lol sakeido, I was playing with a friend on Wednesday and accidentally wall jumped, and I seriously got all giddy about it. “OH MAN DID YOU SEE THAT I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT WALL JUMPS HOW AWESOME” lol
I don’t think she has any moves like that, might just have to plink dash. The only thing is can’t they drop an assist to cover the recovery? Rolling with the Homies
Being a Doom player myself I really dont think there’s much to worry about unless you do a move that’s super vulnerable in the air when he has a lot of meter. Even then you’d have to be like right on top of his head. If Doom is on point everything he has to zone you with has a way around it and everything he has to zone you with from the air doesn’t really lead to much damage. If you’re strictly trying to get in with stuff like air qcf+M to d+H or air qcf+L the only thing you really have to worry about IMO is hidden missles, photon shot (yellow spread shot special) and sphere flame super (upwards flame super that rains more yellow fire a few seconds after it dissapears). When Doom is on point in order for him to throw hidden missles he has to cover himself with an assist and leave himself open on point for a very long time to huge combos. Good Dooms will more than likely throw out 2 or 3 hidden missles on point on occasion to zone you out while moving around and shooting photon shots and an occasional H beam if they see you coming to the ground from a jump. The fact that Doom can’t find a lot of situations to throw out all 8 hidden missles on point makes him a lot easier to deal with than when his 8 missle assist is backed up by another point character.
For X23 IMO this isn’t a huge deal to simply get around. Not that I play online a lot but I estimate you’re having trouble with the typical ground based on point Doom zoning where they just stand on the ground from the other side of the screen and chuck shit at you (for the first week i pretty much played doom this way myself). The only time you can take big damage from Doom’s zoning is if you try to jump down directly on top of him from very high in the air where he can confirm a sphere flame super which with the right characters he can DHC into for solid damage. From full screen the most damaging special he can hit you with is H plasma beam and as long as you’re relatively high in the air and blocking this can’t do much to you. Which then they will probably resort to spamming photon shots which have a dead center on top of Doom’s head.
Once you know that the Doom player is definitely going to spam the screen with a photon shot just aim to jump as high and far as possible towards the top of their head so you dont get hit by any of the shots and he will be vulnerable to a qcf+L easily at that point. Ideally you want to get close enough to where you can super jump directly on top of his head and just rain down on him with d+H. Even if either one of those moves is blocked you’ll still have frame advantage to land pressure and even if you get hit by photon shot you’ll take less than 50k damage probably and just fall back to the ground. Once the Doom player sees you are grounded they will probably try to L or H plasma beam you which you can either just block down or go through completely with your Weapon X super. If u choose to simply block after blocking the beam just jump back up again. If he goes for another plasma beam you can easily air qcf+L on top of him and start a combo or catch him trying to for a photon shot and land on top of his head with air qcf+L or d+H and start a combo.
The only other things Doom can really do (if you’re not counting assist) to zone you are molecular shields (rock formation special) which aren’t as good as they were in Marvel 2 and can be jumped on by a lot of things. When Doom players get desperate they usually tend to just blow their meter on the super version of the photon shot (photon array) which doesn’t do much damage to you as even if you were to get hit by it due to how the damage is spread amongst the array. You can pretty much just hold block while super jumping forward if you know he’s going for this. If you’re on the ground and know he’s going for this just Weapon X through the shit.
Unlike Magneto…it takes a lot more ingenuity and practice for Doom to put you in situations with his dash and air dash game to land big combos on you. Know that his zoning can’t really hurt you too bad and just go in and catch anything obvious from the ground with Weapon X if you have it stocked. Most Dooms online I’m sure dont have his block string or air dash game down to a level where just concentrating on pushing forward and landing something isn’t a big risk.
it springs out from the wall at such an awkward angle you can do weird shit with it. I was doing wall jump, d+H to change height, then qcf+L talon dives. all over the place… makes it easy to get around zoning because the walljump is so fast
mixup stuff - like mentioned before if your first attack is blocked I don’t go for qcb+H stuff I just do qcb+M for the crossup or qcb+A for the frame advantage. keeps people on their toes.
if they stop push blocking, I do c.L c.M xx qcb+H. you can call assist here and then use d+H to either stop on same side, or cross up. you can do d+H xx 236L vs some characters and the d+H will land same side, and then the talon dive will cross up. You can also just do the qcb+H, wait for the crossup and then do talon dive. it won’t cross up if they are standing, and will cross up if they aren’t (character dependent).
alternatively you can do qcf+A after being pushblocked. spaced out ever so slightly, a non-charged qcf+A will link to s.M s.H xx loop
dunno though the more I play X-23 the more it seems she has big holes in her game. without a good assist her damage output is really low and her options for opening ppl up seem pretty limited. match is practically over if you lose either assist. imo the list of viable teams with x-23 on them are very small… Sent almost seems like a necessity for drones assist. I’m also thinking an overhead assist is important too
I’m still trying to find a way to cover qcf+C command grabs. drones doesn’t work because the last drone will hit the person you are throwing, freezing them on the ground and preventing any combo followup
X-23 seems dependent on assists to lock people down and increase her mix-up potential on the offensive IMO. X-23 doesn’t really have an overhead, apart from jumping attacks after Mirage Feint H, which people can avoid and hit her out of. You can sort of cover yourself by doing this however: LM(call out multi-hitting assist), Mirage Feint M behind them, then Mirage Feint H to set-up a jumping attack. You can mix this up by doing a low instead(intentionally whiffing your attack to go for a low is a nice trick too.)
If they advancing guard, you’ll still be in range to mix them up as the M Mirage Feint will put you in front of them anyway.
The only assist that seems to work well with this is Chun’s Hyakuretsu Kyaku. However, people can mash cr.jab(can’t remember if they have to adv.guard beforehand though or reversal and hit both characters, I wish I was joking about mashing cr.jab. So, you have to condition them not to mash, which can be achieved.
That wall jump shit is a pretty important discovery. That shit will pretty much jump her on top of the head of anyone spamming shit from like full screen. It’s almost like your best way to close the gap is to run away and then wall jump. LOL. Especially if you back that up with a beam assist to lock the person down when u go in that’s gotta be like a free get in.
It works like any wall jump where u dont necessarily have to be at the exact corners of the screen also. If you’re just in the middle of the screen and you can jump backwards without forcing the camera to move backwards you can wall jump. This also works like Chun Li’s where u have to do it off a normal jump. Chun Li’s is pretty cool too because although its more defensive in nature due to how slow and short it travels it basically allows her to jump six times (wall jump, forward jump x 3). Which allows her to get to super jump height while still calling assists since all of the jumps are considered normal jumps.
The wall jump thing blows the lid off of her corner games, and since Rage Trigger almost always carries your opponent into the corner after a combo, this is huge. I’ve been learning some insane mix-ups and resets in the corner using this. I am even hesitant to record a video because they are that good - but I probably will anyway. 
X23 is a severely under-developed character so whatever you guys find out is good. I was originally thinking about using her from the get go since she totally fits my play style but I got accustomed to another team and just went with that. I still want to learn her though just for the sake of learning her.
I think like mentioned before the hardest part about using her is that she’s designed like Captain America in that you must learn to use an assist with her to really make the most of her. You can’t just go round 1 fight spamming shit around like Magneto on your 10 moar years shit and expect to win matches. You have to have much more of a gameplan than that going into the fight with her. I think she’s really strong as a point characters because of her meter building and DHC reset potential. The issue is even the srk wiki tells you she’s an assist reliant character and that probably turns her off from people who just want a character that can go in and press buttons and is only augmented by an assist and not so much in requirement of it. Wesker and Magneto definitely get stronger with a good assist but they are hardly at a loss for creating momentum without one.
^
I couldn’t agree more, X-23 can’t just go in and wreck up the place with high-low stuff like Magneto and friends lol. She needs assists to lock them down first to cover the holes she has. And I agree, she is a good point character and I think that position suits her the best because of what you said, plus she benefits more from assists backing her up in that position. I wouldn’t like to put her as an anchor myself.
As for that wall jump thing, that’s given me a few ideas. Time to hit training mode…
I also agree. It’s crazy that this X-23 discussion forum is in the Top 10 among the character discussion sections in total posts, but you almost never see X-23 online or in tournament play. Even our video thread is sort of lackluster, although it has its moments. I think we really need a spark - I’m hoping one of the pro’s picks her up and starts to realize some of her potential. But I’m also not holding my breath, lol.
Wait, really? I wasn’t paying attention to the total posts numbers lol, wow. Generally, there was a lot of hype when that early vid of a player doing X-23 loops against some victim showed up. I was thinking “yeah, I’m gonna go crazy on people with loops!” when I started playing her. That didn’t work out haha and now I’ve really gotta start thinking.
I think some people thought the same way, but after a while, picked a more “stable” character when it didn’t work out. I think eventually, she’ll be used more, but not right now. And using X-23 online properly is…impossible haha.
EDIT: Well, was messing around with wall jump, well you can do a reset and Mirage Feint behind them, wall jump and cross-up L Talon Attack. Let’s see if I can use an assist to cover this.
Yeah, tell me about it.
^
I’m considering using Zero or somebody with powerful easy stuff instead of X-23 because quite frankly, forget her online lol. Offline, I’ll use her all the way but not being able to do even the most basic of loops with her online really sucks.
Well, messing around with more stuff, after any combo ending with Rage Trigger in the corner, you can follow it up with command throw(Decapitating Slice) and basically no matter how they flip in the air, they’ll get caught because the command throw sort of tracks them down. I used Trish’s Low Voltage for cover.
I wouldn’t use this often though because all your opponent has to do is to not flip forward and hit/reversal both X-23 and her assist, do some sort of aerial move or an aerial hyper or simply escape through the air. 
Can’t find a tight way to lock people down to set-up for the command throw.
I guess its cause everyone can see that she has soooo much potential, yet no one is capable of reaching said potential with her yet. Im thinking bout making an x-23 team, not sure who the other two will be yet, been considering sentinel and viper/akuma. I figure since sent struggles with opening people up to a certain degree I pair him up with an overhead and a low hitting assist and we have unblockables all day. On the flip side x-23 gets the drones which as we all know are a good send particularly for her, but then she also get an overhead assist which should also help out her offense. I just need to test out how vipers burn kick interacts with opponents who are jumping back and ill be able to decide whether to with hers or akumas.
Only issue I can see with this team is if the online is really as bad as people say it is, ill be completely unable to play x-23 or viper online lol.
lol
my gameplan right now is to start X23, try and one touch kill guys, and keep her on screen at all times until she dies and leaves me with my two other chars. Wesker/Doom is still an extremely potent combo… X23 with only a beam or only an OTG assist on the other hand, not so much. at all. I think she’s low mid tier at best. She has a powerful ground game… but this is Marvel, so that can only get you so far.
The Official TIME TO STOP SUCKING WITH X23 post. By me.
I was playing with a bunch of guys around my area over the weekend and there was one guy who was playing X23 who brought some really interesting stuff via the L mirage feint (qcb+L). I think it will help to make her a bit more versatile when she gets in. Basically when you get this down you can play X-23 in a way where you can basically just frame trap people down once you get in. This also allows you to bypass advance guard and emphasizes her strategy of pushing people in the corner. If you push the opponent directly into the corner their advance guard wont push you back much at all on your air moves and keep them in the corner. I haven’t seen anyone really do it on video yet so I figure I might as well get it out there.
A lot of people seem to be having the same problem with X23 that they were having with Cammy in Vanilla. “ZOMG NO OVERHEAD WTFZZZ COMMAND GRAB IS LIKE ONE HUNDRED FRAME START UP JEEBUS!!!” Actually X23’s command grab is is like 26 to 45 frame start up depending on how close or far you were away but that’s still only off by half if you count the furthest distance it can land LOL.
This was also back during a time when no one was really trying to frame trap in SFIV any way. All people were doing was picking Rog and mashing jab or picking Sagat and uppercutting. Which is basically all people are doing in this game with an exception to some of the top top players. Pick 2 characters and pick Sent, mash assist then mash on shit with Sent on XFC level 3. Can’t really see what else the game has to offer if people are fine with picking Sent and Friends.
It was pretty much no wonder that no one was really doing anything close to the stuff that you see Sako and Marlin Pie doing now with Cammy that relies on forcing people to press buttons when they shouldn’t. Now I’ve realized that especially if you’re not trying to have an assist every 2 seconds for her to get an offensive going it’s important to learn these frame trap and advance guard cancelling techniques to get in.
***Frame trapping with qcb+L and instant air d+H
Essentially how it works is you do something like c.L, c.M, qbc+L as a block string. This probably leaves you at a bit of negative on block. You can tell because after you do this string if the opponent mashes on an attack they will beat yours if you are also mashing. Not sure about characters with slow start up normals like Dante, but like Wesker with a 4 frame c.L is gonna blow you up. If the opponent doesn’t know that they can just mash through this string you can create a psuedo infinite block string by just doing c.L,c.M, L mirage feint over and over. Against people who dont know they’ll just sit there and wonder why you’re still block stringing them and they’ll press c.L or advance guard at the wrong time and get counter hit into free combo.
Now this starts to get powerful when you add in more tricks. Basically the qcb+L acts like Dr.Doom’s dash giving you the ability to completely move forward through an advance guard. With this you can set up block strings and delay your qcb+L to move in on the patterns of your opponent trying to use advance guard to push you out. If you see them advance guard after c.L, c.M just do qcb+L and you’re right back in. Once the opponent realizes you can do this they’ll usually back down from advance guarding because if they advance guard when u move through they barely push you back if at all while pushing themselves towards the corner. Being a Dr.Doom player this is the same tactic I use with his dash cancels to help push people into the corner.
Probably the most powerful part of this is the ability to create counter hit setups. Basically once you get the opponent to realize that advance guarding wont really work and doing anything but mashing on c.L will get them hit into another combo you can basically just start running this shit in people’s faces and get free damage. Smarter players will start to realize that you’re not actually plus on block and c.L mash you out of the string. You aren’t necessarily positive on block but, luckily you also have enough time to jump without them hitting you. This is important because this is how you stop the c.L mashing.
Essentially if your opponent gets to a point where they realize “ah ok if i just mash c.L at this shit as soon as i block something i’ll hit her and wiiin” that’s when u need to switch up with instant air d+H. Instant air d+H is pretty simple to perform u just kinda hold up after the H mirage feint is blocked then press d+H then instant you know she’s going to be airborne. You can also do this from a neutral position just by pressing up then immediately d+H Basically if you do this perfectly she’ll do an air d+H that doesn’t even leave the ground. She’s practically hitting them in their ankles. Even if you do it a bit higher than that it’s fine cuz it’ll still punish most c.L whiffs. This is great because it already has pretty good priority as an air to air move but since you’re using it to come down on the whiff of a crouch normal it just becomes even stronger. If the opponent presses a button at all during this they’re guaranteed to get counter hit or whiff punished easily into a combo. This is also good at blowing up bad attempts to advance guard.
The command to do the instant air d+H is to kinda do a similar method to what you would do with plinking a normal in SFIV but you do it on the stick instead.
u~d+H
Basically you flick stick then immediately as you know you’ve touched up on the stick flick the stick back down and press H. You want to hold up on the stick as little as possible so try to just return the stick to a neutral position and then immediately hit down+H.
You can get tricky with this and use it in different points during block strings also. Her c.L is negative 3 on block but no crouch normal is faster than 4 frames. Which gives you one frame still to jump up in the air and beat a mash on your c.L tick with instant air d+H. Her instant d+H is obviously safe on block so this allows you great pressure to continue moving in. If you’re fast enough you can even cancel the instant d+H on hit or block into air qcf+L and land a combo afterwards. This can sometimes bait people who decide to stop blocking after the instant air d+H and her air qcf+L gives her a freaking year to land a combo after it lands so sometimes it’s not a terrible idea to just throw it out on top of everything.
**Now you’re going to get to a point where you realize “well fuck all of this is really good and beats people who presses buttons but if they just sit there and block this isn’t going to help me”. **Which is kinda true. You could try to use an assist inbetween things to help you set up a command grab but generally I’m just going to explain techniques without an assist.
Without an assist your best option is just to forward or back throw them depending on which corner is closer or which one you want to throw them into. She has one of the best wave dashes for setting up throws in the game. Her forward throw will instantly put the opponent in the corner if they were towards the center of the screen. You can then wave dash follow them up with 2 or 3 wave dashes and be right next to them to apply pressure after they get up. They might try to roll out which of course you can anticipate and stop your wave dash early and call an assist to bait it and set up another counter hit or command grab. Generally with the way her wave dash works if u do a wave dash up to someone and they didn’t press a button, you can throw them and give yourself a chance to instantly hurl them into the corner.
Once you put people in the corner your game becomes a lot stronger. I’ve seen that she has a lot of tricky resets once she puts people in the corner. More basic things that she has when she puts people in the corner are 50/50 crosses using her M mirage feint (qcb+L) during block strings. If they try to push block your strings this makes the cross up even easier to set up cuz you can choose when to use the M mirage feint and force an ambiguous 50/50 or counter hit setup. When you have the opponent in the corner your air d+H and air qcf+L moves become stronger as if they are push blocked when the opponent is directly in the corner you wont be as affected by them pushblocking. Once you get people in the corner hitting them with air M or air throw if they try to jump becomes powerful as well.
**In general the best option to get away from all of this stuff by your opponent will be to mash an invincible super or jump away. ** Which jumping away can be beat with air throw or air L or M into counter hit mirage feint juggles. Mashing invincible supers will obviously get beat by just blocking. This will also get trickier when you learn to set up assists during all of this so even jumping becomes a bit riskier.
Instant air qcf+L d,df,f,uf+L
There’s actually one more technique that seems solid I’ve found for staying in. Her d+H is good but sometimes you might be just outside of the range for instant d+H to land depending on what block string you did or how far away you were when you did the string. You can help all of this by doing an instant air qcf+L. You do this the same way you tiger knee with Sagat in SF2 or tiger knee a qcf special in guilty gear. Just do a hadoken motion that ends in up forward. This allows you to get in with 23 and have frame advantage if you are about a wave dash or so distance away and gives you a free combo on hit.
***50/50 cross anti advance guard setups with qcb+M mirage feint. ***
I learned a bit about this from being a Dr.Doom main. Basically Dr.Doom is the only character in the game that can dash at people while they are still in block stun. This is due to his unique ability to dash after his normals instead of the other way around like with the other characters. This basically means that if you advance guard Doom he can just dash through any way and get close to you and generally just not give a shit. X23 is like this also but her ability to beat advance guard is much more threatning because you can use the opponent’s advance guard against them to create 50/50’s.
Generally how this works is you during your block strings you want to look for situations where your opponent likes to advance guard. When you see these situations you can react to the flash from your opponent when they advance guard and time your qcb+M as you are getting pushed back so you either ambiguously land behind them or still land in front of them. This is very tricky for the opponent because they can not attack you until they are released from their extra guard stun that is added when they advance guard. Which means by the time you land in front or behind them you get a free counter hit setup because you’ll recover and be able to hit them before they can hit you. Along with how you already ambiguously cross them up with the right timing this can become a very deadly mix up against people who think advance guarding will keep you out easy.
Now this wont instantly make you a gdlk X23 or anything but it certainly helps to give her a real gameplan that pretty much no one is using yet. Hopefully I’ll see other X23 players doing something similar or better in the future with all of the other options she has. With all of this I can easily see her being just as or more threatning than Wolverine. It’s like fighting a Wolverine where advance guarding wont even help you much. She doesnt’ get 500 million damage off a dive kick with these techniques its obvious Wolverine doesn’t quite have as much to beat blocking or advance guard as 23 does.
It’s obvious she has some issues getting in , but arguably her options for getting in are better than Wolverines. Once you find a spot to get in with these techniques and whatever else people figure out u should be bringing some hurt with 23 soon.
Are you sure that you can safely do an air d+H against characters with a quick cr.L? I thought there was a brief state at the start of a jump where you couldn’t act. A cr. L could whiff you after jumping but it could also hit you anyway depending on the character.
Also if you end your block string with a standing H instead of cr. M and cancel into Mirage Feint L then you are at a minor frame advantage (especially if they advancing guard your st.H). If you cancel into a Mirage Feint L and use S to cancel it, you’re even better off.
I still don’t like using Talon Dive L to approach, it’s all anybody ever does and pretty much anyone who’s played an X-23 is looking for it to punish it. It does give you a great frame advantage on block, though.
Also, a lot of this is moot online, sadly. I need to find more live opponents.
Hmmmm yeah from what I tested in training mode against another person they were unable to mash c.L me out of the jump. Not sure if a 2 frame gap is specifically enough but if he couldn’t i’ll assume it’s good till otherwise. If you found something that actually grants frame advantage that’s even better.
Generally the whole point of doing the instant air d+H is that it increases the priority of the air d+H to a point where you basically will beat out any c.L. This is because the air d+H will become active before their c.L does and stuff out their c.L. You can even try doing something simple like recording someone who has a crazy high priority anti air c.L like She Hulk. She has a large hit box on her c.L where her knee to her shoe is not hittable by anything. Yet at the same time she is completely vulnerable in her face and body. Even if you do just instant d+H’s by themselves on top of her body you’ll beat them out. Instant/tiger knee air qcf+L dive comes out at a perfect angle to hit her c.L from a bit of a distance and will even stuff out everything but her shoe.
The instant talon attack (tiger knee qcf+L) I mentioned is not really so much used for approaching. It’s only really good when you’ve already gotten in and need something that’s advantageous that comes in from an angle to stay in. It only travels about a sweep distance across the screen and then lands on the ground any way. It’s generally much better than the high in the air qcf+L’s that everyone is doing,
hmm I’ve had d+H get beat cleanly by lows a lot of the time unless you are making contact with their body. spacing dependent I suppose. its also one thing I’d recommend always buffering in a qcf+L talon dive too, to get the extra damage and frame advantage.
also I noticed advance guard seems to repel attacks even if they don’t hit, so c.L only gets pushed back once but c and s.M get pushed back twice even if the second hit doesn’t touch anything. it might be better to do c.L s.H type of stuff. I suppose you could do a mixup there, c.M xx qcb+B feint to land in front or s.H xx qcb+B feint to land behind
Not to mention, bnb mirage combos that start off with d+H and then air talon dive L that are meterless/no assist do a good amount of extra damage.
I’m still reading this awesome wall of text.
Depending on the hyper she’s up against and X-23’s current position (let’s say grounded), Rage Trigger does have full invincibility in it’s startup and on the first few active frames, so this could also remain in her favor offensively.
I like your writeup, DJ.