Most of my work has been optimizing teams and reminding myself how meter gain works along with working on Dante tools for TACing past X23, an unblockable grapple setup that you can’t just hard tag or jump out of because of how X23 times (shoutouts to SumBrwnKid for the gdlk tech), 2+ meter combos with dante as options instead of TACing (shot loop unibeam extension stuff), stuff like that.
I think Dante(JS)/X23(LowTG)/IM(UB) is the best double dirt nap team with current tech levels.
Been working on using Angled Proton Cannon xx Dirt nap for setups when I don’t have JS. Need to check if the last part of PC has a bit more hitstun because there’s a few frames gap that I’m trying to get rid of.
Kind of a double post from the team thread last night, but I found the meterless XF1 Post Dirt-Nap Thor TOD with my team last night (originally I was capping out at just under 1.1 and it should apply to anyone that has at least a beam bounce extension that works late combo.) There are now only 4 characters I can’t kill +1 meter positive after a dirt nap (Phoenix, Akuma, Strider, RR.)
Found out you can call S + Assist and delay the assist call for a reaaaaallly long time and still have it come out. Makes Unibeam reliable at all levels of HSD as a beam bounce (lets me use it for late XF extensions and post dirt nap extensions to deal with heavys.) Might let you do a higher level of CS during the Strange beam bounce and make some other assists viable for beam bouncing. Might let you use Cart as a beam bounce, too. Only recently realized how much leeway X23 has on timing her assist calls so there’s lots of stuff that might have viability for extensions or dirt nap/throw pickups I didn’t see before.
Nice fuzzy setup with unibeam doing MH+Beam MF Mxx(without crossing up)TA M (times almost perfectly with unibeam) falling j.MM or whatever you feel like using there. (mix up single/double overheads into lows/fuzzies/MFxxTA/etc.) Creates a really strong mixup branch point.
I can verify the 2 H Loops after the command grab, that’s practical, only hitch for me was learning how fast you have to hit the s.H on the first loop.
Ammy specific corner thing, you can do normal ground front throw > otg + assist because she’s so short, probably works on other midgets, too. Great for snapping her in on incoming setups.
As far as using X23’s LowTG with dante, it’s combo > grapple > (very early, almost as soon as you’re able to act after the grapple) c.HH(H+AS)(dH)(dS) falling j.M or H to actually unblockable with X23. You have to buffer the first d for teleport’s ddS in the 4th H of c.HHHH and you call X23 with the 3rd H so she times correctly and you’ll hit with proper unblockable timing. The first 4 or 5 hits of the c.H are supposed to miss and you have to do the c.HHHH fast enough to get the million stabs followup (which is the part that hits meaty), rather than just the normal Dante 4 stabs that you’ll get if you do a single c.H or don’t do the c.HHHH fast enough (as a visual cue, the million stab portion has a lot more red than the c.H portion). Getting it as airtight as possible does require that much work, unfortunately, lol. This beats up-backing (perfectly meaty and full blockstun through the unblockable), pushblocking (million stab negates a lot of pushblock and the teleport covers the rest), mashing. Need to check how it does against wake-up hard tag, but I think you should be able to full punish.
I think the main thing I need at this point is to revisit MFC ground pressure and work out what I can do against people pushblocking (early and late pushblocking to see if there’s specific frame traps we can use), throw mashing, jab mashing, etc.
Been talking more with SumBrwndKid (amazing GA wolvie that is an absolute scientist when it comes to building setups to counter peoples pushblock tendencies and insanely layered incoming traps) and while X23 doesn’t have the same ground pressure tools that wolve does, we should be able to come up with something pretty close.
The general flow should be something like we get in with dash in c.MHxxMFC if they having pushblocked, we have ~11 frames to do whatever we want. I don’t have any great mixup there aside from dashover dH and stagger lights, which only sets up frame traps and push block traps since we don’t have Wolvie’s IOH or ground throw to fall back on, I’m sure there’s something we can use or some little think we haven’t been abusing on her ground game (the people I play all the time know how to pushblock on MFxxTA crossups so those have become less useful over time.) If we c.MHxxMFC and they pushblock we should be able to dash in and continue pressure and we might even have the advantage to not have to worry about the issues that everyone else does where if you accidently dash when you weren’t pushblocked you’re vulnerable to throws.
It would be really awesome to have a setup that punishes neutral tech and can transition into forward tech coverage/mixup in the corner, too. Neutral tech is getting more and more prevalent in the game and my setups don’t handle multiple techs well. Haven’t really looked into it, but seems like we should be able to work something out that puts a meaty c.M/H on the neutral tech timing then MF H (or CS or something else) to auto correct for forward techs that have rolled through you or back techs into the corner.
In general, I don’t feel like we’ve done a good job of advancing X23s neutral game in the past ~5 months and she’s starting to fall behind compared to other characters.