So Ultra Street Fighter 4 just came out (well two to three weeks ago anyway) and I jumped around a lot of characters. I wanted to play ONLY Hugo but I had no idea how bad some of the match ups would be because of literally his size. I'm also not very aggressive so the style of play needed to consistently win with Hugo isn't something I'm extremely comfortable with. So I put him to the side and picked up Poison and she is 100% a character I am comfortable with.
I saw many players not really satisfied with her tool set but I think it's pretty good. It's obviously nothing that is super top tier because of some of the other characters mobility. She has some glaring issues but I like her redeeming qualities much better as they suit my particular play style. I'll use this first blog to talk about my progression and how I feel about the pros and cons of the character thus far.
The main thing I like about Poison is her ability to control space. Her fireballs aren't instant (like Juri or Guile) but depending on the distance to your opponent you can place them in different spots to keep your opponent guessing so you don't get jumped in on so easily. Her fireball game is easily one of her best qualities especially considering how much meter you gain from doing it.
Her anti air game can be tricky depending on the match up but I think they did this to her because of her tool set. If she had a really simple anti air that stuffed almost everything she would be a pain to compete against. Her main anti air tool would be c.FP as it has a pretty wide arc and comes out fairly quick. The problem is it trades quite a bit and then certain characters can delay their jump attack using a dive kick which makes it even harder. However on the upside if it's a clean AA you can cancel into a fireball for added pressure. Being able to anti air consistently is pretty tough though so I would say this is one of her downfalls but it isn't THAT bad.
Her footsies game is pretty standard as you are in the medium range playing footsies if you aren't already full screen chucking plasma. The main buttons are most likely c.MK, s.FP (far), and s.MK as these all have good range with only 1 of them not being cancel-able (s.FP). Obviously there are other buttons you can play with but these are the ones that I stick with 90% of the time.
For me personally outside of her Kissed by a Goddess (Dragon Punch) all of her specials are pretty good to me. Her fireball is probably her best special and then her LMT (Love me Tender) which is similar to Adon's Jaguar Tooth. The thing about LMT is it's only -1 on block and you can combo from all versions of it or do the hard knockdown follow up (just hit K after hitting it).
LMT is a very strong move because it does multiple things for you:
- Chip Damage
-Armor Break
-Provide Safe Pressure
You can't end all of your block strings with fireball because they can start focusing it to get in on your block string. And from that distance you can bet they will hit their mid range button in retaliation and LMT will catch it. Overall LMT is a very good tool that I overlooked when starting out which I have now fully implemented into my game play.
Her DP isn't that good because it trades a lot of the time, has no hit box behind her, no forward progression, and in general just isn't very consistent. So basically she has no "get off me" attack that is super reliable so if you get knocked down you have to just man up and block/tech throws. Unless they do something VERY obvious it's just hard to use this movie effectively without getting yourself blown up.
Next blog will be about block strings, her overhead, and likely my adventure to climb solo queue ladders on DoTA/LoL.
