If you run Dante, you should be able to DHC from Six Cannon into Devil Trigger and then do SRK+M~M (back dash) S~H~fH(bold cancel) jQCF+H and tag Frank.
I’ve been learning Vergil/Frank/Ammy with a friend and it seems promising. He chose Ammy over Dante because he prefers the horizontal lockdown and Ammy as an anchor character over Dante.
Any tips or tech that we should be looking at for?
I am not really a frank player, but I have been trying to build a team around him for a while that seems fun to me. I was curious if anyone knew if Viper could Level Frank up effectively? I have been toying with the idea of Viper/Frank/Strider, but My knowledge of Viper and Frank is too limited to really tell if it is possible.
Viper is possible for sure. I don’t personally play her, but I think the levelup strategies thread is up to date on her leveling tech. What I would really say is that X/Frank/Strider is something you definitely want to avoid. Vajra is a good assist, but not top tier support for everyone. Level 5 Frank doesn’t use it very well, but it is truly horrible for Level 1 Frank. Even if it hits with no left/right and you have the spacing to convert into full jump loops off j.Tools H you’ve already deprived yourself of your only leveling asset by (Vajra double picture). Vajras also an incredibly easy assist to punish, and Frank just can’t defend it well enough.
That’s pretty dirty man. My only problem is that to maximize the damage from Spideys hard tags you’d really have to end up with him on anchor… Not sure how I feel about XF3 Spidey but maybe it’s possible? IIRC the current optimized followup Frank gets post-tag with a Million Dollars THC (if he still has his ground bounce) adds ~620k. It’d probably about max out Spideys damage for a combo starting at one bar.
Thanks man. Vajra is certainly more for Viper than for Frank. I feel like I would try and Get Strider in on point with Shopping cart assist before I would try to play Level 1 Frank with Vajra. This team is sort of just three characters that I have toyed with on other teams and wanted to try and find a good team for, so I was curious if they all fit together in a functional way.
This is something I’ve been looking for too, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much tech on Viper/Frank right now (that I’ve been able to find, at least). Other than TAC, the only other option I know of to level Frank is Burst Time, which can be DHC-whiffed and followed by a Knee Drop (really tight timing) or c.H, s.S, sj.S, Knee Drop, Snap Shot. However, depending on HSD, at best you can hope for level 3 at the expense of 2 meters; longer combos will see HSD reset the opponent. Shopping Cart is pretty good for Viper and also allows for a fairly simple relaunch extension, but if you have Vajra I guess it’s not that significant.
Assuming you do pull off the TAC or DHC, personally I find Viper BK to be the most useful assist for Frank compared to her other two options. At level 4/5, BK assist will cancel ground-bounce to extend Frank’s combos, you can easily hit 900K~1mil just with a magic series combo ending with double Tools M and ToS and it works anywhere. Looking at your team lineup, I would assume you will bump into players who will snap in Strider; if they get the kill, level 1 Frank will come in in front of Viper. This is pretty common and actually I personally find BK assist to be a great tool for the poorly equipped level 1 Frank; BK assist is a soft-knockdown and is HS immune. It hits high, so a c.H timed before BK comes out will usually catch unaware opponents by surprise. There’s a pretty decent amount of time to confirm with another c.H, and you can go into a full combo from there. Once you have Frank’s roll, you can work on the same concept and throw in left-right mix-ups as well.
I hope some of that information helps you! Please share if you find anything on Viper and Frank, I main Frank/Skrull/Viper so it’s pretty relevant to me as well!
The thing about this game that I have found to be true time and time again is that when something seems like it isn’t possible, it likely just means you haven’t tried hard enough to make it possible. I would not have thought that you could get a knee drop after burst time, but now that I know that, it seems like a good place to start figuring things out.
My main team is Mag/Dok/Doom, so this team is kind of on the back burner. But Viper, Frank, Strider were all characters I tried working in with Modok, and who all fell a bit short of what I was looking for, but I enjoyed aspects of all three characters play styles (and like all three as characters in their own right). I figure I can always take the easy way out and just put Doom with beam in the middle, but Frank seems a bit more interesting to me to try and figure out. Plus, I like the idea that this team potentially has two win conditions, one with Viper/Vajra incoming setups, and one with possibly getting level 4/5 Frank with burn kick/vajra assist. Plus you get the potential comebacks in anchor Strider.
I know Jam Session is pretty much the better choice compared to Vajra, but I have just had no interest in playing Dante outside of his assist.
I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I’m not giving up on my line-up despite some rough patches here and there.
I started off playing Viper point, Viper is my strongest character and probably the one character I’ve invested the most lab time in. I had a Frank-centric lineup as an alt but eventually I realized I really enjoyed playing both characters, but found a lack of options with them on the same line-up. So I can understand the feeling, just sticking Doom or Dante in despite not enjoying playing them as characters really felt wrong to me, despite the logic and benefits in doing so.
Finally got to test that DHC out. Definitely a tight timing into the knee drop, but it seems like doing a Viper combo into knee drop + vajra can net two pictures, and what I would assume to be a level 4 Frank.
Hi everyone, Ive been playing frank since ultimate came up, and my main team of spencer/frank/doom wasnt giving me the results I wanted, I ended up doing tacs or loops to get frank lvl3/4 and I was using spencer just for the double lift for snapshot, and anchor doom doing what he better does, footdive.
A friend told me to try changing my team for the results in a lot of casual and tournaments, I like spencer but I knew that in my actual team, he was doing nothing. So I decided to move on a different team and I liked Nova/Frank/Dante, I watched videos and the set up of lvl4 frank with jam session is really great! and I like how Nova can easily lvl up frank with either DHC or TAC and you get insta lvl4 frank and if you are good you can get him to lvl5 with proper jam assist.
What advices can you give me in this new 2014 adventure with this new team? I really enjoy all the answers you guys give to everyone and hope to receive good ones
It’s definitely a high-level Frank team, and it’s a smart switch from Spencer/Frank/Doom. If you like Spencer a lot and want to keep using him sometimes learning Dante will let you run Spencer/Dante/Frank as well, which has excellent level-up damage.
For Nova/Frank/Dante, the most important thing you want to know for leveling purposes is that keeping an eye on Nova’s meter can be the difference between TOD’ing while you get chainsaws and not. The video below has Frank follow-up combos for the following situations (in order):
Nova is farther out than midscreen and has to use his ground bounce in order to hit 2 bars
Nova hits 2 bars during his flight loop and before sj.S. You can add a qcf.L/M here for a little extra meter, but watch your red health so you don’t wall bounce.
Nova starts the combo midscreen with 1 bar or more
Nova starts the combo in the corner with a bar or more.
To really optimize those combos you’d want to tack on a Knee Drop after all the final Tools M wall bounces. Roundhouse M is easier and works as well, but it’s slightly less damage. Those combos all still work when you confirm off of Shopping Cart.
For Frank’s combos you want to use Cent Rush to reset Frank’s ground bounce in basically everything you do. The only exception is the corner combo where you use it at the end to set up 3x Tools M’s. The BnB’s:
Because Frank is so strong with Jam Session (and Nova can’t level Frank from anchor position), you should also get used to leveling Frank with Dante on point. This can also help if Nova dies and level 1 Frank can’t handle whatever matchup he’s forced into. Really the only crucial thing to remember is that DHC’ing from Million Dollars to Frank in the corner is much easier if you use Skydance to side switch. You can do the DHC facing the corner, but on bigger bodies it can be pretty tough, and it’s fairly tight even on regular-sized characters. Dante/Frank levels:
As general advice, be very careful using Cent Rush as a mixup when you’re playing Frank. It can work, but it’s not very safe. If Nova dies and you’re playing level 1 Frank, remember that Zombies (both Swingers and Walkers) are as good at level 1 as they are later. They can make a huge difference, and you have Jam Session to help you get the space to swing one out and start charge partitioning Walkers. Obviously your THC can be amazing for sniping assists, but be wary of flight characters who could be jumping as you THC and have time to fly across and kill Dante. From a distance, the THC beats hypers like Bionic Arm and whatever Viper’s invincible hyper is, but never call it vs. a character with a really fast happy birthdaying level 3 like Zero. In fact you usually shouldn’t call it vs. characters with level 3’s at all, but Zero’s is particularly bad because 1) it’s tempting to try to snipe him when he shuts level 1 Frank down 2) His hyper destroys Dante instead of just sucking Frank into a cinematic.
For Nova, I like to use Jam Session primarily for spacing and setting up Pulses and Shopping Cart for switching to rushdown. Cr.M+Cart is pretty ridiculous in terms of both range and ease-of-conversion. On block you also have time to dash and instant overhead j.L. Don’t do cr.M+Cart and finish the Magic Series (meaning completing cr.MHS) because if you get blocked you lose your mixup opportunities. Just doing cr.M+Cart lets you visually confirm a hit and follow with another c.rMHS or whatever you want to do. Otherwise Cart + boxdash H is pretty dumb, so there’s that.
When anchoring Dante you really need to learn a combo that kills in XF3 and doesn’t use Million Dollars. It’s crucial to not wasting your XFactor time.
Thanks a lot for that answer!!! I was doing the corner combo with frank lvl5 and I did 1 mill, that was really awesome! finally killing with lvl5 frank and I have to say, that this team is the best for frank! thanks
You make it so tempting to go back to playing that team.
I’m curious what you and Zansam think about the future of Nova/Dante/Frank against Magneto/Dante/Frank. I’ve been playing Magneto on point lately just because I feel like he does better against the top tier (especially Zero) but Nova is less draining to play in terms of execution, and I actually feel like he gets more from shopping cart than Magneto does compared to something like missiles which allows him to fly around and do his superman thing.
Yeah that’s tricky. I don’t know whether Dante or Mags would be more execution heavy…I guess it depends on what we’re talking about. Dante’s neutral game involves fairly simple inputs, but his game is soooo spacing dependent that you could definitely call it “draining.” Magneto technically has more demanding inputs in neutral I’d say (lotta kara stuff going on and mandatory plink dashing), but because of his movement and Magnetic Blast/Disruptor, it’s much easier for him to control space and understand when to switch to rushdown. I wouldn’t count combos because that’s more a matter of practice than stamina, but Dante certainly has to deal with differences in character size/fall speed more often than Mags, although characters like Tron and Nemesis can give Magneto a headache for sure.
For the teams…it comes down to both being viable but not getting a lot of attention at high levels of play. Speaking strictly about “the future” of the two teams, I would say that Mag/Dante/Frank is getting a lot more recognition and has significantly more theory-cred than Nova/Frank/Dante. If by “the future” we mean, “will either of these teams end up being fairly visible in tournaments,” I think that’s the major factor. Nova/Frank/Dante is good…I love it personally…but its cons to me strengthen arguments against using Frank at all (on a theoretical level). Some reasons:
Matchups: As you said, matchups are a big deal. Magneto does very well across the board, and once you have a good feel for how to play against Buster, you can evade it quite well. Zero/Jam Session is obviously fantastic, but it’s most likely that JS is going to be called to prevent your forward momentum. Magneto’s excellent keepaway lets him play patiently vs. Zero/JS, and Nova has pretty much no options when it comes to flight-based zoning. Played right, Magneto can find space to fly, throw out a Mag Blast for durability, and call Jam Session to prevent grabs while the throws out another one or induces blockstun and does addf.S xx Blast to capitalize. Disruptor zoning is obviously good (less so vs. Zero situationally maybe), and JS lets you confirm off of it. On block it (meaning EMD+JS) locks down for at least a high/low/throw depending on your spacing. Zero/Strider is stronger in this matchup IMO, but even there, Magneto can use JS to cut off the screen and make space to punish Vajra easily. Nova has fine matchups, and actually does pretty well against Magneto. Depending on how I felt, I might actually mirror Nova if I was playing a Nova team, but it really depends on what his assists are. Vs. team Nemo, I’d probably play Mags.
Assist Synergy: Magneto/Jam Session is good…I mean it’s fucking good, and Magneto uses Shopping Cart surprisingly well. Cart has very little effect on HSD and creates easy confirms, so you don’t have to worry about altering your conversions/combos. Flight crossup left/rights with Cart and be very effective in certain matchups, and, in general, Magneto is incredible with two sub-40-frame lockdown assists that he can alternate to extend blockstun until your opponent loses the 50/50 battle. Boxdash Blast + Cart is also pretty amazing if spaced correctly. That being said, Nova uses Cart really well. Imo it’s a better Cold Star for him (and we know from Moons how well that can work). cr.M+Cart is pretty stupid, leading to free high/lows on block, and building extra meter on hit to increase your chances of being able to DHC Frank in pre-groundbounce for a follow-up with Jam Session. But I just don’t think Nova/Jam Session is that great…I mean it’s fine…most characters aren’t worse with Jam Session behind them obviously He can throw it out for durability to set up a Pulse/zoning game, and he can convert off of it…but keep in mind that you are often going to be forced to avoid converting with j.S…because if you do, and you use f.H to OTG, you have to have two bars during the following flight series. You can’t bring them down and OTG with Cent Rush L for extra meter because you risk having Survival Techniques connect. Maybe people are better at leveling off of Cent Rush L than I am…but I played with it a decent amount and it wasn’t very consistent. The fact that Nova’s addf tri-jumps are poor also means that he has a hard time quickly jumping over and opponent while Jam Session is forcing them to block…which means he can’t capitalize on Jam Session’s pushback as well and get that absurd left/right like Mags.
Crossover Counters: This point is probably under-emphasized when we talk about Frank. We’re playing a character who often doesn’t end up using XFactor until it’s time to make killing the opponent’s last character easier…Shopping Cart is a solid CC vs. characters without multi-hitting normals (so no Zero unfortunately :P), and it can be wellllll worth burning your XFactor. Yes, CC’ing with Nova/Frank/Dante gets you level 4, but that’s about it. CC’ing with Mag/Dante/Frank gives you access to Dante’s THC. Since you’re guaranteed to have both assists available during the follow-up to a Crossover Counter, we know that Frank can always reach two bars to THC, even if he begins at zero (meaning CC’d at 1 bar). This is not the combo that was in my video…you can actually do the relaunch with Disruptor, build two bars/hit level 3 by the Knee Drop, and THC with Dante while still having your ground bounce intact. That last means that you can THC, s.S sj.S (since it’s immune to hitstun), and Tools H into an L Zombie…and you’re already at level 5 when you do this, so you can actually end with Tools M and hyper. It’s insane. Burning that XFactor is much more wortwhile if you’re guaranteed to kill as well. Nova/Frank/Dante simply can’t offer that.
Without Frank: Assist synergy basically undergirds this point…assuming Frank dies and you’ve followed your normal leveling trajectory…Dante/Magneto is much better than Nova/Dante. Dante/Mags can be played in either order and be fantastic (Mag/Dante might actually be better here honestly, but they’re both solid). Nova/Dante can’t…Dante/Nova is just terrible. Dante has pretty much no neutral assist (although you might be able to Stinger+Cent Rush xx Crystal for a frame trap into mediocre high/low, but that’s not really neutral), and both Mags and Dante are better anchors than Nova IMO. Frank doesn’t always win when he levels, so these are important factors. Jam Session only makes Nova’s damage problems worse, and while you could probably get a better reset by doing a Nova combo into Cent Rush L xx Nova Force xx DT and setting up a Grapple reset with Dante, you’re 1) wasting meter on an install hyper and 2) now running Dante/Nova, which is ass.
Damage Control: Could have put this as the biggest factor, but it’s pretty obvious. At least the way I set it up, Frank adds about 365k to a long/high damage Nova combo, and he can only do this if you have the screen positioning (or meter beforehand) to DHC before you use your groundbounce. Frank adds almost 630k to Magneto combos, which is just ridiculous…and can pretty much kill Thor when added to Mags’ pre-tag damage. Total Nova/Frank damage caps under 1.1Mil under optimal conditions (corner). Usually you’re barely breaking 1Mil. Additionally, Nova absolutely has to hyper, however briefly, before Frank can level. Being generous, this means you’re often doing 550k before Frank even gets chainsaws. Magneto can level Frank for as little as 450k (corner), or, more generally, about 500k (anywhere). Because Mags’ method is a hard tag, you can also tag Frank vs. characters with extremely low health and get at least level 3 by doing Jam Session + Snapshotx2 and going into Survival Techniques with Frank to kill. Being a cinematic hyper, ST leaves you more than enough time to tag Magneto back into handle incoming, and your anchor Frank is now level 3 with no added complications. I essentially never give Magneto the kill, even if I get a touch on someone who’s been worn down to next to no health.
Frank’s neutral: Written too much at this point…pretty self-evident that Frank uses Disruptor better than Cent Rush outside of combos. EMD allows Object Toss conversions, sets up charged partitioned Walkers from full screen, works well with Roll, and converts into grounded Tools L loops. Because it 1) barely scales and 2) sets up those Tools L loops, it is quite possibly the best grounded conversion Frank gets off of a roll in terms of damage/meter build. Something like Quick Work is a possible exception.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the comparison. If it sounds biased, keep in mind that I mained Nova/Frank/Dante for a long time and I love that team. I still run it, but it’s just not as good.
The other major factor is the benefit of running Frank anchor with Dante in front of him. That’s probably an argument with no real answer, and I can see people being uncomfortable anchoring Frank…it’s well worth it though IMO. Dante is just sooo good in front of him…even just raw Stinger xx Reverb Shock into Million Dollars xx ST lets you relaunch at level 4 with Jam Session into Tools M’s and it’s a great way to Happy Birthday if used intelligently. If Frank had a really good Beam assist anchor, I’d run Dante/Frank/whoever, but he doesn’t. I tried Spitfire for a while (thanks for the tips Zansam), but IMO it’s just not strong enough for Dante. Leveled up Frank with Spitfire/JS is pretty godlike though, I gotta say.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Doom/Frank/Dante is actually stronger than Nova for the traditional X/Frank/Dante shell…
Think about what’s better for a Frank team. Frank makes better use of Disruptor + Jam then CR + Jam. Mag/Dante/Frank kills most (if not all) of the cast AND gets Frank to Level 4/5. And if Frank dies (even after being levelled), Mag/Dante is a better shell.
As for the point character, Magneto is better. Yes, cart isn’t Magneto’s ideal assist but it’s not bad. And Jam Session is better suited for Magneto than Nova because of the former’s mobility options, mixups and conversions.
Edit: I just realised that Slippaz answered the question in much more detail.
Yep. I like the level-up characters in this game (except Jean, because she’s already a pretty good character and because I don’t like saving meter when spending it is so much better) and Mag/Dante/Frank seems to be the best (and, hopefully, most fun) Frank team. I really need to work on Dante though. Those normals
I really like the Mag/Dante shell over the Nova/Dante shell any day. Well said, Slippaz. I can’t really add much input to the argument since I have very little experience with either Magneto or Nova, but just by playing against so many people, I know fighting Magneto is a lot harder than fighting a Nova. One thing I also have to say I like, if ever for some reason you haven’t leveled Frank already, Gravity Squeeze is a pretty funny way to do it.
Don’t mind me though, I’ll just be over here mashing Bionic Arm to level up Frank. ;_;