Yeah FW is not a great anchor, but he’s at least not the worst in the game, and his XFactor lasts a really long time. The point of using X/Dante/Frank is primarily to open up new point possibilities by comboing into a DT DHC and hard tagging Frank in. You wouldn’t want to do it with Nova, who not only doesn’t need the help leveling, but basically loses his biggest contribution (post-level Frank followups) by not DHC’ing straight into Frank. Someone like Task, though, is awful at leveling Frank from point, but with Dante behind him he suddenly becomes really stable. More importantly, characters like Zero and Wolverine–both of whom are exceptional on point–lose the need to TAC and become stable. Jam Session is such a ridiculously good double picture assist (turns any 19+hit combo into level 4), that hit-counts more or less stop mattering (especially if your point uses Shopping Cart well). You also get new assist possibilities, which is important because Frank with Jam Session is good, but Frank with Jam Session and an assist like Disruptor is just stupid. Other than that, the idea is that Dante levels Frank so well from the front, that playing X/Dante/Frank decreases your chances of having to ever play level 1 Frank at all. If you’re not getting your hit, he also sets up excellent tags with Acid Rain, so you can generally bring Frank in for 0-1 meters safely, let Dante recharge in anchor, and still get that Frank/Dante goodness.
My being generally that Zero/Dante/Frank levels more reliably, but that if you haven’t been playing Frank for very long I’d understand not wanting to anchor him. If your Dante neutral game is really good, though, it becomes less and less of a problem. It’s basically impossible to get a hit with Dante in second (which assumes you have at least some meter) and not level Frank. Even stray hits (tip of a Crystal, couple hits of a defensive Acid Rain) get Chainsaws. If you’re low on meter for some reason, any combo that gets you 1 bar by the time you hit Prop Shredder (for Acid Rain xx DT --> tag) is also level 4.
As far as Zero’s assist goes, I’d use Hadangeki if you’re pretty confident your leveling method is going to leave Zero in Sougenmu. Without the shadow, Hadangeki’s pretty balls (like 3 durability IIRC), but with you get excellent confirms off of f.H from full screen. If you’re not confident you’ll be backed by Sougenmu Zero, use Ryuenjin for the crossover counter IMO.
got me thinking of an old video I saw with hawk eye (simpler raw tag) and yea… Shuma can do it too! So now theres another method of leveling frank with wolverine with no tac, provided the anchor has a method of leveling up Frank (Wolv and Shuma switch spots in the raw tag so Frank dhc’s after Shuma. Tight! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OSxyc-y6fY . off to test most of the cast to see who can do it
So what do you guys think of picking up Mags for different MU’s? Ideally the ones that gives Nova problems. Chars like Wolv, Dorm (if set up properly), Trish etc. Is there any tips for learning the Frank/Mag Shell?
Hahaha… following the Wolvie raw tag into Shuma, you can do cr.MH xx Mystic Stare M, S xx sj. air MHS, tag Frank, S air S, Snapshot xx Survival Techniques, Berserker Charge, Snapshot again.
Whose your third character? Depending on who it is I’d say Mags is an excellent character to pick up, but I’d specifically recommend Dante. Basically Mags’ hard tag works anywhere on screen, so you just do whatever you can and tag Frank in. Ideally you want a combo that builds a lot of meter and corner carries. I’d start with the combo the Mag forum calls the “FChamp BnB”–basically sj.H adf.H, L Blast (land) (dash) s.S, sj.H (fly) LH adf.H (x5) then add.H if you’re in the corner or addf.H if you’re slightly away from it into an L Grav to set up the launch/tag. What you follow up with depends on your third character (although, to be honest, a lot of the cast doesn’t work very well here).
As far as Mag/Frank goes, depending on your opponent’s strengths (namely ground vs air), using jump, airdash up(/back or forward depending) and dashing across while calling Shopping Cart can be really useful. Calling Frank and doing a box dash kara M Blast is also great for inducing blockstun and setting up high/low/throw mixups. Pressuring with s.L or cr.L (depending) while calling Cart is also good for getting them in blockstun. I find Mags uses Cart pretty well generally, but it can be hard to use against characters that like to stay in the air. (Again…Jam Session works too well here :P)
As far as Frank goes, Disruptah makes for an excellent standing conversion into grounded Tools L loops that is (more or less) initially unscaled and doesn’t use your ground bounce (allowing you to do a superjump series, call your second assist for a s.S sj.S relaunch and finish with a falling Tools H for a corner carry and Tools M’s). Converting Disruptor + f.H is, I think, spacing dependent, but it’s pretty effective. It’s just generally good for horizontal pressure when paired with Object Toss, and lets you charge a Walker safely while it’s hitting, which is crucial.
I honestly just totally dropped Nova for him, but that’s partly because I think he (Mags) is ridiculously fun to play. They both have strengths and weaknesses with respect to Frank (Nova winning in the “snap and kill the third character” battle, but not a lot else IMO).
Haha, that is literally exactly what I was thinking when I saw that vid. But Frank has a pretty nice rawtag hitbox, can he tag in off that Wolvy setup himself?
Unfortunately no, he lands in front. I tried all characters looking for anchors other than shuma that can follow up with full combos. Only hawk eye and shuma can do it from my testing and follow full combos. Storm and wesker can get cr l, ryu and st l, and spencer can get a st l , cr m, and armor piercer. Anyone else who can connect cannot follow up ( sent, Dante and several others due to slow buttons or length. Try it out though. Maybe spencer can cr m into a zip loop.
Interestingly Wesker CAN do a full combo on Zero and only Zero, while Shuma cannot on zero, and only zero
Shuma can also hit mid screen. He’ll actually tag zero as well in this case but I couldn’t follow up.
My execution is ass though, you guys try
Also this works off a wolv assist confirm or throw, though hit stun becomes an issue so do it quickly.
Hi guys! interesting reading here to create a well team for frank, I know that the best and easy ways to leveling him up are nova, skrull, tac, etc. But there are better and skilled ways to do it and there are rare teams of frank.
Anyways, Im a frank player and in january I posted that I used spencer/frank/doom in that order, I leveled up with tac only and well…sometimes worked and sometimes not. There was a way also with doing dhc when spencer is doing manouvers then I have 22 hits(if my combo was long enough) and make him go with camera + assist and another camera and lvl4 frank completed.
Right now I want to try something new with spencer/doom/frank but I cant get a viable way to make him lvl4.
what kind of advices can you give me guys? is the team worth it or should I replace doom with dante or stick with the team I like?
Yeah my third character is dante. My magneto is still pretty new so I’m practicing mag blast/hypergrab/fly combos
Also, the combos were sweet and stylish, but were they optimized though?
I also might follow the same path as you if my magneto really gets better lol
Def man! And those combos are damned good, but I know at least the tag --> snap --> DHC to DT --> tag, etc., one isn’t optimized (think it’s his combo 3?). You can actually call Jam Session right after the tag and get a double picture, making your first Survival Tools a lvl 4 one. So it’d be: [tag] (Call Jam Session) Picture, Roundhouse M, Picture, Survival Tools, DHC to DT, tag Frank, Tools H, Tools M, Picture (or Tools Mx2 into hyper or FFC reset depending on what you need).
Also, what Rampage does there using the last shot of Million Dollars to set up a s.S sj.S is pretty brilliant. I haven’t messed with it, but I do have a feeling that you could get more damage after that falling Tools H. He does Knee Drop, Tools H, Knee Drop, which does about 60k at that point. Can you do L Zombie into Kneedrop or am I hallucinating that? I’m gonna try it later…but if you can’t, I think Rampage’s version does more than something like L Zombie, Roundhouse M, (Call JS), Snapshot, Roundhouse M, Roundhouse H, hyper. As far as I can tell, his 3-bar combo is optimized (combo 2 there I think). It doesn’t really matter, though, because at that point you’re killing essentially anyone already. Most of the characters that wouldn’t quite die at 1.05 Mil lose to Tools M into FFC reset anyway, so you could just opt for level 4 and kill them with that.
And Mags definitely takes some work if you’re used to playing Nova, but he’s really fun IMO, and he uses Jam Session incredibly well btw. One you learn how to convert off of it, use it liberally. You can do like whiffed normal+JS into an L Forcefield and actually confirm it (which is insane), so that alone gives you a crazy option select for grounded throws. You can also convert off of L Disruptor with it, which is invaluable against ground and jump-height characters (say Nova/Wolverine). It’s awesome combined with Attraction/Repulsion/Gravitation btw. Vs. incoming you can just call Jam Session and Gravitation and they’ll eat the lockdown on the ground for those 50/50’s.
After an Unscaled Vertical Grapple with Spencer you can just raw tag frank and snapshot into Survival Tech. Then DHC to Bionic Maneuever, TK ZiP ZIP UVG Rawtag frank in again and snap away. Look at that spencer forums for spencer BNB’ to get you started. Doom can DHC array into a whiffed ST. If the order becomes Doom Spencer frank for whatever reason, just DHC from doom into Bionic M, and then Tk zip zip UVG. It’s a very good team
I’m having issues connecting the cH off a cM when i ragtag Any tricks? I can do what you posted just raw from shuma, but i always miss the h when i rawtag. Just learning shuma for like a week now. Any advice?
I’ve been doing the rawtag similar to the hawk eye video (seems more viable)… will that make difference? If you’re doing it the way PR ROG posted, can you try the other way and let me know if it works as well?
Hrm…oh, woops, that’s about the regular combo. The rawtag one, now that I’m labbing it, seems to not work on all hitboxes, so that might be it. I can’t get it at all for Jill. You do have to hit with both shots of the cr.M, and after the eyes, you can certainly do j.MHS and tag Frank.
Hey guys, what would be a good Joe/X/Frank team? The 2nd character needs to be able to get levels for Frank off a midscreen combo, as Joe rarely ends up in the corner off the first hit.
Vergil comes to mind, I could end a Joe BnB with Six Cannon > DHC Swords > Washing Machine > Tag Frank > Picture. I know X/Dante/Frank has a lot going for it, but does the point character have to corner carry in order to set up the Devil Trigger DHC > Tag Frank?
Is Vergil the only character who can set up Frank from midscreen like that?
Pretty much anyone with an install super could have some potential in there. Joe has hard tag setups into Frank (especially if you have a good THC with the other character set up). What do you want the other character to bring to the table?
Oh yeeaahh, I didn’t think about hard tag setups from Joe. Ideally I would want Amaterasu or Dante, their assists would be much better for Joe than Vergil’s. As much as I love Cold Star, it seems like Dante would bring a little better overall synergy, and Jam is still one of Joe’s best assists.
I can’t test it for a few hours, but you definitely gave me some ideas, thanks @TheCape
Any tricks? I can do what you posted just raw from shuma, but i always miss the h when i rawtag. Just learning shuma for like a week now. Any advice?