To Squigly--
darling, dearest, dead.
If you are interested in threads with Skullgirls fanart, you would be better off reading some other thread. In this thread, not only is there no Skullgirls fanart, there is no voice acting and very little cosplay. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Severin, Chilldog, and Kenin Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with suffering, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the thread goes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So Duckator is easily the #1 Skullgirls player in the world right now. He's won every (?) major he's attended since SDE, consistently dominates GGPO, and I hear he even won Evo twice or something. I think it's a bit strange that so little community energy has been put towards figuring out how to handle its strongest player. So!
I thought we could use a thread dedicated solely to making Duckator's life sadder, less predictable, and filled with disappointment.
those... shiny eyes...
To that end, I think it's time people start thinking about Valentine/Filia/Double (V.F.D.). Don't get me wrong! In most respects Duckator is just plain better than everyone. Of his three main characters, he's probably the absolute best with all three of them (any challengers?). He has the most solid fundamentals in the community, he capitalizes on opportunities like nobody else, he's a renowned actor and keen emotional manipulator-- the list goes on. But the fact remains that he's also running the most feared team in Skullgirls right now, and yet it seems there hasn't been much time spent trying to minimize that.
So the goal of this thread is to, as a community, "Analyze the current #1 team in the game, break it down, and, ideally, find ways to weaken and exploit it," even if only slightly! If nothing else, it's a great exercise that helps develop more realistic, practical balance theory (which we could probably use more of, frankly). At best, hey, maybe we can shake things up come NEC in December!
The Basics
I don't have much experience against V.F.D. (the one time I played Duckator he mainly just rolled me with secondaries, although Baiken was running this for a bit at FRB), but I think it's easy enough to understand the team on a basic level. It's a pretty simple concept; take the best rushdown character in the game and put her in front of two of the strongest assists. The result is a team that is (a) adept at scoring the first hit, and (b) possibly unmatched when it comes to capitalizing, fully, on that hit. In other words, when things go right for V.F.D., things go really, really right.
The kicker, though, is that those assists are attached to Filia and Double-- arguably the most robust core in the game, and major individual threats in their own respect. Many people have been knocking around the idea that Filia and Double are in fact the two best characters in the game right now, and it's hard to argue with them. All of this is just to say that V.F.D. is uncommonly good at recovering from unfortunate events; Duckator has more than enough disguises to get the job done even when things do happen to go sour.
In other words, V.F.D. is the strongest core, with the strongest anchor, with the strongest point character in front of it, locked and loaded with two of the most oppressive assists. How do you even begin to invent a way around that?
Matchups
Now, I don't know shit about matchups, especially Valentine's. But I think it's really important to recognize that, even though this entire thread is about V.F.D. being this super scary top tier team, Skullgirls is a really well-balanced game. So while it's uncontroversial that Valentine's overall offensive toolset is among the scariest in the game, in no way does that protect her from matchup struggles, even against characters that are ostensibly worse than her. It really would not surprise me if we eventually found that Valentine loses to Cerebella or something 'unexpected'-- especially if that character were backed up with "best practice" (read: boring, effective)-style assists. Hopefully we can get some good theory going in this thread, since I feel if there's any point character that Valentine happens to struggle against, that is very much relevant to the immediate future of the tournament scene and is important to explore. Of course this applies to Filia and Double as well, though perhaps less pressingly.
Assists
Again, I have little to personally contribute here as I'm not yet what you'd consider a "good player," but if people have any thoughts on what assist combinations they believe give V.F.D. a disproportionately difficult time-- even if they're just the bog standard that everyone's using anyway-- I feel that that's hugely constructive in a world where you literally cannot win a major unless you're capable of beating Duckator 3/5.
One little note I'd like to make here is that I've always found it a bit odd how coy non-Valentine players tend to be with their assists. You don't really see the "point character + two cheapest, most basic assists possible" stuff you might expect. All the Fortune players I've played have tended towards a more one-dimensional style with either one or no assists, just focusing on maximizing the basic Fortune mixup and damage output (the exception to this is Worldjem, but I'm not sure what he mains at the moment. Last I saw he was running point Peacock though). It's effective because it's Fortune, but I have to wonder what they'd be capable of if they went full-on "best practices" mode.
Again though, the game is well-balanced. The main barrier stopping people from winning majors isn't V.F.D., it's that they're just not good enough. So it's not like there's some pressing need for everyone to throw Double in the back of their team or anything-- but I have to wonder what would happen if they did.
Snapback???
I think a lot of people had fun watching Duckator's team receive multiple nerfs throughout the 1.02 beta-testing process. All three characters saw significant nerfs to their best supers, though presumably the new superflash hitstop made up for at least some of that. But what stood out for me as a particularly tantalizing anti-Duckator possibility was the new snapback.
In 1.02, snapping out an opponent's point character locks their assists for 300 frames. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's exactly 300 more frames than in SDE, significantly increasing the vulnerability of a snapped-in character. This is great for people who want to snap in a weakened character to finish them off before they regain red life, but does anyone else see potential for this as a straight up anti-Valentine tactic?
Valentine is arguably the worst assist character in the game, and her meter usage leaves a lot to be desired. She unequivocally does not want to be in the back unless absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, the anchor position is Double's home. She is the best assist in the game, and catheads are a fantastic DHC which remain a strong option as a solo with meter. Double isn't completely wasted on point, but with weak opening mixup escape options and the inability to call assists for 300 frames, will she even make it there?
I think most teams tend to be pretty good about not being too sad if they happen to gum up their order a bit (I play Parasoul/Filia/Cerebella, which really can be played in any order I feel so long as I'm feeling confident). I think "Any Team With Valentine" might be a major exception to that, though:
That's Duckator, completely obliterating another Valentine player by snapping in Filia and laughing in the face of an incoming Squigly/Valentine. Granted, these are two very different teams we're talking about (against Val/Squigly/Filia I feel like it's a straight up no-brainer to go for the snap there, and I was actually laughing about how convenient it was for me that this matchup was recorded), but I think the theory is the same. If you have strong enough incoming mixups, instead of V.F.D. being a team where "even if things go wrong it's still okay," it becomes "if things go wrong you're left with Filia backed by a mediocre assist, possibly forced to spend 2 meters to get Val back in or risk having to struggle with solo Val." It's such a stark difference that I feel it's worth leaving Valentine alive, even if she does have a tattoo of an eye on her left ankle. At the very least, you force Duckator--villain that he is--to play a different sort of game from the one he's used to playing.
Anyway, that's all I've got left to bother you all with. Hopefully this facilitates some interesting discussion. Remember, you are all my last hope that the tales of the Baudelaire children can finally be told to the general public,
With all due respect,
Kristoph, the Angel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
KRISTOPH, THE ANGEL was born in a small town where the inhabitants were suspicious and prone to riot. He now lives in Japan. During his spare time he gathers evidence and is considered something of an expert by leading authorities.
darling, dearest, dead.
If you are interested in threads with Skullgirls fanart, you would be better off reading some other thread. In this thread, not only is there no Skullgirls fanart, there is no voice acting and very little cosplay. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Severin, Chilldog, and Kenin Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with suffering, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the thread goes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So Duckator is easily the #1 Skullgirls player in the world right now. He's won every (?) major he's attended since SDE, consistently dominates GGPO, and I hear he even won Evo twice or something. I think it's a bit strange that so little community energy has been put towards figuring out how to handle its strongest player. So!
I thought we could use a thread dedicated solely to making Duckator's life sadder, less predictable, and filled with disappointment.
those... shiny eyes...
To that end, I think it's time people start thinking about Valentine/Filia/Double (V.F.D.). Don't get me wrong! In most respects Duckator is just plain better than everyone. Of his three main characters, he's probably the absolute best with all three of them (any challengers?). He has the most solid fundamentals in the community, he capitalizes on opportunities like nobody else, he's a renowned actor and keen emotional manipulator-- the list goes on. But the fact remains that he's also running the most feared team in Skullgirls right now, and yet it seems there hasn't been much time spent trying to minimize that.
So the goal of this thread is to, as a community, "Analyze the current #1 team in the game, break it down, and, ideally, find ways to weaken and exploit it," even if only slightly! If nothing else, it's a great exercise that helps develop more realistic, practical balance theory (which we could probably use more of, frankly). At best, hey, maybe we can shake things up come NEC in December!
The Basics
I don't have much experience against V.F.D. (the one time I played Duckator he mainly just rolled me with secondaries, although Baiken was running this for a bit at FRB), but I think it's easy enough to understand the team on a basic level. It's a pretty simple concept; take the best rushdown character in the game and put her in front of two of the strongest assists. The result is a team that is (a) adept at scoring the first hit, and (b) possibly unmatched when it comes to capitalizing, fully, on that hit. In other words, when things go right for V.F.D., things go really, really right.
The kicker, though, is that those assists are attached to Filia and Double-- arguably the most robust core in the game, and major individual threats in their own respect. Many people have been knocking around the idea that Filia and Double are in fact the two best characters in the game right now, and it's hard to argue with them. All of this is just to say that V.F.D. is uncommonly good at recovering from unfortunate events; Duckator has more than enough disguises to get the job done even when things do happen to go sour.
In other words, V.F.D. is the strongest core, with the strongest anchor, with the strongest point character in front of it, locked and loaded with two of the most oppressive assists. How do you even begin to invent a way around that?
Matchups
Now, I don't know shit about matchups, especially Valentine's. But I think it's really important to recognize that, even though this entire thread is about V.F.D. being this super scary top tier team, Skullgirls is a really well-balanced game. So while it's uncontroversial that Valentine's overall offensive toolset is among the scariest in the game, in no way does that protect her from matchup struggles, even against characters that are ostensibly worse than her. It really would not surprise me if we eventually found that Valentine loses to Cerebella or something 'unexpected'-- especially if that character were backed up with "best practice" (read: boring, effective)-style assists. Hopefully we can get some good theory going in this thread, since I feel if there's any point character that Valentine happens to struggle against, that is very much relevant to the immediate future of the tournament scene and is important to explore. Of course this applies to Filia and Double as well, though perhaps less pressingly.
Assists
Again, I have little to personally contribute here as I'm not yet what you'd consider a "good player," but if people have any thoughts on what assist combinations they believe give V.F.D. a disproportionately difficult time-- even if they're just the bog standard that everyone's using anyway-- I feel that that's hugely constructive in a world where you literally cannot win a major unless you're capable of beating Duckator 3/5.
One little note I'd like to make here is that I've always found it a bit odd how coy non-Valentine players tend to be with their assists. You don't really see the "point character + two cheapest, most basic assists possible" stuff you might expect. All the Fortune players I've played have tended towards a more one-dimensional style with either one or no assists, just focusing on maximizing the basic Fortune mixup and damage output (the exception to this is Worldjem, but I'm not sure what he mains at the moment. Last I saw he was running point Peacock though). It's effective because it's Fortune, but I have to wonder what they'd be capable of if they went full-on "best practices" mode.
Again though, the game is well-balanced. The main barrier stopping people from winning majors isn't V.F.D., it's that they're just not good enough. So it's not like there's some pressing need for everyone to throw Double in the back of their team or anything-- but I have to wonder what would happen if they did.
Snapback???
I think a lot of people had fun watching Duckator's team receive multiple nerfs throughout the 1.02 beta-testing process. All three characters saw significant nerfs to their best supers, though presumably the new superflash hitstop made up for at least some of that. But what stood out for me as a particularly tantalizing anti-Duckator possibility was the new snapback.
In 1.02, snapping out an opponent's point character locks their assists for 300 frames. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's exactly 300 more frames than in SDE, significantly increasing the vulnerability of a snapped-in character. This is great for people who want to snap in a weakened character to finish them off before they regain red life, but does anyone else see potential for this as a straight up anti-Valentine tactic?
Valentine is arguably the worst assist character in the game, and her meter usage leaves a lot to be desired. She unequivocally does not want to be in the back unless absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, the anchor position is Double's home. She is the best assist in the game, and catheads are a fantastic DHC which remain a strong option as a solo with meter. Double isn't completely wasted on point, but with weak opening mixup escape options and the inability to call assists for 300 frames, will she even make it there?
I think most teams tend to be pretty good about not being too sad if they happen to gum up their order a bit (I play Parasoul/Filia/Cerebella, which really can be played in any order I feel so long as I'm feeling confident). I think "Any Team With Valentine" might be a major exception to that, though:
That's Duckator, completely obliterating another Valentine player by snapping in Filia and laughing in the face of an incoming Squigly/Valentine. Granted, these are two very different teams we're talking about (against Val/Squigly/Filia I feel like it's a straight up no-brainer to go for the snap there, and I was actually laughing about how convenient it was for me that this matchup was recorded), but I think the theory is the same. If you have strong enough incoming mixups, instead of V.F.D. being a team where "even if things go wrong it's still okay," it becomes "if things go wrong you're left with Filia backed by a mediocre assist, possibly forced to spend 2 meters to get Val back in or risk having to struggle with solo Val." It's such a stark difference that I feel it's worth leaving Valentine alive, even if she does have a tattoo of an eye on her left ankle. At the very least, you force Duckator--villain that he is--to play a different sort of game from the one he's used to playing.
Anyway, that's all I've got left to bother you all with. Hopefully this facilitates some interesting discussion. Remember, you are all my last hope that the tales of the Baudelaire children can finally be told to the general public,
With all due respect,
Kristoph, the Angel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
KRISTOPH, THE ANGEL was born in a small town where the inhabitants were suspicious and prone to riot. He now lives in Japan. During his spare time he gathers evidence and is considered something of an expert by leading authorities.
