I mean you wouldn't really know unless you played both characters at their peak strengths.
And against me (Nash) Most fangs play really aggressive since they cant zone me out. I am guessing he plays the same against other characters who can out zone him.
Also that was a just a general SFV thing , not related to FANG. But If you only play pure zoning i dont think its gonna work out ( Unless the matchup dictates as such ). The meta is such that it rewards offensive play. So even if you are a zoner , you need to go in every now and then. So saying Alex is better because he is an offensive character isnt a fair argument. I feel like his offense is not that scary at all.
Btw regarding FANGs offense , does he have legit 50/50s if you let him setup his cloud/fireball with his teleport? or is that a gimmick. That shit annoys me every time i randomly run in to him lol.
Not a 50/50, FANG players ALWAYS know which side it's gonna end up on.
The only situation where it can be difficult for the defender to guess is when he does fireballs and cancels into EX dash on wakeup. It's still doable but difficult because the payoff for that is just 2 fireball hits so most FANG players will exclusively use it for closing out the round.
As for the trap setups, they've recently made it so that if done after most hard knockdowns (cr.hk, back throw) it can now hit meaty. But the way to know if he's going to change directions is the speed of the dash and how late he does it. If it's REALLY slow and he's still a distance away from you, not a cross up. It doesn't actually cross up until the dash is almost complete so that's something to keep in mind.
Also know that his cloud goes away if you hit FANG even the EX one, which also applies to wakeup options. so if you get a jump in on him while the trap is out, it goes away and same for if you DP through a trap.
It's tough to describe in text, a video would be much better for showing off different setups, I'm sure there are a lot available on youtube. I can tell you some more specific things like which buttons or techniques you can challenge or which aren't worth punishing or some character specific stuff if you want.
My personal favourite setup is what I call the "no setup" setup. I get a cr.hk CC, then do a medium trap ( That is confirmed to hit meaty) then I dash forward and throw. Because of the dash forward, the trap won't hit them meaty because I moved them forward but my THROW is meaty so it'll beat any buttons. The only way to counter it is to specifically throw tech but most people just always assume that the trap is going to hit meaty so they never even try. Great tech to get an advantageous position in the corner or to just get some damage in.
EDIT: And man, it sucks how bad they nerfed Nash
It was always such a fun matchup for me, both as FANG and as Birdie. The only thing that annoyed me was even some poorly spaced medium scythes could sometimes not be punishable but that was pretty much it. They really went at him with a hammer to the legs.
