Small-write up of general X-23 stuff that I copied from the X-23 thread I made over at Neoempire. I need someone to give this a going-over, not everyone’s gonna agree with this.
Another thing I should probably focus on is X-23’s general ground-game. It’s not included in this write-up, I plan to discuss it later, but I’d like to know what you guys do outside of close-range with her normals first.
** Strategy and overview**
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X-23 is an extremely offensive character that’s highly dependant on assists since she has no safe ways of getting in and her moves are incredibly unsafe without being covered with assists. I can’t stress this enough. X-23 is a complete baby and needs Mummy(assists) to hold her hand. Without assists, she loses so much options. Once X-23 gets in, X-23’s offence consists of using specials like Mirage Feint to create left-right mix-ups and also, using Mirage Feint to push against Advancing Guard, so she can keep herself in. Another big part of X-23’s offence is punishing Advancing Guard attempts through heavy frame-advantage blockstring pressure, frametraps, delayed strings, ect in order to condition the opponent into not pressing buttons so she can set up more elaborate mix-ups. When X-23’s offence is combined with assists effectively, even more offensive options become available to you. Multi-hitting assists are very good for X-23 because they help pin down the opponent, allowing X-23 to set-up for mix-ups and her Level 3, Silent Kill, which is really important.
X-23 has low health, so trying to force your way in all the time can get you killed, but being inactive can also get you killed too if the opponent decides to start attacking, so try to stay evasive and space/poke the opponent. Due to X-23’s heavy reliance on assists, IMO, she’s best suitable as a point character. X-23 can be a decent 3rd character due to X-Factor+Silent Kill, but I’d advise against it because she has nothing backing her offence up.
Next up, I’ll go indepth into X-23’s overall strategy and techniques, separated into sections.
Mobility options
Dashing. X-23 has a very quick ground dash. If you can wavedash, that’s even better, because now you have more control over your dashes, can halt and block when you need to, and are able to get across the ground more rapidly. Forwards wavedashing with X-23 is really handy, in fact, wavedashing is really handy in general, so if you don’t use it/don’t know how to wavedash, definitely get it down.
**Neck Slice. **Neck Slice is good because it moves X-23 forward and has a large attack hitbox, so it’s decent as a midrange tool as well. If you throw out a non-charged Neck Slice that’s spaced incorrectly, X-23 can be punished on the ground with a throw and if the opponent air blocks an incorrectly spaced non-charged Neck Slice, they can punish with a full combo. If the opponent spaces themselves outside of Neck Slice range, they can punish it on whiff. Also, Neck Slice doesn’t have any invincibility, so she can’t use it to blow through attacks or projectiles.
X-23 can charge it up for more advantage and distance, but this leaves you open. So, the best way to make this move safe would be to cover it with an assist.
Talon Attack. Talon Attack pretty much turns X-23 into a flying attack box and not much is gonna stuff her out. They also give you various angles to attack from aerially and leave X-23 at a high advantage when blocked and if they connect, you get a free combo.
Talon L can be used like a traditional divekick to help yourself get in. Talon M makes you fly across the air horizontally, which is great for getting in and can be used to escape the corner at times. And Talon H sends you upwards at a 45 degree angle, which is useful for getting at people in the air, as well as escaping corners in some situations, as well as running away. Like said before, all versions can be tiger knee’d, so they can be done close to the ground.
Talon Attacks also don’t have invincibility, despite their active hitboxes, and also, you can’t block whilst performing them, leaving you vulnerable to projectiles and other stuff. Again, best to cover with assists, if possible, especially M Talon.
Mirage Feint. Mirage M makes X-23 hop a large distance. Mirage Feint H sends X-23 into the air, which I guess can be useful for avoiding low attacks. Mirage Feint M also warps behind people for a left-right mix-up. Really important you use assists for M and H Mirage Feint because they’re unsafe up close without them, in fact, they’re borderline useless without assists. Mirage Feints don’t have invincilibity either, so no passing through attacks and projectiles but you can hold Mirage Feint to make X-23 hitbox very low and you can completely duck under some projectiles that way(like Magneto’s L and M Disruptor.)
Walljump. Walljump is great for escaping corners as well as chasing after people who air tech forwards to try and leave the corner and air grabbing them. As long as there’s a wall, X-23 can perform a walljump, the wall doesn’t have to be specifically in the corner, it can be anywhere on the screen. A handy mobility tool for avoiding things on the ground as well.
Offensive options and mix-ups(this is gonna be long.)
You’re inside, where you want to be. What do you do now?
Mashing on a light attack: don’t knock it lol. X-23 can rapid fire both her standing and crouching L. They’re her fastest normals and if you score a hit, you can easily hitconfirm into a larger combo. Throwing(especially tick-throwing) is also a very solid option to help get past blocking, due to X-23’s heavy blockstring game and after a throw, you can mount an offence.
Mirage Feints: You can go for a mix-up with an assist backing up Mirage Feint M for an easy left-right mix-up. Very effective since the mix-up’s quick and hard to react to.
Without an assist, you can use Mirage Feint L, which leaves you at plus advantage(something like 7-8+, basically, you’re not gonna get beat out by a jab or anything) if cancelled from a normal. An example would be LMH>Mirage Feint L. This also serves as a frametrap if they decide to try and attack and you score a counter hit if they do.
You can use also Mirage Feint H during a string and an assist covering you for mix-ups too. For example, you can cancel into Mirage Feint H, which sends you up into the air for an overhead attack, and you call a low assist, like Wesker’s Samurai Edge assist for an unblockable. With a multi-hitting/lock-down assist like Ametarasu’s Cold Star, you can choose to do an overhead, or an empty jump into a low or throw.
Mirage Feint H also leaps over crouching opponents(keep an eye out for character sizes and hitboxes), and you can even cross up the opponent with a j.S. Again, cover Mirage Feint H mix-up attempts with an assist.
Finally, another mix-up you can do: the “fuzzy guard” instant overhead, found by Traumatisch:* "Turns out, X-23 has instant overheads on a lot of members of the cast by making use of fuzzy guard.*
For people who don’t know what fuzzy guard is, it’s a hitbox issue where characters that go from standing block to crouching block often still have a standing hitbox for a number of frames (the duration of blockstun imparted by the high/overhead move), even though the game recognizes the character in “crouching” status.
Now what this does is essentialy give a lot of character a Sentinel sized hitbox in this situation.
The easiest way to do it is using qcb + H and then use her j.B as late as possible to get as much blockstun as possible. Then do an instant jump forward B cancelled into Talon dive (j.d+H) and then cancelled into L Talon dive. When performed correctly, the fuzzy guard will make the jump forward B connect as an overhead, which lets you combo into the Talon attacks for a 3 hit combo, and any desired B&B aftwards.
This tech only works on characters with average or above average height, and then there are a couple exceptions (plus I havent tested on everyone)
Notable characters that it works on are ; Dante, Wesker, Dormammu, Trish, Magneto, Dr Doom, She Hulk, Phoenix, Thor, Viper, Hulk, Haggar, Taskmaster, Spencer, Akuma (not sure about the last two)
Notable characters that it (obviously) doesn’t work on ; Ammy, V. Joe, Wolverine, Felicia, Morrigan."
Talon Dive(down+H): This move is great for going over any crouching normals your opponent might be mashing during strings, if any and get a combo off it. Really good when done close to the ground. You can also create an extremely ambiguous crossup on crouching opponents; if you dash then use Talon Dive on top of them, you’ll cross them up, but you’ll stay in front as if you never crossed them up at all. It’s impossible to see, your opponent has to be aware of the set-up beforehand. This compensates for a lack of a quick overhead, because once your opponent becomes aware of this, they’ll most likely start high blocking, but that leaves them open to lows.
If your opponent tries to jump away, or is somehow air throwing you out of this(they’d have to be pretty godlike to be able to do that, either that or you’re doing your dives too high/too blatantly), you can option select Talon Dive by doing df+H. This way, if they try to jump/airthrow, you’ll either air throw them, or tech their air throw.
You also have X-23’s command grab, Decapitating Slice. You can pretty much throw it out there during strings or whatever, but again, have an assist covering, ESPECIALLY for this move, otherwise if you miss and you haven’t got cover, you’re going to die. The move is horrendously punishable if it misses. If it connects, it’s all good and you get a free combo. Keep in mind that you can’t get long combos after the grab, because hitstun decay kicks in fiercely.
You can also grab someone during blockstun, if used with a multi-hitting assist after a string: [SIZE=12px][FONT=tahoma]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEtqr6wTC9A[/FONT][/SIZE]
Mirage Feint Cancelling(MFC for short): This is one of X-23’s greatest strengths. Like mentioned above, X-23 can cancel Mirage Feints with S when they’re held. But, you can apply MFC to X-23’s normals and special cancel them with it. By doing this, you shorten the recovery of your normals greatly, on block, hit or whiff and return yourself to a neutral position.
So, for example, let’s take X-23’s standing H and apply MFCing to it. You can near enough rapid fire it. Due to the shortened recovery, the lag on the move on whiff is removed because you recover instantly, so it can’t be whiff-punished. On hit, it launches, but since you’ve cancelled the recovery, you can easily hitconfirm off it with more follow-ups than you’d normally be able to without MFC. On block, due to the shortened recovery, the move leaves you at +11 on block. So, you now have a long range poke you can throw out there that’s safe and if it connects, you can easily hitconfirm off it into a combo.
During a string, it’s also possible to cancel normals like st.H before they even hit the opponent. This is really nasty.
When using MFC, L Mirage Feint is the quickest to use I’m told. So best to cancel with that.
**Here are the core MFC strings. **
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st.H>qcb+L~S. See the MFC example.
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M(1 hit), H>qcb+L~S. This blockstring is completely tight. If guarded, the opponent must Advancing Guard, otherwise they’ll be locked in blockstun forever. X-23’s best string up-close. You also have the option of cancelling st.H before it hits the opponent.
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L,M>qcb+L~S. Leaves you at +6 on block. If it connects, you can combo off it.
**Getting around Advancing Guard. **
The opponent pushes you back out with Advancing Guard. What do you do?
L and M Mirage Feint are all good for getting back in your opponent’s face. L’s completely safe assistless, but doesn’t cover as much distance, whilst Mirage Feint covers more distance, but is completely unsafe without assists. You can also decide to (wave)dash right back in there.
Talon Dive(down+H) is great up close because if Advancing Guarded, the pushback is very minimal, so you still remain close to your opponent.
Decapitating Slice(command grab) also gets you back in there and can grab the opponent as they recover from their Advancing Guard animation. This is most effective in the corner.
**Punishing Advancing Guard attempts. **
Like mentioned before, X-23 can make great use of blockstrings with high advantage and delayed strings to score counterhits off Advancing Guard attempts. Remember that a failed Advancing Guard comes out as either an M or a H, depending on the buttons used for it so you’re basically trying to force the opponent to get a failed Advancing Guard scenario and punish them for it(for SF4 players, think of it like trying to punish crouch teching.)
If an opponent is crouching and trying to Advancing Guard, Talon Dive is great to use because Talon Dive will leap over their failed Advancing Guard attempt during a string and punish it, leaving them open to a combo. If they Advancing Guard it high, they could get a backdash due to them pressing two attack buttons and back, which you can also punish. You could also do the same with a tiger knee’d Talon Attack L.
Another way to force failed Advancing Guard scenarios is to use Mirage Feint Cancelling(MFC) to cancel H before it hits the opponent during a string.M(hit)H>Mirage Feint cancel is great for this. For starters, not many people will Advancing Guard the first hit of anything. They’ll do it on the second hit, usually. So, they block the M, that’s one hit, and they’ll go to Advancing Guard the second hit. But nothing happens because you cancelled H before it even connected, so they couldn’t Advancing Guard it. If they did try to, they’d get an M or H because it failed. So, you can score a counter off their failed Advancing Guard attempt, or you can simply throw them out of their attempt.
The downside to using MFC for that purpose is that it isn’t tight, so the opponent could interrupt you with L if they’re mashing. But due to X-23’s blockstring offence, the opponent puts him/herself at risk of eating a counter-hit combo. It’s all about conditioning your opponent not to push buttons, so you can go for riskier mix-ups.
**Setting up Silent Kill. **
For Silent Kill, the most common way to set the move up is to do it on someone’s entry either after a snapback, or if you’ve killed a character and their next one’s coming in. You can make this inescapable on almost everybody by using a multi-hitting assist like Dante’s Jam Session. Not even Phoenix can escape it. Sentinel can escape it using his Hard Drive hyper, somebody else might be able, but can’t remember right now.
You can also combo directly into Silent Kill after activation using assists too. You can even use it during your assisted mix-ups. Use an assist to lock your opponent down while you have Silent Kill activated, and go to town. This is why Silent Kill’s such an extremely powerful hyper, you can use it in combos, for inescapable set-ups on character’s entries, to turn your strings and mix-ups into inescapable unblockables and so on. Definitely master setting up Silent Kill, it’s easily one of the cheapest things about X-23, if not the cheapest.[/details]
I’ll do it tomorrow.