Okay, so while playing around with X-23/Dante/Magneto was fun, I think I wanna stick to X-23/Deadpool/Hawkeye. It just jives better with the way I want to play X-23. =P That said, I realize this means my neutral game with all 3 of these characters is going to have to be SOLID, but I don’t know that Marvel will teach me the right viewpoint of neutral game to play this team well, and so I’ve picked up Ultra, hoping that playing it long enough will teach me the fundamentals well enough to play Marvel better, specifically this team.
I also noticed that playing other games like SF and Injustice has helped alot with playing Marvel.
I’m finally getting to a point with Mags/Dante/X23 that I feel like I have a solid Mags neutral and finally starting to get the non-double dirt nap gameplan of kill 1st character > touch 2nd character > XF > Dirt nap 3rd with point Mags pretty reliably. (Getting more familiar with situations and damage output with Mags.) Still not double dirt napping on this team as much as my old one (don’t have Dante’s infinite solid yet and I’m not crazy about infiniting for 2 minutes straight) and I feel like it shows in the sets wandles and I have been playing. I feel like we both have pretty solid neutral but when you lose the entire match off of one dropped combo or mistake during start of match it really makes a difference in the overall win ratio. We’ve been averaging ~60:40 his favor for the last month or so and I believe pretty firmly that the 10% difference is almost purely from double dirt nap matches.
I think the X23/Dante shell is pretty much what every team should start with now, strong neutral, throw pickup, dirt nap guarantee, safe DHC, infinite, good damage dhc. Recent tech has pushed this pairing back into the BFF (Sorry Tony, we still love you, though.)
@sykilik101: Have you messed around any with X23/Deadpool/Dante? The DP/Dante synergy is pretty solid and it gives you the unscale glitch to round out DPs damage.
Oh yeah. Also, stumbled across this vid the other day. It’s not a terrible starter for Dante + CS. Actually does good damage if you go into shot loops after. *And less finicky than trying to fit CS into the end of a combo and try to keep track of HSD subtleties.
Funny enough, X-23/Deadpool/Dante was the very first team I picked up in Marvel, and I used it exclusively the whole time Vanilla was out and a long while after Ultimate came out. XD Unfortunately, this team didn’t give X-23 the horizontal assist that she needs. Also, I had conflicts with having Deadpool with Quick Work assist (for Dante) or Katana-Rama assist (for X-23). I suppose if I ran Deadpool/Dante/X-23, it could work if I used it as a double DN team. (Which would be really cool, since they’re my three favorite characters, but I decided that they didn’t flow well enough. Dante’s infinite changes that, though.)
I feel like I looked at quick work once and there’s a way to use it as an extender for X23…I’ll try to take another look at it sometime this weekend.
Honestly, I never experimented too much with using QW with X-23; I’m too enamored with her having Katana-Rama when I pair her with Deadpool. Happy birthday combos are beastly when the OTG hits the character and the assist. Plus, a good chunk of my resets come from things I do after the OTG.
Admittedly, though, calling QW and going for a crossup would be beastly, considering how fast the two moves are.
EDIT: Also, Kyle, I might’ve asked you this before, but are there any majors near you that you attend? I’m going to ECT next year to meet and play against Wedge (to improve my DP play, considering he’s one of the best DPs in the US), and I figure, if you’re going to a major, we could run some sets as well.
FR pretty regularly, CEO next week, (hopefully) TFC in september. Those are pretty much my main majors.
Of those three, I’m more likely to attend FR or CEO, depending on how busy I am with school at those times. Either way, I’ll definitely try to attend one or both next year!
Okay, so Kyle. I realized that I knew Luis’s gameplay style, and so I think to myself, “I’ll go watch Kyle’s videos, see how he plays.” Dude, I never even realized you had some of the same incoming setups as I do; hell, I saw you doing one I figured out last night! XD (MF H, then TA L. Either it hits for meaty or combo confirm, or it whiffs and you cross up.)
I’ve asked this a while ago, so I’m wondering if the general opinion has changed at all. Is dante or ironman still necessary for a dirtnap based x23 team? From the footage of jayto I’ve seen, he seems to hit dirt nap consistently without jam or RB.
You can hit dirt naps all day without js, rb, tenderizer, etc. I still think it’s silly to run a team with x23 on it and not have one of them, though. When your banking so much on hitting the dirt nap consistently, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want it to be as guaranteed as possible. That all said, running the team in the order I do now, I make solo run backs with her pretty regularly. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t have a guaranteed and you can do fine without it. Still, I have as hard time seeing why you wouldn’t run her with Dante at this point in the game, though,
@sykilik101:The third part of that incoming mixup is that it also sets up her guard break on pushblock. Be careful about using it in situations where people aware willing to xf thoug, you’ll get grabbed out if that all day unless you hit it super low on their feet.
If you can hit dirtnaps all day without JS, then what makes dante necessary? JS does not give a late relaunch, and plenty of other characters have TAC infinites.
There’s a difference between CAN hit and RELIABLY hit.
Having the extra assist coverage makes it almost completely fail proof. It’s just there to guarantee they can’t come in mashing shit. The Only time I feel anywhere close to 100% without the guarantee is on snap where her dp times itself meaty almost for free. Otherwise, you have to be on the ball or be playing against people that don’t know the matchup. Potato Salad put up with having to play 2 separate x23s for almost 3 years and there’s a noticeable difference trying to do raw dirt naps against people who know what your going for. Go check out the jayto match against justin wong, Justin just falls in to one of the dirt naps and doesn’t even try pressing a button. Of course your going to hit it when people just let you hit them.
Everything in marvel is about risk minimization. Risking 3 meters and a character and having something go wrong is hard to recover from (especially if you gave your opponent 5 meters with and infinite.)
As far as Dante goes, he’s the best of the characters that can offer a dirt nap guarantee, is a better run back character than iron man, and his assist is great for almost all of the top tier characters. He had my vote even before he got a reliable infinite. He doesn’t optimize for x23 when it comes to combos, but she uses him well in neutral and he picks up off throws, gives her a safe dhc, can use her assists in neutral better than the other two.
If you go back and watch jayto matches, he misses dirt naps, if you watch me and wandles when were down to solo x23, we botch dirt naps. Hell, there are even times where we have assisted dirt naps miss for god knows why. Shit happens. But having shit happen while your opponent is in block stun is infinitely better than having shit go south raw.
It all just goes back to optimization for me. I want to hit dirt naps as consistently as possible since it’s a big part of my gameplay. The assist takes a ton of the work out of it and makes it easier to hard tag x23 in after infinite sand hit the dirt nap, even when you have the opponent die in a wonky spot during the infinite. Why make things harder than they have to be. Dante isn’t a bad character to have on almost any team.
You’re kind of confusing me. You didn’t just say “can hit”, you said, “can hit all day”, which would imply “reliably”. Although from this post I’m getting the message that guaranteed solo dirtnap is still considered to be inconsistent, due to mistiming the meaty and getting thrown or whatever.
Now of course dante is a good partner, especially now with his infinite. But I don’t want to use him if I don’t have to. The main reason is my dante is terrible, and I would actually have to pick him up. He is a high learning curve character, with real execution requirements as well so it is a big time investment to learn to use him properly. The other thing is that without using an assist to force a block on incoming, I could potentially have two relaunch assists and have more efficient post dirt nap combos.
My gimmicky theory team that I was looking into is Nova/Dante/x23. Basically the obvious plan here is just get a hit with nova, tac to dante, then dirtnap the next 2. You get to have a really strong point in nova who also has relaunch assists for x23 for her dirtnap combo. The flaw is that nova with only jam session in the neutral feels like it’s missing something. Nova with plasma beam would be way more solid, but comes at the cost of losing jam session, and as a result the consistent dirtnap if you’re correct.
X-23 is also a high-execution character. =P If you’re willing to put in the work to learn her, and if you’re firm on the idea of having a nearly foolproof Dirt Nap, you may as well put in the same work for her favorite DN partner.
And yeah, the reason a Nova player can do so well is because they usually have some kind of horizontal beam (Plasma Beam, Bolts, etc.) to make his approach safe. Without a beam, Nova isn’t nearly as scary. I certainly wouldn’t be scared of Nova if he didn’t have a beam behind him. =P
As for the whole “can” vs. “reliably” deal, to put it simply, having JS makes it MUCH less likely that you’ll make a mistake, and making mistakes in Marvel can cost you a game. It basically makes landing the incoming DN easier and less likely to fail. Yes, you can do an unassisted DN on incoming, but you might miss, or the person could grab you, or something else, and then you’ve wasted three meters. JS makes it almost 100% certain that you’ll land DN.
Solo dirt nap is not brainless. Consistent hitting a 3 active frames (perfect meaty raw S is the only think I’ve seen that can’t get XF thrown out of) normal meaty against an incoming character is rough, especially with how incoming works on this game. It is probably theoretically possible to hit it solo every time. In practice (for me), it’s nowhere near 100% and whiffed/missed dirt naps suck. I played probably the first year of marvel without a dirt nap guarantee and I don’t think it’s worth the risk or effort to rely on 100%. If you want to sit in the lab and work out the timings for every possible situation, you can (I just have too much other crap I have to master before I can focus solely on that.) You definitely need to know how to set up solo dirt naps for situations where shit doesn’t go your way in a match, but you should always be aiming to have some kind of coverage, whether it’s from an assist or some kind of super. (Purely my opinion, though. Clearly other players like Jayto don’t share my opinion there. If you feel like it’s worth the risk, go for it.)
I agree that nova without any kind of hori coverage sounds like a bad idea and if you don’t want to play Dante there are psuedo guarantees like dark hole and cold star that don’t hit meaty, but you can usually force them into without to much trouble and confirm off the blockstun before activating dirt nap. I’m not crazy about CS for X23, but it would work well in a point nova team. (Don’t remember what her damage scaling is, but I feel like it was on the low side.)
As far as my wording:
“Can hit all day”: I was trying to say ‘yes, it’s possible that you can learn to hit it consistently’ It’s just a tight link with variable timing to account for and watch for XF throw situations or people mashing or if you’re too early, being able to react accordingly so you don’t get stuck invisible and in a corner. Back when I was relying purely on solo dirt naps, I was probably ~85% on hitting dirt naps in casual play and lower when dealing with tournament nerves and for tournament games, it was worth making the change to eliminate every piece of randomness possible.
“Reliably hit”: For me, this means I feel safe saying 95%+ of the time, if I have three meters and JS, your characters is most likely dead or dying. XF throw is still technically a possibility, but it’s a huge window where they have to guess when you’re going to dirt nap them while they’re blocking JS, as opposed to just being able to mash it out since you’re typically going for perfectly meaty.
Her damage scaling is 20%. (Also, small tidbit, she doesn’t reach that scaling until 16 hits.)
And I think the key to working out a solo DN is varying up the method. The thing is, most people don’t seem pushblock any normal/special you throw out when trying to escape DN. Most people try to XF grab or XF super depending on the character. So while I do like to do TA M, I’m rather fond of using a ground CS H as soon as they come in. It’s less susceptible to XF grab, and it’s easier to time than TA M. A mind game I like is jumping and doing TA L, but most think I did M. So they’ll XF and try to grab, except I’m doing CS H to hit and bam, DN. I obviously switch it up, but it’s one method.
From my experience. TA M is grab city (and audio telegraphed), SJ dH/TA L are heavily telegraphed by the camera panning upwards so you watch for the guardspark > XF grab (since they have to use one of those options to get hit you on incoming from SJ height), the grounded stuff (CS H / meaty j.S) are all meant to be as meaty as possible (if you don’t go meaty, you’re susceptible to j.Ls and non-XF throws) and if you’re opponent is mashing XF grab and get a lucky frame one, there’s a strong chance you’re getting grabbed.
That’s my biggest beef with solo dirt nap. I don’t want to have to do a mixup to hit my unblockable. They’re either mashing XF grab or get telegraphed by the camera to wait and mash XF grab. Solo dirt napping players that know her options is tough.
against assisted dirt naps, if you think they’re gonna go for an XF grab, delay your dirt nap attempt for a second and then get them and have them blow their XF.
@sykilik101: Were you talking about Ammy or X23 with the damage scaling? I was meaning Ammy in reference to her meter gain during her infinite.
Yes x23 has some execution requirements but I’ve been playing her as an alt since vanilla, and have already put in a lot of the work. I understand how she works fundamentally, I have bnbs down, and I have neutral game stuff like her crossup talon dive down. Although I don’t have those luis loops down 
. With dante I would be starting from pretty much nothing. But from what you guys are telling me, the consensus has not changed and raw dirt nap is still risky in actual matches.
Is there agreement on who fills the ???/Dante/x23 slot the best? It seems a bit limiting to play a point with only jam session and x23 assists and really narrows down who can succeed here. I’m wondering if it might be worth it to ditch dante and live with your dirtnaps getting thrown/escaped every now and then in exchange for a more solid first 2 that will win in the neutral more often. If I’m not mistaken, hasn’t this route seen the best results(with jayto sometimes) as far as non point x23s go?
You can put almost any of the top tiers point in front of js. I think mags/Dante is the best choice for having synergy in any order and having a number of strong options to deal with a wide variety of match ups… Zero/Dante is an obvious choice. Morrigan/Dante has potential imo. Vergil/Dante wouldn’t be awful.
Nobody can tell you what team you should be paying, though. If you don’t like Dante or any of three other dirt nap guarantee characters, play what feels right to you. Dirt nap is still good even with the guarantee, you just have to take more risks than if you had the assist.
Wandles got 17th at FR playing hulk/iron man/X23. He gets a ton of double dirt naps, he makes you deal with a lot of bullshit from hulk even with having a horizontal assist. He has TODs off every touch with hulk and actually has a whole set of really legitimate hulk mixups off RB. I would never have recommended that team to anybody but he picked it, found the tech for it, and stuck with it and now it’s a super gross team.
Jayto’s team isn’t optimized for the double dirt nap plan but you still get a solid chance to dirt nap their anchor and can alpha counter to X23 and have to doom/vergil shell to fall back on.
As far as overall tournament placing, I think meep’s zero/Dante/X23 is one of the top placing teams. It’s even better now, though I’m not crazy about the team of you get Dante such on point. There’s a Florida player (The Good Book) that’s so proposed to be picking up X23 to start running this team after CEO.
My team (mags/Dante/X23) only just recently (in the last~4 months) got the tech to run a 300% and since none of us were abusing the dash L tech, it seemed like a weaker team since it used to be heavily xf reliant post dirt nap. I think it’s one of the best X23 teams and probably one of the stronger teams in the game. Mags and Dante both take work, but I feel it will be worth it in the long run. Mags gets one of his best assists, high damage dhc, one of the better thc’s in the game, and can cover a large portion of the screen. Dante gets his best assist, a great tac, good neutral dhc gimmicks. I think running X23’s alpha counter is an amazing tool to have access to against other top tiers and really strengthens mags and Dante’s zoning games. X23 gets great neutral coverage at the cost of high damage combos (outside of xf), and gets everything she needs to be a legitimate threat.
In the end, though, pick whatever feels right to you, I’m always more than happy to help develop tech and share old shit for weird pairings whenever I can. You can always change your mind later.
Side note: I did a few short vids showing some Dante + CS combo synergy I’ve found recently. CS actually has a cool property where you can vary the timing of the volcano (in stinger xx BC + X23 xx Volcano) and it effects how high CS juggles (and CS has surprisingly high hitstun early in a combo). If you do the volcano fast, you get some pretty cool combo options like being able to link volcano xx grapple midscreen, or volcano xx million carats in the corner. It also lets you do some of the high execution dante combos but removes the super tight links (such as the midscreen dash C double volcano stuff Rikir showed up way back when.)
Also have an example of what kind of damage you can get from anti-air/mixing up off s.M + CS