Street Fighter V/Urien/Introduction

Introduction

About Urien

Urien is vice president of the Illuminati, seeking to overthrow his brother Gill to become the true emperor of the Illuminati.

In a sentence: Pick Urien if you believe your defense can stand on its own, and you want the ability to absolutely blow people up for bad decision making and guessing while on the defensive.

In Street Fighter V, Urien functions as a faithful re-interpretation of his highly popular and explosive Third Strike iteration. He has traded his signature unblockables for a playstyle oriented around high-damage and high-stun mixup sequences, as well as a suite of V-Skills that allow him to either accent his turtling ability (VS1) or his stun output (VS2).

Comparing him once again to Third Strike, Street Fighter Five's Urien is also a markedly more functional character across the board, rightfully earning him a spot in the top five or, depending on who you ask, the top three (as of the current season). He has a suite of excellent low pokes with all of his crouching kicks, the vast majority of his normals are special cancelable, and he has some of the most aggressive frame trapping in the game, on top of his ability to create plus frames out of nowhere with meter or charged normals. Urien is also well-equipped to capitalize on these frame traps, with brutal crush counter and counterhit combos that net him good damage and fantastic corner carry.

Urien's primary weakness, on the other hand, is commitment. Because of his slow walk speed, long dashes, and status as a four-frame character with high-startup normals, Urien must attempt to make hard read (as with an anti-air fireball), force a scramble (EX Headbutt while at disadvantage), or create a mixup sequence to get rolling. Outside of these situations, he is relatively low damage, and struggles to open up opponents familiar with the matchup.

His defensive tools are lacking as well; while wakeup super and EX Headbutt are on the table, they are both expensive and slow. His four-frame jab also means he is very susceptible to getting frame trapped himself, and he can struggle to reclaim his turn where others could.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Strong neutral: far reaching buttons that can be buffered into high corner carry specials with strong oki
Strong, varied oki: can choose to end in a variety of enders depending on whether the opponent is crouching or standing, as well as being able to forego oki entirely for standing resets
Good use of meter: Urien can use meter to win fireball wars, extend combos, or use fast, safe on block special moves to advance towards the opponent in ways that are very difficult for them to react to
Strong v-skills: Uriens v-skills both perform very different functions, with v-skill 1 providing a single hit of armor to any special moves performed with charge motions, and v-skill 2 providing extra hits and better advantage on hit and block to the next fireball thrown
Aegis: aegis reflector is an immensely strong v-trigger, opening up unscaled, high damage whiff punishes, easy confirms into corner carry and okizeme, strong mixups, corner control, anti-airs, combos from throws, and as the name may imply, reflecting projectiles
Powerful situational anti-airs: crouching heavy punch is a launcher that also functions as an anti air, and standing heavy kick provides a lower damage but more consistent anti-crossup anti-air, as well as pre-emptive headbutts, provide Urien a variety of ways to prevent opponents from jumping recklessly

Poor fireball: slower startup than average and higher recovery than average can lead to Urien losing in fireball wars to characters with better fireballs than him, such as Guile or Sagat
Vulnerable to divekicks: opponents who are capable of altering their jump arcs can give Urien trouble, such as Cammy or Akuma due to the fact none of his anti airs have any true invincibility
Slow buttons: Uriens fastest normal is 4 frames, and many of his normals are either average or below average in terms of startup
Weak defense: Uriens only reversal is his critical art, and he lacks a 3 frame normal, meaning that Urien is very reliant on universal system mechanics such as v-shift or v-reversal, as well as knowledge of when an opponent maybe be forced to end their pressure

Final Patch

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