I don’t agree. It is very debatable which is better IMO. Like I said I think dante/strider is the best viper team, but that’s more of a “theory better” assessment or if you have enough time to work on the team (i.e. no job or girlfriend):
Once viper dies vergil/strider is obviously a better shell than dante/strider when you try to maximize their potential.
viper/vajra indeed does enough work in the neutral if you have viper’s ground game down (in most but not all matchups). Just look at busby – he relies completely on viper/strider until viper dies and a lot of his wins come from out-neutraling with viper. The thing I’m not sure about is when the benefits of jam session would actually outweigh the benefits of meter assist or vergil.
-About punishing vajra in particular: I think the easy punishes only apply to careless assist calling or incredibly good reads. If you have a good viper/strider game it’s really not that easy to punish IMO.
-the trade-offs between the two are just too extreme to say one is drastically better than the other.
Busby pulls his team off more from being able to EX like mad because he has Morrigan. Plus like I said with Vergil you can always come back regardless of who your first 2 characters are if you have a dark anchor. It doesn’t say anything about the strength of the team as a whole. And FYI FChamp lit him up in their set. He basically destroyed vajra non stop.
Dante/Strider is absolutely brain dead cheap and definitely better than Vergil Strider. Just because you can press x factor and go ham with the latter doesn’t mean it’s better overall. Vergil can’t even consistently convert off vajra without popping X.
Viper is a high, low, throw mixup character. Meaning she needs some sort of lockdown assist to be at her full potential. Without one you have to rely on burning EX or whiff punishing to get hits. Not the best tactic vs. good players.
Busby pulls his team off more from being able to EX like mad because he has Morrigan. Plus like I said with Vergil you can always come back regardless of who your first 2 characters are if you have a dark anchor. It doesn’t say anything about the strength of the team as a whole. And FYI FChamp lit him up in their set. He basically destroyed vajra non stop.
Dante/Strider is absolutely brain dead cheap and definitely better than Vergil Strider. Just because you can press x factor and go ham with the latter doesn’t mean it’s better overall. Vergil can’t even consistently convert off vajra without popping X.
Viper is a high, low, throw mixup character. Meaning she needs some sort of lockdown assist to be at her full potential. Without one you have to rely on burning EX or whiff punishing to get hits. Not the best tactic vs. good players.
Sorry for a long post but I’ve been thinking about these issues a lot recently.
I recently watched a FT5 set between them and like I thought vajra was punished only when he mashed it on wake up (full screen!) or without covering it. Most striders (myself included) are used to people not punishing it so we feel safe in calling it recklessly - but when you face somebody who practices punishing it you get a rude awakening. However, when called appropriately vajra did a lot of work in that set and in general if not used recklessly seismo/laser/vajra pressure is strong enough in the neutral for most matchups.
That being said, in the mag/missles matchup in particular I said above that I like dante simply because jam session gets rid of missiles and is a better anti-air against magneto than vajra. But other than those few matchups vajra shouldn’t be avoided/punished so easily if you are also a good player.
I still don’t buy it. It sounds to me that you think vergil is just a fraudulent character, which is not true. People play him fraudulently but that does not mean the character is. He doesn’t need x-factor to win by any means especially with vajra.
While vergil can’t confirm off a vajra knockdown, with vajra he can confirm off of helmbreaker into a full combo (and despite popular belief it’s not that hard). Plus, with vajra you have to take a left/right mixup at all times at every part of the screen - whereas with dante you need to set it up a bit.
As a shell dante/strider is REALLY strong but vergil/strider is better simply because vergil is better than dante. Dante absolutely sucks in a lot of matchups whereas vergil has very little if any bad matchups.
Viper has ridiculous ground neutral. This is why smart vajra calls shouldn’t be punished. But also, this leads to safe rapidslash calls which provide ample lockdown (and pushback to continue your zoning!). During seismo pressure I do: seismo, fadc+rapishslash, seismo, viper ball. This locks down the opponent and I get a mixup. Rapdslash is not ideal, but it serves lockdown purpose when you need it to and the corner mixups/incoming mixups are insane. It’s not as ideal as jam session in that it doesn’t come out as fast but then again I don’t think jam session is necessary to get a hit, it just makes it easier.
I do agree that dante/strider maximize a lot of viper’s qualities. I main that team for the most part. But outside of theory (i.e. in practice) it’s hard to distinguish which team is better. However! Maybe we can distinguish in which matchups which team is strictly better! It’s not so clear to me.