I get what your saying Stiltman…because there have been times when I play strider/sent/doom and my strider will take a couple of hits and be out of the game lol and then there’s just sent and doom and it feels like you really have to hustle to come back in a match. i guess playing with strider is some what new to me (been playing with him for about a month now) i tend to focus more on locking down and chipping…which is a little change for me. I’m use to sent/commando or sent/im teams. but to me picking strider without doom feels weird, but i do understand the points you made
You’re hustling to comeback with Sentinel? Isn’t that the whole reason Sentinel is in the team? So he can pick up the slack incase anything bad happens?
playing with just sent and doom in a 2 on 3 situation, yea…depends on what’s going on in a match and who you’re fighting. sent can’t do everything himself…
in fact he can, which is why sent is kinda gay and gets my vote for #1 char in the game.
I’ve seen countless matches of 2 on 1 and even 3 on 1 vs. sentinel (even with the likes of sent/assist vs. sentinel), and if your sentinel is that good, you come all the way back.
anyway, the conclusion seems to be that strider/doom plays totally different from strider/other assist. in my opinion, practicing strider w/o doom teaches you how to use Strider effectively without relying heavily on doom (which is what causes most strider/doom players to die). Strider’s bird/tigers, teleport mixups, bomb, over head, orbs, and c. fierce aka strider’s AAA are all pretty nasty on their own. I mean orbs practically resets the screen for crying outloud. that’s as close to hail storm as you’re gonna get without being storm or sentinel with his HSF.
so just keep practicing with strider/sent/cc. I see a lot of potential in that team, esp. if you could work in calling sentinel drones followed by overhead with orbs running. CC does a sick job of resetting the screen in combination with orbs, and everyone knows what Sent/CC can do. I’m not totally sold that cable/CC is better than Strider/CC. They’re different in their own right, and if you look at it this way, I’d rather have Strider/CC-b vs. each of Mag/Storm/Sent/Cable rather than Cable/cc-b vs. Mag/Storm/Sent/Cable.
Strider does fairly well vs. the top 4, whereas cable suffers much worse to mag and storm, has slight advantage vs. sent, and obviously ties with Cable. I’d rather have Strider.
by hustling i don’t mean struggle. i meant it’s just more work. strider/sent/cc is a nice team, but i just rather play strider with doom and in this case cause it does more for me. i guess since i played sent/cable/cc for so long sent/strider/cc feels awkward to me. and i know sent is the shit, but i rather not leave the fate of a match to just sent alone if i have to
While S/S/C reduces the amount of work Strider has to do, it also drastically reduces the amount of work Strider can do, so I’m not sure there’s much net benefit. S/S/C Strider is not going to accomplish anything of value without virtually spamming drone assist, and given that Sentinel is now expected to be doing all the heavy lifting on the team, exposing him to damage while assisting seems no less risky than putting the load on the shoulders of point Strider.
Here’s where we disagree. I think it’s fair to say that Doom or Cyclops, on point, are in the same tier of effectiveness as, say, BH. So by the same token, would you say that Sentinel is doing 90%+ of the work in Watts?
Furthermore, I don’t think it’s unfair to place a big burden on Strider’s shoulders; Strider with Doom and AAA has impossibly lopsided matchups against almost the entire cast, quite favorable matchups against 3 of the 4 characters that count, and (depending on the AAA) a totally winnable matchup against the only character that can really be considered a bad matchup for him.
It goes without saying that every character has a puncher’s chance against him, and obviously walljumps and ragnaroks happen, but overall, is there any non-Storm character that has a real chance of killing Strider if they don’t take off 70%+ of his life at the first opening?
Again, I just don’t see the point of plugging Strider in here. Why not use Storm, or Cable, or even Spiral or BH? Is an orb-trap-less Strider really any better than any of those characters?
To reiterate a previous statement, Strider’s other tools are appetizers, not a main course. Similarly, Cable has all sorts of tools and weapons at his disposal, and he can certainly hold his own while waiting for The One Chance To Shoot Them, but take away AHVB (and, more importantly, the threat of AHVB) and Cable’s tricks turn into mediocre gimmicks.
I think Strider/CC and Strider/Tron really is better than BH and Cable in this case, possibly on par with Spiral (Strider has an easier time getting mag/storm off of him, but can’t trap like Spiral without Doom), but below Storm.
The idea here is an alternative to Storm/Sent/CC which everyone knows and loves. I don’t know that any other sent/cc team will surpass Storm as a 3rd character.
I also think Strider’s tools such as bird/bomb/tiger are legit against Mag/Storm/Sent/Cable, not just gimmicks. Sure you can’t do whatever you want because hail will eat bombs and mistimed birds, Sentinel can fly over birds, and they can call an assist to eat a tiger, but you really don’t need Doom to use that stuff effectively. Short bomb is still nasty against rushdown happy Mags, long bomb is still nasty against AHVB Cable, and c. fierce is still nasty against Cable’s sj. rh. I think in many ways Strider becomes less prone to devastation even without Doom because you aren’t counting on Doom’s random rocks to cover Strider’s ass as much.
The only team I see S/S/C having a noticeable advantage against, compared to Scrub, would be MSP (but this isn’t precisely useful, since MST basically reverses that).
Animals against Cable are not even remotely viable; enough on that.
Animals against Sentinel are a stalling/meter tactic at best. They are not a tool with which to win a match; Sentinel is the character least likely to die from animal spamming (well, other than Cable, who would just shoot you for trying it). Animals simply do not do enough damage to Sentinel.
Animals are certainly more effective against Mag and Storm, but the problem is that it’s a Spiral-like strategy where you keep your opponent away while you whittle them to death, and Spiral’s simply better at that. Strider’s health is simply too low to depend on this as a destination strategy; you lose too much life from random trades.
You shouldn’t discount the fact that when your opponent is busy blocking orbs (or attempting to run away from them), Strider’s lifebar is not being reduced.
that is the core concept to this variation of strider.
the point of plugging strider into the picture is that we can still play him w\o the risk of losing due to improper team chemistry. Sure, sent\cap is better off with storm but the ninja fills a role all though not as big.
sent\cap\xxx can pretty much put any character on it and be effective so why not strider
what exactly is your point spider dan? that s\d will be more exponentially more effective than s\s\c ever will be?
call assist on Sentinel, use bird or lion to cause Sentinel ‘armor pause’ where Sentinel doesn’t get knocked back, but it prevents Sentinel from being able to rp -> HSF your assist since his rp or c. fierce or hsf comes out delayed due to the lion/bird hitting his super armor.
You just have to learn to be creative with Strider, but he can more than definitely be played with characters besides Doom effectively. Try for instance the corner trap of ground chain+ tron as your orbs are ending, long bomb as tron is out That gives you practically a free opportunity to move in and do j. fierce, j. rh, ground chain, bird xx orbs.
Strider’s been underrated without Doom for the longest time. I’m glad to see some other teams are coming out with Strider because really… he’s one of the forgotten ‘top tier’ in the game. He does unbelievably well against the God Tier for the most part, yet nobody plays him because they don’t want to use Doom in the end and because Strider/Doom is generic/boring/uncreative.
Well don’t use Doom and develop new tactics! He has too many awesome moves to be ignored (And hell, if you land Ragnarok, it chains into HSF just like lightning storm does).
And also, use orbs! nobody said you can’t use orbs if you don’t have Doom. strider overhead + cc is for real, and so is strider overhead + tron from AK’s thread. that shit hurts BAD.
It’s more that S/S/C takes a LOT off of Strider’s table and adds nothing particularly special to Sent/Commando; specifically, one of Cable, Storm, or Spiral would be the-same-but-better in virtually any matchup.
I see S/S/C as the equivalent of Iron Man/Storm/Psylocke; instead of putting Iron Man (or Strider) in a team that actually works for him, you’re trying to just plug him into another team in the place of Magneto (or Storm).
The general problem with throwing animals against Sentinel is that unless you cancel it into orbs (and maybe even if you do), you’re probably looking at a bad trade with Sent’s c.fierce. For S/D, this isn’t a problem, since orbs are the desired destination anyway. For S/S/C, if you have to burn meter on orbs to use animals, and you aren’t getting any serious damage out of orb trap, you are basically throwing away meter.
Doom is a better character than Tron anyway, so I’m not sure what the point is here.
If Sentinel is trying to play the keepaway laser game, then go ahead and cancel into orbs and stay in his face. Or have your drones out there. If Sentinel gets hit by rings or drones, you can teleport on top of him with orbs running and have your way with him. If you catch him in flight you can keep jumping up on him with orbs running and do that instead. If he tries to attack you to take away the range then you’ve got both Sentinel and Commando to help out. There’s plenty of things Strider can do with Sentinel in this situation, and aside from the fact that he has less chipping power if Sentinel blocks, just about every other part of his game is better than any team with Doom/third character.
If you don’t have Sentinel and Commando behind Strider, the heat to keep control of the game against an opposing Sentinel goes up; he can just pick the weak spot in your team to work with. If you lose control of the pace and your third character other than Doom is an AAA, he can play it much more comfortable with the mouth beam as a distance as long as he’s careful not to get hit by orbs. If you lose control and your third character is another Sentinel, you’re much more vulnerable to Sentinel’s stomp offense. Sentinel/Commando is actually an improvement on the situation because it lets you deal with both problems and regain control much more easily. The only difference is that you’re chipping less while you’re in control – but you’re getting more chances to get hits because you can stay in control, and Strider’s chip damage with Sentinel’s drones isn’t just completely negligible.
Well, you tell me. You’ve played me plenty, and since my Storm is terrible enough that I’m not prepared to make any direct demonstrations of that matchup as though that’s representative of the real fight, let’s stick with my BH/Sent/Commando against your Strider/Doom/Cyclops, in those particular orders. We’ve played this fight quite a few times. Now let’s break down the relevant part I’m getting at here: when my BH flat out wins that opening fight and kills Strider outright without getting anyone killed or too badly hurt in return, leaving a largely pristine Sentinel on point against your Doom/Cyclops with a reasonably healthy BH and Commando both assisting, what percentage of those games do you then go on and win? I’d ballpark it at 4-5%… and that’s probably generous. It’s about as hosed as hosed gets in this game.
Something like Strider/Sent/Commando, on the other hand, has at least a fighting chance. Whether that’s better than Sent/Strider/Doom, I honestly can’t say at this point, but they’re both better about it than Strider/Doom/AAA. The only reason I’d ever play Strider/Doom/AAA against someone in a tournament is if I had a pretty solid notion that I could double-OCV them with just Strider. (And I’ve done it before, in the last five years, even…)
a) none of this makes using animals an effective strat
b) liberally throwing drone assist out as an offense opener (when Sentinel is expected to do most of the real, actual work of the team) is not exactly sound
Again, drones as c.fierce deterrent only works when Strider doesn’t need Sentinel to do the dirty work (e.g. S/S/D). If your offense revolves around calling drone assist, Sentinel will take a beating. Then you’re left with a beat-up Sentinel vs. whoever their second character is.
At least with S/D/AAA, I don’t need to call rocks to start my offense (double jump+AAA or teleport+AAA provides enough window to start orbs in most any situation). Rocks are merely the assist I call to kill time and build meter.
It’'s funny that you mention it, because I’d also say that when your BH doesn’t win the opening matchup, your Sentinel gets steamrolled by Strider, at a similar win percentage. So I guess BH is the key to this matchup?
I mean, you’re arguing for drones as a necessary tool against Sentinel, but how often do you see my Strider (with Doom+AAA) having problems against Sentinel as is? When you start Sentinel/Commando against my Strider, the results are pretty reliably in my favor (regardless of my AAA), and if you have Sentinel/Cyclops/notBH, I’m perfectly content to fight Sentinel with Doom (regardless of my AAA). So I don’t think I can agree with the assessment of Doom as dead weight or Doom assist as expendable.
And ultimately, I think your premise itself is disingenuous; you’re essentially asking, “how many games are you going to win if the heavy lifter on your team gets killed early?” My response would be, “I’ll win more games with Doom+Cyke and a dead Strider than I will with Strider+Commando and a dead Sentinel.”
animals are used to occupy space (e.g., birds covers low flying sentinel, full screen away) AND to cover assists to prevent them from getting HSF (without you needing to cancel into orbs to save the day). add to that if your assist comes out in front of you (such as commando if you dash back, cable-b, tron-g, etc), they’ll take the c. fierce and strider comes out unscathed.
a missed RP on the ground when you’re cancelling into orbs = ring stun -> teleport -> infinite. I don’t even see Sentinels do RP anymore against Strider unless it’s in combo.
Strider/cc isn’t bad like you make it out to be. Right now, I truly would prefer Strider/CC over Doom/Cyc, especially if you’re up against the god tier. overhead + cc works surprisingly well if you try it out.
Assist as meat shield is not exclusive to S/S/C (Cyke AAA actually works best for this), so I don’t see this as an advantage.
The assist you want to be calling (drones) does not allow you to throw an animal until after you’ve called it, which goes back to the point against using your heavy lifter as assist spam.
If I’m Sentinel, I want S/S/C Strider to spam orbs, since rocks (which stop Commando cold) are off the table and overhead+Commando doesn’t even work on Sentinel (Strider high-low is pretty weak against super armor, period).
Doom/Cyke (and Cyke/Doom) is considerably better than Strider/Commando against Mag, Storm and Sentinel. Cable is assist dependent; Cable/Commando is advantage: Cable, but I’d put Doom at the advantage with anything else.
That’s not the whole bit of the team. You’re throwing around animals as well as orbs much as you would with Doom, you just have a better distance game to back it up without giving up overhead defense with Commando around. If you’re up against Sentinel, you’d use orbs more. If you’re up against Magneto, you’d use it less and rely more on the critters. The drones aren’t there to do the entire job, they’re there as a bulwark in addition to what Strider can do on his own.
Skip skip…
Not to that extreme, no. If the opening fight goes any direction other than “BH dies for free”, i.e. Sentinel gets any quality time with Doom at all, I’m still going to win most of those. Sure, it helps if BH can stay off the ground, force Strider to chase him, and then lure him into an ambush where BH blows off a fatal DHC to Sentinel who can then retire Doom and Cyclops in order, but almost any outcome other than “BH does almost no damage to Strider and dies”, I still like my chances in that fight. In this respect, Strider/Sentinel/Commando is pretty much indisputably better than Strider/Doom/AAA. So what if Strider is going to get fewer OCVs? You’ll win a lot more games because Sentinel can pick up the slack better than you’ll lose because Strider can’t do it by himself as often.
If I’ve got Cyclops then I’m usually all right. Depends on how my Sentinel is feeling on offense, I’m a little too turtly to make that work sometimes unless I’ve also got BH. Sent/BH/Cyclops or Sent/Cable/BH might be my optimal teams overall against you, although BH/Sent/Commando manages to get some pretty good results as long as BH can manage to stay off the ground.
That’s a wonderful response, except that in the hundreds of games I’ve played with this team, I think I’ve actually had that pair left at the end game… once? Twice? You pretty much always start Strider with this team, and then you either run him into the ground if you’re ahead or you safe tag to Sentinel off orbs rings, and leave yourself the option of DHC’ing him back in later the same as you would with Clock’s team, at which point you could still safe tag back to Sentinel later again. If something goes wrong to screw this up it’s usually by Strider getting snapped out instead of killed early by a Magneto player, in which case you might wind up with either Sentinel/Strider on point (which is no worse than if Doom got snapped in and killed on Clock’s team) or Commando lives long enough to DHC to HSF and you wind up with the same order as you would off of a safe tag from Strider to Sentinel normally. There are enough safe tags and DHCs to go around on this team that you pretty much have no excuse to ever voluntarily be left with Strider/Commando as your last two characters. The only situation where it’ll basically ever happen at all is if Strider gets snapped out double with Sentinel assist… which, guess what, is the identical situation to if he gets double snapped with Doom on Strider/Doom/Commando, except it’s a lot harder to actually do.
So in other words, if you kill Strider (my heavy lifter) quickly and easily, then you win, but if I crush your second-stringer (BH) for free, then I win, because your first-stringer will get steamrolled by mine. What point does this prove, again?
And what’s more… if I have S/S/C vs. Watts and my Strider get turfed early (in exactly the same fashion) by BH, I’m looking at Sent/Commando vs. Sent/Commando/BH. This is the argument that shows why S/S/C is good?
I said “Sentinel/Cyclops/notBH” for a reason. BH assist helps Sentinel greatly against Doom, but against other teams, picking BH for Sentinel (as opposed to any other two members of the top 4) is just as much of a liability as picking Doom for Strider is.
If we are playing a game of “my team counters your team and is therefore superior,” then this thread is over before it started: S/D/AAA counters S/S/C hard. If we are talking about team baggage, Doom is certainly no more of a liability than BH (which was my original point in this tangent). Can Sentinel build a team designed to facilitate killing Doom? Sure. But in general, teams with assists that are problematic for what Doom does are highly susceptible to what Strider does, so I don’t see the issue in quite the same light.
You can do hit and run with Strider/CC and use animals xx orbs to cover CC’s ass. That was my point. If sentinel does c. fierce like you state, CC eats c. fierce and sentinel eats orbs-> teleport OR at the worst, animal stops sentinel from HSF your assist.
About Sent wanting Strider to spam orbs, I can’t believe you actually believe that because the whole time Strider is running orbs and charging meter for his next orbs, Sent will inevitably get hit by cross up CC or cross up orbs or get caught in orbs by flight. Strider can then proceed with jumping orbs chain into c. fierce = good amount of damage. Strider comes out on top once he can control space and the opponent is blocking. This runs true in almost all matches where one side loses space control and is on the whole defense.
About Doom/Cyc beating mag/storm/cable/sent, either you have unbelievably godly Doom/Cyc or you are far underestimating Strider/non-doom abilities. I can’t even agree with Cable/CC beating Strider/CC since Strider has anti-ahvb capabilities,all else being the same (hit and run CC strategy will beat cable/cc in addition to the usual strider-anti-cable tactics). Due to cyc’s AAA angle and Doom’s large size, Doom gets consistently rocked by Mag and Storm.
I just have to agree with Stiltman on this one because I, like him, have given this team a try (amongst other Strider teams without Doom). Players have largely gotten used to Strider needing Doom, but a lot of new possiblities open up when you give Strider new space coverage and/or damage potential that Doom does not provide. If you want those new coverages PLUS having Doom, you’re then stuck with Strider/Doom/AAA at best, which as this thread is pointing out, does not carry the weight of other non-doom Strider-based teams.
So here is my point: if you have to burn meter regularly just to protect your assist, and (unlike S/D) there is no real threat of being chipped to death by orbs, I am happy to watch you toss meter to the wind. Strider high/low games (particularly against Sentinel) are nothing spectacular; I’m sure any Sentinel would rather face that than Mag or Storm’s versions of them.
Or Sentinel could just block them and wait for opportunity to use AAA, c.fierces, etc. The strategies you are describing are ones that are scary in the hands of a Strider with Doom behind him; as I’ve said before, the only way this team does anything is if someone tries to play you as if you are still running Strider/Doom.
Against Mag or Storm, just switch in Cyke. Cyke/Doom is still pretty damn useful against Mag or Storm, while (obviously) Commando+Strider assist is worthless in any meaningful matchup.
You’re approaching it from the standpoint of replacing Doom (whom you see as dead weight) and trying to squeeze mileage out of a defanged Strider. This mindset is not uncommon among S/S/D players; you stick Doom on a team with no help at all, get rushed down, then declare him useless and immediately look for ways to replace him.
In my experience, Doom with Cyke or Commando assist is perfectly capable of holding his own. So I think we have a fundamental disagreement about the very premise of S/S/C; you think that it’s worth giving up rocks because you get to jettison an utterly worthless boat anchor in Doom, while I consider Doom to still be an effective and viable character.