Hi guys, I have been using MODOK since Vanilla but put him on the back burner for Viper/Doom/Ammy since I’ve always been a rush down player. however, I thought I would take a different approach and play a team that is almost the complete opposite. Here are some videos of me playing at our local tournament - I’d love to hear some feedback from the MODOK veterans here for things I could be doing, or could be doing better. I’ve lurked here a long time and there have found some of the most creative things here, so thank you!
Let me know what you think, I am trying to get this team tournament-ready!
[media=youtube]nY7RCrOVpV8[/media] vs. Wolverine,Frank,Ammy
[media=youtube]M9Ug7VCPIZM[/media] vs. Zero,Dante,Vergil
[media=youtube]CIvMxY19zAA[/media] vs. Wesker,Spencer,Ammy (grand finals)
[media=youtube]Kbuq8mxk7X4[/media] vs. Hulk,IM,Wesker (funny match)
fyi - dorm is my newest char so I’m still figuring him out
Idk what to say. I mean your winning and using most of modoks tools which I hardly see like hbr loops and unblockables. Also done consistently. Couldn’t you do the normal max damage hbr to dhc dorm flame bomb meteor combo? I’m guessing its harder bc the opponent is too high sometimes? I think I remember dropping it. I been dabbling more with dorm as well since I saw zak bennett and fchamp use him. I just don’t like his non swag. Heard zak bennett at fgtv was going to use him after evo. Really works with dok because he can do more damage full screen with dhc. Also like the cube rush like an extention of your footzies and convert off dark hole. I think seeing more of this character is making me go with an alternate team. Always been a char loyalist but those zoning teams like chris and morgan on point backed with missiles is annoying me. Anyways keep up the good work Fullschedule. I guess just work on your offense more like in coming mix ups as more ppl figure your team? Also why do you tridash than wave dash or plink? I do it as well because I keep getting barriers but is there a purpose?
Good stuff FullSchedule! You are definitely knowledgeable about the character and are using a lot of tools I thought I wouldn’t see for a few years in a match (like HBR loops).
There are a couple of things I noticed from your play that I would look into improving. First, off of j.S conversions, I saw that you consistently did st.M into whatever afterwards. st.M has the lowest base damage of any of Dok’s moves (starts at 20k per hit) and therefore scales your combo damage a ton. So I would either be a little more aware of when it hits so you can get full damage, or do an automatic confirm that gives you free pressure on block for similar damage on hit, such as j.S, cr.M, fly, IAD j.L, st.L, S, etc. Besides that, I personally would try to zone a bit more, especially during certain matchups like against Hulk and Dante, but for the most part, your neutral is very solid. You just need time find out what works well against certain matchups and applying many of Dok’s rushdown mixups, but honestly, I think it’s fair to say that everyone who plays Dok is still trying to figure that out. Another small thing you can try is for air to air confirms, doing: j.L, L cube, j.L, j.S. Going from j.L into j.S sometimes lets the opponent to grab you before j.S depending on positioning, and if they block it, j.S will likely whiff, so you usually can’t dash cancel for more pressure. Doing L cube gives you lots of time to confirm, keeps you safe, and stops your upward momentum for further pressure if they block. You might not be able to get a relaunch though… it gets a bit tricky. One last thing: j.S is the best way to salvage your combo when Doom missiles interrupts it. Missiles usually floats the opponent too far up for your combo to continue on the ground, so throwing out a cube or dashing just right into a j.S after missiles finish hitting can usually work.
That’s all I can think of for now. I look forward to your play in the future!
Thanks Justin. I am guessing you are referring to Ball -> Meteor -> pillar -> Super? Yeah, I guess that would do more damage, but the timing for it is very specific with MODOK. If I was playing Firebrand first, I would do that one every time because Firebrand sets up the perfect height for Dorm Ball -> chargex2 -> Meteor. however, with MODOK it is a little more tricky. HBR loops are actually very reliable if you use the method LTP posted (I believe he posted it, if not I apologize). As for the tridashing, I play a lot of Doom and I guess that’s just what I am use to. I also don’t have to worry about missing a dash because it is really hard to mess up tri jumps (for me at least). Viper is about the only character I plink with.
LTP, you are one of the main posters I followed a lot on here. Thank you for taking the time to write up this. I’ll definitely hit the lab and see about that s.M - the reason I use it is that it feels like it is one of his fastest normals that isn’t a jab, so I mainly use it to ensure that I don’t miss an opportunity. I’ll give slime a shot to see how it works, but depending on spacing I know it can be iffy. Really good info to know about the s.M though, I did not know it scaled that bad!
It’s funny that you mention the air-to-air confirms, because that was something I was practicing almost immediately after this tournament. The one I was doing was SJ j.M, j.M, airdash upforward/forward j.L, immediate j.S. Let me know what you think of this one, as you can confirm from a huge range, it’s like Vergil but in the air. I’ll give the cube one a try and see how it works too, thank you!
During some of those matches I also thought about the doom missiles messing me up, lol. I wasn’t sure on how to confirm at the time so it was on my plate of things to figure out, I’ll take your suggestion here too and put it into play.
I’m also going to work on incorporating the sick unblockable that was posted here a while back. Not sure who originally came up with it, but when I have an opponent cornered, I’m going to slime, flight cancel, ADF, grab attempt -> M. I think this will help out a lot in corner play for MODOK. I found myself getting grabbed a lot when trying to go in with j. L here. If you can get the grab attempt off (which MODOK has a pretty big grab range) it will make MODOK corner pressure even more godlike.
I usually don’t post a lot on SRK but I’m going to try to become a big contributor here.
No problem and it’s always good to see more people working on the character (though I guess I’m not in the position to say that… I haven’t played in over 2 weeks lol). Personally after j.S, I usually pause (into cr.H, IAD j.M, S or just dash, S) or do L cube for the confirm into a combo or more pressure or zoning (I like the damage too much). cr.M after j.S hits will always hit, on j.S block, cr.M will hit, and on j.S pushblock, cr.M will be just out of range outside the corner and cr.M will hit in the corner (and even hit low for a free unblockable if j.S is spaced and pushblocked just right).
That anti air confirm is pretty good for the right situation. It’s safe and you have lots of time to confirm. The thing is, as it is with most of Dok’s game plan, there are many different air to air confirms that are “optimal” that depend on spacing. The j.L, L cube one is the one I personally like when you are pretty close to the opponent. j.M ones are the go-to air to airs at range, and since they are generally easier to confirm off of/harder to punish, sometimes you can do something like: j.MMS, add, j.H (whiff or hit), S, etc. It’s nice to have an air dash available after a j.S to air dash down, j.H, S because it’s likely that you’ll always get a relaunch. Whether j.H hits or not, you can always get the launcher to connect easily. This is also what I do when salvaging a combo when Doom missiles hit.
Caveman’s air grab into unblockable tech is too good. There are few characters that can escape it and those that can will either die in one combo anyway or have bad matchups against Dok (everyone sans Super Skrull basically). Caveman has a good post that goes over it in detail, specifically with Dok/Dorm/Doom too, since that is the team he runs (I quoted it my tutorial thread).
I think hit confirming with this character is tricky and great from lots of angles. I’m having trouble as well with confirming with missiles if I sj. So yes air dash up forward is great. Legs are great. Dok box jumps are fairly good to convert off of on incoming. As the missiles hit them from juggling them I do Downfoward H, jump cancel to H, cube, spike, jammining bomb. If I’m facing phoenix then I sometimes do body attack up super. You can get like 3 directions off hbr in the air so it could help you in those tight situations. I definitely need a better air throw game and understanding of it. Supposedly dok has the best throws but can easily get thrown if he starts mashing in the air. I really like your forward attacks with cubes and ground game Fullschedule, which I think is really important. Something I try and can’t seem to get. Especially against freaking hawkeye. Jumping spike is going to get old and easy to punish as more ppl learn the spacing. Also your saving ground bounces. I’m all about trying to find the as many hit confirms as possible.
So fullschedule what’s your worst match ups and how do you deal with them? I personally hate hawkeye, magneto, ironically missiles, zeros, tasky, deadpool, vergils, striders, chris, haggars. Some of them I deal evenly but I they are mostly annoying. I think I hate everyone lol.
MODOK goes for a TOD, then you into Dormmamu’s chaotic flame/stalking flare. Then you do your best Dormmamu’s incoming mixups, and then the mixups is successful you go DHC back into MODOK, so that MODOK can kill them. Dorm/MODOK can kill at least two average health(900k) characters back to back if MODOK/Dorm know their combos.
You don’t have to do that exact flowchart, since Dorm/Doom’s zoning is disgusting too. I think if you master MODOK/Dorm’s DHC combos, there will be great rewards for it in a match. Or you could get good with Dorm/Doom shell zoning, the team will be hard to beat too as well.
My latest beast DORM/DOK/HAGGAR is TOD people all over the place. It’s a MvC2 style team but with a little Masta CJ action and Haggar baits DORM lands a hit more often than not. After that’s DOK for the TOD.
U use haggar primarily just for assist? He ends up as anchor too? I want to test cap/dok/haggar was wondering what stuff unhave with modok and haggar together
Haggar is really there primarily to die and as anchor screw up people that get to brave/stupid. Now depending on their playstyle I’ll sometimes put Haggar up front to suck up damage/build meter and find out how they play. Rape if they can’t deal with the mayor. DHC him out before he dies for his godlike assist. MODOK gets a lot of benefit from HAGGAR combo and reset wise, see Viscants Wesker resets for reference.
What do you mean with Viscant’s Wesker resets? Wesker has a teleport and a command grab and a very fast low. Am i missing something that I can use with Modok for reset tricks?
Simply put, you can amplify your current throw resets with Haggars lariat, aka go for throw reset while calling haggar, if they break they fall into Haggar. Also causing them to block a jumping attack and using your extra air dash to go past them while calling haggar for ambiguous cross up. With proper spacing Haggar also allows for easy MODOK unblockable setups as they land from blocking the lariat.
Am I the only one that goes for resets? Granted MODOK with the right setup can kill just about anybody but I like to save meter. (For Dorm really)
I think MODOK has great matchups against a lot of the cast, but he particular has trouble against the top top tier (at least from my experience). I hate fighting Zero, Magneto, and Morrigan the most.
The reason being is that Zero can take all of the great angles to beat MODOK and the Zeros I usually play against will pick either Dante pillar or Strider to keep me in check from the skies. This is a tough fight for sure.
Magneto at the highest level of rush down is really hard to stop. Since MODOK has a big head, he almost gets opened up for free once Mag gets in. The magneto player has to be extremely competent and have good movement/spacing though to get in and avoid all of the cubes/stink bombs/shield. I was messing around with using df. H to stop Magnetos/Zeros from coming in on my head. If you time it right, it beats everything for free since it’s a weapon and separate hitbox from MODOK. But of course, this is for SJ height tri-jumps and not quick trijump Ls - if you are in that spot you just have to block, as s. L usually loses.
Morrigan - I’ve had a lot of game time against Morrigan and it’s a really dumb fight. At the moment it’s coming down to me just battling his soul fists with L/M blasters and us both spamming doom missile. If Morrigan activates AV, I just SJ to the top and hold back/stall until its over, rinse and repeat. Really lame fight but I’m not sure what else the DOK can do here.
thanks ironboy - I am in the process of working on my Dorm incoming mixups as well as my MODOK ones. I think both characters have really good mixups/lockdown in their own way. Hopefully I can get them to be as clean as Viper’s soon.
I’m back for fall break and went to my local tourney to see if I can finally pull of a performance that I can be happy with. I lost my first match against a Viewtiful Joe with strong zoning (not something I’m used to), but in the end, I got first :D. I think I did decently, but I definitely need to work on my game and read people’s habits quicker. My Magneto needs to get less derpier too, but taking the time to really understand his combos in different XFactor levels has been a huge help for my Dok/Mags/Doom team (since he’s the best XFactor character on the team). Anyway, I got 4 matches streamed. I wish I got the matches with the Viewtiful Joe player on there… they were close.
Here’s the stream archive: http://www.twitch.tv/fridaynightencounters/b/334561948
I got 2 matches in a row at 2:26:30 (second starts at 2:40:30). Loser’s and grand finals are at 3:19:30 (grand finals starts at 3:32:00). I started off a little rusty and choked in the last games, but I think I did well overall. The guy in grand finals scared me though. That nutty play threw me off and I hate Spencer. I should’ve just st.L’d him every time he zipped over instead of going for the air throw.
Nice play man. Your commentators were tragically timid though. Made watching it a tad awkward.
It also seemed like the people you played early on were unaccustomed to blocking Modok high. But all in all, your movement with Dok is real fun to watch.
I really liked some of your movement, such as simple stuff like battering ramming down after you kill the character in air for quicker incoming mixup options. Jamming bombs were good, combos were good, I like it! You will have to notate that exchange combo for me too, I need to add it to my swag list. haahaha
I was really surprised at how aggressive your MODOK is. I saw you come down with SJ addf j.M a lot, are characters not able to air grab you from this angle? Since j.M is mainly a horizontal hitbox, I would assume something like dash forward normal jump grab would win here. Maybe not? I did like you using it as a poke from normal jump height on characters trying things like footdive at you. Funny to see that attack get beat for free like that by MODOK.
How do you feel about Magneto in the middle on that team? I like him as a character and I love him with Doom, but I honestly feel like his assists are lacking for a character that in my opinion needs two great assists. It was definitely funny to see the whole normal jump, battering ram up, call mag, grab them to you stuff, but in the end the hyper grav just isn’t that great to me other than combo extension. I know this topic was talked about a good bit a few pages in the team thread, but its one of my BIG questions I’ve been trying to figure out - who the ‘middle man’ should be in this squad.
some quick mag tips… use Magnetic Blast more in neutral, things like
normal jump back H + doom, mag blast L.
Air dash forward mag blast L.
Missiles, SJ up mag blast L
for incoming w/ mag I saw you use J. L, I would try j. L, j. M, ADDF j.L, s. L, continue pressure, or the best one is probably timing normal jump, ADF, mag blast, ground dash. If mag blast hits, you combo. If they block, you are in there. If they push block, you dash immediately to cancel the push block… air grab or s. L
Thanks! There isn’t much I can do about the commentators though lol.
Thanks as well! I have all the corner TAC combos that I use in my tutorial thread (ctrl+F to find the ‘corner tac combos’ section), as well as guidance for adjusting them to whatever makes them feel more natural to you.
I love doing SJ add(f/b) j.M a lot because it’s great for spacing, starting combos/pressure, and it has relatively quick startup. I’m sure dashing up and air grabbing works if I don’t space it properly, but I try to use j.L instead if I’m pretty much on top of them (which is really hard to get grabbed out of). SJ addf j.M gives you great options to follow up with. If they get hit or block the j.M, you can go high with: jump, adf, j.L OR you can go low with cr.H. Either of these combo from j.M. I know cr.H is “slow”, but in this case, it works just as fine as any other low for the most part, since the average reaction time is a few frames more than the startup of cr.H. I open up a lot of people simply mixing up these two options. If they push block, cr.H will whiff and the IAD j.L may or may not hit depending on how far you are when j.M touches your opponent and if you are in the corner or not. If you anticipate a push block, you can do: IAD j.M OR dash cr.H to beat push block and continue pressure. In rare cases, they can push block you just right so that you get sent back to the other side of the screen, but that gives you the chance to get the zoning game rolling again.
The whole calling hyper grav when I’m floating at the top of the screen is just a hilarious gimmick, though it can be a legitimate way to start the round with if you read your opponent correctly (like I knew the Spencer was going to try an up grapple one of the games at the start, since he tried it previously). Honestly, I think the optimal order for my team is Mags/Dok/Doom, but playing Dok/Mags/Doom just seems to be the best order for me, since my neutral with Dok is by far better than my neutral with Mags. When Dok has missiles backing him up, I don’t really think he needs another assist for neutral. In pretty much any situation, missiles will be what you want to use. The only exceptions are for incoming unblockable corner setups (fast lockdown assists), waking up after a knockdown (Haggar, gold hsien), and intense rushdown, which I don’t think is even worth trying unless you have something like drones, daggers, bolts, etc. All that really matters IMO is that the other assist will help extend Dok’s combos, since that will drastically increase damage output, and hyper grav does that well enough. Since my Mags isn’t that great, I usually soften them up with Dok so my neutral with Mags can be simpler, and I can abuse XFactor better. I also prefer eating an incoming mixup with Magneto more than Dok. Dok is also the best at dealing with start of round shenanigans, and that is actually a huge reason why I can only play point Dok now. Safe DHCs from Dok to Magneto are a bit awkward, but Tempest and Shockwave work fine in general. Mags/Dok/Doom has a lot of nice tricks and guaranteed ToDs, but it does cost a tad more meter. A Dok combo with both assists will build and spend 2 bars for 1,050k to 1,150k depending on the starter, but if you have an extra bar, Sphere Flame will do the trick. A Magneto combo with both assists will build 2 and a half meters and spend 3 to KO the whole cast, except off a throw, but it’s more execution heavy, but you can cut down 50-75k to make it easier. DHCs from Magneto to Dok are also safe (Shockwave into HBR), but if Shockwave hits, you can HBR to where they land (no more than 3 bursts) and combo off the hard knockdown Shockwave causes for a full combo (you can only go for the double relaunch BnB if you use cr.M, S to pick them up initially). This actually lets you combo into a jamming bomb off a grab with Magneto in the corner (grab, S, Shockwave, HBR, cr.M, S, jamming bomb combo). The only problem with Mags/Dok/Doom compared to Dok/Mags/Doom is that if Mags dies, Dok/Doom aren’t the best at using XFactor.
TL-DR for the last paragraph: Mags/Dok/Doom has slightly better damage output per meter spent and has better safe DHCs. Dok/Mags/Doom has better start of round, jamming bombs anywhere, and better use of XFactor (for Mags). Both have great resets (FChamp’s Magneto TAC reset and Caveman’s Dok air grab unblockable reset). After writing all this, I’m not sure which order is better actually lol.
Thanks for the tips with Magneto! I’ll definitely try those out and incorporate them in my game
I’m thinking Mags/DOK/Doom is the way to go… KO off any stray hit, pretty much always corners, got that MODOK TAC if you need it (when you have no meter?), safe DHCs, and Mags is TOP TIER BAYBEE
That start-of-the-round game with MODOK is really too hard to pass up tho lol. I guess it really is personal preference, but on paper, I suppose Mags is the way to go?
Just wanna mention that if Mags throws someone in the corner, he can L-hypergrav, then tag in MODOK, c.L into whatever. I think this gets more damage than what you can do with mags, even with the HPB DHC tech? Dunno if it works on every character though?
