X23 Video Tutorial series (Learn 2 pray 2nd best Wolvie)

[Ryuga]

^
Sick stuff man, thank you.

[DevilJin_01]

Thx. Just added in the advanced anti advance guard video. Shows off how to use the s.M, s.H whiff MFC to cancel your block strings at any point.

EDIT: Added another note around 2:05 of the previous neck slice video which explains the extra frame advantage you get on a counter hit regular neck slice. Around 4:18 of the advanced anti advance guard video i added in a note about how the strings are safe from XF guard cancels.

I’m going to be doing a few more vids that show how to anti air effectively with her, how to utilize her normals on the ground to poke, and how to use each of her mirage feints since not many people know how to effectively utilize them. After that I’ll probably take a break to work on Maximillian’s guide and then come back with some videos that help explain what characters she works well, using her dirt nap super and different combos/bnbs.

EDIT AGAIN: Going to start adding a few more videos today. If I get everything done in the same day it’ll start out with showing off how I discovered how her instant talon dives can cross the opponent up without actually crossing them up, how to utilize her mirage feints and utilizing her normals and anti airs and general mid range game.

Just uploaded M mirage feint cross up and instant talon dive un cross up video.

[Ryuga]

That instant Talon Dive un-cross-up is quite frankly, disgusting lol, it’s bonkers. You literally have to guess which side she’s on and if you guess wrong, you eat a full combo, simple as. Ambiguous as hell. You can also cover it with assists as well.

One thing though, on characters with fat hixboxes when they crouch like Modok(and somehow Dante of all characters), I couldn’t get it to cross-up.

[DevilJin_01]

I remember getting it to work on Dante when I tried it training mode. I’ll try it again and see. Overall it definitely adds a lot to her mix up game against most characters because it forces them to stand to not deal with a left right mix up exposing them to lows.

In the cross up video and the mirage feints videos i added in some descriptions in green that explain how X23 with an assist basically has access to the fastest left right mix up in the game. I got blown up by another X23 in tournament this week that showed me how Akuma assist plus M feint is harder to actually block correctly with X23 than even Wolverine. Wolverine has to actually hit you with an attack at the end of his berserker slash and it still has 16 or more frames of start up. X23’s M mirage feint activates on frame 3 and travels across the screen faster than Wolverine’s B Slash. Meaning if X23 lands a knockdown with a projectile or lockdown type assist you literally have single digit frames to guess which way to block. It’s almost not even worth trying to guess right because by the time you even think to guess she’s already swung around with the assist.

I’m also starting to find that ground throwing people with X23 is probably the first thing you should go for to set up a mix up with her. Nothing is faster than a throw and they can’t advance guard it obviously. Once you knock them on the ground you can wave dash up and employ wave dash auto correct mix ups and crash down on top of attempts to mash normals out with one of your meaty normals or an instant dive. The nice thing about throwing people is that they can’t hold up to jump out or they will be hit out of the pre jump frames where they can’t block and eat full ground combos. I won a whole match last week’s tournament with only X23 by herself against 3 near full health characters by just running the throw game and keeping the advance guard element out of the opponent. A style of play that Tatsu has been using for a while.

If you aren’t forcing throws on people first they will just instinctively crouch block and mash on advance guard like the block option throw techs in SFIV. In this game they have to commit to not blocking to tech a throw like the old school SF games giving you a good threshold to land that one frame throw and set them up. When they are afraid of you constantly forcing ground throws on them they will stop looking to advance guard every other thing you do and open up more opportunities for the MFC strings. If the opponent starts teching your throws that’s what you want because that means they’re opening themselves up for strings since they must risk whiffing a hard normal to tech a throw.

[Ryuga]

I think my timing was off when I was practising against Dante, so I’ll go out and test it again.

I’ve seriously been considering swapping out Trish for Akuma, and I think I might do just that. I really like Trish, and her and Dante can smash people, but the thing is, X-23 can’t rely on Trish’s Low Voltage, so I have to give Dante Weasel Shot for cover. But if I give Dante Weasel Shot, I don’t have Jam Session and X-23 needs Jam Session for more Silent Kill mileage, plus Akuma also sorts out Flame Carpet and other stuff that gives X-23 hassle. She can combo off Akuma’s assist very easily and can even use it for Weapon X Prime combos. And like you said, M Mirage Feint+Tatsu is insane. And by himself, Akuma’s capable enough.

So, I’ll probably put Dante and Trish on a separate team and make X-23/Dante/Akuma my main team.

And yeah, I’ve always believed that ground throwing’s quite underrated. It’s something I should be doing more of and it’s more hassle for the opponent to think about on top of the many things that X-23 can do once she gets inside. Coming from a game like SF4, you’d think I’d be using more ticks and frametraps in this game LOL.

Time to hit up that Assassination topic that BurnSilvR made.

[DevilJin_01]

That’s actually the exact same team the guy I was talking about uses. His name is Meep. He was using meter build resets to snap backs silent kill setups to kill off one of the Phoenix players that was there also. Some stuff I’ll most likely have to try to add to my game seeing how effective it proved to be. I’ll post a link to a match or 2 he got on stream so you can see. I prefer Dante first because he just does better overall in matchups but against Phoenix it’s probably worth taking the risk to just build up the 3 extra meters and then just snap her in and get her off the screen. You don’t get much time to play around with Phoenix teams so it makes sense.

With X23 you definitely want the cheapest assists possible backing her up when she has to play on point because if her assists aren’t cheap it means the chances of her getting hit are way more likely. Her hit boxes and movement specials when covered with strong assists are much harder to reliably poke at without risking your life.

[Luckydude23]

So what assist, are good so far for setting up dirt nap and unblockables? Been thinking about it but haven’t come to a conclusion yet.

[abandonist]

I play X-23 / Ammy / Spencer, and Cold Star is great for locking down.

[DevilJin_01]

I was going to do a video on it once I found out more about it but generally any assist with strong lockdown capabilities that can keep the opponent in the air in the corner sets up it up well. Your goal is to kill the first character by comboing them into the corner and then releasing the assist + dirt nap and turn on XF on the next one.

I would assume for now the only 2 assists really capable of locking most characters down long enough for the level 3 are Dante and Ammy. Depending on the spacing some characters may still be able to get out of an Ammy corner setup but (not that I play her to know for sure) but with Dante as long as you time it right everybody is gone. I remember 10 stars saying that Doom’s hidden missles could work also.

That’s only if you want totally inescapable corner setups. With most projectile or lockdown assists you can do s.H+assist and cancel that into dirtnap as a block string. Once you force them to block they’re forced to XF cancel and mash invincible super which baits their XF early and burns their meter which isn’t a terrible trade off for spending 3 meters. Depending on the assist your assist could end up dying but there’s only a certain amount of characters that can reliably XF blow you up. It’s probably best to use when the opponent has already spent their XF so they have no choice but to get hit. If you can get them to block the s.H or the assist while they’re airborne that can give you a more guaranteed setup.

[Diet]

I remember 10 stars saying that Doom’s hidden missles could work also.

Yes it does work pretty nicely, though I’d say beam > HM for x-23 at all times.

[DevilJin_01]

Yeah in general having beam assist for X23 is just hella good for screen clearance while still giving you the M/H feint or command grab mix ups when you need them. You can block string+beam trap people with X23’s s.H also and in some ways it’s actually a bit safer to do because characters like Doom appear behind X23 instead of in front of her so it’s less likely they will get hit if the opponent decides to XF cancel out on a ground situation. If the opponent doesn’t have XF once you cancel into dirt nap during the beam they’re pretty much fucked with a couple wave dashes during the assist block stun into the S.

I added some info in the Mirage Feint video that explains how her mirage feint hold stance (qcb+hold any attack button) makes her as small as a crouching Morrigan. Which means she effectively has a super crouch that goes under all beam based projectiles including Magneto’s EM Disruptor. When you’re done using it you can either let the mirage feint rip or cancel it by holding S and then dashing in. I’ll have to see if you can cancel it into a super or not.

EDIT: Tested it out and you can super cancel the feint hold as well if you choose. Meaning you can create strategies against beam spam by dashing in and then feint holding under a beam and then cancelling into rage trigger or weapon x prime to land damage afterwards. Rage trigger is invincible from frame one before the freeze starts so you should be able to literally go through the beam even. Weapon X Prime moves across the screen nearly as fast but it has 6 frames before the freeze where you’re not invincible so you’ll have to wait for the beam to dissipate first.

EXTRA MAGNUS EDIT: I found out that mirage feint hold doesn’t duck under H disruptah. If he switches to H you’ll get hit.

NINJA EDIT: Added several new vids. First vid showing off some assist based mix ups after ground back throwing your opponent to blow up advanced guards and put people in bad situations quickly. Second is a video explaining some of the anti projectile techniques I discussed earlier. A couple other videos detailing how to utilize X23’s normals to space and poke against different characters and some effective anti air techniques for her as well.

[resin]

I found your videos very helpful and I learned a lot of stuff. I have a hard time dealing with Wesker and your videos really helped me combat him.

10 Stars is correct, Hidden Missiles do work with Dirt Nap although I agree with the both of you…having a beam is far more beneficial.

[DevilJin_01]

Thanks. Glad a lot of people found this helpful for figuring Laura out for the several months Vanilla was a competitive game. With Ultimate coming out if I somehow get an early copy I’ll most likely put up a video update with any new things I’ve found with her. There were a few more things I wanted to go over with her like combos and dirt nap stuff but I feel that’s already been explained in other videos about X-23 like Maximillian’s any way.

I more just wanted to put out everything I knew about X-23 outside of the combos, DHC glitch, and dirt nap stuff so people can know what to with the character when she’s not doing one of those 3 things. She’s a rather assist and XF reliant character and pretty much does best trying to kill 2 people with XF and level 3. Even then I really like her tools out of that and she really fits my play style. I feel learning the left/right talon dive mix ups and M feint + assist mix ups really pushed up her mix up game without relying on high/lows. Plus the MFC’s help her to be a threat from a range without assists.

I’ve noticed the way I have my team set up now it has some limitations if X-23 is second and I already burned XF1…but hopefully UMVC3 will be less reliant on XF1 burning so I can keep my team in the same order and play it mostly competitively. If not then I may consider switching the order or look about other characters for my main team. I’ve already got 2 new teams that I wanna go total ComboFiend on and just put them together and find a way to make them work in the best way possible. I’ll just grind out all the teams including my original X-23 team and see what I like best.