What do you think of Dante? I hear he has a somewhat broken offence? I'm not good enough to make any sort of judgment about him, but from what I've seen, he looks nigh unstoppable in the hands of an experienced player
Dante has very, very long, flashy combos, but they honestly don't do that much damage. His main power is exploiting people who don't react very quickly - his teleport into jumping S will frequently catch people off guard and can lead into a huge combo for roughly 400-500k damage (unless he X-Factors or tacks on a level 3 hyper combo at the end to kill the player) This can be incredibly obnoxious to play against, certainly, but once you figure out his tricks, he's somewhat predictable. He's still very, very dangerous, certainly, but other characters (Wesker, Amaterasu, Dark Phoenix) are generally considered more so.
Sentinel was broken because of hyper armor (cancels/overrides numerous other moves during his own attacks, meaning someone can rush him and he can just hit a button to start a combo and kill them anyway), having some of the best zoning in the game, the best assist in the game, the highest HP in the game, the highest raw power (outside of Dark Phoenix) in the game, normals did damage even when the opponent was blocking, and incredibly simple combos that killed off every character in two combos (or several in one!) Also, his level 3 X-Factor added 230% to his damage, allowing unskilled players to simply save him for last, then decimating the entire enemy team in one go. He showed up in almost every team because there was almost zero reason
not to play him - either you were good enough to play one of his counters (almost all very low-HP characters that died if you made a single mistake) or out of sheer stubbornness. I wish the nerf had significantly lowered his damage instead of his HP because scrubs can still abuse him and kill your entire team if you're not incredibly careful, but oh well, some progress is better than no progress.
Phoenix is, admittedly,
cheese. I'm grateful that most of the people that gravitate towards her for the same reason they went to Sentinel - the moment Dark Phoenix comes out, they throw on X-Factor and start spamming madly, and, well, usually, that's enough to kill any opponent. However, she's made of paper. Best tactic is to snap her in the moment you see she's on a team, then all it takes is one combo. Use ANYTHING to get rid of her - if your combo falls short, use up your own X-Factor, then finish her off that way. Use hyper combos, delayed hyper combos...chip her to death if need be, it's more than a little feasible.
If all else fails, kill the rest of her team, poke Phoenix until she has almost no health, then run out the clock. :3
If Phoenix does turn into Dark Phoenix, remember these:
- You almost certainly cannot run away, because her teleport is the best in the game.
- Blocking won't do you much because she's so insanely fast that, more than likely a scrub using her will inadvertently hit low when you're blocking high or vice versa.
- You do not have priority. You can use any super and she can respond with Phoenix Rage which will (unless you're at full health on a high-health character) override your super and kill you.
- The best way to snag her is any time she is spamming projectiles. Pushblock/Advancing Guard during one of her up-close encounters or wait until she's using her dual-TK shot to use a beam or full-screen super, then X-Factor and do it again. If you don't have X-Factor, try to land anything that has invincibility (Viewtiful Joe's Mach Speed, Captain America's Hyper Charging Star, X-23's Weapon X Prime...check out
Shoryuken's Hyper Guide for other information on that front) and lets you continue the combo onwards. If you can't kill her in one combo...well, you're gonna need to wait until she makes a mistake. Most likely, you won't be playing against anyone who
really knows how to use Phoenix, so you'll be fine waiting her out. Many new players (justifiably!) freak out when they see Dark Phoenix and make mistakes that let her kill you off before you can blink. You have to stay calm.
