Like Jak said basically ?/Sent/Dormammu_Skrull_Iron Man_Doom_Trish_Magneto_Vergil_Wesker_etc
Heres a question though(lemme ask while this thread has a little traffic), how do you guys consistently combo off hard drive? I hit quite a few of them, but sometimes the opponent lands behind, sometimes they land in front and sometimes my cr. 
just whiffs completely and sent eats a delicious combo as a result. So how do y’all know when you can combo off it? I know it has something to do with what part of the hard drive hits them and shit but I don’t really know where.
On Rocket Racoon, you cannot do OTG rocket punch if you are both hugging the corner. You have to backdash, otherwise it completely whiffs. Wesker assist whiffs in a corner combo as well, you have to move even farther from the corner to connect Wesker so I don’t really think it’s practical on Rocket Racoon if your team uses Wesker relaunches.
Sentinel can immediately cancel the recovery of his command grab with his hypers. So you can do command grab buffer hyper or Xfactor and it will option select - if you get the grab nothing comes out, if they jumped you get drones and are probably safer.
I run Sentinel on point on Sentinel-Dante-Wesker. Jam Session is so useful for crossup fly tricks and zoning. Spit spit assist call drones is very strong. You can also call Jam Session and then spit. This covers Dante, preventing them from punishing the assist. And Dante prevents them from punishing your spit because of the wall of lightning. This can get blown up by teleports of course. Ideally you do this close enough that they’re forced to block Jam Session so they aren’t free to do whatever they want.
Jam Session also lets you combo off cr.m xx fly midscreen and makes going for air grabs safer in case you get an accidental boot. Any random connect with Jam Session can be followed up with j.:s: -> :s: -> :h: :s: :a2: :s: :h: :s:, :l: air rocket punch before you land xx Hard Drive, cr. xx rocket punch xx Plasma Storm.
Wesker’s low assist helps provide offense and Sentinel’s invincible limbs and threat of Hard Drive help cover Wesker. Wesker might get hit, but he won’t get combo’d and your opponent will be punished easily. j.:h: xx fly, call :a2: :l: :h: :s: will make a ghetto unblockable and combo into frying pan. If you’re feeling saucy you could do :l: :h: xx unfly :h: v jump j.:h: j:s: for a bit more damage.
Jam Session means that if your opponent tries to meet you air to air they might just run into a random wall of lightning. And Sentinel is safest in the air while still threatening big damage with j:l: xx j. xx j.:s: or j. xx double jump j./j.:h: xx j.:s:.
Level 3 Xfactor Sentinel is still a beast. I often tag out Sentinel to Wesker if I kill their point so he can heal and potentially come back if shit goes south. I also benefit from drone assist.
You can combo off his command grab solo midscreen with immediate fly -> OTG rocket punch xx Hard Drive
For Sentinel runaway, you need to cover his spit and drone calls. Beam assists help cover the startup. Lockdown assists help cover the recovery. Anti-air assists like Hulk AA Gamma Charge (is that its name?) can be called while spitting since it’s a normal.
If a character is going to punish your spit with a tri jump or whatever don’t be afraid to cancel into Hyper Sentinel Force to make yourself safe. If I get baited I can always DHC to Devil Trigger and teleport to get offense going.
In Vanilla the last hit (I believe 12th hit) put them into a spinning knockdown. So watch the combo counter. You can visually confirm the hit as well, they fly up and diagonally.
You can also hear it I think. The hits before the 12th are rapid-fire, then a delay, then the last hit. Not 100% sure about that.
If you whiff the cr. I believe you can cancel into fly and then unfly to be safe. Or stomp on their face.
I believe how high the hard drive hits matters for the timing of the cr. so if you hit a raw hard drive you have to know how high up you are to hit the followup.
In tk rocket punch xx hard drive in the corner, for most characters it helps get all hits of hard drive if you backdash before the rocket punch.
Thanks a bunch, had no idea, so what your saying is if the last hit doesn’t hit I won’t be able to follow up right? Good to know. And yea you are indeed correct it is the 12th hit, so now Im gonna have to start doing math in the middle of my matches lol. Ill test to see if I can hear it but when Im at tourneys I usually play with a headset on antyway so that won’t be too useful.
Glad to see your still playing sent, from the complete lack of activity in these forums I thought I was the only one left actually trying to learn sentinel. What team you playing now? Im currently running sentinel/storm/trish, but Im doing this to better my sentinel on point, for an actual tourney or money match ill run someone/sentinel/trish. Not sure who is gonna be in the first slot yet.
sentinel is still pretty much intact, but the rocket punch hitstun nerf is a little weaksauce. it seems to me his relaunch is more important now for damage and corner carry. good thing harddrive still produces the same spinning knockdown no matter hsd making harddrive loop good to go. sentinel for assist/xf-anchor is still the flavor of the day for him IMO.
What about his light normals(Im really milking this current influx of traffic), how do y’all use them? I never use any of them but I see a lot of sentinels usingf his :l:'s in their pressure game from the cr. :l: to the flying :l:. I realize the cr. :l: covers the space directly in front of sent where his and :h: would either whiff or come out to slowly. But yea how exactly do y’all use his :l:'s?
And while we are on the topic of tools, how do y’all use his drones? Ironically they don’t seem very good on point despite being such a good assist. I occasionally call out the bombing drones(especially when dealing with teleporters) to keep them fools honest, but I haven’t found much use for the and :h: drones at all.
L is great in flight blockstrings and to hit people you expect are trying to jump up and smack your shit quickly. Also, sentinel can punish a surprising amount of moves with cr.L, though it still isnt amazing or anything.
I just use drones for incoming set-ups or if I want to approach from across the entire screen. M drones then hover around like an asshole in their airspace is pretty fun too.
j.l j.m j.s is great air to air at point blank.
You can sometimes combo plasma storm into s.l.
cr.l helps you punish stuff, like Robotic said. One cr.l often actually adds damage to the combo overall.
:h: drones is useful in case you think they’re going to try to punish you calling drones. If they try to bop you, the bombs still fall and you can get a launcher off usually.
Full screen cancelling spit into drones can help lock down an opponent. Use drones because they angle up so they’re harder to avoid. And if they crouch underneath you can call more drones.
If you get them to block one set of drones, you can get them to block a second set of drones.
If you hit them with :l: or drones you can convert into a high damage combo with launcher. Even if you hit them in the air.
You can get a bit more damage off call drones, xfactor, rocket punch, launcher than you can rocket punch xfactor launch.
On incoming characters you can get some cover by putting out some drones. It’s safe too.
The startup on drones is horrendous, but they travel slowly enough for you to use them as cover for rushdown or more zoning.
Thanks guys, I definitely feel like my sentinel game is getting much better. I don’t get air thrown as much anymore(one of my biggest weaknesses back in the day) and overall I think Im becoming better at using each normal at the right time and shit and now ill add his :l:'s to my game.
I actually disliked Sentinel as a game character, but now that I tried him out I really love his playstyle. Very simple, but I like dominating space with different moves that look really crunchy. My current team is Nova/Modok/Sentinel and it pretty much works as a 2 point 1 assist team. Nova benefits from Balloon Bomb/Doritos or Drones, and Drones are perfect for setting up Modok’s Jamming bomb.
What are Sentinel’s options for extremely fast and teleport characters? I usually try to to stay dominant in the air with his Fly normals cancelled into Unfly when I’m in the air. I really like the way FChamp plays Sentinel.
With the grab changes, I find it extremely hard for characters like Dante and Wesker where I could punish their bad teleports with grabs for free.
Currently I’m caught up with all of Nova and Modok’s BnBs, but what does Sentinel have that keeps his damage high without HSF > Plasma Storm? I also know the TK Hardrive loop so that helps me with putting him on anchor. Even with the damage nerf on XF3, the speed boost really helps my Sentinel. This is my current combo if I have him on point.
Anything before :s: SJC :h: Fly :l::h: Unfly :h: Land :s: SJC Double Jump :h::s: Rocket Punch :L: xx Plasma Storm
So I’m a long time mvc3 player and just recently i picked up sentinal just because he complements my doom/strider team so well(mvc2 clackwerk team ftw). Anyways, sentinal is definitely the weakest link in my team(with me being a day 1 doom player, and long time strider fan). My team composition is doom/sent/strider, and all i really find myself doing atm is playing keepaway with his spit and calling strider assist for some lockdown. Anybody can give some tips/strategies/advice that I should be implementing in my game?
My friends tell me that i should be canceling all my normals into flight, but my flight game is sooo ass right, for i don’t really know what to do for solid flight pressure.
I think one of the first priorities for Sent players is to learn how to control space in the air. Locking down the ground is easy enough – lasers, drones, far-reaching armoured normals, etc. Because Sent has those tools, a lot of people are going to get frustrated and jump. Learn how to meet dudes in the air with things like j.M and j.H (depending on distance), and learn how to hit-confirm those anti-air pokes into big combos.
I’m currently running Zero/Vergil/Dante, and would like to substitute Sentinel in place of Vergil. I’m wondering if Sentinel has any mixups or ways of being aggressive with a Jam Session backing him up? It seems that Senitenl still does a fair bit of damage with his combos once he confirms, but I’m having a hard time getting in to begin with.
Well sent doesn’t really have any high/low left/right mix-ups. Sents game is all about pressuring the opponent into hitting a button at the wrong time and capitalizing using his long range, high priority and in some cases armored normals. Plus, you have to learn how to confirm every hit into a full combo, while this isn’t exclusive to sentinel, against a competent opponent you won’t be getting too many hits and you have to capitalize on all of them. Pair that with the fact that sent has the tools to turn almost every hit into some form of damage and you see where Im coming from.
To do this, you have to learn to hit confirm his cr. , it stays out there forever so it gives you a lot of time to confirm if its hitting(and going into :s:) or if its blocked(and going into flight). Just try not to whiff, you will probably die. Then there is confirming his air normals, you should learn to control the skies with sentinel j. , try not to spam j. :s: unless your really close to the ground. Perform a j. and option select another j. :s: into it, that way if it hits you don’t even have to hitconfirm, it goes straight into the ground bounce for you. Another space control technique you should learn is fly unfly , the amount of space that series covers is obnoxious, plus you can transition from the unfly into another , :s: full combo.
With that said, sent with dante in the back is pretty effective from what I hear, but I don’t have enough experience with it to give you specifics. Holla at Kikuichimonji I believe he runs sent/dante. Oh and check out rowtron and knives on youtube, they have pretty solid sentinels. F champs sent is cool as well, check out his match vs xsk samurai and another match against x-ray [media=youtube]ivkptoPdhGA[/media] . Oh and don’t forget rayray, he is pretty nasty with his sentinel.
Awesome post…Thanks!
Sent/Dante has a pretty damn effective mixup, in the form of Fly -> Call Jam Session -> fly.S -> Combo. It’s very obnoxious against most of the cast, but you don’t want to just fly around against people that have very threatening Anti Air attacks(Like, Vergil SJ normals -> j.S -> Full Combo isn’t something you want to get hit by). For most others, just be aware that they may try to jump on you, and be sure to throw in enough fly.H xx Unfly M’s to keep them down and keep them honest.
After KO, he has the same mixup, going into Flight, calling Dante, and either flying over them or not. Anyone without a double jump has to guess, and people with a double jump, you can often bait by teaching them the mixup, and then punishing with a Throw to counter their jump.
Also… I’m getting damn irritated. I thought I was going crazy, but…
Apparently, Sentinel cannot cancel out of the immediate startup of his jH / jM into a hard drive? The situation I’m talking about, is against another Sentinel. My go-to mixup on their way in, is to predict a double jump, and Jump -> Air Throw. If they Hard Drive, the jH comes out… but at least in Vanilla, Sentinel could Hard Drive in reaction, get the last hit, and confirm into cLsMS -> Full Combo.
But in training mode, if I’m point blank, and an opponent’s hard drive comes out just as I hit jH / jM, I’m not able to counter it with my own hard drive. It hits, every time. Wtf? Hard Drive is still invincible from the first frame, isn’t it? If I do the same scenario, with an empty jump, I can counter it every time. Anyone know why this is happening? Making me salty.
anybody else here use sentinel on point or are gonna ?
im trying to see what others chars i should use for my sentinel team .
who do you guys use with him ?
Yea man hard drive is still invincible from the first frame and Im pretty sure sent can cancel the first cancelable frame of any of his air normals into hard drive. I can’t for the life of me figure out why this would be happening, wish I could be of more help. Maybe your missing a few inputs, you checked your inputs to make sure they are clean?
I believe kikuiwhatshisname uses sent on point, but other than him no one comes to mind. Im a big proponent of using sent second since you neither give up the amazing assist, nor have to have him fighting without an assist backing him up, but depending on your team sent on point could work. Sent/Doom/Akuma(or magneto) seems like a solid team on paper, and while your losing an amazing assist by playing sent first, your actually trading it for another amazing assist in hidden missles and tatsu(if your running tatsu I wouldn’t recommend picking plasma beam). So pretty much if your putting sent with two solid assists that serve two separate purposes then by all means run the big robot on point.
Oh and rowtron is the only player with recorded footage that I know runs sent on point consistently(F champ does it occasionally)
I’ve absolutely checked my inputs. I’m a pretty damn good player, former combo video maker, etc etc. I know it’s not me. After the superflash, while I’m eating the Hard Drive, it says 236LMH214LMH236LMH214LMH clear as day. I thought it just might be a crossup issue at first.
I’ll record a video if it’d help, but you can probably test it yourself. Record a Sentinel doing Jump -> Hard Drive, then use you own Sentinel to try and airthrow him right before it comes out; chances are, you won’t be able to Reaction Hard Drive out of the wiff jH. Similarl timed jMs had the same problem.
Thank you for all the additional Sent/Dante thoughts. Even at my scrubby level I really appreciate what drones does for zero, so I’m really trying to make Sent work on point as well.
A couple folowups
- With most characters you try to go for a hit-confirm which then in some way ends up leading into an optimized BnB. With Sentinel, from what I can tell this optimized portion appears to be:
s.S, j.H, Fly, j.L, j.H, unfly, j.H, s.M, s.H, j.M, j.H, j.S, OTG Rocket Punch, Plasma storm.
Is that a good base to aim for?
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I tried skipping through a couple pages but couldn’t find anything - What’s sentinel’s best combo off a human catapult?
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If Sentinel successfully pokes with a j.M, but is outside of j.S range, can he somehow confirm this into anything?
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The spacing on the Fly, j.H, Unfly, j.H, S seems to need you to be right on top of the character when you hit the j.H for the S to connect. Is this somewhat character dependent or am I just mis-timing the S?
Thanks!