Rushdown Spiral

Classic Fighting Games Marvel VS Capcom 2
1

I realize Spiral and the idea of rushdown seem counterintuitive at first glance (and second, and third blah blah etc) but since I run Spiral in an auxiliary position on a few of my low/mid tier teams I’ve been slowly building up a more rush-oriented game-plan with the sexy six-armed queen of the Mojoverse. Basically I found myself trying to make a comeback with a character that I would normally be content locking down at a safe distance, and getting nowhere.

I haven’t really seen this so, dibs, haha. I was considering saving this stuff for competition, but its no fun sitting on it when I don’t even play at comps regularly, plus I don’t block at top tier level, so i wouldn’t create the opportunity to land half this stuff anyway… :sweat:

Here’s what I came up with:

(Near) Instant Overhead

If you Tiger Knee the qcb+HK Quickdrop move, then late LP or LK you get the equivalent of a quick SJ, add LK with Mag or Storm, but just a hair later with the hit. I learned it by doing TK Quickdrop, mash LP, but its more consistent if you figure out the recovery timing on the quickdrop. Its 12 frames if I’m getting Joo’s data right, but I’m not sure. At any rate, it’s not as quick as Mag/Storm b/c their Air Dash recovers at I believe 1 frame, but it does give Spiral a beefed up 50-50 game. It’s not a true tri-jump b/c you don’t make forward progress with Quickdrop, but it’s nice because you can pressure/be a threat without swords.

**
overhead combo options:**

TK Quickdrop, sjLK(overhead), dLK, dHK, sj magic series, dp+P

TK Quickdrop, sjLK, dLK, dFP xx call swords xx lockdown

Call Tron, TK Quickdrop, sjLK, dLK+Tron hits, dHK at last ring, air combo

overhead pressure stuff

The overhead buffs up Spiral’s already good swords stuff. For instance:

-You can typically throw a few swords, dash in, call assist plus do the overhead, then FP, swords, recall swords. Integrates a 50-50 chance into your trap rep.

-On standing opponents when close, you can SJ up LP xx Quickdrop LP for quick pressure. Land into FP, swords if you’ve got 'em. Basically two quick overheads, but they don’t combo, so just for pressure.

-You can dash under someone jumping over you or someone coming down from a SJ, then do the overhead. Hard to block the first time around.

-TK Circle of Swords creates a strong enough pin where you can get an overhead chance too.

Speed Up Stuff

Another method I’ve taken to using in order to create some rush options for Spiral is to mix Speed Up into my trap. Fun because Spiral starts to feel like Strider, burning bar to lock down… I did this mostly with Mag/Gief/Spiral, since nobody on that team actually needs meter to play effectively, outside of DHCs.

Speed Up/Power Up Spiral tends to get overlooked probably because with Team Duc your Cable/Sent wants all that bar, but IMO you can make it a worthwhile option.

Speed Up with Tron backing gets gnarly like Wolvie/Tron. If you do LK+Tron, LKxxSpeed and Tron hits, you can dash into the speed up infinite. This eats up assists. Even if you don’t catch the point, Tron and a couple reps of dash in HK is worthy damage. Throw swords, teleport, LK+Tron, LK… and TK Quickdrop, sjLK, LK+Tron, LK… are some mixups that can lead to Speed Up infinite schit.

Speed Up mode lets you Quickdrop overhead with HP and maybe HK as well. I don’t know if its just me, but it seems like its a lot harder to TK Quickdrop while in Speed up… it just seems like I have to do the Tiger Knee motion even faster than normal. Its a good way to mixup into the dash infinite if you can pull it off.

This is ver. 1.0 of this stuff for me so please tear this a new one, or if some of the setups don’t work as listed I’ll be more specific/take another look at them. Maybe Spiral levels up soon…

2

The thing about marvel is that its not gonna be figured out anytime soon, and even when every character is fully explored there’s still team chemistry to factor in. Training mode Marvel=world’s greatest puzzle game:rofl:

3

Quick Spiral Tron Update:

Spiral can lay down good overhead/rushdown pressure with Call Tron, sj LP, TK Quickdrop LP, random combo. The first sjLP acts as an overhead and tron will combo off of this one quick hit. It works out well when its blocked b/c you’re already following up the first overhead with another sjLP with tron backing. If you’ve got swords ready its even better b/c you can follow up with some lockdown swords spaced out to let you get an assist call, or if you can train them to block your follow-up low, you can use swords to cover another overhead attempt.

4

You talk about Spiral-Tron, well I have no idea if I have permission to put this stuff online, but basically, Spiral without knives and with this assist is almost deadlier without knives. Actually, knives can set this up quite nicely. More later…

Basically, corner the person and do this…

Corner opponent, [Launch, lp, lk, mp, mk, quick-drop, immediate spiral buster, aim forwards, call Tron the second the throw releases]xN

She also has a corner combo like this with Sentinel.
[Launch, IMMEDIATE sj,lp, IMMEDIATE quick-drop, IMMEDIATELY Sentinel-y call, IMMEDIATE Spiral Buster, throw forwards]xN

The latter combo combined with the quick-drop overhead could revolutionize Spiral. Out of the trap, if she gets you cornered, she can do a tiger knee expanding knife circle, dash in, and set up this combo while they block your knives. If you block low, she tk quick-drops, lp you if you don’t stand up instantly, launches you, and starts the “Busta-Loop”. If you block high, she ducking lk you, launches you, the “Busta-Loop” begins, you die. If you block high, well, the overhead isn’t quite instant. Spiral can decide to delay attacking so it feints an overhead, and chances are you eat a ducking lk and get Spiral Busted to death.

Only use quick-drop lp unless you have knives, then use quick-drop lk

5

I definitely feel this. Whenever I play Spiral/Tron I tend to go on 15-20 second runs where I forget to call knives. At least it feels like forgetting b/c I’m so used to calling knives at every safe opportunity.

Hey could you elaborate on this? It sounds really interesting, but can’t they mash LP/LK to hit you during Quick-drop? I think you have to wait 12 frames after starting Quick-drop before you could Buster, so thats the hole in this grab loop. It still seems like it would set up beast mix-ups and/or multiple assist call stuff as well.

So have you known about the quick-drop overhead or is this new to you? Just curious if Spiral players even know about it.

edit:

DF, I still haven’t successfully linked your set-up, but after fooling around with it a little this afternoon I can see that it could work. I’m still sure that there’s something they can do to get out (roll maybe, have you put the CPU on auto-roll?). After messing with it though, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like a full 12 frames before you can Spiral Buster from Quick-drop, so I’m guessing that you can cancel from Quickdrop nearly instantly into Buster. At any rate it’s a great find, because QuickdropxxBuster let’s you call your assist after SJ air combos so that they have Drones or whatever in their face on wake-up.

So even though I started this thread to beef up Spiral’s rushdown, this particular bit definitely helps out her trap set-ups as well, and made me realize that a mutli-dimensional (read Rush and/or Trap) Spiral just means that you can use trapping to set up your rushdown and press that advantage when you see an opening. So, good shit Deathfist. I was considering deleting this for lack of interest, but I’ll keep it around for awhile. :tup:

6

somebody talked about Duc doing this a while ago, i asked duc about it in the main spiral thread, and he confirmed there’s ways to toss somebody into drones by using quick drop xx spiral buster.

as far as comboing AFTER the drones, I don’t think it’s possible because i’ve tried it a LOT and have yet to see it done. spiral buster is inescapable for a lot of characters, so if it were really possible, this would be borderline broken.

and no, you can’t hit spiral out of spiral buster up close… you just get grabbed.

7

hm… as for contribution, this is something I’ve seen you can do:

if you do normal CoS, spiral starts dropping immediately. this keeps you from doing 10 CoS in a row and Spiral staying in the center of it…

but…

if you cancel CoS XX speedup super or CoS XX powerup super, spiral kinda lifts up a little bit and is in better position to do another CoS.

I don’t know that you’d want to do more than 1 powerup (better to save that meter for Cable or Sentinel), but if you do have the opponent cornered, it’s a good way to get at least another CoS going that they’ll have to block or eat. Not only that, but you get speed up or powerup to boot.

8

Ok, cool. I wasn’t 100% about that. Of course it would be height dependent, but yeah, if you position it right…

I didn’t know that about CoS xx Speed-Up/Power-Up either. I’ll definitely make a point to work that into my Rush strings. More swords = good thing.

This bit is theory marvel, but it actually starts to seem worth it to burn some bar into order to get extra CoS chip if you can work something like Doom AA into the mix. I’m picturing something like Doom, SJ CoS xx Speed-Up, recall Swords, blocked Rocks, CoS, land, repeat. Something like that.

I agree with you on it being hard. I not gonna be too quick to rule it out though. Even if Drones doesn’t work though, maybe some other assist will. Team Duc is pretty thoroughly explored so maybe the solution to making a setup like this work is with some different character interaction.

9

You do the spiral buster so quickly after the quick-drop starts that you either don’t see it or if you do you don’t even move. And no you can’t roll out of it. You land on Tron’s rings. Personally tested to work. This one isn’t debated.

As for the Drone one, the best person to talk to about this is Ratio1Beatdown. He found it and told me EXACTLY how it was done. From his description, everything is done so fast it’s as if you’re on LSD.

We’re talking launch, sj lp the nanosecond you leave the ground, quick-drop, call Sentinel-y, Spiral Buster, aim forwards, launch. The timing would be so tight and insane, it’s unreal. He did it, he has a witness [a couple victims actually…,], he told me exactly how he did it, I did some fiddling around with it and can see how it was possible. I think I’ll experiment with it more. I trust his judgment.

I wasn’t there when this happened, but after Beatdown found out about this, he challenged Lord Magnus and Ivan with Spiral. I asked Ivan what happened and he told me that he did EXACTLY the same combo with drones on Lord Magnus over and over till he died.

I rewrote it to describe the timing better by adding a single word multiple times to give you a picture of what it’s like timing-wise…

[Launch, IMMEDIATE sj,lp, IMMEDIATE quick-drop, IMMEDIATELY Sentinel-y call, IMMEDIATE Spiral Buster, throw forwards]xN

10

The x N part sounds iffy - launch when drones hit, sj Lp, quick drop and drones again…doesn’t seem like you could call drones agian that quickly. On the second launch you would have to do a few more hits than sj jab b4 you could quick drop and call drones again.
Could be wrong - I’ll give it a try.

Unless I could get the execution down I’d prob. stick to her HK airthrow resets.

11

Sentinel leaves before the drones are fully across the screen. He can be called this quickly. It’s not like Doom where if you’re using Hulk it’s a cakewalk gamma crushing him [although you can gamma crush both assists :)].

BTW, what are Spiral’s HK airthrow resets?

12

drones leave because spiral buster takes time to execute, and by the time you’ve thrown them into it and you’ve landed, relaunched, and done sj. air combo, of course sentinel is gone by then.

HK airthrow resets have a major problem that spiral buster doesn’t-- you can tech out of it. and all of the good players can consistently tech out of throws.

I’ll believe this when I see it, because I’ve tried this way too many times to believe that it works with Sentinel drones… now if it works with T-Bonne, that should be good enough. That essentially means corner combo with Spiral = just about inescapable death. And then do CoS guard break into the same exact combo, then you can wipe out someone’s entire team.

I definitely think more research should be done on this… unfortunately my DC is temporarily out of commission. damn you guys for not trying this earlier when I asked Duc about it in his thread!! i’m surprised Duc didn’t take it further, himself.

13

My hands don’t wanna move that fast… :sad:

I’m still not getting the combo with Sent, but I’m seeing that Quickdrop xx Spiral Buster or even Quickdrop alone in air combos is really useful, especially with Spiral/Tron.

You can do dash in LK, Tron, HK, Tron Hits, Dash in dHK, pkp, Quickdrop plus recall Tron, HK on the way down. Obviously they will more than likely block that second Tron, but it’s relatively safe b/c they can’t call an assist (airborne). So they land into a Tron pin and you get an overhead try or teleport x-up.

14

magic series…
Hold back when you airthrow in the corner… launch when they bounce.

Launch and drones, sj Lk, Hk, falling lk , jump and HK airthrow again, or launch again if you do the Lk close enough to the ground, or dash under d+Lk - not recommended vs magneto.

I’m still dubious about alot of the stuff being posted - starting to get into thoery fighter realm.
And alot of people aren’t gonna use spiral/tron.

15

I’m usually pretty careful about theory marvel stuff, i.e. I’ll point out that I haven’t used X versus a human player or fully explored technique Y or whatever. But it’s useful just to generate discussion on new ideas/situations/techniques, especially for me b/c I don’t play against good comp often and when I do it’s low tier match-ups.

Re: Spiral/Tron:

You’re right, for the same reason that not very many people run Strider/Tron. Trap characters just want Drones or Rocks more than they want 50-50 Tron mixups. The reason I got this thread going was to show/generate discussion on how Spiral should not be limited to being strictly a trap character. IMO Spiral/Tron gets more options and is safer because swords can cover up a lot of “uh-oh” botched-Tron calls and she doesn’t need meter to lockdown. And Spiral has a pseudo tri-jump overhead which leaves you with frame advantage, and any character with a quick combo-able overhead is a prime candidate for Tron assist. Just my 2cents though.

16

this thread is neccessary.

17

If the Spiral Buster in that [Launch, IMMEDIATE sj,lp, IMMEDIATE quick-drop, IMMEDIATELY Sentinel-y call, IMMEDIATE Spiral Buster, throw forwards]xN combo is done on the ground (or in the air but pixels above ground level), then it works. I was able to get to the second Launch but I’m not tight enough with executing the QCBK immediate DP motion to get that second rep. I actually had the most luck when I added a slight pause in between the Quickdrop and the Sent call because most of the times the drones were coming out too soon. The timing for the assist call looks like it wants to be done at the Forward position of the DP motion. So its buffered in there: f+Sent, d, df+LP.

So it can be done, but I have no idea what you can do to reverse it b/c I still can’t do it at all consistent.

18

I tried it last night - similar problem with how the drones were coming out.
Might be due to the sj jab being too slow so spiral wasn’t close enough to the ground.
I’m thinking of using negative edge - where you say hold the assist button as you do launch or sj jab then release it as you do the quick drop.

The timing for this seems insane. It might be all about how low you are to the ground. I really need to see a vid.

eczangief - re theory fighter stuff - I wasn’t strictly refering to you solely. Probably could have posted more. I’m basically of the opinion that certain characters - like spiral - work so well with drones that anything else is short changing yourself.

Re quick drops - match wise I think your best set ups are after a wos hitting an airborne opponent and during the speed up if you can get the reverse TK thing happening.
Spiral can sj cancel her s Hp IIRC.

Out of the two (speed up and power up)I’d probably go for power up - mainly cos of increasing her sword combos and her HP throw - which is probably what you wanna do if you have spiral solo.

Also, during her speed up if you do in the corner launch magic series spiral buster… toss forward you can connect a jab after on large characters - sent, silver samurai, Doom I think, not sure about cable.
Doesn’t always combo though.

19

Understood-- I did get a tad defensive:bgrin:. Drones are an essential part to Spiral, but since Sentinel has always been my weakest character (I still haven’t digested enough info on Fly/Unfly/Fast-fly etc.) I adapted by picking up other characters that can help get trap reps going.

Ya, Drones is still the best known for traditional (Duc) lockdown, but I’ve found that Doom (see Vidness), Tron, Cyke AA, Iron Man AA, Ken AA and others can work in interesting ways. Doom because he’s Doom, Tron for pinning (especially the last, late ring-- its a doosie), Cyke for that AA coverage with huge forward progress, Iron Man b/c it can hit from both sides (gets mean w/ teleport), and Ken b/c it’s zero risk if you cover it well.

I like speed up too much for that infinite, though haha. Does Power-up give you extra chip damage with Swords? I thought it did, but I’m not 100%. If so I don’t care how slight an improvement, I’d feel good trading a bar for extra damage even if I get shut down and fall back into a couple extra-chippy sword reps.

edit:
re: SJ Cancel-- yeah you can def SJC sHP during a few different windows. I’ve got the frame data bookmarked on my other machine, so I don’t know which frame intervals you can cancel at. It’s strange though, iirc theres a few frames where you can cancel, then several where you can’t, then a few more when you can again.

edit: Joo’s data for s.HP: 35,45,53,63

He lists no data for sHK but I’ve found that you can SJC at some point during the recovery frames. It’s hard though.

Possible flashy use for SJC would be in Speed Up infinites you could TK Quickdrop, sjHK a bunch of times. Or sHK/sHP, sjc Quickdrop, HK into infinite.

I’m tellin ya, if you’ve got fingers like a programmable pad Spiral can really get down. That overhead could be quicker since you’re looking at close to 15 frames (12 before you can do a normal after Quickdrop, then iirc 3 or 4 til LP/LK) before your overhead hits versus what, like 3 or less with Mag? But I can’t really complain b/c you can follow up the TK overhead with a ground combo unlike most low/mid-tier overheads where your overhead can earn you a combo only with the help of an assist. Still gotta test it (TK Quickdrop LK) for frame advantage though.

Q:
Anyone know the best way to assist kill from the Speed Up Infinite? I usually do [dash LK, HK]xN but it causes dizzy pretty quick and the air combo follow-up gets nerfed by damage scaling.

late night edit so I’ll check it for blatant typos/misprints some other time

20

Random Speed Up Infinite Variation

Dash in [LP]xN.

You can link LP until they dizzy. True LP, so you have to wait that split second before you press the button again to prevent getting Strong Punch. Holding forward keeps them nice and close while you get the satisfaction of linking the same hit over and over. Currently my favorite looking combo.