So Canary does a few things very well. Once she gets in on an opponent she can drain their health bar pretty quickly, using 2 or more bars plus trait. Her set ups are really good and being capable of leaving an opponent standing and her at +18 (1,1 after trait) is really strong. It opens the discussion of "typical NRS 50/50s", but what 50/50s does she actually have? 2,1 (mid, low, mid), 2,3 (mid overhead) and she can cancel with trait to stay safe, or +5 with lvl 2. She also has left/right 50/50s with Canary Drop. Ok fine. At face value that can definitely appear to be braindead NRS 50/50s all day. But besides using her precious trait, which has many different uses other than safety, they're punishable on block and once people have more experience against her there's only a couple that are actually (mildly) difficult to block.
Her 2,1 and 2,3 mix up doesn't really work against top players. 2,3 has a gap and once that player sees you're not doing 2,1 they will poke you out 9 out of 10 times. That also stops the 2 delayed overhead/low shenanigan. Even on hit standing 2 is + 8 and causes a slight push back. And if you use those frames to stagger into the overhead, for example, that comes out in 19 frames. This may work more often than doing raw 2,1/2,3 just because you're disrupting the rhythm of the strings but more often than not, if you don't do the low option after staggering just a couple frames, they're either going to poke you out of it or simply walk backwards out of your reach.
So as I said, and despite what I just said, her set ups are really good and really hard to deal with 100% of the time. So her flaws: she has to actually get in to even start her game. Her walkspeed is underwhelming, her dashes are underwhelming and her cartwheel seems like something easily dealt with once, a good player, gets used to the start up animation and either pokes you out of it or punishes its recovery. Even using her Scissor Kick is punishable at -18, Crazy Legs is only -9 but is 27 frames start up. So basically, her tools to get in on an opponent, outside of MB roll (which I use a lot), are very lacking. "But what about trait bro? Trait is f*ckin godlike bro" Yes, trait is great. It's especially great against zoners and catching your opponent moving or jumping. EXCEPT when it's traded with, she loses all advantage if it trades fullscreen or if it's traded with something that has a lot of hitstun, and if you're against a character like BB or SM who can alter their jump arc, the whole trait can whiff. And once she's down trait at full screen, there's not much she can do besides wait for trait to recharge and walk and duck in. Or the Hail Mary MB roll.
So once she's in footsie range. She's gotten in out of zoning range and is sitting mid to close range. What's her footsie tools? Well she has an 11 frame mid, that's good. Doesn't have the best range but it's great for punishing very negative things in close. A 6 frame high that leads to a hit confirmable string. Negative on block unless you use 1,1,3, cancel into trait, or (something that makes her lose range) backflip. Her standing 3 is really nice. Another 11 frame mid that has a lot more reach than standing 2, but isn't really hit confirmable. You pretty much have to commit to something. 3,3 is safe and causes HKD but can't be confirmed into anything else besides a Canary Drop set up. Otherwise you're back to the trait/backflip options. B1, her low, that's 16 frames on start up, links to Knee, Trait, and even Canary Drop. B1,2 string is only -10, right on that line of punishable and safe depending on the situation (character tools, player reflex), really good range, but on the slow side at 16 frames of start up. If used as a whiff punisher, unless it's against one of those damn floating characters (SM's F23), it's great.
Her walkspeed and dash also makes it, not impossible, but definitely difficult to consistently whiff punish and benefit from good spacing. Especially something like SM's F23 (yeap, I hate it). So many times I've caused a SM player to whiff F2 but I'm still close enough that I have to block the 3. There's an extremely small window in the spacing where a really good SM player will whip the F23 string and you can simply keep walking back and whiff punish easily. If you put too much space she can't dash up to whiff punish because the recovery takes too long and walking is iffy to get close enough, fast enough, for a 1,1,2 punish, or the good SM player won't use that string if they know it won't hit. Again, 3 may work great for this, I haven't had the opportunity to really test that.
So, all in all, she's a really solid character! Set ups for days, really good damage, good full screen punisher with her trait. She just lacks in a few key areas, in certain MUs, to start playing her game. Now this could be so she can be balanced. It makes sense for a character that has strong oki and damage to have a difficult time with zoners and strong footsie characters. I'm all for that, but can we please talk about Batman who has really good zoning and insane pressure? Lol I don't play BM so I don't know, but it appears he has tools for any screen position.
But those are my thoughts. I may have missed a couple things or maybe I'm looking at something wrong? Give me your thoughts. Love Canary, but I'll be surprised if I'll end up staying with her once the full game releases. As of right now she feels like she'll be somewhere in upper mid tier range. Totally blind speculation, (IN A BETA!!), but that's just my opinion right now.
