against Elphelt, which would be something like 5P (jc) j.P j.K j.S (1) dj.K j.236H. 236 CH's and leads to (walk forward after CH) bt.S bt.H bt.S rekkas. However, this is a big call out because 236H obviously loses to her other options, as well as a differently timed 5H. If you jump, you'll get tagged on the way up.

 

Don't hit 5K at the start of the round, it trades with both f.S and 2S, but you lose heavily on the trade and she can actually combo from these trades.

 

If you Blitz Shield the rifle shot from anywhere closer than half screen, you can punish with 5H. Otherwise, forget about it.