Tips for beating Fiona in AH3LM (as Angelia)

Tips for beating Fiona in AH3LM (as Angelia):

1. First of all, you have to know about Excalibur so you don't get cheesed-out by it. It's an air-unblockable, overhead super with a huge hitbox. If possible, dodge it by holding 4D during the super flash. If you're in the air, this is the ONLY way to not get hit; if you're already homing, you're getting hit.

Punishing Excalibur: the air version is fully-punishable on the ground. The ground version, however, leaves Fiona in an OTG state once she hits the ground (like Angelia's dropkicks), meaning you can't do a combo on her. The best option is to go for a setup: because her recovery has a fixed timing, you can easily set up a 50/50, sandoori, 4-way, etc. mixup that she has to block once her recovery is over.

By the way, all her 623x specials and Excalibur have one hit of armour. They can't really be used as reversals.

2. Dealing with her air normals pressure: this is tricky. If you can clash with them (e.g. Angelia 5B), it's really strong b/c of Fiona's slow, limited options out of clash. Depending on the situation, you may be able to hit her out of them with jA or ground normals. Reversals work well, e.g. Angelia's 623A+B (vertical halo beam) works as an upper-body-invul reversal. If they're not prepared for / not OSing 4D, you could use that to dodge the jump-in. After blocking a jump-in, Angelia can do 4GC (4D) j[4]6A, which should beat her trying to jump again or use 2A -- but will lose to 5B, 2B, and probably dash 5A. EFC (A+B+C) on block is an option as well, but if you time it wrong it'll just be safe-jumped.

3. Dealing with her air normals at neutral: try to make her whiff them, then home-in to rush her down. From long distance, because you can home-in on different trajectories or vary the speed between normal (5D), fast (5D delay D), and slow (5D hold back, optionally speed-up later with D), it's not easy for her to hit you air-to-air reliably. At closer ranges, if you can either make her block or whiff a normal by using just your jumps and air dash, that's ideal.

Once she whiffs an air normal or is otherwise committed to landing, force her to block after she lands, then begin your pressure / mixups / guard-cancel baits. By default, she has no reversal options and if she does 4D to dodge your jump-in you can OS it by mashing 5B/2B after your jump-in. She may block the jump-in, guard-cancel forward and attempt to throw you, or perhaps guard-cancel back and use j214x (but this will probably lose to 5B/2B after your jump-in). She may EFC cancel after blocking a few hits. That's the extent of her options w/o specific Arcanas. Fire and Ice can give her a reversal super (236236E); Lightning gives her 5[E]/2[E] as options to force a clash (and 623E as an invul response to clashes); Earth gives her 5[E]/2[E] with upper-/lower-body superarmour; Wind allows her to pushblock.

Basically, once you bait EFC a few times so she's afraid to use it (or if her burst / force gauge is in cooldown), you can be relatively liberal with your pressure / mixups while she's blocking.

4. Dealing with her "vortex" after air knockdown: best option is to vary your tech direction (neutral/back) and timing (tech/don't). IIRC, she can't cover all the tech options, e.g. if she's expecting late/no tech I don't think she can do anything about neutral tech -> mash / jump-back. You may also be able to get away with back-tech into immediate special-cancel like Angelia [4]6x or [2]8x, because the timing to meaty someone after back-tech is later than the first frame you can special-cancel it.

If you want to try it yourself (to learn the weaknesses of the "vortex"), end an air combo with j214C, then hold 8D to cancel it upon landing, hold 8/9/6 to maneuver over and at some point press 6D~C to speed across and cross-up (or not) with jC.