Ruby Heart vs Sentinel:
There isn’t a lot of info in this thread about this fight even though it’s both the most common one seen as well as the hardest one she has, so I’ll give it a try.
Long story short, she has the advantage on the ground, and he has the advantage in the air, but since the fight is going to be fought in the air most of the time, you have to learn how to fight with her in the air.
The air fight boils down to patience, IMO. She has some advantages in terms of priority, but like many other characters, the two real issues she will run into are Sentinel’s j/fl.fierce priority and its range. Her j.fierce is a far better tool for her when he is on the ground than when he is in the air; it will trade with his j.fierce at a disadvantage, but the bigger concern is the move’s recovery time. Instead, her main attacks that she’ll work with are her j.short and her j.jab.
Her j.short and j.jab outprioritise Sentinel’s j.roundhouse, but only trade with Sentinel’s j.fierce, and even then, it’s definitely not a trade in her favor damagewise. The silver lining is that while those attacks will trade at his range, they will beat his j.fierce at her range. Therefore, she has to limit her jumping leads to situations where she can get the hit on him at her range, and the two best scenarios to accomplish this is when she can superjump directly underneath him with j.jab, or come directly over the top of him on the way down with j.short.
The second important thing the Ruby Heart player has to do during this fight is to jump at Sentinel such that when she is in a position when she has to block, try as much as possible to get on an equal or higher horizontal plane with him. The reason for this is so that she can pushblock and thus maintain that position on the screen for a second. Pushblocking him in the air while he is above her does her no good, but if she uses advancing guard against him with her desired position, she can use it to her advantage. In this position, Sentinel has to be careful as to how he continues to apply pressure, because if he doesn’t back off, she can guard cancel to Hyper Schwarzaile and back him off of her herself. If she has meter, she’s either going to go to the semi-infinite or she’s going to DHC at the end, or both.
Using Schwarzaile in the air is going to depend on how well you know how to redirect with her; there really is no hard and fast pattern she’ll want to use against him, because it’s going to depend on both who he has as an assist as well as her position on the screen. In general, though, she wants to use her redirects such that she would be in a safe landing position even with her worst case scenario recovery time. From a superjump, to me, she accomplishes that better when she has descended somewhat as opposed to the peak of her jump.
On the ground, Ruby Heart has the advantage overall, but even then, her advantage is in terms of her ability to counterreact as opposed to lead. In order for her to dictate what Sentinel does, Sentinel is going to first have to dictate what she does.
Using Sublimation:
Sublimation is going to be her primary zoning tool, although again, she’s going to counter with it before she can lead with it. If you try to lead with it from square one, Sentinel’s c.fierce stops it before it even comes out, and if not that, forward fly XX fl.roundhouse. To use it in the match, she either wants blockstun on Sentinel, or she wants him to be in a position where canceling to flight wouldn’t get him in position to counterattack in time, such as during a superjump. The best way is to get a secondary attack on the screen, either an assist or Fantome.
short Sublimation is important because of the fact that she can advance forward before the move ends. Sentinel doesn’t have a way to advance past the vertical plane that Sublimation locks down during flight mode nor does he have a way on his own to penetrate the move to attack her from flight move while it is active. She can use this to her advantage in one of two ways: first, she can advance forward to get underneath Sentinel if he tries to wait for the move to end in order to get in position to stomp. This gives her the position she needs to challenge his j.fierce with her sj.short. Second, she can superjump at the first available opportunity, and try to bait Sentinel into attacking her with a normal. Here, he cant wait for Sublimation to end because its still active by the time her sj.short comes out, so he has to attack, unfly or move backward. If he moves backward, she can counter with Hyper Schwarzaile, and if he unflies, she gets to go over the top of him with either Schwarzaile or sj.short. Sentinels ability to counterassist dictates much of what happens in this scenario as well. She should avoid using short Sublimation in situations where he could hit her with a counterassist during its startup, as counterassists are less of an issue after Sublimation gets to the point where it is active. Once Sublimation is active and she can move again, she can either block, move, Sublimation will hit Sentinels counterassist, or she can counterassist herself.
Lets assume he doesnt wait for Sublimation to end to get his opportunity, though, and instead backs off. If he backs off upon seeing Sublimation, fierce Anchor Capture as soon as she is able to move, and advance forward, as she has put something on the screen thats going to force him to take an action other than attacking her. Fantome plus assist another option she has, as the assist call should allow her to safely establish that move on the screen.
Using Schwarzaile XX Hyper Schwarzaile:
The other thing that you have to work with is Schwarzaile XX Hyper Schwarzaile. This move can work in one of two ways: first, she can use it to get in to position where she can engage him with her redirects, then challenge his counteraction with Hyper Schwarzaile. This can be effective, but at the same time, he is one of the few characters in the game that can match Ruby Hearts aerial maneuverability, and she is vulnerable to both his movement as well as his assist, assuming he has an anti-air assist available to him. Manipulating Schwarzaile is the hardest aspect of her game to master both conceptually as well as technically, and itll simply take practice to figure out the correct approach angles for a given scenario. Not surprisingly, two of the three locations shell want to position herself are the exact same as before: on an even plane at melee range, directly above his head or directly below his feet. Second, she can choose to very quickly cancel fierce Schwarzaile to Hyper Schwarzaile all in one continuous motion when the opportunity arises. This obviously manages to accomplish several of her intended goals at the same time. It positions her to attack him at melee range with Hyper Schwarzaile without advance warning, because it forces him to use the opposing players reaction time to counter her attack due to the fact that there is no Hyper Combo flash. Also, it allows her to preserve the invincibility of Hyper Schwarzailes startup until she needs it. The double motion is input in less than half a second, and shes already halfway across the screen in her ideal attack position before he can think to unfly or call assist. As was explained earlier in the thread, once she is in her desired range, there isnt a thing Sentinel can do to stop himself from being hit by Hyper Schwarzaile during flight mode. Shes going to always want to get on an even plane with him when she does this, because moves invincibility has worn off if she doesnt make contact with him with that initial forward charge. Not surprisingly, she can use this maneuver to directly counter Dr. Dooms j.fierce in the same fashion, amongst other characters.
With all of that said, her ace in the pocket is her ability to buffer her ground attacks into Tour De Magi. Sentinel cannot unfly against it at a particular height, and like 90 percent of the hits she gets, she can use it to go straight to her semi-infinite, DHC to someone else, or both.
Lead attacks:
In square one situations, Ruby Heart’s best lead attack is j.fierce, with j.short a close second. Her j.fierce gets the edge because forward j.fierce can basically hit Sentinel from full screen by extension when he extends an attack. She doesn’t have to try to wavedash under Sentinel- Gamma when used as an assist against her because sure enough, she can hit him with dash XX j.fierce just fine. j.short is worthy of consideration because of its recovery time advantage. The recovery time advantage will serve her better against anti-air assists whereas shell want to lead j.fierce against Sentinel when backed by assists like Dr. Doom- Beta. Ideally, she’ll want an assist of her own to get blockstun on Sentinel before the lead attack, because then his assist wont be an issue.
From a superjump, again, sj.short is better than sj.fierce. You can stick a single sj.short out there without getting countered by an assist like Cyclops- Beta, whereas sj.fierce pretty much commits you to that lead offensive period.
IMO, the only ground opening lead attacks Ruby Heart should mess with on her own are s.fierce and c.short, and even then, only one on one. c.roundhouse as a lead is susceptible to his instant overhead j.short, amongst other things. dash XX s.fierce is harder to counter than dash XX c.short, so it’s the one I prefer; c.short is better used when blockstun has been established, and s.fierce is better at establishing blockstun.
The sidenote to that, though, is the fact that Ruby Heart herself has an instant overhead against Sentinel with j.short. dash XX c.short, j.short is important because sure enough, she can go to Hyper Schwarzaile right then and there.
Counters:
I say that she has the advantage on the ground because she has a lot of counters for his ground-based tactics. First and foremost, Sentinel needs to establish blockstun against Ruby Heart before he ever uses a super against her, plain and simple, because if he doesnt, Ruby Heart can direct counter every time.
Hyper Sentinel Force without first establishing blockstun gets direct countered by Partnaire at any range, and Hyper Schwarzaile at close range. At the end of Partnaire, it is possible for Sentinel to retaliate against Ruby Heart with jab Rocket Punch in the air, but it happens rarely, as Partnaire has less overall recovery time than say Cables Hyper Viper Beam.
Ruby Heart can jump in on a grounded Sentinel all day long because any counterattack he executes himself gets flat out countered by Hyper Schwarzaile: Hyper Sentinel Force, Rocket Punch, s.fierce, both versions of Sentinel Force, Plasma Storm and fly XX fl.fierce. No two ways around it. Additionally, jab Sentinel Force and Rocket Punch get countered outright by j.fierce, as mentioned earlier. The ability to cancel to Hyper Schwarzaile on the fly means she doesnt have to worry about the other aforementioned moves on Sentinels list when she leads with j.fierce, either. In general, air to ground is all Ruby Heart, and is easily her best scenario for the fight.
She can crouch under s.fierce innately, and c.roundhouse is a feasible counter when she is in range. She should look to forward normal jump against his c.fierce, because she can hit Sentinel with her j.fierce by extension. When she cancels to Hyper Schwarzaile from a distance such that her invincibility would wear off by the time he countered, it would serve her well to preemptively redirect up or u.forward because she is then in position where she can go over the top of his counterattack, whether it be Hyper Sentinel Force or Plasma Storm.
Verdict:
As illustrated she has a lot more to work with in this fight than a lot of characters in the game, but the most significant advantage in this matchup for Sentinel is his vitality and the effect it has on both the length of the fight and the way she approaches him. Unless a player knows how to effectively utilise her ability to reset damage against him early and often, she has to exhaust a lot of meter to beat him whereas she can put someone like Cable or Magneto out of the fight with less meter. IMO, it remains her toughest matchup overall.
j/k