Pressure, Safety, Mixups, Resets and Approach

People can get much too much into combos, in this game. The majority of characters have 900K or more health, and the average combo does 600K damage, so really, unless you can take your damage to an extreme and kill with less than two combos, getting better damaging combos isn’t your chief concern. What is? Landing combos!

I want this thread filled to the brim with with as much Dante tech as physically possible, and then some! Info on how he can work solo is more important than assisted stuff, because you can’t and shouldn’t always rely on your assists!

Show me some style!

I’ll go ahead and give this thread a kick start. Im pretty much average (SWISH), so I don’t have amazing tips, but here we go!

Pressure:

  • As far as I’ve found, Dante can’t lay down pressure as well as characters like Zero, Crimson Viper and Felicia. His only option off most blockstrings is to make himself safe and try again later. So that brings us to-

Safety:

  • Dante can make his grounded blockstrings 100% safe by (Bold) canceling his H or his Stinger into a Reverb Shock, and then Fireworks. Because the Fireworks shots are fullscreen projectiles, they actually give Dante a greater frame advantage when he is advancing guarded, even if only slightly.
  • Dante’s jS has some pretty intense safety options. The general rule is that you cancel it into a Hammer on hit/block or when nearing the ground, because not only is the Hammer end-lagless, and not only does it lead into the same combos, but it’s completely safe, and it allows good options on block. The best I’ve discovered is that you may use your frame advantage to grab your enemy as soon as they get out of blockstun for a bit of free damage. Press an assist button while you grab. If your grab succeeds, you’ll do a throw. If it fails, your assist will come out during your tech animation. With a good, safe assist, you can confirm a hit into a combo, confirm a block into 100% safety and never put your assist in danger.
  • Devil Triggered Dante’s Vortex is not only completely safe, but impossible to advance guard. I’ve yet to integrate it into my gameplay, but it’s worth noting.

Mixups:

  • I’m no expert here either, but I do know that Dante’s H has great upwards and backwards range, and that he can easily dash under airborne enemies to hit them from behind and launch. Specialized combos will likely be needed for this, since Dante doesn’t normally combo off his S, but rather his Volcano. Nonetheless, good stuff.

Resets:

  • Dante’s Jam Session causes airborne recovery, and a good Dante combo builds about two bars of Hyper. This means that you can cancel into Devil Trigger on the last hit, activate flight and throw the enemy as they recover. In corners, forward and backwards techs are negated. Pressing an assist button while you for the throw grants you an advantage on tech, as I mentioned in the Safety section. You can start a combo off his air throw with the OTG of your choice, as you’re low to the ground.

Approach:

  • Dash, forward jump, air-dash, jH. An Air Play for cover, used after the jump, or a Hysteric, used before the dash, makes for good solo cover. An important thing to remember is to always press forward-H or back-H. Dante doesn’t combo well off air-to-air exchanges, so comboing off a throw works best, and this will protect you from incoming air throws.

Resets:
Going to put on the Captain Obvious cape. GRAPPLE. Yeah, it can get blown up by raw tags, whatever. Grapple forces a forward recovery. Combo -> wall bounce -> grapple -> IAD crossup M/H turns a 450k Meterless/660k with Million Dollars combo into one that kills a character.

Tangentially, anyone found any non-wall bounce ways to land Grapple consistently?

In the corner you can use the Revolver ground bounce after a Volcano or Stinger to set up the grapple reset.

There’s also the corner reset with Sky Dance where you basically end a combo with Sky Dance, and during the ground bounce animation fire a multilock shot. Then you proceed as normal, calling a low assist like Wesker or Felicia and either teleport or IAD for the cross up.

The Grapple is a 50/50 reset, right? Unless you have a low assist, the enemy can just watch where you jump/airdash/teleport to and block appropriately (if they expect the forced tech and aren’t freaking out). If you have a low assist, of course, blocking is futile~

Without assist, sure. Thus, the world runs Wesker/Felicia/other low assist, which moves the choice to raw tag or not, and if the Dante player either predicts or reacts to the raw tag - X-Factor cancelling the crossup H, for example - the incoming character eats it.

Nice stuff! Keep it coming, if you know any more!

So here’s a topic that’s relatively glossed over. Devil Trigger combos/resets and Potential vs Guaranteed damage. Aside from the bar actually spent to activate it, meterless Devil Trigger combos hurt a lot. Just fooling around I was able to get like 670k which is comparable damage to something short (read: wack stuff you might see on stream ) into million dollars.

The purpose of exploring these combos is not for the possible mid-combo extension/slight damage boost, but for the potential damage that’s possible if you end your first combo with a DT reset as opposed to ending it with a hyper for far less damage overall. The first number doesn’t sound impressive by itself, but when you preface that combo with a 450k reset things start to look more attractive. 1,120,00 for 1 bar? I’ll sign up for that.

If I have to hit someone like Taskmaster twice I would rather do it in a reset where the situation is on my terms. If I’ve landed a combo ending in Million Dollars on one of these beefier characters and they survive, what does that get me? It’s back to neutral, I spent a bar for no kill, and now the player has more incentive to raw tag/DHC out to gain red life back.

You would obviously build meter if you didn’t activate DT, but the added mobility you gain adds another layer to the mixup. You’re also endowed with new options to control the match if the mixup fails.

Dante’s most powerful reset is obviously grapple into high/low unblockable. The thing with this though is that it’s highly telegraphed and can be evaded through raw tag. There are counters for the latter, but nonetheless resets have holes. There’s two problems with this reset though. The first is the low assist requirement which not everyone runs. The second is actually due in part to grapple. Grapple eliminates tech roll options, but it essentially reduces all your mixups to 1 left/right guess before they just chicken block to get out of there. In short there are not enough layers to this reset. This is why I’m starting to explore resets off of a ground bounce with st.L.

Off a ground bounce reset you get 50/50 Crossunders, Crossovers when they land, and air throw with just Dante alone. There is some tech chasing that has to be done, but when you have an assist covering you things get easier for you and harder for them. I’m just messing with this now in conjunction with Vajra, and that assist alone can help you cover every tech option. You can OS airthrow in your airdash and have Strider cover you after the throw break.

What I’m doing specifically is Volcano xx Beehive Vajra+st. L wave dash once and look for the tech.

Forward techs: I can go for airthrow and if I saw it early enough, but they still break Strider will attack just as they land. You can also iad back with j.H to put out a big hitbox and keep the pressure on.

Neutral techs: Wavedash under into low, or into iad j.M/H back to same side. Dash up air/ground throw. Dante can’t convert as well from his throws like some other characters, but it’s an option. You can also OS this throw, but generally going for the mixup is better in case you accidentally get the throw instead of da big damage.

Back tech: Chase with wavedash and go for low/iad crossover j.M. Strider will hit them as they land so they can’t mash. You also can’t chicken block this setup.

Anywho, I’m dragging on and didn’t stay focused on one topic, but this is some stuff that’s been on my mind that I think people should start thinking about. Cheers.

:sweat:

Does anyone have any tips for using Weasel Shot off a whiffed s.H? The timing is very tight on it. 3/4 screen whiffed s.H xx Weasel Shot xx Stinger seems very good.

Having a little trouble dealing with hulk + drones any advice standing heavy has me a bit jumpy in this match up and he seems to gamma charge through my zone. I got doom hidden missiles and Vergil rapid slash assist wise.

Funny. I’m using Nova, Dante, Doom and having a bit of trouble too but I got around most of it. I just spam airplay until I can get in with Doom rocks and J.H. When he’s passive that is.

Air play is a good tool if your spaced far enough but hulk has a pretty big air throw range so you gota watch that. It’s harder to punish drone calls when your air born with dante that and he can charge through your air play depending on your height when you throw it out. I like crystal at a good distance because it blows up gama charge if your spaced well if not your… guna eat gama charge to gama crush.

[media=youtube]LGOe4HDSgmQ[/media]

At 3:06. The sickest mixup I’ve ever seen. Period. Actually, when you slow it down this looks like it might be a true unblockable… looks like it’s pretty much guaranteed if they block the acid rain.

Damn that’s good.

Hey cjaycr back when i was considering running strider assist with dante (which didnt end up working out as was gettijng too rushed down to either get strider out on the team i was running) i applied some inescapable left right mixups my friend had come up with for wesker strider and applied it to dante. So here are the notes:
-beehive ground bounce combo finish: asap after beehive ground bounce call strider hold back then hit launch (almost as late as possible but not quite). Needs more delay between strider call and launch vs wesker version as more HSD recovers quicker
**-**OTG volcano finish: call strider during tail end of air s post wall bounce walk f slight pause volcano (same delay as above more or less) quick jc tele for mixup
**-**Strider knocks f slightly goes back under after tele on hit: so after tele prolly cross under again so stays same side as original, otg guns must come fast if tele on strider hit

So yeh the mixup is done after the launcher b dashing under or teleporting or for volcano if ur quick enough to jump xx into tele at the end of a combo, must be at the end for the right amount of HSD to hit both air techs with strider. Hope that helps.

Hey guys, I was wondering about potential resets for Dante that don’t require going into Devil Trigger. Dante’s main role on my team is to build meter, and as such going into Devil Trigger is less than ideal. The assists I have are Dark Hole and Hidden Missiles. Dark Hole is like the king of basic resets, but I’d like to get into something more advanced if possible.

This is one that I use in the corner sometimes with missiles. it’s a pretty dangerous mixup that nets you a lot of meter.

[media=youtube]K533-KjV-i4[/media]

It works by purposely allowing your opponent enough time to forward tech in the air, but they are forced to block both the missiles and the acid rain, teching forward or backward doesn’t matter, if they choose not to block it just all combos together anyway.

OMG, that mixup is…perfect, i can’t wait to use it in a real match.

never played wesker outside of trainning mode cause i think hes stupid cheap but this mix up took the cake…stupid crazy smh