This doc is a combo theory doc. To define what is meant by "combo theory" in this context, it is the idea that you should think of your combos as not set combos that you just dial out when you hit someone but as flexible mini-building blocks that you string together into a full combo. These building blocks can vary depending on factors in the game, for example how scaled your combo is, your starter, your opponent's height relative to you and what okizeme setup you want. Often when one begins to learn a character they will learn a few set bnbs but as you advance towards intermediate and advanced gameplay you have a requirement to become more flexible in how you approach converting your hits as you may often find you get hits you do not know how to deal with, or the setups you get afterwards are insufficient to open up more experienced players.
What this is not is
This doc mainly aims to illustrate the things that may be possible and where they might be applied. While this document is not an oki document in itself, it will detail how to set up various kinds of oki as this is ultimately the end goal of putting someone into a combo. Some full combos will be included to have a starting point from which to branch out from, and there will be many full combo videos linked throughout to demonstrate concepts that are contained in this doc, but these may very well be nowhere near optimal and serve to demonstrate the concepts being talked about rather than being the best thing you can do in that specific moment. Many strong Elphelt players deviate from each other in what setups and combos they use, and I would encourage anyone who is reading this to actually learn something, to take the character to the lab and try different things out themselves to work out what is comfortable and easy for them, as that is how I arrived at these conclusions myself. The concepts in this doc will vary from easier->more difficult based on what I think is easier or harder, so please do read the earlier sections before the later ones.
A large headnote before this doc is that while most characters in the game prefer comboing heavy characters, and the game is balanced in a sense that lightweight characters take more damage but are harder to combo, my experience with Elphelt tells me that she is in fact one of the rare opposites who generally prefer to combo lightweight characters as long as they have forgiving hurtboxes. Combo extensions will often be possible on lightweights in many situations they are not present on other weight characters due to Elphelt having more time to pick them up with combo extenders and this will become clear as we go later on into the doc. An example of this is that my personal favorite character to combo instead of being Sol is actually I-No. Luckily Elphelt still does plenty of damage on heavyweights and staple, basic confirms will still even work on Potemkin (and certain things are definitely easier on him than some medium weight characters) but situational combo extenders may be absent on heavier characters.
With that covered, let us begin.
Being able to delay your normals in aircombos is possibly the second most crucial skill an Elphelt player can learn (with learning to crouch confirm being the most crucial). I have a video on the basics, which you can find below.
Delaying normals on Elphelt - Quick 101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wor_T24t_Xk
While this isn't covered in the video, you can delay normals by different amounts depending on what normal you used before it, the general rule of thumb is as follows -
jK, jP - These normal allow you to delay your next normal by only a very small amount
jS - This normal allows you to add a "medium" amount of delay
jH - This normal allows you to add a very extreme amount of delay, very often to the point where you can actually land and either combo off it or it will knock your opponent down
jD - This normal does not really offer the possibility for delay cancels, but you have so much frame advantage on hit that you can cancel it into grenade pull and still continue combos, or combo off it upon landing