I will see if I can find some matches to record, but honestly it isn’t that hard to imagine, is it? Her L talon has a great hitbox, stops all your opponents forward or upward momentum (hit or block) is quick, gives advantage on block and leads to combo’s. If you space it right, you can dive right into the black hole, dragging your opponent with you. They’re stuck, you’re not. If you time it meaty on opponents entrance, they’ll drop right into the black hole, giving you time to lvl3 them.
Same goes for neck slice, which has a hitbox so good, it even trades with Wolverine’s derp kick.
She still suffers from bad matchups though. Taskmaster and Dante in particular shut her down very hard because of shield skills and hammer/retarded normals respectively.
I feel she has a good matchup against Wesker and even Wolverine personally. She is one of the only characters who can punish a whiffed Bslash xx Brage by jumping out of the slash and coming down with d+H.
I would feel that once X-23 can get in Dorm’s dark hole assist would prove to be useful especially for her H mirage feint high low stuff. The assist has a big hit box it just kind of appears in a weird, not necessarily obvious part of the screen compared to the other assists.
Otherwise when you hit somebody with X-23 you wanna kill them with enough meter so that you can just get rid of the next character via dirt nap also. She doesn’t really have the ability to put enough projectiles on the screen (ESPECIALLY IN ULTIMATE) to just kinda be running forward and landing a hit and not killing off 2 characters. If you hit somebody with X-23 you wanna be able to kill 2 people off and not just one. She’s not like Zero where she has a spaceship of shit around her and it’s not as easy to hit confirm her dive kicks into damage as it is with say Wolverine. Without the DHC glitch and tone downs to XF1 it may be ideal to put X-23 in a second spot so that it can be guaranteed she can kill people in one combo with XF2 and then kill the second down with dirt nap XF2 also. XF1 sounds like it’s going to last too short and force you to burn too much meter and resource to keep her scary in a first slot. It could probably still work but you’d have to do a lot of resetting that would be pretty risky against characters with higher health thresholds where you don’t wanna land supers on to save up meter for. XF2 will allow X-23 coming out the gate to set up dirt nap stuff still I would suspect.
It’s pretty obvious they made X-23 to just be this character that hits you, kills your first character, then makes it impossible for your next character to live. That’s why she has an inherent struggle to get in and is based on resets because it’s hard to win matches with her if you aren’t saving up meter to shut down more than one character. She doesn’t really have the tools to tear down teams without dirt nap like say Zero or Magneto do. She just doesn’t control enough space on the screen to do that. The idea is to just go in, land a hit and makes sure it takes 2 people out the match.
The best/worst thing about Dark Hole is the sense of futility you get when you see X-23 activating her level 3 right in your face.
Just playing Traumatisch made me change my playstyle. I made sure that every time I do a L Talon, I call Doom assist (or vice-versa). The use is not the same as his, but it really made everything about her more effective. The TA by itself is a mixup if spaced properly and if it doesn’t work, it’s okay, you’re still in there. As someone who values (and spends more time practicing) the neutral game over the reset/oki game, something so simple that made such a powerful attack so safe and effective really made me play better overnight, literally (not that I haven’t developed my own resets and oki game, I just can’t really put them into practice).
But I’ll have to disagree with the M MF mixup thing. L+Tatsu, Teleport/Berserker Slash kills people, there should be no remorse in doing the same with X-23, even if she has a billion different mixup opportunities off of a H MF instead, for instance. I’ve been developing some of those M MF setups for Doom’s slow-ass beam myself for the longest time now. I agree that’s not all that X-23 amounts to (nor is she just a vehicle for DHC glitch or Dirt Nap), but it’s still her most deadly and sure-fire mixup. It’s only right to abuse it.
At least it’s better than spamming M Talon Attack, Talon Dive and expecting results.
I didn’t mean to imply that M feint shouldn’t be abused, it is a great move after all. I just don’t like the approach of “X-23 has M feint so I need to build her a team that can abuse that” when solid team building will give her M feint setups any way in addition to giving her more versatility and other mixup options. All I’m saying is it shouldn’t be her main gameplan I don’t think.
So… yeah. That.
Also, I’ve recorded a stupid long set between Sh1nd and myself tonight. It’s 2 and a half hours of matches. Unfortunately his team is Task - Dormammu - Iron Man, so X-23 was having a hard time and dying fast a lot of the times haha. Task really is one of her worst matchups imho.
Anyway I do have some solid footage showing off Dorm’s assist in conjunction with X and I’ll upload when I get the chance. If you guys like I could record more matches in the future. I did well against Sh1nd but neither of us was really on our best form.
Task isn’t terrible as long as you have a vertical assist like Jam Session or Hidden missiles to hold him down to the ground. If you have X-23 on point and not second it’s easy to just add Dante or Doom to your team to help deal with that issue. Jam Session or Hidden Missiles is probably an absolute requirement to fight Trish.
jam session is good to hitconfirm air to air combos. Dunno how effective it will be due to assist hit scaling in ultimate, but yea. Shes actually a stronger frame trap character than mix-up character since she has barely any negative frames on anything. You basically fish for the opponent to push buttons and blow them up or you make them block the entire time and mix them up. All she really needs is an assist to go in and push buttons.
If the first thing you hit the opponent with is the jam session you should be fine. The scaling won’t kick in too hard unless you relaunch and then call another assist. I was in the Dante thread a bit talking with a guy who played Zero and he said from playing Ultimate jam session seemed the same for extending Zero’s combos as long as jam session hit early in the combo. You can’t expect to get much after a long combo into a relaunch is the only thing.
Yeah X-23 kinda takes care of herself once she gets in with a good assist. She definitely needs to be advantaged on everything once she gets in because of the work it takes to get her in any way. It’s very much like a Marvel version of Cammy or Ibuki where you don’t even need to mix them up much to get them hit since everything is just a frame trap waiting to happen once you get in. Her high/low game is pretty assist reliant but her left/right game even without assists is better than most of the other cast. She really excels in forcing people to sideways block and you realize how little she needs a high/low game once you figure this out. The only way to avoid her left/right game is to do something generally risky like stand up which sets you up for lows.
In Honzo’s ask thread he recommended I try pairing X-23 with Modok, does anyone have any experience with that? Is there anything Modok would offer (Outside of the glitch, since that’s not gonna be here much longer) that other beam assists wouldn’t?
I honestly don’t see what Modok really does for X-23 so there’s definitely no point in putting him behind X-23. None of his assists really help X-23 because the only one that would sort of help her (beam assist) most of the cast can crouch under. It’s a fast starting beam but hits way too high for X-23 to make much use of with the feints.
Playing Modok first and X-23 second wouldn’t because then you can build the team around Modok which is basically a requirement for making Modok scary (he just doesn’t have the tools to work well 2nd or 3rd). He can’t clear his own path to get in and needs assists to lock people down who will otherwise just advance guard him to death.
X-23 will give him a low hitting assist so that his air dash troll kick overheads become unblockable. Then you can just have a character with a solid assist for X-23’s mirage feints and talon attacks or just stack her with someone like Dante or Iron Man in the back so you can get an assist that gives inescapable dirt nap setups after you hit them.
It’s suppose to have ground bounce properties for opponents in the air but I’m not sure how good its block stun is for setting up dirt nap. I’m not even sure if Nova still uses red health to power up reflector even being used as an assist.
I plan on using Nova/X23/Hawkeye opening day. If X23 can gain something outta Poison Arrow setups with WXP man that would be silly dmg.
EDIT: Modoks overheads with ankle slice grants unblockables. Getting them to work is the tricky part.
I don’t think his beam is necessarily that bad, from what I’ve tested it can only be crouched by the smaller cast like Wolverine, Zero, Ammy, Joe, and Arthur. Still worse than Iron Man or Doom’s beam, but as long as the third assist is solid I think it could do alright.
I like the idea of starting Modok on point since he can benefit off of two assists and builds way more meter than he uses. The only problem is I really wanted to play Nova in Ultimate and I don’t see him being able to give him OR X-23 much in the way of assists. Looks like I’ll have to make some decisions soon.
Everything about Modok seems like the tricky part to be honest, lol, but I just think he could end up being such a good character with some effort.
The problem is some of those characters you mentioned are among the best characters in the game. For the most part the low health pixie characters have been and will stay the most troublesome in UMVC3 and you don’t want a beam that they can just be standing up and crouch under. If you give yourself Plasma Beam or Unibeam then you come down to only 3 characters that can be in a crouching position and duck under the beam (Ammy, Regular Phoenix, Morrigan). Zero is going to be way too good of a character in Ultimate and generally used way too often to be using a beam for X-23 that can’t even touch him.
If you are going to go the Modok 2nd route whoever the 3rd assist is better be something really good like akuma tatsu or jam session or you’re really going to have problems opening people up quickly or generally getting in.
You can play Nova without him being on the same team. Sometimes you just gotta sacrifice certain characters you may like for the better of the other characters on the team you like. Nova sounds like he’s going to be a character that you can use in different parts of a team but his red health powerup style will most likely have him best put in front. That way you can lame people out with energy javelins and h grav pulses and if you start taking hits from a distance that will basically power you up and make you more of a threat.
Damn, you got me there. I wasn’t thinking about how deadly some of those characters are, and with Rocket Raccoon joining their ranks, having an assist that won’t catch him either does sound bad. X-23 is definitely the character I want to focus on though, and I don’t really want to play Dante or Akuma, so I probably shouldn’t make things difficult with Modok or Nova on the squad afterall. Maybe X-23/Strange/Hawkeye is more up my alley
Or hey, you mentioned in your breakdowns that you thought Rocket’s log trap could potentially provide Dirt Nap setups, right? Rocket/X-23/Hawkeye might work out too.
Yeah I could see the Rocket/X-23/Hawkeye team working but you’ll most likely want to put X-23 first if you wanna take advantage of the assists for dirt naps for X-23. Rocket Raccoon sounds like a meter hungry character as far as when it comes to being really scary or doing any damage with his unconventional bnb’s. Might not be the best character to put first as a batter. X-23 is a great battery character because she’s basically like a shorter Phoenix just trying to get 3 bars to kill a character off via resets, then calling the log trap assist to make sure the second one goes down also. We’ll just have to hope that XF1 isn’t nerfed so bad that one combo kills on a 2nd character after building 3 meters isn’t bad.
Plus if you put X-23 first then it gives X-23 access to two great assists instead of only giving Rocket Raccoon access to one great assist and generally putting a character up first that won’t be able to kill people without burning the meter you need for dirt naps. Plus possibly killing off your guaranteed dirt nap assist if he dies early.
The only reason why I might still put Dante first on my team is because I don’t like the way Dante’s combos work in XF and I won’t get to DHC into Doom like I can with X-23 into Doom. It’s not really that important because Doom can kill characters as long as he has XF or a lot of meter. I really liked the damage Dante could do off the double DHC into X-23 and Doom. I also really liked X-23 and Doom’s XF2 synergy but overall X-23 doing resets in the front and having jam session assist to cover lame out matchups is probably better than Dante possibly dying and then having to rely on XF for the bottom half of my team. X-23 + Doom has to have XF to be scary and if I have to burn XF early for some reason with Dante…I lose all the scare factor on my team minus Doom stomping on one more character.
Thinking about it…I really like X-23’s options with jam session assist even outside of the dirt nap. It allows her to actually attack characters like Trish and Storm laming out towards the top of the screen when they’re super jumping and flying but can’t call assists. Without jam session assist X-23 even with XF basically still dies to Trish and that’s just not cool when at least if X-23 dies, Dante can still easily hit lame out Trish.
Going into Ultimate I’ll most likely just man up and sacrifice the super awesome Dante double DHC so X-23 can have better tools and set up guaranteed dirt naps. The most scary thing about X-23 overall is easily the “kill 2 characters with one stone” level 3 she has so it will be better to just play around that at the start of the round and then have a stronger backup team with Dante and Doom if things go bad.
Yeah, I like X-23 more on point in that sort of role too. Just being able to get momentum early on and potentially sweep two characters at once, leaving them with just their anchor only 20 seconds into the match. That’s definitely my ideal X-23 gameplan. I also think you’ll be able to get a ton of work in with Dante and Doom even if X-23 dies early, and if you don’t really like Dante in XF then you can always save it for Doom. I really think XF3 Doom is gonna be THE anchor in Ultimate.
Speaking of, who do you like as anchor more out of Strange or Rocket? I was kinda thinking about Strange over Hawkeye for his Discs of Danak assist, but Hawkeye just seems like such a solid anchor.
yeah I’ve been lamed out by Trish to death when playing X23, I hate that fucking matchup without a reliable air-control assist. Gonna still stick with my guns though, the thing about Hawkeye is like he can be put anywhere and still contribute to a team from what I’ve seen. My goal coming into Ultimate was finding a solid point man who could build meter, kill a character, and position X23 to kill the rest. I wanted it to be one of the newer characters and Nova seemed to fit the bill on what I was looking for.
I’ve actually felt this way for a long time now also. I think X-23’s speed is one of her biggest strengths, if not her biggest. She can get around stuff really well, and she has mad cross under potential. Also, combined with her speed, cr. M, st. H and from max range cr. H are great, GREAT pokes that can be made safe® via feint cancelling or assist calls.
One of my new favorite setups is using (cr. H xx) Neck Slice + Black hole assist in a footsie situation. cr. H has an incredibly low hitbox which makes it good for going under a lot of shit, the hop back from neck slice is very useful for frame/AG trapping in this situation and everything combo’s, giving me a free followup after the black hole. Also, if blocked, more mixups ^^. The cr. H is optional, as some AG baits may end up biting you in the ass due to some crouching moves reaching really far and tagging you (Wesker’s cr. M for example).
I recorded another set between myself and one of Europe’s finest in RIKO Bubblan. He doesn’t know I recorded yet though, so I have to check if he’s ok with me uploading ;). Match vids of me vs Sh1nd coming tomorrow.
Good question…probably too good of a question ATM.
I would say Ephidel is probably making a strong educated guess in that Hawkeye would most likely be more self sufficient. Rocket Raccoon seems like he’ll need assists to cover some situations and seems like a character that will generally have much more of a scare factor with strong assists in the same way like Zero, X23 or Strider. Hawkeye may not have a crazy mix up game or anything but he’ll be able to self sufficiently shut down a lot of shit with his super fast projectile gameplay and ability to move around rather fast for a character built around long range projectiles. Plus his arrow assists are obviously going to be some of the best assists in the game so having those available for 2 characters is great also.