After another long set vs Batgirl, in which I went 11-70, I've changed my mind. I'm with Killzone, that shit is 10-0.
Not really, but this matchup (and that character in general) is starting to piss me off more and more.
You basically can't fight her at range, at all. The risk/reward on any sort of gunshot is garbage - at most you get 17% damage, if she does something really bad and gets tagged by MB Quick Shot. But this is rare, and generally, it's a trade between 1-2% chip if you guess right, and you eating a Smoke Bomb or Bola if you guess wrong. Even if you trade LGS with Bola (even MB LGS!), she gets a free combo because the bola stun is so long. At range, your only real option seems to be to close in on her safely - not too hard, but don't think even think about trying to zone her. It won't work.
Which would be fine, if she weren't such a pain in the ass up close. Her frame traps seem to be generally really good, and seem to counter pretty much all of DS escape options. If she's really in your face, most of her mixups will tag backdash attempts, so you pretty much have to guess your way out of them, and there doesn't seem to be enough time in most of her frame traps to armor bounce your way out. If you want to jab your way out, her overhead hops over D1, and her low ducks her under 1/F2. Footsie range doesn't seem to work either, because her B1 low has deceptive range, even outranging Stroke's 3. And if you want to play footsies with her, you always have to respect Smoke Bomb, which seems really good at whiff punishing pokes.
If you get some momentum going, it's hard to keep it up thanks to DS lack of standing reset options and Babs' really good wakeup options. You can't really pressure her on wakeup - Flying Bat will beat any non-armored move, and either beat or get her out of the way of most jumpins. If she Flying Bats her way out of a crossup, you can sometimes whiff punish it, but it seems to be quite hard and possibly spacing dependant. Flying Bat will also go THROUGH both B3 and F3, making them whiff completely. You can sometimes catch Flying Bat with armor B3 if you charge it, but again, this seems to be range dependent and kind of finnicky. She also had Bat Wheel, which seems to be invincible on wakeup, and will break armor. Wakeup Smoke Bomb seems to beat most jumpin attempts, and will get her out of vortexes, and even if you cross her up and her inputs get reversed, she'll either get Flying Bat or Bat Wheel, both of them good, invincible wakeups.
I honestly just don't know how to fight her, at any range.
ALSO
She makes me mad because she seems to something of a jack of all trades like DS, but with so many more options. Her zoning is okay-ish, because the threat of Smoke Bomb makes counter zoning and jumping really hard, forcing people to approach her slowly along the ground. Her mixup game is leaps and bounds better than Stroke's, safe 50/50s, meterless reset vortex, good options to start pressure off counterpokes. And then, on top of that, she gets combo extenders on ALL her MB moves (DS gets one, and its corner only), and three really good invincible wakeups. I hate this character so, so much. I'm tempted to play her myself, she just seems like a better version of Slade in a lot of ways :/
