What is the best way to setup El Fuerte's Ultra Spark (Ultra 2)?
What's the best way to apply El Fuerte's Ultra 2 in a match?
Responses (1 total)
While there are certain opponents that the Ultra Spark is easier to use against, there the general properties of the Ultra make it fairly general-use.
The Ultra Spark is a throw-based move, meaning that you basically have to connect (not hit, meaning, they can be blocking when you connect) with your opponent in order to make it work, as shown by the hitbox data below for the first active frame of the Ultra:
The blue box indicates the area that has to connect with the opponent's throwable hitbox in order to connect. As you can see from the "reach" number above, it has a long reach (2.237).
Another interesting property of the move is that El Fuerte has no strike, projectile, or throw vulnerable hitboxes for this frame of animation. Out of the 12 frames of animation that the Ultra is active, these hitboxes don't exist for seven of them.
This translates into invulnerability for El Fuerte in the first seven frames of animation. During the rest of the animation, his vulnerable hitboxes look like this (this is taken from the eigth frame of animation, his first vulnerable frame):
As you can see, the throw hit box is still there and extends beyond his vulnerable hitboxes by a little bit, but El Fuerte now is completely vulnerable from his waist up and above his legs and torso.
And of course, the move is a slide, projecting Fuerte forward:
To recap, the Ultra Spark has the following properties:
- Throw-based, can connect on a blocking character
- Slide, moving El Fuerte forward
- Has a large horizontal throw hitbox
- Invulnerable for the first seven active frames
Taking the above into consideration, when on the ground, El Fuerte should generally be weary of activating this Ultra against characters that have moves with invulnerability that last longer than seven frames. Some characters to watch out for that fall in this category are Sagat and Boxer/Balrog; the Ultra 1 for each of them has more than seven frames of invulnerability on startup.
This means that if you activate your Ultra and then they activate theirs, you will lose out because your invulnerability will disappear before theirs does (although Sagat might go over you depending on where you are).
However, the properties mentioned above makes an El Fuerte with Ultra 2 very dangerous to jump in on. If El Fuerte times the Ultra Spark correctly, he can trap someone who jumps in on him so that they land on him and are caught almost every time.
Finally, projectile characters and characters that rely on moves with lots of non-cancelable active frames or recovery (e.g. Boxer/Balrog's Dash Punch) are easier targets; if they perform those moves against El Fuerte while he is in range of them (he seems to be able to cover a little less than 1/2 of the screen, as seen in the video above) they are punished easily.
