@shoultzula Awesome writeup. Just a couple questions as far as assists are concerned.
Why don’t you think rapid slash is up there as far as good assists for Strider?
Also, lately I’ve been thinking that Nova’s overhead assist might work really well for Strider.
I think another thing that could potentially make Strider a really strong point character is having a good TAC that he can go into. People already explored the raw tag options to increase damage for point Strider, but TACs build ridiculous amounts of meter.
I believe strider likes assists that have massive durability or create pins for mixups. Vergil doesn’t have durability on that move, it kind of just flies into danger. I think the assist might be ok for mixups though. Its not a universal as say, mag beam for instance. Which does a bit of everything for strider. There is a difference between great and good not to mention that strider is less than a year old so players still have to prove what the best assists are.
there is nothing wrong with TAC’s as long as you can use all 3 exchanges to get high damage like doom can. Not to mention that strider does have corner to corner mixups if your execution is good enough so you can 1 touch into death loops through a TAC. Still though, TAC’s give your opponent a shot out of a combo that you don’t really have to give them. Its a dual edged sword. They could very well break a TAC, pin you in a mixup and you died. That shit sucks ass after you already have someone in a combo and you eat a death loop yourself.
From what I have seen of Chou using rapid slash with Strider on point. It seems like a really valid mixup oriented assist that creates easy hit confirm situations. The knockdown state it gives also helps strider extend his combos in some interesting ways in the corner. It definitely isn’t the greatest for lockdown though, given vulnerability it has.
Also, to me, Strider in the second spot generally seems difficult for team compositions because of his kind of awkward dhc options. He seems a lot easier to DHC from than into effectively.
vergil assist is only good if strider has an alternate beam he can use. If vergil is your only assist in terms of horizontal control, then you will find yourself getting destroyed by zoning. Since Strider’s teleports sucks so fucking bad, he has the hardest times moving in and getting something going against the better characters in the game. I’ll dick with it some more in training mode just to see how good it is.
as an extra assist, its good I suppose. As your only assist its shit IMO.
about strider being 2nd and getting a good DHC in, yes that is very problematic but there are some characters that make it safe for him. You can do shit like mag shockwave, dormamu ball, dooms up super then you dhc into animals, they can be pretty safe depending on who you have in front of Striders DHC in. Definitely requires good team chemistry to pull shit off though.
So I tested all of Strider’s good mixups and some of them can’t be achieved with vergil rapid slash assist. You’re missing out on some of Strider’s best mixups using that assist. It does give you slightly more damage on combos but I don’t think the damage trade off is favorable over the mixups because the damage output you’re getting simply isn’t enough. Vergil’s assist is ok, I can definitely think of some worse ones to choose from.
mid screen use teleport mixups with assists and meaty timing. In the corner go for bomb, with teleport+assist mixups. You can try other ones midscreen like sat resets, double dog to get meaty timing out there etc…Sometimes I will even throw a bomb midscreen to force them to move backwards toward the corner even more after KD’s.
Best tac option for strider is gonna be iron man, doom, dante, mags or frank. Franks my personal choice on strider point because off a tac you can get lvl 4 or 5 for 0 bar.
And yeah Virgil is lackluster for strider. It pushes them too much on block. You don’t have much control like with drones for example. Also log trap is a fun assist for strider if you can play strider well without godlike beams and such. The only point strider team I have is strider /frank/racoon. It works alright.
I’ve noticed that sometimes when I hit an opponent the launcher whiffs – it is especially prevalent if the opponent happens to be crouching – is this because I start my combos with LM instead of just H, into F.H, D.H? I think I might be omitting D.H at times as well, could this be the case of the problem or is the problem somewhere else?
EDIT: The problems seems to be omitting the d.H. I played a couple sets where I made sure to d.H as much as possible and it the launcher stopped whiffing :D.
he’s not talking about hit confirm. he’s talking about how S misses when strider tips his pokes which is a real valid concern.
S has less horizontal range than the rest of strider’s poke game for w\e fucking reason that is. It basically means that if you tip pokes or punish from too far away strider can’t get an eays launch combo. What probably going on judging from your post is that you’re not factoring in the S range when you start your combos. When you’re in deep, you gets lots of hits before you go into S. The more further out you get, the harder it becomes to long chain and still get S to combo.
few ways to deal with this problem. Poke+assist, this allows strider to run back in after your combo starter and get closer for another string where S can be used. Other times, you have to make sure you have the satellite on strider prior to doing a poke string. Then if you were too far away but it still hit, you can chain into H then throw sat allowing strider to run back in.
if you can’t do either of those things, best thing to do imo is just go for max hits and activate satellite for pressure or do your max chain, cancel L gram, super.
Rapid Slash is Strider’s 2nd best assist imo, after Jam session. It allows all resets and gives Strider so much ground capability. Jam Session is the top of his best assist friends because Jam allows air and ground nonsense.
Rapid slash isn’t remotely close to being a good assist for strider. It doesn’t give you as much control as your thinking it does. Bad players can’t block rapid slash anyway.
I don’t think its one of striders best assist personally. It negates 2 of his god like mixup patterns. He can’t do poke+vergil, teleport behind them and get a combo. Vergil hits but it drags them way too far for a follow up. He also can’t do poke+vergil, falling j.lk, DJ mixup attempts because again, Vergil drags them too far away.
You can try to substitute left\right mixups with poke+vergil series, qcf+s to create the left\right mixup then dive off the wall for a combo. However, you’re trading teleport front, teleport back and all the variations on those you can create with double jumps. its probably like 10ish mixups vergil assists prevents strider from using. That’s so many mixups gone from his game play that it can no longer be a good assist for strider IMO
strider likes assist that give him teleport front mixup, teleport back mixup, DJ mixups after teleports and qcf+s mixups. Assists like dante, dog, akuma, drones all do that better than vergil assist does.
I played strider on point for like 4 months against tournament players. Usually strider players play him 3rd so he never has tools and its mostly solo play. Playing him first shows you what strider needs to be effective as a point or mid game character. 3rd, he’s a different character entirely
i’ve seen the mixups from the Japanese player and I’m just not sold. That assist stops strider from using his full tool set on mixups so I don’t see how its a top assist for strider to use. I think in terms of assists, it boils down to what strider likes best. Left\right mixups can be stopped with push blocks if you go for poke+assist, teleport or qcf+s. What you need then are the DJ mixups off falling j.lk to create a better scenario. Vergil only does this for strider in the corner and never mid-screen where as other assists like jam session\dog shot allow strider to be strider mid-screen.
There could a lot of options off vergil slash but if it doesn’t give strider his full tool set, IMO its not one of the best assists because of that simple fact. Other assists simply give strider more tools to use and I think the quality of the extra tools is a big plus. IMO, strider’s best mixup is the DJ mixup he gets off falling j.lk after a teleport or a jump-in. If you can pin someone so they’re forced to deal with it, its by far his fastest mixup attempt. Shit like ping falling lk, dj up or falling lk, land fuzzy high are just impossible to deal with. Can’t react to that shit 24\7, simply too fast.
Rapid slash isn’t even good enough to win during zoning wars as a horizontal check tool. It loses against some other projectiles head to head really easily. Strider likes assists that can check the ground, give him a mixup and win zoning wars which is why assists like akuma are pretty solid for strider. Akuma can negate zoning tactics, give strider block stun for short hop mixups, teleport left\right with follow up combo, teleport DJ mixups with falling j.lk and qcf+s tactics. His full tool set is all there in terms of mixups IMO.
The only thing vergil does for strider is that you get an insane point character if strider goes down. That’s the only benefit I see from it in terms of helping strider.
At the least dimension slash assist holds them in place. Here’s an exercise i want to you to try Japanese nut riding expert player. Get 2 players. Have one of them pick a character with a non cinematic invincible super. Now press rapid slash and tp or try fuzzy guard. Have other player literally mash super. You won’t win majority of the time.