Kimosabae said:
Bomb, you really think Dante is undeniably top tier? I understand his damage output, but don't you think his zoning options are totally gimmicky? There's little to no variation due to the fact that his specials don't have gradient strengths. I think his teleport falls victim to this as well since it can only appear in one spot on the screen relative to the opponent. People are starting to easily anticipate teleports from what I've been witnessing on streams (as a Dante player, I often have fun calling them out myself. I see most of the setups from a mile away).
I know you don't care about his low life.
I dunno, just my opinion of him. Curious as to why you still think he's tops.
He's top tier for sure, meaning in this game he is Top 5.
Now before I explain why I think he's top tier/top 5, I will also list the other 4 on that list: Phoenix, Magneto, Amaterasu, Wesker. I would also like to mention that Dante is to be evaluated as a RUSHDOWN character and any moves he has that allow him to zone is merely a bonus to his moveset.
One strength that immediately comes to Dante is his range on normals, which are some of the best in the game. For a rushdown character, this trait is huge. His st.L probably has the highest range out of all the st.L in the game (but it's also one of the slowest). Dante can control space just by using his normals well enough. Only other character who is a rushdown character and has as much priority on moves as Dante is Zero and in the top 5 no character out prioritizes Dante in the normal. His jumping attacks coupled with his air dash allow for ridiculously unfair cross ups and PRACTICAL high/low unblockable set ups.
Now this strength also brings up one of Dante's very few weaknesses which is that his normals are slow to come out and some of them are very punishable on block. This would be true if this was another character but Dante has Bold cancels and style cancels which allows him to make virtually any of his unsafe move safe. This includes Stinger, which covers over half the screen and can hit confirm into a combo using Stinger -> bold cancel -> Volcano. He can also cancel into Weasel Shot/Gun shots and can even hit confirm some of these into a full combo along with doing chip damage on block. Out of the top 5 and not including Phoenix, Dante has ridiculously high block damage coming off of normal attacks and these can easily be made safe if needed.
After covering the strength of his normals and bold cancelling, we come to his damage output which is HIGH with Dante. In fact it is one of the best in the game and out of the top 5 (again not including Phoenix) only Magneto matches Dante in the combo category. We are looking at a 700K+ life lost off of a clean hit with Dante's new bread and butter, a combo which also builds around 2 meter. Adding more Acid Rain loops or more difficult stuff into the bread and butter allows Dante to downright kill any low health character in the game. Dante starting with 1 to 1.5 meter can easily finish that combo into a lvl3, killing off higher health characters in the game. Dante is self sufficient in his combos (doesn't need an OTG assist), if he gets a clean hit off. If he gets an aerial hit then he has to revert to his day 1 stuff which still does respectable damage.
Now we come to mix ups and throw game/reset game. Because Dante has high priority moves and solid mobility (air dash plus a tracking teleport) he will usually get plenty of chances to get a combo in. Plus his jumping attacks allow for practical unblockable set ups. Tracking teleport combined with a space covering/lock down assist allow for really hard to block mix ups and cross ups. Add in Acid Rain mix up on an incoming character along with Bold cancelling to bait a punish attempt, I have never seen Dante have difficulty opening people up. No good player uses his teleport raw and if he does it's usually to punish an attack on reaction which I will cover later on in when I discuss Dante's match ups. Dante's weakness as far as comparison to top 5 goes is that he has very limited damage potential from his air throw... BUT with an assist he can follow up from his throw and do respectable damage. Dante is usually the point man on the team and having an assist that allows him to abuse his teleport and follow up combos from an air throw (which buffs his reset game) is usually mandatory just like it's mandatory for Wolverine to have a lockdown assist or an assist that allows him to combo after his OTG slide.
Talking about Dante's tools, he has plenty of them (duh). Dante as an assist/anchor is extremely solid as he has two really great assists and one of them being the best anti-air assist in the game (Jam Session). With nice X Factor bonuses and a Devil Trigger, he can play anchor really well. Being in the Top 5 list in the game for on Point rushdown skills alone WHILE having great assists and anchor potential means that Dante is going to be seeing play for quite some time now. And of course in the current meta game, Dante is one of the very few characters who can initiate the DHC glitch (he has in fact 2 ways of doing this) and can follow it up which will almost always kill a character. DHC glitch is a very nice bonus to Dante who is already a powerful character in the game, not that he even needed it.
Dante's zoning tools are decent and get the job done for him, which is usually to set up his mix ups. Acid Rain is great and can be used defensively too. Hysteric is nice, Grapple set ups combos, Air Guitar coves space long enough for Dante to come in and even hit confirm into a combo. Air Raid does godly amounts of chip damage and Vortex is invincible, plus Dante is one of the few characters who can heal on point if needed (with a damage boost). Dante has two moves to ground bounce with and a move to wall bounce with. Hammer is one of the best moves in the game, it is INVULNERABLE, gives 20+ frames on BLOCK, causes Hard knock down on hit, hits High, cancels from jump S making it safe and has deceptively high range. Hammer single handedly bodies Wolverine as it snuffs out all his high priority moves (Drill Claw, Dive Kick). Only problem with Hammer is that if you mess up the input you will get a Killer Bee out and that is very punishable.
In fact, Dante's only weakness is the player. Currently, Dante is the king of dropped combos or wrong move input (especially those that have the mash H or mash S property). Most Dante players don't use all of his tools, it is like a split among players where some use a few tools of Dante while others use some other tools of Dante. Floe's Dante is a lot different than Josh Wong's Dante because they use different set of tools and different BnBs.
Finally, we come to Dante's match ups which is really how we evaluate tier lists. Dante is one of the few characters who has great match ups against Zero/Amaterasu because of his high priority attacks (most of Dante's normals easily hit Amaterasu, a problem for other characters). Dante bodies Wolverine with Hammer for free but it's really up to the player to make good reads and not get locked down by an assist. No character can runaway from Dante and Dante does extremely well against zoners or flight characters. Dante is also one of the few characters who does well against Phoenix as he has the tools to beat her but it is usually hard (as it is for every other character in the game). Dante beats out any character who is already free to zoning as Dante has decent zoning tools which can be converted into a combo opportunity. When all is said and done, Dante doesn't really have a bad match up.
Currently, I would say Dante is in 5th place in the Top 5 only because players haven't even come close to mastering him (those who use Dante have admitted it themselves). He has no where to go but up. Dante is used less and has been less effective than other characters at high level play, because characters like Wesker/Amaterasu/Taskmaster are WAY easier to play with and be effective with. That still hasn't stopped him from winning a tournament or two.
If you want to see good Dante play where a team is made around him as the main guy, watch some Josh Wong matches on the Break Weekly. He is a consistent top performer in those weekly tournaments and he uses Sentinels Drones for mix ups and Felicia's assist for the unblockable set ups. Basically he gets in a touch with Dante, does a combo and drops it intentionally so that the player drops to the ground so he can be met with an unblockable set up which will always lead to a full combo.
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