Willamette Parkview Mall Help Center: The Frank West Q&A Thread (Ask questions here!)

[Slippaz]

Does anyone have a optimized lvl 5 Frank combo that breaks a mill? My most damaging combo does about 993k My assists are jam session and centurion rush.

Yezzir, my specialty (I’m hoping you mean off 1-bar and not a meterless lab combo?)

All of these combos work off confirms that cause more HSD, including [j.MMH s.Mcr.Ms.Hcr.HS] and [Zombie Swing L s.MHS]. I just put the cr.H damages because they’re basically the lowest numbers you can get. They’re also all corner-to-corner combos with the exception of the last one which uses Jam Session to confirm.

All Purpose (1.015 Mil): cr.HS sj.MMHS, (dash) j.Tools H (land), (Call Cent Rush) Tools L, s.S sj.MMHS, (Call Jam Session) j.Tools H, s.S sj.S, (falling) j.Tools H, L Zombie Swing, Tools M x2

Basically the combo I do on Sentinel (:57) in this video:

Corner (1.059Mil): cr.HS sj.L, Tools L, Tools L, sj.M Tools L, sj.H (land), s.S sj.MMHS, (Call Jam Session) j.Tools H, s.S sj.S, (falling) j.Tools H), (Slight Delay) (Call Cent Rush) Tools M x3

Ground Bounce Confirm: (j.S or s.Tools H) Tools L, cr.Ms.H(+Call Cent Rush), Tools L, cr.MS, sj.MMHS, (Call Jam Session) j.Tools H, s.S sj.S, (falling) j.Tools H, L Zombie Swing, Tools Mx2

j.MS – 1.013Mil
Knee Drop – 1.081Mil
Air Throw – 938k (lol)

Basically all you’re doing here is looping Tools L on the ground and getting Nova to hit during Tools L to reset your ground bounce for later.

Note on Knee Drop/Air Throw vs. Sentinel: You have to Knee Drop/Air Throw into j.Tools H, which isn’t that bad, but it’s a little harder. Just do it earlier than you think you can. I think he’s the only character that’s true for, but Nemesis is possible.

j.M(+Jam Session)S into another j.MS (987k): (confirm), Tools L, cr.Ms.H(+Nova), Tools L, cr.MS, sj.MMHS, j.Tools H, L Zombie Swing, Tools Mx2

(I use the last if I think an incoming opponent’s going to swing so I figured I’d post it.)

EDIT: Extra clarification.

EDIT2: Since there have been a lot of posts since, I’ll tag @ChomP

[_Insert_Name_Here]

I was watching a bunch of Apology Man videos the other day on youtube, and I swear I saw him use a combo (just once) that got lvl 1 Frank to lvl 4 without the usual Inferno or Tenerizer and without x-factor/meter. I can’t recall which video it was and I can’t seem to find it now, anyone have any idea? I think he was using j.L, j.L, j.M, j.M, j.H after launches (2 reps) but other than that I can’t recall the specifics.

Hit him up on Twitter, he’ll probably answer you.

We can call him here, too.

Anything, @WallJumpMan?

[TakisxLove]

We can call him here, too.

Anything, @WallJumpMan?

Thanks :D!

[TheCape]

Does anyone have a optimized lvl 5 Frank combo that breaks a mill? My most damaging combo does about 993k My assists are jam session and centurion rush.

What is your confirm?

[Slippaz]

What is your confirm?

Do you have some Dante/Nova combos in the pocket?? I like the ones I posted, but I’ll be the first to admit your Frank combo knowledge runs deeper. Share 'em if you got 'em!

[TheCape]

I’ve fiddled with both characters and haven’t really found anything out of the ordinary with them. I want to play Dante, but I just can’t get the hang of bold canceling.

[Fuzzykips]

It takes a little bit of getting used to, take it from someone who just picked up Dante after EVO. Sometimes in the midst of a set with someone I’ll get excited and forget to Bold Cancel muh Stinger and that sucks.

Though buffering everything one move ahead is pretty fun.

[Slippaz]

I’ve fiddled with both characters and haven’t really found anything out of the ordinary with them. I want to play Dante, but I just can’t get the hang of bold canceling.

Yeah he definitely takes a little while

Just as a suggestion, did you try plinking the bold cancels? If you’re good at plinking it makes the timing completely braindead because you can bold cancel Stinger until basically the last frame, so you can put all your energy into the input. I always do it for qcf specials because it lets me return the stick to neutral really easily, but it works just as well for Volcano.

It’s definitely worth a shot in case it’s a more intuitive method for you. The input would just be f.H dp.S~M for a bold cancel Volcano.

It takes a little bit of getting used to, take it from someone who just picked up Dante after EVO. Sometimes in the midst of a set with someone I’ll get excited and forget to Bold Cancel muh Stinger and that sucks.

Though buffering everything one move ahead is pretty fun.

Haha god I know that feeling. If you ever try anchor Dante, though, you’ll be in for a whole new level of frustration. If you’ve been spending a lot of time in XF and try to autopilot the same inputs at even half XF3 speed (nailing the damn bold cancel series perfectly mind you) you end up with cr.Ls.MH, Jam Session. His normals are so slow Stinger doesn’t even come out lol ~_~ Not gonna lie, I get that pretty often. He’s so much fun, though!

[smashingme]

Very Frank, much levels

[_Insert_Name_Here]

Necroing my old thread woooo

@Slippaz: When doing the Frank/Dante THC, your Brotherhood of Chainsaws video explained that dashing forward with Frank before the THC would save the wallbounce, allowing for a better extension. My questions are:

1. How close does Frank actually need to be avoid the wallbounce from his super?

2. Obviously you can easily screw up and the THC causes the wallbounce anyway, but how do you notice? I haven’t had access to the game recently so I couldn’t test it out myself. So far from just trying to eyeball it from your videos I see that the wallbounce makes the combo counter pause for a brief moment and pushes the body up higher. If there’s a better/easier way to catch it, it would be much appreciated.

[Slippaz]

So the general rule is that for “normal” sized characters, you need to get Frank far enough to have crossed the plane created by the opponent’s feet as they point upward. If Frank’s beyond the feet, you’re good. If he’s on their midscreen side, no dice.

I’ve only labbed it a little for Rocket Raccoon, but because you can’t s.HS for extra height before the tag, there’s no question that you can’t dash far enough. In fact, even if you dash a little, a 3-bar THC will still make him wall bounce across you because of the Shockwave-related height change. Zero is a little too small to go for this on in a match IMO, because the line between s.HS leading to a whiffed tag and not is veryyyy small, but I think saving the wall bounce is possible on him.

If you have Jam Session available vs the smaller characters, you’re better off tagging Frank and doing a Snapshot into Hyper and then DHC into Dante for the Jam Session into extensions anyway, because you’re much more likely to get level 5 by the time you have enough meter to hyper and kill (simply because of health constraints).

On bigger characters, it gets pretty easy because you can do s.HS with essentially no delay and not whiff the tag, so you can dash really far before the THC. On Sentinel you’re shooting for a dash to about his knee cap.

I eyeballed it by my spacing as compared to the prone opponent sprite for a while and wasn’t whiffing it, but honestly now I just do it by the time between when I hit dash and when I THC. The real key to hitting it every time is consistently dashing at the same time in relation to the tag recovery. If you can do that and get the “dash…THC” rhythm consistent, you’ll hit it a lot.

Practice it on regular-sized characters first, though…X23, Nova, IM, Frank, Dante, Magneto, Thor…those characters are all different sizes, but you want to shoot for basically the same visual spacing on all of them (around the ankles). That’ll give you a feeling for the timing.

Also, just as an easy trick, if you’re playing a character that you decide not to save the wall bounce against (say…Zero) but you still want to THC, you can tag out of sj.H adf.HS and it’ll work. You can’t dash or call Jam Session into Snap with that tag setup, but you can either Snapshot or THC and there’s 0 risk of an accidental TAC when you add.S.

Btw, in case it helps you, I changed the timing I use for the tag. Instead of doing sj.MH (delay) then a really fast add.S, I started doing sj.MH, ADD with no delay between then and then delaying slightly before inputting S. Eliminates the risk of a TAC and makes it easier to hit S on the very first frames of the ADD (because the stick’s now in in neutral).

EDIT: Also, Cape noticed some pattern with the white flash that appears on the tip of the Cart when the wall bounce happens. I didn’t look at it that much, but I have a feeling it may look different on P1 and P2 side. Still, could help as well if you can see something consistent there.

[_Insert_Name_Here]

Been working on the Wiki page because I’m bored on Christmas and noticed that the entry for Giant Swing only mentions a soft KD happening on the last hit for the light version. Pretty sure it applies to all versions, but I just wanted to double check here to make sure that’s how it was.

[Slippaz]

Yeah I assume that’s right, but I can’t test atm. Should be strictly true, but since u can’t really combo into M or H it’d be true in practice regardless (no HSD at the time of hit).

Also some of us have a google doc set up to edit the Frank wiki. Holidays have kept it from moving too quickly so far, but we’ll be picking up on that soon. What are you editing exactly? Layout? Cause if so, we should make sure to get the new code from u so we’re not editing an old layout. If u wanna PM me an email address here or on reddit I can add u to the doc as well.

[_Insert_Name_Here]

I haven’t touched the layout yet. (I actually plan on doing Magneto first). I just noticed that some of the damage numbers in the wiki were wrong, so I just took the time to check each normal.

I’ll PM you my email.