MvC3: I'm the Second Best at What I Do: The X-23 Team-Building Thread

My transition from online to offline hasn’t been smooth for some characters. I’ve done fairly well by adding Dorm to the team, and it’s paying dividends because I was a dorm player in vanilla believe it or not. X23/Dorm always seem to put up a good fight, but finding that third character is an issue right now:

Wesker: He’s not cutting it. I feel like I have to save XF for him to where I’d rather just burn it on XF1 Laura or XF3 Dorm. God help me if he doesn’t have an assist or XF available. I like the extensions he gives X23/Dorm but he doesn’t offer any answers to missiles, bolts, voomerangs, etc.

Doom: Dorm has pretty much taken the place of Doom on my team. But more importantly, I’ve been oddly dropping a lot of his combos offline. Not good. He’s becoming dead weight at this rate. At least plasma beam keeps missiles/drones off the screen.

Next time at casuals I’ll be looking/trying different character combinations.

Here’s my list:

Felicia - I like Felicia. Ideally, she fits the role of anchor better than Wesker by building her own meter, summoning kitty helpers, and gives extensions with Sand Splash. Her command grab leads to ToDs with XF3 and she has a self infinite she can use. (X23/Dorm/Felicia)

Tasky - Yeah somebody talked about this setup the other day. I know Tasky’s bnbs so it’s not like I would be on the downside fitting him in, he’s good for Laura.

Skrull - I need to put up or shut up with this guy. Great options, but I don’t know how well he works with dorm. We’ll see.

Assist-wise, I felt like Felicia wasn’t any better than Wesker, really (maybe even a bit worse since there’s no low hit). She’s def. a hell of an XF3 character, and way more interesting/fun than wesker will ever be. I never found a spot in neutral where I felt it was a strong option calling her in pressure.

Skrull is an absolute terror in XF3 (check out Potato_Salad, he’s one of the best players in the SE atm and has my vote for one of the most consistently terrifying XF3 skrull). Tenderizer works for dirt naps (and kind of a funky gimped inverted cold star), Quasidomo puts in work with Orbital grudge (super armor mini-tatsu, might be able to do flame carpet + OG > dark matter extension if OG doesn’t knock them too high? Or maybe FC+OG j.MHS s.S relaunch in the corner?), and Stone Smite works well as an extender (and I feel like you would be able to do flame carpet + stone smite for dorm extensions, but same issue where it’s not very useful in neutral.)

Tasky, I don’t know how I feel about anchor tasky, he’s solid, but he doesn’t have very good mixups so you’re pretty much just fishing for throw > super. It’ll still kill, but I would say he’s a better point/second. You can always run X23/Tasky/Dorm if you wanted. Tasky with Dark hole is decent and I think he gets easy throw pickups off it which is a major thing for his damage. Plus the DHCs are pretty solid except for going into X23 at range. He’s probably the only one that would actually give you a neutral assist aside from Orbital Grudge, too.

Yeah your right, and if feels odd for me to play Felicia without Vajra too. Much better anchor than Wesker, but still poses the same problem (I love to burn XF for X23 or Dorm). Tasky is one of those characters that look good on paper, but I really despise his mobility outside wave dashing. He doesn’t fit my play-style much even though I know his bnbs and his terrific DHC. Skrull and Dorm don’t have much synergy I like either (quick lab session)–I’d rather pair Skrull with Vergil (Vergil/Skull/Hawkeye) which leaves X23 out.

So that leaves me to Iron Man. After seeing recent Merkyl footage I was wondering what if I put Iron Man at second, maybe go with RB like Merkyl and to my delight he works nicely. X23 also gives him unblockables, he can still relaunch off Dark Hole, and the DHC’s are perfect for both characters. His mobility is similar to Nova’s and he even grants Dorm a relaunch off flame carpet. I think I may found something here (X23/Iron Man/Dorm).

RB also puts out enough hitboxes to surround Dorm’s biggest weakness to heavy rushdown, and beam keeps missiles/drones off the screen for X23 to move safely around.

I would say the only reason to put IM on your team is for Infinites and RB (his beams good, but RB does so much more for X23 you’d almost be crazy to not run it). If you feel like you need a hori assist, play X23/IM(RB)/random other hori assist (maybe log perhaps? lol.) I messed around with AS with IM and I just don’t feel like there’s enough spots where you have enough advantage to be able to go for AS unblockables. I run CS just as a get out of jail free card because there are plenty of times where it’s just hard to create space against some of the more heavy rushdown characters (IM can convert off a CS hit but I haven’t found a way to use it for practical extensions and it’s really unsafe outside of Alpha counter). Plus it’s my favorite way to kill people that press buttons on incoming (looking at you helm breaker) since you don’t always have time to hard tag safely after Proton Cannon. (such a terrible super in this game, lol.)

I was originally wanting to run an X23/Dorm/IM team. The only reason I’m not playing that team is there’s no max HSD relaunch available and I feel like X23 needs all the damage/meter per hit you can swing. Plus I played more of a rushdown Dorm and couldn’t find a way that I liked calling RB for pressure. That’s how I ended up with X23/IM/RR. Log does work, one of the best assists in the game for what it does. Plus it’s really realllly nice to be able to convert full screen beams and midscreen RBs into full damage combos and I think that Log rounds out IM into a deadly spacing character since he doesn’t really have to speed to play a rushdown character without a really strong lockdown. (a la Joker’s IM+Drones.)

I need to finish my lab work and run a few weeks with RR on point just so I can get used to using RB with him. Theoryfighter-wise…that should be a terrifying combination, I just haven’t put in the work yet. scrub

Sadly, I don’t know any of Tony’s TAC infinite startups. From watching YT he can go all directions, which is nice (I may have to practice up depending on how things go at the next casuals gathering). I’m use to playing Laura with a strong hori assist, but I think I’m going stick with RB for now because I’m netting 855k 1 bar off touch (close to 1.1 mil if I DHC). It’s still good Tony has a durable beam assist to keep drones/missiles off.

I’ve been getting use to Dark Hole’s lockdown effect and when to call the assist (c.M> Uncharged Neck Slice+Dark Hole is filthy). Even though he’s an inferior character compared Wesker, Tony opens up my options a lot more for Laura. I play a spacing type Dorm so RB fits in perfectly surrounding him with hitboxes so he can safely place flame carpets or escape pressure. I love what Log does for Tony and Laura, but I don’t feel like learning RR just for utilizing the assist when Dorm’s is serviceable and is generally the better character.

When you guys add the third character to your team, is the big thing always “how is this character in xf3”? I say this because I despise XF3 with a passion and cannot wait until they nerf that. I almost never use it because it cheapens the comback for me. I rather work for it and it makes all the difference knowing that i made that comeback without the need of XF3.

GO WITH THE CHARACTERS YOU LIKE!!! and make it work! lol

You’re a cool dude, Luis, you make nice videos…

but, no. Play to win. If you’re getting crazy comebacks with XF3, you’re playing the game correctly.

Of course, there are other ways to use xfactor well also, but to deny yourself lvl3 because it “feels cheap” is straight scrubbery.

What matters to me is how the character can cope solo, whether or not they have a good assist and whether or not their assist warrants them being solo, as well as their use of XF3. With a character like X-23 who’s finicky with builds, I don’t feel I can afford to play about, especially considering the incredibly dumb stuff you have to deal with in this game. That being said, I dislike Doom and a lot of the common good support characters. Dante, Akuma and Ironman are some of the few I’d want to use.

Personally, I’m willing to have Raccoon in the back even if he’s not a reliable XF character just for how powerful his assist is for both of my other characters. It’s no different than the Nemo team that everyone is flipping their shit over now and thats even more finicky since you lose pretty much the whole gimmick of the team as soon as the crumple character dies. It’s a great assist and a great strategy but a smart player isn’t going to lose 3 characters to an XF3 strange unless he gets super lucky.

Besides, an X23 team shouldn’t be about XF3, it should be about getting the 2 (or 3 at endgame) guaranteed kills off of XF 1 or 2. If you’re not working towards that with your team compositions, you’re not playing X23 right IMO. Besides, most XF 3 runbacks can’t kill 3 characters anyways due to time constraints

That all being said, if you’re left with XF3 against 3 characters, use it, beat ass, and take the W. You’re playing X23…you’ve already made your game hard enough by making that choice (relative to the high tier tridash/derp teams.)

I mean, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take it into account. I agree with Merkyl though in being as cheap as possible so that incoming characters don’t even get to play, that’s where X23 shines the most. Right now I have Tony at anchor, and his movement and XF3 sucks. But, I love his options. He has a beam, cancelable repulsor, smart bombs (lol), good tools I feel an anchor should have so that I don’t need his XF3 (focus it more on x23/dorm). Proton Cannon is pretty ass, though.

Yes, it is totally ass. The only thing worse than that is RR’s Rock and Roll. Wandles is the only anchor IM I know of and the fact that you can cancel into his level 3 and kill off of anything makes him hard to stomp on. It sucks when you have to run someone else down, though.

So, I see a lot on X-23/IM and X-23/Rocket, and am pretty well versed on how both assists work on Laura. But, having played neither of the other characters, I don’t know what really works for them. My brother wants to relearn X-23 (he got bored with Wolvy, I don’t blame him). So, we’re brainstorming on a team, thinking either X-23/IM/???, X-23/???/Rocket, or maybe ???/X-23/Rocket. What do people think would be a good team to learn quickly? I like the last because I’m biased towards X-23 in spot 2, but all of them sound nice. We thought Hawkeye would fit the first well, and someone like Dormammu, Ryu, or Hsien-Ko on the second. For the third team, Taskington or Wesker would probably work, but we don’t know a lot of the cast, so peoples’ suggestions would be lovely.

My bro’s getting back into the game, so most options are open to him. Preferably execution-light, so nothing like Dante, and our social group kinda has a general dislike of Doom, so none of him if possible.

Edit: Just tried Hulk/X-23/Rocket. There’s a fun one. 972k bnbs off a simple log confirm, and I’ve never played Hulk aside from mission mode, so WOW. Opinions on that too would be lovely, as I said, I don’t really play Hulk.

Tony has amazing setups for Laura, but Log allows her to HC her stuff and covers her neutral well (its durability isn’t great though). I think RB is superior to log on incoming mixups and setups dirt nap much better once X23 builds enough meter off her XF2 loops. If you want, you could just get the best of both worlds like Merkyl is doing. Looking at Hulk or Tasky, depends on what you want. Tasky sorta covers logs crappy durability with zoning arrows, while Hulk will net you better dmg. Hulk is sorta one dimensional, so I would probably choose Taskmaster. He has just as much health as hulk, good air normals, spidey swing, shield skills, etc. even if he dies you should have more than enough meter to kills at least two characters with X23 XF2 loops.

Edit: X23/Dorm/IM is the first team in a long, long time where I didn’t feel the need to run back to Wesker or Doom. This is probably because I’ve been playing offline a lot lately, and those bozos can get away with a lot more shit there.

Once I learn the infinite setups, this team is going to be in cruise control. The only suspect thing I have with it right now is Anchor Man, which I can remedy by simply putting him at second for Proton Cannon DHC (which still fits with Laura’s RT and net around 1.1 mil dmg).

Sorry for always posting walls, guys…I swear I don’t realize how long the post is until after I finish. Hope this helps, at least.

X23(AS or CS)/RR(Log)/Ammy(CS): RR/Ammy is an incredible shell for pretty much any mobile character in the game. Check out NeoRussell for some of the synergy there. I feel like the same kind of shenanigans should exist with RR and repulsor blast, I just don’t have the setups down yet. I probably would have went to this if I knew how to be anything but absolute garbage with Ammy. There’s great DHC synergy on these two and X23 gets a lot from both of them except for maybe super great 1 meter DHCs. (Though I think not having access to infinites limits the eventual lifespan on this team, though it makes up for it with some great setups.)

X23(OTG)/IM(RB)/Sent(Drones): Historically, IM has had the most success with Drones (a la Joker and Alucard), but I feel like it’s not necessarily the greatest way to play him since you’re kind of going against his strengths going with that option. I feel like if you don’t just want him to be an assist character or a low tier version of magneto you need to find a way to be able to consistently convert off his spacing game which is why I stuck with log. I don’t know what other assists offer that since I got lucky with that pairing early on. Drones works because it allows you to maintain corner pressure where you can always combo off RBs and lets you play with IMs hi/low game but you have to get on RayRay or Infrit’s level with Sent to make it really scary.

Hulk(gamma wave)/X23(AS)/IM(RB): I would count this as a broken end game team. It has so many sick setups, just check out the match I posted against Wandles. Hulk has 1mil+ combos off everything except his ground throws and even then you can still pop XF if you want to kill off that (that’s TODs on most of the cast from hi/lows/air throws/command throws/mixups/super armor moves it’s probably about as much synergy as you can squeeze out of hulk). Plus Hulks start of match with RB is rediculously strong. You get to do some really swag looking combos and even crossup setups too, which is wierd for hulk. X23 can get max damge with 2 relaunches and two of the strongest DHCs in the game with Hulk and IM. Plus you have reliable access to the 1-touch kill gimmick since you can reliably TAC through to IM from both X23 or Hulk on point. Only weakness seems to be getting HBD’d during the startup of RB or just not being able to protect IM against random supers in some situations (usually gamma crush keeps that from being too much of a problem, tho.) Gamma Wave is surprisingly good for X23 aside from the slowish startup. It lets you do some real ninja shit with her in neutral since it completely hides her in the rocks at ground level, plus works perfectly for extensions.

X23(CS)/Wesker(LowTG)/IM(RB) or RR(Log): Neither IM nor RR really need or get a ton off OTGs since places where they can extend with it they can get it themselves. But Wesker might get some extensions/mixups/resets off RB or teleports+Log(though no infinites), so you might be able to make X23/Wesker/IM or RR work, X23 would get max damage, but you might want to put IM second for the stronger DHC and do some DHC/Tag/Alpha counter to get Wesker in later, phantom dance is that real booty DHC. (Though both RB and Log pull them out of the corner when extending so it might be better than usual since it wouldn’t be in the corner.) Wesker plus Log would be some pretty broken shit, though you’d have to build combos around not having the wall bounce. Should work fine, I just don’t know enough about his upper-level mechanics.

RR(Log)/X23(CS or AS)/Haggar(Lariat) or Spencer(Armor Piercer or Slant Shot): If you want to go with other off the wall options, there’s a few characters with Hard Tag combos with RR, I think Spencer (not 100% on this one, but I’m pretty sure the tech is there) and Haggar are the notable options. RR/X23/Haggar would probably be a pretty fun team that should TOD, though I think RR would need a better neutral assist to be terrifying, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this pairing has some great setups/gimmicks. (That being said, FR_RoachKing still does a ton of work with just Wesker/Haggar/Phoenix with a lot of resets so maybe you could make it work without a netural assist. He does have the gimmick backing him up though, so…shrug) RR with restand might actually be pretty broken since you would have access to late combo net traps and X23 can hard tag and combo (not 100% if you can do that fast enough after calling Spencer, though.) Even without the X23 hard tag, the oki from this team should be hella scary once you work out the setups. You get the Jacobs Wire reset loops with X23+slant shot but I don’t know how I feel about that personally and I’m not sure if you can even use Armor piercer and it def. wouldn’t be a great neutral assist so it might be better to play that team X23/RR/Spencer. (Plus Spencer has an infinite, tho it’s not one of the practical options, lol.)

X23(CS)/IM(RB)/RR(Log): I feel like this is one of the real end game X23 teams since it also has synergy outside of the 1-touch win gimmick. Once you have consistent infinites, If you play anybody that doesn’t have an Akuma/Strider/RR (low health means you can’t build the extra meter post-dirt nap without another TAC) in their 2nd position, you can build the meter you need to double dirt nap and kill a whole team off 1 touch. Both assists work great for X23s neutral and she can extend in any order and off any starter for max damage. The thing that I really love is that it doesn’t sacrifice synergy anywhere for one of the strongest gimmicks in the game. IM and RR might not be top tier, though japan disagrees about RR, but I can say 100% that IM+log is great once you learn the spacing and I’m only on my theory game as far as how good RR+RB SHOULD be (my RR isn’t even at 50% yet, but I still feel really good about the pairing). The only thing you sacrifice on this team is not having a great XF3 derp comeback character, which doesn’t bother me that much anyways since you should always have the option to guard cancel and both characters can handle HBDs well enough to stage a comeback against people with bad pressure habits. The only bad thing about RB is that it’s a set number of hits, so you can’t use it for HBDs (at least not in a combo I’ve found that can still kill both characters if they’re high health.) That’s a pretty piddly thing for what this team offers, though. Log still works fine on HBDs (tho I’ve seen RR drop out of it before, go figure.)

Don’t apologize. I’m a fan of walls when the writer knows what they’re talking about.

Good stuff, but a lot of the RR and IM stuff I’m not running. I’m still a Task/Dorm/X-23 guy (though the other order of those two switched around is proving easier to play). This is for my bro, who is picking up the game for the first time in 3 months and he doesn’t want to play Wolvy/Wesker. Tonight, to check things out, I tried Hulk/X-23/Rocket for some longer lab time, and the synergy is just insane. Hulk and Rocket are pretty much impossible to get past in neutral, and you can set up log trap confirms from way too much armor (st.H into gamma charge L, gamma charge L twice, st.M f.M works to confirm it too), and each of those confirms leads from 950k to 1.05 million damage, depending on the starter. Basic Sausage had the right idea pairing those two up. It seems I can get damaging combos from an air throw, command throw, air-to-air, all of that does similar damage, and a DHC will ensure most peoples’ deaths. And X-23 gets two assist extensions, both of which do cool shit in nuetral, Mekyll, you already talked about the “ninja shit”. That’s all I got, but that sounds good enough for me. If I picked an X-23/Log team I’d go for Task front, just because it’s what I know already.

Thanks for the info, Merkyll. I’m probably going to try labbing that X-23/Wesker/RR and Hulk/X-23/IM team next.

Great day at casuals. X23/Dorm/Iron Man did very well, better than I expected. I had a little bit of trouble with a Tasky/Doom/Phx player, but each set was close for the most part and I ended up pulling one out with a teleport d.phx into Iron Man’s RB cancel. People were liking my setups with this squad, and even though Tony is at anchor right now he put up some decent stretch of runs. Both assist combined grant Laura ToDs on people and people were complaining how RB covers Dorm’s shit perfectly for meteor/liberation spam.

One thing though, I REALLY need to learn Tony’s infinite setups. If I can get Tony in on a 4-way TAC infinite and not drop this team would be so ridiculous. Also, I dropped some meteor inputs after a stalking flare. I need to get use to the RUN…RUNs more.

Yeah, I’m still missing out on my infinites atm. In the lab, I’m maybe 90% on all TAC on the right corner (maybe 50% on all directions on the left. scrub)

As soon as I try it in a real match, I just can’t get the OTG into the actual infinite to come out. Probably went for literally 30 attempts tonight and got nothing. >.>

I’ve finally started abusing the alpha counter tho…that shit is too good (except against wolvie…I can’t get it to connect on him for shit…>.>)…Also, trying to notice places where I can use the mad hopper hard tag unblockables and have gotten a few of those here and there. Incoming against this team is rough, lol. Don’t want to press a button? Guess right. Press a button? Alpha counter into 1mil+. I have 3 meters? Dirt nap into dead character. Your character doesn’t have air mobility? Mad Hopper unblockables. Lol.

Played a few matches with RR on point just to get used to calling RR and that works really well. It is next to impossible to someone to rush down RR + RB thanks to traps and all the other shit he can throw out.

Had a clutch moment where I couldn’t hard tag so I just went all in and did angled proton cannon > DHC dirt nap > TK CS HxxS and it seemed pretty solid. They tried to XF out of it and weren’t able to. I’m sure it’s not airtight, but something to think about if you’re running the pairing.

Alpha counters are one of those things that people know about but dont use like snapbacking. At one point i got really mad at my friend with his Vergil because its just bs and i went to the lab to try to find a counter and X23’s uppercut alpha counter was perfect against lockdown Vergil swords shenanigans. Also works on Taskmasters Shield > Stinger blockstring

^^ I also have a similar thing like you did with Angled proton > Dirt nap with Ryu. Im pretty sure youre right and its not airtight but i swear ive landed that setup 100% of the time or they get hit by the beam for spamming pushblock lol.

I’m only running ankle slice so dorm can get free relaunches off it (small delay s). I will probably switch soon though because rb picks them up off fc. And yeah, having something against Vergil swords is wonkers.

Well its not perfect. Once they know that you have an answer to that, all they have to do is block while they have swords out but thats good because it prevents them from going apeshit 100% of the time to something less than 100%