See title, we all know Firebrand loves the shit out of that assist, but I’m trying to think of other candidates. I’m thinking VJoe and any rushdown character with a command grab, but that’s all I can think of.
Hmmm, I know Magneto likes using it and he can protect it quickly with Disruptor L.
Teleporters make the best use of it. Wesker in particular can use it to relaunch, mix-up, reset, and go for command grabs. Characters with command dashes, like Zero and Captain America, can also work.
Dark Hole is okay for Firebrand. Not great. You mostly play Firebrand/Dormammu for the amazing DHC synergy, and Dark Hole is a neat little bonus against some opponents.
The big problem with Dark Hole is that it’s a pinning assist that covers an awkward space and causes a soft knockdown at low HSD levels. So, if you pin an opponent with Dark Hole and go for a high/low mix-up, you tend to not actually get a full combo off of it because you hit your opponent and then he rolls out. It’s basically a shitty version of Cold Star for all intents and purposes, though I’d love to hear an argument for an alternative perspective.
This is part of why you don’t see a lot of Dormammu, though. He’s in a weird position. This game has a lot of selfish characters with bad assists, but Dormammu is the only selfish character with bad assists that is also a weak point character. You want to DHC him in. So the question becomes: “who wants to run their point character second?” And the answer turns out to be “not many people”.
F. Champ is so successful because he gets this about Dormammu. EM Disruptor and Hidden Missiles are two top assists for Dormammu, and he gets them both on the same team while also having one of the best ways to DHC Dormammu in that the game has. Part of the reason he’s so far above everyone else is he’s one of the few people thinking about this game as it needs to be thought about. As a team game.
I think Haggar uses him well. Haggar on point can lead into Dorm.
I use Haggar Dorm Magneto. Finishing a combo with haggar’s meter building crazyness ends with a giant haggar press and DHC Dorm in with Stalking Flare. Dark Hole can be useful to Haggar for combo extension too.
The best way to know an assist is shit for a character is when you can only think of “combo extension” as a justification for the assist.
true. but Haggar has a command grab. so i can use it to pin and keep pressure once he’s in.
Again, something any assist can do. It’s not like your opponent sitting in blockstun for 30 frames vs 15 frames gives you a better command grab. If anything, it lets your opponent think more and is worse. Pinning assists are best for characters that can prepare things (Strange), or have good high/low mix-ups (Magneto). Not Haggar.
yeah that’s why i dabbled with Liberation but found it difficult to prep…
I think in the future liberation will be the best assist for dormammu. Especially on Dorm/doom teams or teams that already have an assist and dont need dark hole.
I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work well for Felicia, she’s quite underrated at that kind of in - your face, rushdown game.
Personally I use Purification on Dorm, which I agree is his weakest assist, because Thor can abuse it really well.
Yeah, I was thinking about using Liberation instead for Dante for combo extension.
I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while, but for Doom/Dorm/Sent, have you played with Purification assist? I feel like Doom
having an extra vertical control is pretty handy. Plus, it has uses for cross unders for Doom and cross overs for Sent.
^I’ve never used it but I saw rubillionaire use it at revelations and it definitely piqued my interest. I will do some more research into it.
That’s one of those teams where Purification can work, but it’s still not great. Purification comes out super slow, so when Dooms calls it you already need to be on the offensive or Dormammu might get bopped. Dark Hole isn’t great for Doom, but you can use it for additional pressure after a f+H Foot Dive. Also, I bet you can use Purification to combo extend for Doom in corners.
Well, I mostly limit my Purification calls to incoming at mid-screen. Even then, that’s rare, as I more than likely have Drones waiting for me as well.
Outside of combo extension, I personally use Dark Hole as a defensive/pre-emptive neutral assist for Wolverine mainly, as it takes up a large amount of space for a good number of frames, and catched assists in it well. On top of that it’s sucking the durability out of your opponent’s projectiles and gives you an opportunity to advance if they don’t move into it themselves. If they block it like that they have to deal with your standard high/low/throw/left/right deal.
Dark Hole also lets Wolverine combo from crossup Slashes, which is limited but useful all the same, as well as combos from all ground and normal jump throws and your usual combo extensions. Reset wise there’s a lot Wolverine can get out of it, but not much more than other good characters can manage.
For Wolverine it gives him some useful welcome mixups with an ambiguous left/right SJ Dive Kick which stops air dash escapes and forces double jumpers to block and stay where they were, and this combos on hit or gives you another mixup on block. As well as a couple of specific high/low setups for him.
As for other characters, Dark Hole combined stuff like Wesker jump back Gun/Magneto ADB Magnetic Blast/Frank West jump Camera all lead to full combos while being great defensive options. Mags also gets nice stuff like back throw OS Dark Hole + Disrupter M for full combos or a quick mixup on block and similar strings with Dark Hole.
I really should get around to playing with Lib more, but each time I do I miss Dark Hole and its applications for all my teams. Thinking about it I have Dorm 2nd in all the teams I muck about with so I’ve gotten extremely accustomed to having it there.
Wolverine / Dorm / Iron Fist
Magneto / Dorm / Doom
Wesker / Dorm / Magneto
Dante / Dorm / Magneto
Zero / Dorm / Dante
Hulk / Dorm / Sent
Hmmm.
I’ve been playing around with this actually. I can’t figure out how to extend a corner foot,footdive combo with it but you can add damage to the combo by calling it on the next to last iteration and adding in an additional J.M to keep them in the combo, then foot,footdive and finish them off.
I’m prety locked on playing Dorm (purification), Strange (bolts), Doom (missiles) at this point, but Dorm is a conundrum. His assists are so terrible I can’t justify playing him anything but point. And I hate Doom as an anchor, but missiles is godlike. None of Dorm’s assists do anything for Strange, as far as I can tell currently so I think I may have the optimal ordering for this team but I’m open to suggestions. Maybe Strange anchor? bleh
This is the eternal conundrum of playing Dormammu.
Taskmaster loves the hell out of dark hole. It lets him extend combos easily, pushes them up to a height that lets you get jumploops or whatever you’d call his air sequences off an assist confirm, and can be thrown with a shield skills to allow repeated, continued pressure.
This , I find the the coverage for shield skills to be amazing with hole. In addition, it helps with Sting Master loops and you can use hole to get off a Vertical Arrows shot safely which allows Tasky to setup more offense or zoning. I’ve actually used it to get off the unblockable via lockdown into a headbutt and then X-factor to go into a kill combo, just finish the canned series to go for a mix-up on wake up or just do Legion arrows to the face or after the knockdown.
Dorm’s assist are very specialized which is THE problem with him but I think it works out since he is such an amazing DHC into character.
Personally, I love Hole for Doom as well. I do a lot of dash-canceling off of block strings with Doom and I find that Hole is really nice since it eats up a lot of screen when going for left-right stuff. Also, you can use it really well if you foot dive over your opponent while calling assist. Almost everyone immediate goes for the attack to only get caught by hole. Just flight cancel and :s: foot dive to the ground and go for a combo. Sure, the damage scaling hurts a lot, but Doom hits hard enough and the DHC damage of my team (Task/Dorm/Doom) is stupid good that I can kill most characters easily with 2 bars.
The ONLY time I’ve seen liberation work is the stupidly fun Battery (I use Doom or Spencer)/Dorm/Morrigan Team. Just try it out and see how annoying you can be with THCs