When I last tested it, I really struggled to punish Spread outside of the corner because of the pushback on their character and the hop back that Iron Man does. I could punish IM in the corner if I did Rep Blast + spread point blank on Wolverine, who has a 4 frame jab and a good dash, but the timing was really tight. It wasn’t possible outside of the corner.
Of course if they’re doing stuff like Devil Trigger -> Hail Storm DHCs, you’ll get punished. Don’t mess with 1 frame post flash DHCs.
You’re right though, you are giving them control after a Repulsor Spread. I just see it as an option. If the Repulsor Blast worked, it leads into a combo that can kill most characters. If it doesn’t work and they block the spread, you’re back where you started - still under pressure.
I think if you’re under pressure the ideal response is to make some space and take to the air so you can use his strongest normals and flight options, but I still see Repulsor Blast as a good tool to work in occasionally too.
Ideally I see it as a move like hidden missiles on point with Doom where if you use the missiles on point without an assist you’re not using much. Though if you gather it together with a solid zoning assist you can really get some nice longer term screen control.
Another question I want to ask is, for those who play IM on point, do you play him aggressively or lame? For me, depending on the match-up, with the team I have, I mainly run away and wait the Vajra to hit or at least make contact and then go in for the kill. The problem is I do little damage and build little meter playing like this, I think the change to his air dash made him very slow in general and it becomes very difficult to pressure people using it, In fact I think it is bad for run away as well, because it is easy to throw IM out of it before he accelerate.
I have had very little success playing him aggressively, unless against people with no clue of what they are doing.
My opinion might be bias because I use him with drones and can rush down for atleast one mixup relatively free IF drones are out and the opponent doesn’t super jump but I think it really depends on your assists. For example someone with jam session can focus on a strong midscreen footsie-esque game. But all in all I think you just have to allow your assists to help you go in/help you lame out.
Since the IM team thread is pretty much dead if someone could help me with my team. Trying to find a good order, assists are unibeam, missles, drones unless someone has a better option which I’d love to hear.
IM/Doom/Sent
Doom/IM/Sent
IM/Sent/Doom
So far Doom+Drones puts in the most work in terms of kills, that prob because Doom is just a really good char and I’ve been playing him on point up until now.
First off I should mention I’m a total n00b who just started playing, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt. That said, it seems to me that you would want IM/Doom/Sent. IM would be on point rather than Doom because after reading this thread it sounds like IM needs the extra assist to get work done alot more than Doom would, and Doom second so that if IM fails you still have Doom + Drones (which sounds like it has already proven its strength for you) to fall back on.
That team is pretty flexible because you have a ton of good assists on it.
I like keeping Sent in the back in that case, since both IM and Doom can play rushdown or keepaway with Drones while protecting Sent pretty well. I’d probably put Doom on Hidden Missiles for air control, though his other assists would work well too.
My only worry is that the team could have overlapping bad match-ups.
Thanks to the both of you, was running a bunch of sets tonight and confirmed that the team looses hard to strong zoners and teleporters unless I have missiles in the sky…sigh I guess there no solutions to this problem besides to change a character or deal with it
I dont really want to change a character because i do like how all of my characters have some of the best assists in the game. Sigh…the problems this game presents…
I think I’d have to agree with Duck on this one. I don’t like IM as 2nd because you can’t safely DHC to him at will like you can with the other 2, so that narrows it down to having IM 1st or 3rd. Of all 3 characters, I think IM has the worst matchups overall and works least well solo, so putting him 1st is better than 3rd if possible (which it is in your case). And as for using Sent or Doom as anchor, that one is a toss up, but I’d agree with Duck simply because Sentinel has more bad matchups than Doom.
As far as just being able to amount strong pressure as an anchor…Doom fits the bill better any ways because of his better aerial mobility and how his wonky jump dash becomes a lot scarier in XF. Plus his ability to cancel his normals into dashes means he’s almost immune to advance guard once you get in. Making him especially scary at close range as anchor when pretty much any back throw or any forward throw towards the corner will lead to dead people in XF3.
Plus the scare factor XF guard cancel level 3 is srs. Basically as long as you’re holding on to that people can’t even c.L you without dying. They’re basically forced to attack you from the air or stick to throws on the ground to amount any offense that won’t end up killing them. His ability to build nearly 2 meters in the corner still without an assist means you can easily level 3 kill down a last character even if your XF runs out.
The only real issue you’re going to run into is that you lose pretty much free to anchors like Trish or Morrigan because they can just stay in the air and attack you from a range where you can’t really do anything effective without an assist. If Sentinel didn’t have such a hard time mixing people up without an assist he would basically be better for the job against those specific characters. You’re pretty much left with just fish f+H foot dive (which is pretty telegraphed against aerial characters like them) or j+H butter gun against them as anchor. Everything else you have that’s scary they can stay up and above from.
Thanks guys, only reasoning Pushing me to put sent as anchor is that Proton cannon- HSF is not always save because a character like magneto can super jump it and punish. Also If I make a bad sent call with IM on point my second character will have hella red life which isn’t too good. But then again doom is a solid anchor where as anchor sent is free.
Guess I’ll do some testing with both orders and see which yealds better results. Guess the only gripe with the team is that it has little answers o Trish, Morrigan, Hawkeye and the like? The DHCs are very strong. Doom extends Sent and IM combos. Sent extends Doom combos and lets Him chain together supers. And IM lets Sent go rocket punch xx HSF.
The assist for IM is unibeam but I’m having trouble using it, probably because when Doom/Sent is on point it is outshined by Drones/Missles respectively. Thinking about switching to repulsar just for a anti air assist aswell as extending combos amazingly.
If anyone wants to help me level up my team on XBL my GT is Untitled66 thanks to everyone again.
I agree with this. You get good DHCs with this order both for damage and safety and I think Doom missile does more for Sentinel than drone does more for Doom. And yeah Sentinel anchor is bad, I guess Doom is a pretty good anchor now because of his j.s, easy hit confirm and meter positive TOD with or without xfactor.
Doom in some ways was a better anchor in Vanilla because he did even more damage in XF and sphere flame was basically an 830k damage level 1 in XF3 and did like 650+in XF2. Allowing you to do really dumb stuff like super DHC into sphere flame turn on XF2 and just kill somebody off right there. Or just shoot a random flame up against Akuma anchor in the air with XF and if it hits he dies instantly. Can’t really do that as much anymore. j.S just gives you an auto aerial footsie vs. ground normals since even a trade = you kill a character. Good players are just going to block or XF guard cancel punish or dash under and then force air throws on you if you try to jump up to do it again.
LOL yeah it’s always a nice gambit to have especially if you have him as anchor where the pop off against a bad assist call can basically kill an assist plus do big damage to the point character. As long as you have a safe DHC behind him or an XF activation available it’s not really that bad of a thing to do. You can always cancel into something else in this game as long as you have meter or XF so fuck it.
After a bit of testing with my team, I notice Vajra just don’t do enough block stun for me to mount pressure, although its a good tool against some run away and characters with no speed. Hence I am looking for a defensive assist (or at least something that has a decent hit box on the way in, so it is hard to get random happy birthday) to replace Strider for IM and Dante, as I feel IM really need one, at very least I need one.
Or something that stays on the screen for while that is not Hidden Missile or Drones. I can’t play Sentinel to save my life, so I don’t want a liability on my team. But I can’t think of another assist that does similar things.
Jam Session is kind of ok, but it is hard to combo from (IM is too slow to get his ass over there if its in mid screen, which is ironic because IM has all the jets and gadgets but he can’t move a little quicker than Thor) and it scales the combo big time.
I am looking at Vergil’s Rapid Slash. I am not sure how easy it is to hit him out of it, but once its out I think its pretty hard to stop on reaction and it push people full screen away for some space. Is there any other suggestion I could use? The only that pops out of my head right now is Akuma Tatsu, but I hate him with a passion so there will be no chance of me playing him.
I really miss Tron assist. Its is totally useless now:(
Haggar is still a great GTFO assist if that’s what you want…easy to confirm off of too.
Also Drones is GDLK for everything involving IM allows me to get in their face by super jumping and addfing into an air heavy, cr. light, or a throw and then further pressure them by negating advancing guard with flight… SOO good
Well adding Hagger basically means I lose a character slot for a semi invincible assist. I thought about it, but I am not a fan of having a character that you know will struggle to do anything, so I am not too sure. I find Drones are only good in some match up, when your opponent don’t have a fast long range move or beam hyper.