About 40% of my matches nowadays are either Fulgore or Maya counterpicks. Here’s an instant classic.
Around 75 seconds on the clock, the goddess of input errors forsake me.
On top of all of this, why does Fulgore have a 3-hit DP? Because ■■■■ you Aganos, that’s why.
And Aganos charges as well as punches RIGHT THROUGH Fulgore’s Hype/Devastation Beam too 
How did that Fulgore player get a jump kick AND successful block upon landing as you did a shadow ruin?
When armor is used, the attack that Aganos is using gets slowed down significantly. The opponent essentially still gets counter hit damage and counter hit stun. That’s why you shouldn’t punish Hisako’s normals with Shadow Ruin, because the armor gives her enough time to cancel into a counter.
He hit me low enough in his jump so that the counter hit frames gave him enough time to land and block.
But hit-stun (counter or otherwise) should not apply when Aganos has chunks (because that’s the whole point of armor). Also, hit-stun is supposed to slow down whomever the hit hits (sans armor), not speed up the offender (and in this case, Fulgore shouldn’t be able to block upon landing so quickly, especially when the attack came so late in the jump). While I can understand Aganos being slower due to his chunks, I didn’t think his slower speed would be applied to his shadow moves too - I, for 1, could certainly never see a difference.
It doesn’t speed up the other opponent, it just slows down Aganos’ attack. For the most part, yeah it’s very annoying. It’s much worse for projectiles, which is why Maya is such a bad matchup. Sometimes though, it helps because the added frames allow Aganos to react to get a hit confirm. And 9/10 times, it’s not going to matter for Shadow Ruin.
I’m sure there are good reasons why it’s like that, but I don’t know enough about it.
@GalacticGeek there are two different effects at play here: hitstun and hitstop.
Hitstun is when a character is hit by an attack and reels back. As you correctly pointed out, armour negates hitstun entirely.
Hitstop is the freeze applied to both characters when a move hits. It doesn’t have an animation, it just freezes the animation of the two characters for a certain number or frames. A good way to see hitstop in action is to do a normal outside of a combo and then do the same normal as a manual: the manual version should have more of a pause when the normal hits as a manual.
Armoured moves apply greater than average hitstop to both characters, with the armoured player (AFAIK) receiving more hitstop than the attacker.
I probably shouldn’t have used the word “hitstun” in the first place, since it doesn’t put Aganos into a combo-able state. The uneven hitstop basically just adds startup frames to the armored attack, which can prevent links that are normally guaranteed.
For example, Aganos’ standing HP into Heavy Natural Disaster is an easy hit confirm. However, if he gets hit by a projectile (Hail is a good example) between the HP and the ND, it probably won’t confirm and get blocked instead.
If Fulgore could hit me with a jump attack and still block, the difference in hitstop must be at least -5?
Thanks for the explanation of hitstop. I’ve obviously never understood it before. I’ve heard of it, but just assumed it was a variation on the word hitstun. Otherwise, the only 2 I’ve ever known about was hitstun and blockstun. I didn’t think there was a term for when both players stop moving, which I didn’t even know was a thing. I also went back to watch the clip after your explanation and I can see it after Leo does the shadow counters into manual (it’s hard to see, but it’s definitely there as he hits with the manual). I also looked back on the shadow ruin that got blocked, and it’s still a bit confusing for me. It looks like there’s hitstop when Fulgore kicks the armor because they both freeze for a split-second, but the next thing I know Fulgore’s on the ground and blocking. I don’t see him actually fall the rest of the way to the ground after the kick; he’s just there. Am I just not seeing the frames or was there a minor bit of lag there?
@LeoFerreis Can I go to your School of Shadow Counters??!? 
That was a great display of shadow countering jump in pressure!!
Also, a bit off topic, but do you have any tips vs Maya?
As a Fulgore main,Fulgore has a huge advantage over Aganos. Especially when he has meter. When he does,Aganos can’t touch him out of fear for the beam. Chunk up full screen? Nope. Hype beam will destroy your chunks. Shadow Ruin a fireball? Nope. Pip cancel into a teleport. Agano can’t do anything.
Of all the characters I face as Aganos, Fulgore is by far 1 of the worst (right up there with Sadira). Fulgore has so many options against Aganos it’s just ridiculously stupid. And despite knowing how to read Fulgore’s ADs, I STILL have trouble breaking them, unlike other characters because, as I’ve said in the past, I swear his combo-speed changes throughout the fight. I keep wanting to say it’s because he has meter, but that’s only supposed to affect his walk and dash speeds, not his actual attack speeds (otherwise, it’d fit TJ’s instinct nearly to a T). Just this evening I lost 8 straight fights against some Fulgore player called Frog-something-or-other… I think I actually got worse as the set progressed from 1 fight to the next. :’(
Multi-hitting, forward-advancing, invincible on startup DP that can be cancelled into from teleport? With said teleport able to cancel into a throw for an extremely easy 50/50 chunk-removing/chunk-bypassing mixup? Or how about his projectile into teleport full-combo punish crossover? Or his up-laser that can hit a standing Aganos from half-screen distance? Or cancelling a blocked DP into air shadow laser?
Yeah, I hate fighting that cyborg…
Just don’t let him gain pressure fron the start. Without meter,just stay close ahd bully his wakeup.
But he gets meter automatically - at best, I can slow him down…
Yeah, I mentioned here that Fulgore was Aganos’ most difficult matchup imo. I do think he is beatable. Shadow counter jumps in like the video. SC every double elbow spin (just like jago’s double roundhouse). Tons of Fulgore’s do the double elbow spin and then the low laser. If you miss SC’n the double elbow spin, you can SC right before the laser as well.
And … I was in the lab… don’t know if someone else already knows this … but it appears that if Fulgore has meter and you’re afraid he’ll cancel his blocked teleport into the shadow laser, you can mash s. MP and Aganos’ incredible standing overhead will knock him out of his shadow laser quite consistently. 
Folks feel free to test this. I hope it indeed is an option for us. If not, oh well…
Every character has their more challenging matchus, but Aganos still has options on defeating the cyborg!
@LeoFerreis You won, why are you complaining? It might be a tough match to deal with Fulgore but he certainly doesn’t do a lot of damage. If he had Jago’s damage and romped around on you sure, but he does a good 15-20% less damage than most of the rest of the characters in the game without proper setups or a beam cash out. I don’t know why you’re worried. It’s not like hes gonna chunk you for 50%+ even with burning a shadow stock. 2 Stocks give 45%-50% When will you have that happen? End of match and that’s just a maybe. He has a 3 hit DP so you can’t just spam moves mindlessly in pressure/wakeup situations in every matchup. Jago will almost always have enough meter to do a Shadow DP wake up for 5 hits. His will do 15-25% to you if it lands. Fulgore’s will do what… 8-13%?
@iDoMusic4Media If you shadow counter Fulgore’s light laser he can cancel into DP stuffing your shadow counter. You want to SC his normals not his specials.
@GalacticGeek I have played Fulgore for a very long time, his auto doubles are all the same speed as anyone else. The only one that changes is the 3rd hit. Light Punch and Kick are the same speed, Medium Punch is faster than Medium Kick, and Heavy Kick is faster than Heavy Punch. His base auto’s are all the same and do not change in any way shape or form throughout the fight under any circumstances of meter or no meter.
Box him in, you need to use walls vs. Fulgore. That’s literally how you’re doing to have to make this work. Same with Shadow Jago, and Maya. That’s how you slow them down and take away options.
I’m not really even complaining here, outside of a snarky comment about Fulgore’s DP, which for the sake of argument, I’ll complain about now.
When designing an attack to have multiple hits, you’re pretty much designing it as a balance to that character’s matchup against Aganos. Multiple hitting attacks affect Glacius, TJ, and Riptor, but to a much smaller extent. Shago has a 5-hit divekick for a bit of meter and a 5-hit DP (that’s otherwise mediocre) for no meter. He also has excellent zoning, particularly against Aganos, along with good mixups. That’s fine, because his mixups are pretty unsafe and his overall movement is high-commitment.
That’s not the case for Fulgore. Fulgore’s heavy DP has had 3 hits since Season 1, well before Aganos was even thought of. If he didn’t have a 3-hit DP, he would still have lots of options against him. He would still have projectile + teleport mixups (during which he is invisible), safe pressure that is less Shadow Counterable than anything else in the game, amazing dashes, great zoning, a good overhead, a chargeable forward-moving attack that only gets more plus as you charge it, and special-priority medium and heavy laser beams that can even outplay Aganos in the footsies game. The multi-hitting aspect of his DP is a remnant of Season 1, when Double Helix probably wanted to make Fulgore more Ken-like to Jago’s Ryu, and when the number of hits on an attack didn’t matter.
Spam… on a wakeup? How do you even do that?
Anyway… yes, every character in the game has 5-hit Shadow Moves, many of which are invulnerable. If they didn’t, Aganos would be unbeatable. Fulgore’s DP doesn’t cost any meter… and it has the range to beat Aganos’ sweep, which might be the longest range normal in the game.
The amount of damage you do to Aganos when removing chunks is meaningless. The goal while fighting him is to strip his chunks (which is easy with a 3-hit DP), then abuse his poor defense with safe pressure. Pressuring or comboing your opponent is undoubtedly favorable to playing defense or getting comboed, even if you’re getting less than average damage. Just as Fulgore needs meter to get competitive damage, Aganos needs meter to have any sort of defensive options. Because of Fulgore’s 3-hit DP, he gets straight to Aganos’ poor defense pretty easily and stays there with his Jago-like pressure.
You don’t even have to worry about that. Cancelling into Shadow lasers isn’t safe to an Aganos with less than 3 chunks, unless he does it immediately. Just press HP when he lands.
A lot of players jump in then press a button when they land. If they press crouching chained lights, there’s a good chance that they’re mostly doing it on autopilot because of old SFIV tendencies, and will do it again next time. I’ve found that it’s more useful against top players, maybe those with SFIV experience. However, even if you have that read, you’re still making a risky guess.
Yeah, that’s one of the rare cases where I actually put a wall behind me. Against most characters, you can box them in without walls by pushing them to the actual stage corner, then playing a solid ground game. Against Fulgore, you need the stage corner, along with a wall behind you. That’s more easily said than done when Fulgore is constantly throwing fireballs or baiting a chunk grab before he teleports behind and DPs.
Yeah, that MU is pretty balls for Aganos. It would be a lot closer minus the 3 hit DP, but Fulgore’s still got a ton of tools to use against him even apart from that.