41

Well, if anybody has any other questions to steer this thread into a more serious vein again, I’m open to answer them.

For the record, I personally do not believe the infinite or launch into sj. fp XX JD is particularly useful. The infinite can be done fairly consistently, yes, but I’m not at all convinced that there isn’t going to be at least a little randomness in the way people bounce, and if you misjudge it at any point, guess what, the other guy just lived. I’ve never been much of a fan of infinites for any char, really… even Magneto, IMO, doesn’t really need his infinite that much except as a setup for either resets, snapbacks, or supers. It’s similar with BH… I think that building a team that’s geared towards letting BH infinite in the first place hurts him too much on more or less everything else for the sake of flashy combo numbers.

BH/Sentinel/Commando gives BH the drones assist (one of the better defensive helps and horizontal space controllers in the game) and Commando assist (the best vertical space control help next to BH himself in the game, the best all-around countercall, and it also sets up most of his nastiest DHCs). If you build a team around infinites you raise the bar on your execution to get things done under pressure (rarely wise) and you take away the countercall and space control of Commando in favor of Cyclops (which I think is, on the balance, a bad move). If you build a team around infinites that are going to kill someone on one hit, you also have to take out Sentinel in favor of Cable or Storm, thus taking away his defensive help and horizontal space control. IMO, that’s too much team chemistry being given away in trade for a combo aspect of his game that he doesn’t really need.

Hopefully that interjects a bit more of an even-toned substance to the thread.

42

hahahaha. Oh really? If you’ve really played me at the pit than I’m sure you’re lying. I usually get like 10 wins in a row when I’m there. And by the time I reach 10 wins I want to use a different team. And that’s with me toying around with people (it’s only a quarter to play so there’s no reason to be serious). So who are you and who did you use against me huh? How long ago did you play me anyway? And when do you want to play me again so that I can hand you a serious ass whooping and expose your lie? I call fake on this guy, cuz I’ve OCV’d the fuck out of everyone I’ve played there when even semi serious.

43

For the record, I don’t think there is any real use for BH’s launcher, sj.fp into JD either (with exception of a storm DHC, which there 's still better alternatives to). I just put that as an alternative for a better combo into the JD. I myself never use it even though it’s really not that hard to pull off. Also I agree that building a team geared around BH’s infinite weakens him greatly b/c his play becomes limited and predictable. And indeed you weaken sentinel as well if you really want to use cyclops.

Note I said earlier to learn to use cyclops as a means of working on your defense b/c you must be a more calm and composed player to not get stomped out with him as an assist. I feel people get too assist happy with Commando personally, which weakens his use. Don’t you agree? By playing with a cyclops assist, some of these newcomers out there might learn some patience and composer which would improve their defense right off the back. Don’t you agree? And IMO a person who has good defense and assist control with cyclops will end up having great defense with commando which is obviously the better anti air anyway.

As you can see I agree with everything you stated above, EXCEPT for the comment on the infinite being done only fairly consistently. The version I use is so easy to pull off that I don’t mess up. I even taught my friend Chubroq, who posted above, how to do it consistently in like 5 minutes and he can state how simple it is as well. He’ll tell you that when I want to actually do the infinite (which is rare anyway) I do NOT mess up. Despite this I still agree with you on the fact that he does NOT even need the infinite. The only real purpose for learning it or working on it IMO is to us it as a method of improving timing which you must have to at least some degree if you’re going to be effective with BH.

Having said this I would just like to reiterate Stilt’s call for more even toned substance on this thread. I’d also like to apologize for the sidetracking from the subject that has taken place do to my original post. I suppose I should have just humbled myself and let it be. any questions that someone might have I’m more than happy to give a co-opinion with Stiltman or dasrik on to help out.

44

Hey I just thought of a question that should get this thread back on track. This goes out to Stilts and Dasrik and anyone else with some strategy. What’s you strategy for playing against a team like:

  1. Sin’s team
  2. MSP
  3. Sprial teams
  4. Strider/ Doom teams

I have my own pretty effective strategy for these teams but I’d like some out side ideas on how to deal with them. I’m always looking to get better so I think a combination of different strategies would in the end make for a better blackheart. Let’s just assume that we’re using BH/xxx/commando for this question okay.

45

Handling spiral teams or Strider/doom teams can be quite difficult sometimes. I the best way that i can think of is to keep away and predict thier moves and capcom them. either that or if u find a big mistake snap out cable and burn them 5 meters u’ve been waiting to use.

46

vs. Team Scrub: This hella depends on the person controlling the team. On the average Team Scrub, Doom/BH/Commando actually still works well. Sentinel is NOT trapping this team, and between inferno and corridor, it’s hard for the average Joe to start flystomping. When you’re playing Blackheart on point vs. Sentinel and especially when Cable is coming in, it’s important to not give ground at all. Put Sentinel in a box where he can’t approach you that well to do damage, and chip occasionally with Inferno xx JD if you can’t land any clean hits. Don’t Inferno xx HOD unless the opponent only has two meters. vs. Cable, as long as you stay above him and you haven’t screwed up on Sentinel, Blackheart can do his job alright.

vs. MSP: Two ways to approach this fight - keepaway method (jumpback fierce and call AAA when they get close) and fort method (jump in place, call projectile assist and dash when they get close). IMO, fort method is most effective because it doesn’t require you to put yourself out at risk by jumping with fierce. It’s easiest with Sentinel drones, but can work with Doom rocks, Sabretooth gunshots or what have you. If the MSP player is very aggressive, keepaway method might actually work better though because if Magneto runs into enough drones, you can combo them into AA (Commando) and end the Magneto fight early. If you kill Magneto, then you have an easy time with Storm, just don’t fall on her launcher and don’t eat any hails.

vs. Spiral: BH is more useful as an assist in this fight, but if you bring him in on point, you want to try to rush Spiral and keep her from getting swords. You get to throw out Infernos without supers in this fight, as long as you’re backed up decently with an assist that can run interference vs. knife traps. If she gets swords, the standby SJ.RH airdash RH works as a strategy until she gets rid of her swords. You want to try to kill Spiral if you can, because BH fighting Cable while Spiral assist is still alive might mean you’ll end up losing even if you’re able to put a dent in Spiral.

vs. Strider/Doom: Somewhat like Spiral, except you don’t have to worry as much about killing Strider. Well, you do if you don’t have a great Blackheart, because Doom can mess you up if you’re not careful. Jumping around really doesn’t work because of animal farm; SJ.RH works better most of the time, but if you get close, you want to try to stay close. As for Doom, the trick to fighting Doom with Blackheart is to superjump at the same time he does so his gunshot will have a hard time connecting with you.

Just some notes.

47

thanx for your post but I think you need to explain what you’re trying to say better. If you just try to keep away from spiral teams and strider doom teams, how do you do it. I myself would rather keep the pressure on these types of teams, using the lk, and demon so that they can’t activate there spinning little friends. I find that they’re not so dangerous if you stop them from activating their key weapons. If you’re going to use this strategy though, I suggest you pay close attention to any AAs that they might have. Get too aggressive and you get blasted back and have to deal with the swords, ourobouros, and doom’s assist anyway. If they do get there offense going you just have to play smart defense and not get chipped to death. In the case of a strider/doom team I suggest that you sj, throwing RH demons if possible to disrupt strider from pinning you down. Realize this is the only time I would advise sj. You’re much more effective on the ground level. I’m curious to see what others might think about these situations. So give your input.

48

There’s some good stuff here that he posted. For team scrub I’ve found that you can be pretty aggressive on sentinel w/ BH. Even with a commando assist to get around you can lay the pressure on him with a lot of j.lks and FPs while calling out your own commando to counter any efforts they might put up to fight back. Remember to be careful once you’ve called out your assist though. if you’re not careful you’ll see you assist taking a beating (eventually dying b4 you know it). BH’s JD is your best friend in this match-up.

I wasn’t going to say this but you really are better off using BH as an assist against spiral. It isn’t necessary but you can almost completely stop her from ever activating sword w/o getting punished in the process. you should call him out whenever they might try to jump and be ready to follow up with another attack that you’ll need if they block the AA and still try to activate.

I like what he posted on dealing with MSP and use similar tactics. I would advise mixing it up between what he said so as not to become to obvious w/ your strategy. The main idea you should be using here is, jab if they’re close and FP if they aren’t, using an AA when appropriate. One of my favorite things to do is try to punish Psylocke every time she is called with an assist of my own(commando). Make sure to still be guarding retaliation from they’re front man though or you’ll find you and your assist getting raped. Also don’t get too happy with your assist. rely on it too much and you’ll find BH getting snap out and you assist being juggled to death.

49

Yeah i have hard time with those teams but i ment playing a mind game and finding mistakes to go at them. If i was a better bh and knew how to not get carried away i would prollie rush them down and not let get a chance at knives or drones or what ever they got for me but thats prollie not till another month or so.

50

im working on a BH/doom, anyone got pointers for that combo?

51

And i quote, myself again, i walk away from matches sometimes, since you pretty much destoryed my first two characters. And you still have 3 characters in tact. I am the guy using sentinel, cable, commando. I lost to your blackheart 7 out of 8 times. :mad:

I play you when you were using blackheart, cable, commando. And magneto, ironman, psylocke.
I beat you when you had blackheart, strider, doom with team scrub.
The only team i didn’t beat, i lost 9 straight times is blackheart, storm (expansion), commando.

Well anyways, infinite into launch + commando (had that doen to me decent amount of timemany time), does half life at least.

52

Team Scrub can either go really good or really bad. It all depends on whether the other player is mentally prepared to win a patience fight with you. If they’re going to start Cable, then your job is to gang up on him with both Sentinel and BH and get him off point without losing either of your two principals. Preferably by killing him, but one way or the other, you’ve got to exploit the fact that you’ve got two assists for your side and their Sentinel only has one. That’s generally the plan for any Cable/XXX/Commando… get their Cable of point and then work from the fact that Sent/BH/Commando usually has a serious advantage on any XXX on that team.

If they start Sentinel and try to rush at you (i.e. they’re not playing it patiently) you play it defensive and let him come.

If they’re truly prepared to win a patience fight with you though, they’re usually going to succeed. This is one reason why I still keep a Team Scrub of my own in practice; BH/Sent/Commando does much better against the overwhelming number of Magneto teams out there than it does against a stone-cold patient Cable/Sent//Commando.

However, there aren’t many people who are prepared to win a patience fight with me, so I don’t automatically stop playing BH/Sent/Commando when I see Team Scrub.

Run from Magneto. Take away the ground with a combination of j. fierce, Sentinel’s drones, and pokes, and force him to over the top where his offense is one-dimensional and one-directional. You will get the first solid hit a lot more often than he will, and he won’t survive the DHC. Then Sentinel can play with a lead, Commando and BH on Storm/Psylocke. This is almost always horrifically bad for Storm.

Start Sentinel. Spiral can win patience fights with BH just by remembering to block and pushblock. Sentinel and Commando don’t help him much on that. However, Sentinel/BH/any-AAA against Spiral is about the most one-sided matchup there is among the top eight or nine chars. Spiral has absolutely no chance in that fight. Let Sentinel maul Spiral and let BH hold the lead against whoever is behind her.

Start BH. If they’re starting Strider, play a patient running game and make him work hard for everything. BH has close-range reach advantage on Strider, teleport attacks are very dangerous to try on BH because any Commando hit that you anticipate getting because of the teleport can lead to a DHC that will most definitely kill Strider outright, and Strider simply can’t build the meter he needs to stay with BH if he only starts with the one he gets at the beginning if BH doesn’t get wild. As long as BH does enough damage to Strider that Strider can’t stay on point much after BH, Sentinel will win this fight against the rest of the team, because there’s no Strider/XXX/Doom combination where XXX/Doom or Doom/XXX is going to get very far on Sentinel/BH/Commando.

If they’re starting a battery char and putting Strider second, keep playing it defensive, use Sentinel’s drones to cut away the ground, and keep their first char from using Doom on you much. Sentinel’s drones should keep most any char other than Strider himself from getting a lot of usefulness out of Doom on this team, and if you play it carefully they shouldn’t be able to meaningfully chase BH down too much. Then Sentinel fights Strider later on, and goes trap versus trap. Trying to keep a Strider/Doom trap going on a patient Sentinel/BH is hellaciously hard.

53

I’m not doubting it now when you include the juggle as an inferno by itself. shrug

54

Just wanted some pointers because I’m starting to use Spiral/Blackheart/Cyclops. Not really interested in using any of the the big 4 and I think this team is pretty decent without them. Mostly I just use Spiral for battery until about I get max’ed out meter so that blackheart can come in [Through DHC or Circle of Swords] for inferno xx HOD, air judgements w/ Cyclops assist, sj. jab, c.short into Cyke AAA into infinite or inferno into HOD or Armageddon.

I have a question though. Like if it’s in the corner… would it be better to do Inferno xx HOD or Armageddon? I noticed that some of the demons go outside of the screen and don’t hit the opponent as much. Whereas Armageddon hits most of the time but there is a few cases where there is enough space in the meteors that it misses. Oh and also is the Armageddon mashable?

55

Yes, and you can hold forward to get the meteors to move forward slightly. Also you can sometimes sj and follow up as it ends depending on how it hits (height related I think) - rare though.

56

dude, if he knows where u play and played u, y does he have to be lying?

he even said he walked away cause u beat him bad, that shows his honest and he probably has played u.

take it easy man.

57

If you look at his original post it could be mistaken for him saying that my BH sucked worse than my cable. And if he WAS saying that, claiming that he played me, that would make him a liar. I already said mah bad to him on a private message so don’t think me to be some shady person aiight.

58

Okay a spiral/BH combination can actually be pretty good but I recommend that you don’t use cyclops with this team. you’re much better off with a commando assist b/c cyclops won’t take the pressure off you from someone like BH, sent, Mag or storm. Plus you really don’t want to try to base this team on the infinite. your game plan with this team will be limited to chipping or the infinite which will make BH less effective. As for the which super is better to cancel into while in the corner. IMO it would be HOD. you can connect a RH demons as they are falling from getting blasted and if timed right they will be stuck standing there red-orange with demons holding them. From here you can jump in j.lk, j.lk, l.k, rh giving you an additional 15 point of damage. This tends to be more damage than you’d get from armageddon on average and I’m not sure but I think you can repeat the j.lk, j.lk, lk, rh over and over again without worry of them mashing out of the demons. I’ve done this too my friend a few times and he swares that he couldn’t mash out of it. But it’s always been a case of where he was dying as I did the second j.lk part. If anyone can check this I’d appreciate it.

59

Now, Spiral/BH/AAA is a team where I would be ambivalent about whether I’d rather have Cyclops or Commando as the AAA (assuming I didn’t want to just put Cable in there). Yeah, I know I’ve said that Commando is better for BH, but I think Cyclops may be more better for Spiral. Her main problem matchup is going to be Sentinel, and Cyclops creates just that much more space and block stun for her than Commando does. With Commando, you’ve got less blockstun although a little more space control, but if they block it you’ve got far less time to capitalize on the breathing room you’ve created before you have to be ready to follow up. OTOH, just about any blocking of Cyclops is a free swords call… there’s a very good reason why Duc used to play Spiral/Cable/Cyclops before he discovered Sentinel as a third char, and continued to play both teams for a long, long time. Even these days, when he doesn’t want to use Spiral/Cable/Sentinel it’s my understanding that he likes to sometimes go to Spiral/Sentinel/Cyclops. I haven’t played with Spiral/Cyclops nearly enough to really claim a huge amount of intelligence on it, but I do know that I think it’s enough better than Spiral/Commando against people prepared to be patient on Spiral that I think it may be worth sacrificing BH’s Commando help for it.

60

^ I was debating that too. Commando or Cyke. But Cyke gave me more breathing room [block stun] for me to load swords and shoot some to cover Cyke. Anyways I know Commando is a great assist and does a nice chunk of damage he is a very crappy character. At least when I have Cyke I have 3 dependable characters rather than 2 since Commando has NOTHING favorable against any of the big 4 [Or AA assists like Cyke and Psy]. Plus really you already have a rather large AA with Blackheart’s AA. Even though it may not be quick but with Spiral’s swords and teleports it can knock out just about anything [with proper distancing]. Plus Cyke invinciblity which I think it’s crucial to snuff out Doom AA’s, Capcom AA’s, Tron AA’s, Sentinel Ground, Storm Projectile.

I really don’t focus on the infinite too much. Maybe land about 2 reps then launch into whatever. Mostly I try to focus on sj. jumping and throw RH demons, airdash to try to cross up with a sj. short land c.short, call cyke, c.foward Cyke hits, inferno into HOD. Works pretty nicely for a blocked chain too since I think when you throw in Cyke then Inferno it’s pretty hard to guard cancel it. But then again I only know of a few people who can actually guard cancel the inferno xx HOD but I noticed that they can’t get it off when Cyke comes in. Guess it fucks up the timing or they are doing it wrong.