I hear completely different things about this matchup from different threads I have looked in. potter seemed to think it was advantage to sent. I know traditionally its thought that cable has advantage but how much?
I read through many threads some of them claiming that only a shitty sent would lose to cable, mine probably is pretty shitty but when I watch vids it seems like sent is NOT winning clean.
my question is after you bait out the ahvbs what is the strategy besides get on top of his head?
this might come down to needing superior stomp down patterns but I must ask how long is it possible to keep cable in blockstun so he cannot call cap when you do NOT have unfly. how long when sent does have unfly?
perhaps after baiting ahvbs focus on counter calls for captain?
basically how is this matchup at different levels of play?
bonus question:
I have trouble with watts… Ive heard allot of new shcool players have trouble with this team. I am more comfy in a thrax mirror or vs. msp than this team. i just don’t know what to do between the 2 AAs? bait and punish? that is what i tend to do for blackheart on point but i find it harder with sent on point.
any help is greatly appreciated! if these questions are answered elswhere just point me in that direction and ill look it up myself. thanks so much!
Ok. first off Cable/Capcom beats Sent/Capcom because of Cable’s ability to zone him out. I don’t care what the pros say. I play scrub at an average level and I played one of the best Sentinels I ever played (MVC2 Junkie). My Cable solo beat his Sentinel solo. If an average player like me can beat a damn good sentinel, then that match-up has to be bad for sentinel. Don’t be upset if you lose this match-up. It is frustrating.
First off, be patient. Bait out Capcom, and then punish with your assist.
Second, try to get Cable into a corner. He is going to go there eventually. That is your objective. If you don’t have unfly, you are to just bait out Capcom and counter call with your assist. I would say get hit by Capcom at least once just to get unfly, especially if he does not have alot of meter.
Third, after you lure AHVBs out, either call Cap or get on his head.
Last, if you hit him, hurt him bad.
Against team Watts, just rush down. He can’t do anything but call Cable, which is not very good against Thrax, and whiffs against a flying Sent. Blackhearts assist is slow, so you can punish with ease.
when i was referring to team watts though what i meant was “sent/blackheart/capcom”
the problem is when i am too close to get smashed up by cap assist and if i try to fly further out or waggle to make cap whiff i get tracked by blackheart’s
You corner sentinel all the time ok? Most players are going to call Capcom when pressured. What do you do? When you think cap is called, fly back and call Cap. His cap is getting killed and he is still in the corner and he can’t do anything. You rushdown and counter call with Cap. That is all, just RTSD then call Cap. If he counter calls your cap, its whatever. Sentinel hurts more than Capcom anyway. Punish his assist and keep pressuring.
A good sent will immediately jump and do hp when pressure by sentinel, but that is why you call cap, to keep him in the corner and do some mediocre damage.
Cee Dizzy is on point but I kinda believe Sent/CapCom > Cable/CapCom, stomp patterns+assist is just beasty! Cable/Capcom is really hard to get in on and the best thing to do is bait out his assist and rush. Just think of it this way, every time you get close expect CapCom to be coming out. Cable is good at zoning and really not a threat unless he has at least 3 meters.
Just keep an eye on Cable’s meters pretty much and just try and stay on him, don’t give him any space cause he can control it really good. Don’t worry so much about getting hit by CapCom either cause your gonna get hit eventually but when you do you’ll have unfly and that’ll boost Sent’s abilities up A LOT!
Word of advise, with Sent get in a habit of doing attack+unfly (while you’re in fly).
I never heard of team Watts, I usually use team Row and Matrix. I’m thinking about picking up Combofiend (Sent, IM, Cyke) seen some of his matches with Chunksta and I liked the team! But I suck with IM.
Sentinel can’t dodge mando AA super well. You have to make cable stray away from his helper by baiting it out. So for sentinel to get around cable\cap, this is what he has to dodge mando. Jupfwd past mando, good but you lose unfly and UNFLY is crucial in this fight. Not to mention that if you jupfwd and don’t call assist, cable can guard break with jump jab, wait, ahvb. Activate flight mode, fly past mando. It works but cable has counters ready, pretty easy and safe counters. If you have no unfly, its not gonna work right. sjupfwd, probably the best counter you can get away with safely but its not 100% clean and has EXTREMELY limited range.
Sentinel can’t spit check cable cause of gun x4, and TK ahvbs. Spit just takes forever. Sentinel can’t do poke+hsf strings cause of guard cancel AHVB, duc is famous for it. Grenade placement by cable can zone off multiple parts of the screen with screen drag grenades.
so sentinel can’t fight from full screen and when he gets in for pressure, cable can guard cancel and fuck him up still. Sentinel DEFINITELY needs unfly in this fight and you have to get it clean. Don’t risk getting unfly @ the risk of getting AHVB. in this fight SJ air throw is REALLY good vs cable. If sentinel throws cable, he gets that beefy ass air combo. Now if cable starts countering, you can SJ and separate yourself from cable’s normals and counter hit him for another big ass combo. Learn the max range of sj.lk with sentinel. This will come in handy when cables does j.fp, its one of his favorites normals to use and it can be countered for hella damage. Don’t fogret that cable’s j.fp is an overhead against sentinel, you gotta stand block those. Be careful with high SJ’s to dodge cable crap on the ground, its just a ruse. Cable will dash underneath you, fast cable style, and maintain distance. This is really tricky to break.
Its just incredibly hard for sent\cap to win the fight against cable\cap that can play the matchup. sent\cap basically has to play safe rush down and lots of counter hits to be effective. Its even tougher when cable has bar cause cable can call his helper and you can’t so in most of the exchanges you have cable will always have assist help where sentinel will have to block and fight solo. 1 wrong assist call and its a done assist. 1 bar with a capcom into ahvb is like 75%.
I answered it partially. Actually crossing up with a helper is really good against cable if super jumps raw.
One counter never works all the time in a neutral situation. Like cable won’t always let you throw him for instance but the throw only works because you can also SJ counter hit+mando combo his ass. So 1 option allows another option to become effective. The more safe options you have per given situation, in this cable cable SJ-ing raw, the easier it is to trick your opponent and deal life.
Explaining how fighting games properly work can be tricky and in this fight, you need to exploit some of those trickier concepts.
additional notes:
Its crucial to get cable out of position in this fight. If he stays in his sweet spot the whole time, you will be the one making the mistake eventually. Typically, the easiest way to make cable get out of position is to dodge his zone. Once you have unfly, baiting cables zone and dodging it becomes much easier because you have more angles to make cable fuck up. With no unfly, you’re limited to certain tricks.
A common trick cable loves to do is sj.fp when he sees sentinel SJ. Its a full screen poke and their isn’t much sentinel can do about it from certain spots. Here what you can do is SJ, fly mid SJ height, unfly. If cable takes the bait, he SJ’s all the way to the top of the screen and you can use the stuff that has been mentioned here to hit him.
You can gain unfly safely by taking a mando AA from the right spots. This is incredibly risky to constantly keep trying since mando does a great bit of life. You can also try to run into grenades that cable can’t AHVB after, those do very little life and give you unfly. Cable also loves his srk+p. Its fucking god like and that doesn’t do so much life either however he can couple it with mando so that it does like 20% to robot.
Mid screen with/without unfly it’s around 7 to 3 matchup in Cable’s favor.
If you ever manage to get Cable to lose super mid screen it’s about 5-5 even. It’s actually a little more in favor for sentinel at that point because he can just try to trade with Cable (getting unfly in the process) but that’s like a 10 second time frame. In the end it’s 5-5 because you could end up trying to trade hits and cable builds just enough super to counter AHVB you.
Once Sentinel corners Cable it’s 6-4 Sentinel favor if Cable has 0-1 meters and Sentinel has 50%+ life.
If cornered Cable has a plethora of meter it evens out to 5-5 or even beyond once again to Cable favor. If we’re talking about 4 to 5 meters it doesn’t even matter. Cable can play with guard canceling/taking hits on purpose and AHVB you back for even trying to attack in the corner.
In summary: the main weapons Sentinel has in this matchup are safe DHC to hailstorm later on to cover risky play, reliance on unfly, and pushing while Cable has no meter.
Unfortunately for Sentinel his superarmor is more or less useless against Cable (AHVB very unaffected by damage scaling, j hp and j hk from cable all go through superarmor, bulk of the game is played in the air.)
its hard to just say sent/cap vs cable/cap because there are two factors that can make the fight look real different (in terms of tactics used)
-cable’s big issue is meter, if it is the first characters fighting (i.e. scrub vs santhrax, opening cable vs sent fight), then cable might not have the meter to automatically shut down a lot of sentinel’s options. so this will make cable burn his meter instead of saving it most of the time, also, since its the first fight of the match, sentinel will have a MUCH easier time getting unfly
-sentinel’s big issue is unfly, which as i expained above, is MUCH easier to get when cable doesn’t have meter
shoult explained sentinel’s sj airthrow tactic great, its huge in the cable vs sentinel fight (high lvl) because its probably the lowest risk and highest reward option sentinel has. shoult also explained you have to watch cable’s patterns, so if you are jumping over cable’s s.fp, and he is pscimtar’ing afterwards to hit you, you gotta either fly back or unfly and punish.
if you corner cable, now you can punish his assists somewhat safely if it is cable/cap vs sent/cap, counter call cap, and then lock down cable and hit capcom with unfly/refly/reset strings.
i dont’ care who says it though, don’t believe that sent/cap vs cable/cap. if you saw a sent/cap beat down a cable/cap, it was either sent/cap is just a better player, or cable screwed up or sentinel for real just got lucky.
If either char has a good life lead, then that team is favored.
Which is why I think starting Cable vs. Sent isn’t the best choice, esp. against santhrax.
Your best bet: Be able to do Santhrax Special Combination (you know the one) with your eyes closed. Once cable starts getting scared of your sj.LKs, you’ve eliminated much of the threat.
.:.
Vs. Watts:
TLDR; Snap BH in. DESTROY
Longer:
BH on point:
Practice getting outta blocked infernos with a friend.
In SJ: Pushblock first hit, airdash out.
Inf xx HOD: Pushblock first hit of Inferno, normal jump/dash/sj out (don’t do it if your assist is caught up)
Cable on point vs. Sent: Same as above, just be more patient. As long as you don’t get AHVB/eat 10000 capcoms, you pretty much win. Inferno assist is more annoying than deadly, used to make you make dumb mistakes. Personally though, I’d use storm on point here, since most Watts players can’t take the rush.
With Sent on point vs. Sent: Flying unfriendly skies. Again though, Inferno is more annoying than anything (little bit more deadly); it’s main use is to catch your flys, or make you fly forward into a frypan. On the ground, s.HP BH on sight. If you have meter to burn, HSF combo the BH assist/blocking sent.
PS: Don’t ever do blocked HP xx RP against Cable (naked or w/assist). Hella punishable.
1)first bolded “answer.” i never said the beginning fight was not in cable’s favor. just noting, a good sentinel will get unfly safely and then the fight will become much harder.
2)second bolded “answer.” i think that is the only place you wouldn’t get it :lol: if sentinel jumps at you in kissing range, and you got cable in the corner, who wouldn’t tech THAT throw. and then cross up attempt? if i whiff a sj.fp going up, and he just drops, i don’t understand why im in such a bad mixup lol, especially if you have unfly. anyways, that seemed like a dumb answer.
third bolded “answer.” i don’t get it. are you saying cable’s s.fp are a 100% lockdown? or are you saying that cable doesn’t have to use s.fp block strings? if he doesn’t use s.fp, there isn’t much that stops you from wavedashin and slowly pushing him in the corner, where cable doesn’t want to be. only person i’ve ever seen play cable and get away with not doing many s.fp strings is mixup, but his cable is stupid crazy good and it was online. s.fp is a great tool that cable almost has to use, and your options after using s.fp block strings are lk or rh grenade, delayed scimtar anticipating them to jump, or nutgrab to reduce delay and get back to moving. “jumping over cable’s s.fp means waiting for him to mistime it, and then assuming he can’t react.” i don’t believe that to be true at all, s.fp strings just get jumped out of time to time, its a fact of life. obviously some people have better reactions than others, but that doesn’t mean you can’t trick a high level player because he is LOCKED into those options i just went through, so you have more options. does anyone remember sanfords old school tactic of normal jumping forward of s.fp and doing j.fp xx rp
4)fourth bolded “answer.” sure, cable can counter call sentinel. i was assuming high level play, my bad. why the blue hell would you call your assist first on cable, unless you have a way to protect it. even cable with one beam can do at minimum 60% on your assist by counter calling his cap. it seems you’ve never ran up on somebody who knew how to protect their capcom from cable? lets say you have applied pressure and now see an opening. you can wavedash into j.rh+cap, fly unfly, land, sj.rh and it is safe from being ahvb’ed, and if you have godlike timing, you can even snuff his counter call on capcom (which if it did hit, would only hit sentinel, as capcom has left already). anyways…yes, you are right, cable can counter call sentinel.
5)fifth bolded “answer.” this is a good point, it does look like im advocating sentinel/cap beating cable/cap. i posted more sentinel strategies because that is what was being talked about by the OP. he was losing using sentinel. i didn’t think there was a point to discussing cable block strings or mindgames. cable is fucking real, i believe in this. look at who won the evos. justin wong, and duc do. did sanford win once? i think he did, been so long ago. duc do won due to spiral partly, yes, but more to do with how gay cable is once spiral has built that much meter for him. i also think one of wong or sanford’s best teams is scrub. its just boring, kinda.
but i dont even know why i posted this, it feels pointless discussing mvc2 in these threads.
Non maliciously, I have to agree with what you said: “but I don’t even know why I posted this,” because it was mostly your response wasn’t very coherent and often a rehash basically culminating in:
Matchup is in Cable’s favor. Thanks for clarifying such. That is all.