Who Counter's Dante?

is dante totally useless against an opponent who has sentinel’s drones assist?

No. He’s still strong, he just has a harder time exerting his will on a player who has Sent drones.

I’ve read through this thread to get some ideas, but this character has always been one of the most difficult to deal with in the MvC3 series. From my experience playing against him he really has no significant weaknesses. I’m still a novice player so I know that that is a lot of the problem but nonetheless…

My main issue with this character is that, apparently he’s never unsafe. I mean, absent doing something absurd like whiffing million dollars, is Dante ever unsafe? His air s is just absurd. It has very high priority and apparently even if you block or he whiffs he can cancel into hammer, and if that doesn’t work apparently that can be made safe via devil trigger or that air pistol attack or airplay. Another thing that seems really safe is his teleport. It’s lightning fast and thus very hard to air throw on reaction–and doing so is very risky because you could mistime it–which means getting hit into a 30 minute TOD combo. And of course, he’s covering it with a projectile assist so that doubles the risk of trying to punish it. The other big issue with Dante are his top 5 hitboxes. I don’t think it’s even possible to whiff stinger–and of course, even if he does he can bold cancel into reverb fireworks for complete safety. I will say that I tend to do OK vs. him when I play skrull backed by drones. But I think a lot of that has to do with people not being familiar with Skrull and meteor smash hitting him out of constant airplay/air s/hammer. I’m trying to learn Logan, Spencer, and Magneto because I want to progress to top tiers. Any tips with those characters would be especially helpful.

dante can’t bold cancel a whiffed stinger; he can only bold cancel them on hit/block.

and while dante has safe block strings and “appears” to be relatively safe, you can punish a few of his air options, such as a mis-spaced, whiffed hammer. you have to remember that dante’s normals are pretty slow, i think his cr L has an 8 frame start-up. you can’t mash against his blockstrings but you can always delay your pushblocks to put yourself in auto-blockstun to block his left right mix ups. dante’s high-low game is very mediocre in my opinion.

and his teleport is very easy to punish if it’s not covered by an assist. you just have to go in training room and practice air grabbing it.

Dante with meter beats Zero. Without meter Zero wins if he gets close etc.

Optimized Viper clean beats Dante IMO, but it’s not as bad of a matchup as some others vs. her.

The best part about Dante is he’s like the Ryu of the game. There’s no match he loses terribly as long as he stays in the space he needs to be in and the player is knows how to utilize all of his tools in said range. Most matchups he either wins, even or barely loses at worst. Especially when he has an assist. He’s not the best character to play at the start of the round, but once he gets space he can do what he wants to do.

Everyone always says he has tools for everything but this isn’t true. His fastest normal is 8f. This is not “tools for everything”. He has a strong zoning and good rushdown, that’s what all his tools move towards.

People constantly bring up the 8 frame fastest normal thing, but air S cancel to hammer is probably one of the best defensive tools in the game. It’s downright un punishable and leads to easy high damage combos on hit. On block it leads to a free mixup.

He also has one of the best teleports in the game if he really needs to get out of trouble.

Not that Dante mains need anymore help decimating other characters, but here’s an example of what I’m talking about when I say air S cancel to hammer (AKA air lariat) is one of the best defensive tools in the game–and the reason why not having any normals faster than 8 frames isn’t important. Dante can defend himself against even THE BEST rushdown (in this case truly one of the most frightening rushdown characters in the game–and used by one of the best rushdown players–Ricky Ortiz’s Wolverine).

It is still slow, which goes back to the point. Hammer would be horrible if it was punishable (which it is on whiff, just not on block). It is a pretty good move, but a far cry from what it used to be, and I would hardly say in a game like marvel that it is a strong enough defensive option to say it cleans up his 8f normals. You can think of the move as, from the point of execution until the point invul starts to be vulnerable. Beyond that it also requires prejump frames to not be tagged low.

dante is bad against zero, wesker, mags, vergil, viper, ammy, spencer. his main way to deal against these charavters is pushblock and stinger. he cant really outzone mag or zero cause they have quicker projectiles. the matchups arent that bad however. they are six to four dante being four.

the absolute worst match ups dante has are against ammy and vergil. ammy is too small for dante to effectively combat her and too quick. the vergil match up being seven to three in vergils favor. vergil is a lot faster than dante and spiral swords shuts dante down.

dante dominates dorm, doom, aerial characters with static runaway like trish and a few others cause of h isbteleport. his qcf m ice shuts down nova and he has an answer for most of the other cast. imo my two cents.

Any tips against Sentinel? My Dante performs terribly against him, whether he is on point or an assist. J.M prevents Dante from using air play, drones discourage him from teleporting. Dante’s QCF+S projectile is slow and can be easily double jumped, and his missles projectile gets torn in half by Sentinel’s standing/crouching H. That’s nearly all of his projectiles. Box jump -> cross up jumping H, one of Dante’s best rushdown tools, is useless against Sentinel because of his height. Reverb shock is the only way to stuff a predicted Cr. M but isn’t the safest move in the world, and to top it all off Sentinel requires character-specific combo alteration.

Basically I’m having trouble both near and far when fighting against sentinel. Any tips are appreciated. Crystal becomes incredibly useful for me as it can be used to absorb two drones and prevents an armored Cr. M. Any beam assist helps greatly, of course.

Use air play outside range of hyper sentinel force and his stand H. That will force him to move or block. If he sees you chathing he may approach you. Of he jumps release and act accordingly if he moves on the ground release and come down with a normal or go into Hhhhhhh to buy som time to safely fall. Usuall they tend to jumo M. Once he jumps you can move around and get into a better positio. I find some of them block air play which is ehat you want. You can fall use drive or air lock and then dt he has to block drive and you get a mixuo by dashing up or teleport shenanigans both which will ne safe. You can then just jumo and do thunderbol if you choose because now he can’t do anything. If he hard drives you cN vortex as long as you are at a good range. Dt Dante is a 10-0 matchup against sentinel. He can’t pushblock thunderbolt and vortex punishes a lot of his options. Not tk mention that you get better air mobility. He should never be in range to touch.

Just be patient and use moves that don’t require a lot of charge time on the ground. You can pretty much play defensive and win without risk. Sents buttons and armor is a bitch so rushdown isnt as good but if you can get him to block he has to eat at least 2
mixups.