I’ve been very happy with X / Dante / Strider, but I can’t settle on the point character for this team just yet. The great thing about it is that Dante benefits everyone with either Jam Session or Weasel Shot, and Strider’s Vajra has my anti air/anti zoning assist covered. And while I think he’s great in other spots too, I really like Strider at anchor.
So the funny thing is that I have like a perfect team for anyone on point, but I just can’t settle on someone yet. Doom, Viper, Chris, Deadpool, Hawkeye all seem like good candidates here.
The funny thing with X/Dante/Strider is it avoids the situation of slot 3 Strider team where the middle character just doesn’t work without a helper assist. Dante is one of those characters that does work by himself but gains from an assist. Nini Heart has proven that Strider is a reset machine for him, and he also OTGs for combos when strider is used as anti air.
Never tried it but Jam session I will bet works well for Strider mixups. blockstring, jam session, teleport. Just don’t know if you can catch them on hit or if the teleport recovery is too long. Maybe double jump towards them while still in mid air.
Doom is happy with Jam session and Strider, Dante works well with beam assist.
Viper/Dante/Strider I’m pretty sure is one of those teams Chrisis rants is totally broken for Viper.
Don’t really know about the others except they don’t seem to use Strider as well as Dante/Doom/Viper. Maybe Hawkeye. He has OTG combos. The thing Chris,Deadpool, Hawkeye get out of Strider is a little nonobvious but I suspect they can really abuse the knockback from Vajra. In the air Strider’s kick prevents forward momentum and even pushes back making it harder for opponents to jump forward and get in. Not as dramatic as Jam Session but still very useful for keepaway.
The glaring hole on this team is a beam if Strider/Dante is put on point, unless the first character is Doom/Chris/Hawkeye.
It is so obvious I need a double post for emphasis.
Pick Zero.
Zero loves Dante Jam session for mixups, lockdown, and damaging combo extensions. Strider is useful but a little unnecessary. I’m sure broken stuff can be found with a little searching though.
What’s interesting about them to me is that they really do well controlling the lower half of the screen with projectiles, but have fewer options against super jumps. Strider’s an easy answer there, and all 3 characters can easily combo off a knockdown if it connects.
Chris is pretty weak against approaches from the air, but when he’s combined with Jam Session and Vajra, he has literally the two best assists in the game for dealing with it. The only thing I really worry about with him is if they snap him to the back of the team because he’s a pretty poor anchor. Both Hawkeye and Deadpool are stronger there.
Zero’s not a bad idea for sure. His conversions off Strider knockdowns are a bit harder to come by, but it’s not like you’re missing a lot without them. He’s still the best character with two of the best assists.
I don’t think dante\strider as a duo is good enough to hang. It still allows dante to basically die for free with very little help. Yea dante does have AA pokes but those normals are 8\9 frames normals, they are not very fast pokes @ all. Dante loves something that checks the screen for him like a doom beam\mag beam and he would also like something to create pins so he can go for mixups and strider assist doesn’t exactly do that. varja assist isn’t versatile, its only good in a few spots so thats why its VERY hard for characters to use it as a stand alone assist. You basically need a character that can fight everyone from everywhere with no help.
but yea the combos, the OTG combos and the resets for dante with varja are god like but the team composition isn’t exactly ideal. Its fucked in certain orders
I think there is only 1 character that can use varja assist as a stand alone assist for everything and its zero. Fast normals, god like priority, solo AA, safe normals with busters, solo projectile game, solo mixup game, high damage, scoops off strider OTG. To a lesser extent, doom might be able to also do it but doom’s AA game isn’t as strong as zero’s, very slow normals and the priority comparison is skewed towards zero. It doesn’t mean that doom has shit priority, its just that zero’s is too strong.
with zero on point and strider hits, you can just activate, glitch level 3 buster charge and stored up, dive kick, buster, lightning loop or w\e. Typically if the fight is down to zero\strider, I’m pretty sure you have a bar stored up.
I dont think Zero is the only character that can use varjia assist for everything. I think Viper can. It is really the best assist for her. You can get relaunches, combo enders, and it covers her blindspot. She can pick it up from a hard knockdown and rack close to 700k even more. it really gives her an advantage. Especially when people do thier teleport and then beam kinda stuff. With Viper you can punish the assist and then strider assist can hit them.
weird that im testing this zero otg buster off of vajra but cant combo off the buster considering the pushback from buster so am i doing sumthing wrong … idk im pretty good at execution so someone else try! lol
Midscreen you can do Sentsuizan xx Buster, L Heikyaku, H, 6HS into whatever. There’s some alternatives in the Zero forum but I don’t remember them off the top of my head.
In the corner you can do Sentsuizan xx Buster xx Raikousen and just go to town
viper’s AA pokes aren’t half as good as zero’s. All she has that matches up is ex seismo which costs bar that strider will end up using later. Zero has several normals that win almost every time when timed properly even against some of the best moves in the game like doom’s jump.S. No normal viper has is even remotely close to being that good
viper doesn’t set up her own mixup game like zero can. Either by cloning or doing a poke string, teleport, release level 3 buster. Those are very solid block strings into fast mixups. Not to mention that zero can create a solo unblockable that has a use, viper can’t.
combos are combos, I think all the heavy hitters in this game can use it to create some extra combo damage. That isn’t the end all be all scenario.
it seems that viper players aren’t thinking about the ENTIRE team. More like how well can viper use strider assist. There will be a point where viper will die and its just strider\xxx to bank on. Viper assist does nothing for strider as strider likes pin time and horizontal control. Neither of which viper is good at as an assist. Strider needs help too when he’s on a team, he doesn’t like using limited tools and putting viper on the team, a character with no good assists, obviously makes him weaker. You will need to make a compromise sooner or later with viper\strider and that compromise will be, horizontal or pin time. if you go with viper\strider\doom, you lose out on striders pin game same with viper but strider really suffers. If you go with viper\strider\dog, you lose the horizontal game that viper\strider love and strider suffers against zone quite hard Not to mention how fuck up those viper\strider teams are if you lose your most practical assist. You’re basically throwing strider on there to only help viper instead of creating a balanced team. While it does help viper immensely, you’re creating a team designed for 1 character and the only time it has worked @ the highest level consistently is dark phoenix in vanilla.
I have been running into some of those problems you mentioned. But I wasnt thinking of how the other character helps strider I thought you were just mentioning characters that can survive by themselves with x/strider and not taking into account if it becomes strider/x. But just curious what does zero do for strider if it becomes zero/strider.
Also i like your posts and read them alot so I gotta ask what about this team viper(burn kick)/strider(vjara)/sentinel(drones) or akuma(tatsu). Both tatsu and drones seem like a good compromise between a beam assist and a lockdown assist. So wouldn’t those two teams be pretty solid as you get horizontal control and decent lockdown. And I do agree that the best teams have a duo incase the point character dies such as Wesker/Magneto/Sentinel. If wesker dies your left to fight magneto + sentienel which is a really strong duo.
@ the very least, double hadenki is fairly usable. 2 hits, allows strider to get teleport mixups, anti push block strings so strider can use re-dash pressure, SOME durability when coupled with strider’s other tools like bombs\satellite. Strider by himself already has really good AA, probably one of the best in the game so he doesn’t need the shroyuken assist. The other assist zero has doesn’t have enough block stun time so hadenki is the best one for strider IMO.
Its not 100% ideal but @ least it helps strider do SOME strider things where as viper pretty much does nothing for him.
viper\strider\drones, hmm… It doesn’t sound that bad, there is a nice compromise there. I think the main reason strider likes doom beam is because not only is it horizontal control but it has some massive durability on it taking shit out the way and that is the 1 down side to drones. Awesome compromise but no durability.
There are other factors too like sentinel’s worth as a xf3 character in the back slot and the fact that it can be very easy to hit sentinel in the head thus stopping his assist from continuing.
I’ve said many times on here that I think xxx\strider\akuma SHOULD be fairly strong, I had dante on it myself and its been my most successful team. However, I couldn’t recreate the pressure as good as the strider\doom\dog version. doom\dog as a duo does fairly well in tournaments by more than 1 player so @ that point I think its been proven. I haven’t seen a strider\akuma build to prove itself yet. That doesn’t mean that its not strong, it just means that its unproven.
balanced teams do the best against the widest variety of people. Teams that cater to 1 character, not including DP, usually end up getting random-ed out. You can’t predict every team you will come across in tournament play and you could come across a build that just totally shuts down your 1 character based team and when that character is gone, you’re simply hanging onto 2 characters rather than having a duo back there. Also in tournament play, shit goes wrong from time to time. Balanced teams work in any order so no matter what if you start to lose, there is will always be something functioning back there to help you out.
mvc2 worked like this when the game was new. Lots of ugly teams won early on because of the unknown factor. As the game progressed, more and more people started figuring out the better versions and shit like justin wongs mag\cable\cammy eventually got out muscled to make way for teams with stronger team dynamics. It will happen with umvc3 once they stop fucking with the game and let it stay.
Go with doom…i’ve been using him and he can abuse the hell out of that vajra for both zoning purposes and mixups on opening charecters. Not to mention doom loves anyone that provides a hard knockdown. He can also use strider in his combos to add more damage in the corner by allowing you to get another tiger knee plasma beam which will net 735k meterless. He can dhc into strider from his hyper air photon rays into striders legion.
Strider can use any of dooms assists so its up to personal taste and what your team needs.
Doom also has synergy with Dante in that he can sphere flamexxdhc devil triggexx to continue the combo and net arround 1.1k for no effort. Dante can help doom zone by cuttin of the screeen even more with his jam session. Its also provides extra lockdown but you can use his gunshot assist to do a ghetto ammy lockdown to get that mixup in.
It all depends on taste so play whoever you want but i suggest doom i think he is better then the others except maybe hawkeye (only because i main hawkeye and he is my fave charecter)
After today’s Wakeup Shoryuken, not only were my eyes opened, but it solidified my ideals when I initially saw Strider play. I’m 100% certain now that his optimal position in the team is 2nd, even more so if the player loves putting him on point and/or a Strider mains. Having him as anchor for X-Factor 3 is still strong, but I’m almost certain this metagame will die out soon in a couple of months. As you exit the realm of beginners & scrubs and start to enter one with more serious players, you enter one where shenanigans such as XF3 Orbs are put on blast and or shutdown completely from ever happening by a snap backs combo. Shoultzula and Chrisis have been pointing it out (as well as a few others), but Viscant pretty much solidified it for me. (If you love derping XF3 or just abusing his assist, please feel free to keep him on anchor. I believe the serious Strider players should play him second however.)
Having him 2nd makes him very dangerous if you are a good Strider player on point. With a set up of point/strider/anchor you have:
A strong XF2 Orbs (if needed).
Extreme mixup potential with an assist after your point main gets blown up (basically “Strider-on-point” gameplay if he’s a main of yours).
1~3 bars of meter as Strider comes in.
Strider becomes a battery for your anchor.
A third character if and when Strider gets blown up (with or without XF3).
However I believe this can only work based on a few more factors:
Your point character has to be pretty much amazing still.
Your anchor would need to be able to hold his/her own after Strider is knocked out.
Point and anchor would need to have various synergies as well.
Team becomes vastly more superior if the anchor’s assist can control horizontal space. Characters like Mags, Doom, Ammy, IM, Dante, Akuma, Shuma, Hawkeye, Strange, Task. (ironically almost all of these characters can hold their own solo)
Most people that main Strider and put him on anchor mentally relies on XF3 Orbs to get the job done, leaving many to be distressed to drop the character or create a point team that covers Strider anchor weaknesses post XF3 Orbs. Once Orbs run away, it becomes a serious uphill battle without an assist.
Maybe Clockwork doesn’t know it yet, but I believe Doom/Strider/Ammy is his most dangerous team configuration. As his skill with Strider increases, I would say Doom/Strider/Phoenix as well.
For my money Strider + Drones is the most evil. It so easy to get the drones on top of someone with Strider, and the things you can do to them once they are are just evil.
For as good as he is with assists, I’ve been keeping him at anchor. The reason is because I think he’s far more complete as an anchor than most of the rest of the cast. These numbers are arbitrary but I hope they get my point across:
XF2 Strider + Sentinel may be the most possible value you can squeeze out of Strider, but then you’re stuck with anchor Sentinel who has some bad match-ups and weak comeback factor. So you got 100% of Strider’s potential, but only like 60% of a real character in the anchor slot.
XF3 Strider may only be 80 or 90% of that max potential, but he lets you play your first two characters to almost 100% of their value, too.
You get slightly less from Strider, but more from your team overall. That’s how I see it at least.
The problem with Strider as anchor is that his assist doesn’t benefit everyone in the second slot. Like Shoultzula has said countless times, anchor Strider can fuck up your team chemistry if the second character cannot fully capitalize off of Vajra. It isn’t a generic top tier assist like Plasma Beam or Drones.
If you’re left with x/Strider and x character cannot get much off of Vajra, x dies for free against another team that can use an assist they can capitalize off of. I’d much rather have Strider/x considering the last character is very likely to be a character Strider has more use for rather than the other way around.
Strider’s a great anchor and all, but I don’t think it is his optimal position on a team. Strider with an assist backing him up is far more threatening than anchor Strider.
even though you have strider\3, you can still get XF 3 strider.
by either tagging, exchanging during a combo, DHC then let that other character die off while fighting. Now you haven’t affected your team build chemistry and you still have strider in xf3. I use this tactic from time to time. Sometimes my doom will die fast and now its just strider\dog. I’ll do my best with strider to get as much life as possible but if it looks like I’m still in a bad position after fighting, I’ll tag dog and try to bank on xf3 strider ftw.
his most ideal position is 2. Not only does he have an access to an assist but its still possible to get him into xf3 so you get to play strider from 2 strong positions rather than 1.
Unless you’re using a character like Dante, Doom, or Viper second, you’re not really going to be able to fully capitalize off a random Strider anti-air hit. There aren’t many characters that can fully capitalize off of Vajra. You’re going to need both the point and the second character to be able to use that assist to maximum effect while still keeping the whole team balanced in chemistry.