I have a question about using drones assist. When is the best time to call them out? I mean, sentinel is just out there for so long that it’s easy to beam super or bionic arm him.
Thats an ambiguous question, the answer is situational. You just gotta judge the situations and the tools your opponent has and never call him at a point where your opponent can use those tools to blow him up. I mean if your fighting against haggar and your full screen, you can just use a projectile while calling sentinel, but if its a viper with bar(or any character with a tracking teleport) then thats just a bad idea. Its also relative to the character you are playing in front of sentinel, if its magneto then disruptoring and magnetic blasting can be useful, but if its doom, photon shots, plasma beams and hidden missiles help cover it. If its a character with a teleport then, you guessed it, teleporting so the opponent is in between your character and the drones is helpful.
Its just very situational, and if you want a less broad answer, your gonna have to ask a less broad question.
lol, you’re right. i was typing that on-the-go and didn’t realize how vague it was. i run a team of skrull/sent/wesker. drones really help skrull out a lot, especially in making meteor smash safe and also in allowing him to close the gap. when i picked up sentinel though, i was also getting happy birthday’d a lot more often than before (or if not happy birthday’d, then getting him killed before he even got a chance to go in).
so yeah, against characters like morrigan or magneto or hawkeye or spencer or whatever, i was wondering when the best time to call sent was. fireball spammers, or characters with fast full-screen supers generally make my sentinel assist useless. or should i just make an alternate team (one that doesn’t have sent in it)? lol. because yeah, i really do want to use sent as a means to close the gap and also allow for me to do some mixups and set up throws and stuff once i’ve closed that gap.
and side question: do u think it should be skrull/sent/wesker? or skrull/wesker/sent? i know sentinel has a lot of bad matchups, which is why i’m pretty hesitant putting him in the third slot
I’d probs run it Wesker/Skrull/Sent. That way each character is properly assisted, plus the Wesker/Skrull THC is pretty decent. Some people say Sentinel isn’t a strong enough anchor, but if your offense is good enough with your point characters it shouldn’t matter and if it’s just sentinel on his own, you’ve made a mistake. Drones offer so much that I personally like him in anchor best (although I’d like to experiment more with point sentinel, as he’s a lot of fun).
Also, Sentinel does have bad matchups, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to win with him, especially if you put the time into mastering his movement etc.
Personally I think it should either be skrull/wesker/sent or wesker/skrull/sent, if your running wesker behind sentinel, sent is playing without an assist(which he does on anchor anyway) and weskers also playing without an assist, but if you run wesker/sent, you get wesker with one of his best assists(seriously, go watch unknown, wesker/drones is just plain stupid) and if all else fails, sent with lvl 3 x-factor is no slouch. While personally I agree with you and don’t advocate running sent on anchor, I only support putting him in the middle if you have an assist behind him that actually helps him out(which wesker really doesn’t), plus as rayray, fanatiq and infrit(to name a few) have shown, if you put the time into sentinel you can make the anchor position work.
On to your second question, with skrull what you wanna do is meteor smash behind them right as you call him out so they are in between skrull and the drones making it impossible to hit sentinel, you can also cover the sent calls with skrulls :f:x3 :h: move. Check out nickcam on youtube to see how he protects his sentinel when he calls. With wesker, you can cover sent with the gunshots(when your full screen) or the teleports when your close to them(check out unknown to see all the little shenanigans he uses to cover his drone calls) but yea, learning how and when to call sent takes time and ill try to help where I can, but remember, Im jak d ripr not justin wong, Im learning aswell so apologies if something I tell you turns out to be false.
Thanks for all the tips! One of the most helpful replies Ive received. I haven’t been able to play umvc in a while but will try running wesker/skrull/sent next chance I get (or skrull/Wes depending on the matchup). I’ll post back here to say how it goes 
What’s the setup for a multiple hard drive loop combo? Almost any combo I do, I can end up getting a hard drive and plasma storm but I could never to multiple hard drives.
After any tk hard drive, you can just keep tking them till your out of meter really. If you can perform a tk hard drive into plasma storm you should be able to loop them, its a lot easier than it sounds.
How do you deal with runaway zoning characters like Deadpool? I’m finding it damn near impossible to get to characters like Deadpool with good zoning. Wave dashing, flight, jump, super jump, tk hard drive, spit + flight, none if seems to help get in on zoning characters. Pretty much I have to get lucky when fighting good players and it’s up to my sentinel to finish the job. I did find out though that if I manage to get close enough to them to actually throw out some Ms or Hs, I can cancel into flight to stop some of the advancing guard. Any tips would be helpful.
Long range crossover assist along with the rest of the stuff. If he’s all that’s left then you’re gonna have to get creative with your flight patterns and ready to unfly+block at a moment’s notice.
Also don’t underestimate the value of his air grab, most people will try to up-back against you to avoid dealing with most of his mix-ups, use this opportunity to go for air-grabs(especially in the corner, you have more time since you can just get them on the way down as opposed to doing it pre-emptively). In lvl 3 x-factor sent can fly cancel his 
's and get a combo off them from close range on most characters(I think only rocker raccoon, joe and maybe ammy can’t be hit by this). So you don’t have to commit a cr., you can fly cancel it into :l: :s: and if they blocked you continue your pressure but if they got hit your getting a free combo.
I just realized that with nearly ALL characters, you can land devastating damage from a :h: command grab at or near the corner.
Taking Infrit’s team to account,
Sentinel does Human Catapult :h: , hard tags to Nova, Nova does Centurion Rush :l:, proceeds to full combo, ends combo with Nova Strike :h: (using Spencer assist), can hard tag back into Sentinel/Spencer and continue destruction from there.
I use this sometimes and with Nova/Insert character here, I can set up a TAC for Sentinel to do his infinite and then either hard tag into someone else, or keep him in play for an incoming character mixup.
Hmmmm, ill run some tests with doom(my current point character). It does depend on the character though, I mean sentinel gets a good 700k+ with one bar(that he builds himself) off a command grab in the corner, so whoever your hard tagging needs to do more to warrant the hard tag. And honestly, I can’t really think of too many characters who can get more damage off a hard knockdown, even the almighty zero can’t do much since the opponent will be in a hard knockdown state and he won’t have enough time to charge a buster. Only person I can think of is maybe doom since he builds so much meter in the corner, and vanilla dante, but he doesn’t exist anymore so yea…
Yeah I realized this when I was fooling around with my skrull/sent/akuma. However, like jak said, whoever you hard tag to needs to do more damage than sent can already do.
I haven’t even tried it with anybody other than skrull, but i never had much time to otg. I tried hard tagging to skrull and doing any of his otgs (he has a lot) and the only move that I was able to get was tenderizer L, and then my combo would be really scaled and do lilttle damage. It’s cool for style points though.
But yeah, maybe someone like doom could really benefit and build a lot of meter off the hard knockdown. Maybe felicia and her toy touch also. but yeah its a good find.
Off the top of my head, Dante, Doom, Nova, Wesker (not 100% sure), Chris Redfield can do slightly more damage and possibly w/o meter.
Dante, most definitely not, he doesn’t get a lot of damage in this game anymore, and he gets even less damage off an otg(at most about 600k), doom yea we can both agree on this, nova, maybe but I don’t know a lot about the character, wesker prolly not, especially since when he tags in he will always have his glasses on, chris maybe. But even the maybe’s, have you tested how much damage they get? I mean I considered this a while back, but deemed it not very useful since most of the cast really doesn’t get that much more damage off sent’s command grabs, and since they can only do it in the corner as well I didn’t really see the point.
I play Nova/Sentinel, and usually the thing I do off of command grabs in the corner doesn’t even involve a hard tag, because you don’t really need to do it. If you just combo and DHC into Super Nova, you get 991k. The combo I do is j.H, j.S, S, sj, M M H S, Nova assist (Centurion Rush M), Rocket Punch L, cr. M xx Rocket Punch M xx Plasma Storm xx Super Nova.
You can get more damage (and meter-gain) by doing the combo from the guide (with some additions):
:dp: :h:, forward jump , j. , double-jump , j. :h:, j. :s:, land, st. , st. :s:, j. , j., j. :h:, :qcb: :s:, j. :l:, j. :l:, j. , j. , j. :h:, j. :s:, land, :a1: (Nova assist), :qcf: :l:, assist hits, cr. , :qcf: :l: or , Plasma Storm, DHC to Supernova.
This not only gets around 1.8 bars (1.9 perhaps, I’m guessing on that measurement) but lands 993,300 damage.
I’m trying to crack dat 1 million damage. Hitting the lab.
Dante gets 887k, 1.5 bars with Drones assist off of the H command grab in the corner. Not easy btw. (1)
812k minimum solo, 1,3 bars, pretty easy. (2)
(1) [Sent] :h: CmdGrab > Tag in [Dante] Volcano > j.:s: [land] Drones + Million Carrats > j.:s: xx Hammer [land] Volcano xx Beehive [groundbounce]> Backdash :s: xx :h: (shots) xx Stinger lvl2 [wallbounce] xx Bold > Sky Dance > [land] Beehive [groundbounce] > Stinger xx Bold > Volcano xx Beehive xx Million Dollars.
(2) [Sent] :h: CmdGrab > Tag in [Dante] Volcano > j.:h: xx Air Play > j.:h: [land] :s: > j:h: xx Air Play > j:h: xx Killer Bee [groundbounce] > Backdash :s: xx :h: (shots) xx Stinger lvl2 [wallbounce] xx Bold > Sky Dance > [land] Beehive [groundbounce] > Stinger xx Bold > Volcano xx Beehive xx Million Dollars.
----"-----"----
With Doom, I got 900k, 1.7 bars solo. Just footdive looping. maziodyne actually does less damage here, for some reason… (1)
912k, 1.9 bars with Drones assist. (2)
(1) [Sent] :h: CmdGrab > Tag in [Doom] [st:h: (2) :s: > j:m: (1) FootFoot xx Dash Down] x4 > j.:h: Plasma Beam xx Air Photon Array
(2) [Sent] :h: CmdGrab > Tag in [Doom] [st:h: (2) :s: > j:m: (1) FootFoot xx Dash Down] x4 > [land] Call Drones > Air Photon Array > j:s: > j. :h: Plasma Beam
TL;DR : You can get a fuckload of damage if you’re willing to get out of the combo -0.1 or -0.5 meter negative, or something like that.
So I was correct in assuming doom was one of the few that could get substantial damage off the command grab. Good to know, especially since unlike dante his combo is easy. So-correct me if Im wrong-he just foot dive loops and gets 900k while building a bar and a 9th? Pair that with the plasma storm dhc and your looking at 1.1 mill, not bad at all, looking more and more like picking up doom was a smart idea. Im gonna do a slight rehaul of the sentinel guide and ill definitely add this to it.
Just wish there was an easier way to get damage off his command grabs mid-screen, oh well, guess ill just have to practice flying up to them.