**2. General Assist Strategies **
Alright now there were some basic things covered in part 1 (in the wiki about assists). Namely they have recovery times after use, there’s certain situations where you can’t call them and invincible assists have 3 frames of vulnerable start up before their invincible properties kick in.
I know some people have been bringing up the power or potential OPness of assists like Napalm Pillar and Hornet Bomber…but I feel this is just the crying out of people who are not used to invincible assists. Which leads into what I was going to say next.
There is another thing that is not mentioned that is very important though. If your point character gets hit the assist DOES NOT become active. This is a BIG difference between Marvel 3 and Skullgirls when it comes to assists. This is the way assists were done in Marvel 2 and it helped keep invincible assists from getting totally out of hand. Yes invincible assists are strong, but what made them mindless in Marvel 3 was that there was no reward for hitting your point character before they became active. You got hit or were forced to block any way.
In Skullgirls it works more like Marvel 2 where you can’t just straight mash on invincible assists like a free shoryu FADC (as was the case in Marvel 3). You have to have good defense prior to calling the assist. If you’re mashing on the assist and get hit or thrown before the assist becomes active, it goes into recovery frames. Meaning you no longer have the assist to protect you and you are taking full punishment for your actions. If the assist has long recovery frames (like most assists do) you could very well be in a 2 for 1/bday situation for calling that bad assist.
In general if you want to have an invincible assist protect you, you have to have strong defense prior to the assist call. Use this to take advantage of people who are not really protecting themselves with hit boxes or are generally sitting on block or an idle situation while calling the assist. If you can land a hit or throw them before the assist becomes active you can potentially kill the point character and hurt badly or kill the assist also.
Remember also that you can utilize snap backs to bring in strong assists. Also remember that most assists including the invincible ones have long recovery frames (I’m assuming more than in Marvel 2 even) to punish. In Marvel 3 some of the assists like Akuma tatsu are extremely fast start up, release even if the point character gets hit and have very short recovery frames. The invincible assists in Skullgirls pretty much have none of those mentioned properties which makes them much easier to take advantage of with bad calls.
In general the game is a lot of baiting out assists. If you can bait your opponent’s assists well you can capitalize and get the momentum you need. The invincible assists at best are just a check for sloppy, one dimensional offense in a game where you can get crowded with hit boxes and mix ups very fast. Making them important for having extra coverage and allowing you to create more of a spacial game instead of just flat out fishing for confirms into anime combos the entire match.
This is footage from the Civil War grand finals between Ryry and Chris G. This does a good job showing off how they both use movement and spacing to avoid each other’s assists and shows the lengthy recovery on the invincible assists that can be punished easily without strong coverage.
http://www.own3d.tv/teamspooky#/watch/608104
** Mike Z’s why you should SHUT UP about Hornet Bomber (booty assist)**
Also, FOR PETE’S SAKE EVERYONE SHUT UP ABOUT HORNET BOMBER. Even if it were going to get fixed, it’s NOT FIXED NOW so you might as well learn to play against it. Learn to deal with it - snap in Double and kill her, hit the assist with your own as a punish, learn to predict when they’ll use it and dodge it, duck it, jump and pushblock to maintain your position, move in during her long recovery, etc. And who knows, once you do that you might not think it even needs fixing. Yeesh. Players who complain about that now are just gonna complain about Napalm Pillar or whatever tactic the people they can’t beat adopt next.
It’s not HALF as bad as Doom or Psylocke or CapCom was, or even the “completely unescapeable” Cable+Storm tornado trap or walking Sent+Blackheart pillar or Gambit+Iceman or Marrow+Tron or how about Ken’s DP man that thing is huge AND invincible and he’s got that launcher into hurricane for 70% so cheap! I swear, people, the game has been out for mere WEEKS, you don’t have ANY IDEA what dominating tactics will be found that you don’t even know about yet. Where did that drive to improve go?*
** yeah, I know you think I’m kidding, but perhaps it will lend some perspective to realize that all of these things were being complained about as hard as Hornet Bomber is currently…and look what happened to them. *
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