3. EX elbow is extremely important for dealing with that dead zone of Reptile's, and is overall his best footsies option. The threat of being in elbow's range now switches, because if you don't react on the blocked EX elbow, it's +5 and you're in (I know Reptile's better normals are too slow to take advantage of this, but +5 is still good). If you get hit, you lost 17%, are knocked down, and Reptile is pretty much still in. Essentially, from maximum EX elbow distance, you are capable of getting in for pressure in a time span of 13 frames using something that has a fairly generous hitbox that goes active on the 6th frame. That's too important. Yes, you can be punished for using this, but you have to be scouting it basically to deal with it. Combine it with invisibility, and yeah...it just gets pretty funny.